“And that doesn’t sound crazy to you?”
I take a step back. Rose’s voice has gotten louder than I’ve ever heard it before, and there’s a shrill edge to it. That same fear I heard before, but more present now.
What is she afraid of? Of me? Is Rose scared of me now?
The thought makes me feel sick, my already acidic stomach frothing even more.
Her hands come out of her pocket, and now she, too, has her arms wrapped around herself. As if she can use them as armor.
“Look, I’m gonna be real with you, I’ve thought things were weird here for a while now. It seemed great at first. Everyone was nice—aside from Violet—so I was willing to look past the strangeness of living out in the woods with some guy and a bunch of girls because it was my best option. And because I wanted to believe all the stuff Sol said. All those stupid garden metaphors about becoming a better version of yourself. I wanted to believe it. But how is setting a store on fire going to make you a better person? Someone could’ve gotten hurt.”
“Noone was there but me.”
“Youcould’ve gotten hurt,” she snaps. “Or arrested. You might still get arrested if cops find out you did it.”
“They won’t,” I whisper, but it’s more a reassurance to myself than to her. In truth, I’ve thought of that risk every day since the fire. It’s not as if the way I set it could have looked like an accident. Arson would be obvious. “Rose, you don’t understand. When Sol asked me to do it, I wasn’t sure, but … but he explained it well. The reasons why.”
“I’m sure he did,” she sneers. “He explains everything well, and then you walk away and it stops making sense.” She lets out a shaky breath. “And what was shaving your head supposed to teach you?”
“Not to be so attached to my appearance.”
Rose scoffs. “This … this is too much. I need to go.”
She starts walking toward the door behind me.
“Rose—”
“I won’t say anything,” she says. “I promised I wouldn’t, so I won’t. But I can’t do this right now. I … I need to think.”
She turns and opens the door and runs from the shed, back to the cabin.
I slump against the wall, tears welling in my eyes.
I’ve made a terrible mistake.
IRIS
Astorm rolls in that night and stays through the morning. Dark, lightning-filled clouds hang low over the misty mountains as torrents of rain pour down. It seems fitting, all things considered.
Rose hasn’t spoken to me since my confession in the shed. She joked with Poppy and Zinnia while we got ready for bed last night, but her dark eyes haven’t looked my way once. Then, when I woke up this morning to the sound of a distant clap of thunder, she was already gone, having gotten up before dawn, presumably just to avoid me.
The sight of her empty mattress leaves me feeling lonelier than I have in a long time.
She can’t avoid me completely, however, because the storm has us all trapped inside the little cabin.
Zinnia struggles the most with this claustrophobic situation, though. Once her chores are done, I find her sitting by the atticwindow, watching the storm with a wistful expression, pencil slack between her fingers and a sketchbook open in her lap.
“You okay?” I ask her as I grab some of our dirty clothes for the laundry.
She looks up at me and shrugs. “Yeah. I’m just …stifled.” She emphasizes the word in a way that makes it clear she’s been thinking for a while about how to describe her emotions, and that is the term she landed on. It rolls off her tongue like she’s testing it out, speaking it aloud for the first time. Then she nods. “Yeah. That’s it. I feel stifled.”
“From being cooped up today?” I ask.
“That’s part of it.” She looks out the window again. “I oughta be asking you that, though. You and Rose.”
I pause, half bent down to pick up a discarded T-shirt. “What about us?”
Zinnia gives me a sideways look. “Y’all usually get along real well. Smiling and teasing. But she’s not talking to you for some reason.”
