Flower

Chapter 21: Raven

After the winter formal, Flora would not talk. At all. She would lie in her bed, staring at the wall. Her dress hung limply in her closet, the hem ripped up.  I felt so bad for her. She watched her boyfriend die, or so that's what Williams confirmed it as. They couldn't find a body or who even had done it. 

            Christmas came and by, no one was really in the mood now that our group was missing a member.  Poor Flora.  I had received gifts from the Jacobson's, but I hadn't bothered to open them yet.  Derek had also given me something and I was tempted to open it when I found it outside our door, but then I remembered Flora and strongly decided against it.  I didn't want to upset her any more than she was at the moment. After Christmas, snow began to fall and winter became a bitch.  I've always hated the cold and it wasn't my idea to go to an academy in the north.

            Flora stopped going to her treatment sessions with her step-father, Roy. She told me that there was no point going now since she had nothing left to live. She told me that they weren’t working and her demon father was just going to take her over in the end.  I wouldn’t buy that. I tried everything to get her to go, but she would scream at me to leave her alone.

Eventually, Roy would just come into the dorm room and take her because she wouldn’t come. She would scream and shout and kick, but it didn’t seem to faze Roy. I would watch with sadness. She would come back in a couple hours, drowsy and depressed. 

            On New Year's Eve, we tried to throw a party to get Flora out of the room. It was a flop.  She came out all right, but once she saw it was party, a New Years Eve party, she burst out crying and ran back to the dorm room, locking the door. I wasn't allowed in until the next day when Mrs. Berlowski had to unlock it for me.  That was a little embarrassing. 

            Classes began and Flora became a zombie, going to class, eating required meals and then holing herself in our room. It was awful, seeing how depressed she seemed. Her grades began to slip and eventually, she was required to go to the counseling office for classes instead because she was a wreck.  She wouldn't talk to any of us; she barely talked to anyone at all.

            "Poor Flora," Betty said worriedly as she watched Flora walk away, not even eating her lunch. "She won’t talk to any of us. She has become unsocial."

            "She's depressed," Derek pointed it out. "Usually, I'd say she'd get over it, but I don't see that happening any time soon."

            "I don't think anyone would if they watched a person they loved so much die in the hands of a masked figure." Whitney chimed in.  "We've tried everything to get her back to what she was and it hasn't done anything."

            "The only thing that will get her back to her normal self; "Jane piped in, "Is Emmett himself."

            "Hello! He's dead!" I said a little too loudly. Flora must had heard me because she turned to me and burst out crying. She ran off in a disastrous heap. I felt a hard kick to the shin.

            "OW!" I jumped, rubbing it afterwards.

            "You don't say that out loud. You know we don't know for sure." Betty said sternly. I sighed and continued to eat. 

            The loudspeaker kicked on and Jan's recognizable voice echoed through the hall, "Ms. Sterling, phone call in the office."

            "Who's calling you?" Whitney asked me. "We fooled the doctors pretty good in September. They can't be calling us now to give us the bill!"