The Mythic Koda Rose

by Jennifer Nissley

  “Have a nice day, Miss Grady? It’ll take about—oh, thirty minutes to get to your mother’s office.”

  Heart pounding, I look out at colorless Fifth Avenue, the sidewalk choked with kids waiting for rides. Some cross the street, into Central Park, which isn’t nearly as impressive at ground level as it seems from eighty-five floors up. A mass of fog and dead trees.

  Queens. The pounding fills my throat, my eyes, getting louder and louder the longer we idle. Queens, Queens, Queens…

  The car noses forward. Another couple feet and we’ll join the clog, Mom-bound. I’ll totally lose my nerve.

  “Hold on,” I say.

  He stomps the brake.

  My day sucked, I want to shout when his eyes skitter back into the mirror. But as my mouth opens, I think better of it. Too off-script. Instead, I take a breath. My voice wobbles only a little when I recite the address off my phone.

  * * *

  A silent crawl through traffic on Fifth. More gray, tangled streets, so packed with traffic that we make it to the bridge right as the sun flames out. While we cross, the entire island of Manhattan becomes visible along the horizon, skyscrapers like the dips and peaks of a heart monitor. Honestly, it would be breathtaking, if anything in New York deserved that label. Staring at the sunset, the restless gray river, I take deep breaths, one after the other. Willing my chest to loosen.

  Crossing the bridge is like getting squeezed through the guts of a giant slug. Driver maneuvers from lane to narrow lane with a stoicism that suggests he’s about to murder me. The outer boroughs must offer some prime options when it comes to dumping bodies, but as we near the end of the bridge, an exit pops up for ASTORIA BLVD. We take it.

  I switch to the middle seat to make my view more panoramic. No skyscrapers here. Just three- and four-story buildings made of yellowish brick, interspersed with more modern-looking glass facades. Some truly monstrous scaffolding looms ahead. I lean over the console to investigate.

  “Subway,” Driver explains. As we pass beneath it, a train rumbling by sends a whole new round of earthquakes through me.

  “I thought the subway was underground,” I say, blinking up at the sunroof.

  “Some lines. Others are elevated.”

  We turn off the noisy boulevard, up a short hill. The sunset turns caustic. Without my sunglasses, I feel more than see tiny front yards, all Christmas’ed out with lights and glowing plastic Marys. “Oh,” I say.

  It’s gotten dark, and I’ve counted five more Marys by the time we pull up to the curb. We’ve been on this street for a while, and it looks more like Manhattan than any bit of Astoria I’ve glimpsed so far. Shops and too many people. Only the brick buildings and tacky decorations haven’t changed. I peer through murky street light until I find a sign that says FAZES CAFÉ, the letters wrapped around a fat white moon.

  “This it?” Driver sounds doubtful. I never actually explained why I made him bring me out here. I’m not sure I know myself. While the car idles, my eyes jerk to the sidewalk just beyond the doorway. The same place—it must be—where Sadie stood in the video.

  Anyway, my motivations are none of Driver’s business. “Yeah.” I reach hesitantly for my backpack.

  Fine. I’ll be fine. Chances are she’s not even here. “Yeah,” I repeat, stifling a burp. “Call you when I’m done, okay?” The locks release. Chirp.

  The café door says PUSH, not PULL. Embarrassing, but I get there. Warm air flushes into my face like dough rising.

  Two things.

  First, Astoria gives way too many shits about Christmas.

  Second, Sadie isn’t here.

  I know automatically. It’s not a big café. Besides the counter with its row of barstools, there aren’t many places to sit, only a sofa, and mismatched armchairs in upchuck florals. Any remaining room has been hijacked by that station all cafés have, where you add sugar and cream, and an art installation. Scrap-metal reindeer, their antlers looped in white lights. Music thumps. Anonymous EDM with fractured vocals, beats that drop. Two girls sit on the sofa, leaning over the same laptop. I try not to stare at them, their knees almost touching, as I move stiltedly toward the counter. A print of my father broods by the espresso maker, but in a weird way I was expecting that and don’t make eye contact. That’s the first rule of encountering Mack Grady in the wild.

  The guy at the register has plugs I could shove a fist through. He slides me a Poland Spring from the cooler and asks if I want anything else.

  Yeah, I would say, if I was any good at this. You know this woman? Mack’s ex? I’d play him the video, saved hours earlier on my phone. But it’d be stupid to just give myself up like that—he obviously doesn’t recognize me. He pricks an eyebrow, waiting.

  “Um…” Only one latte flavor on the chalkboard menu. Called latte. I point, and he proceeds to take steaming the milk very seriously.

  The girls are still giggling when I perch on a scruffy orange armchair, juggling my bottled water and latte. No harm waiting. I have plenty of time, hours and hours, until Mom leaves her office. What else am I going to do until she gets home? Homework? I carefully pry off the lid and blow, my breath sending shivers through the heart drawn in the foam.

  I’m a little relieved Sadie isn’t here.

  Like, what if she was? I didn’t practice introductions, don’t have a clue what I would say to her. Hi, Sadie—real name? Approximation?—you don’t know me, but my father—cheated on you with my mom—was in your band, and… frankly, I’m still kind of obsessed with how she flipped off that pazzo. Would my father have done that?

  I sip the latte. Swallow. I’m not facing his picture, but Mack’s presence, that sublime smile, makes the foam clot in my throat. There’s this interview he gave back when Sheer Folly debuted at number one, special because there’s a transcript and a voice recording—one of only a handful where he isn’t singing. Most of the interview’s about music stuff, recording, totally boring, but there’s this part toward the end where the interviewer asks how Mack feels about their upcoming tour, and he sort of laughs and says, Well, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t freaking out. And that’s always stuck with me. It’s just so honest, a giant fuck off to anybody who’d judge him for being scared. And then he got over that fear. He must have, right? He toured the world. He sang for thousands of screaming people, night after night.

  Anyway—the voice recording is a start, but not enough. I want to know what his eyes did, his hands and shoulders and mouth, when he said it. I want to know where you get that kind of courage.

  So if Sadie walked in right now, I guess we could start there.

  “Oh my God, no! Give me the computer.” The girls on the couch wrestle for control of the laptop. “Charlotte, I swear…”

  What does Sadie think about when she sees my father’s picture? That interview? Something else? Walking past him seems too cold, even for an ex. She could smile. Press her fingertips to his lips like Lindsay does with Peter.

  “Stop!”

  My phone’s in my pocket. I fish it out, on a mission.

  “You stop!”

  Sadie’s real name is Sarah. Or was until ninth grade, when she made my father give her a new one. Mack and Sarah sounded dumb. Recent photos of her are pretty elusive, but in the blurry shot I find from 2010, she doesn’t have a dimple either. Just big, dark eyes. A stampede of brown curls. I close Wikipedia but hold on to my phone, turning the syllables over in my head. Sa-die. Sar-ah. For a birth name, it’s not so rough. Definitely not as bad as Mackenzie. Or Marianne Blackwell, the person I never think of as Mom, even when we used to visit her hometown and her parents—my grandparents—refused to call her anything but. Maybe when Sadie sees my father, she doesn’t think about him, or touch him at all. Maybe she pulls a Mom and stares straight through him. Exactly like she might do to me.

  Time to get out of here. I zip my phone into my backpack. Down the latte, pitch the ambiguously recyclable cup, and when I get back to my chair, the computer’s on the floor and the girls
are kissing.

  Kissing kissing.

  Making out.

  My face flames. It’s a truly brazen display of PDA. I don’t know where to put my eyes, or hands, so I settle for lowering myself back onto the chair, the Poland Spring bottle throttled between my knees. The girls keep kissing. I can hear this even though I’m not looking at them anymore, hear the slide of their tongues and murmurs of their jackets brushing together and the wide-open surprise of Register Guy, who is so clearly trying not to stare. The girls part, and the one called Charlotte laughs, which guts me. A thousand little hooks. “Wow,” she says. “Megan.”

  Eyes stinging, I study my jeans, sawing a thumbnail along the grain of denim. There’s less than ten feet between us. I could say something. I picture myself getting up and tapping Megan’s shoulder, disgust and annoyance and spit on her face when she finally looks at me. Excuse me, I’d say. They’d think I was a total homophobe. Sorry—how do you get a girl to say your name like that?

  I push out of the chair. The water bottle clonks to the floor, but they don’t notice. Of course they don’t. They’re Charlotte and Megan. They’re kissing. And I’m wearing a penguin beanie.

  On the sidewalk, I nearly lose it. One dry bark of a sob, but I get control of myself quickly because I’m seventeen, not seven, and someday I’ll be way older, seeing ages my father never saw. Twenty-two. That would’ve been a big one for him, I bet, even though I can’t really fathom being that old. I can’t fathom turning eighteen, but it’s going to happen, as unstoppably as the feature. KR GRADY blared across ROCK magazine, still unwhispered.

  CHAPTER 8

  IT’S MASOCHISTIC. I KNOW THAT. But when Driver picks me up the following afternoon, I make him take me to Astoria again. A week. That’s all I’ll give myself. One week, and if Sadie doesn’t show… I’ll stop. Forget a conversation. I think I just need to see her. Without a sighting, empirical evidence, you can’t prove anything is real. Not that Sadie is small and wild and once shared a stage with my father. Not that she knows my name.

  Until then, I have lattes for company. This ache in my ribs.

  If I’m acting as off as I feel, Mom doesn’t notice. I’m in bed before she gets home. This morning, she wakes me up slipping into my room. I just don’t let her know it. My face stays slack, my lids don’t flutter, when she kisses me goodbye. A distracted peck right between the eyes.

  Maybe I don’t seem that gloomy. It’s kind of nice having somewhere to go that isn’t Mom’s office or home. Fazes is way cooler than our apartment—twisted-metal reindeer aside—and EDM only plays when Register Guy, with the plugs, works. Otherwise, it’s classical. White noise with piano. Notebook balanced on my knee, eye pinned to the door, I attempt calc equations, conjugate Latin verbs. Turns out “Fazes” is the perfect name for this place. I bob along on its tides. Deliveries arrive. After-school crowds disperse. Megan comes in without Charlotte and buys a muffin. Lemon poppyseed.

  By Friday—three days without a Sadie sighting—my rib aches only add to the ambience. I read more about her. Articles from when my father was alive. Mack and Sadie crashed black-tie parties. They stuck their tongues out for pictures and trashed hotel rooms. We’re talking thousands of dollars’ worth of damage, still unpaid. Sadie smeared her lipstick on purpose. My father tried stuffing himself into her clothes.

  Hunting for tales of her current exploits proves futile—her social media presence is nonexistent. No Twitter, Snapchat, Insta… I’d be impressed if it wasn’t so irritating. Blog posts refer to her as reclusive, a hermit, but if she’s not online, then how am I supposed to figure out where she is, when she’ll be here? It’s like she’s ghosted the world.

  On Saturday, though, I don’t know—I just have a feeling she’s craving a macchiato or something. I forsake my orange armchair for a beige floral with retro potential, right by the window. Scanning for her on the brightly lit street, I try to practice. I imagine what I would say to her, if a sighting really wasn’t enough. Hi, Sadie. My pulse thumps in my fingertips. The roof of my mouth. Hi, Sadie… A pigeon sitting on a parking meter tilts its head at me, cooing.

  Mom’s still at the office when I get home. Big surprise. I change into pj’s and starfish across her bed. On the ride back to Manhattan, I was inert. A science word that means “numb with cold and disappointment,” but now, buried in Mom’s pillows, I start grinning. It’s fine that Sadie never showed. Really, truly fine. Tomorrow’s her last chance, and then Mom has some time off. An entire Sunday afternoon with one of those fancy cards on it. Reserved—for us.

  * * *

  Saturday, I’m up early. Mom’s first meeting isn’t until eight, which means we get to have breakfast together: PB&J smoothies blended with cooked oatmeal. Almost as good as bread. When Driver returns from dropping her off, I’ve been itching in the lobby for forty minutes.

  “Awake already?” he asks as I climb in.

  “Sleep is overrated.” Scientists who claim teenagers need extra should hit me up.

  The drive seems different today, even though we take the same streets, cross the same bridge. The river is calmer, the sky almost offensively blue and bright until I realize what’s happening: I’ve never seen Astoria in the daytime. The revelation leaves me tingling. As we make our way down the street Fazes is on—Steinway, I learned it’s called, like the pianos—jerking to a stop every ten feet for a light, I put my penguin beanie on, jittering. “Isn’t there a shortcut?” I demand. Driver doesn’t answer. Actually, he rolls his eyes. I’m positive about this, practically feel them rocking in their sockets at me, Mariah Black’s spoiled daughter. Whatever. I rub at the grease smudge my forehead left on the window. Three blocks.

  Three blocks and we’ll be there.

  Except—construction. A chasm clawed into the asphalt just to jam us up. It takes five minutes—literally five, I count—for a worker in an orange hat to guide us around it. Then another stoplight. More construction. Some men driving a beer truck urgently decide to start unloading, right in the middle of the street. I’m going to scream.

  And then I see her.

  Leather jacket. Black jeans. Waiting at the crosswalk.

  “Stop!”

  Driver pulls over so abruptly he must think I’m about to barf. Maybe I am. The light turns red, and I crane my neck as the herd passes in front of us, this impossible stampede of peacoats and knit hats and scarves until—there. It is her. Unmistakably. Same sunglasses, even. I scramble out, street-side, and almost get nailed by a bicycle. “Sorry!” I say to the cyclist. Also Driver, who’s bellowing for me to get back in. His insurance must not cover this. “Sorry, um”—crap, I can’t lose her—“call you whenever.”

  “Miss Grady!”

  I bolt across the street.

  Sadie went right. Right? Yes. Safely on the sidewalk, I hang back, wanting a good ten feet of strangers and concrete between us as she saunters down Steinway, fingertips twitching against her thigh. I hesitate. Photos didn’t indicate sauntering. Also her hair’s not what I prepared for, a mess of dreadlocks, but besides that, she’s tiny and cool, my father’s ex. My stomach boils. I can’t tell if I’m breathing air or glass.

  But I follow her.

  In movies this looks easy. Pick your target, keep her in your sights. Plus I’m tall. Like, mortifyingly, although suddenly being a girl periscope isn’t so bad, considering Sadie treats walking like a game of freaking limbo. She swerves around oblivious couples, skirts children—a man cuts her off, carrying a chair over his head, and instead of stopping to politely seethe like I would’ve, she squirts right under his armpit. “Excuse me,” I mutter, edging past him. “Excuse me!”

  Five-foot nothing has its own advantages, apparently.

  One block down, I start to get the hang of it. My muscles loosen. As the crowds thin, I creep close enough that I could say something to her, if I really wanted to. Hi, Sadie. Her white-girl dreads are fuzzy. The leather jacket sheepskin-lined, worn gray at the collar. We pass a Duane Reade pharmacy. Dueling bodeg
as offering discount cell phone plans. PAY AS U GO! NO MONTHLY FEES!!!! She ducks into one them and reemerges a few minutes later, smacking a pack of Newports against her palm. A smoker, then. Like my father. Of course. Tucked behind the glass case of a bus stop, I watch her root around for a lighter, cup the flame.

  Smoking slows her down. Makes her more contemplative somehow. She wanders through this pop-up stall selling Christmas trees. REAL TREES, the sign insists. GROWN IN NEW JERSEY. Sadie strokes a garland while I sidle up to a nearby wreath display, my view of her netted by my eyelashes but still the best yet. Photos don’t count, and the video footage was too grainy to capture her rings and gazillion ear piercings. The delicate curve of her neck. She turns and I duck, burying my nose in a wreath. Act natural. Act. Natural. Even in my panic, I smell Christmas morning. Gingerbread and spicy balsam.

  “Watch the smoke, sweetie,” grumbles the vendor, and Sadie quirks her mouth at him, like maybe she isn’t his sweetie.

  Outside Fazes, she stops again, but the place is packed. Worse than packed—the line is practically out the door. Her brow puckers like it did in the video.

  She dallies on the curb so long, finishing her cigarette, that I pop a Tums into my mouth. Crunch it to oblivion.

  Theoretically, this should be enough. That’s it, Sadie spotted, time to get on with my life, the Everest of homework I’ve got waiting for me. Except thinking of homework only yanks me back to my disastrous first day. Koda Rose Grady lingering beneath the school banner. Stranded in the hallway, classroom, cafeteria, with boiling heartburn and nothing to say. Introducing myself to Sadie—Sadie freaking Pasquale—won’t go any differently. Get out of here, this voice whispers. Stop embarrassing yourself. I back up—

  Into a man I didn’t realize was standing behind me. “Sorry,” I mutter. No problem, he says. And then he crouches to help a little girl—his daughter, I’m guessing—open her juice box. Strawberry apple.