The Flower Bed

• Madeline Brough, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2017

The Flower Bed
Hi, my name is Orchid and I live in The Flower Bed. The Flower Bed is such a bright, colourful place, that it might as well be a rainbow, but don’t be fooled by its bright, happy demeanor.
The Flower Bed is a mean and horrible place if you are like me. You see, The Flower Bed is a place where beauty reigns supreme. Beauty, not brains, not courage, not others, only themselves and how beautiful they can be. Most flowers in The Flower Bed are white or pretty pastels.
I am a deep black orchid and teased about it endlessly.
Anyway, most of my days start with waking up at the crack of dawn, the only time when I get some peace. I love looking at the sunrise, it’s so beautiful. Unfortunately, the other flowers start to wake up and the trouble begins.
The ringleader of the bullies is Nanci Wildflower. She is the prettiest of all the flowers in The Flower Bed, but she has a terrible personality. Nanci is mean and nasty, she also leads the charge against me every morning. So every morning after sunrise I get bullied and all the other flowers join in.
One balmy summer eve, I wished upon a star with all my heart to leave this awful place. The very next day, a big human came by with a smaller human.
“ Look Clara, a patch of pretty flowers! Why don’t you go pick one and we’ll put it in your hair.”
The flowers around me gasped, it was the greatest honour to be put in a humans hair. As the smaller human bounded cheerfully towards us, all the flowers of The Flower Bed started brightening up their petals and making their stems straighter and greener. I knew I wasn’t going to be picked, I never was, so I stayed the same and not caring very much about it.
The little human looked us over with a critical eye. “ Daddy!” she called, “Yes, sweetheart?” he replied. “ I found the flower I want!” she said cheerfully. At that moment all of the flowers started talking at once. “ She’ll choose me!” said said Daisy. “No, me!” Lavender screamed. “No, she’ll pick me.” Nanci said with a smirk. The other flowers started to protest but were cut short by the little human, Clara.
“Daddy,” she started, all of the other flowers were pretty much drooling with anticipation, “I want that black flower over there!” she said with a grin, pointing at me! “What!” Nanci bellowed in shock. All the other flowers stared at me. Slowly I smiled, “Well,” I exclaimed “ it looks like you were all wrong. She chose me!” My mind was racing, my wish had come true. I was going to leave The Flower Bed forever! Clara picked me out of the ground and put me in her hair. I left The Flower Bed and lived the rest of my life happy, because my wish came true.