Second Chance Rose

by John Mc Caffrey

at Brandenville High. Richy would catch her between fourth and fifth period, whispering to her in the hallway.

  “Sally-babe, what time is it?” She would smile her best smile for him, thrusting one hip forward and lie telling him she didn’t know.

  “Party-time,” he would say, and grab her hand to slip out the gymnasium door to smoke a joint. They would get high during the day and occasionally make love after school in his car at the woods. Party-time.

  Some life huh Richy? Some great life. Thirty-five years old and still wishing I was back in high school. Still actually missing it. Party-time.

  It’s funny how life can get away from you when you aren’t looking. It’s even funnier how the hands of The Reaper can lay his icy grip on the back of your neck, all the while crooning softly that certain love song you seem to know so well.

  Party-time

  She raised the bottle, in a drunken toast to Richy and his back seat romance, and took a long drink. The bottle was almost empty. Pretty much the way she felt, empty. There had been a time when she was younger when she thought everything seemed okay. Everything was manageable and easy. It wasn’t that she had ever known peace as much as she simply didn’t have the turmoil that was in her life now. Whatever she once had, poured out long ago, like the cheap whiskey she drank.

  Thanks for the memories---

  What was the name of that song? Her grandfather used to listen to corny music like that when she was younger. Before she came to know party-time. Back when things were easy and uncomplicated.

  I miss you gramps, I miss you too grams, I’m sorry.

  Sorry for what though? It’s a little too late for apologies when you’re about to take a nosedive off some creeps building.

  Thanks for the memories

  She lifted the bottle to her lips one last time, drinking deeply, until it was empty.

  Its time now, you betcha it is. One last smoke, one last cigarette before the swan dive whadda’ya say? She giggled in the dark and set the bottle down on the ledge beside her. She pulled her pack out, closing her eyes as she did.

  “Party-time Richy” she whispered, as she pulled her lighter out.

  A sudden blast of wind pummeled her so hard she had to place a hand on the ledge to steady herself. With eyes still closed she once again cupped her hand around the lighter, inhaling deeply.

  Maybe I should leave a note.

  A note to who though? Her grandparents were dead, ditto on Linda. Her father she had never known, having fled when she was four and her mother a few years after that. She had no friends left, and now, she even had no apartment. She let the cigarette burn slowly between her fingers as the reality of what she was thinking took a firmer grip in her clouded mind. She had no one to leave a note to. There was no one who cared enough she could say goodbye to. Not even a cat. No one. Zip.

  Despair settled over her like a well-worn coat. “Screw this shit.”

  She smiled at the wreckage of her life, and flicked the cigarette away into the darkness. She stood up, swaying close to the edge as she tried to gain her balance.

  Thanks for the memories

  She tilted her head back, letting the snow gather on her face. She and Andy used to make snow angels in his backyard when they were kids. Back before she discovered party-time and had decided making snow angels was for kids. She missed Andy, and wished she had never left home, she would very much like to be able to make snow angels with him again, if only to see him once more.

  She whispered to the night sky, “I’m sorry Andy, really sorry. You were right all along. Making snow angels was cool. Sorry I laughed at you that night. If ever I needed you, I needed you these past few years. Sorry I didn’t call. Sorry I turned out to be such a loser. I’ve missed you.”

  The cold wind buffeted her from behind, as if wanting to help her decision. She lowered her head and looked off in the direction of the winos by the tracks. “Goodbye,” she whispered to them, since she had no one else to say it to. She closed her eyes and lifted her right foot, stepping off the ledge into the night. No tears now, no regrets, finally a solution. She finally had a plan, finally an end. As she stepped off the ledge, a popping, rippling sound made her open her eyes; her tears blurred her vision making the air in front of her appear to shimmer and churn. It looked as though the space in front of her parted; it twisted and heaved, swirled and eddied in the glacial wind like a vortex. She glanced at it, saw it, catalogued it as an oddity, and dismissed it all in the space of a second as her body followed her foot off into space. Her forward momentum however, was suddenly halted as someone grabbed her jacket from behind. The moment seemed frozen in time. She could feel the rush of the wind as she fell; yet she could also feel the tug on her jacket, holding her in place. She was falling, yet she stood on the ledge still. The two occurrences seemed to juxtapose, each happening simultaneously. Her head rolled back on her neck and she closed her eyes. She didn't turn to look at who held her; there was no shock of surprise, just a gentle frustration and a sense of momentum that made her nauseous.

  “Let me go.”

  “I can’t do that Rosey. Come back and sit with me a spell. I traveled a long way to get here.”

  She lowered her head, shifting her weight forward, trying to pull away from the hand that gripped her. Whoever it was, applied equal pressure effectively holding her in place.

  She turned her head, looking over her shoulder. It was a teenage boy. He pulled harder until she stepped back down on the roof almost losing her footing in the snow. She stared at him; his pale oval face seemed to glow in the bluish gloom of the rooftop. She couldn’t make out his features but something about him struck a chord of memory. The tilt of his head, the glasses creeping down his nose as well as the sound of his voice all brought back memories, but her mind was too befuddled to piece it together. Maybe some kid from here in the building she had passed in the hallway on the way to one of the artsy freak’s many parties.

  “What you doing out here?” she asked, trying not to slur her words.

  He moved his hand to her arm, guiding her to the ledge where she had sat moments ago.

  “Sit down,” the boy said.

  She did as he asked, his hand still gripping her arm as he knelt in front of her. She felt safe somehow, secure. As if he were the adult, and she the kid. He had an aura about him, a calmness and strength. It was comforting and familiar. She peered at him closely, but his features seemed to ripple and shimmer like the vortex she saw moments ago. His face hid in shadow from her and she decided she was too tired and too drunk to focus.

  “What you doing up here? Your parents’ll be worried,” she said, pulling her arm free.

  “Nah, I doubt that Rosey.”

  The more he spoke, the more familiar he sounded, and not from some kid in the building. “Who are you? And why do you keep calling me Rosey? My name’s Sally.” Rose was her middle name, but this boy couldn’t know that.

  “I always called you Rosey, don’t you remember?”

  Andy?

  She blinked her eyes rapidly, trying to peer at the kid in front of her. That was impossible; Andy was two years older than she was, he would be thirty-seven now. She tried to focus, but her eyes wouldn’t cooperate.

  “Who are you? What do you want?” she asked, fumbling for another cigarette as the kid knelt before her. She got the pack out but couldn’t get the lighter lit. The boy reached out, took it from her, and sparked it. The bright flame in the cold gloom momentarily blinded her. She hesitated, then bent forward and inhaled deeply while she studied the boy’s face. He was looking down at the flame in his hands as he began to speak, the faint glow under his face illuminating him in an eerie, eldritch way.

  “Sally Rose Chesterton,” he said, inserting her middle name. “I called you Rosey because that’s your middle name. It’s the name, within your name. Just like you have another, separate personality within. It’s what’s inside of you, what you keep hidden from the rest of the world. When you were with me, alone, you show
ed your inside. You were Rosey. When you were outside, with the rest of the world, you were Sally. You could’ve always been Rosey had you only given yourself a chance to be.”

  She stared at the boy, her cigarette forgotten in her hand as the echoes of the past were blown on the cold breeze of the city to rustle down the alleyways of her memories. That was pretty much what Andy had told her one night long ago as they sat on his back porch when she first told him she was leaving home with Richy for Los Angeles. Andy had lived in the house next to her grandparent’s, back in Brandenville when they were kids. Poor Andy, bespectacled and homely, who had told her many times he loved her. She’d been unable to even consider returning that love in anyway more than that of a friend. Andy, who had always been there when she needed him, whether to talk to in his backyard late at night when she came home too stoned to make it in the house, or to bail her out of jail when they became teenagers when her grandparent’s wouldn’t. He’d been her best friend, though at the time she was too young to even realize it.

  Andy.

  But Andy had to be a grown man now, not this young boy before her. “Who are you?”

  “You know who I am Rosey.”

  Impossible

  “Andy?”

  He nodded and handed her back the lighter as he pushed his thick-framed glasses back up on the bridge of his nose. She shook her head as if it might dissolve the hallucination before her. It