rumors said, theyâd know. Even if they werenât, they would wonder why Mielâs rose held their colors in its petals, and they would look at her, and then at Sam.
Miel paused, finding a break in the familiar silhouettes along the river.
Two shapes stood against the dark, close enough to Miel that she hid in a treeâs shadow so they wouldnât see her. Her eyes adjusted to the dark, letting her see one feature at a time. A girl. A boy. Neither standing in enough light for her to recognize them.
But she could make out their posture, the girlâs inclining forward. Eager and flirtatious, her hands flitting in the space between them like birds. From where Miel stood, a tree branch obscured the girlâs face, but the moon lit her hair enough to show the color. A veil of rich red that could only belong to a Bonner girl.
The boyâs stance did not match the girlâs. He did not lean forward. He did not try to touch her. There was no sense that he was making an attempt at persuading her. To let him kiss her, or to get her sisters to sneak out and see him and his friends, or anything at all.
He seemed bored, humoring her rather than being entranced by her. The way he held his shoulders, facing a little out, made him look like he would leave as soon as he could figure out a way that wasnât rude.
Miel knew this same scene. Sheâd seen it, when girls had tried flirting with Sam, who seemed as oblivious as he was indifferent. Sheâd been half of it, with other boys, to get back at Sam forâshe flushed realizing this laterânothing more than being interesting to another girl.
But sheâd never seen it with one of the Bonner girls. The Bonner girls had stolen boyfriends, enchanted reverendsâ sons, lured away boys who, before, never did anything without their mothers telling them to.
If a Bonner girl couldnât interest a boy she wanted, if she couldnât have anything she wanted, how could she keep her own last name?
Miel moved a little farther down the river, putting tree cover between her and those two shapes. She knelt alongside the river and stared down into the dark water, trying to make out a shape, any sign that something was down there. Fish. The glimmer of pondweed leaves. Or the river mermaids Sam told her stories about, so Miel would one day be unafraid to go in the river.
She wasnât ready. She was never ready; even when she was anxious to have the weight of the rose gone, she cringed before slicing the blades across the stem.
Rumors about her roses laced this townâs gossip. Some said her roses could turn the hearts of those who had no desire. Others insisted their perfume, the soft brush of their petals, was enough to enchant the reticent, the frightened, the guarded.
One said Miel had given a pale pink rose, barely blushing, to one of Aracelyâs friends. A boy had done something so bad to her that she could not think of parting her lips to be kissed even years later, when another boy with hands as gentle as tulip tree leaves wanted to love her. Another said that last year, sheâd given a rose to a farmhand who had fallen in love with an apple growerâs daughter, but who could not see past how her eyes were the same green as his familyâs, a family that never let him forget his were brown.
But Aracely had cured them both, not Miel and her roses. Aracely had convinced that girl to love the boy with hands like tulip tree leaves. And the farmhand, he had come to Aracely, and so had the apple growerâs daughter, wanting her heart rid of her love for a boy too shy to love her back. They had both wanted lovesickness cures, and Aracely had told them both to come at the same time. When they saw each other in Aracelyâs indigo room, when they both realized they were heartbroken enough to want the love torn from their rib cages, they touched each other with their hands and their mouths, and they forgot they wanted to be