Rose Sees Red

by Cecil Castellucci

  “That would be very nice if it could happen,” she said.

  “Sure it can,” I said. “We can make it happen.”

  The bus pulled up right there in front of us. And as the doors opened, I turned around to tell her that I wasn’t going to the party and that she should just come over to my house right then so we could watch some TV together or something.

  But instead, something else happened. Yrena pushed me onto the bus with her and reached over me to put in some bus fare as the bus pulled away.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  I was totally flummoxed.

  “Carpe diem?” she said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Your party, is it far downtown?”

  “Miss,” the bus driver said to me, “you have to put your fare in.”

  “I’ve never been downtown without my parents,” Yrena said. “Only once, on a school field trip to the United Nations.”

  “Miss, you’ll have to get off at the next stop if you don’t pay your fare,” the bus driver said.

  The light had changed and the bus was pulling away and we were going. There was no getting off now until the next stop.

  “You could take me to the party,” Yrena said. “That way I can see one for myself.”

  Once there is a crack in you, it’s so easy for just a little bit of light to seep in. That’s how I felt, as though little bits of light were brightening up the dark corners inside. Once light gets in, things start to grow. Feelings ripen—a tingling in my chest, a flush of excitement, a bubbling up of happiness.

  I dug into my pocket and put the seventy-five cents into the fare box.

  I was on a bus going to a party that I hadn’t planned on going to with a girl I didn’t really know, and I was glad.

  Yrena grabbed me and we laughed and shouted and ran to the back of the bus and plopped down on the back bench seat like friends. Like best friends.

  It was while I was laughing that I noticed through the back window that the suits, who had been lazily leaning against the wall of Zips ice cream store, were now running behind the bus, waving at it, trying to tell it to stop.

  The two men became tiny as we moved away from them. I poked Yrena, but she just kept looking at me. She didn’t even look back. Maybe it should have struck me right then to be worried. To maybe wonder if they had radios to contact other agents. But that didn’t even cross my mind. Yrena seemed calm as anything.

  “I’ve only gotten to live in Riverdale,” she said matter-of-factly. “That’s not the real city.”

  “That’s crazy,” I said. “You have to see New York City. It’s the best city in the world.”

  “One of the best,” Yrena said, teasing me.

  I was about to say something like Maybe we shouldn’t go to that party. Yrena got this look on her face. A look that said Don’t.

  “Who will be at the party?”

  “People from school,” I said. “Callisto and Caitlin.”

  “Is Callisto a boy?”

  “No. She’s a girl.”

  “But there will be boys?”

  “Yes, of course,” I said.

  “Good,” she said.

  We got off at 231st Street and climbed the stairs for the subway downtown.

  We were really doing this.

  The train arrived in the station and the doors slid open.

  I looked over my shoulder, but there were no suits following us.

  From that moment on, there was no turning back.

  Party on the Steps

  Yrena was tracing the graffiti tags on the subway walls, her fingers making intricate loops as they followed the marks. The farther we pulled away from the Bronx, the more I think we both relaxed.

  “Those are called tags,” I said.

  “Why don’t they do pictures like they do on the outside of the train?” Yrena asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think tags are just people marking their territory. Like a cat.”

  “This looks ugly,” she said. “But on the outside, it is very exciting.”

  I had to agree with her. The graffiti on the outside of the trains was thrilling. People, like the mayor and my parents, called it vandalism, but I thought it was art.

  Even though their calligraphy was sometimes graceful, tags seemed dirty and uninspired. I liked them better when they were used as signatures on the outside of the subways for the massive pictures, or where the letters covered the whole outside of the car, boasting. The words were written with aerosol cans so that they looked like pure, colorful art, the kind you could believe would be in a museum. You couldn’t read it until you stepped back and saw the word. I could be sitting in a car with the six-foot word BURN, or STAR, or CRASH, with the occasional image thrown in, like a Smurf or superhero or a hot girl or Puerto Rican flag woven in with the words. Those were pieces I could get behind because they turned the monotone of the subway into something magical. I was glad that someone cared enough to go into tunnels and car yards and make something routine anything but. My first week of school I saw a car with my name on it—ROSE it said, with bright red flowers climbing all over the word. I took it as a sign that no matter how hard high school was, I was doing the right thing getting on that train to head downtown.

  Yrena and I talked for a bit about that. She said that in Russia, the trains were clean and that they were blue. We agreed that here everything was so dirty. She said that in Moscow there was even a station that had a chandelier in it. Imagine that. I could never picture a chandelier in a New York City subway station. Most of the stations I’d been to were downright dirty and had no frills at all. Platforms with brown peed-on cement, rats you could see running around on the tracks, strange smells, and lightbulbs that flickered. There was nothing romantic about a subway station as far as I could tell. They were just in-between places, meant to be left as quickly as possible.

  The wheels screeched and there was that rumble as the car shook.

  “Listen,” Yrena said. “It sounds like applause.”

  She was right. If you used your imagination, the sound of the subway moving through the tunnel sounded a little bit like an audience bursting out with joy at the end of a masterful performance.

  Brava! Brava! Brava!

  “Is this Manhattan?” she asked as the train came out of a tunnel and moved along a track outside for a bit.

  “Yes.”

  “I have left the Bronx!” Yrena said.

  I put my hand into the air to give her a high five. She looked at me blankly and left me hanging, so I changed my hand into a thumbs-up. She understood that and gave me a thumbs-up back.

  “Here’s something you would like,” I said. “Near here is the Cloisters. It’s a medieval castle. They brought it brick by brick from Europe. It’s part of the museum where the party is, only they keep it uptown. There are unicorn tapestries and everything.”

  “We have a lot of medieval things in Russia,” Yrena said.

  “I’ve seen the pictures,” I said, but I actually couldn’t really recall any specific pictures that I’d seen of Russia. I knew that there was a place called Red Square. But I wasn’t sure if it was square or red.

  “I wish we could see the castle,” Yrena said. “Everything outside the window is not so nice-looking.”

  “That’s because everything is new,” I said. “We are a new country. We just had our bicentennial. Maybe all of this will be beautiful in one hundred years.”

  “I do not think those buildings will ever be beautiful,” Yrena said.

  She was looking at the apartment buildings all squashed up against one another. It was dark outside and not all the streetlamps worked. You could see the light spilling out from people’s windows, dotting the buildings like constellations. Sometimes, with the close buildings, you could even catch a glimpse into those strangers’ lives. A living room here. A kitchen there. We watched people moving along privately in their homes as we sped by them.

  “Some people say new is
better,” I said as we descended into the tunnels again.

  “New is not better,” Yrena said.

  “I didn’t say that all new was better. I never said I didn’t like old. Besides, how does anyone know what is going to be beautiful in a thousand years?”

  “No one will know,” Yrena agreed.

  “Exactly, and isn’t Communism new? Democracy is way older than Communism, and many people on the planet think democracy is more beautiful than Communism.”

  Yrena turned her head away from me and looked back out the window where the view had turned to nothing.

  Where was this red, white, and blue patriotism coming from? Did being with a Russian somehow make my American feelings kick in? Why had I brought up politics? Was that inevitable when two people from different places and different points of view got together? Did we have to point out all that was different about us in order to define who we were? It was very strange. I was hoping to have fun, and instead I felt defensive and irritable. I couldn’t exactly form an opinion because I realized that I didn’t really have one. Everything was a vague feeling I had in my head. Nebulous thoughts about bigger issues. Vagueness doesn’t really help in a friendship. But now what we’d said was just out there sitting between us. I felt like if I didn’t know exactly what it was that I wanted to say, maybe I should be quiet until I did know.

  People came on and off the car, and while Yrena brooded, I did what I did best: people watching. Some were dressed up to go out, some were coming home from work, some were just starting work. There were old people and young people and children. There was every kind of person on an NYC subway: the woman coming home from work in her business suit but wearing comfy sneakers. The two little girls with big brown eyes in very fancy, lacy dresses with their large, round mom. The night watchman with his metal lunch box. The scary-looking guy with wet-looking hair and his agitated girlfriend. The effeminate, delicate Indian man reading Proust.

  “It is very equal on the subway,” Yrena said, breaking the silence. “Every kind of person.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “A big melting pot.”

  “That is beautiful,” Yrena said. “I have not seen much of very different kinds of people in my life.”

  We hopped off the subway at 86th Street and took the crosstown bus. Any weirdness that had cropped up for a minute between us was forgotten. Yrena liked the look of Central Park and so did I. I realized that while I’d been to Central Park plenty of times (mostly with my parents), I didn’t really know it. I didn’t really know much about downtown at all.

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art was grand and gorgeous, timeless and fierce. Even Yrena stopped talking when we approached it. I could tell that she was impressed.

  “It looks like your White House,” she said.

  “What?” I said.

  “Where the president lives.”

  “I know what the White House is. But I don’t see it.” Maybe she meant the Capitol building.

  “Look again,” she said.

  “Maybe,” I said. “If you squint.”

  “Squint?”

  I squinted my eyes for her so she could tell what I meant. She got it and squinted back at me.

  “Interesting. If you squint, you can make something look like something else,” she said.

  “This place is filled with treasures,” I said, feeling I was responsible for being some kind of tour guide. “Art treasures.”

  It was funny how you could suddenly have complete ownership over something. Here I was bragging about the museum, even though I hadn’t actually been to the museum in a million years, and maybe only a few times at that. I realized I was starting to compile a list in my head of things to do in NYC.

  Explore Central Park.

  Visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

  I had the New York pride spring in my step.

  “They have some Degas dancers in there,” I said. “You would like that.”

  There was a room with a bunch of Degas’s paintings of ballet dancers. There were also statues and a lot of them were little sculptures of dancers in the various positions. I had forgotten about them until just that moment. When I was little, my mom had taken me to see them, and for a couple of years afterward I’d loved to visit them and say hello. I could remember talking to them like friends. I had names and stories about them—what their careers were like, who was in the corps de ballet, who was the prima ballerina, who died of consumption, and who had suffered from a bad love affair. The stories were only for me—I never shared them with Daisy—and the dramatic ones were based loosely on ballets and operas I’d seen or heard of.

  It was amazing what I could remember about myself when I retraced my own steps. When I thought about it, those dancers were what I thought ballet was like more than any of the pink tulle that Daisy used to try to push on me.

  I told Yrena this.

  “Lovely,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  We stood and looked at the building for a minute more, and then a gaggle of kids our age started running by us toward the steps. We followed.

  It may have been a world-renowned art museum during the day, but on Friday nights the steps of the Met doubled as a high school rendezvous point for hanging out and drinking. All kids were welcome. Here, private school and public school lives met on even ground.

  Kids were mingling on the steps in little groups. Some sat on the edge of the fountain at the bottom of the steps. Some were gathered up on the ledge near the doors. It was a lot of standing around, like a happening waiting to happen.

  “I thought it was a party,” Yrena said, looking around.

  “It is a party,” I told her. I liked that it was not a regular party with a makeout corner, a bowl of chips, and music I didn’t know playing on the record player.

  “But this is not what I imagined.”

  Yrena was definitely disappointed. If she was looking for the football players and the cheerleaders, this was definitely not the right place. I couldn’t even find it for her if I wanted to.

  “Well, a party is a party, right?” I said.

  “There is no music,” she said. “No rock and roll.”

  “It’s better to have a unique experience.”

  She looked at me and pouted.

  I just smiled back. A smile is sometimes all it takes to be lifted. To feel brave.

  “Come on,” I said with a confidence that I hadn’t felt in over a year. “This is where it’s at.”

  I actually didn’t know if this was where it was at or if it was going to be awful. But I knew I wanted it to be fun. And if you wanted something to be fun, there was a better chance that it actually would be.

  “Do you see your friends?” Yrena asked.

  I scanned the crowd. I was counting on Callisto and Caitlin showing up like they said they would.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t see anyone yet. But it’s still early.”

  I was more trying to convince myself than her.

  “Perhaps we should introduce ourselves and meet people,” Yrena said.

  “Wait,” I told her. I didn’t know why I said wait except that I suddenly froze up. I didn’t know how to just go up and talk to people. It was the difference between being on the dance floor, where you were given all the choreography, and being the choreographer, where you made it all up yourself. Anything could happen.

  Yrena smiled at me. “If you squint, they will look just like your friends,” she said.

  I squinted.

  I squinted so that people looked nicer.

  “Okay,” I said. “But maybe we should start by finding someone who can get us drinks?”

  Yrena nodded.

  I felt better with a plan. I felt more confident about asking people for something, like a drink, than just going up to strangers and inserting myself into their conversations. I had about as much experience as Yrena did at coming out to a party, but with the two of us in it together, it was a lot easier to fake.

  I was just starting
to feel good about the whole night, and how it might actually go okay, when I saw Daisy coming up the stairs.

  Daisy.

  I felt that old rush of bad heat come over me.

  Of all the people that I thought might be here, Daisy wasn’t one of them. Then again, this was exactly where she would be. She probably partied all the time.

  I tried to duck behind Yrena and get her to walk all the way over to the other side of the steps, but Daisy caught sight of me before we could slip away. I watched in horror as she gestured to the girls she was with. They all looked in my direction and then looked away and laughed. My heart was beating fast. I wanted to run away. I think normally I would have, but I didn’t want to give myself away as a weakling in front of Yrena.

  I had to remind myself that Yrena didn’t know me. So she didn’t care about what had happened between me and Daisy.

  Yrena was what I’d thought high school would be for me: a clean slate.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that Daisy’s friends had formed a little V behind her, like she was the lead bird in a flock of geese going south for the winter.

  I stayed put and tried to size up who would be the best person to approach for booze.

  “Are those your friends coming toward us?” Yrena asked. She’d noticed Daisy’s crowd looking at us.

  “I wouldn’t call them friends,” I said.

  “But you know them?”

  “I used to go to school with them.” That sounded like a nice balance between a lie and the truth. “They go to Science.”

  She didn’t know what that meant. So I explained.

  “They go to a school called Bronx Science. My brother goes there, too.”

  “Maybe they will have a drink for us,” she said, starting toward them.

  “No,” I said a little too forcefully, and tried to catch her arm. But I missed and watched as she moved down the steps toward Daisy and her friends. I forced myself to follow, pretending I was making an entrance from the wings onto a stage. Listen to the music. And one, two, three, go.

  When Yrena and I reached Daisy’s spot on the steps, she hemmed us in like she was afraid we’d get away. It seemed strategic, and I remembered that she was always doing stuff like that, forcing me into the weaker position.