The yellow petals smell of honey and dust. Velma presses her nose close to the enormous sunflower growing beside her grandmother's porch, and the scent fills her head with summer.
"You're the one everyone talks about," she says. "The flower that listens."
The sunflower bends toward her. Just slightly. Like it's nodding.
Velma's best friend, Maya, stopped speaking to her three days ago. No explanation. Just silence in the hallways and an empty seat at lunch. So Velma tells the sunflower everything—how she doesn't understand what happened, how she asked Maya what was wrong, and how Maya just shook her head and walked away.
The sunflower bends closer.
"See? You get it," Velma says. "You actually care."
The next day, Velma brings her favorite book and reads to the sunflower for an hour. She complains about her annoying brother. She describes the stray cat she saw behind the library.
