It’s in the school crest and it’s there because gardenia represents purity and innocence. It has an inherent goodness to it. So it’s basically an example for us girls. Bad girls, I mean.
To become good and leave behind our rule-breaking ways.
But that’s not the only thing that gardenias represent.
“Secret love,” Poe tells me while clipping dead leaves. “It also represents secret love.”
“Yup. They just don’t know it.” Callie snickers, looking at the teachers loitering around, keeping an eye on us; Miller is one of them.
“Which is so weird.” Wyn shrugs. “Because you can just Google it.”
Secret love.
I’m growing secret love.
I could laugh at this.
Ishouldlaugh at this.
It’s funny, isn’t it? It’s a joke.
The universe is kidding.
The girl in secret love isgrowingsecret love.
How tragic and poetic and totally not funny at all. And somehow it gives me the strength to make the decision. “I wanna call my sister.”
Because I need to know what happened.
I need to know what was so horrible that they would break up when they were on the verge of getting married.
Ineedto know.
But the thing is that I can’t call my sister.
I don’t have the privilege of making outgoing calls yet. But then, I have access to an illegal cell phone. Which its owner herself, Poe, reminds me about.
“You can totally use it,” she tells me and Callie nods for emphasis.
Wyn nods too, in fact.
I think it’s because they have sensed that something is up. Moody silences after the press conference video; disappearing in the bar and then returning with a pale, shocked face will tell people that. But like that day in the classroom when they gave me space and let me keep my secrets, they do the same now too. They don’t ask questions.
So I find myself inside the third-floor bathroom, with Poe’s illegal phone in my hands, while they stand guard at the door.
Tightening my chunky sweater around myself, I psych myself up to dial my sister’s number.
I tell myself that I can do this.
I can call my sister.
I mean yes, we haven’t talked in months and I don’t usually call her or email her, except on her birthday and special occasions when I send her cards and gifts, because she doesn’t like when I bother her.
But this is an emergency, right?
A breakup is an emergency and I wanna talk about it. I wanna ask her how she’s doing.
I can ask her that, can’t I?
