“Why is there a newspaper on our front porch?” My voice is mostly air.
Archer doesn’t answer, and I move closer to read the headline, the room starting to spin out of focus.
CUTWATER HIGH STUDENTS AFFLICTED WITH
UNEXPLAINED HYSTERIA
I skim the article quickly, my eyes catching on several words—sentences that feel like sharpened thorns scraping across my bones.
Locals blame longtime residents known as the Goode family…
Tulip farm may be the cause of the unusual phenomenon.
Symptoms are abnormal… including delusions of love.
I step away from Archer—I don’t want to read any more.
“They’re calling it a modern-day tulip mania,” he says, glancing up from the article.
“They’re not wrong.” I sink back into the chair, facing my uneaten plate of toast. “Who do you think left it?”
Archer folds the paper in half, then drops it onto the kitchen table. “Mrs. Thierry was at the end of our driveway when I opened the door.”
We are silent, staring down at the newspaper—we’ve spent our whole lives shrouded by whispers and rumors about our family, but this is the first time our name has been printed in the local newspaper.
“It’s a shit newspaper anyway,” Archer says.
It might be a tiny newspaper for a tiny town, but it’s still the Goode family name stamped in black ink on the front page, for all to see.
The air leaves my lungs, and I lift my eyes to my brother. “We’ll get them back.”
He frowns. “What?”
“We’ll get them back,” I repeat. “All of them. We’ll find the stolen tulips and we’ll stop whatever’s happening.”
He sinks into his chair, tilting his head. “How?”
“Bait and switch.”
My brother and I walk to town, taking the alleyways, keeping out of sight.
Mrs. Thierry said that we were “stirring up things” we shouldn’t by letting others possess a tulip. Stolen or not.
I intend to fix that.
We reach Aubrie’s Flower Shop, on Second Street, and we gatherall the ordinary tulips arranged in glass vases, then ask the shopgirl for any others she has in the back. She eyes us, wary, watchful, but I tell her that they’re a gift for a sick relative, and she nods, like she has no intention of questioning our motive. She just wants us out of her shop as quickly as possible.
Archer pays for the blooms with money I never knew he had, and by the time we’ve left the shop, we have a good five dozen tulips balanced in our arms.
Leaving town, we keep to the shadows, making sure we aren’t seen, then hurry up Swamp Wells Road.
Archer drags out the rusted red wheelbarrow from the side of the house and parks it at the end of our driveway. The tire is flat, it hardly rolls, but we fill the wheelbarrow with the purchased tulips. Then I use a piece of cardboard from the shed and hastily write out a sign:
TRADE IN YOUR OLD TULIP FOR A FRESH ONE.
NO COST.
“Do you think they’ll really do it?” I ask, unsure if anyone will believe our lie.
