“I got it,” he said, but still he was uncertain how to act. What to think about all of this. It made him sick thinking he might’ve done something to hurt her as she implied. It was like the comment she claimed he made, but didn’t remember, about her ghostly appearance–only much, much worse. All he could do was listen, find out what happened, and feel ridiculously useless.
“It happened at the end of the summer, the day you and your family were leaving Cloud Hill to return to your home in Alabama.” Her eyes were steady on his, but the pupils had dilated, leaving more black than the gray he had always enjoyed seeing. “You were fifteen. I had just turned fourteen. I don’t know if you even remember me from back then–other than that I was the geeky daughter of the village hippies who smoked pot on their front porch and made jewelry from polished stones and other found objects.”
“You were fourteen? I thought you were younger than that. You seemed so…I don’t know, younger.” She blinked a few times, but said nothing. He couldn’t tell if that information bothered her or she was just processing it.
“I guess, I can understand that. You were going to high school. I was entering eighth grade. We’re only a year difference, but middle school to high school seems like a bigger difference.”
He nodded. “The bottom line is that I remember you, Aurora.” Why was it so hard for her to believe that? Did he make her feel unmemorable when they were kids? “I might not remember every detail of when we were kids, or every time we spoke, but I’ve been remembering more and more about you since spending time with you over the last few days.” He shrugged, recalling a new memory of her, and his heart broke free a little from the tension squeezing it since discovering she’d been harmed. “I remember you wearing a ring of purple, red, and yellow wildflowers on your head, like a headband. I also remember liking to talk with you.” He sucked in a breath. “You were so tiny. Your clothes were so big. You looked fragile but really pretty.” He smiled. “I also remember that you never hung out with anyone. You were always alone.”
Tears sprang into her eyes, but didn’t fall. “I’m glad to know I wasn’t invisible.”
“Oh, Aurora, you were never invisible…”
She held up her hand. “Let me just tell you what happened.”
Once again, he nodded.
“That last day you were in Cloud Hill you were going around town saying good-bye to everyone. I watched you go into the inn, the general store, the bait shop, and a few other places. You were laughing and joking with a half dozen of your friends who were tagging along.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“Well, I do. That day is crystal clear to me.” She looked toward the waterfall and remained silent for a few seconds. He couldn’t imagine how horrible it was for her to have to recount what she’d been through. “I was feeling really sad that day. My parents had just blindsided me, announcing we were moving to a reservation in Montana so they could study Native American Mysticism—their latest kick. I didn’t want to leave the school where my art teacher had taken a special interest in my sketches. I didn’t want to go someplace that did things even weirder than my parents did. And, I didn’t want to move away from the place where the boy I thought I was in love with visited his grandparents from time to time.” She looked at Daniel. “You found me in the park sketching…and crying. I don’t know what you told your friends, but you said something to them and walked away from them to come to talk to me. Do you remember that?”
Crap. He didn’t. He had a visual image of her sitting in the park, but he remembered her being there a lot. Or it seemed it was a lot. “No. I’m sorry, I don’t remember.”
She looked up at the waterfall again. “They headed toward the General Store. Maybe they went there.” She shrugged and her hood fell back off of her head in puddle over her shoulder. “Well, we talked for about twenty minutes, you giving me a pep talk for most of it. I hung on every word you said. I thought you were so wise and worldly. You were a musician, after all. Musicians were held in very high esteem in my family. Besides that, you were an older man—even if only by one year.” Her cheeks blushed a pretty pink. “As pathetic as it sounds, I used to hide behind the big cottonwood to listen to you as you played and sang with your friends.”
“You should’ve joined us, Aurora. I would’ve liked that.”
She laughed softly. “No, you wouldn’t have. You were the popular guy. I was the…well, misfit who wore flowers in her hair whose parents were potheads.”
“Was I that much of a cliché? The popular kid who was cruel to the kid who was a little different. Shallow?”
“Sometimes.” She said it with such sincerity it stung. “Sometimes you were sweet and attentive. I wouldn’t have thought I was in love with you if you were rotten all of the time. But what I know for certain is that your actions that day nearly got me killed.”
Daniel stood and began to walk nowhere and everywhere. “Hell, Aurora. I can’t imagine I ever would’ve intended for anything bad to happen to you.” He shook his head. “I always thought you were a sweet, pretty girl and I thought you were so talented, drawing pictures in your sketchbook.”
“Intentional or careless. The end was the same for me.”
“Who hurt you, Aurora? What did I do that you think made it happen?”
“Sit down.” She motioned to the place where he’d been sitting before. Daniel sat. “So, we were together at the park. I was crying, upset about my having to move and you leaving. I felt so lonely…alone. You held my hand and listened to me. I don’t know why, but when I was cried out, and sat there with nothing more to say, you leaned in and kissed me on my cheek.” She touched the side of her face with the tips of her fingers.
“I remember kissing you,” he said, his throat tightening with emotion. “I thought your skin was so soft.” I also remember thinking I had never seen anyone as unhappy as you.
“Do you remember that I kissed you…on your lips?” She sucked in a breath.
He nodded. “Yeah, I remember.” He also remembered that he was afraid he was going to make her feel even worse than she did when he held her away after she kissed him…and that he had actually liked her kissing him.
“You didn’t kiss me back,” she continued, her voice flat, absent of emotion. “It was only after I thought back on it that I realized that you had gripped my shoulders and kept me at arms distance away from you. I was a silly, naive girl. My heart had been racing too fast, my head spinning too much. You were the first boy I ever kissed–who kissed me, even if it was just on the cheek. I can tell you, it was totally humiliating when I did figure it out in the days that followed.”
“I’m sorry. I probably could’ve handled it better but I was shocked that you kissed me. That I kissed you. Most of all, I was shocked that I liked it.” Daniel touched the back of her hand. She didn’t pull away. There was such relief in her not rejecting him, that he felt tense muscles in his shoulder ease a little.
“Two of the boys walked up then,” she continued. “I knew one, Joe Sawyer. He had always been nice enough to me, offering a wave now and again as we passed in the street. He was laughing with the other boy, looking at you. There was something in the way they looked at you, like they were sharing an inside joke. That boy wasn’t from Cloud Hill, or I would’ve known him. I figured he was just a school friend or a tourist in town who was hanging out with kids his age.” She shrugged. “Maybe I was paranoid or overly sensitive to you all laughing, but I thought I was the joke. It wasn’t the first time I was the punch-line to kids’ jokes. Still, the little girl in me who’d just kissed the magical prince didn’t want to believe it. In my illusory world, you and I were already boyfriend-girlfriend.”
“I never wanted to lead you on…”
She shook her head. “You didn’t. I later learned in a few phycology classes in college that I was a typical teenager having an identity or maybe, even a romantic crush. Admiration or attraction, it mostly has more to do with fantasy than reality.” She shrug
ged. “So, it has a name in the textbooks. Played out in life, it’s dangerous.” She looked at him a moment before continuing. “A few of the other kids of Cloud Hill that I did know joined us and…” She swallowed hard, the emotions clear in her eyes. “They were laughing too, exchanging glances with each other and you. You moved farther away from me. You didn’t even look at me. It hurt. I was the outcast.”
“I should’ve been more sensitive to your feelings. Honestly, though, I don’t remember that or caring so much about what my friends thought that I wasn’t aware of your hurt and embarrassment. Hell, I always prided myself that I was never that butt-head teenager that succumbed to peer pressure.”
“Butt-head?” She laughed softly, despite the seriousness of what they were talking about. “Did we even use that slang when we were kids?”
“Probably so.” A light gust of wind rushed through the trees. Clumps of snow fell from the bare aspens and dark green pines. Aurora put her hood on her head before speaking again.
“Well, eventually you all went off together and I was left alone with my sketchpad.”
“Didn’t I invite you to join us?”
She nodded. “Yes. You did, but when Joe and that other boy started to punch you in the arm, teasing you about liking me, I declined.” Daniel started to interrupt her again with questions, but she held up her hand. “I’ll answer any questions you have after I tell you everything.” He nodded. “About an hour later, I was still in the park, sketching the squirrels, feeling melancholy. That boy I didn’t know returned. He told me that you had sent him to get me to join everyone for a farewell party by the waterfall. He told me that you said it would be a farewell party for me too. That you really wanted me there.”
“He brought you here?” Damn it. His stomach began to pitch. He felt sicker and sicker the more he heard. Who the hell was this kid?
She sighed. “Yes. As you must’ve surmised, he was lying about the party. But even if he made up the party, he knew I was leaving town too. You had to be the one to tell him that I was moving from Cloud Hill. I hadn’t told anyone else.”
His heart sunk in his chest. Had he done that? It was plausible he had. He’d probably shared the news he’d just learned, that Aurora was moving away. That boy she didn’t know had used that information to manipulate her. Still, how it happened he didn’t know for certain. He didn’t remember this boy, or talking to him, or talking to his own friends for that matter. Yet, looking at her now, sitting still with so many emotions in her eyes, another memory settled in his mind. One of Aurora.
“I remember something about when I left that day,” he offered. “It wasn’t long after you kissed me. I was sitting in the back of my parents’ van with my brothers as we drove past the park on our way out of Cloud Hill. I saw you sitting on the yellow slide, looking at something and drawing in your pad. I remember how the sun cut through the clouds and landed on your long hair. I thought it looked like your hair was painted with sunshine.” He took both of her hands into his now. “That’s a twenty-year-old memory that still leaves an impression on me.”
“I don’t know what to say to that.” She shook her head. Her brows furrowed and she looked away. She looked confused. He wanted her to believe him. “I guess the problem here, Daniel, is that I have a twenty-year-old memory of you that still leaves an impression too.”
First, they needed to know what was broken before they could fix it. Big’s advice echoed in his head again. “Tell me what happened next, after he brought you up here.”
She folded her arms over her chest, against the chill in the air. “Once that guy got me up here, and I saw that no one else was there, I tried to leave. He insisted I had to stay because you had told him that I liked to kiss boys and do other things with them. He said horrible things about my parents too…how they were freaks and so was I. It was awful. He knew we were moving onto an Indian reservation and mocked me for that too.” She swallowed, looked directly in Daniel’s eyes. There was so much anger and hurt in them it felt like a knife to his heart. “He could only know that if you told him…like you told him that I liked to kiss boys and do other things with them.”
“Aurora.” He said her name like an apology. Had he told his friends something she thought she’d told him in confidence? Maybe. But, he wouldn’t have lied and made up things about her being wild and promiscuous. He wouldn’t have said something that lead to…what?
Attacked. Nearly raped. Left to die
“He threw me to the ground…” Her voice caught and Daniel ground his teeth against the anger building inside of him. Anger that had no outlet. It rotted his gut, burned his eyes and ears, and turned his muscles into stone.
“He pinned me down,” she said, continuing as Daniel tried to get his anger under control. “I fought him like I was a wild beast. God, I don’t know how I did it, he was so much bigger than me, but I fought and fought and fought.” Her voice turned breathless, sounding like she was in the middle of a battle again. “I swear I don’t know what I was doing or what I did that had him rolling away, screaming in pain, but when he did, I ran. I ran fast and hard…I didn’t know where I was running, but I ran up the trail. Higher and higher. All I knew was that I needed distance between me and that vile human being…and maybe the others who might be coming. I thought that since you said the awful things about me to this horrible person, you must’ve told the others. They would be after me too.”
She rubbed her gloved hands on her lap.
“I ran until the trail ended and because I was running so fast and recklessly, I ran right off the edge of the mountain. The ground sloped away from me, saving me from death, as I tumbled down the mountain. I have no idea how long I crashed into trees and rocks and bushes…but I did. Then, the ground suddenly disappeared beneath me and I fell into a pit. Only it wasn’t a pit. It was an abandoned mine.”
“Holy crap.”
“Either from the fall into the mine shaft or tumbling down the side of the mountain, I had fractured my leg and dislocated my shoulder. I lay there in the dark mine, in a cloud of hundred-year-old dust…unable to move…to cry.” She shivered. “A slant of light from where I tore through the shrubs to fall into the mine kept me from lying in complete darkness. I remember watching the light move across some etchings on the wall, down the floor until it disappeared. Two days, I watched the light shift in that tomb, with only those strange hand-drawn marks on the wall to keep my mind occupied…to keep me from going mad.”
“Are those the drawings you spoke of that inspired your thesis on murals?”
“Yes.” Her voice broke, again. The hell with not touching her. He needed to touch her. He lifted her and settled her on his lap against his chest.
“Big found me,” she said, her body stiff in his arms. “Over two days after I fell into the mine, he found me.”
“Big? Was the entire town looking for you?”
“No. Everyone thought I had run away because I didn’t want to move to Montana. Everyone except that boy, whom I never saw again. He knew the truth, but didn’t say anything. Big decided to search the woods around the trails just in case I hadn’t run away. He went beyond the marked trails and found the broken tree branches and shrubs where I had fallen over the side. He followed the disturbed landscape…” She inhaled deeply. “I was so relieved and hysterical when I saw Big peering into the mine, I poured out the whole story to him.”
“Did the police arrest that kid?”
She shook her head, reaching up to hold the hood when it threatened to fall. “No. Big wanted to, tried to talk me into it. Over and over again. I was too embarrassed. I didn’t even tell my parents. I’d have rather died than let anyone know what happened. I was foolish and headstrong and young. I knew no one would believe me. It would be that boy’s word against mine. I made Big promise to keep my secret. He reluctantly agreed.”
“He should’ve found that rat-bastard-kid and kicked the sh….”
“No.” She climbed off his lap and stood. He felt her movin
g away from him both literally and figuratively. “I wanted it all to end right there in the mine.”
He stood next to her, gently gripping her shoulders. As he hugged her to him, her hood slipped off her head and he reached for it, intending to put it back in place. Instead, he yanked off his glove and gently stroked his hand along her silky hair. “You survived this traumatic thing that no one should ever have to go through. You are a strong, wonderful woman. You didn’t let this defeat you. You’ve accomplished so much with your life –have a lot more to accomplish too.” Aurora sucked in a breath. It broke his heart to know that she had gone through this. That someone could’ve been so cruel to that gentle, adorable young girl with the colorful wildflowers in her hair.
“Yes, I survived it. I don’t think about it often, but when I do, I still wonder why,” she whispered, stepping away from him and looking at him with eyes so icy, he feared he’d never see the spark of laughter in them again. “Why did you tell him to come and get me, Daniel?”
He shook his head. “What? I would never do that. Never.”
“But you don’t remember that for sure, do you?”
He exhaled hard. “No. I just know I wouldn’t have…”
“But you laughed. You let the others think I was a joke. A nothing.”
Could that be true? Had he laughed with the others to impress them? “I was a stupid, jerk teenager, Aurora. Most teenagers are brain-dead, you know that. Even so, I don’t think I would’ve been mean-spirited. You must’ve misinterpreted…”
“I don’t think so. I know that, at the very least, you talked about me to your friends. How else would they have known I was feeling lonely and sad? That I was moving to an Indian reservation in Montana. And, as he told me, you said that I kissed you and you let me because you felt sorry for me.”
He shook his head. God, he wished he could remember what the hell he’d said two decades ago. It hadn’t been important enough for him to remember, that was true. For that he felt like a complete jerk.
The Nutcracker Reimagined: A Collection of Christmas Tales Page 47