I make myself into a chrysanthemum so I can fit in this box, the box our vacuum came in; it’s not so big that I don’t have to fold myself first. Knees drawn up, arms wrapped around me, head down. It’s 85 degrees but my teeth are chattering; I’m a fluttering paper flower. I can still hear the heavy footsteps that stomped through the classroom, stopping to reload, stomping again. Pop. Pop. The teacher didn’t even have a chance to ask why he was there. I hear stomping in the breezeway connecting garage to kitchen. I’m in the box and the box is in the closet and I hold my breath; he’s coming in here too! He followed me from school and now he’s coming to get me. I might puke. It’s not safe to come out. “Rachel, are you here?” he calls, then louder, “Rachel!” He knows my name. It’s a trap. My screaming classmates cried, running to the door, to the windows. Pop. Pop. Pop. I can still hear them. My paper hands reach up and cover my paper ears. I was lucky there was a box in the classroom, a box like this. It was turned upside down. And I folded myself into a swan and ducked my paper head under my paper wing, trembling. The popping stopped. “Is anyone alive in here?” I didn’t budge. “It’s safe now.” I didn’t believe them. I didn’t want to see what I knew was outside the box. And then I had to and I saw blood, so much blood, my friends’ blood. I spread my swan wings and flew, I didn’t look at anyone or anything else; I just flew home over the chaos, over the ambulances and police cars and panicked people to my home, to this box and folded myself into a flower, sprouting roots right through the cardboard, through the floor, right through the earth, my heart still pounding. “Rachel?” I can hear his voice breaking. Then, “I was at the school. I couldn’t find her. They don’t know if she’s one of them, they haven’t all been identified yet. So I came home, but she’s not here either. I don’t know where she is.”

Home. I push aside my petals and peek out the closet door. He’s sitting on the couch, my father, his face in his hands, the phone still lit, lying on the floor next to his feet. 

 “Dad?” I can’t fight back my tears any longer; they gush from my eyes. I’m a girl again, not a chrysanthemum and my petals scatter as I stumble into his arms and they fold around me.

Susan Israel’s work has been published in Blink-Ink, Backwards Trajectory, Does It Have Pockets, MacQueen’s Quinterly, JAKE, 50 Word Stories, Bright Flash Literary Review, Flash Boulevard, among others. She lives in Connecticut.