The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015 by Joe Hill Page A

present?
“Nostalgia,” we are apt to label this phenomenon. It is the success of the invading plant, which seeks only to anchor itself in the past. Why move forward? Why move at all?
    Â 
    â€œIs this the spot? Are you sure?”
    Andy spreads out the blanket. A soft aura surrounds the low moon, as if the moon itself were dreaming. The red halo reminds him of a miner’s carbide lantern.
    At first, when the girl suggested that they drive out to the park, he felt annoyed, then scared; the light was in her eyes again, eclipsing the girl she’d been only seconds earlier. But once he’d yielded to her plan the night had organized itself into a series of surprises, the first of which was his own sharp joy; now he finds he’s thrilled to be back inside the Black Rock Canyon campground with her. (The Joshua is also pleased, smiling up through Angie’s eyes.) It is her idea to retrace the steps of their first hike to Warren Peak. “For our anniversary,” she says coolly, although this rationale rings hollow, reminds Andy of his own bullshit justifications for taking out a lease on a desert “bungalow.” He does not guess the truth, of course, which is that, slyly, the Joshua tree is proliferating inside Angie, each of its six arms forking and flowering throughout her in the densest multiplication of desire.
Leap, Leap, Leap.
For months it has been trying to drive the couple back to this spot. Its vast root brain awaits it, forty feet below the soil.
    Angie has no difficulty navigating down the dark path; the little flashlight around her neck is bouncing like a leashed green sun. Her smile, when she turns to find Andy, is so huge that he wonders if he wasn’t the one to suggest this night hike to her. Something unexpected happens then, for all of them: they reenter the romance of the past.
    â€œ
Why didn’t we then
. . .” all three think as one.
    Quickly that sentiment jumps tenses, becomes:
    â€œ
Why don’t we now
. . .”
    When they reach the water tank, which is two hundred yards from the site of the Leap, Angie asks Andy to shake out the blanket. She sucks on the finger she pricked.
    Around the blanket, tree branches divide and braid. They look mutinous in their stillness. Andy can see the movie scene: Bruce Willis attacking an army of Joshuas. He is imagining this, the trees swimming across the land like sand octopuses, flailing their spastic arms, when the girl catches his wrist in her fingers.
    â€œCan we?”
    â€œWhy not?”
    Why didn’t they, Andy wonders, back then? The first time they walked this loop, they were preparing to do plenty. Andy unzips his jeans, shakes the caked-black denim off like solid dust. Angie is wearing a dress. Their naked legs tangle together in a pale, fleshy echo of the static contortionists that surround their blanket. Now the Joshua tree loves her. It grows and it flowers.
    Angie will later wonder how exactly she came to be in possession of Andy’s knife. Its bare blade holds the red moon inside it. She watches it glimmer there, poised just above Andy’s right shoulder. The ground underneath the blanket seems to undulate; the fabric of the desert is wrinkling and flowing all around them. Even the Joshua trees, sham dead, now begin to move; or so it seems to the girl, whose blinded eyes keep stuttering.
    The boy’s mouth is at the hollow of the girl’s throat, then lower; she moans as the invader’s leaves and roots go spearing through her, and still he is unaware that he’s in any danger.
    I can Leap back
, the plant thinks.
    Angie can no longer see what she is doing. Her eyes are shut, her thoughts have stopped. One small hand rests on Andy’s neck; the other fist withdraws until the knife points earthward.
Down, down, down
, the invader demands. Something sighs sharply, and it might be Andy or it might be the entire forest.
    Leap, Leap, Leap
, the Joshua