My Sister Rosa

by Justine Larbalestier

  ‘I think he needs it more than you do.’

  ‘She won it,’ the man says. ‘Fair and square.’ He stands up.

  Rosa grabs the money and slides it into the pocket of her raincoat. ‘Mine,’ she says, glaring at me. ‘Morris says it’s mine. You heard him.’

  One of the men who’s been watching slides into the vacant seat. ‘You gonna beat me, little one?’

  ‘No, she isn’t.’ I grab Rosa’s hand and pull her from the seat. She glares harder.

  ‘You come back soon, girlie,’ the man says. ‘Looking forward to teaching you some humility.’

  Rosa glares at him and he laughs.

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ she says to me. ‘I want to prove I’m the best one here. I’ve only lost one game and that was because I wasn’t warmed up yet. I want to make more money. You made me lose my spot.’

  My phone rings. David again. ‘I’m bringing her home,’ I say. ‘She’s fine.’

  ‘Hurry. The police want to talk to her.’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ Rosa says.

  ‘We’re on our way. Five minutes.’

  David doesn’t ask to speak to Rosa. I put the phone in my pocket.

  ‘We’re going. The parentals are freaking out. They thought you’d been kidnapped and murdered.’

  ‘As if,’ Rosa says, calmly certain that nothing like that would ever happen to her.

  ‘You can’t take money from strangers.’

  ‘They’re not strangers. I learned their names. It’s not like we were gambling.’ Rosa points to the sign behind the tables which reads, ‘These tables are for chess and checkers only. There is a two hour limit per table. Tables are free for public use. No gambling or fees allowed.’

  ‘Brilliant. You broke the law.’

  ‘I wasn’t gambling.’

  ‘He gave you money because you won. That’s gambling.’

  ‘Morris didn’t believe I could beat him. He gave me money because I proved him wrong.’

  ‘That’s a bet, Rosa. Betting is gambling.’

  ‘But I wasn’t going to give him anything if he won.’

  ‘An uneven bet is still a bet.’

  I look both ways before we cross the road, not trusting myself to remember which way the traffic runs.

  ‘Everyone else was betting. There are cameras. Morris says there are cameras everywhere. Some of them have live feeds. They wouldn’t gamble with cameras pointing. I was about to play Isaiah. He’s the best player there. I’m going to beat him.’

  ‘Didn’t anyone ask you where your parents are?’

  ‘They asked. Especially about my parents.’

  ‘What did you tell them?’

  ‘I said I ate them.’

  ‘Jesus, Rosa.’

  ‘They laughed. Isaiah said white girls are vicious and they laughed even more.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  There are two police officers, both of them severe and scary.

  Rosa isn’t fazed. They ask detailed questions about where she’s been, what she’s done.

  She walked to the park. She patted some dogs. She tried to pat a cat but it ran away. At the park she watched the dogs running around – Can I please have a dog? she asks – and she went to the playground, but there weren’t any kids her age, then she remembered about the chess. She likes chess.

  ‘I’m a chess prodigy,’ she says. She doesn’t smile or dimple.

  The expression on the taller cop’s face says that she thinks Rosa is a brat. Her hair is tied back in a bun so tight it looks like it could explode. The gun on her hip makes me nervous.

  ‘You need to respect your elders when they tell you to stay at home,’ the cop says. ‘You listen and you obey. This is not Australia. New York is a very big and very dangerous city.’

  ‘We used to live in Bangkok,’ Rosa says. ‘It’s much more dangerous.’

  ‘I doubt that, kid,’ the cop says.

  ‘Bangkok has a much higher murder rate than New York.’ Rosa begins to recite statistics to prove it.

  ‘Rosa!’ Sally says. ‘The police are here to help you, not to hear a lecture on comparative murder rates.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything wrong,’ Rosa says, glancing at me. ‘I was good. I didn’t get into any cars with strangers. Playing chess is educational.’

  ‘You can play chess,’ David says. ‘We’re not stopping you from playing chess. I’m sure there are chess clubs for kids your own age here.’

  Rosa begins to protest.

  David holds up his hand and Rosa shuts up, folding her arms across her chest. The look she cuts at David is venomous.

  ‘Thank you, officers,’ David says. ‘We’ll make sure this doesn’t happen again.’

  ‘She’s a handful, sir,’ the shorter cop says. He doesn’t sound charmed.

  ‘Yes, she is,’ Sally says. ‘Thank you so much. We’ll be talking to her at length about this. She will not enjoy her punishment.’

  ‘That’s good, ma’am. You need to get her under control,’ the taller cop says.

  ‘Thank you,’ Sally repeats. ‘We really appreciate it. We’re sorry to trouble you unnecessarily.’

  ‘Nothing unnecessary about it, ma’am.’

  David sees the cops out the door. As he closes it I think I hear them laughing. Laughing at the stupid foreigners and their bratty kid.

  ‘You lied to us, Rosa,’ Sally says. She holds up David’s phone. ‘You lied to your parents and you lied to your brother.’

  ‘No, I didn’t!’

  David holds up his hand of silence again. Rosa looks like she wishes she could cut it off at the wrist.

  ‘You can’t lie to us, Rosa. We’ve discussed that. You’ve said you wouldn’t lie.’

  ‘I’m a child,’ Rosa says. ‘We’re supposed to pretend. I was playing a game, pretending. I’m supposed to do that!’

  ‘You were pretending to be David so you could get around our rules! It’s not the same thing. What were you thinking?’ Sally asks. ‘What’s come over you?’

  Nothing, I want to tell them. This is Rosa.

  Sally and David see her every day. They see her sometimes forget to act like she cares when people are hurt or sick. Even when it’s one of us. They’ve seen her complete lack of fear in front of those cops.

  Why don’t they realise she isn’t like other kids?

  ‘What possessed you to go off on your own like that?’

  ‘Anything could have happened!’

  ‘I won,’ Rosa says. ‘I beat those men who’ve been playing chess longer than I’ve been alive. You should be prou—’

  ‘Proud of you!? We thought you’d been kidnapped! We thought you might be dead!’

  Rosa stares. David rarely yells.

  ‘An essay,’ Sally says. ‘We want a thousand words explaining what you’ve learned today. Sent to us by dinner tomorrow.’

  Rosa hates writing essays. ‘A thousand words?’

  ‘Yes, Rosa. It’s not okay to pretend you’re me. There are different kinds of pretending. The kind you did was not childish play. It was not fun. It was deceitful and wrong. You stole my phone. You knew it wasn’t okay.’

  ‘I borrowed it. I was playacting,’ Rosa begins, but then her face shifts as she finally realises she’s played this wrong, that she should show contrition, that she should have charmed the cops. The parentals don’t think she’s been clever beating adults at chess, showing that she knows more than the police about which cities are dangerous.

  Next time she’ll judge better when to be the prodigy and when to be the little girl.

  Rosa bursts into tears.

  Between the tears she squeezes out fragmented phrases about being sorry and not realising and whatever else it is she thinks the parentals want to hear.

  David pulls Rosa into his arms. ‘Oh, possum, it’s okay.’

  ‘You frightened us,’ Sally says, putting her arms around Rosa and David. ‘You can’t wander off like that. Especially not when you don’t know anyone. We’ve been here
such a short time. You could have gotten lost.’

  Rosa turns her head, catches my eye. She smiles.

  I have to give it to her. She’s turned around a bad situation.

  She won’t turn me around, though. We’re going to talk about what she means by the word good.

  She promised to be good. She wasn’t.

  When I go upstairs the light seeps out from under Rosa’s door. I knock.

  ‘I’m asleep!’

  ‘Yeah, me too,’ I say loud enough for her to hear. Switching my phone to record, I open the door.

  Rosa sits on her bed, her face illuminated by her tablet. Her blonde curls look almost gold.

  I close the door and sit on her desk chair.

  ‘You broke your promise,’ I say.

  ‘You know they love each other more than they love us,’ Rosa says at the same time.

  I do know that. But I try not to think it, let alone say it. I don’t want it to be true. They’re our parents; Sally and David should love us best. But they don’t, which is how I’ve become the one responsible for Rosa. They don’t love us enough to notice what’s wrong with her.

  ‘You broke your promise,’ I repeat. ‘You said you’d be good.’

  ‘I was good. Seimone plays chess. I wanted to practise before I play her. She’s won competitions.’

  ‘Being good doesn’t mean wandering off on your own and gambling with strangers.’

  ‘Yes, it does. The parentals want us to explore and be brave. I was exploring and being brave. I was being good.’

  ‘Bullshit, Rosa.’

  ‘I never promised not to pretend. I never promised not to lie.’

  ‘Would you promise not to lie?’

  Rosa shakes her head. ‘Lying is too useful.’

  ‘Are you lying when you make promises?’

  ‘No. I didn’t break the promise. I was good.’

  ‘In a way that directly disobeyed what the parentals told you.’

  ‘They never told me not to go exploring.’

  ‘They said you couldn’t play chess in the park and they arranged things so you wouldn’t be alone. It was clear they didn’t want you to go exploring at night.’

  ‘They didn’t say not to.’

  ‘That’s not being good. That’s being a weasel looking for loopholes.’

  ‘I didn’t hurt anything or anyone – not even a spider. I didn’t steal. I borrowed David’s phone,’ she says quickly before I can dispute her. ‘I didn’t make anyone do anything they didn’t want to. I was good.’

  Rosa leans forward and rests her chin on her knees. She looks like she believes every word. ‘The parentals being mad at me isn’t rational.’

  ‘How many angels on the head of a pin, Rosa?’

  ‘Huh? I was being good to you, Che. You wanted to go to the gym. You spent hours there!’

  ‘Really? You went and played chess in Tompkins Square Park for me? How kind.’

  Rosa nods.

  ‘That was sarcasm.’

  ‘Sarcasm is stupid. Did you see Sid?’

  ‘Who’s Sid?’ I ask, forgetting for a moment that it’s Sojourner’s nickname. Then I blush.

  Rosa giggles. ‘I can concentrate on being good if you like. Though I don’t know what good means.’

  ‘It means doing what you’re told, not gambling, not taking other people’s stuff without asking, not using someone’s phone to pretend to be them—’

  ‘Not even as a joke?’

  ‘It wasn’t a joke.’

  Rosa sighs. ‘Aren’t there times when if you do what you’re told you’re doing something bad? Like when Apinya did what I told her to and killed Kitty?’

  ‘Talking to you is like talking to…’ I was going to say the devil. ‘A slippery eel.’

  ‘I’m trying to understand. Good is complicated. But I’ll try to be it. I don’t like it when you’re annoyed with me.’

  ‘You care what I think about you?’ I didn’t mean to say that.

  ‘I like that you like me best. I like being liked.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The next afternoon I have to duck out of the gym to walk Rosa to her first dance class. The parentals are at yet another meeting with the McBrunights. They spend most of their time over there. The McBrunights’ au pair will pick up Rosa and Seimone and take them to the mansion. Sally and David will bring Rosa home. Once I get back to the gym I can train for as long as I want.

  I wonder if the parentals have warned the McBrunights or their au pair that Rosa can be a handful. Not that I’m worried. It was only yesterday that Rosa tested the limits of good, and there’s always a lull between incidents.

  Rosa takes my hand. If she were some other kid I’d assume she was nervous.

  ‘No cars coming,’ she says, having looked left and right on the one-way street.

  ‘Cute,’ I say, meaning the opposite. ‘We’ll wait for the lights.’

  On the other side of the road she drops my hand to pat a dog that’s bigger than she is. The woman holding its leash smiles at Rosa.

  ‘This is Harry. He’s an Irish wolfhound.’

  ‘He’s beautiful,’ Rosa says.

  The woman thanks her and tugs on his leash. The dog trots after his owner.

  ‘I want a dog like that.’

  ‘That’s not a dog, Rosa. It’s a horse.’ At least she’d find it difficult to kill such an enormous dog.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Che. It’s a dog.’

  As we wait for the next set of lights she holds my hand again.

  ‘When are you going to write your essay, Rosa?’

  She scowls and drops my hand.

  ‘They said you have to send it to them by tonight.’

  ‘They might forget.’

  ‘They won’t.’

  ‘Suzette has a crush on David.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The McBrunights’ au pair.’

  ‘Everyone has a crush on David. Don’t change the subject.’

  The lights change and we cross.

  ‘What did you learn from last night?’

  ‘Not to be impatient about getting to checkmate. That game I lost? I would have won if I’d waited a few more moves.’

  ‘You’re hilarious.’

  ‘I wasn’t joking.’

  I know that. The only kind of humour Rosa understands is slapstick. ‘What did you learn about behaving like a normal person?’

  ‘I need to lie better. I should have pretended to be sorry straight away. Next time I’ll burst into tears as soon as I see the police.’

  ‘What about next time you don’t trick your tutor into leaving before an adult comes home?’

  ‘You’re not an adult.’

  ‘How about next time you don’t wander off on your own?’

  ‘Nothing happened. I wasn’t far from home. I don’t see why I wasn’t being good.’

  Here we go. Her latest loophole: I don’t understand what good means. ‘Why did you leave your phone behind if you thought you were being good?’

  ‘I forgot it.’

  Rosa never forgets anything. ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘Lying isn’t bad.’

  ‘What?’ I stare at her.

  ‘Everyone lies,’ Rosa says. ‘Everyone pretends that lying is bad but everyone does it. Telling the truth is ruder than lying. If I told people what I thought, I’d be in trouble all the time. My mistake last night was telling the truth: that I was proud to beat old men at chess. I should have lied.’

  ‘I don’t lie.’

  ‘Yes, you do. You lie by not answering questions you can’t answer without making trouble.’

  ‘That’s not lying, Rosa.’

  ‘Yes, it is. You say you’re fine when you’re sad. When people ask you about me or the parentals you don’t tell them you think I’m bad and they’re terrible parents.’

  ‘I don’t think…’ I can’t finish that sentence.

  ‘This is it,’ Rosa says brightly. ‘I bet I’m the best dancer in my cla
ss.’

  I was so sucked into our conversation I failed to notice we’re surrounded by leotard-garbed girls in sizes varying from tiny to almost as tall as me. I walk Rosa to the reception desk and make sure she’s properly enrolled. The dance school smells like my gym: sweat and industrial-strength cleaners. I follow the directions to lead Rosa to her class.

  This is something the parentals should have done.

  I don’t think they’re terrible parents. They love us. I think they’re negligent parents. That’s not the same thing.

  Back at the gym I train hard, trying to put Rosa’s views about lying out of my head. I’m worried she’s right. I worry that the solution is not to teach Rosa to be good – she’s never going to understand what good is – but to teach her how to fake being good.

  I exchange only a few words with Sojourner. Her friend Jaime is there. I don’t ask for her number or give her mine. When the seven o’clock sparring session rolls around I head for the change room. I’m thinking about texting Georgie and Nazeem for their views on lying. I’m pretty sure Jason’s will be too close to Rosa’s.

  Instead I text my Sydney boxing coach:

  —Thinking about sparring. Do you think I’m ready?

  I’m about to pocket my phone when she answers.

  —You’ve been ready for years.

  I stare at my phone. I wasn’t expecting a response. Natalie only checks her phone between classes.

  —Are you okay?

  —Taking a day off.

  Natalie does not take days off. —Seriously?

  —I’m taking my own advice and learning to chill.

  You’re ready to spar. You’ll get a lot out of it.

  —You never said that.

  —Not saying it now. Texting it.

  —Funny. You sure?

  —Yes. Did your parents change their mind?

  —No.

  —Oh.

  —Yeah.

  —But you’ve changed your mind about obeying them?

  I don’t know what to tell her. I won’t lie to them. But disobey? I try not to. But they’re being unjust and wrong.

  —I don’t know.

  —I’ll talk to them if you want. Offer still stands.

  ‘That looks intense,’ Sojourner says. She’s sitting on the bench outside the women’s change room, holding ice to her hand.