A Constellation of Roses

by Miranda Asebedo

  “At an angle,” he reminds me when I attempt to fasten my seat belt. “I won’t help this time. You’re obviously an expert.”

  “So true,” I agree, getting it clicked in on the third try. “What are you up to?” I ask in an attempt to make conversation as he puts the truck in first gear. The class ring hanging on a necklace from the rearview mirror swings wildly as the truck lurches into motion.

  “Going to deliver some pies for your aunts. Mia texted to let me know she had a few tonight and could use the extra hand.”

  “Ah,” I reply. “Not needed on the farm tonight?”

  “There’s always work to be done on a farm. But Mia pays cash, and my dad pays in pats on the back. Something about pride in my family’s work and all that.”

  “Cash is good,” I agree. “Hard to spend pride.”

  “Yeah, but I still love it. Working on the farm.”

  “So, is that what you’re going to do after you graduate?” I ask. “Run your family’s farm?” I don’t think a lot about the future. I guess I always thought I’d be drifting, sort of like my mom.

  “Well, that’s the plan now.”

  “Now?” I prompt as he pulls into a parking spot in front of the shop.

  “It was supposed to be Jesse’s future. Not mine. He was the oldest, so he was going to inherit the farm. Which is sort of ironic,” he says, tapping the steering wheel absently as the engine of the truck rumbles, “because he never wanted the farm. I did.”

  “So now you get what you wanted.”

  “I do.” His voice is dark. “Lucky me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “So you know all about me. What about you?” he asks, shutting off the engine. “Why did you come here, to Rocksaw, to live with your aunts? You blew off Adalyn when she asked today, and I get that—you two aren’t super close. But you won’t even tell me? Fellow pie-delivery veteran?”

  He’s right. I ask hard questions, but I rarely answer them. “My mom’s gone.”

  “Like, she died? Was she sick, or in an accident or something?”

  “No. Like, one day she got up and said she was going to get a pack of cigarettes, and she never came back. She didn’t call. Nothing. She just left.”

  There’s a strained silence. It feels good to say it out loud, though. To finally tell someone what happened without making it an awkward joke, like I did with Mia in the kitchen Sunday night. I feel like Jasper might understand. I don’t know if others would. Ember has never pried. Truthfully, I don’t know if I could ever tell Ember. Ember with her adoring mother. How could someone like Ember ever understand what it means to be abandoned?

  Two women leave the shop, their arms full of pink carryout boxes. We watch them, neither of us hazarding a guess on whether they’ve got Bracing Blueberry or Cherish Cherry.

  “Why do people do that?” he asks, his hands sliding from the wheel. I know he’s not talking about the women with their pies. “Why do they leave?”

  I shrug. “Maybe she planned it. Or maybe she got into her crappy car and just kept driving because she felt like it.” I put my hand on my arm, over where my scars are hidden beneath the sleeve of my sweater. “The police checked the morgues. Hospitals. They checked everywhere after social services brought me in. But they never found her.”

  Another long pause.

  “I’m sorry,” Jasper says finally. “I just wondered if you knew.”

  “It doesn’t matter, does it? She left. All that matters is that she left, and I’m still here.”

  Jasper nods and unfastens his seat belt, his face somehow haunted again. “Hold on. Remember, you’ll have to slide out this way or I can come around and open your door from the outside.”

  “I can slide out,” I say, grateful for the change in subject. Jasper grabs his backpack and gets out first, and I slide across the bench seat and follow him out his door.

  The inside of the McCabe Bakery & Tea Shoppe is warm and bright, the brass chandeliers casting a golden glow over the crowded tables. It smells of rosehip tea and blueberry today. Mia is standing at the register. “Did you get what you needed?” she asks me, her voice too cheerful. Even though Ember told her I was running an errand, she was still afraid.

  I nod. I don’t know how long it will take to convince her and Auntie that I’m not going to run again. I can scarcely believe it myself. But I can do this. I can survive two years here. Even though I’d willingly accepted the ride from Jasper, I feel a small sliver of regret that I told him about Mom leaving. Maybe that was a mistake. And something about his face tells me that my story touched something in him that hurts, too.

  “And you brought Jasper back with you!” Mia exclaims, noticing him behind me. “How lovely! I’ve got more deliveries than I can handle. Two Ardent Apples to the principal again. Apparently, Auntie made some sort of deal with him. And a Bracing Blueberry to Maria Sanchez, and a chocolate cake to Mrs. Jindal. Six pumpkin pies to Lottie Peretti to take to bingo. I can’t tell you how much of a relief it is to have you tonight. I’ve got a special order for Mitzi’s sixty-fifth birthday cake, and the Silvermans are having a bat mitzvah, and I’m up to my eyeballs in pink cupcakes with strawberry cream filling.”

  “I’m here to help,” Jasper says, giving her that familiar charming grin. I’m beginning to realize that it’s only real about half the time. That’s when it pulls at the scar. The other times, when it’s only his mouth moving, those smiles are fake, some show he’s putting on for all the people in this town who adore him. “Let me load up the truck and I’ll hit the road.”

  “You’re a treasure, Jasper.”

  She hurries to the kitchen to get the deliveries, and Auntie comes out to the dining room. “It’s almost six o’clock. Go see if anyone needs anything to go.” She makes a waving motion to send me back out to check the tables. “Tell Mrs. Gunderson I’ll be out in a minute to give her another reading, though I can tell you for damn sure that nothing’s changed since yesterday.”

  I look over at Jasper, who shrugs, indicating that no one would think to disagree with Auntie. I guess I was sort of hoping to go on his delivery run with him, which tells me that I like him a little more than I thought.

  “Boys later,” Auntie says. “Go on. Get to work. I don’t pay you to flirt.”

  There are a lot of smart-ass remarks I’d like to sling back at her, but instead I swallow them and grab my apron from where I left it on the table and put it on, pulling my notepad and pen from the pocket.

  Half an hour later, Mia and Ember have finished mopping, and Auntie is nearly done counting the register drawer in the kitchen. I’ve wiped down the counter and am waiting for Auntie to give me the deposit to run over to the bank when I notice a black backpack sitting near the front counter. It’s crumpled into itself, obviously mostly empty. I pick it up, looking it over to see if there’s a name anywhere. There’s nothing, and when I open the largest pocket, there are no books inside. So I pry open one of the smaller pockets and dig around until I find something. When my hand closes around it, I pull it out.

  It’s an orange pill bottle with a handful of small green pills, the orange plastic making them look almost brown in the bottle. I check the label.

  Ruiz, Jasper.

  I recognize the name of the prescription immediately from television commercials I watched in the Starlite. These are antidepressants.

  I’m so surprised that the container drops from my hand and rolls across the floor to the front window. I think about what Ember said of his deepest, darkest secrets. He only wants to be happy.

  I drag the backpack along, chasing the prescription bottle. When I lean forward to pick it up again, the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I look up, suddenly sure that someone is watching me.

  And I’m right.

  Jasper is standing outside the shop, staring in the window at me. His arm is extended, about to pull on the door to come in, but it’s been locked since we closed thirty minutes ag
o.

  My stomach drops, and I shove the pills back inside his bag, knowing that there’s no way he could have missed seeing me holding them up, reading the label like I had any right to pry into his personal life.

  I stride over to the door, click open the lock, and step outside with his bag.

  It’s twilight now, and Jasper’s hands are shoved in his pockets, his arms tight to his body, like he’s cold.

  “I found your bag,” I say. “I wasn’t sure whose it was. I didn’t mean to—”

  Jasper grabs the bag from me. “I’ve got to go,” he says. “I’ll see you later.”

  For the first time since I’ve met him, he doesn’t even try to fake one of his charming grins.

  He just takes his bag, gets into Cleo, and drives away.

  Eleven

  BACK AT THE FARMHOUSE, I help Ember unload empty muffin and scone trays. Mia is cheerful, but somehow strained, and it makes me uneasy.

  “Girls?” Mia says when we dump the trays in the kitchen for her to wash. Her voice is strangely high, and I wonder why she’s nervous. “Has either of you seen my wedding ring? I can’t seem to find it.”

  Ember frowns, her green eyes meeting her mom’s in a way that is strangely confrontational. “What do you mean, your wedding ring? You don’t wear it anymore, do you?” The exchange speaks volumes to me. Ember’s parents must be divorced.

  Auntie makes a harrumph sound in the back of her throat, and mutters something about worthless ex-husbands.

  Mia says softly, “Sometimes I do.”

  My chest tightens, my heart beating faster. Mia’s going to ask me if I took her ring. There’s no other way for this to end.

  “I haven’t seen it,” Ember replies sharply.

  Mia looks down at the worn kitchen island, her fingers sweeping along the grain of the wood.

  I wait for her to ask.

  Moments pass.

  I touch my scars over my sweater again. I wish I’d never stolen the ring.

  My face feels hot, and my chest hurts because my heart is beating fast, too fast. Maybe I should tell her that I took it. Maybe I shouldn’t say anything. Maybe I should deny ever seeing the ring.

  “Isn’t it Ember’s turn for dinner?” Auntie asks, breaking the silence. “I’m starving.”

  “I’m trying a new recipe,” Ember says.

  Mia replies cheerfully, “I can’t wait.”

  I flee, taking my homework upstairs to my room to work at the little desk under the eave. Hands still shaking faintly, I set it all up, stacking the history book, the biology book, and the spiral notebook so that they make a neat little pile arranged by size. I pick up a plain yellow pencil and open the first book. Chapter review questions for American history. I open the book to page thirty-two, looking at the set of five questions. This should be easy. I pull the notebook off the pile next, opening it up and writing my name in the corner of the page. I read the first question, about European colonies in the United States. The words start to swim a little, the black ink blurring against the white paper. I used to be a decent student. But it’s like my brain has gone rusty during the time I took off from school. Or maybe I’m just distracted by this bizarre feeling of guilt.

  I look at the second question, about the mystery of Roanoke. Everybody who lived in Roanoke disappeared. Kind of like I used to disappear. Now I’m here, though, putting down roots, or whatever, like Auntie said. Put down roots, or you’ll die.

  I draw a small rosebud in the margin of the paper. Then a whole cluster of them, vining between the margin and the metal spine of the notebook. I shade them dark, think about what that old man, Jensen, told me about Connor. You can’t be afraid to draw the shadows.

  My thoughts flit back to finding that bottle of pills in Jasper’s backpack. It wouldn’t have been so bad if Jasper hadn’t caught me. I think what made it more awful was that he didn’t even tell me off. He just took the bag back and left, like he was more hurt than angry.

  And then I cringe thinking about Mia’s wedding ring. I hadn’t known that she would miss it so quickly. I should have put it back when I decided I was going to stay. I can’t put it back in her room now, or it will be too obvious that I took it, then felt guilty. I have to find a way to make it look like Mia misplaced it herself. The worst part is that I’ve done everything Ms. Troy cautioned Mia about.

  I slam the history book shut, hoping I’ll be more focused later. I feel too guilty to sketch with my stolen supplies right now. I tap my fingers on the textbook. I guess I could go downstairs and see what the McCabe women are up to. Maybe Mia will have forgotten about the stolen ring.

  I’m at the top of the stairs on the second floor when I smell it. That bright, spicy smell of fresh ginger. With the weight of the last few days hanging on me, I feel that phantom ache now more than ever.

  I slide down to sit on the top step and lean my head against the stair railing.

  “This place is really nice, Mom,” I tell her hesitantly. I am twelve years old. The air in this building smells like ginger, and the windows in the stairwell are foggy from the steam of the kitchens below. We are climbing the steps to our new apartment. Mom looks different, almost like they replaced my old mom with this new one when she was in rehab. Her face is fuller, smoother, and her dark hair thick and shiny. She looks back over her shoulder and smiles at me, fidgeting with her hands like she’s nervous.

  Finally we stand in the tiny apartment. It sits above the Jasmine Dragon in Little Chinatown, a small section of the city, home to a popular open-air market with freshly plucked ducks hanging by their smooth pink necks and ropes of long beans nearly the length of my arm; some small shops; at least a dozen restaurants; and a theater called the Imperial Palace that only charges two dollars to see movies that have left the regular theaters a month or so earlier. The apartment is papered in the same wallpaper as the restaurant dining room below, pale green with the faintest lines sketching out bamboo in the background.

  “Do you like it?” Mom asks. “Ms. Troy helped me get the job and the apartment. I’m waitressing downstairs. A few day shifts, but mostly evenings, when they’re the busiest. But don’t worry, Mr. Yang says you can come downstairs and sit with his kids if you want while I’m working. He says there’s a booth in the back where they do their homework together.”

  The night of Mom’s first shift, I sit across from Wendy and Jack Yang, nervous, watching my mother wander between tables like she doesn’t really know what she’s doing. Wendy is twelve like me, and her little brother, Jack, is ten. They both have straight, thick black hair and study me carefully with serious expressions when I climb into the booth with them.

  They are already a team, a unit, a family, and when they exchange a look as I get out my crinkled school papers and a yellow pencil that needs sharpening, they communicate more than I could say with a dozen words. My hands are sweating, and I wipe them off on my jeans, feeling my face burn with embarrassment under their gaze.

  But then Wendy smiles at me, and it’s a beautiful sunshine smile. I don’t ask for anything, but she offers to share her ice-cream-cone-shaped pencil sharpener, and it makes me feel warm inside. My most recent foster home was with the deeply religious woman and her husband with the leather belt, and each meal and ride to school was a reminder that my presence was somehow an affliction that must be dutifully borne.

  As the days go on, I do my best to move in the shadows, to never be a burden here. To never peel back the layers of my new, beautiful mother to see if the old one is underneath. I ask permission to sit in the booth with Wendy and Jack each night, to get a glass of water from the kitchens, to use the restroom off the dining room. They laugh after a few weeks and tell me that I don’t need to ask, and their father, Mr. Yang, tells me to stop scurrying like a little mouse.

  Even as my mother stays tightly folded in a bud of fresh beginnings, the Yang family expands and blooms before me. Mrs. Yang met Mr. Yang when he moved to the United States from China to work for his uncle in the Jasmin
e Dragon. Mrs. Yang was studying art history in the city, and she came into the Jasmine Dragon looking for dinner and left with the phone number of a clumsy waiter. They fell in love and took over the Jasmine Dragon when Mr. Yang’s uncle passed away. Mr. Yang smiles when Wendy and Jack come down into the dining room in their school clothes each morning, their faces bright and freshly washed. They do not ask for our story, but let us start over here, a crisp, blank first page.

  A month passes. Wendy and I stand outside the music shop where she takes piano lessons on the edge of Little Chinatown, and she points at the electric guitar in the window and tells me she wants to be a rock star with pink hair. She asks me if I will be in her band someday, and I tell her I will. We pinky promise because we are best friends now.

  Mom learns how to be a good waitress, and Mr. Yang is pleased with her work. He gives her a raise, promises to help her learn bookkeeping if she wants. Mrs. Yang says I am too skinny, and she tells me to eat from the buffet during dinnertime. When business is slow, Mrs. Yang sits at the booth with us and plays games. She teaches us to bluff in Texas Hold’em, and we ante up with peppermints from the dish by the front register. Then she admires my sketches when I get brave enough to show them to her, and finally I shyly offer her one of Wendy and Jack side by side in the back booth. She says she will frame it, and I am happy, but too nervous to show her the sketch I made of Wendy and me side by side in the back booth, as if we were sisters, as if I was a part of their family.

  After each game of poker, I put my peppermints back in the dish by the front register, still in their wrappers.

  I don’t steal anything here.

  I say please and thank you, and I never swear because Mrs. Yang declares it isn’t polite, especially in front of the customers. The Jasmine Dragon is a perfect world, like a snow globe, and I don’t want to do anything to break it.

  But even though I am happier and safer than I have ever been, sometimes I am reminded that Mom and I had a life before this one. One night it is too warm in the dining room, and I push up my sleeves. The scars on my arm are still young and stand out bright pink against my skin.