Something Quite Peculiar - Chapter 07

Chapter Seven: Bed of Roses

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“What are you doing here?” Bunny asked as Jack settled himself atop one of his large egg sculptures.

“I went after you through the tunnel,” Jack said with a shrug as the buck made his way over to a basket he’d abandoned earlier to go to North’s workshop. Jack smiled softly, finding that Bunny was in the middle of tending to the plants in his warren, the basket full of small flowers waiting to be planted.

“Okay, but why? I know Easter’s a few months away but I’m busy,” Bunny said, carefully placing one of the small sprouts into the ground.

“It seemed like the quickest way to get out of there, didn’t realize I’d be interrupting your gardening,” Jack said with a small laugh.

“What’s wrong with gardening?” Bunny replied, narrowing his eyes at Jack as though daring him to say something against his hobby.

“Nothing, nothing,” Jack said, his smile tight-lipped to keep from laughing again. “I just figured all the plants here just kind of, you know, happened. Never pictured you planting them all.”

“Hmph,” was Bunny’s only reply as he continued to focus on his flowers, carefully arranging them in the area he had designated for them.

“Is North like that a lot?” Jack asked suddenly.

“Like what?”

“Acting like he’s my father or something, I half expected him to ground me,” Jack said, leaving his space from on top of the egg sculpture and hovering low to the ground, examining the existing plants as he went.

“Maybe,” Bunny said, gently patting the soil before him, “If you didn’t act like a child, he wouldn’t treat you like one.”

“How am I acting like a child?” Jack asked, stopping to examine a rose bush, featuring purple roses whose petals faded out to blue toward the ends. He recalled the sketches of roses that had been in Rowan’s notebook.

“Breaking into someone’s apartment because of a story? That’s only a little better than someone having triple-dog dared you to do it,” Bunny said.

“I didn’t steal anything, I didn’t break anything, she doesn’t even know I was ever there,” Jack said. He turned back to Bunny and gestured back to the rose bush. “What do you want for some of those?”

“What for?” Bunny asked.

“Well, apparently it’s okay to break into someone’s home if you leave gifts,” Jack said.

“So you want to leave her some of my roses.”

“They’re pretty,” Jack said simply. “And she had drawn some in her notebook I looked through.”

“How’d you even find this girl anyway?” Bunny asked, completely ignoring his sprouts now and watching Jack in confusion.

“She’s Jamie’s cousin, he asked me to make sure she drove home safe. The other night he had me listen in while she told him a bedtime story. I wanted to know what happened next since she never actually finished telling the story,” Jack explained. “So, can I have the roses or not?”

“If I say no, you’re just going to come back and take them, aren’t you? I have to trim this anyway, you can’t just pick them all willy-nilly,” Bunny said, taking a pair of pruners from his basket and approaching Jack and the rose bush.

“I’m surprised you’re going along with this,” Jack said.

“I’m not condoning you breaking into whatsername’s apartment,” Bunny said at once, trimming the roses with expertise. “But there’s no reason she shouldn’t get something nice to make up for it.”

“Think this’ll get North off my back about it?”

“Nope,” Bunny said, taking the roses back to his basket, where he fumbled around a moment until he found a ribbon to bundle them together with. Jack almost made a comment about Bunny having ribbon on hand in his basket but decided against it. “And Jack, there’s something you should know.”

“What’s that?” he said.

Bunny met Jack’s eyes and spoke in an entirely serious manner, which was sort of comical when one stopped to remember that he was a giant rabbit holding a bouquet of roses. “Courting a mortal is a terrible idea. It’s never not a terrible idea.”

“What?” Jack said, surprised at both the statement and the fact that Bunny was still using words like courting. It was the twenty-first century, after all. “I’m not ‘courting’ her, the roses are a completely platonic thing.”

Bunny raised his brow skeptically in response.

“Why would I try to get a girl that can’t even see me?” Jack said.

“I’m just saying, mate, nothing good comes out of it. In fact, you really shouldn’t even be spending so much time with Jamie Bennett,” Bunny said, handing Jack the finished bouquet. Jack swore under his breath as he snagged his hand on one of the thorns, accidentally icing the roses in the process.

“Jamie-” Jack started, examining the finger that had been pricked by the thorns.

“Is a great kid, he really is, but that’s just it,” Bunny said, shaking his head slightly as he watched the edges of the roses freeze. “He’s a mortal, he’s going to grow up, he’s going to die one day, Jack. So is his cousin, so is every other mortal that you pal around with.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Jack said. It was something he didn’t like to think about much, the fact that the first person to ever see him was going to die one day.

“I think you try to forget about it, but there’s only so long you can do that. It’s for your own good that you don’t get attached, Jack,” Bunny said. “Ask North, if you don’t want to take my word for it.”

“I’ve spent the past three hundred years just watching, Bunny,” Jack said. “I don’t want to forget what it’s like to hang out with kids, I don’t want to hide away like the rest of you. It works for you guys, that’s great, but it’s just not how I operate.”

“Talk to North, seriously,” Bunny said. “And don’t get attached to this girl.”

“North may like to act like he’s my father, but at the end of the day I made it centuries without any of you there to tell me what to do,” said Jack defensively.

“We’re not telling you these things to ruin your fun or antagonize you,” Bunny explained, eyes narrowing and patience growing thin. “We’re not against you, you’re not all alone anymore! You don’t have to be so defensive and ridiculous, all of the boundaries are for your own good!”

“Look, I appreciate that you guys are around, I do, but I’m not your responsibility and I can run my own life,” Jack replied. “I may not have as many centuries under my belt as the rest of you but I’m not naïve. I don’t need someone to hold my hand and tell me who to be friends with. Not that Rowan and I are friends anyway. I’m not going to get attached to her, and I have no intentions to try to win her affections or something. I’m only around for the stories, it’s that simple.”

“Human relations are never that simple,” Bunny pointed out.

“Well, good thing I’m not human then. I’ll see you around, Cottontail, thanks for the weeds,” Jack said, flying off in the direction of the tunnel leading to North America.

---

“It wouldn’t start at all, huh? Guessing you guys need a ride, then?” Rowan said, her cell phone wedged between her ear and shoulder as she buttoned her dark navy pea coat.

“Okay, well I haven’t even been outside yet so we’re definitely gonna be late, I still have to dig my car out of the snow and everything,” she said, grabbing her now nearly finished painting from the easel with one hand and her tool box of paints with the other. “Yeah, send him an email, how much is he gonna really penalize us, right? I’ll be surprised if half the class even shows up within the first hour of class with all the snow. Oh! Don’t forget the flash drive so we can work on the history presentation at lunch.”

Rowan carefully slipped her canvas from one hand to the other before opening the front door of her apartment. “Right? Mondays aren’t even trying anymore… Okay, I’ll see you in a few, bye,” Rowan said, taking her phone from her shoulder in order to end the call, stopping short before she stepped into the hallway.

Lying on the floor before her was a bouquet of roses, violet in color, fading out to blue. They were covered in a sparkling layer of frost.

Setting down her paint box and canvas, Rowan glanced down the hall to see if anyone else was around that might have left the flowers. Finding that she was alone, she kneeled down and carefully took the bouquet in her hands, examining it for a tag of any kind. She found none.

“How peculiar,” Rowan whispered, bringing the flowers inside and pulling a tall glass out of the cabinet to use as a vase. She filled the glass before setting the roses carefully inside, careful to keep the ribbon binding them together from getting wet.

Who could have possibly sent them? She had never received flowers from someone who wasn’t her own father trying to cheer her up on a lonely Valentine’s Day. She’d never received roses, despite them being her favorite, and these roses served only to confuse her. It was not their presence alone that did it, but rather the coloring. She was almost certain that roses this color did not exist in nature, and yet, here they were.

After taking a quick snapshot with her phone, she returned to her things by the door, picking them up once more before leaving the apartment.

She would have time to ponder the flowers and where they came from when she wasn’t running late.

---

“Maybe Danny sent them,” said the very tall, slim girl setting up her painting at the easel beside Rowan’s. Rowan made a face as she re-arranged her paint, brushes, and water, her canvas already settled on the easel.

“I don’t think so,” Rowan said. The other girl plopped down in the nearby chair and rummaged through a box of brushes.

“Nicolette was saying he’s been particularly annoying ever since you dumped him,” the other girl pointed out, tucking some of her short black hair behind her ear.

Rowan groaned a little. “I’m so glad he doesn’t go to school here, I can’t imagine having classes with him after that.”

“Maybe the roses are an attempt to win you back.”

“I don’t think so,” Rowan said, taking a very small brush from her box. “Why would he wait so long to leave me the roses? And not even leave a note or stick around to make sure I knew he was the one that left them?”

“True, he’d make sure he was there so you knew just who to thank,” the other girl said, ignoring her painting for now.

“Pretty much. Did you bring any masking tape? I forgot mine.”

The other girl dug through her bag and soon produced a roll of bright white tape, with the name “Shirley Houben” scribbled on the side in permanent marker.

“Thank you,” Rowan said, taking the roll from Shirley and beginning to tape her reference photos onto the side of the easel and beside her actual still life.

“No problem, I’m going to steal some of your black paint in a minute here,” Shirley said with a bit of a shrug, leaning back in her seat. “Maybe the flowers are an early birthday gift. Which, by the way, Adam and I are taking you out for dinner, no arguments.”

“No arguments,” Rowan repeated with a small laugh, handing Shirley her tape back. “Maybe they are, but still, who could have left them?”

“Secret admirer?”

“Without a sappy love note? How disappointing.”

“Maybe,” Shirley said, stroking an imaginary beard as she pondered. Rowan dipped her small brush into her paint to begin working. She had only fine details left to complete on her piece. “Someone did something to piss you off and those are sad apology flowers.”

“I can’t think of anyone who has both pissed me off and would do that,” Rowan said.

“Shirley, Rowan,” said an older man in a paint-stained dress shirt and jeans as he walked up behind the two. “It’s the last class to work on these. Less talking, more painting.”

“Yeah, Rowan, stop talking so much, jeez,” Shirley said sarcastically, turning back to her easel.

“Yeah, okay, of the two of us, who always makes their deadlines and who mostly makes their deadlines, Shirley dear?”

“I’m no longer talking to you, you’re a bad influence,” Shirley said simply. Their professor rolled his eyes at the pair, walking away after a short moment. At least the girls were painting in addition to their back and forth now.

---

Jack sat atop one of the small buildings on the small campus, watching as students shuffled here and there with various projects in hand. Class being in session, however, didn’t stop many students from venturing outside to construct snow sculptures. Some professors even stopped to join them.

There were a few generic snowmen, adorned in thrift store glasses and mustaches made of stiff and broken brushes. Also present on the grounds, however, was a cat wearing a bowtie and monocle, a reclining nude woman, a gaming console, and several representations of genitalia, all crafted lovingly in the snow.

“Why don’t I hang out at art schools more often?” Jack said with a laugh as he took in the sights. Rowan and another girl soon emerged from the nearby building, chattering away as they wandered in the direction of the largest building on campus (which still was not so large). They took their time, stopping to examine many of the sculptures along the way.

Jack furrowed his brow as Rowan leaned in and whispered something to the other girl. The other girl glanced toward the building Jack sat upon, confused, before shaking her head and mumbling something back to Rowan. Rowan whispered some more before the other girl took Rowan’s head in her hands.

“Finals are messing with your head!” she said loudly, laughing as Rowan sighed, seeming frustrated. The girl linked arms with her as they began walking again. “Let’s just go get coffee, everything will make sense again, I promise.”

Jack pulled himself to his feet as the girls passed. He remembered watching Rowan work diligently on several projects over the weekend. He had been waiting for opportunities to flip through her notebook again, and had gotten few while she worked. He wasn’t entirely surprised that she seemed to be stressing herself out.

Now, though, Jack took note that Rowan was stressing herself out on campus. Not in her apartment, as she had done the entire weekend. He smiled to himself as she and the other girl finally entered the large building in the distance. Perhaps it was time to take a trip to Rowan’s apartment.

Maybe she had left her notebook behind as he had hoped.