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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E D E L W E I S S
[leontopodium nivale] ➳ courage.
ONE AFTERNOON IN GRADE nine, I'd perched on the steps behind our house and picked a yellow dandelion out of the ground. As the late summer beat down on my skin, I'd plucked the flower's petals one by one.
Will he? I'd asked myself silently, dropping the first petal to the ground. Or won't he?
Obviously, I was being silly, and the outcome had nothing to do with whether or not Anthony Ruiz would ask me to be his girlfriend. But I still tore off each petal, revelling in a gush of satisfaction when I touched the last one.
Yes, I'd thought giddily, watching it fall. He will.
And he did, on the same day he gifted me a silver butterfly necklace. He'd helped me clasp it around my neck, then claimed my first kiss before I could even process my good fortune.
At the time, that had been the best day of my life.
But even so, that was not the day dandelions and wishes became a recurring motif in my life. Instead, will he, won't he? became just one iteration of my least favourite game.
Because he would just leave his sister there to cry, and he would let his parents take the blame. He wouldn't come after the people he had hurt and he definitely wouldn't apologize. He would break my heart, even if I broke up with him first, and his memory wouldn't leave me alone, not for months.
Not until I found a way to move on.
And in the shadows of this small-town graveyard, which already looked more alive than it had ever been, I realized I had done exactly that.
I paced along the grass next to Isaac, both of us holding cardboard boxes that overflowed with pink roses. Using sparkly tape and an excess of the tissue paper, we'd put together tiny bouquets of several flowers each.
Now it was time to distribute them to the graves.
A gradient stretched from the tip of the atmosphere to the uneven ground; the skies were saturated with bright oranges and purples that melted into dusty browns and faded greens beneath our feet. Side-by-side, Isaac and I delivered the bouquets in sync, speaking softly as we drifted between the rows.
Our conversation had fallen to the topic of my old gang. I did most of the talking, explaining how we'd all met, and how each of them had at one point given me grief about loving plants more than most people.
Isaac had laughed at that.
"Out of everyone you've told me about so far," he said, fiddling with the tape on around a bunch of flower stems, "I think I like Priya and Chloe the most."
