AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I eat lunch alone, ignoring my old table in favor of a bench outside the library. When I wasn’t dating Zack, Sasha and I used to float around the lunchroom, eating with various friends who were all excited when we came by. The last few months, we stayed at one table, the popular table, where all of Sasha’s self-appointed friends (and Zack) accepted us as if we’d always been there. Now that she’s gone, those friends haven’t asked me to join them all week. Maybe they think things would be awkward now? They’d be right. No worries. I eat my chicken salad alone, eyes on my phone as I refresh my email yet again.
This isn’t healthy, and I know it. Part of me doesn’t care, and the other part of me — the one smart enough to get into vet school — thinks I should get a hobby.
After school on Wednesday, I call Mom and tell her I’ll be a little late, and then I drive over to Izzy’s Flowers.
The front room of the flower shop looks like a pink rose monster threw up all over the place. Well … if a rose monster’s vomit looks like vases filled with skillfully arranged bouquets.
“Izzy?” I call out, walking through the small footpath between racks and racks of flowers. They’re stacked on top of every available surface, lining the floor all the way to the front counter.
“Billy?” Izzy calls out from the maze. “That you?”
“No,” I call back, peering through a temporary plastic shelving unit to see Izzy walking up to the counter. “It’s, uh, it’s me.”
Saying my own name would be the next step here, and maybe it’s the overwhelming perfume of roses, but my body feels prickly, like thorns full of anxiety are pressing into me. I came here expecting a job, but did Izzy really mean that? Maybe I should buy flowers or something to make it look like I had a reason to come here.
I slip into the small free space on the customer side of the front counter. It’s about one floor tile wide, and can’t possibly be in accordance with fire codes.
“Raquel,” Izzy says, the lines around her lips creasing into a smile. “It’s good to see you. I’ve been wanting to tell you that you gave a beautiful eulogy.”
“Thank you,” I say, feeling heat rush to my cheeks. I’m not one for loving compliments, and her memory of the funeral only makes my heart jump in anticipation of the next note from Sasha.
“Sorry for the mess,” Izzy says. “Billy is half an hour late, of course.”
“What are all these flowers for?” I try to glance around, but mostly I focus on making myself as small as possible so I don’t knock any of them over.
“Big fancy wedding over in Rosehill,” she says. “The bride is a little stuck-up, but of course I’m not allowed to say that.” She rolls her eyes. “She wanted more pink roses than anyone in the entire state had in stock, so she ordered from five of us. Five florists! Something like ten thousand pink roses in total.”
“Wow,” I say. “If I had that kind of money, I wouldn’t spend it on flowers.”
“That’s why we work here,” Izzy says, giving me a conspiratorial wink. “We take the money from those who have too much.”
“We?”
“Well, that’s why you’re here, right?” Izzy reaches under the counter, her denim dress pooling around her feet, and pulls out a dark purple apron, still in the plastic bag. “You ready to start working?”
I rip open the bag, shake out the new apron and hook it around my neck, tying the strings around my waist. It smells like new clothing, and there’s an embroidered Izzy’s Flowers logo in the center. Hands on my hips, I say, “How do I look?”
“Like someone still healing from a loss.” Her lips tuck into a slight frown. “But there’s no better way to heal than to work hard.”
Izzy puts a weathered hand on top of mine and then glances behind me, toward the front of the store. “Looks like Billy’s finally here,” she says, just as the front door opens. “Let’s start loading the truck, hmm?”
She grabs a vase of flowers and I follow her lead. Soon, the truck is filled but the store is only a third of the way empty, meaning Billy, a thin Hispanic man with the coolest handlebar mustache, has to make two more trips for the day.
I focus on working quickly and working hard, the desire to impress my new boss growing with each minute that I’m on the clock. While we work, she tells me I’ll be getting paid thirteen dollars an hour (woot!) and that I can fill out a tax form before I leave for the day.
She’s right about the hard work. It’s nine o’clock when we watch Billy drive away with the last load of pink roses, and Izzy flips the Open sign on the door to the Closed position. Only then, when we have a quiet moment to breathe, do I remember all the things on my mind.
Sasha’s dying wish. Elijah. The ever-pressing ball of agony in my stomach that reminds me I’ll never see her alive again.
I pull my phone from my back pocket, realizing that I haven’t checked it since before I drove here.
I have a few messages from Mom, asking if I’ll be home for dinner and then telling me she’ll save some leftovers just in case. There’s a new email from school, reminding the student body of the blood drive next week. But that’s all. I shut off the screen as I slide the phone back in my pocket.
Izzy and I set up a work schedule, which is probably the best schedule ever. She says I can come in whenever I want and we exchange phone numbers so she can text me when we get big orders and she needs my help.
I have a feeling I’ll be spending a lot of time at Izzy’s Flowers. It’s fun, it smells great, and the boss is like one of those spiritual, wise older people in a movie about finding yourself. Now, I need to be found more than anything.
My phone pings as I’m pulling into the driveway, that familiar little chirp that signals the arrival of a new email. I tell myself to chill out.
