What Rose Remembered (Part 6)
She's got a new best friend, or 'best friend'; someone trying to fill the Emmy-shaped hole in her life. Lucy Avon. She makes the mistake of telling her.
It would be nice to think Lucy was trying to help by telling Jeremy. Even in retrospect, Rose isn't sure. She wasn't the only fifth grader to be an unstable and unsteady cocktail of instincts and hormones, after all. Self-awareness comes hard and slow.
Jeremy crosses the playground from the middle school. She's playing tetherball with Lucy, who gives her a big grin and a thumbs-up and disappears.
"So I hear you like me."
Rose turns a bright, livid color. "Maybe."
"That's cool." He thumbs his backpack; he's wearing a t-shirt over a long sleeve shirt. He carries a skateboard to school everyday but he doesn't really know how to use it. (It's 2002, and Avril Lavigne is one fifth of the Billboard Top 10 all on her own).
"Not really," she says. "You've got a girlfriend."
He smiles the cocky smile of a middle schooler talking to a fifth grader. "I could have two girlfriends. If you can keep a secret."
There's a moment of perfect, blissful clarity; her smile is something sweet and precious. She toss the tetherball in the end and hits it as hard as she can. It whips around the pole, coming in down and from the right, and smashes his nose flat. Then she turns and punches him in the stomach as hard as she can.
"Emmy's my best friend!" she shouts, and everyone's staring at them, and she's grinning in a way that has nothing to do with feeling good.
(But she does. Oh, she does.)
He staggers back, blood gushing down his face and tears already starting in his eyes; his hands fold over his stomach as he half-keels over.
"She's my BEST FRIEND you--cheap motherfucker!" It's the worst curseword she knows, the one her mother saves for the really bad days, and she's never said it before.
She's pretty sure she used it right, though.
It will be five years and a little more before she gets suspended again.
(It's not the reproach in her mother's face or the cold anger in her voice that scares her; it's that deep-down flicker, the dark thing that lives in the depths of her mother's eyes. The one that will, in a few short weeks, threaten her father with the beating of his life if he doesn't drag his sorry ass back into rehab. What scares her is that she gets the sense that whatever lives down there sees what she did. Sees it very well.
And approves.)
Five years fly by, in a flickering blur--Jaime, a boy who is a friend who becomes a boyfriend who gets a car and wants more and he dumps her when she won't give it to him, and then Evan, who everyone knows is a dick, and she lets him the first time he tries, in the back of her car, her little yellow coupe, and it hurts but she smiles--first come smiles, then come lies--and tells him he's amazing and waits for it to get around, to see the hurt on Jaime's face and she thinks that's what you get, motherfucker; that's what you get and people stop staring and stop telling the story about Ansley's party and spin the bottle, she may not be having fun but she's winning, she's doing the job, she's being normal and somewhere along the line that became her mission; to fool everyone. Even herself. Especially herself.
And then it is snowing, and then they are in her house, and everything is red; then it is now. Red over white; out of the blue, and into the black.
The pattern she's painted on the wall swims before her eyes, two intersecting rose madder curves; the letter called Zn, where eternity touches now. She sees it.
Sees it very well.
And wakes.
It would be nice to think Lucy was trying to help by telling Jeremy. Even in retrospect, Rose isn't sure. She wasn't the only fifth grader to be an unstable and unsteady cocktail of instincts and hormones, after all. Self-awareness comes hard and slow.
Jeremy crosses the playground from the middle school. She's playing tetherball with Lucy, who gives her a big grin and a thumbs-up and disappears.
"So I hear you like me."
Rose turns a bright, livid color. "Maybe."
"That's cool." He thumbs his backpack; he's wearing a t-shirt over a long sleeve shirt. He carries a skateboard to school everyday but he doesn't really know how to use it. (It's 2002, and Avril Lavigne is one fifth of the Billboard Top 10 all on her own).
"Not really," she says. "You've got a girlfriend."
He smiles the cocky smile of a middle schooler talking to a fifth grader. "I could have two girlfriends. If you can keep a secret."
There's a moment of perfect, blissful clarity; her smile is something sweet and precious. She toss the tetherball in the end and hits it as hard as she can. It whips around the pole, coming in down and from the right, and smashes his nose flat. Then she turns and punches him in the stomach as hard as she can.
"Emmy's my best friend!" she shouts, and everyone's staring at them, and she's grinning in a way that has nothing to do with feeling good.
(But she does. Oh, she does.)
He staggers back, blood gushing down his face and tears already starting in his eyes; his hands fold over his stomach as he half-keels over.
"She's my BEST FRIEND you--cheap motherfucker!" It's the worst curseword she knows, the one her mother saves for the really bad days, and she's never said it before.
She's pretty sure she used it right, though.
It will be five years and a little more before she gets suspended again.
(It's not the reproach in her mother's face or the cold anger in her voice that scares her; it's that deep-down flicker, the dark thing that lives in the depths of her mother's eyes. The one that will, in a few short weeks, threaten her father with the beating of his life if he doesn't drag his sorry ass back into rehab. What scares her is that she gets the sense that whatever lives down there sees what she did. Sees it very well.
And approves.)
Five years fly by, in a flickering blur--Jaime, a boy who is a friend who becomes a boyfriend who gets a car and wants more and he dumps her when she won't give it to him, and then Evan, who everyone knows is a dick, and she lets him the first time he tries, in the back of her car, her little yellow coupe, and it hurts but she smiles--first come smiles, then come lies--and tells him he's amazing and waits for it to get around, to see the hurt on Jaime's face and she thinks that's what you get, motherfucker; that's what you get and people stop staring and stop telling the story about Ansley's party and spin the bottle, she may not be having fun but she's winning, she's doing the job, she's being normal and somewhere along the line that became her mission; to fool everyone. Even herself. Especially herself.
And then it is snowing, and then they are in her house, and everything is red; then it is now. Red over white; out of the blue, and into the black.
The pattern she's painted on the wall swims before her eyes, two intersecting rose madder curves; the letter called Zn, where eternity touches now. She sees it.
Sees it very well.
And wakes.