IRIS
I can smell smoke and gasoline on my skin for days after the fire. I keep expecting someone else to bring it up or wrinkle their nose at the stench, but none of the other girls seem to notice it.
I take long, boiling-hot showers every day, scrubbing my skin until the water runs cold.
“You’re getting as bad as Violet,” Zinnia grumbles one night after discovering there’s no more hot water. “Y’all gotta be more considerate about the rest of us.”
I stop after that.
I keep picturing Mr. Brophy’s face when I close my eyes, devastated by the damage to a store that I imagine he’s owned for decades.
I don’t know the man. We only crossed paths once, but I’ve created a whole backstory for him in the days since the arson.
I imagine he’s a widower, his wife dead for a few years, his children grown and moved away.
Maybe he has daughters. Maybe that’s why he was so worried about the scrawny girl taking food from his store.
In this history I’ve spun for him, Mr. Brophy’s store once belonged to his father and was passed down to him. He loves it there. Loves the employees like family. Loves seeing his regular customers come in and hearing about their lives.
And I took that away.
I don’t know how severe the damage ended up being, but I assume there was enough destruction that the store will be closed for a couple of weeks, at least. That’d be a loss of income for him and any employees he has.
I know Sol says that money isn’t that important, that our society places too much value on it.
But Mr. Brophy and anyone who works for him don’t have someone like Sol to teach them that.
They’ve lost their livelihoods and don’t have a mentor to enlighten them on how to separate from their attachment to material wealth.
I’m not just worried about him, though. I’m worried about us, too.
I keep waiting for the police to show up at the door again, not to check in this time but to arrest me.
They’ll drag me away in handcuffs and throw me in a dark, cold cell by myself.
And worse, they’ll take the other girls away, too.
Sending Poppy, Zinnia, and Rose back to places they don’t want to be.
Or the real nightmare: putting them into foster care.
The only time when I’m not thinking about all the potential consequences of what I’ve done is when I’m around Sol.
He looks at me, and his smile is so bright that it chases the shadows away. He puts a hand on my shoulder from time to time, gives it a squeeze. More than once in the days that follow, he tells me that he’s proud of me.
And in those moments, I remember why I did it. I remember that it was to protect the other girls, that it was to show my loyalty to this family. To stay in the garden.
When Sol looks at me and says, “You did a good job, Iris,” during our next Growth Session, I believe him. I feel confident that I did the right thing, and I trust that everything will be okay.
Until I leave his room
And then the sun sets, and all the fears come rushing back in the darkness he leaves behind.
My stress must show, especially in comparison to the other girls, who are in high spirits now that they have a bit of food in their bellies.
That’s one benefit of my actions, at least. I try to hide the guilt and worry behind smiles, but I know I’m doing a poor job of it.
So I’m not surprised when, a week after my second trial, Rose broaches the subject.
“Hey,” she says in one of those rare moments when we’re alone. “What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing. I’m fine.”
“How many times do I have to tell you that you’re a bad liar?” she asks.
We’re out in the shed, cleaning off some shelves and figuring out which gardening supplies will need to be replaced as spring rapidly approaches. Sol wants to start planting soon.
“You’ve been off since the night you came back crying,” she says. “I didn’t wanna push it then. And I know you said you’re not supposed to talk about what you were doing that night. But you’ve been quiet and distant for the last few days. I’m worried about you.”
I stare at a box of seed packets, wishing so much that my hair was long enough to hide my face as I feel heat rush into my cheeks. It feels good, in a strange way, to know that she worries about me. Because that means she thinks about me, maybe as much as I think about her.
Even though I shouldn’t be thinking about her. Not this much. Not the way I do.
“Iris.” Her hand wraps around my wrist. “You know you can talk to me, right? I won’t tell anyone you broke the stupid rules.”
I look up and find Rose giving me a very serious expression, undeniable sincerity in those big green eyes.
And I want to. I want to tell her everything. I want to spill my sins like blood and let her heal the wound left behind. If she and Sol tell me that I did the right thing, surely that will be enough.
It occurs to me then that Rose’s approval has grown to matter to me almost as much as Sol’s does. That makes me feel weirdly uncomfortable.
I hesitate, still uncertain, until she reaches out and puts a hand over mine where it sits on one of the shelves. My eyes go to the place our skin touches.
“I don’t want you getting in trouble,” she says. “But I want you to know I’m here, if you need to talk.”
Her face is so open and earnest. Not even the usual teasing smirk on her red lips, and I swallow. Because it’s at this moment I know I’m about to deliberately defy Sol for the first time.
But I believe Rose when she says she won’t tell anyone.
I step away from her and go to the shed door, peering outside to make sure none of the other girls are nearby before I close it. After a deep breath, I turn around to face her again.
And then I open the cut and let the guilty blood flow.
“You know Mr. Brophy? The man who I told you owns the grocery store?”
She raises an eyebrow. “The guy that sent the cops for the wellness check, yeah.”
“That guy,” I say. “Even before that, I guess he’d been asking questions. Out of concern, I think, and then he caught me stealing and sent the police to check in. That put you, me, Poppy, and Zinnia at risk.”
I’m trying to justify myself, trying to explain before I tell her what I’ve done.
Rose doesn’t say anything. Her face doesn’t show any expression as she leans back against the shelves, hands shoved into the front pocket of the same oversized red hoodie she arrived in months ago.
Again I find myself wishing my hair was still long, this time so that I could fiddle with it, giving my shaky hands something to do other than hang awkwardly at my sides.
“We’re all underage. If the police knew we were here, they’d take us away.
Send you guys back to your homes or put us in foster care, and who knows what would happen there?
Sol’s told me so many horror stories about how that works and the people we could end up with. ”
Rose frowns. “Yeah. I get that. But what does that have to do with where you went the other night?”
I wrap my arms around myself, pressing my palms against my ribs. “Sol wanted me to distract Mr. Brophy. Give him something else to focus on so he would leave us alone. So I …” I take in a nervous breath. “I set a fire in his store.”
She blinks at me, like she’s sure she misheard. “You what?”
I don’t answer. I can’t bring myself to say it twice. Instead I nod, a silent affirmation that she heard me correctly.
Her eyes go wide. She stares at me like that for what feels like an eternity. But, finally, she shakes her head. “Well, I was not expecting that. You set the store on fire?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I just told you,” I say. “Because Sol said we needed to keep him focused on something else so that he’d leave us alone, and—”
“So Sol told you to do it?”
I nod. “I’ve been doing these trials,” I explain, because if I’m going to share this much, I might as well share it all.
“Because I’ve been here a year. It’s sort of the culmination of my Growth Sessions.
It started with my hair, and then this. I …
Rose, it was to protect all of us. To protect you. ”
Rose goes quiet again. I can see thoughts forming behind her green eyes, but the rest of her face is a mask.
In the tense silence, I reach again for something positive.
Something that will make this better somehow.
The wound is ripped open, the blood shed, and now I’m desperate for her to help me bandage it.
“That’s why we have food again. Sol and I took as much as we could before I …”
I trail off, silenced by the shift in Rose’s expression. The blank neutrality has turned cold. “Please tell me you’re joking,” she says.
Her voice gives away more than her face does. I can hear the sharp edge of anger there and, beneath that, something else. Something worse.
Fear.
Slowly, I shake my head. My heart sinks into my churning stomach. I will not find healing here. Rose isn’t going to comfort me. She’s not going to tell me that I did the right thing. I’ve betrayed Sol for nothing.
“And Sol asked you to do that?” she demands. “And he’s the reason you shaved your head?”
“Yes, but—”
“That’s insane, Iris. You realize that, right? That him asking you to do that is messed up?”
“It was to keep you all safe,” I say, words coming out more like a plea than an explanation. “I had to do it.”
“No, you didn’t have to,” Rose argues. “You had a choice. You’ve always got a choice. You could’ve said no.”
“He would have made me leave. If I don’t do my trials, I can’t stay here.”
“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.”
“No one was there but me.”
“You could’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.