“If this were your birthday, I would get you white roses,” Emily says, because even if I claim I don’t have an affinity for them, she knows me too well. “But it’s not your birthday. It’s mine.” I can tell by her tone that no amount of reasoning with her is going to change her mind.

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Let me get this straight. You want me to buy you a bunch of orchids. But then instead of handing them to you like a normal person, you want me to leave them anonymously on your desk and then pretend they weren’t from me?” I look at her doubtfully.

Emily clasps her hands together and lets out an excited squeal. “It’s going to be perfect.”

“It’s going to be dramatic,” I say with a laugh.

She gives me a mischievous smile. “Same thing.”

Emily walks up to my front stoop and places the white rose on a pile of roses in front of my door. Has she been coming here every day since I left, bringing me a rose? The realization hits me hard and it feels like my heart is going to tear straight out of my chest. I had been so concerned with surviving the Academy that I hadn’t truly thought about the impact my absence would have on her.

Emily kneels down on my steps and says a few words that I can’t decipher before she gets up again. But even from here I can tell that her eyes are red, and she wipes at them with the back of her mittens. And I wipe at mine. More than anything I want to make the grief on her face disappear. As she walks toward her car, I have a desperate desire to call out to her. And as she closes her car door, I feel like I’ve lost something precious. She turns on her engine and backs up, her silver car jostling on the dips in the dirt driveway. Just like that, Emily pulls out onto the road and disappears behind the tall trees.

I press my fingers into my eyebrows. I take a few deep breaths before I even dare look at Ash because I know I will crumble.

“Would you like a minute alone?” Ash asks, and there is concern in his eyes, but something else is there, too—a question I can’t quite make out.

“No,” I whisper, and break eye contact with him. “Let’s just go.” I motion for him to follow me, focusing all my energy on the task at hand.