Someone was leaving her flowers. Beautiful, bold bouquets with all kinds of arrangements of flowers. Some of them were simple, a small arrangement of daisies and primrose and a few others that were just a few flowers, nothing massive to start. As time went on, they became more wild, more overt. Someone was trying to send her a message, but she could never figure out how they were getting into her bedroom. She was the only one who had the key to her room and it wasn’t as though she was passing it around freely to her other fellow boarders.
It wasn’t as though she invited a gaggle of people into her room either. She had scored a single dorm and wouldn’t have given it up for anything. Somehow, someone was getting in to leave her flowers.
“Maybe it’s a ghost,” her best friend, Tara, said as she painted her nails a dark red in the student lounge. “You do know this used to be the winter home of the famous director, Zatz Katz, right?”
She refused to believe it could be a ghost. A ghost couldn’t lift or move real objects like that. It had to be someone else.
“Melv,” She said next, blowing on her wet nails. “Please back me up here, this place is creepy and totally could be haunted, right?”
Melvin, the hottie with the unfortunate name that had tried to shorten it any way he could just shrugged. “I’m just going to say don’t think Zebras.” He sipped his coffee and continued to scroll through his phone. He was so cool, none of the high school drama seemed to touch him.
He realized they were both looking at him with confusion across their faces. “When you hear galloping, don’t think zebras, think horses?” He asked, as if everyone had heard it before. “Look, there has to be a simpler explanation than a ghost, Syd.”
Just the way he shortened her name, as he did with everyone else, made her chest feel light, but it wasn’t enough to pull her from the mystery at hand.
The next time it happened, she came back from the showers to find a large bouquet of flowers she couldn’t even name, but were the most beautiful flowers she had received yet. She instantly sent a text to Tara and Melv, her two best friends. Maybe they could figure it out.
Tara arrived first, her face mask still on, in the skimpiest pajamas she had ever seen. Obviously, she has caught her by surprise. Melv showed up a few moments after, in his typical silk pajamas, his hair mildly tousled, always the epitome of cool.
“More flowers?” He asked, as if he seemed to know. She hadn’t exactly been thinking straight when she had sent the text message, fear and excitement surging through her.
Words were hard sometimes around Melv, so she just nodded.
“Show me,” he said next.
She blindly led him into her dorm room, thankful it was clean enough. Still, it felt strange to have him (and Tara) there, like a strange invasion of privacy. Thankfully, he seemed to only focus on the bouquet set up perfectly on her desk by the window.
“You have a secret admirer,” he said, once he had looked over the bouquet. “This one means they really like you,” he said pointing to a small bloom. “And this one, well,” he gave a small chuckle. “They want you to see them.”
Tara scoffed, her arms crossed across her chest. “Didn’t know you were so invested in flowers, Melv,” she said. It was obvious she was uncomfortable. Upset about something.
Syd looked at him, really looked at him for the first time. It wasn’t like Melv to be into anything that wasn’t considered cool. Yet, as she looked at him, she realized the bottoms of his silk pajamas were covered with dirt and dust.
“How do you know so much about flowers?” She asked him. “And what happened to your pants?”
He looked at her and truly smiled, finally knowing she understood. “Would you believe that Zatz Katz had secret tunnels built behind the walls and one leads to your very dorm room?”
“And the flowers?” She asked next. How could the popular Melv be interested in her?
“Well,” he said turning back toward the stunning bouquet. “I’m pretty sure this one is saying I want to ask you out.” He pulled it from the bouquet. “What do you say?”
“Yes,” She said with a smile. “But next time don’t sneak into my room.”
Melv just smiled. “Only if you ask me to.”