Rose Sees Red

by Cecil Castellucci

  “Do you actually go to museums? Or do you just drink on the steps and never go inside?” Yrena asked.

  “I used to come here more,” I said. “There’s a good book about two kids who run away and live in there.”

  “Oh, I read that book in fifth grade,” Maurice said. “I love that book.”

  “I liked that they were here at night,” I said. “Sleeping on the old beds. Wandering through the art.”

  “We are here at night,” Yrena said. “We are like your book.”

  “I’ve partied more on its steps at night than gone inside during the day,” Free admitted.

  “Tell me what is in there,” Yrena asked.

  “Everything,” Maurice said.

  “Endless rooms of Greek statues and Chinese vases,” Free said.

  “And paintings, so many paintings,” I said. “Beautiful furniture, photographs.”

  “It would take days to see everything,” Free said.

  “Weeks,” I said.

  “Years.” Maurice smiled.

  Yrena snorted.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You have the freedom to come here whenever you want and instead of coming to enjoy the actual treasures, you treasure your time outside talking,” she said.

  “You were the one looking for a party,” I pointed out.

  “A regular party, with disco music,” she said.

  “We’re at a party on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We are artistic just by being here. We are the works of art,” I said.

  “I like that,” Maurice said. “I really like that! I don’t need to be inside because I am a work of art!”

  But Yrena and Free didn’t care anymore, because while Maurice was turned to me, they had started kissing.

  “Uh-oh,” Maurice said. “I think they want to be alone.”

  “I can’t leave her alone,” I said.

  “Come on, I’ll walk you to the tunnel to give them a few minutes and then come back for them. Also—it embarrasses me to say this—but I really, really have to pee.”

  “Me, too, actually,” I said.

  I headed off with Maurice into the park. As we turned the bend, I looked over my shoulder and saw that Yrena and Free had stopped kissing and were writing in the dust on the museum window.

  “You go first,” Maurice said when we got to one of the tunnels in the park. “I’ll stand here.”

  The tunnel was creepy and dark. It smelled like pee already. I’d never thought of myself as the kind of girl who would go to a party and pee in a tunnel, but there I was, squatting and trying not to get pee on my shoes. I laughed.

  “You okay? Or is that a signal?” Maurice asked.

  “No, I’m laughing,” I said. I pulled up my underwear and then emerged from the mouth of the tunnel. I felt lighter and better.

  “Stand watch for me,” Maurice said.

  Once he was done, we walked back to get Yrena and Free and rejoin the party. Maurice and I started talking dance—specifically, about remedies for blisters on your feet. Even Free had some ideas about foot care. His advice for athlete’s foot? Use a mixture of honey and garlic slathered over the foot. Sounded pretty gummy and potentially yummy. We all agreed we’d try it.

  When we breezed by Daisy and the Science girls, I didn’t get that knot in my stomach again. I didn’t cringe as she threw dagger-eyes at me. Or at least I didn’t cringe much.

  “I have an idea,” Yrena said, grabbing my arm and dashing me down the steps, away from the boys so she could talk to me alone. She stuck her hand into her pocket and pulled out the flyer.

  “That’s tomorrow,” I said.

  “I know,” she said. “We will stay out all night!”

  I shook my head. “I can maybe stay at this party for a little while longer, but I definitely can’t stay out all night.”

  “But I do not want to go home yet. Now I want to see the sun rise. Now I want to go to the march.”

  “Yrena,” I said, “we can go together tomorrow if you want. We just need to go home to sleep.”

  “There is no other way,” Yrena said.

  “ROSE!” two voices cried.

  There, coming up the steps with swagger, were Callisto and Caitlin. Still calling my name, they ran over. Callisto looked David Bowie–perfect and Caitlin looked dramatic in a black pencil skirt and cute fifties sweater.

  When they reached me, they both gave me a big hug.

  “I can’t believe you made it,” Caitlin said.

  “I think I have to go soon,” I said.

  “You can’t go,” Callisto said. “We just got here!”

  Yrena was mad. I could hear her as she stomped away from me, back up the stairs to Free. I turned back to Callisto and Caitlin.

  “Who’s that sourpuss?” Caitlin asked.

  “She looks like she’s sucking on lemons,” Callisto said.

  “That’s Yrena,” I said. “She’s my next-door neighbor. She’s never been downtown before. Not without some supervision.”

  “Never?” Callisto said. “That’s weird. I mean, that’s really weird.”

  “She’s from the Soviet Union,” I said. “For real, not like a defector. She lives next door to me and her parents do something at the consulate. Maybe they’re spies. I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” Caitlin asked.

  “No,” I said. “She’s lived next door to me for two years and I’ve never spoken to her before tonight.”

  “So, let me get this straight,” Callisto said. “My sister and I ask you to go out and you say no. But some girl from the USSR who you don’t even know asks you and you say yes?”

  I started getting a little queasy. I felt as though I had done something bad and no matter what I said it was going to come out sounding wrong.

  “I meant to say yes to you,” I said.

  Callisto threw her arms up in the air aggressively.

  “I feel like I’m mad at you,” she said.

  “Oh, no. No. No. Please don’t be mad at me,” I said.

  “Ugh,” Callisto said, and surprised me by pulling me in for a hug. “I’m not really mad.”

  “But I’m just a little hurt,” Caitlin said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I meant to say yes. I just couldn’t.”

  “I know! You’re like the Rock of Gibraltar! Keeping all your good stuff to yourself,” Caitlin said.

  “Forget it,” Callisto told me. “Let’s get this party started. Let me have a sip of that bottle of something.”

  I passed her the rum and the Coke. She took a swig of each and let out a little whoop. Then she passed the bottles over to Caitlin and put her arms around my shoulders and pulled me up the steps.

  “Let’s see who’s here,” she said.

  We got a good vantage point so we could suss out the party.

  “Nerds at twelve o’clock.” Caitlin pointed to a bunch of awkward boys standing together with their hands in their pockets. They looked like my brother and his friends.

  “Stuyvesant, UNIS, Fieldston, Hunter, Science,” Callisto said, pointing at a different group on each step.

  “Punks, New Wavers, jocks, brains, sluts,” Caitlin said, pointing to other groups on other steps.

  “Good, then—looks like everyone is here,” Callisto concluded, jostling me in a friendly way.

  “Let’s go join the PA’ers,” Caitlin said.

  I started scanning the steps for Yrena, who I’d last seen standing with Free.

  “I don’t see her,” I said.

  “Who?” Caitlin asked.

  “Yrena, the girl I’m here with.”

  “She was over there earlier,” Callisto said.

  “I know, but now I don’t see her. I don’t see Free, either.”

  “Well, maybe they went to go make out,” Caitlin said. “It’s hard to do that on the steps.”

  “You’re right. Or maybe they’re at the tunnel, to pee,” I said.

  We walked to the back and saw plenty of people
on the side of the building making out or smoking pot, but not Yrena. The only thing that was left of her was her name written in the dust on the window.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Caitlin said. “We’ll find her.”

  I wasn’t so convinced. She’d vanished into thin air.

  Back at the steps, I made a beeline for Maurice.

  “We’re looking for Yrena,” I said. “Have you seen her?”

  “She said good-bye,” Maurice told me.

  I started to freak out.

  “Hey, Rose.” Daisy was standing there. She had her hand on her hip and she was looking angry. “Your friend is a bitch.”

  “What?”

  “I made out with Free last week at Jen’s party,” Daisy said. “I had dibs. And then I see her getting into a cab, leaving with Free and a couple of your PA friends.”

  “Oh, that’s right—I think they went with Tammy to the rock,” Maurice said.

  “The rock?” I said. “How could she leave me like that?”

  “Yrena wanted to go to another party,” Maurice said. “And Tammy wanted to hang out with the drama people.”

  “Come on, Rose,” Daisy said. “You should just bail on that girl and this party and come home with me. We could share a cab.”

  “I have to think,” I said, a little startled by the offer.

  “I’m trying to help you,” Daisy said, put off. “You should be nice.”

  I almost said I was sorry. I almost believed that Daisy really wanted to make up with me. But then I realized she probably just wanted to pump me for information about Yrena. And for the first time since we had stopped being friends, I didn’t miss her. I didn’t care for her.

  “I have to go to the rock,” I said. “I have to go find her.”

  “I know where it is,” Callisto said.

  I turned away from Daisy. I could imagine her cursing me out as soon as I was out of earshot.

  “Come on. We’ll help you go get her,” Maurice said.

  “You mean you guys will come with me?” I said.

  “Of course,” Caitlin said.

  “What did you think?” Callisto said.

  I’d thought I was all alone.

  The Rock

  Maurice was already standing in the street with his arm in the air, waving down a yellow cab.

  “Can’t we walk?” I said.

  “Through Central Park?” Callisto said.

  “At night?” Caitlin asked.

  “Don’t worry. I have money,” Maurice said, and we piled into the taxi.

  I was squashed in the middle, trying to keep it together.

  I’d thought Yrena was my friend. And now instead of having fun, she had put me in a bad situation—without even saying good-bye. I was going to be in a lot of trouble if I didn’t find her.

  I had never been in trouble before, not really. I was a pretty good girl—not the Goody Two-ballet-shoes in Daisy’s mind, but not the kind of girl who got into the trouble I was imagining that I was going to be facing if I didn’t find Yrena and bring her back home.

  I tried to calculate just how much trouble I could possibly get in. Probably a lot of trouble. So much trouble that I would be grounded forever. So much trouble that I wouldn’t get to go to college. So much trouble that I would likely have to live at home for the rest of my life and never be allowed to go on a date and end up as an old maid.

  After all, I’d lost a whole human being.

  I glanced out the window as we weaved in and out of traffic. The streetlights illuminated parts inside the cab. My hands. Callisto’s face. Maurice’s hair. Caitlin’s earrings.

  “Can you go faster?” I asked the cab driver.

  Even though I’d lived in New York City my whole life, I didn’t know where I was. Somewhere on the East Side, going downtown, was all I knew. If you’d asked me to point to it on a map, I would have failed.

  I adjusted myself, trying to settle in. But I couldn’t relax. The pressure of trying to be cool in front of Maurice, Caitlin, and Callisto, who were acting like they actually liked me, was killing me.

  “Why does your face look like that?” Maurice asked. I was squashed up next to him and he massaged my shoulders, like we did to one another in the warm-up exercise in the one acting class we had to take. Usually it felt nice, but now I was freaking out. “That’s how you look in dance class.”

  “Like what?” I asked. But as I spoke, I realized that I had been holding my face in a grimace. No matter how I spun it, I knew it didn’t look very pretty.

  I knew that I was not very pretty.

  “All angry or something,” Maurice said. “Your face gets all frozen.”

  I didn’t know if I liked the fact that he’d noticed my face in class. Or that I even did the face in class. It struck me that I felt that same mix of angry at myself and totally terrified whenever I was overwhelmed and out of my comfort zone.

  There was no space outside. On one side of the street, buildings were pressed up next to one another, block after block. Only the green of the park on the other side gave some relief. Cars were honking. The taxi made a sharp turn. I fell into Maurice. He pushed me back up.

  In class, everything went so fast and everyone was so on top of everything that it took every ounce of concentration to keep it together and keep up. Just like that moment right then in the cab. The night was slipping out of my fingers.

  “Here, here,” Callisto said, banging on the plastic divide. The cab driver pulled over and we emerged from the cab at the bottom edge of Central Park.

  “I gotta make a phone call,” I said, spotting a bay of pay phones. I left them standing there paying for the cab.

  I had never been so happy that my parents gave Todd his own telephone for his own room. That’s what I wanted for my sixteenth birthday. But I wanted mine to be a rotary phone. Black. Todd had an orange one with push buttons. He thought it looked futuristic.

  I slid the dime into the slot and dialed the number.

  Come on. Come on. Come on.

  Pick up. Pick up. Pick up.

  “You’ve reached Todd. Rhymes with Zod. Land of Nod. And alien pod. Leave your transmission at the tone. May the Force be with you.”

  “Todd. Are you there? Pick up.”

  The phone clicked as someone picked up.

  “This is Dungeon Master Hertreopo,” Todd said in a booming voice. “What do you want, Rose? And don’t say we’re making too much noise down here because I know you can’t hear us from upstairs. The garage is soundproof.”

  “I’m not calling from upstairs,” I said.

  Todd was quiet for a moment.

  “Really? You went out?” He sounded impressed. “Where are you calling from?”

  “Central Park South and Sixth Avenue.”

  “Whoa!”

  I could hear his lame-o friends in the background yelling at him to get back to the game.

  “I need your help,” I said.

  “You need my help,” he said. “Oh, how I like the sound of this. Hey! Don’t touch that troll! And don’t move your dwarf into that hexagon until your turn!”

  I imagined he and his friends were wearing costumes. God. I was going to owe Todd one forever. His nasal breathing on the phone reminded me that he was the last person I wanted to owe one to. I was beginning to regret calling now.

  “Have you noticed if the girl next door came home?” I asked.

  “You mean Yrena, my love?”

  “Yes, Yrena.”

  “No, I haven’t noticed her. Besides, I’ve been playing D&D, and I don’t think that she goes out much. What’s going on?”

  “I took her to a party.”

  “You what?”

  “I took her to a party.”

  “And you didn’t invite me along?”

  “You were busy with your dungeons. And your dragons.”

  “You are hanging out with Yrena! Screw the dragons!”

  I could believe that Yrena would be the only thing that would distract Todd fr
om his fantasy world, because she was his ultimate fantasy.

  “Wait. Are you lying?” he asked.

  I was about to lose my patience. “I’m not lying.”

  “Wow. Did she ask about me?”

  “A little,” I said.

  “Really?” Todd said excitedly. “I wasn’t expecting that to be your answer! What did she say?”

  “Not much,” I said.

  “Okay, but you made me sound cool, right? I need details.”

  “Todd, I’m in a rush.”

  “You said you needed my help. The price for help is details.”

  I scrolled over the things that Yrena had said about Todd to try to come up with something that would satisfy him and not let him know that there had been a moment in a parallel universe when she could have been the only girl at his D&D party.

  “She said that you seemed like you had fun,” I said.

  “Nice,” he said. “Tell her I think the color blue looks good on her.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not? Just tell her that fuzzy blue sweater she wore last week when she was in her garden looked great. Ask her if she bought it at a store or if she knit it herself.”

  “I can’t,” I repeated. “She’s not here.”

  “So she’s not with you right now? Right this second? Call her over. I want to say hello.”

  “No, I can’t do that,” I said, closing my eyes because it felt easier to tell the truth that way. “Because I’ve lost her.”

  “Hang on.”

  Cue: mumbling and rustling.

  “Tyler says that there is a lot of activity next door. You know. With those suits.”

  “KGB or CIA?”

  “I don’t know, I can’t see their eyebrows.”

  In a moment of panic, that made me smile.

  “Rose. Those diplomatic kids are pretty isolated and insulated. She probably doesn’t even know how to get back home. You’ve got to find her.”