Rose Sees Red

by Cecil Castellucci

  I wanted to avoid disappointment.

  “It’ll be so great,” Callisto said.

  Despite the big sign on the bulletin board that said INSTRUMENTS MUST REMAIN IN CASES DURING ACADEMIC CLASS AND HOMEROOM, Caitlin had pulled out her guitar and was now strumming quietly.

  “No,” I said. “I’ve got to be home.”

  Callisto shrugged. “I told you so, Cait,” she said. “Well, how about pizza after school?”

  “Say yes. Say yes. Say yes,” Caitlin chimed in.

  I found myself thinking: When something is meant to be, it is just meant to be. You can put the brakes on as much as you want, but it will happen anyway.

  “Okay,” I said, looking down at my nail-bitten hands. “I can do pizza after school.”

  It was as simple as that. Once you say yes, after saying no for so long, it becomes a lot easier.

  Caitlin and Callisto high-fived.

  “Don’t flake on us,” they said as the bell rang and they split up down the hallway.

  There were some things that I admired about Callisto and Caitlin. Even though I was not in the music department, I had heard them play in the hallways, in homeroom, and at lunchtime. They were always game for an impromptu jam session or to accompany anyone who wanted to sing or dance.

  They were very talented, like everyone here at school was, but they took their talent with such stride. They had this attitude, like, either they would be musicians or they wouldn’t, and it was no big deal. Music was just one part of their lives.

  I was not relaxed about dancing. I wished I could be sure that I was going to be a dancer for real. I wanted to be one so badly that the thought of not doing it or giving it up made me want to give up sunshine and dreaming and air.

  I wasn’t even near the best.

  And that worried me. Only the best get to do what they want, right?

  Only the best.

  When I left school that afternoon, Callisto and Caitlin were there leaning against the building, waiting for me.

  “Hey, let’s go!” Callisto said, barely giving me a chance to say hello. “We’ve got to rush to get a good spot.”

  There were thousands of pizza places in New York City, but there was no doubt in my mind where we were going. Only one pizza place was cool enough for us Performing Arts students: Viva’s. On my way home from school, I had often passed by and seen it so overstuffed with people that kids spilled out onto the sidewalk. The pizza always smelled so good and there was laughter as loud as the Spanish music that blared on the radio.

  But I had never had the nerve to go in there by myself and order a slice for the trip back to the Bronx. I just clutched my bag tighter and walked by, trying to look like I had somewhere important to be, like a dance class or, even better, an audition.

  Now here I was, walking through the doors with Caitlin and Callisto, and everyone was saying hello to them. To us.

  Callisto managed to snag a table in the corner near Caleb, but he ignored her as he sat with the stoner drama kids, who languished there in leather jackets, army coats, and vintage sweaters, fine-tuning their broodiness.

  We sat down with our sodas, waiting for the pie that was still cooking in the oven. I took my straw wrapper and blew the paper off, but instead of landing on the table, it flew off in the direction of the next table, hitting Caleb on the nose.

  “Hey! What is your problem?” he yelled.

  I shrank deeper into the corner.

  He didn’t think it was funny, but Caitlin and Callisto thought it was hysterical.

  Caleb responded by crumpling up some greasy wax pizza paper and throwing it at our table. It hit Callisto in the worst possible place—her hair—and stuck there.

  “Cool,” Caitlin said. “It kind of looks like a small hat.” She was obviously trying to soothe her sister from going ballistic.

  “A pillbox hat,” I chimed in, trying to help.

  “Not my style,” Callisto said.

  Callisto plucked the wax paper from her hair. And then Caitlin shot me a look and motioned with her eyes. That’s when I saw it—there was a string of cheese still hanging off of Callisto’s hair, dangling all the way down to her ear.

  Caleb and his tablemates erupted into howls of laughter.

  “Looks like you’ve got a booger hanging off of your head,” Caleb yelled over at her.

  Caitlin reached over and carefully plucked the cheese off of Callisto’s head, which messed up her hair.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, irritated by the laughing.

  Caitlin showed Callisto the cheese. Callisto shouted some curses and gave Caleb and his table the finger, which only made them laugh harder. But yelling had made her calmer, and so she spit into her hand and fixed her hair so that it was Ziggy-perfect again.

  The crisis was over.

  “I’m so glad you came out with us today,” Caitlin said to me, putting her hand on my wrist.

  Callisto nodded. “You’re like one of the only people we can stand.”

  “But we know you’re super shy,” Caitlin added.

  Caitlin and Callisto think I’m shy, I thought. Maybe that’s what I am.

  Shy.

  “But you have so many friends at school,” I said.

  “Here comes one now,” Caitlin murmured.

  “But we don’t really like her,” Callisto said in an exaggerated whisper.

  “Hey.” A drama girl came over, interrupting us. She wore her hennaed curly hair down and long and was wearing a 1940s blue housedress. She had made her way over from a table that had a mix of dance and drama kids—the Broadway heads, not the angsty ones like Caleb. They were the group that orbited around Maurice Tibbets and his famous-mother glow.

  “Hello, Tammy,” Callisto said.

  “I thought I’d let you know that there is a party on the steps tonight.”

  Tammy’s body had a vocabulary of nervous tics. For example, as she stood, I noticed that she would twist one of her hennaed curls and stick the tip of it in her mouth and suck on it. The edge of her hair was filled with sharp wet points.

  “What steps?” I asked this out of curiosity, not out of a desire to go to a party. But it must have sounded that way. And maybe, deep down, I did want to go to a party. Maybe I was starving to go to a party. I hadn’t been to a party since summer and that had been with Daisy and no fun at all.

  “The Metropolitan Museum of Art,” Tammy said, barely acknowledging my existence. “There’s a scheduled impromptu party there every Friday night.”

  “How is it impromptu if it’s scheduled?” I asked.

  “It just is,” Tammy said. “You should come. I’ve never seen you anywhere.”

  I tried to prevent this from upsetting me. But I had to blink a few extra times because my eyes sort of watered over.

  “I don’t know if it’s my scene,” I said, and I could hear myself trying to make it sound as though I definitely had a scene, and the reason why no one had ever seen me anywhere was because my scene was something else.

  “Don’t knock it till you try it,” Tammy said, and then made her way back to the drama table, having delivered her message of partydom.

  “Caleb!” Callisto yelled over to her brother. “Are you going to the party on the steps?”

  “No way,” Caleb said. “I only party on the rock.”

  “Good,” Caitlin said. “We’ll go if you go, Rose.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so.” I looked down at the table. “I wouldn’t know anyone there.”

  “No one knows anyone there,” Callisto said.

  “That’s why we should go together,” Caitlin said.

  “I don’t think I can go,” I insisted. “I don’t like girls like Tammy. Those kinds of drama girls are so phony.”

  “Don’t knock it till you try it,” Callisto said, laughing.

  “But you want to go, Rose. Deep down, I know you do. So just come,” Caitlin said.

  “No,” I said. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

  “Wel
l, I guess you can meet us there if you change your mind,” Callisto said.

  “Look at Tammy!” Caitlin elbowed Callisto and pointed. “She is all over Maurice.”

  I shot a look over to see Tammy hanging on to Maurice Tibbets, even as he attempted to eat a slice of pizza. She was draping her arms over his shoulders, and even though he kept shrugging her off and trying to lift the pizza to his mouth, her arms kept snaking back up around his neck.

  “Starfucker,” Callisto and Caitlin both said at the same time. And then they put their heads together and giggled.

  “Did you know that Tammy smokes British cigarettes because she thinks that the UK is cool?” Caitlin said.

  “She’s so affected,” Callisto said.

  “Caleb does the best imitation of her. He says she’s a nightmare in Graveson’s drama class.”

  “She did her private moment in class the other day, and it was overdosing on pills. But wait, Caitlin—the UK is cool.”

  “I know, but Tammy doesn’t like it for the right reasons,” Caitlin said.

  “Are there right reasons?” I asked.

  This was my secret fear. That there were right reasons for liking things. That’s why I usually just went along with whatever everyone else said.

  “The British invasion of music,” Callisto said. “David Bowie. Duh.”

  “Monty Python and Elfpunk. Stanley Kubrick. King Arthur!” Caitlin said.

  “For anything on the BBC?” I offered. I wasn’t sure. I was just asking.

  “I knew it,” Callisto said, putting her arm around my shoulders in a familiar way. “You are one of us.”

  Was that it? Was that the moment that everything changed? When Callisto said it, maybe something happened. Maybe it was magic? Maybe it made me brave enough to put one step in front of the other. It was such a tiny thing.

  “What do you think Tammy likes the UK for?” I asked.

  “She likes it for Culture Club, Chariots of Fire, and Randy Prince Andy,” Caitlin said.

  Sometimes, you can’t keep a laugh in. Even if you are just trying to be cool, to look cool. What Caitlin said made me laugh so hard that I nearly spit my Coke out of my nose.

  “Oh, come meet us tonight, Rose,” Callisto said. “I promise we’ll have so much fun!”

  My heart was fighting with my head. I wanted to say yes, but my head was so full of always saying no that only no could win.

  “If I’m going to go to the Met, it’s going to be to look at the art,” I said.

  “Oh, there will be art there,” Callisto said. “The art of the party!”

  Red Means Stop, Green Means Go

  By the time I had walked through my front door, I had convinced myself that I couldn’t be friends with Callisto and Caitlin. It would be a bad idea. I decided that it was probably just best to put everything I had into something that I could control.

  Plié. Tendu. Écarté. Chassé.

  “There is pasta, or you can order Chinese—I left you twenty dollars,” my mom called out to me from her bedroom. She was getting ready for a date night with my dad.

  “I had pizza after school,” I said. I came into her room and sat on the edge of the bed. “I’m not that hungry.”

  “Did you go out with some friends?” she asked. “You know, you can invite friends over.”

  I watched her as she stood in front of her full-length mirror wearing a smart pantsuit, sliding her big loop earrings in her ears.

  She went on. “I just hate to think of you here by yourself, Rose. It’s not natural for a healthy teenage girl like you to spend so much time alone.”

  “I’m not really alone. Todd has his Dungeons and Dragons game down in the garage,” I said.

  She gave me a look through the mirror that said she wasn’t buying what I was selling.

  “I just think that you are by yourself too much.” She turned around and faced me. “I want to meet some of your friends,” she said slowly. She said it as though she had practiced saying it. As though she had read it in a book called something like How to Deal with Your Angsty Teenager.

  She was fishing.

  I didn’t want to answer her because she wasn’t asking me a question.

  She stood there looking at me, giving me the time I needed to say something. Anything.

  I had no words. I only had movement. If I could have gotten up and showed her with my body, with my movements, how I felt, would she understand? Would she feel better about what I was saying?

  My mother was staring at me. And then I remembered the way she had cupped my face that morning.

  I opened my mouth.

  “Well, I had pizza after school with Callisto and Caitlin,” I said. “They’re triplets. I mean, two out of the three. They’re in the music department. They don’t look alike. At all. Weird, huh?”

  She seemed relieved. Then she came over to the bed and gave me a little love pinch before going back to her primping.

  After my parents left for the evening and Todd headed downstairs to prep his D&D game, I brought my ghetto blaster into the bathroom and slipped in a mix tape. (“Tainted Love,” “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,” “We Got the Beat,” “Girls on Film,” “I Know What Boys Like,” “Shake It Up,” “Open Arms,” “Centerfold,” “I Love Rock-n-Roll,” “The Tide Is High,” “Kids in America.”)

  I drew a hot bath and filled it with Epsom salts. I lit some candles. I filled the tub up high so that the water went right up to my chin.

  This was my favorite thing to do on Fridays, soak in a long, hot bath. I needed the hot bath and the salts because my muscles were always sore from dancing all week.

  First I would slip my bloody blistered feet into the tub. It stung a bit at first, and the bath was always a little too hot initially, but I knew it was going to feel good.

  Then I would sink down into the water, letting it cover me completely. I felt all the bones in my body. I rubbed all the muscles. I closed my eyes. I stretched and released.

  My body played out that week’s classes. That week’s combinations. That week’s mistakes. In the tub, when I closed my eyes, I could imagine standing half a chance at doing the combinations perfectly.

  Relaxed, I got out of the tub and went into my room where I pulled on snowflake-patterned long underwear and an antique pink slip from the 1940s that belonged to my Grandma. It was cold, so I put leg warmers on my arms. I wasn’t making a fashion statement.

  I had just taken my hair out of the towel and was about to brush it, but was distracted by a zit that was forming on the end of my nose. (Later my hair looked good because of the way that it had dried, in a way that I could have never planned. Another happy accident.)

  I wasn’t paying attention to anything else but my extreme close-up, and this one little clogged pore, which magnified by one thousand looked totally gross. Pores were totally gross. That’s what I was thinking when something hit my bedroom window.

  “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!” I yelled.

  Even though it was probably a branch or the wind, my immediate thought was: It’s a pervert. On the fire escape. There were perverts in the Bronx. I knew this to be true because my brother, Todd, was a pervert and he lived in Riverdale. I also knew that his dorky friends were perverts, and they were all downstairs in the garage playing Dungeons and Dragons. Right now, my house was Pervert Central.

  Maybe it was one of Todd’s friends pulling a Peeping Tom on me at the window. They all knew I was here alone upstairs and they had such limited contact with girls that they would do anything to see me in my underwear. Todd had probably told them that I was bathing. I grabbed a sweater. I wanted to cover myself up. I put it on backward to have maximum coverage over my chest area. (I might not have had big boobs, but to most boys, boobs are boobs.)

  The noise at the window became more insistent and I started to really freak out.

  Maybe, I thought, it’s a killer.

  Things like that had been known to happen. There could have bee
n a killer at the window.

  I didn’t want to turn toward the window because I was afraid of what I might see. I was totally spinning out and having a massive panic attack. I wanted to sneak out of my room, but I knew whoever was there could see me because all of my lights were on. So I started to edge my way over to the door, kind of wishing that I wasn’t such a slob because if I wasn’t a slob, then the floor would be clear and I would have an easy path to the door and out of the room, and then instead of it taking me what seemed like hours to inch out of my room, I’d be far away from the horrible thing at my window as quickly as possible.

  Then there was a voice.

  “Hello?”

  A girl’s voice.

  With a Russian accent.

  Definitely not a pervert, a friend of my brother’s, or a murderer.

  “Hello?” the voice said again. “It’s Yrena, your neighbor.”

  I turned around and looked and, sure enough, there was Yrena, pressing her face up to my window. I barely knew her to say hello when we passed each other on the street, so I didn’t really know why she had shinnied up to my window.

  I wasn’t scared anymore. Instead, I was mad that she had scared me.

  I walked over to the window. Her face was goofier up close than it was when I saw her from afar. Or maybe it was just distorted by the glass. I opened the window and she fell into the room.

  I ripped right into her. “Freaking a girl out is not the way to be neighborly. You could have been a murderer! Next time just ring the doorbell.”

  She smiled as she gave me her hands so I could pull her up. Which I did.

  “Yrena,” she said, smiling at me face-to-face now. She was a little bit taller than me. Her long blond hair was up in a tight bun, like always.

  “Rose,” I said.

  “Rose,” she said. “Like a flower.”

  For two years, she’d been on my radar, but I never took much notice. She was just there, doing her thing in my peripheral vision. Every now and then, though, she’d emerge and I’d pay attention. Those moments of hers that I’d notice were never big. It was just small things: doing her homework at night at her big brown desk, folding clothes and putting them in drawers, taking those white bows out of her hair, getting up to turn off the lights but always leaving one light on.