Rosie Girl

by Julie Shepard

  “I did that already, by the way. After I found the box, I got to thinking there may have been other things my dad left behind, maybe with Lucy, but a search of her bedroom was a bust.”

  “See?” he says, all proud of himself. “There still may be something, but it won’t be where you can find it. Maybe she’s got a safe-deposit box, which of course wouldn’t help you because you’d have to be on a list to access it. Perhaps a locker—”

  “Or an office desk.”

  Mac shoots his finger like a gun just as John did that first night I met him. “Bingo. Do you have access to her office at the scrap yard?”

  “I haven’t been there in a long time . . .”

  “But if you did go, could you get into her desk?”

  “I broke into my old house. I can definitely break into a drawer.”

  19

  I USED TO ENJOY late-night smoothies until the blender woke Lucy one too many times and she threatened to stick my hand in it the next time the whirring noise interrupted her sleep. But I’ve finished the assigned reading for English, tackled a Physics chapter, and actually managed to get eight out of ten Pre-Calculus problems correct without cheating online. I deserve a treat. Plus, my meeting with Mac this afternoon still has me riled up and plotting a way to visit Lucy’s desk at the scrap yard without visiting Lucy. A cherry-yogurt smoothie will soothe my nerves and I’m prepared to risk a limb to make it.

  It’s almost eleven thirty. Lucy’s been asleep for about an hour already. I should be safe, but to be extra-safe, I decide to pour everything into the blender but use it in the room farthest from her bedroom, which I call the den. It’s not really a den. It doesn’t have book-lined walls or comfy chairs for watching television. It’s only got an old desk and a ratty sofa Judd sleeps on when he and Lucy are fighting.

  We used to have a den in our old house. I liked to read on the thick carpet, my back propped up against the sleeper sofa. There was a long, sweeping floor lamp that stretched high above my head and lit up my book or magazine. Sometimes, when I’d wander in, I’d find my dad hunched over his desk, still working even though he had left the office hours before. Not wanting to disturb him, I’d turn to leave.

  Stay, he’d say.

  But you’re working.

  I can work with you in here. As a matter of fact, having you in here helps me think.

  Really?

  Really.

  I’ll be quiet, I promise.

  Me, too, he’d say, because he was that kind of dad.

  The room is dark when I enter, clutching the blender like a baby, my footsteps muffled by fluffy slippers with soft suede soles. I don’t turn on the light, fearing it may cast its glow down the hallway and seep under Lucy’s door. Besides, I know exactly where the outlet is, on the wall to my right. I’ve used it to charge my laptop a hundred times. The prongs slip in, and I press the button. The whirring sound doesn’t sound so loud in here. I mentally pat myself on the back for a fine idea. And then—

  “What the hell?!” Judd’s voice is like unexpected thunder on a cloudless day. He lunges in the dark, flicks on the desk lamp with such force it slides across the laminate surface.

  Instantly, I press a button—any button—to stop the noise. The thick pink liquid gurgles, then dies. “Sorry,” I say sheepishly, because I obviously scared the crap out of him.

  “What are you doing?” he asks, fiddling with his boxer shorts, making sure everything’s tucked in.

  I don’t look anywhere near his hands, just straight into his eyes. “Making a smoothie.”

  “In here?” He runs both hands through his tangled hair, which looks oily, like it’s been splattered by chicken grease at work.

  “I didn’t want to wake Mom.”

  “But it’s okay to wake me?”

  I unplug the blender and take it back in my arms. “How was I supposed to know you’d be in here? Why aren’t you in the bedroom?”

  “Why do you think.” It’s not a question. “Didn’t you hear us arguing earlier?”

  I hadn’t. That’s the beauty of headphones. I nod anyway.

  “Sorry,” I say again, and turn to leave, but Judd reaches across the small room and grabs my leg. I shake him off, thanking God for the sweatpants I had thrown on with my nightshirt.

  “You don’t have to run off.” Judd’s suddenly more awake than asleep. He pats the scratchy plaid sofa that always itches the backs of my thighs. It reminds me of the blanket Ralph threw down on the shed floor.

  “Uh, yes I do.” I lift the blender. “My cherry-yogurt-orange-juice smoothie awaits.”

  “Drink it in here,” he offers.

  “Straight out of the blender.” I raise my eyebrows at his suggestion.

  “Come here,” he says. “Put that down.”

  “It’s going to get yucky. Smoothies have to be consumed immediately.”

  “Put it down, Rosie. I want to talk to you.”

  By the sound of his voice—playful and flirty—he wants to do anything but. “We can talk tomorrow,” I say, warning flags flapping in my chest.

  “How many opportunities do we get to have a private conversation?” he asks.

  I steel my eyes at him. This guy needs to hear a message and quick. “We shouldn’t be having private conversations, Judd.”

  A sheet of cold shock spreads across his face. “Why are you getting so defensive?” On hairy legs he slithers over to me and stands barely a foot away. “I want to talk about your birthday, Rosie. That’s all.” He twists a corner of his mustache between two fingers.

  The blender starts to feel heavy. “What about it?”

  “I thought maybe we’d combine it with the wedding—”

  “Why would you want to do that?” I interrupt.

  “’Cause I’m a nice guy.”

  “Yeah, well, the older you get, the less birthdays mean,” I say, hoping to slam the lid on any plan he’s brewing.

  He frowns a little, like I’ve hurt his feelings. “In any event,” he says, which he loves to say, because he thinks it makes him sound smart. “I was thinking of a double celebration, like a half-coming-of-age, half-coming-together kind of thing.”

  I have no idea what any of that means, but the offer sounds strange, even for him. “That’s nice of you, Judd, but—”

  “But what?”

  Here goes. “You’re not my father. It’s not your job to make birthday parties or dinner or anything else.”

  “But I will be,” he says, his tone sharpening.

  I shake my head, still clutching the blender, rocking with agitation on my fluffy slippered feet. “Look. I don’t want anything for my birthday.”

  He inches closer. “But it’s a big one,” he says, rubbing up against me, grinning at his pun. I’ve known Judd since I was fourteen. From the moment I met him, my pedophile radar has been on varying degrees of alert. Right now, the needle’s on high and ready to bust.

  Both hands grip my waist, but because I’m holding the blender, I can’t push him off. It’s finally happening. He’s making his move.

  Oh my God. I need to call Mary. I need to get out of here right this minute and tell her.

  I unsuccessfully attempt to wriggle out of his grasp.

  He backs me against the wall, whispers in my ear, “Eighteen. You’ll be legal.”

  “Yeah, to vote and buy lottery tickets. Now get off me.” I force the blender against his ribs, hoping if I push hard enough it’ll break them. “Or I’ll scream.”

  “For who—your loving mother?” He purposely chokes on the word loving.

  “I mean it, Judd. You’re twice my age—”

  “No, I’m not.” He snorts, like I’ve offended him. “You obviously stink at math.” Heavy breathing in my ear, the smell of grease and chicken swirling between our necks. “I’ve only got about ten years on you, and the
older you get, the more you know how to satisfy a woman.”

  Desperate squirming. “You’re marrying my mother.”

  “So?”

  “Why would you—I mean, how could you—”

  A flash of anger crosses Judd’s face, making me flinch. I’ve seen this look before—on Todd last week after class, and on Ray when I refused to do things to him, sexual things. But Judd’s face is darker, and he bites his own lip to keep the anger inside.

  For a split second, I think he’s going to hit me. I need to get out of here. But he grabs my waist again before I can get away. And then his mouth is on mine, forcing his tongue between my lips. The blender slips through my hands and crashes to the floor. I feel the smoothie pooling at my feet while I grunt and twist, trying to free break free.

  “Shut up,” he growls. “You don’t want to wake your mother.”

  I pull away, but not before biting down nice and hard on his tongue, making him yelp like a dog. “Neither do you,” I snap.

  “Bitch!” A finger flies into his mouth, probably to check for blood, but there isn’t any. “Clean up this mess.”

  “You do it.” I turn for the door and there’s Lucy.

  “What the hell is going on here? I was dead asleep!” She’s most annoyed at having been woken up. Imagine that. Her hair, usually pristine, is a shaggy mess, and remnants of mascara have created globs of black guck beneath her eyes.

  Too bad about the “asleep” part. I push past her to my bedroom, but she’s hot on my heels, screaming at me to come back.

  “Talk to Judd!” I race down the hall, manage to shut my door and lock it.

  “Come out of there!” She bangs on the door, making it rattle and shake.

  “No!”

  Then I hear Judd, having arrived at the scene, saying, “Babe, it’s not what you think.”

  “You don’t know what I think,” she says. “If you did, you’d be gagging on this goddamned ring.” I hear her light up a cigarette and take a drag that makes her cough. The smoke instantly finds its way under my door, so I pull some dirty clothes from my hamper and stuff them along the gap.

  “He hit on me,” I say through the door. “Your frickin fiancé hit on me.”

  “Judd, you’d better tell me what’s going on.”

  “She came on to me,” he says, at which point I kick aside the clothes and pull my door wide open.

  “Liar!”

  “You’re half my age, Rosie, and . . . come on, you’re like a daughter to me.”

  “Then why is your tongue swelling up?” I ask.

  Lucy turns to him, sucks in a ton of smoke, and blows it out.

  “He’s talking funny, can’t you tell?”

  Lucy doesn’t answer me, just stands there, staring at Judd, waiting for his story.

  “Okay, look . . .” Judd backs up against the wall. The hallway is dim, but I can still see his pathetic expression, the complete opposite of the one I saw five minutes ago when he was acting like the big man in charge. He pushes back his greasy black hair. “First of all, it wasn’t like that.”

  “Second of all, you’re a pervert,” I chime in.

  “I had been drinking, all right?” He tries to take Lucy in his arms, but she backs away. “You know how I get when we’ve been fighting. I had too much, and I passed out, and then she—”

  “What? What did I do? I was making a smoothie, Judd. That was it. Don’t try pinning this on me.”

  “Well, you sent out signals, Rosie.”

  “Signals? Oh my God.” I turn to Lucy. “Please don’t believe him. I would never do that.”

  In that dim hallway, beside Judd’s pathetic face, is Lucy’s confused one. She’s not sure who to believe, even though it should be me, her daughter. Maybe Mary’s right, and I’ve just been fooling myself. I’ll never really be hers.

  I turn around and slam my door behind me. My heart beats wildly in my chest, being accused of something so disgusting. The next thing I hear better be the sound of his Ford truck peeling out of the driveway.

  I call Mary and beg her to come over, but she’s still frosty from our conversation yesterday and says, “Just spill, Rosie, but do it quick. If my mom hears me on the phone she’s going to blow a gasket. Plus, I’m supposed to be sick.”

  “Judd attacked me.”

  “Are you okay? What happened? Did he hurt you?” She’s wide awake now, firing off questions before I have a chance to answer even one.

  “I’m fine, just totally freaked out. Thank God Lucy walked in on us—”

  “And tossed that pervert’s shit out on the lawn, right?”

  “Not yet. They’re arguing out in the hall, so there’s still hope.”

  “Jesus. That’s so messed up. I can’t believe he finally tried something. He should be thrown in the slammer. Like that guy Eddy.”

  Why does she have to keep bringing him up? Hearing his name makes my head hurt, and everything starts to get cloudy. Suddenly, I’m so tired and I don’t want to talk anymore.

  “I’m beat. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

  “Cheer up, Rosie girl,” she says. “I’ll bring Hot Pockets for lunch.”

  In the wake of our call is deafening silence. I don’t hear them arguing or Judd’s truck rumbling away as I’d hoped. From their bedroom, across the hall, travels a distorted melody of yelling and laughing. What could possibly be funny about what just went down?

  I clench my teeth, squeeze my eyes shut, hating them both. Then I curl myself into a ball, hugging a pillow, jamming the sheets and blankets between my legs. She’s never going to take my side. This kicks the waterworks into high gear and washes away whatever hope I’d held on to of Lucy loving me.

  When the melody finally stops, I cry long and hard until I manage to fall asleep on a pillowcase soaked with tears.

  20

  THERE ARE NO Hot Pockets. I’m kind of bummed, but Mary said her parents were in a major fight this morning during breakfast and she didn’t want to make any waves by going in the kitchen.

  We have English together second period, but it’s impossible to talk during class, so we pick up last night’s conversation during lunch.

  “I can’t believe she let him off the hook,” I say, because he never left the house last night, and I woke to their bedroom door closed and giggling whispers that had me on the verge of crying again. I take a bite of a fish stick, its center still frozen. The day is nasty, with clumpy gray clouds hanging over the school, threatening to ruin our picnic.

  “Oh, of course you can. Did you really think she wouldn’t?” Mary inspects the peanut butter and jelly sandwich she bought at the cafeteria, then takes a tentative bite.

  “Moses parted the Red Sea. Miracles happen.” I wipe my greasy fingers on a napkin, then hope to wash away the taste with the soda.

  “I don’t know how you ever slept last night.”

  “With a crowbar, that’s how,” I joke. I don’t tell her I cried myself to sleep. She may think I’m weak, but now that I know she’s been dealing with her own stuff at home, I want to seem strong like her. Maybe she’s even been subjected to her father’s wrath, too. I rack my brain. Have I ever seen bruises she wouldn’t explain? Without realizing it, I’m scanning her body—her long legs, her forearms, her neck.

  “What?” she asks, catching me sizing her up.

  “Nothing.” I shake the disturbing thought out of my head. “Could she be in denial? I think she—” I pretend to gag. “Loves him.” I know the feeling, how it keeps you from seeing things right under your nose, like Ray staring at another girl. We went to the beach most weekends, so there were a lot of opportunities for his eyes to settle on another girl’s butt. A couple times I even thought he’d been cheating on me—a string of flirty text messages, a girl who passed by us at a party one night and called him her little architect—but brushed aside th
e suspicions because he told me I was blowing things out of proportion. So I did, because I didn’t want to lose him, my first official boyfriend.

  “That explains it then. Lucy’s wearing blinders the size of goddamned solar panels. How else could she not see that her fiancé hitting on her kid is a major red flag?” Mary waves her sandwich in the air, a gesture to ensure I don’t interrupt her upcoming thought. I pick at the syrupy fruit cocktail and choose something orange. “Maybe that’s it. You’re not really hers, just some snot-nosed kid she helped raise. Why she kept doing it after your dad croaked is anyone’s guess. So forget about last night, Rosie girl. You’re not gonna win that battle.” She puts a hand on either side of her face. “Solar panels.”

  “I guess,” I say, trying to find a shred of solace in her theory, but still coming up empty. I don’t know why I even care, but I do. We’ve still shared a life, me and Lucy, and as much as we’ve butted heads, I don’t want her thinking I’d ever betray her like that.

  She takes a final bite and her sandwich is gone. She rolls up the foil and tosses it in her bag. “But the war—now that’s something else. That you have to win. So what’s your plan?”

  “Well, I overheard her calling in sick.”

  “Sick, huh?” Mary says, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

  “Yeah, she always calls in sick when they have a fight. I think she does it so they can have makeup sex without me around.” I pop a grape in my mouth and enjoy the sour-sweet explosion. “Anyway, it works to my advantage today. Going to skip last period and head over to the scrap yard.”

  “Good luck getting past Shoal,” she warns, as if I need reminding of the legendary secretary who lives to thwart anyone’s goal of leaving early.

  “Maybe I’ll bribe her with melon.” I hold up my fruit cup.

  She wags her finger. “Judging by Shoal’s thunder thighs, you’d have a better chance with cake.” Mary’s flushed from the heat, but the glow makes her pretty. She wears more makeup than I do, especially foundation to cover the freckles she’s grown to detest (thinks they make her look too young), and when she wipes away sweat from her nose, the foundation comes with it.