“Oh my God. Forget it.”
Kiara did.
For about three days.
Then she heard Madison talking to Lauren Price beside the greenhouse sink.
Lauren was seventeen, white, brunette, shorter than Madison, and had been her closest friend since middle school.
Kiara entered while they were speaking.
Madison lowered her voice too late.
“Schools love that stuff now.”
Lauren laughed.
“What stuff?”
Madison noticed Kiara.
“Nothing.”
Kiara filled a watering can.
Neither girl continued.
The conversation could have meant anything.
Kiara did not write it down.
She did not report it.
She barely remembered it by dinner.
Then came the photograph.
Cedar Hollow’s district communications office visited in October to take pictures for a vocational-program brochure.
The photographer spent fifteen minutes in horticulture.
He photographed everyone.
Madison grafting roses.
Lauren filling pots.
Two boys assembling a raised bed.
Kiara standing beside McCall while explaining the inventory system.
The district eventually used the last photograph online.
Madison sent it to Lauren.
Of course.
Lauren replied:
lol
Madison:
They got exactly the picture they wanted.
Lauren:
What picture?
Madison:
You know.
Lauren sent a laughing emoji.
A third student was in the group chat.
Abby Turner.
Abby was white, seventeen, quiet, with brown hair usually tied low at her neck. She volunteered at an animal rehabilitation center and was taking horticulture mostly because it satisfied a science elective requirement.
She read Madison’s message.
Did not reply.
That silence would later become important.
At school the next morning, Madison looked at Kiara.
“Saw your modeling career.”
Kiara glanced up from a tray of seedlings.
“What?”
“The district photo.”
“Oh.”
Kiara returned to work.
Madison waited.
“That’s it?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Nothing.”
Kiara pushed a plant marker into soil.
“Okay.”
Madison watched her for another second.
“You don’t think it’s interesting?”
“What?”
“They picked you.”
“From the twelve pictures they took?”
“Yes.”
Kiara sighed.
“What answer are you looking for?”
Madison smiled.
“None.”
She walked away.
Abby had been working at the next table.
She looked at Kiara.
Then toward Madison.
Said nothing.
The first real sabotage looked like a mistake.
Cedar Hollow’s horticulture class planted three trays of winter lettuce for the school cafeteria.
Kiara labeled each cultivar.
Two mornings later, the labels were switched.
McCall blamed nobody.
Teenagers made mistakes.
They fixed them as best they could.
A week later, twenty-four herb seedlings dried out because an irrigation valve had been shut overnight.
Kiara had checked it before leaving.
She knew she had.
Madison told McCall:
“Inventory manager should probably start checking the actual plants instead of the spreadsheet.”
Kiara looked at her.
“I checked the valve.”
“Apparently not.”
“I did.”
Madison shrugged.
“Plants don’t lie.”
That sentence irritated Kiara precisely because she usually believed it.
McCall replaced the seedlings.
No investigation.
Then twenty bags of donated potting mix were logged as nineteen.
Kiara counted again.
Nineteen.
Invoice said twenty.
Madison laughed.
“Maybe your famous system isn’t perfect.”
Kiara asked Keller Nursery whether the delivery count was correct.
Nathan Keller checked his records.
Twenty bags left the store.
A driver remembered unloading twenty.
Kiara searched the sheds.
Nothing.
One bag missing.
Worth less than twenty dollars.
No crisis.
Still strange.
The following week, the missing bag reappeared behind a stack of plastic pots.
Madison found it.
“Look at that.”
Kiara stared.
She knew she had checked there.
“You put it there?”
Madison laughed.