Rose Sees Red

by Cecil Castellucci

  “Hello,” Yrena said, extending her hand into a handshake. “I am Yrena. Rose’s friend.”

  “Rose,” Daisy said as she eyeballed Yrena and ignored her extended hand. “It’s so weird to see you here. I never see you out at anything fun.”

  “I run in different circles now,” I said.

  “Must be a small circle,” she shot back.

  “Yrena, this is Daisy,” I said. “We used to go to school together.”

  “You mean we used to be friends,” Daisy said.

  “I am Yrena,” Yrena said again.

  “Yrena,” Daisy said. “Great name. So you go to Performing Arts?”

  “Go?” Yrena said blankly.

  “Where do you go?” Daisy was losing patience—and she didn’t have much to start with. “What high school do you go to? Are you at Performing Arts, too?”

  “She doesn’t go anywhere,” I said. “We live next door to each other.”

  “I thought those weird commies lived next door,” Daisy said.

  I cringed. It had sounded funny when we referred to the next-door neighbors as “commies” when Daisy and I were in eighth grade, but out loud, now, it made me feel embarrassed.

  “I didn’t know you guys had become friends,” Daisy went on. “I guess desperate times…”

  No matter how much I kept the smile on my face and no matter how much I tried to just pretend that I didn’t feel anything, I still felt wounded.

  How is it, I wondered, that you can be best friends with someone for such a long time and then, when you break it off, you still know so much about them, and so little at the same time? And how, despite all that distance, can she still get to me in a way that no one else can?

  Yrena was standing next to me with her arms crossed, totally at ease. Any intimidation that Daisy and her posse were trying to force on me completely passed over Yrena’s head.

  I realized I had something I’d never had when confronted by Daisy before.

  I had backup.

  Since I felt like I was performing, I moved forward with a new plan. The plan was that I was fabulous and that I had a friend in Yrena and that I was excited about being out, which was true, and that I wasn’t going to let Daisy bother me.

  All of that gave me a tiny push to be a little bit different than I normally was. Daisy was staring at me. It was my line, my solo, my turn.

  “We’re looking for a bottle,” I said.

  “It’s BYOB,” Daisy said. “Tough luck.”

  “There’s twenty bucks in it for you if you can find some,” I said. “I bet you could get some for us.”

  “I thought you didn’t drink,” Daisy said. “I thought you were, like, a Goody Two-ballet-shoes.”

  “We don’t care what it is,” I pushed on. I’d never said that I didn’t drink.

  “I think now maybe you can go help us get something to drink, yes?” Yrena said.

  “I can get you some beer, or maybe a little bottle of hard alcohol,” Daisy said, giving in not to me, but to Yrena.

  “We don’t care what it is,” I said.

  I slid Daisy the twenty and she went up the steps a bit, over to a guy who looked like he was a senior.

  I watched as she flirted with the senior-looking guy till he opened up his trench coat and handed her something. She gave him a big hug and then came back over to us, brandishing two bottles like trophies in her hands.

  “Rum and Coke,” she said.

  I didn’t really want to keep hanging out with Daisy and her Science friends, so I thanked her politely and led Yrena a few steps away. I opened the rum, then pretended to take a sip and chase it down with a big gulp of Coke. After I was through, I passed the bottles over to Yrena, who made a face at the taste of the rum.

  I thought we’d go back and forth like this. But instead Yrena walked over and passed the rum to Daisy next.

  “Uh, no,” Daisy said.

  “We must share,” Yrena insisted. “It is the friendly thing to do.”

  Daisy shocked me again by reaching out for the rum and taking a swig. The bottle of Coke exploded a bit on her shirt when she opened it.

  Yrena smiled, but didn’t laugh.

  “Good,” she said. “Now we are all friends.”

  I didn’t want to say that Daisy and I would never be friends again. And neither did Daisy. We let our disagreement hang between us like a wall. It had nothing to do with Yrena.

  “Oh my God, here he comes,” Daisy suddenly turned and squealed to one of her friends.

  I looked over my shoulder, curious to see who she was looking at. It was a hippie-looking guy in a Guatemalan shirt. He was approaching us with a kind of I’m-on-a-tropical-island gait. He had longish, wavy blond hair and a beard. He was wearing an old-style hat that made him look cool, even though it shouldn’t have.

  “Hey there,” he said.

  Daisy moved over a little bit so that now she was kind of standing with us again. All the Science girls flipped their hair a little.

  “Hi, Free,” Daisy said.

  But Free was looking straight at Yrena.

  “Hello—I don’t know you, do I?” he said.

  “Free, this is Rose and Yrena,” Daisy said. She had that look in her eyes like she totally wanted to get with that guy and she was glad that he was standing near her because of us, but mad that he’d noticed us and not her.

  “Free?” Yrena said.

  “Is that your name or your nickname?” I asked.

  “My name,” Free said in a tired way, like he got that all the time.

  Yrena started to laugh and then tried to swallow it like she knew it wasn’t right to laugh at someone’s name.

  “My parents were hippies,” Free explained.

  “But to name a child Free?” Yrena said.

  “It’s just my name,” he said. “Everyone has to be called something.”

  “There’s a girl in my class named Winter. And one named Echo,” Daisy said, trying to insert herself back into the conversation.

  “That is also very funny,” Yrena said. Still, she wasn’t laughing. She had a serious look on her face.

  “Truth is, when I was a kid I wanted to be called Bob,” Free said.

  “Bob!” Now Yrena was almost laughing. She allowed herself once Free started laughing, too.

  “I know, ridiculous!” he said.

  His eyes were on Yrena and me, and I could tell that Daisy was about to have a conniption fit. Maybe it made me kind of mean, but I enjoyed seeing Daisy denied what she wanted. It was nice to see her have to work a little. I watched with pleasure as Daisy had to move down a few steps and then move around so that he could see her again.

  “Who are you?” Free asked.

  “Yrena.”

  Free could tell that there was something different about Yrena because he leaned in close to her and then took her hands, like she was a princess or something. She looked more like a czarina than a worker.

  She allowed her hands to be taken.

  “Where are you from? I love your accent,” he said, like he’d discovered gold. He wasn’t at all mad that she had made fun of his name. He was intrigued.

  From where I was standing, I could see that Free’s eyes were the kind of brown that made him look like he was sensitive and cared about the whole world. At the very least, he cared about whales.

  “I am from Russia.”

  “‘Without a revolutionary theory there cannot be a revolutionary movement,’” Free said.

  “Lenin,” Yrena said.

  “I read,” Free said.

  Free reached into his bag and took out a flyer. “Hey, there’s a No Nukes rally tomorrow in Central Park,” he said. “You should meet me there.”

  “I’ll meet you there,” Daisy said.

  “Great,” Free said, ignoring Daisy and putting the flyer into Yrena’s hands. “See you all there.”

  Then he moved on to another group of people to hand out more flyers.

  “I don’t need a flyer ’cause I’l
l probably just go with him tomorrow,” Daisy said. “Free is on the Ultimate Frisbee team. I go to all the games.”

  I wanted to get away from Daisy. I looked around to see if Callisto and Caitlin had arrived, and that’s when I saw Maurice Tibbets running up the stairs. He wasn’t coming toward me, he was going toward another group of drama girls. I knew they were drama girls not only because one of them was Tammy, the girl from the pizza parlor, and not only because I saw Stanley trying unsuccessfully to insert himself into their circle, but because they were acting theatrical in their drunkenness, and drunk in their theatricality.

  Maurice, however, looked graceful when he ran. Powerful. No wonder he could dance circles around anyone if he could take the steps two at a time that effortlessly. He was probably a better dancer than Martins, Baryshnikov, Nureyev, and d’Amboise all rolled into one.

  Struck by the moment, I did the unimaginable. I called out to him.

  “Maurice!” I yelled. “We’re over here!”

  I tugged on Yrena’s arm and it looked like she could tell it was because I wanted to get away from Daisy and the Science girls. I could tell by the look on her face that she was ready to go, too. On that front, we were united.

  Maurice stopped running toward the drama girls when he heard his name. He looked around while he tried to figure out who was calling to him, and then his eyes fell on me. He seemed a bit stunned and confused, since I had never hung out with him or his group. I had never spoken more than two sentences in a row to him, and most of those sentences were “Was that a grand jeté?” “On two or three?” “Right foot first?”

  Yrena waved. I followed her lead and waved really big, like we said hello to him all the time. Daisy looked intrigued by what I was doing.

  Maurice stuck his hand up uncertainly and waved back to us before continuing on to the drama girls. When he got to them and said his hellos, I noticed that he turned back and looked at me again with curiosity. The drama girls all craned their necks to get a look at me, and I smiled back at them all and waved again, like I was cool. Because I was smiling, they started smiling, and Maurice waved me over just like we really were friends.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “Who’s that?” Daisy asked, not even bothering to hide her interest.

  “Is that your boy friend?” Yrena asked.

  I knew from the way that Yrena said it she meant a friend who was a boy, but Daisy didn’t know that.

  “Boyfriend?” Daisy said. “You have a boyfriend, Rose? I wasn’t aware that hell had frozen over.”

  “He’s just over there,” Yrena said, pointing over at Maurice. I didn’t want to answer any of the questions that were forming on Daisy’s lips.

  “Bye, Daisy,” I said.

  Yrena took the bottles out of Daisy’s hands and we walked away.

  “Your friends are strange,” Yrena said. “I do not like them very much.”

  “I don’t go to school with them. They’re not really my friends now.”

  I got nervous again. We were leaving one person who wasn’t my friend but who I actually knew, and approaching another one who wasn’t my actual friend but I probably liked more. Each step that we took was a step closer to me being one hundred percent humiliated. Maurice wasn’t even close to being an acquaintance. I wasn’t even sure he’d remember my name.

  “I’m not exactly friends with Maurice,” I warned Yrena. “I just wanted to get away from Daisy.”

  “Oh,” Yrena said, smiling impishly.

  “Maurice is a dancer. He’s in my class.”

  “I understand. No problem.”

  I didn’t know exactly what it was that she understood, but I was sure that she wasn’t going to embarrass me, and that was all I really cared about. Despite being from the total other side of the planet, Yrena seemed to have all the social skills that I lacked.

  “Are those people with him your friends?” Yrena asked.

  “They’re from my school,” I said, which was not a lie. “But Callisto and Caitlin—the friends I was meeting—aren’t here yet.”

  “I am so curious about your arts school,” Yrena said.

  We got right up to the drama girls and stood there for a second, not really saying anything. Then Yrena did the craziest thing—she gave each one of them a big hug and a kiss like they were her best friends. She kissed them all on the cheek three times, like she was French or something, and even though I had never talked to Maurice, I nodded to him like it was no big deal and I did it all the time. I just pretended.

  “Rose.” Maurice said it slowly, like he was unsure, but sure.

  “We’re in dance together,” I said, trying to find something to talk about.

  “I know,” he replied. “How about that combination in Mr. Heath’s class?”

  “That was something else. Modern isn’t my thing,” I said. “I couldn’t get my contraction to snap.”

  “You have to do it from the center, like this,” he said, and then he did a perfect contraction. He snapped his body like every single muscle in it was a separate thing that he had complete control over.

  “Show it again,” Yrena said.

  Maurice repeated the move. Yrena looked at him very carefully and then she repeated the movement perfectly.

  “Nice,” he said. He held up his hand to do a high five…and Yrena gave him a thumbs-up.

  “She’s Russian,” I said, as though that explained everything.

  He went from looking like he felt a bit dumb for being left hanging to relieved, because it wasn’t like he was being dissed or anything.

  “Russian, huh?” He took Yrena’s hand and showed her how to slap it in a high five. She liked it. So then she high-fived me and Tammy, too.

  I was feeling good—until Tammy asked, “Is your sweater on backward?” I felt myself turning bright red, but then Tammy added, “I’m totally going to bite that off of you. You don’t mind, do you?”

  I looked down and remembered that I wasn’t wearing anything that I usually wore. I looked a bit funkier than usual.

  “Go crazy,” I said.

  “Cool,” Tammy said.

  The other drama kids crowded around me and clucked in approval. Somehow, after two months of being on the outside, they were treating me as though I was in.

  “You’ll totally have to teach me how to dress like you do,” Tammy said. “I’m really into being kind of New Wave. Cigarette?”

  She passed me a Dunhill Blue.

  “No, thanks—I don’t smoke,” I said.

  “I thought all the dancers smoked!” Tammy said.

  “I don’t smoke,” Maurice said.

  “Well, not you, Maurice!” Tammy said, playfully squeezing his arm.

  Maurice had strong arms. Nice veins. He must have had those arms from all the partnering he did. I could just imagine what those arms would be like lifting me. I couldn’t stop looking at them. In truth, he wasn’t my type. I would’ve bet that most people wouldn’t have understood that. I didn’t want to get with him. I just would have killed to be partnered with him in a dance.

  “I will take a cigarette,” Yrena said. “But I don’t want this one. I want an American one. A Marlboro.”

  Someone passed over a Camel Light to Yrena, who put it in her mouth and lit it up.

  In all the time I’d watched her in her room, I’d never seen her sneak a cigarette. Now she looked like she knew what she was doing—she didn’t cough or anything. But still, to me, the cigarette didn’t look natural in her hands or mouth.

  “I smoke because it’s an appetite suppressant,” Tammy volunteered. “I’m so skinny because whenever I’m hungry, I just smoke! And you know, actresses need to be thin, right, Maurice?”

  “How would I know?” he said.

  “Because of your mom?” Tammy said. “She does all those diet commercials.”

  Maurice looked away.

  Tammy didn’t pick up on it. “Isn’t this party great? We come every Friday.” She’d squeezed her way in between
me and Yrena. She stood very close to Maurice. He took a step back away from her.

  “I’ve never seen you here before, Rose,” he said.

  “Doesn’t mean a girl can’t show up,” I said.

  Free came bursting in.

  “Hey again,” he said. “Just wanted to make sure that your friends knew about the No Nukes rally.”

  He handed Maurice a flyer, which I hadn’t even looked at closely. It said: REVERSE THE ARMS RACE. NO NUKES RALLY—OCTOBER 30TH, 1982, CENTRAL PARK II A.M. TILL SUNSET.

  “That’s tomorrow,” Maurice said. Then he turned to me. “You gonna go?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it,” I said, even though I hadn’t been thinking about it at all.

  “Maybe I could meet you there,” Maurice said. “No Nukes is important.”

  “A protest?” Tammy interjected. “That sounds really hard.”

  “Well,” Maurice said, “it sounds like it’s important.”

  “Caleb Mazzeretti and all the stoners are doing some kind of skit there,” Stanley said, trying to insert himself into the conversation by acting like he was in the know. “They’ve been practicing all week.”

  “Boring,” Tammy said.

  “That’s cool. Caleb Mazzeretti is pretty cool,” Maurice said. “You’re friends with him, right, Rose?”

  “No,” I said. “But I know his sisters. I was supposed to meet them here.”

  “Hey, Yrena,” Free said. “Do you want to walk around the side of the building? You can see the Egyptian temple all lit up.”

  Free took Yrena’s hand and I looked at Maurice. He nodded and we followed them as they quickly moved down the stairs and away from the drama girls.

  I looked back over my shoulder, expecting Tammy to be seething. But instead she just turned to two of the other girls, laughing and talking in a perfect, tight little group. I was a little jealous that they had that. They were huddled together in a way that made them look like one body with three heads, like something that would be in The Odyssey. Or maybe more like those three witches from Macbeth.

  We hit the sidewalk that curved around the building. There, behind the path, were enormous windows, and through them we could see the Egyptian temple. Yrena and Free moved ahead of us and pushed through the bushes to get up close to the glass, which was really dirty and covered with people’s names written in the dust. Maurice and I joined them and we all stood there, hands pressed against the glass, breathing together, leaving perfect handprints. The temple looked as though it were in a cage. I wanted to smash the glass and set it free, but why bother? Transported stones cannot go home. They rest where they have been dragged to. That building would sit at the edge of Central Park for eternity.