See you in twenty.
I look at the message for a second. I already ate a full breakfast.
Was it croissants?
No.
Then it doesn't count. I decide. I have twenty minutes to get ready and head to my parents' place.
I put the phone away, rinse my mug, and go get changed.
By nine-thirty I'm at my parents' house. Jazz is already there, her red car flashy in the driveway. As soon as I push through the front door, the smell of brown sugar and cinnamon rolls across my brain and my stomach rumbles.
Jazz is, in fact, at my parents' stove. This will not surprise anyone who knows Jazz.
"The door was unlocked," she says, without turning around, by way of explanation.
"It's always unlocked." I drop my bag on the kitchen table. "This is Saltford Bay."
"I know. I'm just establishing that I did not break in."
"Noted."
The tissue paper flowers are Jazz's idea and, as with most of Jazz's ideas, it arrived fully formed and non-negotiable. A full garbage bag of white and pink crepe paper sits in the middle of the living room floor next to a box of floral wire and a printout from a craft website that Jazz has annotated in three different colors of pen.
She's made notes in the margins. There are arrows and, unless I'm reading this wrong, a small diagram.
"Sit," she says, pointing at the floor beside the bag.
I drop my jacket on the couch and sit. The morning light comes in through the yellow curtains and falls warm and golden across the floor, and it occurs to me, not for the first time, that I have missed this room every single day I've spent at Stronghold.
Jazz appears from the kitchen and drops onto the floor across from me before pulling a stack of paper toward herself. She assesses it with the expression she reserves for things she is about to completely dominate.
"The technique involves accordion-folding," she says, handing me the printout. "Then wire in the middle, fan, separate each layer. It's supposed to be simple and meditative."
I look at the printout. "It says that."
"I've made three hundred of these for Elena Reyes's quinceañera. It takes practice and it will absolutely try to make you bleed, but it looks awesome in the end."
"It's tissue paper. How can it make you bleed?"
"The wire, Maddie. The wire."
I pull a square of pink paper toward me and start folding. Accordion. Accordion. Accordion. Beside me, Jazz works with the quick, sure hands of a woman who knows exactly what the wire is capable of.
We work.
It takes maybe six minutes. Six minutes of just the sound of paper and the warm, lingering smell of whatever Jazz has on the stove drifting in from the kitchen and the distant sound of Mr. Prewitt's basset hound doing his usual morning commentary on the general state of the neighborhood.
Finally, Jazz breaks the silence without looking up from her flower.
"Okay. You're going to tell me right now or I'm going to grill you and then you'll tell me anyway. So let's save us both the time."
I separate a layer of pink paper with my thumbnail with probably more concentration than the task requires.
"Tell you what?"
I know I'm being coy. I could never get anything past my bestie. Still, it's fun to make her sweat for it.
