Renata Santos doesn't expect her heart to flutter when she catches a boy stealing flowers out of her backyard. But as she unravels his reputation, she realizes puppy-eyed delinquent Isaac Marshall may just be the sunshine she needs to turn her life...
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P O P P Y
[papaver rhoeas] ➳ consolation.
I VOLUNTARILY SHOWED UP at the greenhouse the following weekend.
With two days until final exams, it might've been smarter to hole up in my bedroom and study instead. But Isaac and I had already spent hours poring over our notes, and surrounding myself with luscious flora seemed like a good way to clear my head.
I'd texted Jackie to let her know I'd be there. To my relief, she responded right away. And when I arrived, the first thing I spotted was her phone on the table — which meant she'd been able to get it back from the school office.
The second thing I noticed the way every gesture made her look exhausted. She knocked over a cup full of pencils when she reached across the table, struggled to orient a pair of scissors into her hand and seemed to lose her clipboard every two minutes.
"Sorry," she said eventually. "I'm messing up everything today."
"That's okay."
Saturdays were reserved for arts and crafts, so today we planned to decorate plastic flowers pots. Jackie had acquired a colourful assortment of permanent markers and empty pots from the community centre, and now it was my job to arrange the supplies into sets.
Red strays poked out of her ponytail, which she tightened over and over again as I allocated twelve markers at each place on the table. "Is there something on your mind?" I asked. "Or is it because of exams?"
She hesitated, her blue-grey eyes almost translucent as her irises flicked side to side. "Maybe both?"
I forced a smile. "That's stressful."
"Yeah." Perhaps encouraged, she went on. "I just feel like everything is happening at once. It's almost like, I have no idea what my life is going to be like in two weeks. It's been so hard."
Things had taken a sharp plunge into uncertain waters, and it suddenly didn't seem wise to wade out any further. Not with words, anyway. Without thinking, I walked around the table, held open my arms and wrapped her into a hug.
It had been a long time since I'd embraced someone as a friend. In the city, I had sleepovers with my best friends, sharing pillows on their tiny beds, and took photos with our arms linked like sorority girls. But here, I didn't have anybody I could do that stuff with.
I'd missed this a lot.
"Sorry," Jackie murmured, toying with her ponytail again. "I wish I could tell you everything, but I think my dad would get mad at me if I did."
"You don't have to do what your dad says, you know." I'd never considered myself a bad influence, but I didn't think Doug Merritt was a very good influence either, so I kept going. "He doesn't always know best."
