Rose Sees Red

by Cecil Castellucci

  “What are you looking at?” he asked.

  “Your face,” Callisto said. “You know, you’re cute? I don’t think I’ve ever noticed how cute you are.”

  “Well, you’re scary-looking,” he said. “I mean, you look like David Bowie. You look just like a boy!”

  “This coming from the son of Khadira!” Callisto said. “Drag queens do impersonations of your mom!”

  “I know that,” Maurice said. “That’s a good thing. She’s iconic.”

  “Well, David Bowie is iconic and he’s androgynous. Are you afraid? Maybe you like boys. No shame in that.”

  “I’m not gay! Why does everyone always assume that a male ballet dancer is gay?”

  “’Cause a lot of them are?” I said.

  “Right,” Maurice said. “I just—never mind, this is going to sound crazy. Forget it.”

  “No, just say it,” Callisto said. “We’re all friends here.”

  I didn’t want to correct her.

  “Well, it seems like a lot of girls throw themselves at me,” Maurice said.

  “I’m not throwing myself at you,” Callisto said.

  “Neither am I,” I said.

  “Well, I know that,” Maurice said.

  “Maybe girls throw themselves at you because you are one of the only straight boys in dance class?” I said.

  “Maybe,” Maurice said. “Or maybe it’s that girls just want to be with me because my mom is famous.”

  “Is that hard?” Callisto asked. “Having Khadira be your mom?”

  “It’s confusing that everyone reacts to who my mom is, you know? It doesn’t have anything to do with me. So I just want to take my time. Sort things out. Meet someone I like first.”

  “I respect that,” Callisto said. “Our dad is Stone Mazzeretti.”

  “Who’s that?” Maurice asked.

  Judging from Callisto’s reaction, this wasn’t exactly the right answer. I was glad Maurice had asked and not me.

  “He’s a famous jazz musician,” Callisto explained. “A trumpet player.”

  “So you get it,” Maurice said.

  “Yeah, it might be smaller than Khadira, but I get it.”

  Maurice looked relieved.

  “Thanks for not laughing at me,” he said.

  “It’s no laughing matter,” Callisto said. “And I wouldn’t laugh at you, anyway.”

  Wait, I thought. Where is Callisto going with this flirting?

  Before I could figure it out, someone started yelling, “No. No. NO!”

  “Caleb!” Caitlin yelled back from the table.

  And then Caleb was standing in front of us.

  “What are you guys doing here? Are you following me?” He looked like he was scowling again, but not his eyes. They were shining brightly and playfully as they took me in, like he was trying to decide if I was more than a kind of thorn.

  “More like are you following us,” Callisto pointed out.

  “This is a drama department hangout,” he said. “Don’t you have places that you can go?”

  “Do you always have to be such a jerk?” Callisto shot back.

  “You’d better be buying the beer,” Caleb said. “And then I’ll forgive you.”

  “Jerk.”

  “Come and join us, Caleb,” Caitlin said from the table.

  Caleb and Callisto both laughed and then did a special handshake that they only did with each other and with Caitlin. It was a triplet thing.

  “Hey, you. Underwear girl,” Caleb said as we all went back to the table and sat down.

  He shook the longish, bangy part of his hair out of his eyes and stared at me. His mouth was actually ajar.

  “Who are you again?” he asked.

  He scratched the scruff on his cheek and cocked his head sideways.

  “Rose,” I said.

  “Are you really wearing underwear?” he asked.

  I blushed a little.

  “It’s long underwear,” I said. “I didn’t know I was coming out.”

  “Crap. It’s almost midnight,” Free said, looking at his watch. “I have to go home. Curfew!”

  “And we should go soon so we don’t have to wait forever for a ferry,” Caitlin said to her brother and sister.

  And just like that, everyone was dumping all of their cash onto the table and heading outside.

  “Wait,” Yrena said. “I have not picked a song yet.”

  She took a quarter off the pile of money on the table and came over to the jukebox.

  “I think we have time for one more song, yes?” she asked impishly. She had a mischievous look on her face, like she was up to a kind of fun that we would all be really missing out on if we didn’t stay to hear what the song would be.

  “One more song,” I said.

  She put her quarter in the jukebox. She didn’t even flip through the pages to see what was on there; she just looked down at the big red buttons and pressed them randomly, like she could somehow channel the perfect song.

  We all waited to see what would come up. To see what kind of tone chance would let us end the night on.

  The needle fell on the groove…and there it was.

  The bass line came on.

  Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam.

  Super Freak.

  Yrena bent her elbows, stuck them out, and began to strut. Maurice did a little twitch move with his shoulder. I started to tap my foot. Callisto cocked her head from side to side. Caitlin moved the table to make some room.

  And then there was the bumping of butts. And bodies sliding side to side. And dancers pointing to each other, giving cues.

  Superfreakyyyyowwwwww.

  We were leading the disco on the bar floor, drawing attention to ourselves. People at the other tables began to clap and encourage us. We got more freaky.

  Free had the best moves. He didn’t have ballet stuck on him, so he was all moves and gyrating hips. We let him take the center of our dance circle. He knew all the words and he serenaded us all as he grabbed Yrena and drew her toward him. She laughed and laughed, right from her belly. Right from her heart.

  And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the needle lifted up off the 45 and the song was over. But we still had the moves inside of us as we made our way to the door and spilled out onto Second Avenue.

  Dancing had made us all a little closer. We didn’t want to let go of the beat. It was like the music was still inside of us, keeping us together. Like we all wanted to see if there was maybe one more moment that would shake out of us, that we could all linger over.

  But Yrena didn’t ask for another moment.

  She said her big good-byes to everyone. It was like she was saying good-bye to her nearest and dearest friends, and she didn’t even know them.

  I watched her, and what I remember noticing was her hair. When we had left the Bronx earlier that evening, it had been in a high, tight bun. Now her hair was in a high ponytail. Was she coming undone? Was she letting the inner her shine out for one day?

  “So, I’ll see you at the march tomorrow?” Free said.

  “Yes,” Yrena promised.

  “I’m not so sure about that,” I said, imagining what she would face if the suits were really hanging outside of her house when she got home.

  “Yes.” Yrena said it to Free, but she was looking at me.

  Yrena and Free were hovering around each other. I could tell she liked him. I looked at him and didn’t see anything so special. He was big. He had a beard. His shoulders were very large. He looked like a football player masquerading as a hippie. He was normal-looking. I didn’t think that anything about Free was hot at all. He was an average American guy.

  Oh, right, I thought. Average. American. Guy. Poor Todd. He never really stood a chance with her. He was too eccentric.

  Free kind of did the pin on Yrena as she leaned up against the gate that covered the window of the store next door to Night Birds.

  I watched as he put his forehead close to Yrena and kind of leaned into her, like he
might like Yrena, too. It was sweet. And weird. But I noticed that about Free. He might look like he could be on a football team or date a cheerleader, but he had eyes that cared. I bet that was why he wore the hippie clothes and the beard. He was trying to distance himself from who he thought the world thought he should be.

  Were we all like that? Were we all trying to change how we looked on the outside to match how we felt on the inside? Were we all trying to change how people saw us? I knew it annoyed me that Daisy and the Science girls wore leg warmers and headbands when they didn’t even dance. And I wanted so badly for the world to see me as a dancer, as something that was not like my brother in full nerd regalia, something not like my parents in their business power suits. I wanted people to look at our family portrait and see that I did not belong to them. That I was an alien. That I was different.

  “So, I’ll see you tomorrow then, Yrena?” Free said Yrena’s name like my brother did, like it was a piece of music. “I’ll be near the big tree on the right side of the Great Lawn.”

  “Good-bye,” she said.

  “Good-bye,” he echoed, and then, with one last glance back at her, walked away.

  Yrena watched him go and looked so sad.

  “I should call my brother and let him know we’re on our way,” I said, reaching for the nearest pay phone.

  “I can take you guys back uptown,” Maurice said.

  “They don’t need a boy to protect them,” Callisto said.

  I slid the dime into the slot and dialed.

  “I’m not saying they do. And I’m not saying I can protect them. I’m just saying my mom is out of town and I have the time.”

  “Where’s your mom?” Callisto asked.

  The phone was ringing.

  “Rose?” It was Todd. “Did you find her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thank God. There is some weird shit going on next door.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t want to say—I’m worried they’ve tapped our phones.”

  “Don’t be paranoid,” I said.

  “The suits were upstairs talking to Mom and Dad. Wait—did you hear that?”

  I wanted to say that Todd was acting crazy, but I had heard a click.

  I freaked out and hung up the phone. I should have called back, but instead I comforted myself with the thought that at least Todd knew that I had found her. I rejoined the group.

  “She’s in Los Angeles, shooting a guest spot on the show The Nemesis,” Maurice said.

  “Our parents are upstate,” Callisto said.

  “I hate being left alone,” Maurice said.

  “We can walk you guys to the subway,” Caleb volunteered.

  “We’re going there, too. Only in the other direction,” Callisto said.

  You would have had to have been in a coma not to see that I was struggling with something. But how could I tell everyone about the click on the phone? It seemed so ridiculous. They didn’t believe me about the KGB.

  Maybe I was making it all up.

  Sometimes, when people can sense that you are upset and not talking, they know that you are really upset, and sometimes what it means is that they’ll start acting nice. Extra nice. Which is how everyone was acting toward me. Even Caleb, the jerk. He was making small talk that I wasn’t really listening to as his steps fell in time with mine.

  “…saw Pacino in American Buffalo last year…”

  “…I have an Atari…”

  “…pretty good at Asteroids…”

  “…I play music, too…”

  Yrena stepped in between us, put her arm around my shoulder, and pulled me away from him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, too,” I said.

  “We are friends, right?”

  “Yeah.” It was funny to think that by that time, it was true.

  “Then I can tell you a secret,” she said.

  “Yes, of course,” I said.

  I figured that she would tell me that she had gone to second base with Free. Or that she had gotten a little tipsy.

  “I leave for Moscow next week,” she said. “We are moving back. That is why I do not want to go home. I do not want to let this evening go.”

  Once I had a bucket of ice water thrown on me. It made me feel numb and wet and it was as though my skin had been stung with a million tiny needles. That was how I felt when Yrena said that she was moving back to Russia. I wanted to pretend that she hadn’t said it. Like maybe we could just move on to another subject.

  “No way—you’re going back to Moscow?” Callisto jumped in, holding her clove cigarette between her thumb and her forefinger and flicking the stub out into the street. “That’s cool.”

  “I will never be in New York City again,” Yrena said. “This is my night.”

  “Whoa, that sucks,” Caleb said.

  “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” I asked.

  “I was afraid,” she said. “Once we got on the bus, I was afraid that if I told you, we would go back. I just wanted to see New York. I’m sorry.”

  “So that’s it?” Callisto said.

  “It seems weird now that we’ve met you that you’re leaving forever,” Caitlin said.

  “We just spent the whole night looking for you,” Callisto added.

  “I know, I know,” Yrena said. “I was selfish.”

  She put her face in her hands.

  “We have to go home,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  But I didn’t want her to leave.

  “We could all ride with you guys uptown,” Callisto said. I noticed she was looking at Maurice when she said it.

  “No,” Caleb said. “Look, I feel for you. You’re going back to the Soviet Union. But I don’t want to take a train to the Bronx.”

  “Caleb, stop being an ass,” Caitlin said.

  “I have to get up early to go to the march tomorrow.” Caleb shook his hair out of his eyes. He was scowling again. I could see that he was trying to work something out. “It seems to me like everything that protest is trying to accomplish is happening right here. Right now. This is how world peace starts. We shouldn’t have to separate right now. We should get closer. They tell us that we couldn’t possibly get along. Well, look at us. We’re getting along just fine, if you ask me.”

  He was right to look pissed off. To be brooding over something. To be pointing out the obvious.

  “You know,” he said, “I’d go with you if you were taking her sightseeing or something.”

  I looked at Caleb. He didn’t seem so jerky anymore. He seemed like someone who understood that this situation really sucked.

  “Can we go to the Statue of Liberty?” Yrena asked.

  “You can’t go to the Statue of Liberty—the island is closed at night,” Callisto told her.

  “But you could go on the Staten Island Ferry and kind of see everything,” Caleb said—and he would know, because that was where he and the other Cs lived. “And then we could go home.”

  “We have to go home,” I said. “The suits…”

  “Yes,” Yrena said. “I know.”

  She put her hand on my shoulder to quiet me, as though if I kept saying it out loud, the suits would come running around the corner. But they didn’t know where we were. In a way, we were safe from them as long as we stayed downtown.

  We were almost at the subway station. Callisto, Caitlin, and Maurice were insisting on escorting us uptown.

  “Come on,” I said to Caleb. “You know you want to be our bodyguard. Maybe you can disarm muggers with your performance art.”

  “Are you saying that at our rehearsal we were that bad?” Caleb said.

  “No, I thought it was good.” I grinned. “I just mean that you’d probably have the element of surprise.”

  “Right,” he said. “Bamboozle them with absurdist art forms.”

  For a split second, his perma-scowl melted away.

  “Fine,” he grumbled, going back to his normal, angsty self. �
�How could anyone resist such a charming compliment?”

  Before we went underground, Yrena’s eyes swept one big, long look around the city. She sighed. She touched her heart. She blew kisses to the north, south, east, and west.

  I hung back a bit and took a slight pause to try to see the beauty that she always seemed to see. Now, looking back over my shoulder as we descended into the subway, I saw it, too. Oh, the buildings in New York. Oh, the city that never sleeps. Oh, the great wonder of a city that never slept.

  New York. So beautiful.

  Clamshell

  I tried to think about the ways we could sneak back into our houses. Which was funny, because I figured that most people my age tried to figure out ways to sneak out of their houses.

  The things I was thinking about were crazy.

  Like that it was true that we would be in just as much trouble tomorrow as we would be if we went home tonight.

  It was weighing heavily on me that Yrena was going back to Moscow next week.

  It was just past midnight and the subway car was empty except for some tired man in the corner. He was eyeballing us while he tried to sleep. I was guessing that he just wanted to make sure that we were not the kind of kids who were going to cause any trouble.

  Caleb was sitting really close next to me. His leg was pressed up against mine. He didn’t seem to be giving it any thought, though. That was my department, to overthink things.

  I kept stealing glances at him. I kept finding things to like in his face. His lips. His cheekbone. His nostril.

  While I was sitting with my legs crossed like a lady, Yrena was swinging on the poles in the car.

  She lifted her legs in impossible ways.

  Yrena was doing a private dance performance, street theater with us as an audience. Maurice shouted out combination moves to Yrena, who incorporated them into her improv. She mixed it up pretty well, too. I noticed that the guy in the corner kept one eye open and was smiling. Yrena noticed, too, because when she was done she did an exaggerated bow. I noticed that the guy had a veteran’s pin on. He was youngish, so it must have been Vietnam. I bet he didn’t know that she was his enemy. He actually clapped as he got off at Times Square.

  A bunch of people got on then, too, including some cops. I motioned to Yrena to stop. She plopped down across from me. Her face was flushed. Her eyes were flashing.