Rose Sees Red

by Cecil Castellucci

  And then it was done.

  “Time to go home,” I said.

  We left the park with all the others, and there was such a sense of camaraderie between us all. Not just me and my new friends, but between me and the whole world.

  As Yrena and I climbed on to the 1 train heading back to the Bronx, it was almost as though we had forgotten that it was forever good-bye.

  The thing was, saying good-bye is actually too hard. So sometimes you just don’t. You just keep listening to the music. You just keep swaying side to side. You just keep going until the day is over. I couldn’t see how a person said good-bye when it was forever good-bye. It would be slow and sad. It would be painful and foggy. It made no sense. Like being underwater. Or seeing things flicker and extinguish.

  We were tired. We wanted to go home. We talked all the way about everything that had happened that night. About what we could do to top it. About how we would hang out every single day before she left. About Free’s kisses and about Caleb’s holding my hand on the way through the crowd.

  When we got to the bottom of our street, humming one of the Pete Seeger songs, trying to remember the words, and looking for a stick of gum in our purses because we realized we hadn’t brushed our teeth in over a day, we learned that going home wasn’t going to be as easy as we thought.

  They were waiting to grab us as soon as we came in sight of them.

  Men in suits.

  We didn’t see them at first. All I heard was a word: “You!” Then a snap as one of these men, CIA by his eyebrows, unhooked something from his belt. At first I thought it was his gun, but then I saw that he was speaking into his walkie-talkie.

  “I’ve got them,” he said.

  There was then some Russian spoken by one of the other men, softly, like the lullaby that Yrena had sung to us. It was Yrena. She was talking to me, telegraphing a message.

  “But I don’t understand,” I said.

  “Da,” she said, and turned. “Take off your shoes.”

  She was taking off her shoes, stepping out of them. I did the same because she had asked me to.

  “We’re just going home,” I said as the next pair of suits approached us. They were not smiling. They were angry and yelling in Russian. They seemed to be in disagreement with the first pair of suits about who had authority.

  “We live just up the street,” I said. I was trying to be helpful. But the suits closest to me put their fingers in my face, shushing me.

  The man closest to me nodded to the other men—KGB, if I went by his eyebrows—who were escorting Yrena away from me.

  No one noticed about our shoes. Yrena was walking barefoot up the hill. She looked back over her shoulder to me and smiled.

  “Come with me, please,” the man who stayed with me said. His arm was holding my shoulder so tightly, I couldn’t go in any other direction than where he led me.

  I had to Nancy Drew what she was trying to tell me with that look. I wanted to tell her that she was leaving her shoes behind, but something stopped me when I stared at the shoes. In hers I could see the piece of paper with the address the waiter had given her, folded up and springing out from under the tongue like a small ladder stopped by the laces.

  “Can I get my shoes?” I asked.

  The man nodded and we went to retrieve my shoes. I slipped Yrena’s on my feet. They were too big and I had to clench my toes to keep them on as I walked.

  The Girls Who Came In from the Cold

  Isn’t it funny how you could know a person for fewer than twenty-four hours and know everything about them? Know someone better than you’ve ever known anyone? Know when they are being themselves or not? Know someone better than you even know yourself?

  They came and took us away from each other and interviewed us separately.

  They asked me so many questions.

  “How long have you known her?”

  “Who instigated the incident?”

  “Did she force you to go along with her?”

  “Would you say that you were under duress?”

  “Would you say that you felt your life was in danger?”

  “So you don’t really know her at all?”

  I wanted to say:

  “I’ve known her for forever.”

  “We both decided to have an adventure together!”

  “We are not our countries!”

  But the lawyer said I should keep my mouth shut. He said that it would be better for me to emphasize that I had only met her on Friday.

  So that’s what I did.

  And that’s what made me a traitor.

  After it was all over, the CIA let my parents and my brother into the interrogation room.

  “Why didn’t you girls just come home right away?” Now it was my dad who was interrogating me. The lines in his forehead when he furrowed his brow were so deep, they looked like canals.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  The truth was that we were never not going to go home. We kept meaning to go home, and then it just got later and later. And then it got harder and harder. And at some point during all that, we started to have fun. But how do you say that? How do you say that staying out had suddenly become more important than the consequences? Because it was the only time. It was the only night.

  Nobody understood that.

  I wanted to tell them that I would never give that night up because even though I was going to be in more trouble than I had ever known, I had made friends for life.

  But my mom must have known that, because she sat next to me and smoothed my hair and smiled at me.

  “What did you girls do?” she asked.

  “We went to a party,” I said. “We went to a party and we had fun.”

  “That’s what you keep saying,” my dad intoned.

  It didn’t matter if I said it a million times. It didn’t matter if it was true. I felt like he was never going to believe me. He was never going to let me forget the fact that the authorities were in his house, questioning him and his politics that morning. That he was just a guy who didn’t vote for Reagan, who fell asleep during the eleven o’clock news, and who didn’t ever think about or want to think about the Cold War as being something that affected him in any way.

  “Dan, relax,” my mom said. “Rose is okay.”

  I laid my head on the table.

  “I’m done talking,” I said.

  “Rose,” she said, “you girls did the right thing by coming home.”

  “I really never meant to be any trouble,” I said.

  “I know, baby,” my mom said, and hugged me again. She put her arms around me and held me tight, like she loved me something fierce.

  I looked up at my dad and it looked like he wanted to say something to me. It looked like he wanted to say I’m sorry.

  I took my sweater off the back of the chair and lost my balance a little as I stood up.

  My brother caught my elbow and helped me keep steady.

  Just like he was at the bus stop, he was there to walk me out of the federal building.

  I was free to go. I was on my way home.

  The CIA drove me and my family back to my house in Riverdale.

  I couldn’t bear to look at my parents, and even Todd knew to let me be, so I looked outside the window and stared out across the river at New Jersey. The George Washington Bridge flew by. Cars were going places. A Circle Line boat was sailing on the Hudson River, full of tourists. People were just doing their thing.

  One day you could be a normal girl. In America. Free. Your blood ran red, white, and blue. And then Monday morning, you were alluded to in the New York Times as an “unspecified international incident.”

  My parents were deathly quiet next to me and I knew I would never be the same.

  I was still a ballerina. That would never change. And somehow I was surer of it than before. I was a ballerina.

  But I was also a girl who was under suspicion of consorting with an enemy of the state.

  I looked out
my window across the driveway at Yrena’s house. I thought it was going to be dark and empty, like they’d been removed in the middle of the night, but the light was on in Yrena’s room.

  I could see that it was full of boxes and everything looked bare.

  I thought maybe she wasn’t there. I thought maybe she was already gone halfway across the world. I decided that I wouldn’t draw my curtains closed. I just kept looking over at her window, wondering what she was doing. If she was okay. If she was in a lot of trouble. If she was thinking about me. And then suddenly she walked into her room. I was just standing there, surprised to see her. I wondered if she would look up. There was no way to yell over at her without getting us both into trouble. There were suits stationed in front of both of our houses.

  Finally she did it. She looked up.

  I waved. So did she. We smiled. But it broke my heart. We couldn’t even say anything to each other. This was terrible. Then I got an idea. I motioned for her to wait a second. She nodded that she would. I got a marker and a stack of paper.

  ARE YOU OK? I wrote it down and pressed the note up against the glass, hoping that she could read it. Hoping that she could see it. Hoping that she could read English as well as she spoke it.

  She smiled and nodded.

  DO YOU GO HOME TOMORROW?

  She nodded.

  I copied down the Cyrillic from the paper in the shoe, hoping that she could read it.

  She gave me a thumbs-up.

  I wrote again.

  I’M SO GLAD THAT WE BECAME FRIENDS.

  She bobbed her head up and down furiously. I could see that she was crying. She blew me some kisses. I blew her some, too. I saw her turn her head and say something. Then I saw her mom walk into the room. Her mom looked out the window and saw me. I saw her face soften, like she felt bad, but she had to do what she had to do.

  I waved. I waved to make sure my good-bye was seen. Yrena lifted her hand up, too. She waved good-bye. Good-bye. Good-bye.

  Yrena’s mom went to the window and pulled down the shade.

  That was it.

  Good-bye.

  Wednesday

  My parents said that I didn’t have to go to school until I was ready to. Part of me wanted to just curl up in a ball and stay in bed for a year, but I knew that I had to go in. I couldn’t stay home.

  On Wednesday I made my way downtown.

  I saw Callisto and Caitlin hanging out in their usual spot, leaning against the brick wall below the window that looked into the office. Caleb was with them. It filled me with joy to see them all there. They didn’t see me as I walked up to them. They were in deep conversation; sometimes they laughed, sometimes they furrowed their brows. As I got closer, I noticed that Maurice was standing with them, sharing his coffee with Callisto.

  Caleb saw me first.

  He smiled. He raised his hand up. But then he thought about it for a second, scowled as per usual, and turned away from me in his broody way.

  He was being cold and aloof, but I could tell, because I was a dancer and I could read the movements in a person’s body, that Caleb really wanted to run to me. He was holding himself back. And that made me feel so good. I wanted to run to him. But I held myself back, too.

  I walked over to my group of friends.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “We were worried about you when you didn’t come to school,” Maurice said.

  “And then when we read about the international incident in the Times yesterday,” Callisto said, “we realized that the incident was you.”

  “Are you okay?” Caitlin asked.

  I was about to start crying or turn away because I couldn’t handle the fact that this crazy, huge thing had happened and I didn’t know where to put it. The whole thing seemed unreal, but these people knew that it had happened. We were all witnesses to the moment.

  Caleb looked at me from under his bangs. He wasn’t being broody. He was being shy. He didn’t say anything and I couldn’t speak.

  And then Caleb didn’t need to say anything because he made a move toward me and he put his arms around me and hugged me so tightly that I felt like he was hugging the very me that hides inside. After a moment, Caitlin, Callisto, and Maurice piled on, too.

  “Are you okay?” Callisto asked me when Caleb finally let me go.

  “Shaky,” I said.

  “Yrena?” Callisto said.

  “Gone,” I said. “Or going soon.”

  Everyone’s face went grim.

  “That’s so sucky,” Caitlin said.

  “I wish things could be different,” Maurice said.

  “I really wish that our countries didn’t hate each other so much that Yrena couldn’t come back and visit or something,” Callisto said.

  “Hey, guys, I just wanted to say…” I started.

  “I just want you all to know…” I started again.

  “It’s just that it really meant a lot…” I started a third time.

  I wanted to say it. I wanted to say thank you, but I didn’t know how.

  “Hey,” Callisto said, stubbing out her clove cigarette. “No sweat. You’d do the same for us.”

  And she was right. I would have in a heartbeat.

  “So, I’m going to go in to warm up for class,” Maurice said to me. “You wanna join me?”

  I nodded.

  “Great!” he said. “See you at lunch, Callisto?”

  “Yep,” she said, and then they kissed quickly.

  “I have a free period right before lunch,” Caleb said to me. “I was going to go get a sandwich at Le Café. Can I get you something?”

  “Yeah, a plain yogurt with some honey?”

  “You got it,” he said, and he was still holding my hand right up until Maurice and I headed inside. The downstairs was quiet, but as we headed up to the dance department, it got louder. There was music and people talking, and my classmates weren’t just warming up in a boring, repetitive way. They were warming up and practicing combinations and they were trying out different kinds of moves, creating their own dances. Not just ballet or modern. They were free dancing, which was a kind of dancing that I could do and not be the worst at.

  They kind of stopped and looked at me when I came in all dressed and ready to work. They looked at me as though I was a stranger…because mostly I was.

  I was worried that I wasn’t going to fit in after all and that this was a stupid mistake. But Maurice took me by the elbow and led me into the center of the room and started to stretch next to me. I followed his lead and started stretching, too.

  Hang in there, Rose, I thought. Just make it through the day. The bell rang, meaning it was time for my first class: ballet.

  Ms. Zina’s cane banged on the floor, announcing the start of class. She began counting out the time as we did our barre exercises. One, two, three. One, two, three. And plié. And relevé. And coupé.

  “Now, first group, the combination from last week,” Ms. Zina said.

  I watched Maurice and group one do the combination.

  “Group two.” Ms. Zina banged her cane on the ground.

  I turned and faced the mirror.

  Preparation.

  And go.

  My heart went straight to my feet.

  I was a dancer.

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2010 by Cecil Castellucci

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Castellucci, Cecil, 1969–


  Rose sees red / Cecil Castellucci.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: In the 1980s, two teenage ballet dancers—one American, one Russian—spend an unforgettable night in New York City, forming a lasting friendship despite their cultural and political differences.

  ISBN 978-0-545-06079-0 (hardcover)

  [1. Ballet dancing—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Russians—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 4. New York (N.Y.)—History—20th century—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.C26865Ro 2010

  [Fic]—dc22

  2009036850

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-28320-5

  Rose vines on cover © Natalia Kuzmina/iStockphoto

  Skyline on cover © iStockphoto

  Cover design by Becky Terhune and Elizabeth B. Parisi