It’s impossible to see what’s real.
Morning sunlight spears over the treetops, ricocheting through the bus windows. The brown bench seat is cracked along the edge, digging into the backs of my legs, and the air smells like waffles and maple syrup. Tim Zhang’s mom makes him waffles every morning before school, and this morning he still had a waffle in his hand when he boarded the bus; now he sits chewing the last of it from the seat in front of me.
I don’t mind—perhaps the sugary scent of batter, butter, and syrup will mask the covetous scent of tulips on my skin. I evenmanage to get my bus window open just a crack, the fresh air whirling over me.
Still, anxiety clatters along my thoughts.
Get through class, finish out the week, and then I’ll be free.
And not just free for the summer.
Free for the rest of my life.
I’ll graduate, get my diploma, and then I’m leaving this town.
For good.
In my lap the notebook is spread open, and I shade inthe boy’shands, his knuckles, imagining the parts I didn’t get close enough to see. It’s pure curiosity that keeps me coming back to this sketch, a need to finish it.
The bus thumps over a pothole, someone shrieks from the front of the bus, startled, but I lose myself in the rhythm of the pencil scratching against the paper, the side of my hand smearing the edges. I lose myself in his face, the slope of his eyes—how they stared back at me, reckless, unafraid. Sunlight sparking off his lashes. I could have moved closer, I could have asked him his name before he strode away. I should have held on to the moment, squeezed it in my fist until it was burned onto my flesh.
The.
Boy.
I close my eyes, trying to conjure the memory, but the boy is slipping away like a dream at first light.
The bus finally turns into the Cutwater High parking lot and lumbers to a stop. The school looks like a brick prison as I exit the bus, making my way down the metal steps. Only two more days. Two days of suffering, two days of enduring my classmates’ covetousstares. But it’s more than that now. I don’t know how many tulips have been passed and traded in secret; I don’t know who possesses them. And I don’t know what will happen to those who do.
Sliding my headphones over my ears, hitting play on Oasis’s “Wonderwall,” I make my way across the lawn—my eyes lowered, the front doors into the school only a few paces away.
But I never reach them.
Chloe Perez—a sophomore who last year had a locker next to mine—appears from behind one of the craggy oak trees bordering the lawn, as if summoned by the shadows. She calls out to me, her eyes watery like she’s been crying, but I only make out a few of the words. I let my headphones slide down to my neck—the song still playing from the tiny speakers like a faint insect hum—and she marches up to me, stopping much too close.
“I thought you’d never get here,” she repeats, her face a galaxy of freckles, dark hair curled around her small ears, but her features tug strangely to one side, and there’s a sharpness in her butterscotch eyes that frightens me. “They were right,” she continues, nodding. “There’s something inside them, the devil’s perfume or…orreal magic, or the flesh of the dead, I don’t care what it is. I need more.” She looks like she hasn’t slept, but has instead been pacing the lawn in front of the school all night, her cheeks hollow, her lips dry and colorless.
“What?” I say, my voice cracking, as I take a step back.
“The rumors…” Her eyes widen like I should know what she’s thinking. The air hisses from her lungs, and she lets out a short, uneasy laugh. “It wasalwaysthe tulips that made everyone love you…the Goodes.” She nods again, more manic this time. “It was those flowers. All along. And they’ve just been growing behind yourhouse, sprouting right up from the ground. For free.” She laughs, and her eyelashes flutter like the whole world has suddenly come into focus—like she’s finally seeing clearly.
She shifts on her feet, then begins rummaging in the pocket of her blue corduroy skirt, before holding something up for me to see: a single cursed tulip.
A Goode tulip.
The petals are still intact, the crimson streaks visible across the soft white flesh, but it’s wilted, losing its color—turning pale and lifeless. It should be in a vase of water, but it looks as though she’s been clenching it in her fist for at least twenty-four hours, unable to part with it. Let it out of her grasp.
“Where did you get that?” I lean closer to her, wanting to snatch it from her hand.
“Took it out of Connor’s backpack at lunch yesterday when he wasn’t looking.” Her eyes are wild and treacherous—she is pleased with herself, with the heist she managed to pull off. But her words make me feel sick. The tulips have changed hands so many times, there’s no hope of ever getting them all back.
She smiles, almost laughs again, her eyes bright and unblinking. “And right after, Archie Green offered to carry my bag. Then Billy Ruthers said he’d give me a ride home today so I don’t have to take the bus.Billy Ruthers…,” she says again for emphasis, both eyebrows peaked into her forehead like she still can’t believe it—Billy Ruthers, who drives an old, restored black Chevelle and parks it in the teachers’ parking lot. They just let him do it. Like even the teachers know he’s better than this place.Untouchable.But yesterday…henoticed Chloe Perez.
“Please,” she hisses, tilting her chin closer to me, unafraid. “I need another one, before this one dies.” Her teeth are mashed together, her fingers gripping the tulip stem so tightly, I think it’s going to snap.
“I don’t have any….” I shake my head at her, “Wonderwall” still playing from the headphones around my neck. “I’m sorry, but—”
She reaches out with her free hand and grabs my forearm, holding tight. “I can’t lose this feeling, the scent of it….” Her eyes flutter closed, before she snaps them open again. “Is this how it feels all the time for you, living in that house? Is this how you feel right now? Like your skin is tingling? Like you’re sleepwalking but you never want to wake?”
