Patricio's Sunflower Girl • Patricio Fernandez

Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Sunflower Power

Allison

Kids, as we grow older you may have to brace yourself for questions you wish you had the actual answer to. People around me have asked me one thing and one thing only, what am I going to do in the future? And being in high school whose a senior and who's about to graduate? does not help the case at all.

"Earth to Allie?" Daniel waved his hand in front of my face.

"Sorry, where were we?" I shook my head chuckling lightly before looking back at out project.

In the midst of the group discussion, my eyes momentarily skimmed through the classroom. Until it landed on a vase of sunflowers. I smiled. When people ask me what's my favorite kind of flower, my answer has always been the same, a sunflower.

Ever since I turned 16, I've made my own fantasy super power which is having the ability to look past people's facades and see their very own sunflowers. Healthy sunflowers represents the happiness and liveliness the person experiences. Dorky am I right?

What state is my sunflower you ask? Well, my sunflower is slowly wilting.

Don't get me wrong though, my life is completely normal; good grades, good friends, and a good family. Everything was almost perfect, but like they say nothing is always perfect. There are certain points of time where my sunflower petals fall.

As they say, too much water can still cause the flower to wilt.

"Allie!"

I jumped in my seat and redirected my attention to my best friend, Amber, sitting across from me with an annoyed expression. "I said, did you manage to summarize the theories that we planned last night?"

I nodded, "Yeah, yeah everything is in the file I airdropped you". Amber looked at me suspiciously before looking back to her laptop. "Hey, are you sure you're okay? You seem out of it today" Daniel asked turning towards me in his seat.

"Yeah-"

"I'm not even surprised, she's been dozing off quite often nowadays" Amber scoffed as she threw a crumpled draft paper at me. "Hey! This project cost me my sleeping hours, you and I both agree how exhausted we're all feeling right now" I sassed as I threw the paper ball back at her.

"I have to agree to that, I am exhausted" Jared breathed dropping his pen as he leaned back against his chair.

"Exhausted? You didn't even finish up your part of the job since we came here" Amber hissed. Jared ignored her and rolled his eyes playfully.

"Amber you know I love you but you're being really annoying right now" I chuckled. "Come on lighten up" I nudged her.

"Yeah I agree, we've been actually pushing ourselves to finish it within this week when the deadline is in another two weeks and we're technically 80% done with our report for the GDP assignment" Daniel sighed as he patted my shoulder making me smile in comfort.

"Fine, I guess we're done for the day. I'm kind of getting hungry too" Amber shrugged. "Great! Let's go get dinner" Jared said too excitedly while rushing to pack his stationary into his bag. The rest of chuckled as we did the same.

We walked out into the semi-crowded hallway, it was almost the end of school period and students were starting to leave their classes. Not a day goes by when people will wave at me or stopped me for a chat while walking along the hallways.

I'm not popular, I just seem to attract all this unnecessary attention. Not that I hate or mind it, I just wish I'm invisible sometimes.

"So, tell me what is actually going through that pretty little head of yours" Daniel chuckled as we walked side by side in the direction of our lockers.