Chapter 1
Chapter One
The Haunted Hero she just started when we all came back from the summer for our senior year. She has huge curls and golden-brown eyes and she’s here because she stole some money and was running away but got caught.
By whom, you might ask?
By her guardian, who also happens to be the very scary principal of this reform school.
Yeah, poor Salem.
She chose to mess with the wrong person and well, now she’s here and I think I love her too. Even though I only met her for the first time when school started a week ago.
So I tell her, “And you. Don’t think I forgot you, Salem. I love you too.”
Her nose scrunches slightly. “I wasn’t thinking that. Although I was thinking that this is a little weird.”
Poe throws her arms at her. “Thank you. Yes. This is weird.” She turns to me. “What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing.” I smile and sigh, trying to ignore the fact that this is our lunch hour and we specifically finished our very dismal-tasting lunch early so we could come out here and catch the sun, which was all bright and shining when we were inside.
The sun that suddenly disappeared the moment we stepped out of the cafeteria building, and by the time we got to this very hard and uncomfortable bench — as uncomfortable as our classroom desks — it was like there was never any sunshine whatsoever.
Wyn leans forward slightly. “Is it the First Week Blues?”
Okay, so we all have a term: First Week Blues.
It’s a term coined by Poe back in our sophomore year, when it was just the two of us. Wyn came later, in our junior year, and as I said, Salem was sent here for her senior year.
Anyway, it basically means that we all go through a short period of feeling low and blue when we’ve just come back from our summer vacation.
Because we go from months of being free to being caged and restricted.
“No, these aren’t First Week Blues,” I reply to Wyn. “Because A, this isn’t the first week anymore. This is the second. And B, why would I be sad when there’s so much to be happy about?”
“Like what?” Poe asks.
“Like…” I look around.
After a deluge of them pouring out of the cafeteria, only a few girls remain outside. They all went back once they saw there was no sun to be had.
But then, inside is even more depressing, with beige lockers and walls.
So here we are, and on my sweep through the area, my eyes land on another thing that I love and had forgotten about.
Flowers.
Gardenias, to be exact. Tons of them, mixed in with daisies and roses and hemlock.
“Aha.” I perk up because I like flowers. “Like flowers. Look! And the fact that we get to work on them this weekend.”
Every Saturday, as a part of reformation and teamwork, all girls do a little bit of gardening. We mainly grow gardenias, the school symbol, because it represents purity and innocence.
It also represents secret love, which I’m pretty sure no teachers know about and it’s sort of like a running joke between all the girls here.
Poe sticks her tongue out. “Ugh. I hate flowers.”
I give her a look. “Everyone likes flowers, Poe.”
“I like roses,” Wyn adds.
“I think gardenias are cool,” Salem pitches in. “What about you, Callie?”
Daisies.
I love daisies. I have dresses with daisies printed on them.
Or I had dresses with daisies printed on them.
I left them all in Bardstown the day I came here because I hate them now.
I hate daisies. I hate those dresses. I hate…
No, Callie. Now is not the time.
“I, uh —”