I shake my head, groaning.
I don't want these memories.
I don't want to remember.
But why?
The woman is singing in a beautiful voice, Italian words that I don't understand blending together in a soothing lullaby. She's trying to comfort me, but as she sings, her voice begins to shake and tremble, and the melody loses its meaning.
"We have to go now, little one," she tells me, grabbing me and gathering me in her arms. The flower crown I'd been making out of the daisies falls to the ground.
"But I'm not finished," I complain. She pays me no mind. She runs along the grass. Her feet are bare and streaked with green, and so are mine. We're in our own world. A place where we're safe, and happy, and good, until we aren't. Until someone barges into our fantasy with a bang. Bang bang bang.
"Mama!" I cry out, little arms extending for my mother. "Mama, don't go!"
But she's being pulled away. She reaches out for me, and then there's a loud noise, bang bang bang, again and again, over and over again. Rosettes of deep scarlet bloom on my mother's chest and she stumbles back, having never quite reached me, her last chance of comforting me being cruelly ripped away. She utters my name, but no sound comes from her lips. They open to shape the letters of my name and then darker red, almost black liquid spills from her lips.
I don't know what's happening, but I know something's wrong, and I start to wail. Mama falls to the floor and I crawl closer to her, watching her gurgle blood, trying to speak and tell me something that could save my life. But there's nothing. No words come out. She reaches out for me, but her hand falls midway, her arm brokenly lying on the grass and her eyes lifeless, staring into nothing.
"What's wrong, Mama?" I ask, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "What's going on, why won't you talk to me?"
I'm too small to understand, too young to comprehend it's over, it's done. She's dead, and I don't know it, so I keep sitting there, absentmindedly picking daisies that grow in the grass around her unmoving body. I tuck them in her hair, filling her dark mane with flowers.
I snap out of it with a sharp intake of breath, and Jas is there, but Mama is nowhere to be seen.
With a start, I realize it was nothing but a memory. A memory I've been keeping under lock and key, because it's just too much to deal with daily.
Mama.
My mother.
Dead, next to me.
Only now I'm understanding the significance of what I've remembered. Someone killed her, shot her, and left me with her dead body in our garden, where the daisies grew.
My hands form fists at my sides as I look at Jasper. "She's gone."
"Who's gone, Petal?" For once in his life, he actually looks concerned. I'm afraid too, because it seems as if he's finally pushed me enough to break me. I'm remembering things I haven't thought of in years, and as Jasper's words blur into nothing, I go back in time, to a simpler, kinder place.
I'm sitting in a garden again. I'm wearing dark clothes, and there's a boy next to me, an older boy, who's picking daisies with me.
My mouth forms a scowl, because I don't like daisies. They remind me of Mama and what happened to her. How peaceful she looked lying there with flowers in her hair and blood leaking from the wounds on her chest.
Thoughtfully, I pick the petals off the flowers, softly chanting the words as I go.
"He loves me. He loves me not. He loves me. He loves me not."
The memory is intense and painful, and I blink my eyes open and closed again and again, lost somewhere between the past and the present.
My eyes lock with Jasper's, and I furrow my brows. "What are you doing to me, Jas?"
“What have you seen?”
It hits me then. Those eyes, these eyes.
Once upon a time, there was an older boy who took care of me. Who never picked on me. Who teases me in sweet, kind ways, and protects me from the mean kids in the playground. I remember the boy who protected me when no one else would.
My savior.
My stalker.
My tormentor.
"It’s you,” he whispers.27JasperIt’s you.
I stare down at my little Petal —at her disheveled hair, her rosy cheeks, but no matter how much I study her, I find it hard to process her words.
“It’s me?” I repeat.
She pushes away from my embrace and sits opposite me, her slender legs tucked beneath her.
Her gray eyes shine with child-like excitement and realization. “When I was young, my mother and I were always hidden, somehow. Dad visited us and it seemed like he didn’t want to show us to the outside world. One day, he told Mom I should remain hidden, and I was like four. I didn’t even understand what it meant, but I felt it. That day, Mom threw away all my dresses, cut off my hair and told me, you’ll be a boy now, Georgie. If anyone asks about your name, it’ll be Joseph. Although I didn’t understand it, I loved the idea of not having to brush my hair anymore. At the tender age of four, I became a boy, and since I was a child, it was believable to everyone else. All that time, I thought Mom wanted a boy and I was just playing the role of one for her.