The Boy Who Made Flowers Sing

38 | A New Start

Epiphany. That's the feeling Elena awoke with on a sober Friday morning. Perhaps it was Andreas's letter finally sinking into her slow and disintegrating brain. Or Jennette's attempt to inspire Elena and hope for a better future. Or maybe it was the constant guilt she felt for putting her mother through constant mental torture. It was probably an accumulation of all of these things including rehab. However, it didn't matter because, for the first time in years, Elena felt inspired and motivated. Those two words were like new additions to her personal dictionary.  

She jumped out of bed and yanked open the metal box under her bed with a lock on it. She had hidden pills from her mother who still believed she was clean. 

She took the pills out, held them in her hands, and headed to the bathroom. 

She flushed the pills down the toilet. Then, she took the whole bottle and dumped the blue tablets into the toilet bowl. They swam around lifelessly and then disappeared.

She had never done that before. She smiled knowing Melissa would be pleased. Finally, she was saving herself from further ruin or a terrible overdose.

Kennedy's mother had sat all night beside Kennedy when she had her overdose. When Elena came in the morning, Joel was in the same seat, trying to keep her eyes open just in case her daughter needed anything. 

She knew Kennedy's parents were far from being the greatest, but perhaps they would change. It made Elena upset that it had to come down to a critical moment like this for Kennedy's parents to realize how terrible their daughter's condition had become. 

Joel had the same wrinkled forehead that her own mother had from years of stress. Sometimes, she looked at old pictures of her mother and compared them to what her mother looked like now. It was a drastic transformation. The pain in her delicate eyes and the sheer amount of love and comfort made Elena feel grateful instead of angry. Everything her mother had done was out of love, whether it was right or wrong. Instead of pushing out the love, she had to welcome it, whatever form it came in. 

She didn't want to add one more wrinkle to her mother's forehead. She didn't want to wake up in a hospital room with her mother sleeping on a chair beside her. She didn't want Stella to be traumatized by that experience. It made Elena shudder to think about that. What example was she putting forward for her sister? How could she let Andreas's letter go to waste? How could she let Oda's inspiring words become meaningless? How could she let Jennette's hard work all be for nothing?

Elena was filled with a sudden need to make these people's words and actions count. 

The sun periodically peaked through the dull, rain clouds that loomed over her town. Her mother was sleeping in while Elena sat at the dining table with a warm cup of green tea. She had opened the kitchen window so she could hear the magpies, sparrows, and chick-a-dees rhythmically bellowing their melodious chirps.  

After finishing her breakfast, Elena grabbed the car keys from the small shelf near the front door and took the family car to get groceries from the local store. Her mom finally let her use the car, knowing Elena was more trustworthy now. It felt strange being a normal part of society - just a normal person driving to a grocery store instead of an inebriated corpse passed out at a random person's home.

After picking up the groceries and tossing them in the car, Elena backed out of the parking lot and rode home quietly. The only sound was the faint squeaking of the wiper blades as they wiped the droplets of rain off of the windshield. 

Spontaneously, Elena decided to take the longer, scenic route home that passed by the prairie lands on the highway. She always loved the continuous fields of golden canola and majestic horses freely roaming the farmlands but hadn't traveled on the highway for years. 

There wasn't much to see other than the golden fields on either side, but on the way, a brick building caught her eye. She frowned as she had never seen it before. Since there was no one else on the highway, she slowed to a stop. Children were going back into the rugged building through a tall, wooden door that had a sign engraved into it. Elena squinted trying to read what it read but its letters had been worn out due to years of erosion. Why had Elena never seen this building before? The children, who were kicking the maple leaves on the ground with their rainboots were being led by a smiling woman in the back and a tall, young man in the front. Elena's curiosity led her to getting as close as possible so she could see what it was. Was it a school? It was a rather solitary area for a school to be in. The building was surrounded by the canola fields but was closer to the road. At the same time, it was partly obscured by the dense forest on its other side. 

Elena realized another sign at the intersection revealed the building's identity. She peeked through the car's window and squinted through the rain to read it: "School For the Forgotten Ones." 

Forgotten ones? Elena frowned and thought to herself. 

It was quite a sad name for a school but Elena realized it was for orphans.

Elena unknowingly smiled when she saw the kids beam from ear to ear, laughing and running on the slippery and muddy grass. Entranced for some odd reason, Elena continued to watch. Suddenly, the honk of a car behind her snapped her out of thought. Elena quickly stepped on the gas. For some reason, she couldn't stop thinking about the kids.

The forgotten ones, Elena thought, sadly to herself.

No one deserved to be forgotten.

Elena drove home and ran inside with the groceries, quickly putting them away. She then hurried over to the old desktop in the study room and looked up the school on the internet. It indeed was a school for orphans.

Elena knew what she wanted to tell Jennette for phase two.