Forget-Her-Nots
Authors: Amy Brecount White
To my husband, Pete,
I give a bough of blooming dogwood
“The more we learn about flowers, the less silent they are.”
—SHARMAN APT RUSSELL,
ANATOMY OF A ROSE: EXPLORING THE SECRET LIFE OF FLOWERS
L
ily
reread the letter to her daughter and signed her name at the bottom. Her hands shaking from exhaustion, she dabbed glue on the top right corner of the stationery. She chose bell-like white flowers with slim leaves and pressed them gently into the glue.
Lily of the valley for the return of happiness, she thought. I’ve given her every clue I can.
The Language of Flowers
“When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment.”
—GEORGIA O’KEEFFE, AMERICAN PAINTER, 1887–1986
A
flash on the brown carpeting caught Laurel’s eye, and she jumped mid-step to keep from crushing it. “What the—”
Three bright flowers tied with a shiny silver ribbon lay just outside her dormitory room. Her chest fluttered with excitement as she picked them up. There were two small white ones, a red one with a yellow center, and some feathery leaves. She looked both ways, but the hall was dim and empty.
She bit the inside of her lip. Pranking—according to her sophomore cousin, Rose—was one of the more popular hobbies on the campus of the Avondale School, outside Charlottesville, Virginia. Laurel listened for telltale giggles to break the silence, but all was still. And there was no note with the flowers.
Could a guy have left them? she wondered. Any time she saw Willowlawn boys on campus, she couldn’t help double-taking. What had been a daily occurrence at her old school was now the exception, and she hadn’t made any guy friends yet. Nearly everyone at both schools had started there in sixth grade, which left little room for newcomers like Laurel.
She lifted the delicate blooms to her face and breathed in. Sweetly spicy, the scents mingled in her nose and swirled through her head. Her body seemed to be floating up and spinning—light and dizzy. She threw out her hands against the door frame.
“Whoa.” Laurel blinked while the hallway around her stabilized. She knew the white flowers were snowdrops—one of the earliest buds to bloom—but the red one and the feathery stuff were unfamiliar. Mom would have known their names, Laurel thought. She knew everything about flowers.
The squeak of another door startled her, and Laurel stepped out of sight. Twirling the flowers between her fingers, she wondered who to tell. She had no time to show anyone before class, not even Rose. Strangely, Laurel needed fresh flowers, different flowers, for an English presentation this morning. She was already carrying an empty basket, so she put the mystery bouquet inside it and hurried out of the dorm.
Spring was officially weeks away, but Laurel could sense its approach. The sky above her head was soft and pink. Drops of dew glinted on the grass like bits of crystal all along the path to the garden. The breeze that caressed her cheek was still cool, but the damp earth below her feet was warming and readying itself.
Taking out the list of flowers she needed, Laurel headed for a clump of purple-and-white pansies she’d found the day before. “Pansies for thoughts,” she whispered, and picked a handful. Snowdrops, hanging like tiny white lanterns, dotted the brownness.
“Snowdrops for hope.” She plucked a few, lifted them to her nose, and then wiggled her fingers. Her hand felt fuzzy inside and that whole arm was starting to tingle. “Dizzy, spinny, tingly,” she whispered as her eyes scanned the landscape for color. “Spizzy, tinny, dingly.”
Crisscrossing the mulched pathways, Laurel picked the rest of the flowers on her list, but she wasn’t ready to leave the garden. Every branch, every bud seemed strangely fresh and distinct this morning, as if her vision had suddenly cleared. Everything unfolding and green seemed to shimmer and shine with newness. The garden felt almost magical, as if she might turn a corner and come upon lithe fairies dancing in a circle.
She’d just started down an intriguing path when a bell rang in the distance. Panic gripped her body like
a hard pinch. “
Merde
,” she said, under her breath. She turned and sprinted back toward the main campus. Rose was right—there was something satisfying about cursing in French.
Laurel rounded the brick corner of Founders’ Hall at full speed and crashed into a tight clump of classmates. Tara stumbled backward at the impact, and Laurel had to grab the nearest arm to stop her momentum. Flowers flew from her basket.
“Ahhh!” Tara screamed. Her pink cell phone spiraled out of her hand as she landed on a low bush. Nicole, a plump girl with brown skin and spiky hair, ran to pull her up.
Laurel’s stomach clenched. “I’m sorry. I—I thought I was late.”
“Watch it, Whelan.” Tara shook out her long black hair and smoothed her uniform skirt. “I told you she’s in la-la land,” she announced to the circle of girls.
Laurel realized she was still holding on to someone’s jacket and let go. “Sorry.”
“No problem,” said Kate, a tall blonde classmate who spoke with a southern twang. “But save your speed for soccer.”
Laurel hardly knew Kate, but they were both trying out for the junior varsity soccer team, as was Tara. Before the tryouts Laurel had avoided the glare of Tara’s attention.
Lately, though, Tara seemed to look for opportunities to knock her down a notch.
“Who are you supposed to be, anyway?” Tara’s hands rose to her thin hips. “Little Red Riding Hood?”
Laurel frowned down at the oversized red windbreaker she’d grabbed from her closet without thinking. Pushing her too-long bangs out of her brown eyes, she noticed another snowdrop near Tara’s foot and lunged for it.
Nicole’s eyebrows lifted above the purple rims of her glasses. “Nice basket, too.”
“It’s for my report,” Laurel said as she salvaged more flowers from the grass.
“You’re going
today
?” Nicole said. “In English?”
Laurel glanced between the smirking girls. “Yeah. So?”
Tara giggled. “So . . .
nada
. Good luck, Little Red,” she called back as she and Nicole headed into the classroom building. “Watch out for wolves.”
To Laurel’s surprise, Kate didn’t follow the others but stood still with a few flowers she’d picked up in her hand. “Where d’you get these?” Kate said. “They’re so . . . bright.”
“The school garden,” Laurel said. “You can keep those. I’ve got plenty.”
“Thanks,” said Kate. “You’re pretty brave to go today.”
Laurel trailed her into Founders’ Hall. “Why?”
“’Cause it’s Exchange Day,” Kate shouted over her shoulder as they snaked through clusters of girls crowding the hallway. “Willowlawn guys come to our classes. Didn’t you see the schedule?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know it meant
that
.” Laurel’s mind started to tick. She’d skipped breakfast that morning, so she didn’t know if any guys had come to their dining hall or wandered into her dorm. But the idea of some secret admirer leaving flowers outside her door seemed like old-fashioned wishful thinking.
Laurel stopped outside the English classroom, pulled off her jacket, and stuffed it into her backpack. Inside, the desks were pushed together, and the rear of the room was jammed with lanky boys on folding chairs. She was surprised at how her heart sped at the mere sight of guys. Tara and Nicole had positioned themselves in the exact center of the room, while Kate claimed the last desk in the back. A balding man Laurel didn’t recognize was standing off to the side.
“Please sit anywhere today,” Miss Spenser called out above the din. She was past middle age and usually dressed in tweeds and bows. Most of the girls called her Spinster Spenser, but her voice sang when she read poetry out loud.
“Laurel, why don’t you go first?” Miss Spenser tapped a desk. “You can sit here.”
Laurel set her basket on the front desk and let her backpack clunk to the floor. Now she wished she’d chosen a normal topic, like the Globe Theatre or something about Charles Dickens. But ever since she’d opened that letter from her mom, Laurel couldn’t get flowers out of her head. The letter had arrived on her fourteenth birthday out of the blue. Her mom had attached little white flowers to the top and written a puzzling inscription under them: “Lily of the valley for the return of happiness.” Her mom’s name was Lily, but Laurel had Googled the phrase. She was amazed to discover there was a whole language of flowers.
“Listen up, guys,” the balding man said. “And settle down.”
Miss Spenser cleared her throat. “I’d like to welcome Mr. Thomas’s English class to our oral reports on history and literature,” she said. “Our first presenter today is Laurel Whelan, and her topic is an unusual one: the Victorian language of flowers.”
Her heart now galloping, Laurel fumbled with her note cards and wrote “The Language of Flowers” on the chalkboard. Behind her, someone whispered, and Miss Spenser’s fingers snapped twice for silence. Laurel turned to face the crowd.
“Imagine”—she paused to steady her quivering voice—“imagine that you are a young lady living in the Victorian era.”
Several boys snickered.
“Or a guy,” Laurel added. “All the social events you attend are
strictly
chaperoned.”
“Sounds like Willowlawn,” a boy with thick sandy hair whispered loudly.
“Mr. Buchanan,” said Mr. Thomas.
“Sorry,” said the boy, but his blue eyes were unrepentant. Even Laurel had heard all about the infamous Everett Buchanan.
Ignore, she told herself, but her eyes kept straying back to his gorgeous face.
“Okay,” Laurel said. “Now imagine that you’re in love with someone, and you want to tell that person. Texting, Facebook, IMing, and even telephones haven’t been invented, so you have to find other ways to communicate.
And
you have to do it while your chaperones are watching. You could send him—or her—a secret message in the language of flowers.”
Laurel reached into her basket for a white flower. “In Victorian times,” she said, “every kind of flower, even every herb and shrub, symbolized a different feeling or emotion. For example, if you gave someone a snowdrop that meant hope. Or you could give someone a whole bouquet of symbolic flowers, called a tussie-mussie. Each—”
“Fuzzy-wuzzy?” Everett said. “What-y?”
Tara’s laughter shredded the air as she swiveled toward Everett.
Miss Spenser stood up. “Mr. Buchanan,
do
raise your hand if you have a question.”
“Sorry.” Everett held up both palms as if at gunpoint. “Excuse me, uh—Lauren?”
“Laur-
el
,” she said firmly.
“Excuse me, Laur-elle. What did you call ’em?” Everett flashed a confident smile.
“Tussie-mussies. It’s kind of a silly name, but that’s what they were called back then.” She giggled nervously.
“Thank-you-very-much,” Everett said, bowing his head. “Laur-elle.”
Laurel blinked at him because she didn’t want to believe the sarcasm that slithered through his voice. She squeezed her cards and forced herself to read on. “Most Victorian girls had a language of flowers book for reference, like this one.” She held up a pocket-sized paperback,
The Language of Flowers
, which she’d spied in the window of a florist shop near her dad’s new town house. She’d hurried into the store and flipped its pages to the letter
L
. “Lily of the valley for the return of happiness,” the book said—exactly like her mom’s letter.
Skimming her next note card, Laurel crossed out the geeky words in her mind. “Lots of the meanings in the flower language come from literary sources, like the
Bible, Greek mythology, and Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets,” she said.
“Excellent!” exclaimed Miss Spenser.
“For example, if someone gave you a narcissus—that’s the scientific name for a daffodil—that means they think you’re narcissistic or egotistical.” Laurel held up a photograph of a daffodil she’d printed off the internet because the buds weren’t open yet outside. “In the Greek myth this guy Narcissus is really gorgeous. He sees his reflection in a lake and actually falls in love with himself.” She shook her head. “You wouldn’t want to get a tussie-mussie with narcissus in it.”
“No way,” whispered Everett. “That would suck.”
Laurel winced as Tara laughed loudest of all.
“C’mon, man.” An Asian guy kicked the back of Everett’s chair. “Cut it out.”
“Mr. Buchanan,” the Willowlawn teacher said. “Final warning.”
Everett nodded curtly. “Yessir.”
Laurel met the other boy’s eyes with silent gratitude. His shoulder-length black hair was parted in the middle and tucked behind his ears. When he gave her a quick nod back, her body relaxed a little.
Miss Spenser smiled at her. “This is fascinating, Laurel. Please continue.”
Gathering herself with a slow breath, Laurel chose
other flowers and explained their meanings: pansies were for thoughts, crocuses for mirth, sprigs of green myrtle for love, and lily of the valley for the return of happiness. After her mom’s cryptic reference Laurel
had
to have some lilies of the valley. It was too cold for them to bloom outside, but she found some online and ordered a potful. Her dad would never notice the expense on her charge card.
“And if you’re really serious about someone,” Laurel went on, “you could add ivy to symbolize marriage and fidelity.” She tucked a few sprigs into the other flowers and wound strips of green tape around the stems. “So if you gave someone this exact tussie-mussie, you’d secretly communicate your hope for love and happiness in the Victorian language of flowers.”
Everyone started clapping, but Laurel’s eyes fell on the black-haired guy. She lifted the bouquet to her nose and breathed in. The honeyed fragrance swirled into her head and swept through her body, leaving a strange trail of lovely words she couldn’t help whispering to herself.
“Bright cut flowers, leaves of green,
bring about what I have seen.”
The instant Laurel uttered the words, a fizzy feeling sparked in her fingertips and whooshed up her arm.
“Ahhh!” She dropped the bouquet. Forty pairs of eyes stared, and her face flushed warm as she leaned on the desk. The scent of flowers was strong and dizzying.
Miss Spenser stepped toward her. “Are you all right?”
“It was a . . . a thorn,” Laurel blurted out as she rubbed her arm. “It pricked me.” All her flowers were thornless, but she hoped no one would notice. She couldn’t meet her classmates’ eyes. “So . . . uh . . . does anybody have any questions?” Like, What’s happening to me?
Nicole’s hand popped up, as usual. “How did you find out about this flower language?” she said in her breathy voice.
Laurel opened her mouth and closed it again. The birthday letter was a secret she needed to keep. “I found this book”—she lifted the small paperback—“at a florist shop called Say It with Flowers. It’s in Georgetown.”