But I feel hollowed out.
Maybe we’ve stopped the madness from spreading. We’ve prevented things from getting any worse. But I haven’t remedied the source of my own pain.
Maybe this was never a story about a curse, about stolen tulips and mismatched love.
It was always something else.
Something simpler.
A tiny love story.
Alostlove story.
And a summer I can’t get back.
Four days evaporate behind me.
Locals no longer come to the house, begging for tulips. They got a free tulip. And although they must have figured out it is the wrong kind, a flower that contains no magic—a flower that can’t bring them desire or affection—no one has marched up to our house complaining of such things.
Maybe now they can begin fitting their broken hearts back together—the lovesick and feverish dusting themselves off, a little rattled, a little hungover after a summer of delirium. But it wasn’t their fault. It was a sickness, a poison, that plagued a handful ofCutwater High students—a wickedness that most would rather not speak of.
A summer when they loved the wrong person. When they felt a wild, unnatural euphoria whenever they held a rare, blood-streaked tulip between their fingertips.
But they all know what it really was….
The Goode family.
And with renewed fear, they will keep their distance, they will whisper our names in Lone Pine Coffee and on back porches, they will cross the street when Archer or I draw near.
We are to blame for what happened this summer.
I watch the garden, wishing the tulips would finally decay back into the soil. Maybe then I would feel like I could leave. Like the summer was truly over. Like there was nothing worth staying for.
No flicker of hope. No last chances.
But the tulips remain—even as the sun blazes over Cutwater, the afternoon heat turning the swampy soil to dry, cracked mud. Even when the creek below the house fades to only a trickle.
The tulips are defiant, refusing to die.
Footsteps on the front porch.
It’s well after dark, and I’m seated on the living room floor, working on a sketch of Mrs. Thierry—shading in the deep creases around her eyes, her dog, Peebles, standing at her side, nose to the air—losing myself in the drawing, as if I’m shading over the memory ofhim.
Oak was a lesson. A lie. I learned the hard way, the worst way,just like Mom warned. What we had was only the start of something. Those first fragile moments together—the almost, the could have been but never was. The promise of something. And maybe that’s what makes it so hard—not knowing what it might have become.
Eventually I’ll forget.
But the sudden scrape and shuffle of footsteps sends a dreadful spike of hope straight through me.
Archer shoots me a look, and he reaches for the shotgun in one swift motion as he moves for the door. He pulls back the curtain on the front window, peering outside.
“Who is it?” I ask, imagining a boy, tall and shadowed on the front porch, eyes shaped by sadness, a thousand promises on his lips. A boy who could crack me open again.
But my brother doesn’t answer. Instead he lets the curtain fall back into place, and he yanks open the door, letting in a cool evening wind.
Peering past my brother, I see the half outline of a boy.
But it’s not Oak.It’s Randy Ashspring—a junior—his light brown hair shaved close, his brown eyes all soft and pleading. He’s tall, taller than Archer, and he stands with arms crossed, legs set wide on the front porch, like he’s ready for a fight. I think he’s going to ask for a tulip, beg for one, but instead he says, “She thinks she loves you….” He stares down at Archer, and I understand at once why he’s here. He’s not the first angry boyfriend or girlfriend to get the courage to confront Archer directly. “She broke up with me, and she thinks she’s going to run away with you.”
