FIVE
Few people have ever left Cutwater. Those who did never returned. Including our mother, Alice Goode.
In those first few months, I waited for letters to come, a postcard from somewhere beautiful: Mykonos, the south of France, Australia, or maybe a tiny island in the Atlantic. I pictured her skin sunned and salty, spending her days drifting in turquoise waters. I waited for her to write and ask us to come, giving instructions on how to find her. I imagined her setting up a life somewhere, getting it just right, before she sent for us.
I imagined a fairy tale.
One that never came true.
Because in three years there have been no postcards. No word.
She might as well be dead.
And it makes me hate the tulips even more—because whatever the reason for her leaving, the tulips are certainly to blame. One way or another.
I move quickly down the driveway, over the creek, and I find my brother in the kitchen when I step through the front door.
He spins around, and there’s something in his hand—but hequickly tucks it away into his pocket. Out of sight. My eyes narrow, a twinge of curiosity about what he’s hiding, but not enough to ask. In fact, I probably don’t want to know—it’s likely something he stole, even though he’ll deny it and insist it was given to him by someone who couldn’t resist his charm. Or maybe it’s one of the love letters that have begun to pile up on the kitchen table—too many to count.
“The school called,” he says, turning to the refrigerator and pulling out the carton of orange juice. I wince, certain it’s bad news—they’re not going to let me graduate, not after what happened on the front lawn. But Archer raises an eyebrow at me. “They said classes are canceled tomorrow,” he continues, shooting me a look. “It’s the end of the year. No more school… ever. We’re done with that place.” His mouth edges into a smile as he fills a coffee mug with juice, then stares down at it like he’s changed his mind. “And since you’re home before first period has even begun, I’m guessing something happened.”
I sink into one of the kitchen chairs, a sudden relief spilling through me: No more classes. No more awful stares as I make my way down the halls of Cutwater High.
I’m really done.I’m free.
“It was the tulips,” I answer. “Everyone at school was…” How do I explain? “They wanted a Goode tulip, they were begging for them.”
Archer stares down at his mug, then asks, “Did you find out who stole them?”
I lift a shoulder, uncertain. “No, but I think they’llallbe trying to sneak into the garden now. It’s like…” My eyes click to the front window, the gray floral curtains pulled back, and I stare down the driveway. “Like they’re addicted to them.”
Archer leaves the mug on the counter and walks to the kitchen table. “Like they’re in love?” he asks pointedly, sinking into the chair opposite me and leaning back. “Dale Dawson said that someone was in the alley behind the school last night charging five dollars to hold one of the tulips for a single minute. Dale paid it, and said it was the mostenchantingminute of his life. ‘Like falling in love with a god.’ But Dale can be dramatic.”
I push aside a stack of love letters on the table, making room to rest my elbows. Mom always said the tulips contain the highest concentration of pheromones of any flower that’s ever existed. She claimed that those pheromones could command armies, control worlds if someone wanted. And we, the Goodes, grow them in the garden behind our house. We sleep beside them, live our lives only a few feet from where they sprout from the soil; we’re born when the tulips bloom.
I push myself up from the table, the chair scraping against the floor, and walk to the back door. I look out at the uneven rows of tulips: our entire life, our whole fate, tangled up in those flowers.
“There’s some old barbed wire in the shed,” Archer says. “I’m going to string it up around the garden. I don’t know if it’ll stop them, but it might slow them down, at least until tulip season ends.”
I don’t answer. My mind is divided: I hate the idea of others slinking into the garden, ripping flowers from the ground. But I also feel myself letting go of this place. School is done. In a few days I should have my diploma, and then I’ll be gone. And I’ll no longer care what happens to the tulips, to this house, to the garden. A part of me is already miles away from here.
“Do you think Mom was running away from this house or fromus?” I ask, a thought that has lived inside me since the day she left, but I’ve never said out loud.
Archer exhales behind me. “I think she wanted to be someone else.”
I hate this description—because it sounds like whatIwant too. To bury my last name in the swampy dirt and never speak it again. The only thing I don’t want to leave behind is my brother. “This whole place feels damned,” I mutter.
“No shit.” Archer stands up, crosses the living room to stand beside me, then pulls out the guitar pick from his pocket, turns it through his fingers, an unconscious habit.
The sound of the creek fills the quiet between us, and I imagine myself drifting away on its surface, letting it carry me out through the garden and into the forest beyond, a hundred miles to the ocean, where I’ll spill into the sea and be set adrift on the Pacific. “Remember when we used to make paper boats?” I say, glancing at Archer.
The features of his face sometimes remind me of our father’s—gentle and quiet, unflinching.
“We’d drop the boats into the creek at the front porch, then run through the house, chasing them, and when they appeared from under the back porch, we’d follow them out into the garden.”
“You said we should write wishes on our boats,” he adds, a smile barely touching his eyes.
I forgot about this, how we’d write our wishes in crayon on the side of our flimsy paper boats, then let them be carried away, hoping they’d come true.
