I had never been on an airplane. Before my mother became too sick to travel, she preferred driving. We took road-trips across the United States. Together, we zigzagged through national parks, cheap motel rooms and road markets on long weekends.

Now, I was curled around a porcelain toilet seat inside the private bathroom of the Bradshaw's family jet. I cradled the white, glass bowl like a mother clutching her newborn. Each time I tried to stand on shaking legs, something swayed in my empty belly, like a thread tightening, and I was pulled back down to heave colorless bile into the shallow water.

"Little plum." A quick knock accompanied my pet name. "We are just about to land. I would prefer you take a seat and get buckled in."

"The only way I'm getting out of this" – I coughed, a loud, wet sputtering noise that caused my fingers to clench on the emerald tile – "bathroom is if we aren't moving."

"The turbulence will just knock your mouth away from the bowl, and then it'll go everywhere but where it should," Leonora's calm voice said. "Trust me, I know."

I opened the bathroom door slowly, and kept my head down, ashamed to look Leonora in the eyes. She wrapped a warm arm around my shoulder and directed me to a cream-colored leather chair. A heavy bowl cut from marble waited for me, it was wrapped in a shiny plastic, a makeshift barf-bag good enough for millionaires—sorry, billionaires—to huff dryly into.

The moment I buckled myself into the plush seat, turbulence wrapped around the plane like thin, dying leaves holding onto slender branches during a May thunderstorm. I imagined myself as one of those leaves, twig-fingers digging into the upholstered leather. I pressed my lips into one tight line and refused to even breathe.

"Look out the window, it will help," Leonora said.

Although I shook my head, I turned my eyes to the dark, zooming world outside. Only the lights of a small airport below us shined—there was no sign of a city nearby, just dark green trees and acres of smooth farmland snuffed out by the night.

I didn't know what I preferred more, this steady darkness or the dancing, golden pearls of light that came with thick populations and cheap gas stations on every street corner.

"Welcome to Daisy Land," Lenora whispered.

She nudged me softly with a folded pointer finger. I smiled, and then, I vomited.

***

Although the empty airport was small, the interior was decorated in granite floors, bronze statues of people I failed to recognize, and pleasant-looking staff members who smiled in my direction every other second. Save for a family of four—all golden-haired and pristine in the way they dressed despite it being only ten minutes past sunrise—Leonora and I were the only guests.

Our steps echoed loudly in the terminal. The building reminded me of the waiting room at my mother's hospital. At the Yarborough Care Center, everything appeared pleasant and perfect, even the patients and overworked staff. I always thought about how I never saw a dead body or a frenzied group of nurses rushing to a room. It just didn't make sense to let in all that bad stuff from the big, mean outside world.

This was the same. The interior palette consisted of two familiar colors: off-white and a deep, blue black—both signature shades for anything that smelled rich and looked half-clean. The airport was the gateway to a new kind of opulence, an old, generational wealth that could only exist for the few people who vacationed on this island—Daisy Isle... or Daisy Land. That's what Leonora called it.

"God, I could use a coffee right now," Leonora said.

At her words, I turned on my smartphone. 5:36 a.m. was scrawled across my screen in thin, white numbers.

"Hey," Leonora continued. I glanced up at her with tired eyes, ready to answer, but saw that she held a cellphone to her ear. "Which car and who's picking us up?" Another brief moment of silence. "Alright. The white Caddy and little Rose. Thank you."

She ushered me past the luggage pick up and through a revolving door made of thick brass. When we came out on the other side, I caught my first breath of the warm, humid air. It wrapped around me like a familiar sweater. Although the island seemed sticky, I welcomed it. In Arkansas, the air turned so gross and thick that sometimes, on the worst days, it seemed as though the wet earth rose from the ground and turned every particle of air into speckles of mud.

A new, white Cadillac was the only car parked beside the exit. Flashing red hazards warned any passerby to drive around. The trunk was lifted up, and a tall, broad male figure packed my red Samsonite in the back with olive-colored hands.

"Rosie Posie!" Leonora called out with her arms extended. I had a feeling she liked pet names.

The man searched for the voice and turned around. I held my breath. I had to.

Rose—that's the name she gave him on the phone—was well over six feet tall and built sturdier than any boy in my high school. He wore a simple matching set of a spotless black sweatshirt and an equally clean pair of black joggers. His hair fell over his brown, half-lidded eyes in luscious dark curls, like sprawling lines of thick ink. His lips were a pink-red, and they reminded me of the time I put my mother's lipstick on and tried to wipe it away with the back of my hand. The rich pigment still remained for hours after, no matter how hard I tried to scrub it off. His face was sculpted like something between a cherub and a marble statue of a Greek god.

He looked like a fallen angel.

Please don't let him be related to me.

"Mrs. Bradshaw," he smiled. Cool relief and a hot rush coursed through my body at that large, wolfish grin. He didn't call Leonora 'mom'.

"I hate it when you call me that," Leonora said. She wrapped her arms around his neck in a warm embrace. "Please call me mom."

I frowned. Stepson, perhaps?

"You're the boss," Rose said, his dark eyes still steady on Leonora. That was to be expected. Leonora, like my mother, was outrageously and unfairly beautiful. "And—" He pulled his gaze away to find me. His sudden attention made me conscious of what I wore—wrinkled overalls with an orange stain from my last round of barfing—but I refused to adjust or move any fabric or hair or limb to appear 'prettier'. I just stood there, frozen in his stare. "You must be Mrs. Bradshaw's niece, Ms. Susanne."

I wanted him to say my name again in that cool, slow accent of his. Unlike Leonora, he sounded like he came from somewhere a bit closer to home. Maybe he was an Oklahoma rose.

"Yes," I whispered, unsure of what to say. "And you are?"

"I'm Rose Hawthorne," he grabbed my trembling hand with his own. His fingers were long, thick and squared off at the end. They were nothing like Leonora's, instead they were working hands. "Pleasure to meet you." He lifted his pink-red lips to my freckled palm and kissed it, too long and too quick all at once.

"You're from Texas," I rushed out. His last sentence gave it away. He held onto his 'r's and his 'o's, until they rolled slowly out of his mouth.

"Good ear." He gave me a half-hearted grin, like he hadn't expected me to catch it so quickly.

"Rosie works for our family," Leonora said from the front passenger seat. The door was open, and she sprawled across it, long forearms underneath her chin while she watched us together. She smiled like she knew a secret. "Although he'll be leaving us for Harvard in August."

That didn't make any sense. Why would a handsome kid from Texas waste his last summer working a whole world away from his friends and family? He would have no last hoorah. No warm, fuzzy memories wrapped underneath the setting Texan sun with old flames. No final goodbyes.

I smiled bitterly. I knew the feeling.

"I hope it will be a good summer for us both, then," I said, clueless to what it even meant. It sounded like something a prattling church woman would say to her women's bible study— where they traded mindless, half empty pleasantries so quickly, it turned into a language of its own. I wouldn't have a good summer, not even if those steady, dark eyes followed me all through the summer heat. 

Sorry for the late update! My weekend got a little crazy! I hope you guys enjoyed!

What do you think of our newest (main) character Rose Hawthorne? :D 

Looking forward to comments! Please vote!