Rosethorn

by Ava Zavora

  *****

  Minutes after Sera’s grandmother left for work one morning, Andrew was knocking on her front door, a nervous smile on his face. Sera had pulled him in and shut the door and ran up the stairs, Andrew running after her until he caught her in his arms, the two of them entangled and turning in a heated kiss until they tumbled onto her bed, laughing.

  “Good morning." Sera grinned as she licked her lips.

  “Good morning,” Andrew said, his eyes focused on her mouth. “How long have we got?”

  “I don’t have to be at Mrs. Delgado’s until two."

  “What are we going to do until then?” he asked, his mouth tugging softly at her earlobe, making Sera lightheaded.

  “Ohhh, God, I don’t know." Sera eyes closed in rapture. “Let’s just stay here all day."

  “That’s probably not a good idea." Sera’s eyes flew open.

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, I don’t know." Andrew was breathing hard. He got up and sat on the edge of the bed, a pained look on his face.

  “What’s wrong?"

  “Nothing. I was, uh, playing hoops last night and knocked into some guy." Andrew was bent over, his hands clenched tightly between his thighs.

  “What! Let me see." Sera was alarmed and tugged at his hand.

  “No! No. I’ll be okay in a minute." Andrew turned from her and stayed bent. He looked all around her room.

  “Have those always been there?" He nodded to the pictures tacked on her wall.

  Sera laughed. “Yeah.”

  “Oh. I never noticed I guess. This is the first time I’ve been here when it wasn’t dark. It looks totally different in the daylight.”

  Andrew got up and walked over to her wall of photographs. “Did you take these?”

  “Yeah." Sera clutched a pillow to her chest, suddenly shy. He pointed to a stone angel, its handless arm out, wings chipped.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s from a cemetery in San Rafael, the one by the Guide Dogs. And the ones next to it are from a cemetery at the very end of Fifth Street." Sera looked at Andrew nervously. Most of the photos were of grave angels, slightly eroded, blackened in some places, broken at the edges. Their faces fascinated her, their sad expressions heightened even more when she produced them in black and white.

  “These,” Andrew pointed to a few clustered together, “how did you make it so only the angel’s in black and white and everything else is in color?”

  “I tinted it by hand. The photos are on matte paper, not glossy, so it can pick up paint. I just use ordinary cotton swabs and paint in layers. You have to let one layer dry before you start the next. It takes a lot of layers to make it vivid like that." Sera pointed to her favorite, the one of the angel with a star rising from her forehead. She had painted the sky a vibrant cobalt blue and the trees behind her a deep emerald green.

  “Can I have it?”

  Sera glanced at him in surprise. “Why this one?”

  “It reminds me of winter, before I started working for Miss Haviland’s. You were sitting by the tree in the graveyard on top of the park, the same one that night...”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you were writing. My friends and I were really loud, fooling around by the swings, but not once did you look up."

  “I never knew..." Sera shook her head as she took down the picture and handed it to him.

  He took it from her, then noticed the picture by her mirror, beneath a UC Berkeley felt pennant. “Is this your mother?”

  Sera nodded proudly. It showed a young woman, probably her age. She was smiling at whoever was taking the picture in such a way that Sera had lately realized it must have been someone with whom she was very much in love. She had looked at her reflection one day then glanced at her mother’s face. They had the same radiant expression.

  “I found these with her things." Sera pointed to the LP records she had stacked by an old turntable she bought at a garage sale.

  Andrew picked up them up. Fleetwood Mac’s white album was on top, underneath was “Rumours,” then below that “Buckingham Nicks."

  “Is this why you love Stevie Nicks?"

  “Yeah. I think she must have liked her a lot too. I got curious about the music and when I listened to it, it just really spoke to me, especially her songs. So I got the rest.”

  Sera pointed to her CDs, most of which were either Fleetwood Mac or Stevie Nicks’s solo albums.

  She took the Buckingham Nicks LP from Andrew and held it up, turning it in the light by the window. “This one’s rare. It’s holographic. See?"

  “Are they naked?" Andrew peered at the cover closely.

  Sera laughed. Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham were on the cover without any clothes. Stevie was turned slightly so that she wasn’t completely exposed.

  “She and Lindsay were in love and poor, and she cleaned houses, like me. They made this album before they joined Fleetwood Mac. I’m really bummed that Polydor won’t release it as a CD, so I can only listen to it on this." Sera patted the turntable.

  Sera set Buckingham Nicks down and picked up the white album.

  “Fleetwood Mac wanted Lindsay to join them without Stevie, but he told them it was both of them or nothing, so they took her on, too. This song,” Sera pointed to “Landslide,” “was written by Stevie when she was trying to decide what she was going to do, whether she was going to give up and go back home or follow her dreams and keep singing.”

  Andrew looked at her face. “This is your favorite song, isn’t it?”

  Sera nodded, clasping the record to her chest before gently setting it down.

  Andrew opened the turntable and turned it on. He took out the white record from its cover and placed it on the table, then carefully placed the needle on it as it spun. Landslide’s plaintive beginning was a simple strumming of a guitar, followed by Stevie’s voice sounding so young yet wise, singing about lost love and change. Sera’s heart constricted.

  She turned from Andrew and sat down, looking out the window.

  “It’s a sad song,” Andrew said, surprised. When Sera didn’t say anything, he turned around and saw that there were tears in her eyes.

  “Sera, what’s wrong?" He knelt in front of her.

  Sera shook her head. “I don’t listen to it very often. It reminds me of my mother, about how I miss her and how I wish..." She couldn’t go on. Andrew wiped the tears from her face.

  “I’ll turn it off.”

  “No. No. I’m glad I’m listening to it with you." She leaned her head against Andrew as he sat and held her.

  “Don’t cry, Sera, please don’t cry,” Andrew begged.

  Hunger filled her. She turned to Andrew with half a sob and found his mouth, seeking hers. She tasted the salt of her tears on his mouth. They fell on her bed, his lips on her neck.

  She felt his hands under her skirt, going up the back of her thighs, underneath her underwear. He grasped her and pulled her to him. Sera spread her legs and clasped them around his waist, wanting him to be closer, ever closer. She was moist and on fire, the world was spinning and she wanted to hold on to him.

  “Sera, Sera, Sera,” he groaned as he moved against her. “I love you so much."

  Sera froze. Andrew was kissing her, his face contorted. She felt something hard and smooth rubbing against her inner thigh. She quickly moved back up the bed and crouched by the headboard, looking at Andrew with his pants down.

  “What is that?” she cried out.

  Andrew looked hurt and ashamed, quickly trying to pull up his pants.

  “I’m sorry. I thought." He stumbled off the bed and zipped up his pants. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. His face was turned away from her.

  The record was spinning around and around, but there was only static.

  Wild panic reared in her, making it hard her to catch her breath. “I think we almost-"

  “I know. But we didn’t. We stopped it." Andrew looked at her, his face red.

  “I stopped it." She
could see fear in his eyes. “It would have happened if I didn’t stop it,” she accused.

  “No it wouldn’t have, Sera. I’ve stopped it many times.”

  “When?”

  Andrew crossed his arms. “Every time we kiss. Every time. Didn’t you ever feel...?” Andrew gestured towards his groin.

  Sera looked away, embarrassed.

  “I thought that was your wallet.”

  “My wallet’s in my back pocket." Andrew reached behind his pants and held up a billfold. “And I don’t have that much in it." He put it back.

  “Oh." Sera couldn’t look at him and stayed crouched by the bed.

  “Nothing happened." Andrew started to approach her, but Sera quickly moved away even farther. He stopped and reached out a hand. “Let’s go out. We still have a couple hours. There’s a place I’ve been meaning to show you. We can have lunch at the burger place and get those onion rings you like.”

  Sera shook her head. “I think I want to be alone now.”

  “What?" His face was anguished. Sera felt numb. Why didn’t it hurt her to see him in pain? She was very far away from him. “Don’t do this, Sera.”

  “I’m just really tired." She was confused and suddenly exhausted. “And I want to take a nap."

  “But." His eyes were pleading with her.

  She turned away and looked out the window.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow? By the bridge, tomorrow morning at nine." Sera said nothing. He stood for minute, then took her picture in his hand. “I’ll wait for you."

  He walked out of her room. She heard him go down the stairs and shut the door.

  She lay down and closed her eyes and fell into a deep sleep.

  *****

  Sera awoke and looked groggily at the clock. Seeing the time, she scrambled around her room, getting her backpack and her shoes on. She was late. She quickly rode her bike to Mrs. Delgado’s house and apologized over and over again for being tardy before she started cleaning.

  She was drugged with sleep still and full of tumult. The look on Andrew’s face, her own wild fear kept going around and around in her head. Everything was happening too fast. A month ago, she had never even been kissed, and today, she had been perilously close to-Sera couldn’t even voice the words to herself, what they had almost done.

  Even Allison and Paul hadn’t done it. Sera had hesitantly asked her how far they had gone. Alli had been uncomfortable and said that they did “stuff” but still had not gone all the way, blushing and covering her face with her hands. Sera didn’t ask what “stuff” was, wondering what was between kissing and...that.

  She thought back to the times when she and Andrew had kissed, especially at night in her room, how he would abruptly stop and turn from her or say he had to go. Once he suddenly started reciting the Apostle’s Creed really fast and she had just looked at him in dumbfounded silence. She didn’t know anything about anything. She knew technically what was supposed to happen, but whenever she had thought about the actual act, she could only picture anatomical diagrams on the overhead projector in Phys Ed.

  After she finished cleaning Mrs. Delgado’s kitchen, Sera rode her bike down the Boulevard, all the way to the lake. She needed to be far away, somewhere Andrew wouldn’t find her so that she could be alone to think. She took off her boots and put her feet in the water, absentmindedly walking around in circles.

  When night fell and she was alone in her room, gazing at the silver bullet clutched in the palm of her hand, her longing for him swelled until it choked her. Was it enough, how she felt for him? Everything was changing all around her. She was changing from day to day, even hour by hour, she had felt it. Would those words he had said to her as he lay in her bed still ring true once the summer was over?

  She locked her window and drew her curtains closed. She fell asleep with the lights on.

  In the morning, she moved slowly and stared at herself in the mirror. Andrew’s wounded eyes haunted her even as she tried to nurture her doubts. For the first time, she walked to the bridge by the park and did not run as usual.

  As she turned the corner and walked down the slope, she saw Andrew emerge from the side of the bridge, where he had been sitting, his head turned towards her direction. He stood still when he saw her, looking tired as if he had not slept.

  Sera slowly walked down until they stood facing each other. He had his hands clenched at his sides. Sera hugged herself to keep from running to him. There was an awkwardness between them that had not been there before, not even in the beginning. Had everything already changed?

  For the first time she didn’t know what to say to him, how to cross from here to there so that they were together again. It had been so easy, like breathing, to slip her hand into his, to be enfolded in his arms, to cling to him as if he were a mast in a storm; it had all been done without thought.

  She recalled the words she had been prepared to give him, asking him if they could take a break so that she could breathe a little, think some more, make sense of all the chaos inside her. She wanted to tell him that she was scared that one more step forward and she would fall off the edge of a cliff.

  Words sat on her tongue but as he stood before her, not speaking, naked pain in his face, she knew she would never say them.

  Sera took a deep breath as she patted the heavy necklace underneath her shirt and decided she would leap into the unknown with a blindfold in the dark, as long as was there to hold her.

  “Take me somewhere."

  Relief washed over his face.

  “There’s a place I was going to show you Saturday, but we can go there today." He was looking at her warily, still a little unsure.

  They went back to her house and got her bike, then she followed him to the valley. She saw that they were heading towards Miss Haviland’s but did not ask where he was taking her.

  She had always held her breath expectantly whenever he had taken her anywhere, waiting for the moment when he would reveal his surprise. Everywhere they had gone was a revelation, whether it was a beach she had never been to, a hidden nook, a place only he would know. He had showed her that summer that the world was vast within the few miles beyond the well-worn roads of their town.

  She followed him past Miss Haviland’s house, down the paved street that turned to a dirt road, which she thought had led to the fields by the hills. They entered a grove of bay trees, whose green leaves filled the warm summer morning with the spice of another adventure.

  Sera’s heart beat with growing anticipation. Andrew stopped at the edge of the grove and got off his bike, which he leaned against a tree.

  Bending his head, for the branches hung low, he turned to her and held out his hand. Sera leaned her bike against his and took his hand. The dry summer grass had grown unhindered here, as if no one had stepped this way for years, and reached above her waist. Crickets hummed in the heat, accompanying their footsteps as they waded through the tall golden chaff and towering weeds.

  “I found this last weekend while I was waiting for you to finish up.”

  The prickly weeds stung Sera’s bare legs as they chomped through. Beyond Andrew’s tall back, she saw a high stone wall that ran far on either side. They stopped at the edge of a rusted black wrought iron gate, one corner unhinged from the wall. A thick chain closed both sides of the gate shut with a heavy padlock. Sera stood next to Andrew and looked through the iron scrollwork.

  A dense briar as tall as Sera had grown wild beyond the gate. It was covered everywhere with extravagant crimson roses blooming with abandon. The briar seemed as thick as the stone wall, for she could see nothing through it. The scent of roses surrounded them.

  “Can you see it?”

  “What?"

  Andrew pointed beyond the briar. Sera saw spires rising against the blue summer sky. Sera stood on tiptoe and craned her neck but could see nothing else.

  “Is it a house?"

  Andrew nodded and began climbing up the gate, placing his feet on its iron scrolls and leaves. He re
ached the top and gingerly sat on the blunt ornamental arrows crowning the gate before jumping off, landing inches from the thorny briar.

  Sera followed slowly, hands sweating. When she reached the top, she carefully placed each leg on the other side of the gate.

  Andrew looked up at her, his arms outstretched. She slowly took off her backpack with one hand, while holding onto the top of the gate with the other and dropped it into Andrew’s hands.

  “Your turn." Andrew held his arms out again, beckoning her.

  It seemed like a long way down.

  “I’ll catch you."

  Sera swallowed and rubbed her sweaty palms on her shorts. “Promise?”

  Sera stayed on top, finding it hard to let go.

  “I won’t let anything happen to you." Finding reassurance in Andrew’s encouraging eyes, Sera took a deep breath then jumped off.

  She screamed as she fell, cut short when Andrew caught her in his arms. He stumbled back a few steps then gaining a steady footing, grinned at her, “See, I told you."

  He started to bend his head then stopped and set her on her feet instead. Sera turned away and put on her backpack.

  They followed the length of briar hedge until Andrew spied a narrow break. Carefully moving sideways in single-file, they went through the briars and emerged on the other side. Squinting in the bright sun, Sera saw the house for the first time.

  An old Victorian stood surrounded by a vast, overgrown garden. Sera thought that a mad child genius must have designed it for it seemed too whimsical, even for a Victorian. She counted thirteen spires rising from the roof, some fat, some slim and pointed, all elaborately ornamented. There was a turret and what looked like a little gazebo on the very middle of the top of the house, set in between two gables.

  The turret was large and wide, made up almost entirely of tall glass windows, dulled by age and dirt. Topping the turret's peaked roof was an unusual weather vane of a rampant winged lion, fanged mouth open in a silent stone roar.

  Even the windows were fantastical, no two the same, many fitted with colored, stained glass. On the first floor by the door was a large star-shaped window. They walked closer to the house, stunned into silence. Even the front door was unlike anything she had ever seen. Roses had been carved in relief on its massive face. They walked up the steps to the wide porch. Intricately carved, white wooden scrollwork lined the first story, covered by thick cobwebs. Thorny vines of creamy white roses and green ivy covered half the house.