Rosie Girl

by Julie Shepard

  “No. I’m shallow. Fashion rags for me.” I parked myself in front of a row of glossy covers, all showing tan bikini bods, ready for summer. It was only March, but the fashion industry is always months ahead of the actual calendar.

  He stood next to me and picked up a Car and Driver magazine, which is when I noticed the smell of gas and Armor All. It’s distinctive. Judd uses it on Mom’s Slaabmobile when he’s trying to spruce the old lady up. I figured this guy worked in some kind of garage. Then I zeroed in on his hands. When I spied dirty fingernails and calloused knuckles, I knew my hunch was right.

  “Hey, where are you going after you read about bathing suits and makeup?”

  I didn’t like his condescending tone. Besides, he was a grease monkey, not exactly my type. Ray was my type—preppy and clean, and always smelling like something in these magazines. His nails were kept perfect. We even gave each other manicures one day when we were bored at my house and feeling silly. “Didn’t you have to use the bathroom?” I pointed out.

  “Nope.” He smiled and blinked those long lashes.

  “Uh, okay . . .” I shuffled away from him so he’d know I wasn’t interested.

  The chips I had an hour ago were already wearing off. When my stomach growled I didn’t care. Maybe it would turn him off.

  “So,” he said, propping himself up against the magazine rack. “Want to go somewhere?”

  “What?” I asked, thinking I might not have heard him right. I’d been distracted by an article claiming crocheted sweaters were making a comeback.

  “I know someplace we can go.” He cocked his head, stuffed his hands in the pockets of his tattered jeans.

  I jammed the magazine back in the rack. “For what?” I asked, snotty but with enough ignorance to invite an answer. Stupid me. I had no idea what this guy was talking about.

  “Whatever you want.”

  “I gotta go,” I said, brushing past him. Margarita was busy with a customer, or I would have stopped to chat and gotten rid of this guy. She didn’t even look up as I walked out of the store. I could feel him behind me, so I pretended to fiddle in my purse, snug against my hip.

  “I know you don’t have any money in there,” he said, keeping step with me.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “’Cause I’ve been watching you,” he said.

  “Really.” It wasn’t a question. It was an I-don’t-believe-you challenge. We emerged into the main thoroughfare among a lot of shoppers. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t relieved to be back in the crowds.

  “You need money. I need, well, I’ll tell you what I don’t need. A girlfriend. I just need to get laid,” he said.

  “I’m going to call security.” I looked around for someone—anyone—in uniform.

  “And why would you do that? I’m not a pervert.”

  “All perverts aren’t old and disgusting, playing with themselves in front of elementary schools,” I said, weaving my way through people, trying to lose him. “And how do you know I need money?”

  “Because you’ve tried on a hundred things and bought nothing.”

  So he had been watching me. I quickened my pace. I was about to grab anyone who seemed like they could protect me from this creep. A burly father would do.

  “Hey, stop.” He grabbed my hand, which I yanked away. “At least allow me to introduce myself,” he said, as if that would make any difference. “Aaron’s the name.”

  I ignored him and headed straight for the nearest mall exit with a bus stop in front.

  “What’s yours?”

  “Leave me alone,” I said, clutching my purse.

  “That’s an interesting name. Is it hyphenated?”

  I refused to crack a smile, even though I wanted to.

  “I’ll give you twenty bucks,” he said.

  I stopped in my tracks. “Are you serious? I’m not a hooker.”

  “Right. You only look like one.”

  Of all days I had to experiment with makeup. I silently cursed Anya while wiping the gloss off my lips, then tore the earrings from my lobes. “Less hookerish?”

  “Yeah.” He smiled, and his entire face softened into this cute teenage guy who was only looking to get lucky.

  “Listen. I’d thank you for the offer, but I’m insulted and completely creeped out.” I took a peek at my watch. “I gotta catch the next bus. See ya never.”

  “Hey, I went about this all wrong,” Aaron said. “How about some lunch? Just lunch.”

  I was getting hungry, but I said, “No, thanks.” I kept walking at a brisk pace.

  “C’mon. Let me make it up to you. I’ve been an asshole.”

  “No amount of sushi can undo that.”

  “Sushi, huh?” he said, batting those long lashes again. “My favorite.”

  • • •

  It was still pouring outside, so Aaron, working hard to paint himself as a gentleman, offered to pick me up out front of Macy’s, the entrance closest to his car. Sure, I told him, all casual, maybe a little flirty, but the moment he was out of sight I called Mary in a panic.

  “Why didn’t you ask me to come?” she asked, annoyed. Why do best friends always think you can’t go anywhere without them, especially the mall? Sometimes, when I’m feeling the pangs of creativity, all I want to do is settle on a bench and draw while staring into a storefront window. Chatting it up with Mary only distracts me.

  “Last-minute decision,” I said. “Besides, I know you’re further behind on Moby-Dick than I am. I was doing you a favor.”

  “Doesn’t sound like a favor to me. Best friends are supposed to offer up cool alternatives to bullshit homework.”

  “Sorry,” I said, almost whining. “But please, Mary, you have to listen to me. I need your advice.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I met this guy—”

  “Thank God. Now you can throw that prick Ray back down the drain where you found him.”

  “Not that kind of guy.”

  “I’m not following you,” she said, and I imagined her scrunching her eyes together like she does when she’s trying to understand “what the author meant” in English class.

  “You know how I’ve been racking my brain, trying to figure out a way to pay this PI.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said, kind of garbled. I figured she was eating.

  “I know it sounds crazy, like totally crazy, but this guy I met. He offered to pay me.”

  “For what?”

  “What do you think?”

  “No way!” She broke into a forced chuckle that instantly irritated me.

  “Stop laughing, and tell me what I should do.”

  She got silent, and all I could hear was her breathing. “Look, Rosie, I know you want to find your mother. It’s all you’ve talked about since we found the box last Sunday. But come on. This is nuts.”

  “It’s not just about finding her, Mary. If I find her, maybe I’ll find out why my dad lied to me. Why my stepmom’s been lying to me. I have to know. And I need money to do it.”

  She sighed, breathed, sighed some more. I was getting anxious. Aaron would be pulling up any minute and I needed Mary’s blessing. I couldn’t get in his car without it.

  “You’re a virgin. You can’t. I mean it, Rosie girl, you can’t.”

  “But—but—” I stammered.

  “Remember Eddy?”

  Hearing his name turns me ice-cold. “Why would you bring him up now?”

  “Because I didn’t save you from that guy so you could turn around and do something like this.”

  Then right there—at the entrance to Macy’s in the men’s section with suits and ties and stiff-looking shoes—I began to whimper into my phone.

  “Are you crying?”

  “No,” I said, but she knew I was.

  “You see
how upset you’re getting? Blow this guy off. We’ll find another way.”

  “There is no other way, Mary.”

  “There’s another way.”

  An idea springs inside, one I hope she’s hinting at. “You’ll reconsider asking your dad about working at the store?”

  “Absofuckinglutely not. Sorry, Rosie girl, but I can’t give him any reason to keep his boot on my neck. He may treat my mother like a punching bag, but not me.”

  “A what?” I asked.

  “Never mind.” She paused, and I heard a deep sigh. “I just can’t ask him.”

  “Well, I don’t know what to do,” I said, the panic rising in my throat. “I need to start making money now.”

  “So you’ll put off hiring that PI. Come over. We’ll hash this out.”

  “No!” I snapped. “She may be waiting for me!”

  “Rosie, come on . . . ,” Mary chided, as if I’d just said the craziest thing ever. But I didn’t care what she thought. I wasn’t going to put off anything. I wiped my nose on my sleeve as a black Mustang pulled up with Aaron behind the wheel. His windshield wipers banged back and forth, full speed. With one hand, he motioned for me to come out.

  “I gotta go. He’s here.”

  “Don’t hang up!”

  “I have to go. He’s waiting. And it’s raining. And I have to go.” I was rambling. Was I slurring? I felt a weird sensation in my eyes, my head, like I was maybe getting a migraine. “Mary?” I asked, because I thought the phone had gone dead. There was a weird silence between us, a shift in energy that had me clutching the door handle without opening it. I rested my head against the glass, the phone still to my ear.

  “Rosie, I’m here. Listen to me. You can’t do this,” she said. “But I can.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll do it. The some other way I just mentioned. We’ll earn the money together.”

  • • •

  Turned out Aaron liked her better, anyway. He thought I seemed a little prissy, and Mary, with her gutter tongue and raspberry gloss, proved more worthy of his money.

  She met us at Bagsburg Park. By the time we got there, it had not only stopped raining, but the sky had cleared to powder blue and the sun pierced boldly through cotton-ball clouds. It was the kind of afternoon that drove people to parks like this and had them eating lunch on blankets. But we weren’t here for lunch.

  Aaron gave me a towel from his trunk, which I used to sit on under a big shady tree. It was still hot, but a fairly good breeze blew off the lake and made it bearable. He stayed with Mary in the Mustang. I pulled out my little sketchbook, desperate for a distraction, and started working on a robe like the one I tried on in Victoria’s Secret. But this one would have no lapel, no collar, maybe a single button closure at the neck.

  I had never been so grateful for tinted windows, though I did find myself staring at the passenger door, ready to save Mary if she came fleeing out. But she never came fleeing out, and the whole thing was over in twelve minutes. I had timed it on my phone.

  At my request, Aaron delivered us back to the mall after he made good on his sushi offer (even though it was a drive-thru joint and the fish smelled fishy). I wasn’t about to have him drive us home, where Mom could ask me questions if she was in a rare give-a-crap mood. I’ve learned to keep the mode of transportation—both coming and going—the same. If you get in one friend’s car to go somewhere, you’d better come back in that same car or it raises all sorts of questions. She knew I was taking the bus and saw me head down the sidewalk, so I knew she’d better find me walking back, too. Even having Aaron drop us off in the neighborhood would’ve been a risk. Who knows if Judd would have gone out for cigarettes or something, and seen me getting out of this strange guy’s car? I didn’t want to chance an inquisition.

  So we waited for the bus in front of the food court, silent, until Mary said, “It was no big deal, so wipe that look off your face.”

  “What look?”

  “That guilty bullshit one.”

  How could I not feel guilty? My best friend just had sex for money. For me.

  Mary dug into her shorts pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. “Here,” she said, placing three ten-dollar bills in my hand. “Your cut.”

  I must have flinched, because she said, “What? You didn’t think I’d hand over all of it, did you? I mean, really, Rosie. I earned half, don’t you think?”

  “Of . . . of c-c-course.” Why was I stuttering? This was totally fair, and I cursed myself for hesitating. Plus, I was surprised she had negotiated another twenty bucks on top of the extra twenty I had already insisted on after Aaron’s insulting offer. But I also wasn’t feeling well and suspected it was the sushi. My head hurt. I was heating up fast on the bus bench and starting to melt. Mary, too, was picking the hair from her neck, wet with sweat. Even in March, after a storm, the air was thick with moisture.

  “We split it down the middle. You want to find your mom. I want to get the hell out of this fucking furnace. I want out, Rosie, out of Florida. Away from my dad. Because if the heat doesn’t suffocate me, he will.” She looked worse than I did, with her pale, freckled face already pink and flushed.

  I felt bad for her. At least I had a shot at my goal. I wasn’t so sure about Mary’s. Her parents were kind of strict, religious, and had no intention of letting her take off after graduation in a few months. They weren’t mean, although her father had a bit of a temper I’d seen a few times and her mom was a little strange. She wore way too much makeup and was always skittering around the house cleaning stuff that didn’t look dirty. Anyway, they’d made it clear—she was going to a local college while working at her dad’s hardware store, Perkins Paints. She was sick about her dismal future, and I couldn’t blame her. Plus, I think there was some stuff going on between her parents that had Mary worried, but whenever I brought it up, she quickly changed the subject.

  I grabbed her hand. “Are you okay? ’Cause I’m not.”

  “Don’t get all sappy on me, Rosie. If we’re going to do this, we need some rules.”

  We hadn’t had time to discuss the possibility of continuing this craziness, but obviously she’d been thinking about it.

  “Rules?”

  “Yeah, like don’t ask me how I’m doing after. That will be rule number one.”

  “Okay,” I said, grateful she was taking the lead on this. She could have whatever rules she wanted. I turned to her so she’d know she had my full attention.

  “Rule number two. I’m never meeting a guy by myself. If I get hacked up into a million pieces, we both lose.”

  “Mary!” I smacked her arm. “That should be rule number one.”

  “Rule number three. Whatever I do with the money is my business. Don’t question me.”

  “But you want to leave, right? I would never question that.” I wouldn’t want to mix paint all day, either, or help someone choose the right grade of sandpaper. But I suspect there’s more going on at home. There has to be.

  “Things could change, Rosie girl. Remember that. Even for you. So it goes both ways. Even if you decide not to find your mother, for whatever reason, I won’t hassle you. It’s—”

  “My business.” I paused to let this all sink in, and then thanked her.

  “Don’t thank me. Honestly, I don’t like people indebted to me, and I don’t like to be indebted to people. Boot on the neck. Remember that, too.”

  “Okay,” I said, and backed off. Then, even in the heat, even with us both sweaty and uncomfortable on the metal bench, she took one of my hands and laced her fingers with mine.

  “Okay.” She nodded at me. We understood each other. The ground rules had been set. We’d be all right, maybe even find a way to both get what we want. “Finally,” she said, lifting me from the bench. The bus was coming, and with it the promise of ice-cold air-conditioning. “Let’s get you on this thing
. You look like you’re gonna drop.”

  9

  SO THAT’S HOW it all started. Finding the box, my dad’s letter, and the plan we hatched to earn money so I could find my long-lost mother. It’s what movies are made of, right? Drama, secrets, a colorful cast of characters. But this is no movie—it’s my life—and it better have a happy ending. Otherwise, how can I live with what Mary and I have done?

  As tired as I am, the excitement of meeting John William Brooks, PI, earlier this evening has kept me up past midnight, lying on my bed and sketching. I’m feeling so peaceful that when there’s a knock on my door, I instantly become irritated. I choose to ignore it, pretend I’m sleeping, but unfortunately I’ve left my light on.

  Another knock, softer. I don’t move. It can be one of only two people, neither of which promises a good visit.

  “Hey, Rosie, I know you’re in there.” It’s Judd. “Your light’s on.”

  “No, it’s Rosie’s ghost who forgot to shut it off.”

  Judd chuckles at my joke. I can always count on him for faking it, always trying to get into my good graces. Or something else, which makes me shudder.

  “Feeling better?” he asks. I had forgotten about the little white lie I told earlier so I could slip out of here to meet John.

  “Yep,” I say, trying not to encourage an extended stay with anything more than a one-word answer.

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, Judd. I’m fine.” Four words. Oh, well.

  “Just checking.”

  Oh my God. Is he going to leave or not? “Good night,” I say, hoping he’ll move on.

  “Can I come in?” he asks.

  “Why?”

  “I want to show you something,” he says.

  Please, Lord. Don’t let it be something in his pants.

  “I’m studying,” I say. Always a great excuse.

  “It’ll only take a minute. Two, tops.”

  I check myself. “Hold on.” I’m fully covered by my nightshirt, but that’s not enough armor, so I pull on a pair of sweatpants and a robe. I crack open the door. He jams his face into the narrow space like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. I jerk backward, away from his stubbly beard and garlic-chicken breath. “What is it?”