Chapter One || A Blooming Mystery

It was a Monday morning at Rathbone Academy, and the air was buzzing with the usual mix of yawns, chatter, and the occasional sound of a locker slamming shut. Emily, Ruth, Tallulah, and Anna met at their usual spot by the big, old oak tree, where a mystery was brewing, though none of them knew it yet. “What is that smell? Can anyone else smell that? Where is it coming from? Oh, that's wierd but nice. Like wierdly nice.” Emily asked, wrinkling her nose. Emily stuck her finger in her mouth and pulled it out, pointing it straight up into the air above her head. "The winds going this way from over there I think". She pointed to the neglected side of the schoolyard, an area overrun with weeds and long-forgotten debris. “It’s like.. earthy, but not in a bad way. It’s weird.” “You think everything smells weird,” Ruth teased, leaning her head on her hand. “Remember when you accused the science lab of smelling like he inside of a dogs ears and everyone was like how do you know what a dogs ear smells like and then the whole lesson got taken over with questions on what does the inside of a dogs ear smell like? Then Mr Lemon went like, totally mental.” “That was valid,” Emily shot back. “Plus, no one was listening to his lesson anyway, but this is different.” She motioned dramatically toward the patch of ground beyond the fence. “Look! There’s color where there was only dirt yesterday.” The girls turned to see what she meant. Sure enough, bright splashes of yellow, purple, and white flowers were popping up in the middle of the forgotten lot, as though someone had waved a magic wand. Curious, they picked up their things and walked over to the area Emily was still pointing to. “Huh,” Tallulah said, squinting at the flowers. “Maybe the plants just got tired of being boring and decided to glow up.” She mimed a plant snapping its fingers sassily, causing Ruth to giggle. Anna adjusted her glasses, her eyes narrowing with curiosity. “That’s highly unlikely. Those flowers weren’t there yesterday, I ran through that whole bit when we did cross-coutry, it was all slippy and muddy. Someone’s been planting them.” “What, like a gardening ninja?” Emily smirked. “I’m serious!” Anna protested. “PE was last period so they weren't there when we left. Look at the way they’re arranged, symmetrical clusters, deliberate spacing. This isn’t random. Someone’s been working on this.” “She’s right,” Ruth said thoughtfully, tapping her chin. “And they’re not just weeds, those are actual flowers. Look, there’s lavender, daisies, and.. is that snapdragon?” Tallulah gasped dramatically. “Snapdragon? That’s such a cool name! It sounds like it should breathe fire or be the hero in some epic storybook. Ruth, are we in a fantasy flowerland?” “Very funny,” Ruth replied with a smile. “But seriously, someone’s gone to a lot of effort and it's not the caretaker, he's still not back after breaking his ankle." "How did I not know that?" exhaled Tallulah sympathetically, "We should have made him a card or a poster or thrown him a get well soon something-or-other". "Well," replied Emily, "he broke it slipping on a lipstick in the girls' bathroom. Poor guy, he’s probably avoiding anything to do with schoolgirls right now and is stuck at home watching telly but, ignoring that for now, if we’re going full detective mode we need a game plan. Step one: investigate the scene. Step two: interrogate suspects. Step three: figure out why anyone would bother planting flowers in this dump.” Anna frowned. “Calling it a dump is unfair. Whoever did this clearly cares about making it beautiful.” “Or they’re secretly building a base for mutant plants to take over the school,” Emily quipped. Tallulah’s eyes lit up. “Mutant plants? I’m in! Let’s check it out before class.” The girls approached the fenced-off area, their shoes crunching on the gravel path. Up close, the flowers were even more impressive. The soil had been freshly turned, and the plants looked carefully watered. “Definitely not random,” Anna muttered, crouching down to examine the ground. “Look at these tiny footprints. Whoever did this is probably wearing sneakers. Small ones.” “A gardening ninja in sneakers,” Emily mused. “This gets better by the second.” Ruth pointed to a trail of disturbed dirt leading toward the tool shed. “Let’s follow that. Maybe it’ll give us a clue.” As they reached the shed, Tallulah tugged on the door. It creaked open just enough to reveal a jumble of gardening tools, bags of soil, and, most suspiciously, a pair of green gardening gloves hanging on a hook. “Gloves!” Tallulah exclaimed. “The plot thickens.” Emily grabbed one and held it up like a trophy. “Clue number one. We have the gloves of our mysterious green-thumbed culprit. Now we just need the hand that fits them.” "Pass them here" shouted Anna excitedly. She reached deep into her bag and pulled out a small spray bottle with a glowing green liquid inside. It was her highlighter spray, invisible to the naked eye but you could see it under UV light. She had a habit of spraying her bedroom door handle with it in an attempt to find out which of her sublings was stealing her socks every morning. "I've made a fresh batch with the highlighters Miss Matthews threw in the bin yesterday. They might not work for her, but they'll work for me!" The group looked at eachother slightly amused as Anna sprayed the strange liquid into the gloves and placed them back on the hanger. They couldn't help but be a little impressed with the ingenuity, if someone was going to use those gloves soon, they'd just have to catch them before they washed thier hands. If it was a teacher, that would be between breaks, the same if it was a girl student. They weren't really sure if boys washed their hands for anything really. Ruth glanced at the clock tower. “We’re going to be late for maths if we don’t move. Let’s regroup at lunch and figure out our next steps.” As they walked back toward the main building, Anna looked over her shoulder at the colorful flowers. “Whoever did this.. I think they wanted to make people happy.” Emily smiled. “Or they wanted to distract us from a bigger mystery. Either way, this is officially our next case.” Tallulah grinned. “Operation Bloom is a go.” The bell rang, and the girls hurried inside, already buzzing with ideas about what secrets the flowers, and their mysterious gardener, might hold.