Page 26 of Poetry of Flowers

Why ask at all?

“Of course,” I said, and Kayden also walked past me, but his fingers brushed my free arm, giving me goosebumps all over.

He did this on purpose, I knew because touch was our way of communicating. We didn’t need to talk when we could hold each other’s arms. That was enough, just to know we were there for one another.

Locking the door behind me, I walked into the living room where Theo sat on the couch, at least three feet away from Autumn.

“Ride or die?” Kayden said suddenly as he looked between me and Autumn.

What did he mean by that?

“Pardon?”

“Ride or die?” he repeated himself and I looked over to my cousin, her facial expressions as confused as my own before we both looked back at him.

“Ride,” both of us answered at the same time.

It was always ride with Kayden, if we died on the road together, it would be fine because at least we got to ride together.

“Told you,” Theo told Kayden, who looked happy with our answer. He rarely looked happy, but this night he seemed different. I can’t figure out if he truly is happy or if there is something rotten behind that mask.

Normally, I can figure him out, so this really bothered me.

“Would you come across the country with me?”

Was he for real? He looked like he meant what he said, and the bag he had thrown on my couch.

“What?!”

“Yes.”

Once more, Autumn and I spoke at the same time, only this time it wasn’t the same words.

My best friend searched for my eyes, and when they met mine, the butterflies were back. The feeling of home.

“You would?”

“When?”

There wasn’t a no, with Kayden everything would always be yes. The word no doesn’t exist in the universe we shared.

“Can someone explain what you mean by that because I can’t agree to something I have no clue about,” my cousin brought Kayden’s attention to her.

He grinned. Kayden smiled and grinned at me often, but not like this.

He pulled a map out of the bag he had carried into my house and laid it on my couch table.

There was a bumpy line drawn in red sharpie from Washington to Illinois. From Grand Lee to Chicago.

He followed the red line and looked back up at us as I sat down next to my cousin.

“I got us four train tickets from Seattle to Chicago. Well, the train is not direct. We’re going to hop on different ones and maybe even borrow a car at some point, but my plan is there. Tickets from Seattle to Spokane, which is still in Washington but an almost eight-hour trip. We take a break there and sleep in a motel before we take off the next morning and see how far we get. The tickets are booked for twelve pm tomorrow. If we travel through the night, it would be around two days, but I want to live during this trip and stretch it over an entire week, we’ve never left Grand Lee. Let’s be the teenagers we never got to be.”

I didn’t know if I was shocked or impressed that he had planned everything out so well. When we were younger, I had been the planner and Kayden the baby duck that followed me everywhere.

What did I have to lose? One week of school for memories that could bring me back to life. I wanted to feel alive again. My mom wouldn’t have wanted me to grieve her for almost nine years.

Whatever reason Kayden had to turn everything upside down just for this adventure, I would follow him. I would follow him to the end of the world if he told me, it was important to him.

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