Hugo & Rose

by Bridget Foley

  “For your Barbies,” said Rose’s mother.

  It was she who had spent the early morning crouched in the garage in her robe, weaving streamers through the bicycle’s spokes.

  Rose’s father had picked up the bicycle with a box of training wheels the evening before. These extra wheels had not yet been affixed to the bike, as had been the plan. This was due to the fact that Rose’s mother had spent the prior evening spinning her own wheels about the changes to little Rosie’s party required by the next day’s forecast—which led to Rose’s father spending the evening reassuring her that it would all be fine.

  Rose stood shivering in her cotton party dress in the garage.

  “Thanks, Mommy. Thanks, Daddy.”

  * * *

  The weather remained chill that year all the way through the middle of June. At Field Day, in the last week of school, Rose’s classmates all clutched at their sweatshirts and pulled their ankle socks against the cold wind before running races against one another. School might have been ending, but it didn’t feel like summer yet.

  The bicycle was moved to the side to make way for Rose’s father’s car. The training wheels remained in their box, set out of the way on a high shelf in the pantry by Rose’s mother.

  The bicycle wasn’t forgotten, but just as one doesn’t think about sleds and snow shovels at the beach, nothing about the season sparked feelings of “bicycle-ness.”

  And six-year-old Rose … though very pleased with the bicycle when she had seen it, had not thought about it again since she had returned from the cold garage to the warm, squealing girls of her party. She had gotten plenty of lovely, indoor toys that day: toys she already knew how to play with.

  In fact, the only person who thought of Rosie’s bicycle at all was her father, for whom its location in the garage was creating an obstacle to exiting his vehicle. As he would contort his body around it, squeezing past the driver’s-side door, he would think about how much the bike had cost him and how his wife had insisted that Rosie must have it.

  But, kids, he’d say to himself with a sigh. What are you going to do? And head inside.

  * * *

  Summer arrived overnight two weeks after school had ended. The coldish spring was burned away by a hot July sun, arrived early, too impatient to wait for the end of June. All around the neighborhood, mothers dragged sprinklers onto their front lawns, told the kids to entertain themselves, and returned to the cooler dim of their homes.

  Rosie spent her days shuttling between her neighbors’ houses. Jennifer had the best dollhouse. Brittney’s mom bought name-brand Popsicles. Kara’s parents let her watch MTV.

  For these trips Rose used her own two feet, shod in a pair of aqua jelly sandals. And though the shoes left her with delicate, oddly placed blisters, she still never thought about the bicycle she had been given for her birthday or that she could travel much more comfortably upon it. She didn’t know how to use it, and no one had yet undertaken to teach her.

  Besides, the jellies made her feel like a princess.

  * * *

  It wasn’t until a hot Saturday after the Fourth of July that Rose’s father finally hauled the bicycle out of the garage. He had spent the morning weeding and drinking beer. Rose, who had at first insisted upon her fitness to help him with the task (the weeding, not the drinking), had quickly given up and instead lolled on the grass, complaining of boredom.

  “Go find your mother,” suggested her father, who thought that if he was to be made to work on his day off, at the very least he could be spared the whining.

  “She’s not here,” whined Rose.

  “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Rose’s mother was in fact out doing chores, something she’d informed both Rose and her father of before leaving. But both had not thought the information worth remembering, and so it was to both of them as if Rose’s mother had disappeared from their living room without so much as a by-your-leave.

  “Well,” he said, turning from the flower bed, “whatcha want to do?”

  “I dunno.”

  “TV?”

  “Nothing’s on.”

  “Go see Jenny?”

  “On vacation.”

  Rose’s father studied his daughter. Suddenly, his mind was full of the bicycle he’d had to move out of the way to get to the gardening tools that morning. He took a swig of beer.

  “Come on, let’s go.”

  * * *

  Rose was not so sure about this.

  She straddled the crossbar and looked up at her dad. Unable to find the box of training wheels after ten minutes of searching, he had decided that Rose didn’t really need them anyway.

  “Why bother putting them on when you’re just going to ask me to take them off in a week?”

  He had tried to cajole Rose into mounting the bike without them. And when that didn’t work he had bullied her. Insisted he thought she was a “big girl.” Maybe he was wrong.

  Rose knew when she was being accused of being a baby. She had socked Pete Koernig last week when he had suggested that she still wet the bed.

  Rose had gotten onto the bike. But now, perched on the edge of the seat, her toes skimming the ground, she thought maybe she was a bit of a baby. Maybe it was better to be a baby. Safer.

  “We’ll take it slow, okay, honey? You just keep your feet moving.”

  Rose’s father gripped the back of her seat and her handlebar. With a sharp inhale, Rosie pulled her feet up, located the pedals, and pushed.

  Pushed.

  Pushed.

  They were moving. Rose laughed. So did her father.

  “See! You don’t need those silly wheels!”

  He led her in a steady, straight line past the neighbors’ houses.

  “We’re going to turn now.”

  Gently, he pulled an angle into the handlebars. Rose’s breath caught—sure gravity would kick in now—but instead they just executed a wide loop, before straightening out.

  Rose’s confidence grew as they looped around and around in front of their house.

  Her father, sensing this, began to loosen his hold on the bike. First they did a circuit with his hand barely gripping the seat. Then they executed another, this time his fingertips only lightly guiding the bars. Pretty soon, she was doing it all by herself, though he kept pace with the bicycle.

  “Don’t let go, Daddy.”

  But he already had. Rose’s hair was streaming in her self-made wind, her tongue between her lips in concentration.

  Rose’s father held back and watched her go. Still unaware that she was doing it on her own.

  She was about to make the turn when he shouted, “That’s my big girl, Rosie!”

  Rose, surprised by the distance of her father’s voice, turned toward it and let go of the handlebars. The wheel jerked to the side, suddenly perpendicular to the bike, forcing the whole contraption into a complete and sudden stop.

  From where he stood, Rose’s father watched as her small body pitched up and over the handlebars. A little rag doll landing headfirst, crunch, on the asphalt.

  * * *

  She was not scared. At least, not at first. And she wasn’t in pain. She was simply on the ground, whereas a moment before she had been in the air. And before that? Where had she been before that? Rose couldn’t remember.

  Somewhere, beyond the expanse of pebbles and tar of the road, she sensed movement. Feet running toward her.

  And then there was the hot, bare sky and her father.

  Rose anchored on his face. Her father’s unshaven face. It was stricken. Terrified. He was shouting something, looking at her, but she couldn’t tell what it was he was saying.

  It was then that she became scared.

  Her father’s fear infected her. It welled up through her tiny body, invading her chest, her limbs, her neck. Fear poured out of her, bubbling over, spilling out of her ears, running out of her eyes.

  Rose drowned in her father’s terror, sinking further and furth
er away from him until she couldn’t see him at all.

  * * *

  “It’s about time you got here.”

  The beach smelled of caramel. And so did the little boy.

  Rose was confused. “Where is here?”

  “I dunno. Here. Here is here … I guess. Here is where I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Rose sat up, the pink sand shifting under her bottom.

  “Here,” wherever it was, was beautiful. A short expanse of beach emptied out into a gulf of clear, warm water. In the shallows, Rose could see the flashing of piscine bodies as schools of fish shifted and flocked in the current. A gentle kiss of a breeze carried the scent of salt and lilac across the water. Mounds of sea grass clutched at the sand, before yielding to a sun-speckled forest.

  They were in a tent of some kind. White sheet walls, sloping up to big top peaks. Like the blanket forts she made for herself on rainy days … but so much bigger. Grander. Like the circus, almost, but lighter, prettier. A pavilion.

  “Want a snack?”

  The boy offered her a seashell. A small cowrie. Like the ones on the necklace she had brought home after her trip to Hawaii with Mom and Dad.

  Something about that thought bothered her. What was it? Rose pulled her legs in and shook her head.

  The boy shrugged and popped the shell into his mouth. Cracked it with his teeth.

  “Are you crazy? Don’t do that.”

  “Why not? They taste like candy.”

  He offered Rose another, this time the slightly larger fan of a bivalve shell. His teeth crunched down again.

  Rose took it. She let her tongue flick across its surface, bracing herself for its saline grit.

  Instead a sweet warmth rolled over her. The warmth of Sunday breakfast. Butter and maple and flannel pajamas.

  “It’s good, right?”

  The boy turned onto his belly, digging into the sand for more seashells.

  At age six, Rose didn’t really make a habit of looking at boys. To her, they all seemed to be loud, dirty things with a proclivity toward hitting—not worth as much study as, say, the Toys “R” Us circular or the back of the Cap’n Crunch box.

  But this boy was different, as much as this place was different, and Rose took a moment to really look at him.

  He wore a black vest over a white shirt and a loose pair of pants that ended below his knees. He looked a bit like a pirate, Rose decided, or more likely a stowaway on a pirate’s ship. A plucky cabin boy like in that Swiss Family movie.

  He had brown eyes. Rose had never noticed the color of anyone’s eyes before save her mother’s and her own. Rose decided that she liked his brown eyes. They were the color of chocolate.

  His hair was curly and too long, as he kept having to brush it out of his face. It was that color that is neither blond nor brown but somewhere in between.

  His smile started on one side and crept its crooked way across his teeth, before activating the dimple on the other side of his face.

  He was a big kid. About the size of the second graders at her school. The size of kids who can read chapter books and tie their own shoes.

  And as Rose had already noticed, he smelled of caramel.

  “I’m Hugo. What’s your name?”

  three

  Hugo had been waiting for her for “like a million years.” Or so he said. And while he’d been waiting he had done a little bit of exploring, though never straying too far from the beach.

  “Come on, there’s something I want to show you.”

  He grabbed her hand and pulled Rose up to the crest of a sandy ridge.

  “That is Castle City.”

  From the horizon rose a mass of shining spires of all different shapes. Some were rounded and some were pointed. Others had jagged bits that stabbed at the sky. There were hundreds of them all collected together behind a single unbroken wall.

  Around it all hung a yellow halo of sorts, giving the place the look of a city in a snow globe.

  “That’s where we have to go. Because that’s where everyone is.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Everyone. In the whole wide world.”

  “Even my daddy?”

  “Especially your daddy.”

  Rose looked at this boy. This Hugo. He seemed to know what he was talking about.

  “Is he in trouble?” Rose almost remembered something … felt it tickling at the back of her brain. Her father’s face, worried about something.

  “Yes. Kinda. Maybe. They need us to rescue them.”

  “Oh.… From what?”

  Hugo shrugged. “I dunno. Something bad. There’s gotta be some reason why they’re all in there and we’re the only ones out here.”

  “Huh.”

  Rosie sat on the edge of the ridge and considered the city. Considered everyone she loved being inside, and herself and this boy being the only people outside.

  She was not used to being the person doing the rescuing. In neighborhood games, she always elected to be the princess in the tower. She had never considered being the knight. She had never considered herself a hero.

  “Hugo…” She tested the feel of his name. “Aren’t you … aren’t you a little scared?”

  He scoffed. “Nah. What for?”

  And he smiled at her in such a way that she could not help smiling back.

  * * *

  Since everyone in the whole wide world was in the Castle City, there was nothing for it but for them to go there.

  She and Hugo had filled their pockets with seashells and set out in the tall saw grass that lay in the direction of the city.

  “How long do you think it will take us to get there?”

  “Dunno. It doesn’t look too far. All morning?”

  “Is it morning?”

  “Feels like it, doesn’t it?”

  Rose noticed that the towering blades of grass were in fact shiny with dew and that they seemed to be that particular shade of green one sees only in the early hours of the day.

  “Yeah. I guess,” she said, wanting to agree with this older, smarter boy.

  They walked in silence for a bit. The blades clattered against one another as they pushed them out of their path.

  “You wanna sing a song?”

  “A song?”

  “Sure, sometimes I do that. When I’m walking. You know any?”

  Rose knew lots of songs, but she was afraid Hugo might laugh at the ones she knew by heart. “If I Knew You Were Coming” and “How Much Is That Doggy in the Window” seemed too babyish to sing on an adventure.

  She shrugged.

  “You know this one?” His voice rose in a sweet trill across the grass: “When you’re alone and life is making you lonely, You can always go…”

  “Downtown!” Rose loved this song. Knew it from her time at the roller rink.

  Hugo smiled at her, excited she was catching on. “When you’ve got worries, all the noise and the hurry, Seems to help, I know…”

  “Downtown!” they shouted together.

  Hugo had a better hold on the lyrics than Rose, but she filled in the gaps with “dedums” and soon they were racing their way to the end.

  And you may find somebody kind to help and understand you

  Someone who is just like you and needs a gentle hand to

  Guide them along

  So maybe I’ll see you there

  We can forget all our troubles, forget all our cares

  So go downtown

  Things’ll be great when you’re downtown

  Don’t wait a minute more, downtown

  Everything’s waiting for you, downtown

  Hugo finished by grabbing Rose around the waist and swinging her in an open patch in the grass. Her bare feet swung out from beneath her and she clung to his chest, smiling up into his tucked chin.

  He tumbled sideways, and they both fell to the ground. Curled into fits of giggles. Rose rolled to her side and watched as he sat up. Brushing off his hands.

  “You’re funny, H
ugo.”

  “So are you, Rosie.”

  * * *

  Hugo spent the morning teaching her songs as they walked. “The Crocodile Rock.” “I Was Made to Love Her.” “The Love You Save May Be Your Own.”

  Rose absorbed the lyrics and the melodies as they kept pushing forward. She almost forgot what it was they were meant to be doing … the learning of songs seemed to be reason enough to be walking through the grass. Simply spending time with Hugo.

  But then the saw grass ended.

  They reached a clearing, which finally afforded them a view of the horizon. Castle City remained stubbornly the same size in the distance, yet they had been walking for hours.

  Hugo was quiet. Disappointed.

  “We need to get there. We need to rescue them.”

  Rose nodded. Serious in that way that only a child can be. Seriously serious.

  “Maybe we’re doing it wrong. Maybe we need to try to get there a different way.”

  * * *

  The different ways they tried led them through the landscape of the island, which they discovered was an island because they spent a great long while walking on the sand and ended up in precisely the location they had left.

  It was just after that journey that they found the Plank Orb bobbing awkwardly in a rocky cove.

  “What is that … thing?” asked Rose, not sure what to call it. “Some kind of boat?”

  Hugo waded out to it, careless of his pants getting wet.

  The “thing” rocked gently in the waves. It was clearly made out of wood, the kind of blockish two-by-fours one’s father picked up at the hardware store for home projects.

  But somehow these lengths had been curled around an open space, creating a kind of wooden bubble that rose and fell with the water. The whole thing was weathered and gray, splintery like an old fence.

  Hugo caught the edge of something on its top. Pulled it toward him.

  “There’s a way in!”

  Rose watched from the shore as he hefted himself up onto the contraption and disappeared into a door at its peak.

  She decidedly did not want to climb onto that thing. She decidedly did not want to follow Hugo into that darkness. Or get her skirt wet. Or any of it at all, thank you very much.