by Alex Flinn
I read gardening books too. Reading had become my perfect solution, and I researched the best food, the perfect soil. I didn’t spray for pests, but washed off those that came with the roses with soapy water, then guarded against reinvasion. But even with the hundreds of flowers, I was aware of the small deaths brought by each morning, as one by one, the roses withered. They were replaced by others, of course, but it wasn’t the same. Each tiny life that bloomed into being would live only in the greenhouse, then die. In that way, we were alike.
One day, when I was plucking a few dead friends from the vine, Magda came in.
“I thought I would find you here,” she said. She had a broom with her, and she began to sweep up some of the fallen leaves.
“No, don’t,” I said. “I like to do that. It’s part of my work each day.”
“There is no work for me. You never use your rooms, so nothing to clean.”
“You make my meals. You shop. You buy plant food. You wash my clothes. I couldn’t live the way I do without you.”
“You have stopped living.”
I plucked a white rose from a vine. “You said once that you were afraid for me. I didn’t understand what you meant, but I do now. You were scared I’d never be able to appreciate beauty, like this rose.” I handed it to her. It was hard for me to do, to pick my prizes, knowing they’d die sooner that way. But I was learning to let go. I’d let go of so much already. “That night, there was a girl at the dance. I gave her a rose. She was so happy. I didn’t understand why she cared so much about a rose, a stupid rose that was missing petals. I understand now. Now that all the beauty of my old life is gone, I crave it like food. A beautiful thing like this rose—I almost want to eat it, to swallow it whole to replace the beauty I’ve lost. That’s how that girl was too.”
“But you do not…you will not try to break the spell?”
“I have everything I need here. I can never break the spell.” I gestured for her to give me the broom.
She nodded a little sadly, and handed it to me.
“Why are you here, Magda?” I said, sweeping. It was something I’d been wondering about. “What are you doing here in New York, cleaning up after a brat like me? Don’t you have a family?”
I could ask that because she knew about my family, that I didn’t have one anymore. She knew they’d abandoned me.
“I have family in my country. My husband and I, we came here to make money. I used to be a teacher, but there was no work. So we came here. But my husband, he couldn’t get his green card, so he had to go back. I work hard to send money back to them.”
I stooped to get the leaves with the dustpan. “Do you have children?”
“Yes.”
“Where are they?”
“They grow. Without me. They are older than you now, with children of their own I have never seen.”
I lifted the dead leaves. “So you know what it’s like, then, to have no one?”
She nodded. “Yes.” She took the broom and dustpan from me. “But I am old now; my life is older. When I made the choice I made, I did not think it was forever. It is another thing to give up so young.”
“I haven’t given up,” I said. “I’ve just decided to live for my roses.”
That night, I looked for the mirror. I had brought it upstairs, to the fifth-floor rooms, where I’d left it on top of an old armoire.
“I want to see Kendra,” I said.
It took a few moments, but when she finally showed, she looked happy to see me. “It’s been a while,” she said.
“Why does the mirror take so long to show you to me, but others I see instantly?”
“Because sometimes I’m doing something you shouldn’t see.”
“Like what? In the bathroom?”
She scowled. “Witch things.”
“Right. Got it.” But under my breath, I sang, “Kendra’s on the potty.”
“I was not!”
“Then what do you do when I can’t see you? Turn people into frogs?”
“No. Mostly I travel.”
“American Airlines or astral projection?”
“Commercial airlines are tricky. I don’t have a credit card. Apparently, paying in cash makes one a security risk.”
“You are, aren’t you? I’d think you could just wiggle your nose and blow up a plane or something.”
“It’s frowned upon. Besides, I can time-travel if I travel my way.”
“Really?”
“Sure. You say you want to go to Paris to see Notre Dame. But how about if you could see it being built? Or Rome at the time of Julius Caesar?”
“You can do that, but you can’t undo your spell? Hey, can you take me?”
“Negative. If I hung around with a beast, they’d know I was a witch. And witches got burned in those days. That’s why I prefer this century. It’s safer. People do all sorts of weird stuff, especially in New York City.”
“Can you do other magical stuff? You said you felt sorry about the spell. Can you do me a favor to sort of make up for it?”
She frowned. “Like what?”
“My friends, Magda and Will.”
“Your friends?” She looked surprised. “What about them?”
“Will’s a great teacher, but he can’t get a good teaching job—meaning a job other than sitting around tutoring me—because no one wants to hire a blind guy. And Magda works really hard to send money to her kids and grandkids, but she never gets to see them. It’s not fair.”
“The world just reeks of unfairness,” Kendra said. “When did you get so philanthropic, Kyle?”
“It’s Adrian, not Kyle. And they are my friends, my only friends. I know they get paid to be here, but they’re nice to me. You can’t undo what you did to me, but could you do something for them—help Will see again, and bring Magda’s family here, or send her there, at least, for a vacation?”
She stared at me a second, then shook her head. “That would be impossible.”
“Why? You have incredible powers, don’t you? Is there some kind of witch code that says you can turn people into beasts but not help people?”
I thought that would shut her up, but instead she said, “Well, yes. In a way. The thing is, I can’t grant wishes just because someone asks for something. I’m not a genie. If I try to act like one, I could end up stuck in a lamp like one.”
“Oh. I didn’t know there were so many rules.”
She shrugged. “Yeah. It sucks.”
“So the first time I want something for someone else, I can’t have it.”
“I already agreed it sucks. Hold on one second.” She reached over and took out a big book. She flipped through a few pages. “It says here that I can do you a favor if and only if it is tied to something you have to do.”
“Like what?”
“Well, let’s say that if you break the spell I placed on you, I’ll also help Magda and Will. That’s okay.”
“That’s the same as saying no. I can never break the spell.”
“Do you want to?”
“No. I want to be a freak all my life.”
“A freak with a beautiful rose garden…”
“…is still a freak,” I said. “I love gardening, yeah. But if I was normal-looking, I could still garden.”
Kendra didn’t answer. She was looking at her book again. She raised an eyebrow.
“What now?”
“Maybe it isn’t so hopeless,” she said.
“It is.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “Sometimes, unexpected things can happen.”
2
That night, as I lay in bed on the edge of sleeping, I heard a crash. I put my hands to my ears and willed it not to wake me. But then I heard glass falling, and I was awake.
The greenhouse. Someone was invading my greenhouse, my only sanctuary. Without even dressing, I ran to my living room and flung open the door that led out.
“Who dares disturb my roses?”
Why did I say that?
>
The greenhouse was bathed in moonlight and streetlights, brighter still for the hole in one of the glass panes. A shadowy figure was in the corner. He’d chosen a poor entry point, near a trellis. It had fallen over and lay on the floor, the rose branches broken, surrounded by dirt.
“My roses!” I lunged at him at the same time he lunged toward the hole in the wall. But my animal legs were too fast for him, too strong. I sank my claws into the soft flesh of his thigh. He let out a yelp.
“Let me go!” he screamed. “I have a gun! I’ll shoot!”
“Go ahead.” I didn’t know if I was invincible to gunshots. But my anger, pulsing, pounding through my veins like fireblood, made me strong, made me not care. I’d lost everything there was to lose. If I lost my roses too, I might as well die. I threw him to the floor, then pounced on him, wrestling his arms to the ground and prying the objects from his hands.
“Was this what you were going to shoot me with?” I growled, brandishing the crowbar I’d stripped from him. I held it aloft. “Bang!”
“Please! Let me go!” he yelled. “Please don’t eat me. I’ll do anything!”
It was only then that I remembered what I looked like. He thought I was a monster. He thought I’d grind his bones to make my bread. And maybe I was, and would. I laughed and grabbed him in a headlock, him struggling against me. Holding his arms with my free paw, I dragged him up the stairs, one flight, then two, heading to the fifth floor, to the window. I held his head out of it. In the moonlight, I could see his face. It looked familiar. Probably I’d just seen him in the street.
“What are you going to do?” the guy gasped.
No clue. But I said, “I’m going to drop you, scumbag.”
“Please. Please don’t. I don’t want to die.”
“Like I care what you want.” I wasn’t going to drop him, not really. It would bring the police there, with all their questions, and I couldn’t have that. I couldn’t even call the police to arrest him. But I wanted him to fear, to fear for his life. He’d hurt my roses, the only thing I had left. I wanted him to pee in his pants in fear.
“I know you don’t care!” The guy was shaking, not just in terror, I realized, but because he was coming down. A junkie. I put my hand in his pocket for the drugs I knew were there. I pulled them out along with his driver’s license.
“Please!” he was still begging. “Let me live! I’ll give you anything!”
“What do you have that I’d want?”
He squirmed and thought. “Drugs. You can keep those! I can get you more—all you want! I’ve got a lot of customers.”
Ah. A small businessman. “I don’t do drugs, you sleaze.” It was true. I was too scared I’d do something crazy, like go outside, if I was high on something. I pulled him farther out the window.
He screamed. “Money, then.”
I held his neck tight. “What would I do with money?”
He was choking, crying. “Please…there must be something.”
Tighter. “You have nothing I want.”
He tried to kick me, to get away. “You want a girlfriend?” He was choking harder, crying.
“What?” I almost lost my grip, but I dug my claws in harder. He screamed.
“A girlfriend? Do you want a girl?”
“Don’t screw with me. I warn you…”
But he could see my interest. He pulled away, and I let him. “I have a daughter.”
“What about her?” I loosened my grip a little, and he came inside.
“My daughter. You can have her. Just let me go.”
“I can what?” I stared at him.
“You can have her. I’ll bring her to you.”
He was lying. He was lying so I’d let him go. What kind of father would give his daughter away? To a beast? But still…“I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true. A daughter. She’s beautiful…”
“Tell me about her. Tell me something to let me know you’re telling the truth. How old is she? What’s her name?”
He laughed like he knew he had me. “She’s sixteen, I think. Her name’s Lindy. She loves…books, reading, stupid things. Please, just take her, do what you want with her. Take my daughter, but let me go.”
It began to be true. A girl! A sixteen-year-old girl! Would he really bring her here? Could she be the girl for me, the one I needed? I thought of Kendra’s voice. Sometimes, unexpected things can happen.
“She’d sure be better off without you,” I said. Then I realized I believed it. Anyone would be better off without him for a father. I’d be helping her too. At least, that’s what I told myself.
“You’re right.” He was crying, laughing. “She would be better. So take her.”
I decided. “In a week, you’ll bring your daughter here. She’ll stay with me.”
He was laughing now. “Sure. Absolutely. I’ll go now, and I’ll bring her back.”
I knew his game. “But don’t think you can get away with not doing it.” I pulled his face through the window again, farther than before. He screamed like I was going to push him, but I pointed below, to the surveillance equipment by the greenhouse. “I have cameras all over the house to prove what you did. I have your driver’s license, your drugs. And I have something else.” His hair was long and greasy. I seized him by it and dragged him to the old armoire where I kept the mirror. “I want to see his daughter. Lindy.”
The mirror image changed, from my grotesque image to that of a bed, a girl sleeping in it. The image took greater shape. I saw a long red braid. Then her face. Linda. Linda Owens from school, the one with the rose, the one I’d watched in the mirror. Linda. Could she be the girl?
I shoved the mirror in the scumbag’s face. “This her?”
“How did you…?”
Now I said to the mirror, “I want to see the address where she is.”
The mirror panned out to the door of an apartment, then a street sign.
“You can’t escape.” I showed it to him. “Wherever you go, I will know exactly where you are.” I looked at his driver’s license. “Daniel Owens, if you don’t return, I’ll find you, and the consequences will be terrible.”
The consequences will be terrible? Sheesh, who talked like that?
“I could go to the police,” he said.
“But you won’t.”
I dragged him back downstairs to the greenhouse. “We understand each other?”
He nodded. “I’ll bring her.” He reached out, and I realized he was trying to get the bag of drugs and the driver’s license I held. “Tomorrow.”
“In a week,” I said. “I need time to get ready. And I will keep these in the meantime, to make sure you come back.”
I let him go then, and he scurried into the night like the thief he was.
After I watched him go, I went downstairs. I was almost skipping. Linda.
I saw Will on the third-floor landing. “I heard the commotion,” he said. “But I thought it was better to leave you to your own devices.”
“You thought right.” I was smiling. “We’ll be having a visitor soon. I’ll need you to go and buy some things to make her comfortable.”
“Her?”
“Yes, Will. It’s a girl. The girl who’ll break the spell maybe, who could…love me.” I almost choked on the words, they were so hopeless. “It’s my only chance.”
He nodded. “How do you know she’s the one?”
“Because she has to be.” I thought about her father, ready to trade his daughter for his drugs and his freedom. A real father would have said no, even if he got arrested. My father would have done what hers had. “And because no one cares about her either.”
“I see,” Will said. “And when will she be coming?”
“A week at most.” I thought about the drugs still in my hand. “Probably sooner. We’ll need to work fast. But everything has to be perfect.”
“I know what that means,” Will said.
“Yeah. Dad’s credit card.”
3
In the next days, I worked harder than I’d ever worked at anything, decorating the empty third-floor master suite. Linda’s room. The furniture in it was living room stuff, and empty bookshelves—just to remind me that my father didn’t plan to visit. Now I made it over into the perfect girl’s bedroom and library, sending Will out for furniture catalogs, paint, paper, everything.
“And you think this is right?” Will said. “Forcing her to come here? I don’t know that I can take part in—”
“Kidnapping?”
“Well, yes.”
“You didn’t see the guy, Will. He broke in, probably to steal my stuff for drug money. And then, to get out of trouble, he offered me his daughter. Maybe he’s done it before—ever think of that? So I said yes. You know I don’t plan to do anything bad to her. I want to love her.” God, I sounded like the Phantom of the Opera.
“I still don’t think it’s right. Just because there’s a benefit to you. What about her?”
“What about her? If her father would give her to me, who’s to say he wouldn’t give her to someone else? Sell her into slavery? Or something worse, to buy drugs? I know I’m not going to hurt her. Can you be so sure about the next guy he tries this with?”
Will was nodding, so I knew he was at least thinking about it. “And how do you know she’ll be someone appropriate for you to fall in love with?” Will asked. “If the father’s a sleaze?”
Because I have watched her. “This is my one chance. I have to love her,” I told Will. “And she has to love me back or it’s over for me.” And if she could love that loser of a father, maybe she could see past my looks and love me too.
Three days passed. I chose blankets and pillows filled with down. I imagined her sinking onto the bed, the nicest she’d ever had. I picked the finest Oriental rugs, crystal lamps. I could barely sleep those days, so I worked from four in the morning into the night. I painted the study turned library a warm yellow with white trim. For her bedroom, I chose wallpaper with a trellis of roses. Will helped, and Magda, but only I worked through the night. Finally, the rooms looked perfect. Almost unable to believe she was coming, I did more. With the mirror, I visited her house and explored her closets, then went online and bought out the Macy’s Juniors department in her size. I arranged it all in the walk-in closet in her new rooms. And I bought books—hundreds of books—and arranged them on ceiling-high shelves. I bought out all the online booksellers and included all my own favorites, the titles I’d been reading. We could talk about them. It would be so great to have someone my own age to talk to, even if it was just about books.