Daisy’s eyes were still saucer-wide, and filled with alarm. She stared at me, as if waiting for more word-vomit from her best friend. “Oh.” She blinked. “Why?”
“Why did I destroy the garden? I—I was overwhelmed. And hurt. And I just felt like—I felt like a shaken pop bottle about to explode, and I had to take the feeling out onsomething. Have you ever felt that way? Like so much happens all at once, and if you don’t scream, you feel like it’ll swallow you whole?”
The expression on Daisy’s face shifted, something serious taking its place. “Yes.”
“That’s how I felt.” I squeezed my phone tighter, knuckles aching under the pressure. “It was my parents, and Destelle, and just… everything.”
“So… you lit the serenity garden on fire?”
“On accident.” I explained to her the whole situation—how Beck handed me the lighter, and we first just lit flower petals on fire. How I’d started to burn a rose on the bush, but thought I’d blown it out. “I didn’t realize the fire caught. And then it… all went up in flames so fast.”
“And they just assumed it’d been Beck?” Daisy asked, hands hanging off the end of her steeringwheel. Her voice had lost the shocked edge, turning to something softer. “Did you say it’d been Beck?”
“No,” I rushed out, voice catching. “Mrs. Johnson did. He was holding the lighter, and… people already expected it of him, you know?Troubled. That was what they’d called him. It must’ve been him. Eleanor was barefoot, and her fingers were dirty, but she wouldn’t do something like that. She was a good girl.” I swallowed, thinking back to quiet Beck, who just sat outside and looked at the stars. “And Beck was a bad boy.”
And I hadn’t corrected them.
That, right there, was the worst part of it all. Destroying the garden, kissing Beck, lighting a bush on fire—it all paled in comparison to the lie by omission. Shameful to admit aloud, a choking pressure around my throat.
“I’ve seen what my parents look like when they’re disappointed,” I went on, my confidence slipping away, the pressure on my chest becoming tighter. Harder to breathe around. “It’s like something in their face changes. Like—like you stop being who they thought you were. They looked at Destelle like that. And she hadn’t cared—she never cared about what they thought—but if they looked at me like that… it would’ve broken me.”
Wordlessly, Jamie laid a hand on my shoulder, giving it a squeeze. The weight caused tears to prick my eyes, because I didn’t deserve his silent encouragement.
Daisy, too, reached over and gripped my knee. “You were just a kid, Nellie,” she said softly. “Kids are allowedto make mistakes. Even ones like kissing a boy and accidentally setting fire to an award-winning rosebush.”
“Not me,” I told her. “Not ever.”
“You put too much pressure on yourself.” Jamie let out a small sigh. “Mom and Dad, if they knew the truth, they’d?—”
“No.” My voice was flat and final, and I blinked the stinging in my eyes away. “They don’t need to know the truth. Beck’s back home, unbanned from Alderton-Du Ponte, and the rosebushes are blooming again. It’s fine. It’s all in the past.” I laid my hand over Daisy’s. “I just wanted to be honest with you. I should’ve told you the truth from the start.”
Daisy pressed her lips together. In the dimness of the cab, it was hard to see the exact emotion in her eye. I was almost afraid to look too close.
“Jamie,” Daisy murmured before I could say more. “Can I have a moment with Nellie?”
Jamie blinked, because now that the truth about Beck was out there, what else was there to keep a secret about? “Sure,” he replied after a beat, popping open the back door. “I’ll, uh, see you later, Daze.”
She gave him a nod, but turned back to me when he closed the door behind him. “Tell me the truth,” she said, lowering her chin. “Do you still have feelings for Beck?”
I should’ve told her about what had happened in the coat closet. How close I’d come to slipping and making another stupid decision. But she didn’t need to know that part. “I can’t have feelings for him,” I told her. “Liking him won’t impress my dad.”
“Nellie,” she said on a sigh, dropping her head to the side. “There’s more to life than impressing your parents.”
There wasn’t. Not right now. Not when everything felt like it was already slipping out of place. I pressed my lips together, shaking my head slightly, like I could physically push the conversation away. “There’s something else I want to talk to you about,” I said, forcing my tone lighter. “I want to talk about… Dalton.”
Daisy’s forehead wrinkled. “Dalton?”
Safer. This was safer. “Jamie said I should’ve asked you more about it the other day. He said it was clear you wanted to talk about it.”
“Uh.” She blinked several times, turning away from me to lean back into her seat. “No? I mean, I don’t know. I’m not… I don’t know.” Her fingers fluttered around the steering wheel. Nervous. “It’s kind of like how you didn’t talk to me about Beck. You weren’t ready. I don’t… think I’m ready.”
“I knew it. Jamie thinks he knows you better than me.”
That made Daisy chuckle. “He’s just a worrier.”
“No, just a know-it-all.”
Now we both laughed. She tipped her head to look at me. “Raelynn was so mad when I went up to her tonight. She said, ‘What, do you secretly like him?’”
