A Constellation of Roses

by Miranda Asebedo

  I thought there’d be some sign, like a beam of light falling on me, when I finally saw him. But there’s nothing. He’s just a man, still only a small collection of facts.

  “Were our dads friends?” I ask Ember. I don’t know anything about her dad. Obviously he’s not here. Something about him simmers between Ember and Mia, but I don’t know why.

  “They were best friends,” Mia says wistfully. “Since they were kids.”

  I hazard a glance over at Ember again, and she’s stopped eating, her face unreadable.

  “Ember’s dad will be here for Thanksgiving,” Mia says, watching Ember, now, too.

  Ember only shrugs.

  “It would be fine with me if Jordan would stay in the city,” Auntie huffs.

  Mia shoots Auntie a glare. “I’d prefer he come here. Then we can enjoy the holiday together. Would you rather I send Ember to him? Then it would be the two of us staring at each other over a dead turkey?” She spears a chunk of cucumber in her salad with excessive force.

  Ember’s face is still tight, her green eyes beginning to look a little watery.

  “Technically there’d be three of us this year,” I joke, wanting to defuse the situation for Ember’s sake. Truthfully, it’s strange to think about being anywhere for Thanksgiving other than the motel room I was in last year. I don’t think I’ve ever had a normal Thanksgiving, the kind with a big family around a table. Mom and I never celebrated it. Thanksgiving break was only a week in whatever motel or car we were living in when I didn’t get free school lunches, and I had to go out and scrounge for something to eat midday. For the Yangs at the Jasmine Dragon, Thanksgiving was a great day to make extra money on all the families who accidentally burned their turkeys or didn’t get them out early enough to thaw.

  All three women lock eyes on me, pulling me out of my memory.

  Mia smiles. “Of course. And Jordan will be able to tell you amazing stories about Connor.”

  “But back to the town gossip, how did he really die?” I insist.

  Mia laughs, and shoots a look at Auntie. “Cancer,” she says.

  “What’s so funny about cancer?” I ask.

  “Cancer isn’t funny,” Mia says, more soberly this time. “It’s just the obituary was. Connor had this really particular sense of humor. And even when he was sick, he was joking about how cancer was too boring a way to go. He said he wanted to go out with a bang. Some amazing story so that people around here would never forget him. In his last days, he told me that he’d taken care of everything. The funeral arrangements, the obituary. He said he wanted us to party when he was gone, not spend all our time planning services and crying. So the day after he died, all the local papers printed his obituary. The Rocksaw Gazette. The Buffalo Hills Herald. The Evanston Eagle. The Smokestack. The Cottonwood Hollow Monthly. Every one of them had an obituary for Connor McCabe.”

  “And?”

  “And every one of them had a different story about how he died. Bull riding in Amarillo. Crashing a plane in the Sahara. Getting hit by a train in China. A shark attack in the Pacific. A volcanic explosion on Fiji.”

  “So he lied? And everybody believed him?”

  Mia shrugs. “I’m sure there were a lot of people out there who knew it wasn’t true. But everybody still talks about him like all those stories were real. It’s nice, really. A way of honoring him the way he was, before he got sick.”

  “A guy who lied about shark attacks?”

  “A guy who wanted to make people happy.”

  Lying about shark attacks seems like a weird way to make people happy, but I guess I get it. He wanted people to laugh with him, not pity him. I feel like every detail about Connor is just one stroke of the pencil, and someday there’ll be enough strokes for me to truly see him. To make out his face, imagine his laugh.

  “Wasn’t there one about getting eaten by a tiger at a circus?” Auntie asks, twirling pasta on her fork.

  I take the photo of Jordan and Connor back to the mantel and look through the other photos there, this time finally knowing which face I’m looking for. Behind a picture of Auntie and one of her husbands, I find another dusty shot of Connor. He’s younger, maybe eighteen or so, wearing a very ugly suit with a girl who is obviously not my mother. Maybe a prom photo. Or homecoming, since that seems to be a big deal around here. I slip the photo out of the frame with whisper-quick hands. I tuck it into my back pants pocket, beneath my loose sweater.

  It’s not really stealing because he was supposed to belong to me.

  After dinner and dishes, we go up to Ember’s room. It’s painted a pale peach, the doorways and windows framed with green vines.

  “Did you paint those?” I ask her when I see the vines.

  “With stencils,” Ember replies. “Mama and Auntie don’t care how I decorate. I’m sure we could paint your room if you don’t like the color.” She leads me to one corner of the room, where a dressmaker’s dummy waits with a lavender gown on it. “This is it. My homecoming dress. I made it strapless. And then I cut it off above the knee and hemmed it. See the tulle underneath? I’m going to take it all out, then put one layer on top of the gown. It’ll be like mist over the lavender satin. And I’ll take in the waist a little and take off the stupid bow in the back.”

  “That sounds like a lot of work.”

  “It’s a labor of love.”

  “You could just wear one of your regular dresses. They’re nice.”

  “You would probably wear a hoodie,” she says matter-of-factly, and it tugs a half smile from me, because I realize she’s teasing me. And she knows me a little better than I thought. Ember continues, “But, let me show you the dress I’m thinking of for you.” She opens her closet door and digs around in a mass of clothing until she’s completely lost, just a disembodied voice in a tiny room of tulle, velvet, satin, and lace. “Wait . . . hold on . . . a second and I can reach it—”

  “Do you need some kind of rescue team?” I ask.

  “Got it!” she crows as she extricates herself from the closet. Her left hand drags out a burgundy-colored dress in a sateen finish. It’s huge and frothy and incredibly ugly. She hangs it on the back of the closet door. “It’s not anything now, but close your eyes and imagine what it could be. I’d take off the poufy sleeves, remove about half of the black tulle underneath, and then I’d hem it at the knee and split it up here on the side so a little bit of the black tulle would peek out. Kind of edgy, a little badass. Like you. And I think there’d be plenty from the bottom half of the skirt I take off to put on a long sleeve if you want it. Or we could do elbow-length gloves.” She digs out a spiral notebook from the Dollar Tree and sketches it out with a pencil to show me as she gushes.

  “I have a hard time imagining how you’re going to turn this monstrosity into that. So I’m just going to trust you on this.”

  “You won’t regret it!” she squeaks, more excited than I’ve ever seen her. “I’ve always wanted to make over a dress for someone else. I want to go to fashion school someday, and this—”

  “Ember!” Mia calls, poking her head in the door. “You won’t guess what happened! Your dad’s on the phone, and when I told him you were going to homecoming, he said he was coming, too! He can’t miss his baby girl’s first dance!”

  Ember’s face falls from dressmaking exultation to shock.

  “That’s great, isn’t it?” Mia asks, still beaming, as if she can’t see the way Ember’s expression has changed. She holds out her phone, her hand cupped over the receiver. “Do you want to talk to him?”

  “No, Mama. Not now. Trix and I are busy. I’ve got to take her measurements.” Her movements are stiff as she crosses the room to grab a yellowed measuring tape.

  “Sure,” Mia says, still covering the receiver. “I’ll tell him you’re busy. I can’t wait for him to meet you, Trix. I’m going to keep it a surprise for when he visits,” she whispers, a huge grin on her face.

  I only nod, not knowing what else to do.

  The doo
r snicks shut.

  Ember’s face is sullen, her dusting of freckles a dark pattern across her cheeks.

  “What’s the matter?” I ask. “You don’t want your dad to come?”

  “It’s not as simple as it sounds,” she says, brandishing the measuring tape. “The whole thing is a mess.”

  I wait to see if she’s going to explain why, but she returns to measuring, the moment of warmth and excitement cooling between us. She’s careful not to touch my skin with her hands. She’s going to let me keep my secrets because she has some too.

  Later that night, I sit on my bed with all the lights on in my attic bedroom, and I slide the old photo of Connor out of my sketchbook. I open to a fresh page and begin to sketch.

  An hour passes, and I pause only to ball my hair up on top of my head so that it doesn’t get in my way. My hands are black with charcoal and I smudge it with an intensity I can’t quite put into words, remembering what he’d told Tobias Jensen. In real life, everybody’s just shades of gray.

  When I finish, I set the sketchbook open to my latest picture upright next to the small mirror over the dresser. I study Connor’s face, the planes and ridges, the wideness of his mouth, the crooked bump on his nose. And then I study my face in the mirror, searching for something to tell me that I’m wrong. Something to tell me that I am not all Allison Fiorello who abandoned me. Something to tell me that I am part Connor McCabe, that there is something of him in me that is light instead of shadows.

  The only thing we have that’s the same is the color of our eyes. But you can’t see that in black and white.

  Fourteen

  ONE OF THE MANY JOYS of living in a small town is that when you don’t want to see someone, you start to run into them everywhere.

  After more than a week of Jasper avoiding me at school, I run into him at Lee’s General Store while picking up sandwiches for lunch on Saturday. We lock eyes between the aisles of the tiny grocery store, me holding sandwiches for Auntie, Mia, Ember, and myself, and Jasper gripping a box of Pop-Tarts. I open my mouth to say something, but he turns on one heel of his stupid cowboy boots and hustles down another aisle. It feels miserable to be blown off while clutching an armful of lunch meat, and I want to tell him that I didn’t mean to find his prescription, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to chase after him like some kind of lovesick cow.

  And that does it for me. I’m beyond feeling bad about looking through his bag. Now I’m just pissed.

  So after lunch, when Jasper calls and tells Mia he can’t make any pie deliveries that afternoon because his dad needs his help on the farm, I’m not surprised. Instead I get stuck riding shotgun with Auntie in the old Suburban for deliveries, listening to her tell me about her first husband, who died of a heart attack while they were having sex. “What a way to go!” She chortles, clipping yet another curb.

  By evening, I’m pretty sure I’ve got whiplash from Auntie’s driving, and my feet hurt from waitressing all day. All I want to do is go home, eat something, crawl into bed, and not think about Jasper at all. But on the way home, Mia says the car is almost out of gas, so she stops at Mitch’s Gas Emporium to fill up.

  And who’s there, leaning up against the brick wall of the station, sipping a soda and laughing with Grayson and a couple of other guys from the football team?

  Jasper fucking Ruiz.

  Unaware of my angst, Mia reaches back from the driver’s seat and hands me forty bucks. “Can you run in and prepay, hon?” she asks. “It’ll take me a minute to get the stupid gas cap off. It always sticks. I’ve got to get it fixed.”

  “I’ve been telling you that for years, but you never do it,” Auntie grumbles. “Bring me a beef stick,” she tells me. “One of the hot ones.” She notices the boys standing outside the gas station. “Oooh.” She snickers. “Look at those beef cakes.”

  Mia ignores that last part. “You don’t need any jerky,” she says to Auntie. “We’re going home to eat right now. I have leftover shepherd’s pie in the fridge.”

  Ember sits forward when she sees who Auntie is talking about. “I’ll go, too,” Ember says, pulling out her phone to check her appearance in its reflection. “I’ll find that spicy beef stick you like, Auntie. I know where they are.”

  Mia looks surprised. Ember never offers to run errands because that usually means she’ll have to interact with other people. “Okay,” Mia says hesitantly, handing Ember a couple bucks for Auntie’s request, even though she’d told Auntie no snacks. She looks at me. “Tell them pump two, okay?”

  “Or Ember could pay for the gas while she’s hunting beef sticks,” I say.

  “Come on,” Ember murmurs, tilting her head at the boys. Her eyes widen, imploring me. “I can’t go alone.”

  “Ugh. You owe me,” I whisper back.

  Ember opens the door and descends from the Suburban gracefully, and I follow, nearly tumbling out behind her when I accidentally get my boot caught beneath the seat trying to step over an empty baking tray. I barely manage to remain upright when my feet hit the concrete.

  The guys stop talking when they see us.

  Jasper’s eyes lock on me immediately.

  Twenty-four hours ago, I still wanted to tell him I was sorry. But now, after a week and a half of him pretending that I’m invisible, I’m furious right back at him. I’ve been invisible for months at a time while I was drifting, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let someone make me feel that way on purpose.

  Grayson waves us over as we approach the building, clearly thrilled to see Ember. He barely notices me. “Hey,” he calls to her. “What’s up?”

  Ember smiles. “We just closed up the tea shop. So we’re on our way home.”

  Grayson nods enthusiastically, like Ember’s told him she’s going to build a rocket out of Mia’s gluten-free muffins and fly to the moon next week.

  The other two guys say hi, but when another car pulls up, this one full of what look like senior girls, they peel off from our little group, leaving only the four of us. Jasper shoves his hands in the pockets of his jeans while Ember and Grayson talk, looking at anything but me now—the price of gas, the dumpster that’s overfilled, the rust along the wheel wells of Mia’s Suburban. I notice that Cleo isn’t here, so he must be riding along with Grayson.

  I clear my throat, unable to stand this awkwardness any longer. I tell Ember, “I’m going to go pay for the gas. You want me to get Auntie’s jerky?”

  “Sure,” Ember says, handing over the cash carefully, so that we don’t touch.

  If Grayson notices, he doesn’t mention it.

  Inside the gas station, I find Auntie’s beef stick and prepay for the gas. I take a long time folding Mia’s receipt and tucking it into my pocket, and then double-checking the expiration date on Auntie’s jerky, which looks a little dusty, to be honest. I ask the clerk if I can switch it for another one. He shrugs and continues watching football on the tiny TV next to the register.

  When there’s nothing left for me to do and I think Mia’s probably filled the tank, I leave the gas station again.

  Pump Two is empty. The Suburban is gone.

  They left me.

  Everything feels tight. I can hear my heart beating in my ears, pounding like the bass on a souped-up car. It’s hard to breathe, like suddenly my sweater is too tight, or too heavy. I tug at the neck of my shirt to make it easier to get oxygen into my lungs. Against my will, my eyes are pricking with tears, like I’m some five-year-old who’s been forgotten at the grocery store. I’m alone. And I don’t know why it’s so damn scary, because I’ve been alone a hundred times. A thousand times. But somehow it’s different now.

  “Hey!” Ember’s voice calls, and I scan the parking lot frantically until I lock eyes on her. She’s standing next to Grayson’s Jeep, smiling, as if nothing at all was amiss. Relief courses through me when I see her face. “Grayson said he’d give us a ride home. Mama said it was okay.”

  I am still trying to process the raw, gut-wrenching fear that’s ebbin
g from my veins. I look up, trying to will away the shimmer at the edges of my vision.

  “Trix?” Ember calls again, her face revealing concern in the bunching of her eyebrows.

  I realize I’m just standing there by the gas station door, holding Auntie’s beef stick like I didn’t hear a word Ember said.

  I clear my throat before I yell back, “Yeah, I’m coming.”

  But then I notice Jasper’s there, next to Grayson and Ember, and I curse my timing instead. Jasper looks like he’s doing the same.

  “Do you want to take a walk first?” Grayson asks Ember. “It’s a nice night.” I can tell he’s looking for any excuse to spend more time with her, and she’s not looking for a reason to leave town yet.

  Ember looks over at me, her eyes pleading again.

  My feet hurt, Jasper hates my guts, I’m starving, and I have to go play wingwoman.

  “Sure. Fine,” I say, unwrapping the beef stick and taking a bite.

  Somehow we end up at the city park. It’s dark, and Ember and Grayson stop and talk by the picnic tables. She perches on one end of the table, and Grayson stands before her, his head tilted forward as he listens intently to whatever she’s saying. Jasper is texting someone on his phone while he leans against a set of monkey bars. I wander over to the swings that are situated in an island of play sand, some small part of me remembering a motel where Mom and I lived for a while when I was very young that had a playground out back. I plop down in the swing, the metal chains cold against my hands.

  “Higher!” I squeal with laughter, the sunset bathing us both in pink-and-gold light.

  Mom pushes me again, her hands warm on the small of my back.

  I swing so high that I can see over the top of the motel, past the cars parked there, past the way Mom looked tonight when we had to split a package of ramen noodles for dinner. “Tomorrow will be better. I get paid tonight,” she told me as she carefully divided the food.