Violet in Bloom

  ALSO BY LAUREN MYRACLE

  Luv Ya Bunches: A Flower Power Book

  Bliss

  Rhymes with Witches

  ttyl

  ttfn

  l8r, g8r

  bff

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Thirteen Plus One

  Peace, Love, and Baby Ducks

  Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances

  (with John Green and Maureen Johnson)

  How to Be Bad

  (with E. Lockhart and Sarah Mylnowski)

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and

  incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used

  fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business

  establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may be obtained

  from the Library of Congress.

  ISBN: 978-0-8109-8983-2

  The text in this book is set in 11-point The Serif Light. The display typefaces

  are Annabelle, Chalet, FMRustlingBranches, RetrofitLight, Shag,

  and TriplexSans.

  Text copyright © 2010 Lauren Myracle

  Illustrations copyright © 2009–10 Christine Norrie

  Book design by Maria T. Middleton

  Published in 2010 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights

  reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval

  system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical,

  electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written

  permission from the publisher. Amulet Books and Amulet Paperbacks are

  registered trademarks of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

  Printed and bound in U.S.A.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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  “Dad,” Violet says, meaning, Please don’t. Please?

  He shifts his gaze to the steering wheel. Violet looks out the window at Katie-Rose’s house. The idling engine whispers shhh, while the yellow house smiles and says, Yes. You. Come in, come in—your friends are waiting!

  “Visiting hours don’t end till four. We could go see your mom, and I could bring you right back afterward.”

  “We’re already here. My friends are counting on me.” And I’m counting on them, she thinks. Without Katie-Rose and Camilla and Yasaman, how would she survive?

  Her father sighs. “Okay, Boo. Okay.”

  Her fingers fumble for the door handle.

  “Will you do something for me?” he asks.

  Violet holds perfectly still.

  “I know it’s hard, the way things are right now,” he says, his words like worn-out puzzle pieces. They’ve talked about it and talked about it, how her mom’s in the hospital and what that means, but sometimes it feels like the pieces never fit together. “Just . . . you need to know that it’s hard for your mom, too. Will you think about that for me, baby?”

  A small animal sound escapes from inside her, because she’s always thinking about it. Doesn’t he know that? It’s been a month since they moved from Atlanta to Thousand Oaks. A month since her mom was admitted to California State Regional Hospital, the best in the country for “this sort of thing,” as her aunt Tanisha puts it. A month since Violet has seen her mom, or hugged her, or smelled her violet-scented Fleur de la Fée perfume, which she’s worn since Violet was born.

  When Violet found her mom—on the bad day—she smelled like Fleur de la Fée, but she looked like a fake person. She sat on the kitchen floor with her back against the wall and her arms hanging by her sides. Her palms faced the ceiling. Her fingers curled slackly inward.

  “Thinking about it” isn’t Violet’s problem.

  There’s movement from Katie-Rose’s upstairs window. Katie-Rose has pulled back her curtain and is saying something through the glass, gesturing broadly. Violet can’t hear her, but knowing Katie-Rose, it’s something like, “What’s the holdup? Stop sitting in your car and get in here!”

  Violet’s heart beats faster.

  Now Yasaman appears. She tries to restrain Katie-Rose, but Katie-Rose wiggles free and pounds on the glass. Yasaman makes a funny face at Violet, like Help!

  “I think your friends want you to come in,” Violet’s dad says drily.

  There’s pressure in Violet’s lungs. She hopes it’s a laugh pushing its way up, but when it bursts out, it sounds more like a gasp.

  “Go on,” he says. He puts his hand on her knee and gives her the briefest of squeezes. “Have fun.”

  She scrambles out of the car. Katie-Rose has managed to open her window, and she leans farther out than common sense would dictate.

  “What’s the problem?” she bellows. “Everything all right?”

  “Everything’s fine,” Violet calls. Her ribs loosen, because she’s not even lying. Everything is fine, or will be, just as soon as she’s with her three BFFs.

  possessed Violet is, so when she appears in Katie-Rose’s doorway with flushed cheeks, Yasaman is surprised. Or, no, it’s not the flushed cheeks. Anyone would be flushed after jogging up a flight of stairs.

  It’s her eyes, Yasaman decides. The color of amber, and typically just as clear, Violet’s eyes seem . . . clouded over. Could it have something to do with the long talk she had with her dad just now?

  Violet catches Yasaman studying her, and right away she smiles. She gives both Yasaman and Katie-Rose a hug, and when she steps back, the clouds are gone.

  “Where’s Milla?” she asks, scanning the room.

  “That is an excellent question,” Katie-Rose says, plopping down on the carpet. “Where is Milla?”

  “Here we go again,” Yasaman tells Violet under her breath.

  “Why?” Violet says, grabbing a pillow and stretching out on the floor. “Is something up with Milla?”

  “There better not be,” Katie-Rose says.

  “There isn’t,” Yasaman says. She lifts her headscarf off her shoulders and lets it spill down her back. “Katie-Rose is worried because she’s not here yet, that’s all.”

  “I’m not worried. I’m annoyed,” Katie-Rose says. “On the Plant It Here page, I said three o’clock. It’s almost three thirty, so where is she?”

  “On her way?” Violet suggests.

  Katie-Rose scowls. Then she tries to put her feet in Yasaman’s lap, but Yasaman pushes them away, because: (a) Katie-Rose’s feet are not the un-smelliest, (b) Yasaman is wearing a clean pair of jeans and prefers to keep them that way, and (c) Yasaman knows that Milla is usually Katie-Rose’s footrest. Yes, Yasaman could fill in, but Yasaman also knows that Katie-Rose doesn’t really want a footrest. She wants Milla, who’s supposed be here by now, but isn’t. Katie-Rose loves her three best friends equally and with all her heart, but Yasaman knows Milla is the one Katie-Rose worries about most, in terms of “Eeek, what if I was wrong? What if she doesn’t want to be my friend anymore?”

  Katie-Rose would never worry about Yasaman in that way. Yasaman is the “counted on” friend, rock solid in every way, and realizing this gives Yasaman the quickest-ever flicker of resentment. But she banishes it. It’s good to be counted on. It’s excellent to be rock solid.

  Yasaman firmly believes that Milla is equally rock solid, and she tells Katie-Rose so. “She’s not ditching us, okay? I promise
.”

  Katie-Rose turns a fiery red, because Yasaman has laid out Katie-Rose’s true fear: that one day Milla will ditch them. That she’ll go back to her old friends, Modessa and Quin.

  But she won’t. Modessa and Quin were really cruel to Katie-Rose at the beginning of the year, and that showed Milla just how chock-full of meanness pills they are. Plus, Milla’s got real friends now. Her BFFs, or rather her FFFs, which stands for “flower friends forever.” Violet and Katie-Rose are flowers for obvious reasons; yasaman is Turkish for “jasmine”; and a camilla is a small pink flower that grows by streams.

  It was so cool when they realized they were all flowers. It was like Allah, or God, planted a friendship seed in the soil of each girl’s heart and said, “Bloom. It is meant to be.”

  “Milla will get here when she gets here, so let’s change the subject,” Violet suggests. “Anyone have anything they want to talk about?”

  “Other than Milla being late?” Katie-Rose says darkly.

  “Oh! I do!” Yasaman says. It slipped her mind in the tumble of Violet’s arrival and all the “Where’s Milla?” drama, but there is something she wants to bring up. It’s an idea that came to her just this morning, and it’s exciting and important.

  “Hit us with it,” Violet says.

  “Okay. Remember last month and what happened with Milla’s bobble-head turtle?”

  “The Fake Incident of the Stolen Turtle, otherwise known as FIST?” Katie-Rose says. She slaps the floor. “When Modessa and Quin accused me—me!—of stealing Tally the Turtle?!”

  “I think she remembers,” Violet says.

  “What kind of person would even think such a thing about me, sweet innocent me?” Katie-Rose sits taller. “I’ll tell you what kind of person! A crazy, sick, brain-diseased person, that’s who! Two crazy, sick, brain-diseased persons!”

  “Okay, but it’s over now,” Yasaman says. She might have shown poor judgment by bringing up the Modessa/Quin yuckiness at this particular moment in time. “It was terrible and awful, but remember, we won.”

  “Of course we won!” Katie-Rose cries. She glances about wildly, as if someone might be hiding behind the curtains waiting to dispute this. “Flowers for justice, I tell you!!!!”

  “Whoa there, Nelly,” Violet says. She strokes Katie-Rose’s back and speaks soothingly, the way a school nurse might address someone who’s taken a nasty blow to the head. “You’re safe. You’re among friends. We’re all friends here, ’kay?”

  Katie-Rose blinks. She gazes around the room as if she’s just come out of a fog, and Yasaman suppresses a groan. They’re being silly, and it’s kind of funny, this jokey routine of bringing Katie-Rose back to reality after one of her bursts of being overdramatic. But Yasaman would rather get back to her idea.

  Violet, however, seems to be having too much fun. “That’s my girl,” she says to Katie-Rose. “Now. Can you tell me your name?”

  “Is it . . . Veronica?”

  “Ooo. I’m sorry, but no. Want to try again?”

  “Is it . . . Laverne?”

  At this, Yasaman does groan. “You guys! Could you please stop acting like crazy loony birds?!”

  They do stop. They stop rather abruptly, in fact, and a pit forms in Yasaman’s stomach. Crazy loony bird? Really? That’s what she had to call Violet, whose mother possibly is a crazy loony bird?

  Yet when she checks, Violet seems fine. She might have a wisp of cloudiness hovering over her, but with Violet, it’s awfully hard to tell.

  “Um, sorry,” she says.

  Violet shrugs. For what? the gesture says.

  Yasaman twines the end of her hijab around her fingers. “I just . . . you know. Wanted to tell you my idea. Do you want to hear it or not?”

  Violet nods.

  Katie-Rose says, “Sure.”

  Yasaman swallows. “Well, after Tally the Turtle, we made a promise to do two things. Do you remember?”

  Katie-Rose and Violet look at each other.

  “I don’t,” Katie-Rose whispers. “Do you?”

  Violet makes big eyes.

  They giggle guiltily until Yasaman cuts them off. “One, stay FFFs forever. And two, use our flower power for good.”

  “Oh yeah!” Katie-Rose says.

  “We’ve done an excellent job on our first goal,” Yasaman continues. “But what have we done for our second?”

  “Hmm,” Katie-Rose says.

  “Nothing?” Violet says.

  “Exactly, which is why I had my idea!” Yasaman says. “We need to come up with a plan, don’t you think? For how to use our power for good?”

  Violet wrinkles her brow. “Can it involve bunny rabbits?”

  “What?” Yasaman says. “No.”

  “Steam engines?”

  “No,” Yasaman says. It’s not like Violet to be so silly, and Yasaman is confused and slightly hurt. Violet’s silliness is sure to set off Katie-Rose again, which will send the conversation whirling once more away from anything real. Does Violet not care? Even knowing that Yasaman has something she wants to say?

  Katie-Rose bounces and thrusts her hand into the air. “How about forks? Or, I know—Care Bears!”

  Yasaman thinks she sees guilt flit across Violet’s face. But it’s there, and then gone, and she can’t be sure.

  “Saving Care Bears from theft and torture!” Katie-Rose exclaims.

  “Poor Funshine Bear,” Violet says, because, like Yasaman, she knows that Katie-Rose’s brother cut open her Care Bear, wedged a raw egg into the stuffing, and closed the wound with duct tape. It was for his middle school’s egg drop. All the flower friends know this story. “Bad bad Sam, and poor poor you, Katie-Rose. Were you just so mad?” Violet asks.

  Now Yasaman is starting to guess something. Something about Violet. Violet knows Katie-Rose was mad because Katie-Rose has told the story of Funshine Bear and the egg many times. So many times that Violet herself once bopped Katie-Rose over the head with a pillow to make her hush about it.

  Yasaman realizes that Violet doesn’t want to talk about anything real. It’s not that she doesn’t care about Yasaman. She just needs silliness and not-real-ness today, for reasons only Violet knows.

  “Omigosh, ‘mad’ doesn’t even come close,” Katie-Rose says. “I mean, seriously. Can you believe that my very own brother could commit such a heinous crime?”

  “Yes,” Yasaman says.

  “And did I mention that Funshine Bear was my very first Care Bear ever?”

  “Yes,” Yasaman says.

  “And held a very special place in my heart?”

  “Yes, Katie-Rose.”

  “Poor Funshine Bear,” Violet says. “She must have been so scared.”

  “Tell me about it!” Katie-Rose says indignantly. But because she’s Katie-Rose, she opts instead to tell them about it, using her imagination to fill in the gaps of Sam’s bare-bones account. She paints the key elements in vivid detail: the stony-faced firefighter atop a ladder; Funshine Bear, dangling helplessly from one fluffy yellow leg; the terrifying plunge to the asphalt below. The screams. The horror. The explosion of fur, fluff, and eggy gloop.

  Yasaman gives herself over to it, though secretly she wishes that either Violet or Katie-Rose would say, Oh! Yasaman! Your idea—we completely spaced it, didn’t we? Then they’d insist that she tell them, and they’d listen, and it wouldn’t make Violet sad or bad or whatever. Because although her idea is real, it’s made out of flower power, and she knows her FFFs are going to be just as excited as she is.

  Rose chattering as she hurries up the stairs to Katie-Rose’s room. She pauses outside the door, soaking in the sight of them, and she just . . . she just feels so happy, because that’s the magic of friends, if the friends are the right kind of friends.

  Milla’s FFFs are exactly the right kind of friends. They’re funny and loyal and true, and seeing the three of them—Katie-Rose, laughing and beating her fist on the floor as she insists upon some point; Violet, her lips twitching; Yasaman, looking e
xasperated, yet amused despite herself—fills Milla with gratitude. She’s the luckiest girl in the world. How did she ever get so lucky, and what can she do to tell the world thank you?

  “Okay, I think we’ve talked enough about eggs,” Yasaman says, interrupting Katie-Rose. “Can we move on? Please?”

  “I wouldn’t trick him into eating one, though,” Katie-Rose whispers to Violet. “Well, maybe I would, because he deserves it after what he did. But I myself would never eat one.”

  “Thank goodness,” Violet whispers back. “Raw eggs are freaky.”

  “Wanna know what’s even more freaky?”

  Milla steps into the room. “What’s freaky? We’re discussing freaky things?”

  “Milla!” Katie-Rose cries. She hops ups, hugs her, and then spanks her fanny, grinning widely.

  “Ow,” Milla says. “What was that for?”

  “Because I missed you.” She flings her arms around Milla again, squeezing her tight and lifting her an inch off the ground. Katie-Rose is forever lifting people up, maybe because she’s so tiny and wants to prove she’s strong.

  “Can’t! Breathe!” Milla squeaks.

  Katie-Rose drags her over to Yasaman and Violet.

  “Come. Sit. Discuss,” she says. “We’re talking about freaky things, and now we’re going to go around the circle and say what we’re most afraid of in the entire multiverse.”

  “We are?” Yasaman says. Not for the first time, Milla thinks how beautiful Yasaman is with her dark eyes and her dark hair, almost all of which is tucked into her hijab. “No, we’re not.”

  “What the heck is a multiverse?” Violet says. She nudges Milla. “And where’ve you been, girl?”

  Milla sits down. “I got held up by my moms. Sorry.”

  “Held up how?” Katie-Rose says.

  Milla pushes her hand through her hair. “Omigosh. Well, Mom Joyce’s supposed to go to this baby shower, okay? Only Sara—she’s the woman who’s pregnant—isn’t having a regular baby shower. She’s having something called a blessing way.”