Briar Rose

by Jana Oliver

  ‘Don’t know about that. What about you?’

  ‘Mom refuses to talk about college. Period. So my dad and I do when she’s not around.’ Briar shifted her backpack to keep it from rubbing against her shoulder. ‘My mom went to see your gran a few times. She wouldn’t ever tell me why. I only found out about it because my grandmother mentioned it.’

  ‘Was Lily able to help her?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Briar replied, pushing aside a damp strand of hair. ‘Mom’s been getting weirder over the last few months. She was always protective, but now she has to know where I am at all times or she freaks out, and all she does is bake stuff, twenty-four/seven. We have two big freezers full of cookies and brownies.’

  ‘If there’s a zombie apocalypse, I know whose house I’m hiding in.’

  ‘It’s not funny. She’s been crying a lot, when she thinks I don’t know. I asked my dad what was going on and he says it’s no big deal.’

  ‘Your dad always says that,’ Reena replied. ‘He’s got an ostrich personality. If he can’t see it, it’s not a problem.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. He seems so mellow about everything, especially when it comes to Mom. I’m really worried about her.’

  ‘I think you should be.’

  That wasn’t comforting, not coming from her best friend. ‘There’s something else,’ Briar said, then hesitated.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I’ve been having this nightmare. It’s the same one over and over.’

  Reena halted in the middle of the path. ‘What is it about?’

  ‘I’m walking on the old road at night then – bang – I get hit by a car. I wake up at two nineteen a.m. every time. Is that creepy or what?’

  Her friend was frowning now. ‘Did you tell your parents about this?’

  ‘No . . . Dad would just say it was something I ate and Mom, well, she doesn’t need any more hassles.’

  They started walking again. ‘How long has this gone on?’

  ‘It started about a month ago. I tried waking up right before two nineteen. No go. It’s like I’m destined to have the nightmare every night.’ Her friend’s mouth was a thin line now, the muscles in her jaw tight. ‘Do you think Lily could do some sort of magic that would stop it?’

  ‘Don’t know. I’ll tell her what’s going on,’ Reena replied quietly.

  Briar could tell it was time to change the subject – her friend took this kind of stuff way too seriously. Cheers came from the field behind them – apparently the baseball game was about to start.

  ‘You going to the lake tonight?’ Briar asked.

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Definitely. It’s the closest thing to a sixteenth birthday party I’m going to get. Anyway, he might be there.’

  ‘He being Patterson Daniels?’ Reena asked, smirking.

  ‘Of course. Who else would it be?’

  ‘Someone who isn’t a jerk, maybe?’ At Briar’s glare, she added, ‘Oh, trust me, he’ll be there. Daniels wouldn’t miss an opportunity to flex his planet-sized ego in front of an adoring audience.’

  ‘Whoa, that was a slap down.’

  ‘Damn right. God, you have the worst taste in boys,’ her friend replied, kicking a small stone down the path.

  Pat and his family had moved to Bliss right after Christmas last year – his dad was in shipping or something – and they’d bought the Ashland Plantation. The old house hadn’t been occupied for over twenty years, so Mrs Daniels was busily having it restored, which told everyone in town the family had a bucketload of money.

  Pat had immediately made a mark for himself. A football star in his Ohio hometown, he’d proved to be just as talented on the basketball court here in Georgia. No ‘new kid’ awkwardness for him. Pat was smart and a total hunk with gorgeous brown eyes and if this were a fairy tale, he’d be cast for the role of Prince Charming in a heartbeat.

  ‘Daniels is too full of himself,’ Reena added. ‘Did you know he was hitting on your cousin the other day?’

  ‘No way. Saralyn is just making that up. He would never pay attention to her.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yeah. She’s just saying that to get to me. She knows I think he’s cool.’

  Briar had no intention of letting her cousin steal away the most eligible boy in school. Not that Pat was hers, but maybe that would change tonight.

  Since most of her classmates couldn’t drive yet, gathering at the lake had become the thing to do. They’d bring food, build a huge bonfire and there’d be tunes. Even some making out, not that any of their parents knew about that. As long as they kept an eye out for the occasional alligator, they were golden.

  Briar had her first kiss at the lake last summer with Teddy Jenkins. It had been seriously unimpressive. So blah that she made sure never to let Teddy kiss her again. There’d been more fooling around at the lake during her short, but spectacularly doomed, relationship with Mike Roth. Which had led her to wonder why some boys were better at kissing than others. Just one of life’s mysteries. She knew Pat would be a good kisser because anything he did, he did well. As she daydreamed about exactly how wonderful that might be, Reena jogged her elbow.

  ‘Helloooo? You still there? Let me guess, you were redecorating the castle, right?’

  It was Reena’s way of poking fun at Briar’s ‘obsession’, as she called it. It was her father’s fault: when Briar was four, he’d read her ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ at bedtime. She’d come away from that experience with a true love of fairy tales and a morbid fear of wolves. From there she’d gone through the Disney phase where all fairy tales ended happily ever after. Now she was solidly in the Brothers Grimm camp, where happy endings usually required a few corpses just to even things out.

  Then Patterson Daniels had moved to Bliss, every inch a Prince Charming.

  Briar wasn’t about to admit to her friend she’d been daydreaming about him sweeping her off her feet, how they’d melt into each other’s arms as they left Bliss in the dust.

  ‘No, I was just . . . thinking about—’ she began.

  ‘Give it up, girlfriend,’ her friend cut in. ‘You keep chasing after guys with big egos and you’re going to get burned. Trust me on this.’

  Briar frowned, knowing this cold shower had nothing to do with her. This was fallout from Reena’s last big crush, a hunky guy from Savannah she’d met at a track-and-field meet. Convinced he was the stuff of legend, she’d fallen for him hard, though he was a couple of years older than her. He’d made all the right moves at first, but it had ended badly when he’d taken her for an unscheduled ride – in a stolen car.

  ‘Doesn’t mean anything bad will happen to me,’ Briar said quietly.

  Reena shook her head in exasperation. ‘I know – I just want you to find a nice guy. Someone whose brain isn’t in their pants.’

  ‘Like who? There’s no one like that in Bliss except maybe Joshua Quinn and that’s only because he’s more interested in horses than girls. Anyway, it would be a cold day in hell before I let him kiss me!’

  Reena rolled her eyes. ‘Forget it. Josh is hot and he’s not an asshat like Pat. You’re just too blinded by your weird family grudge to notice.’

  Unbidden, the darker memories came now, how when she and Joshua were small they’d played together at preschool, then in kindergarten. They’d spent every minute together, until one of them had died and come back to life. It had never been the same from that day forward.

  And it never will be again.

  CHAPTER TWO

  To take advantage of the re-enactment spectators, a flea market had sprung up underneath the century-old magnolia trees in Bliss’s city park where folks browsed and bought stuff they didn’t need. Nearby, the bandstand hosted a group of local guys playing bluegrass music, each sporting new beards in honour of Elmer Rose Month. Like many location traditions, it didn’t make much sense: Elmer had never lived long enough to grow a beard.

  As Briar and Reena headed towards the shade, a visiting family
rolled across the street, the littlest child in a stroller. She had bright red hair and was clutching a rag doll. As the elder kids raced forward towards the swings, the doll tumbled on to the ground, left behind in the street. Briar stared at it, riveted by its button nose and the line of dark stitches for its mouth.

  The little girl turned and began to wail, pointing at her lost treasure. Reena didn’t hesitate, but dashed out to grab it, trained by her younger siblings that it was the only way to end the racket. As she reached the middle of the street, a car turned the corner and accelerated, heading in her direction.

  Briar froze. Her voice wouldn’t come; her mouth wouldn’t work. She heard the screech of brakes, the crunch of body against metal as the car struck her friend, tossing her into the air along with the doll.

  ‘Hey, you OK?’ Reena asked, joggling her elbow. She stood beside her now, the doll already retrieved and returned to the beaming toddler. The car had parked along the sidewalk.

  There’d been no accident, only Briar’s mind playing tricks on her.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ her friend asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  But everything was wrong. She’d not told Reena the truth: the nightmare was starting to creep into the daylight now, showing up at random times, slowly taking over her life. Like now.

  The town already thought her mom was strange. Now she was acting the same way.

  I’m not nuts. It’s just because I’m not sleeping well.

  ‘Come on, you need food,’ Reena said. Like a hummingbird to a blooming flower, she zeroed in on a bake sale, her drug of choice. From what Briar could see, the heat wasn’t doing anything good to the frosting on the cakes, or the Methodist Church ladies running the booth.

  Relieved that the weird sounds had finally retreated from her mind, she scratched at a bug bite. ‘Same old stuff,’ she muttered. ‘Nothing ever changes here.’

  Briar tagged along with her friend, kicking at the dirt like a sullen child. She found herself wishing, for the millionth time, that something magical would happen to their home town. Unicorns running rampant in the streets, a smoking dragon curled round the city hall bell tower, anything that would nullify the ‘norm’.

  When Briar was little, it hadn’t felt that way, but after you’d seen fifteen Fourth of July parades with the same people every year there was no excitement, just the grim realization that she was trapped in what had to be the dullest part of the universe.

  Tomorrow she would be sixteen, and absolutely nothing would change.

  As soon as I graduate, I’m out of here.

  She sighed to herself. Her escape was as much a fairy tale as any the Brothers Grimm had collected. Once you were here, you never escaped. Bliss was a life sentence.

  Reena looked over at her, pointing at a plate of apple fruit bars. ‘Want some?’ she called out.

  Briar shook her head. ‘Nope. Thanks.’ Not with the acres of baked goodies at home.

  The area just in front of the three-storey city hall was home to Elmer Rose’s statue, erected on the hundredth anniversary of his death. To the left of the statue was another monument of sorts, but this one wasn’t for one of Bliss’s heroes. The dry patch of red dirt and a gnarled tree stump indicated where Jebediah Rawlins, a notorious traitor, had met his end, executed for conspiring with the Yankees.

  The Rawlins were distant cousins to the Quinns in some way, though the latter refused to claim them. That was probably best: the traitor’s name had been used to scare Bliss’s children into good behaviour for decades. Even now, townspeople wouldn’t walk over that section of dirt, as if it were an entrance to hell.

  After Reena had bought a dozen macadamia-nut cookies and scarfed down two in short order, they parted company at the bandstand. With a wave, her friend headed east towards her house, her face pensive. She’d been that way since they’d talked about her gran. In fact, she’d been a lot more solemn the last couple of weeks or so, for whatever reason.

  During the heat of summer, life slowed in Bliss. As Briar hiked home, she kept to the side of the street that offered shade. Something made her turn and look back towards the centre of town. The grin came unbidden. She’d been wrong – there was something new. The water tower had received a fresh coat of paint earlier this week, white, like usual, except now bright red spray paint announced that this side of the tower was HOT. She was willing to bet the other side said COLD. Someone was going to be pissed off about that.

  ‘That rocks,’ she said. Most likely it’d been Ronnie and Ben, a couple of the troublemakers from her class. She’d be sure to ask them tonight at the party.

  She cut down the road that led to her house – aptly named Rose Street after dear dead Elmer, again staying in the shade. Along each side of the road were individual rose gardens, but this afternoon the blooms wilted in the heat, even though some of the gardens had been recently watered.

  Bliss might be dull, but it did have pretty tree-lined streets. Magnolias, mostly, and Briar loved how their fist-sized blooms smelt like heady perfume in early summer.

  What would have happened to her if she’d lived in a bigger city like Savannah or Atlanta? Would she still be the same person? Did your hometown indelibly mark you for life?

  Lost in her depressing thoughts, it took her time to realize that someone had called her name. Looking around she found Mrs Parker rolling a wheelbarrow full of junk up the sidewalk behind her. At present she was clad in a worn T-shirt, ratty cut-offs and her greying hair pulled back with a scrunchy.

  As odd went, Mrs P was off the scale by Bliss standards. She loved to collect junk. Folks might have thought that was strange, but it was an easy way to get rid of a mismatched set of dishes or a broken lawn chair. Mrs P took it all home, welded the metal together into bizarre statues and stored them in her backyard.

  ‘Happy birthday, Briar!’ the woman called out, sounding nothing like a homicidal maniac. But then how would a homicidal maniac sound?

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Parker.’ The woman was a few hours early on the greeting, but it never hurt to be polite, especially with adults. They gave you less trouble that way.

  ‘You know, you shouldn’t believe any of the rumours,’ Mrs P added.

  You mean like how you hacked up all your husbands and are using them as fertilizer in your backyard?

  Just to be safe, she called out, ‘What rumours?’

  No answer was forthcoming as Mrs Parker was already headed across the street, her wheelbarrow squeaking with each turn of the wheel. She began to hum something that sounded suspiciously like a song from the musical Sweeney Todd.

  You’re so freaky. Maybe Reena was right about there being evil in Bliss. It did have its share of macabre residents, like Mr Nelson, who left his Halloween decorations up all year and mowed his lawn every other day, even in the heat of the summer, claiming if he didn’t the zombies would rise and kill them all.

  At least that would be cool.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Before she entered the house, Briar paused on the broad porch to hang up the uniform coat and trousers on a pair of hangers her mom had supplied just for that purpose. They needed to air out before next week’s re-enactment or she’d really reek. That would be a little too authentic.

  After fanning open the shoes, she laid her damp socks over the arm of a rocker. As long as the neighbour’s basset hound didn’t bury them like he had last year, she’d be in good shape.

  The house wasn’t as big as the mayor’s stately house near the town square – it was only a two-storey affair with a wrap-around porch. Though the wooden floors creaked and the plumbing needed updating, again, it always felt like home.

  There was something odd about the place, especially the unexplained draughts in the bathroom late at night when Briar showered. Doors opened and closed when no one was upstairs, stuff like that. Her father said it came with living in an old house, but she wasn’t so sure.

  Briar pushed open the back screen door – no one locked their houses in Bliss – and fo
und her mother fussing around the kitchen, icing cupcakes. She paused in wonder: it looked as if a rainbow had exploded over every available surface. Her mom always baked for special occasions: engagement parties, weddings, baby showers. Even funerals.

  That thought made her shiver, despite the heat.

  ‘Hey, Mom, I’m home.’

  Though usually full of energy, when Mrs Rose turned towards her, she appeared to have aged since early this morning. Her skin was sallow against her pale blonde hair and the dark circles under her eyes were more prominent now.

  Not good. ‘Are you feeling OK?’

  ‘It’s nothing. Just tired.’

  Briar dropped into one of the wooden chairs at the kitchen table. Now that her mom no longer worked as a school nurse in Statesboro, it seemed all she did was cook and clean. ‘Why were you baking brownies at three in the morning?’

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘I woke up drooling from the smell.’ Which wasn’t exactly true – she just hadn’t fallen back to sleep after the recurring nightmare.

  ‘I was up because I needed to get a few things done,’ her mom replied in a flat tone.

  Which is so not an answer.

  ‘What are all these for – my birthday?’ Briar asked.

  ‘No, the library. They’re having a fundraiser.’

  From experience, Briar knew asking more questions would get her nowhere, so instead she homed in on the closest cupcake. It was pink, her fave colour.

  ‘Hands off,’ her mom said, shaking her head.

  ‘Ah, come on. Just one?’ Briar wheedled. ‘I died really good today.’

  Her mother’s face went ashen and she turned away, her fingers gripping the edge of the counter top.

  ‘Mom? What’s going on?’

  Mrs Rose shook her head and said softly, ‘Have as many as you want. It doesn’t matter now.’

  It doesn’t matter? Feeling feisty and keen to test that theory, Briar collected a dinner plate and placed five cupcakes on it, each a different colour. As she poured herself a glass of iced tea, she waited for the ‘That’s far too many of those, young lady’ reprimand. It never came. Her mom kept her back to her the entire time, even as Briar headed upstairs for a shower, plate and glass in hand. With each creaking step her worry increased.