Rosethorn

by Ava Zavora

  "Excuse me.” She brushed past him to get to the other side for a better angle. She knelt on one knee and took a few pictures of the falls, but was dissatisfied with the angle. After scanning the embankment below, she grabbed her backpack and started going down the treacherous slope.

  "Wait.”

  Sera pretended not to hear him and kept going down, sliding a little in her haste. She was crouching by the edge of the pool and taking her pictures by the time Andrew caught up to her.

  "Why am I always chasing after you?"

  "So don't."

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him stoop to pick up a stone and throw it into the pool.

  "Chase after Vanessa instead."

  She heard him growl through his teeth.

  "You know, that’s starting to look like a good idea. After all, she’s ‘my people.’ And she probably wouldn’t blame me every other second for everything that’s ever gone wrong in the world.”

  She kept clicking on her camera, even when the scene in the viewfinder started swimming. She didn't know what she was taking pictures of anymore, but she couldn't stop either.

  "Would you stop that and look at me?” She ignored him. He advanced towards her and roughly snatched her wrist away, letting her camera hit her chest.

  "Let go, Andrew."

  "You're bleeding.” He held up both her bloodied and dirty palms tightly by her wrists. "You wouldn't have hurt yourself if you'd only gone slower or maybe waited for me. After all, I'm the one who drove you here.” He started dragging her to the edge of the pool as she twisted and turned in his grasp.

  "You're hurting me."

  "Good.” He pushed her to the ground and plunged her hands in the water. Sera bit back from yelping at the iciness that stung her scratched palms.

  He shook his head and let go of her hands. “You know for once, I just wish you'd say you’re sorry, just once admit that you’re wrong.”

  “Oh baby, I am sorry,” Sera said softly as she crept closer to him and placed her hands on his shoulders. She smiled as she looked up at his wary blue eyes. "I'm sorry for getting you wet," she said sweetly as she shoved him into the pool.

  She looked down at him with a cold smile as he sat half-submerged in the water, shocked and furious.

  "This is not fucking funny! It's cold as fuck!"

  "Karma's a bitch, isn't it?” she said over her shoulder as she started going back up to the trail. The echo of his curses followed her. When she heard him clamber up the bank, she started running, heedless of the mud and her throbbing knees, her still bleeding palms.

  "I don't know where you think you're going, I have the keys to the car,” she heard him yell out below her.

  Her head ached and her stomach rumbled angrily but Sera's anger had returned to her so she made short work of the now downhill trail. It took her only 10 minutes to reach the lake.

  Pausing to catch her breath, she waited for sounds of Andrew following her. A pair of birds trilled in the trees above and the lake shimmered, untroubled. She tightened the straps on her backpack and, breathing deeply, she started purposefully down the road back to town.

  A few cars passed her going the other way, its passengers looking at her curiously while she walked on the shoulder, her head stiff and upright. About half a mile from the lake, when the road started sloping up through the hills, she heard the Mustang's rumble behind her and immediately straightened her back. She did not look when it slowed to keep pace with her.

  "Get in the fucking car.” She glanced sideways at Andrew, one hand tightly gripping the wheel as he leaned towards her. His face was red, his mouth in a snarl.

  She kept walking.

  "It's eight miles to Fairfax, Sera, I'm not going to play this stupid game for eight goddamn miles."

  A car came up behind the Mustang, honked angrily, then passed, its passenger shouting at them. Sera looked up at the sky and started whistling.

  "You wanna walk? Fine. I'm tired of this shit.”

  The Mustang peeled away from her in an angry squeal. She stopped in her tracks, her nose smarting with the smell of burnt rubber. As the dust and smoke cleared, she saw with disbelief the Mustang's tail disappearing around a sharp curve ahead. She watched the road through hot, pulsing tears, waiting for the Mustang to turn around and come back. When no one came, she wiped her nose with the back of her sleeve jacket and looked around her. The placid lake below and forest surrounding her with its miles of concrete that wound through hills in narrow, snakelike ribbons lay ahead.

  She was all alone in the midst of what should have been one of their special places, like the hidden cove at the beach he showed her during an unusually sunny December day, reachable only in low tide, the ruins of an old paper mill in the middle of West Marin, the cavern carpeted with black mussels set within paprika and saffron-colored cliffs--"Heart's Desire" Andrew had told her and she had found it so wildly romantic and beautiful.

  All she would have to say was "Take me somewhere," and like a magician who had been saving a wonderful secret up his sleeve, Andrew would drive her somewhere new and different, finding the exotic in familiar places.

  "Stupid, stupid!” she whispered angrily to herself as she walked, drained of righteous anger now, but plodding in slow, tired steps.

  A waterfall should have been a delightful surprise, she was forced to admit. Andrew had surpassed himself for it was one of the most amazing things he had shown her.

  It could have been a welcome respite from school and how suddenly infamous she had become, seemingly more hated than the lone freshman out of the jeering crowd at the basketball game that had been cited for yelling the N-word. Although she had loyally followed the basketball team the entire season, yesterday, Rick Yang and two other players passed by her with dagger-like looks. One of them had coughed what sounded like, "Traitor.”

  At lunch, she sought refuge with Allison in Mr. Leach's classroom. Allison tactfully didn't ask if she was hiding from Andrew. "I'm sure Woodward and Bernstein had their bad days, too," she said with her dependably sunny smile.

  Mr. Leach patted her on the back. "Consider it your initiation into the world of truth-telling. Nobody likes to look in the mirror and see Hitler looking back, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't hold it up anyway.”

  Allison and Sera had looked at each other in confusion and laughed.

  Had she been solely focused on truth-telling, she now asked herself. Or had a part of her wanted to get Andrew back? As soon as he got the Mustang and became captain of the basketball team, he seemed overnight have become part of them, being invited to parties where she sat miserably in a corner watching as everyone got shitfaced, Andrew included.

  Suddenly, too, Vanessa Sadler seemed to have discovered Andrew, and Sera had to watch as she jumped up and down with her bouncing breasts and gravity-defying butt during the basketball games, her blonde hair in a perfect ponytail, smiling and kicking her long legs seemingly just for Andrew. Sera would sit in the bleachers, feeling inadequate as she realized that painting her face green and yellow to show support for the team was nowhere in the same league as Vanessa in her cheerleading outfit.

  Their idyllic summer days where it was only the two of them seemed distant now. The world had intruded and highlighted the differences between them that had been absent in the beginning.

  “You’re paranoid,” he had said, when she told him that his friends disliked her, maybe not calling her a “crazy” to her face, but she could see it in their eyes. The feeling of not belonging was felt sharply by Sera as she hung out with Andrew and his friends. She didn’t get their crude jokes, couldn’t find anything in common with their girlfriends. If it weren’t for Andrew, they wouldn’t even say two words to her. Andrew had accused her of being deliberately standoffish and not even trying.

  Perhaps her attempts to win them over were half-hearted, for the differences between herself and Andrew became even more apparent, at least to her, once she had discovered her mother’s diary.

 
Her eyes had finally been opened and she saw everything as it really was, even herself. She saw that she had been a blank page before, not knowing who she was or where she came from. But now her mother’s words had written themselves on her, giving her history. Her mother’s dreams, her experiences, her troubles, and the insults she had borne had become part of Sera, changing how she viewed the world.

  It also changed how she viewed Andrew. And with the ugly Tam High incident, nothing seemed simple anymore.

  Sera kept her head down as she walked, trying not to think of what she must look like to the weekend hikers that were now driving up. After an hour, a van pulled over and its occupants, a hippie couple, offered her a ride to Fairfax. Although she was sore and hot by then, for the morning sun had started beating down on her, the strong smell of weed that wafted out when they rolled down the window made her decline reluctantly.

  No one else stopped to offer her a ride, not even the sheriff's car that passed by her a couple times and received her most hopeful looks. Mountain cyclists, singly or in pairs, slowly grunted past her as they ascended, casting her only one quick glance as they pushed on. She was too proud to hitch her thumb out, thinking of those dubious, dirty people she would see by the freeways with cardboard signs.

  No longer grumbling, her stomach was now on full protest. The brunch she had made for them was in a paper bag in the backseat of the Mustang. Her mouth watered as she thought of the slices of French toast, the bunches of grapes, the tin foiled sausages, and carafe of hot chocolate. She looked through all the pockets of her backpack, but couldn't even find a piece of gum.

  She wondered if Andrew would eventually come back for her or just make her walk all the way to a bus stop in Fairfax to teach her a lesson. Lately, it seemed that a week didn’t go by where they weren’t in a fight. The longest he had ever been mad at her, mad enough to spit when he talked or sit fuming in red-faced silence, was overnight. He hadn't called her until the next morning and by then he had been the one to apologize, even though he said he still didn't know what he had done wrong.

  The batteries of her disc player died in the second hour and so she had nothing but her thoughts, which turned from self-reproach, to longing, then delirium. As the sheriff's car passed her slowly once again, tantalizing her with the hope that maybe this time the deputy would stop and offer her a ride back to town, only to accelerate so that the dust blew in her face, Sera held her middle finger up so that he would have a nice picture of her in his rear view mirror.

  "Fuckerrrrrrrrrrrrrr!" She screamed down to the canyon below. Pleased that her echo reverberated for miles out, Sera started singing out loud.

  She was on her third rendition of "Rock the Casbah," nonsensically twisting the lyrics in a British accent, when she noticed that the marker on the road indicated she had now walked for four miles.

  “Oh the kitten told the boogeyman, you have to let that bugger drop! The boil down the desert wa--"

  She stopped abruptly as she rounded the corner and saw, like a cool black mirage down the road, parked underneath a tree, the back of the Mustang. She halted in her steps, measuring from this distance, the outline of Andrew’s head and shoulders, whether it was still rigid with anger.

  She took her notebook from her backpack and with her pen, scribbled hastily on a page. His eyes followed her on the rearview mirror as she approached the Mustang. He at last turned his head when she stopped by his rolled down window. He raised an eyebrow, but said nothing, his hand propping his chin expectantly, two long fingers grazing the side of his face.

  Still unsmiling, she raised her opened notebook so that he could see, in big letters, “VENETIA OR BUST!” A laugh escaped him, which he smothered with his hand.

  He shook his head and tried to look stern.

  She quickly turned the page and scribbled some more: “RIDE 4 APOLOGY?”

  He laughed freely this time and held up his hands, “Well?”

  Throwing the pen and notebook to the ground, Sera got on one knee and clasped her hands in an exaggerated attitude of begging. He kept laughing while she screwed her face to look as pathetic and contrite as possible.

  “You think you’ve got me whipped, don’t you?” He said as he looked down at her, his smiling blue eyes belying his mocking tone. “Get in.”

  Sera got up and shook her head.

  “What? What now?” he asked in frustration.

  She opened the door and wordlessly pulled him out.

  He didn’t resist as she led him back down the road, 50 feet from where she had walked, to a turnout, next to which an unmarked trail disappeared into the trees.

  As they entered the woods, she dropped her backpack and turned to him, one hand pulling at his wet shirt, another tugging at his jeans.

  Fumbling and clumsy in their recklessness, they engaged in feverish battle with zippers and buttons and straps, savage, hungry kisses as he pinned her to the rough tree trunk. She would find leaves and moss in her hair later and wince as she soaked the scraped skin of her lower back in the bath, and she would remember, with the sharp taste of wilderness and icy spring rains, Andrew pressed against her as he entered, his head buried in her hair and saying as if he was out of his mind, "Someday, I’ll stop chasing after you."

  Chapter 17

  July 9, 1986

  The first night of Midsummer. I was horrible. I had been confident throughout rehearsal and knew all my movements but tonight I was half-a-beat behind the other fairies for our entrance and couldn’t catch up. I was better in our second dance, but how could I have goofed up so badly in something so simple? The others told me I was being too harsh on myself, that it happens.

  Sweet Daniel gave me roses afterwards and told me he didn’t notice that I was behind the other girls. He thought I was fantastic. He came alone.

  I must tell him soon that I cannot see him anymore, but something besides pity is holding me back from saying the words.

  Nothing has actually happened, I tell myself.

  July 9, 1986

  I can’t concentrate on anything. I torture myself and am dissatisfied with everything.

  I can't sleep easily and my whole body burns.

  I wonder about him-who he is-and what goes on behind those eyes, that smile. I tell myself that he means to turn my head just to see if he can do so. I am mere sport.

  But he cannot leave me alone. Alex.

  I’ve cradled your face, scrutinized the blue, lingered on your lip, and licked the stubble of freshly cut hair. I’ve smelled you after water polo, scented with chlorine and sun or on a Friday night of beer—on you the bitter tastes so sweet. I’ve spanned your broad brown back, explored the lines of your palm and tested the grip of your long fingers. I’ve fallen at your feet and insinuated myself wantonly, slowly up your legs and dreamt of things I’ve never done.

  So if the next time we meet, if ever we meet again, if I blush or turn away from you, if I cannot manage to squeak out a hello, it’s because too hotly I remember how I’ve already ravished you.

  July 16, 1986

  I can’t do this. I can’t, but oh, how I want, more than anything I’ve ever wanted, to be his.

  Alex’s found me. After tonight’s performance, he was waiting for me outside. I was surprised and not surprised. It was as if I had always known he would come, drawn to me as I am to him. I tell him that I don’t know how to play this game—was that wise of me? Too honest of me? Should I have been coy and light? What part should I have played?

  He tells me there is no game and I ask him, angrily, again I am angry, why he waits for his brother’s girlfriend, aren’t all the bridesmaids in the world enough for him, and doesn’t he have someone waiting in Connecticut? Aren’t you just being greedy, Alex, I ask.

  And he stands there with a smile that is unfamiliar to him as it is to me, as if he should be the one wary of being hurt and not me. He tells me such lies, that he couldn't leave for L.A. in three weeks without at least trying, that for the first time in his life he wished he were h
is brother and had been the one to see me first.

  They are lies aren’t they? I know he must be playing me, but I want to believe everything he's said. Yet I don’t want him to treat me as carelessly as he did that empty-headed bridesmaid, the girl in Connecticut.

  So I'm angry and disgusted, but I don’t tell him to go away. And when he asks to meet me tomorrow, I don’t respond and try to look harsh. I'm not convincing, and secretly, truly, I have no conviction at all. He can already sense that I was won before he ever made his plea.

  I’m afraid of how much I want him.

  July 25, 1986

  Alex tells me that I toy with him, that I'm worse than a tease. What game are you playing, he asks me with such frustration. With utmost control I put on a little smile, a light tone and tilt my chin. If anyone would know, a player like you would. I am not playing, he says to me. I laugh at him.

  He meets me for a romantic movie, thinking in the darkness he could seduce me only to find he is with two girls, not one—innocent, thick-headed Esme between us eating the popcorn and candy he’s bought for me. He asks to meet me yet another day, warning me not to play the same trick. I tell him I can't, that I'm busy with rehearsal, then go out with Daniel, who still knows nothing, knowing full well that he would tell Alex.

  You treat me like crap, he accuses.

  Because I go out on a date with my boyfriend? I ask innocently.

  Break it off with him, he commands, you know you belong to me.

  Again I laugh at him. Belong to you? You don’t own me. You may own your girlfriend, you may have a dozen girls falling all over you, but you don’t own me. I give him nothing, nothing and yet he keeps trying.

  Is he surprised that he tries so much? I think so. I don’t know how I'm so sure that not giving into him is the only way to bind him to me.

  He calls me cold and cruel, amusing myself by reducing him to a dog.

  Yes, I admit I want to bring him to heel. For he still seduces every girl, every woman he passes, even if it is with just a look. He flirts shamelessly with the waitress even as he's supposed to be wooing me in a fine restaurant in Sausalito, then is outraged when I go to the bathroom and never come back, having caught the bus back San Rafael, my tummy still full with the dinner he paid for. That was quite a night. I should have caught a ride with the car full of boys who wanted to pick me up, but chickened out. What did surprise me was how fast he got to the stop at the hub and boarded the bus to drag me off of it. We treated the drunken transients to a screaming match for ten minutes.