SATURDAY MORNING DAWNED COOL, WITH ONLY A light mist that the sun would probably burn off by noon. Laurel predicted a 100 percent chance of everyone at the bonfire diving or being pushed into the chilly Pacific water, and was doubly grateful she had bowed out. She lay in bed for several minutes watching the sunrise with its blended hues of pink, orange, and a soft, hazy blue. Most people enjoyed the beauty of a sunset on a regular basis, but to Laurel, it was sunrise that was truly breathtaking. She stretched and sat up, still facing the window. She thought of the percentage of people in her small town who were sleeping through this incredible sight. Her father, for one. He was an infamous sleeper and rarely rose before noon on Saturday—or Sleepday, as he called it.
She smiled at that thought, but reality trickled in all too soon. Her fingers walked over her shoulder and her eyes flew open wide. She bit off a shriek as her other hand joined the first, trying to confirm what she was feeling.
The bump was gone.
But something else had replaced it. Something long and cool.
And much bigger than the bump had been.
Cursing herself for not being one of those girls with a mirror in her room, Laurel craned her neck, trying to see over her shoulder, but she could only catch rounded edges of something white. She threw back the thin bedsheet and ran to her door. The knob turned silently and Laurel opened the door a tiny crack. She could hear her father snoring, but sometimes her mother got up early and she was very quiet. Laurel let her door swing open—consciously grateful, for the first time in her life, for well-oiled hinges—and slid down the hall toward the bathroom with her back to the wall. As if that was going to help.
Her hands were unsteady as she pushed the bathroom door closed and fumbled with the lock. Only when she heard the bolt click into place did she let herself breathe again. She leaned her head against the rough, unfinished wood and forced her breathing to slow. Her fingers found the light switch and she flipped it on. Taking a deep breath, she blinked away the dark spots and stepped toward the mirror.
She didn’t even have to turn to see the new development. Long, bluish-white forms rose over both shoulders. For a moment Laurel was mesmerized, staring at the pale things with wide eyes. They were terrifyingly beautiful—almost too beautiful for words.
She turned slowly so she could see them better. Petal-like strips sprouted from where the bump had been, making a gently curved four-pointed star on her back. The longest petals—fanning out over each shoulder and peeking around her waist—were more than a foot long and as wide as her hand. Smaller petals—about eight or nine inches long—spiraled around the center, filling in the leftover space. There were even a few small green leaves where the enormous flower connected to her skin.
All of the petals were tinged a dark blue at the center that faded to the softest sky blue in the middle and white at the ends. The edges were ruffled and looked eerily like the African violets her mother painstakingly grew in their kitchen. There must have been twenty of the soft, petal-like strips. Maybe more.
Laurel turned her front to the mirror again, her eyes on the hovering petals that floated beside her head. They looked almost like wings.
A loud rap on the door snapped Laurel out of her trance. “Done yet?” her mother asked sleepily. Laurel’s fingernails bit into her palm as she stared in horror at the huge white things. They were pretty, sure, but who in the world grew an enormous flower out of their back? This was ten—no—a hundred times worse than the bump. How was she going to hide it?
Maybe the petals would just pluck off. She grabbed one of the oblong strips and yanked on it. Pain radiated down her spine and she had to bite her cheek hard to stifle a scream. But she couldn’t stop the whimper that escaped from between her teeth.
Her mother knocked again. “Laurel, are you okay?”
Laurel took several deep breaths as the pain faded to a dull throb and she regained her power of speech. “I’m fine,” she said, her voice shaking a little. “Just a minute.” Her eyes swept the room looking for something useful. The thin, strappy nightgown she was wearing would be no help at all. She grabbed her oversized towel and threw it over her shoulders, pulling it close around her. After a quick check in the mirror to make sure there were no gigantic petals in sight, Laurel opened the door and forced a smile at her mother. “Sorry I took so long.”
Her mom blinked. “Did you take a shower? I didn’t hear the water running.”
“It was short.” Laurel hesitated. “And I didn’t get my hair wet,” she added.
But her mother wasn’t paying much attention. “Come on down when you’re dressed and I’ll make you some breakfast,” she said with a yawn. “It looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day.”
Laurel skirted past her mother into the safety of her own room. She didn’t have a lock on her door, but she wedged a chair under the doorknob like she’d seen people do in movies. She looked at the setup dubiously. It didn’t look like it would keep much out, but it was the best she could do.
She let the towel fall from her shoulders and examined the crushed petals. They were a tad rumpled, but they didn’t hurt. She pulled one long piece over her shoulder and examined it. The huge bump was one thing, but what was she going to do about this?
She sniffed at the white thing, paused, and sniffed again. It smelled like a fruit blossom but stronger. A lot stronger. The intoxicating scent was starting to fill the room. At least the huge thing didn’t stink. She’d have to tell her mom she got a new perfume or something. Laurel inhaled again and wished she could find something that smelled this good at the perfume counter.
As the enormity of the situation crashed over Laurel, the room seemed to spin beneath her. Her chest felt tight as she tried to consider what to do.
The most important thing first; she had to hide it.
Laurel opened her closet and stood in front of it, looking for something to help her hide an enormous flower growing out of her back, but that hadn’t exactly been her first priority when she’d gone clothes shopping in August. Laurel groaned at the closet full of light, thin blouses and sundresses. Hardly made for hiding anything.
She sifted through her clothes and grabbed a few tops. After checking to make sure the coast was clear, Laurel ran to the bathroom, swearing she would get to a store today and buy a mirror for her room. The door closed a little harder than she intended, but though she stood next to it with her ear pressed against the cool wood for several seconds, she didn’t hear any response from her mother.
The first top wouldn’t even fit over the enormous flower thing. She stared at it in the mirror. There had to be another way.
She grabbed as many of the long, white petals as she could and tried wrapping them around her shoulders. That didn’t work very well. Besides, she didn’t really want to wear sleeves for the rest of her life—however long that might be.
She pulled them around under her arms and wrapped them around her waist instead. That worked better. Much better. She grabbed a long silk scarf off one of the hangers and wrapped it around her waist, securing the petals to her skin. Then she buttoned her shorts up over part of the scarf. It still didn’t hurt, but she felt confined and smothered.
Still, it was better than nothing. She picked a lightweight, peasant-style blouse and threw it over the whole thing. Then, with trepidation, she turned to look in the mirror.
Pretty impressive, if she did say so herself. The fabric of the blouse was bunchy anyway, so you couldn’t tell anything was underneath. Even from the side the bulge down her back was only barely noticeable and if she brushed her hair down over it, no one would be able to tell. One small problem solved.
A hundred big ones left.
This was way more than some strange manifestation of puberty. Mood swings, disfiguring acne, even periods that went on for months were at least semi-normal. But growing oversized flower petals out of your back from a zit the size of a softball? This was something else entirely.
But what? This was the kind of stuff you saw in cheap horror movies. Even if she did decide to tell someone, who would believe her? Never, even in her worst nightmares, had she imagined something like this could happen to her.
This was going to ruin everything. Her life, her future. It was like everything was washed away in an instant.
The bathroom suddenly felt too warm. Too small, too dark, too…too everything. Desperate to get away from the house, Laurel scooted through the kitchen, grabbed a can of soda, and opened the back door.
“Going for a walk?”
“Yeah, Mom,” she said without turning around.
“Have fun.”
Laurel made a noncommittal sound under her breath.
She stomped down the path toward the woods, paying no attention to the dew-speckled greenery around her. There was still a touch of fog on the western horizon where it rolled off the ocean, but the peak of the sky was blue and clear and the sun was making its way steadily to the top of the sky. It would indeed be a beautiful day. Figures. She felt like Mother Nature was mocking her. Her life was unraveling, yet everything around her was beautiful, as if to spite her.
She ducked behind a large cluster of trees, out of sight of both the road and her house; it wasn’t enough, though. She kept going.
After a few more minutes, she stopped and listened for the sound of anyone—or anything—around her. Once she felt safe, she pushed the back of her shirt up and untied the confining scarf. A sigh escaped her lips as the petals whipped back into their original position on her back. It felt like being released from a tiny, cramped box.
A beam of sunlight shone down from a break in the trees above, making her silhouette stretch out on the grass in front of her. The outline of her shadow looked like an enormous butterfly with gauzy wings. And in the same strange way balloons cast shadows, the blackness had just a tinge of blue in it. She tried to make the wing-things move, but although she could feel them—feel every inch of them now, soaking in the rays of sunlight—she had no control over them. Something so life-shattering shouldn’t be this beautiful.
She stared at the image on the ground for a long time, wondering what to do. Should she tell her parents? She had promised herself she’d tell them Monday if the bump wasn’t gone.
Well, it was gone.
Pulling one of the long strips over her shoulder, Laurel ran her fingers down it. It was so soft. And it didn’t hurt. Maybe it will just go away, she thought optimistically. That was what her mom always said. Eventually most things go away on their own. Maybe…maybe it would be okay.
Okay? The word seemed to fill her head, reverberating in her skull. I have a humongous flower growing out of my spine. How is this supposed to be okay!
As her emotions tumbled around like a hurricane, her thoughts suddenly centered on David. Maybe David could help her make sense of this. There had to be a scientific explanation. He had a microscope—a really good one, from what he said. Maybe he could look at a piece of this weird flower. He might be able to tell her what it was. And even if he told her he had no idea, she’d be no worse off than she was now.
She wrapped her scarf around the flower again and hurried into the house, almost running into her dad as he lumbered into the kitchen.
“Dad!” she said in surprise. Her nerves—already at the breaking point—stretched farther.
He leaned down and kissed the top of her head. “Morning, beautiful.” He laid an arm across her shoulders, and Laurel sucked in a nervous breath and hoped he couldn’t feel the petals through her shirt.
But then, her father rarely noticed anything before his second cup of coffee.
“Why are you up?” she asked, a slight quaver in her voice.
He groaned. “I have to go open the store. Maddie needed the day off.”
“Sure,” Laurel said absently, trying not to see this change in the normal routine as some kind of bad omen.
He started to pull his arm away, then stopped and sniffed the air by her shoulder. Laurel froze. “You smell nice. You should wear that perfume more often.”
Laurel nodded, praying her eyes weren’t popping out of her head, and unwound herself from her dad’s embrace. She hurried to pick up the cordless phone and then headed up the stairs.
In her room, she stared at the phone for a long time before her fingers managed to dial David’s number. He picked up after the first ring. “Hello?”
“Hey,” she said quickly, forcing herself not to hang up.
“Laurel. Hey! What’s up?”
The seconds stretched into silence.
“Laurel?”
“Yeah?”
“You did call me.”
More silence.
“Can I come over?” she blurted.
“Um, sure. When?”
“Right now?”