Roman Holiday

by Ashleyn Poston

  Her eyes widen as she snatches it out of my hand and turns it around in her hand, inspecting it. Without looking up from the chip, she asks, "Got your laptop on you, bb?"

  "It's at home."

  "That's fine." She hurries over to the gargantuan purse she dropped by the bathroom door and pulls out her DLSR. She pops out her own memory chip and puts his in. "Okay, let's see what's on this then..." Her frown deepens as she clicks through the pictures, searching through the photos. "This can't be right."

  "What do you mean?"

  "This." She shakes her camera. "This card. It's not from the Lona, bb." Her mocha eyes connect with mine. "They're pictures from the night Holly died."

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I snatch the camera from Maggie and scan through the photos, feeling myself pale at every one. John must've been outside her bathroom window.

  The photos aren't close, but you can tell it's Holly. They look like screenshots to a scene in a movie. She's holding a glass of wine in one hand, listening to her iPod, her eyes closed. Her hair floats around her in the bathtub beside candles and incense, nothing more than a soothing bubble bath. She has one foot up out of the water. It's black and blue. Hadn't there been something about a fall the week before in Arizona?

  John was nothing more than a peeping Tom.

  But then...something begins to go wrong in the pictures. The wine glass tips out of her hand onto the floor, coating the tiles in a blood-red stain, and she begins to sink beneath the bubbles, her hair floating like a wreath around her. First her chin goes under, then her lips, and then sliding, sliding...

  My stomach heaves. I shove the camera back to Maggie.

  "He must've taken the Lona photos on the local memory," Maggie says, although her heart isn't in it. She shuts off her camera and pops out the memory card again. "Bb, Roman really wasn't there the night she died."

  "But John was, and he could've done something."

  Maggie shakes her head. She drops her camera back into her purse and begins to pace. She's followed John for a year, kept up with him, idolized him, almost. The confusion on her face is sickening. "That dick-licking bastard. He could've saved her! He could've—but he just—bb, this is big." Then she gasps and seizes my shoulders with her claw-like nails so hard, it makes me wince. "This is our leverage. Two people can play at this game."

  I blink. "...I'm not following."

  "Hello. Check in, okay? Follow—we got his jerkmeat, right?" She holds the memory card between us. "And he just slut-shamed you on every major tabloid in the world. It's on, bb. It's on like Donkey Kong. We're going to go there. And we're going to fight like real Holidayers!"

  "But I'm not a Holidayer."

  "You love Roman, don't you?"

  I frown. "That doesn't matter."

  She rolls her eyes. "Whatever. Either you're a Holidayer or a Hate-idayer." She sniffs me and cringes. "Take a shower and get adorbs. We're going out."

  "Maggie, I'd rather just hide here under the couch for a few years until all of this blows over." I start over to the couch, but she runs in front of me and puts up her hands to block my way. "Maggie," I plead.

  "No way, bb. Time to do some retaliation."

  I give her a no-bullshit look.

  She rolls her eyes. "Where the hell do you think John's gonna be today?"

  "I don't know."

  "Yes you do."

  To prove her point, she snatches up the TV controller and turns it to MTV. It's a full day of live coverage from St. Michael's Cemetery—or it's supposed to be. My big fat face stares at me from over Nick Lively's purple-suited shoulder. She quirks an eyebrow. "Now do you know? I told you, this shit just got real. And I'm not going to sit around and watch my best friend get slut-shamed. Call me classy, but this means war."

  I purse my lips together. "Don't you think he should see them first before we just hand them to the public?"

  "Yeah, well, he sure blew you off, didn't he? And besides what does it matter? This memory card is his golden ticket to freeeee-dom! If we hand this to the public? Not only will it put John at the scene of the crime, but Roman will totes be off scot-free. He didn't murder Holly. He wasn't even there. So what do you say, bb? Let's give John the old Magbug One-Two?" she offers, holding out her fist.

  On the screen, a blue mohawk cuts through the crowd behind Nick Lively. Seeing it, my resolve strengthens. Where Boaz is, I'm sure Roman is soon to follow. But giving the photos to Nick Lively without Roman seeing them first? I just have this horrid mental image of Roman waking up tomorrow morning with new photographs of his dead best friend on the front page of the New York Times. Wouldn't that hurt him even more than her death already has?

  Nick Lively pulls up an old yearbook photo from sophomore year of high school when I still had braces and frizzy short hair. How the hell did they get that picture? The caption under the photo reads 'JUNIE BALTIMORE, COMPETING WITH THE DEAD?'

  Maggie's right. This is war.

  But it's not our move to make.

  "We give it to Roman," I tell her, and when she opens her mouth to rebuke I add, "Please?"

  She sighs and drops her first. "There goes my fifteen minutes of fame."

  "Don't count that out quite yet," I reply, ripping my eyes from the TV screen to get dressed. I don't even bother straightening my hair, I just fishtail it over my shoulder.

  Maggie frowns at my Journey t-shirt and frayed shorts. "We're going to war, not a lawn concert, bb."

  "I won't stick out then, will I?" I retort.

  "You have pink hair."

  Maggie drove her neon purple Celica. It smells like roses and old take-out food, probably from the week-old Chinese in the backseat. I shove the library books and magazines onto the floor and buckle up.

  "Sorry for the junk," she says. "You never know when the zom-pocalypse will come. And when it does, I'll be ready."

  "Shotgun?"

  "Double pump action, and just so you know," —and she pats my knee lovingly— "if you go zombie, I'll kill you first."

  I laugh. "Thanks, Mags. I'd kill you first, too."

  The only think playing on the radio today is Roman Holiday in memory of Holly Hudson. It's either that or NPR. The end of "Crush on You" migrates into "Deep End," a swoony song about—you guessed it—diving off the deep end for love, and then drowning in it. Holly sings most of this one. Sort of ironic, really, considering the photographs. Maggie taps her fingers along to the beat, rocking her head back and forth, as we speed toward Lynn Island. "You know, I always wondered, bb, Roman and Holly are from Myrtle, right? How many people knew them?"

  I shrug. "Not a lot, I guess."

  "But a good majority of them, right? Holly, at least, because I could totes see her as senior class prez or something. Oh! The viral video—the one at the golf course? Taken right there." She points at Arrg, Pirates! as we drive past. A small smile creeps onto my face. Yeah, I know the place. My shoes still smell like the lagoon.

  "Dad loved that place when I was a kid," I reply instead, wanting to keep that night a secret, because it is the only thing that is truly mine anymore.

  "OhmyGod, you could've ran into him and not even knew it!"

  I think about the shape of Roman's face, and the way his lips turn up when he's amused. I shake my head. "Nah, I think I'd remember if I did."

  Maggie rolls her eyes and merges onto the interstate, following the signs to Lynn Island. It's a small town a little past South Myrtle, home to shrimpers and oyster-shucking contests. "You sure? Because do I look exactly like I did when you first met me?"

  "Sort of, minus the dreads."

  "And the fantastic boobs," she adds, thrusting her chest up. "Think, because Roman doesn't really have orange hair you know—"

  "I know! I've watched you obsess over Holiday for five years," I reply, rolling my eyes, and prop my elbow up on the door, putting my chin on my hand.

  She huffs. "Jeez, take a chill, yeah?" It sounds like she drops the subject until suddenly, like she always does, she a
dds, "I just thought you'd have run into him before, is all."

  I do everything I can to not groan. "Well, I haven't."

  She sneaks a glance at me from the road, thrumming her thumbs on the middle of the steering wheel. "Is something eating you?"

  "Sorta," I confess. "What John said last night—about me just being..." I hesitate, pressing my forehead against the warm glass of the window. "I don't wanna be like...you know, just another holiday."

  The edges of her rouge-colored lips quirk up. "You love him, don't you?"

  The back of my neck prickles with heat. "No." Although, I can't shake last night, not even after his harsh words and hateful glares. When we were dancing cheek-to-cheek, it was...it felt like every love song ever made, and that isn't something that a scornful scowl can erase.

  I begin shaking my head. "I shouldn't. He's a rock star."

  "Yeah, duh. He's got models lusting after him."

  "Yeah," I murmur, sinking further down into my seat, "thanks for that."

  "But," she adds as an afterthought, "Deep End" morphing into "Ever for Always." "I've never ever in a billion years thought you'd be on his side on anything. You hated him."

  "I still should. I'm being crazy right now. Why the hell should I care what happens to him? Why should he matter so much?"

  "Because, because, because," she singsongs. "Next stop, save the Lining, right?"

  "Somehow, bb, I don't think we can save that with a memory card, too." I lean up and change the station to classic rock. Guns 'N Roses. "'Sweet Child 'O Mine.'"

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Flowers wreathe the gate and litter the ground in front of St. Michael's Cemetery. Arrangements with 'We Miss You!' and 'Stay Weird!' lean against the tall stone wall and lace across the ground. No one dares to step on them—as if they're in a magical bubble. A crowd of quite possibly, oh, five hundred fans wait in front of the cemetery, most of them wearing pink SAVE HOLIDAY shirts, holding candles. Don't any of them have to go to work? Have a life? Something else to do besides pay tribute to a dead girl?

  Maggie parks in bumfuck nowhere, so we have to hike at least three football fields' worth of cars to get to the cemetery itself. It's a complete pain, and today is stifling hot at that. Heat waves rise up from the asphalt, making the entire walk feel like I'm trudging through a sauna. How Maggie can look so cool in her four-inch heels and A-line skirt is beyond me. I can't even look cool in a parka in sub-zero weather.

  Then again, I might be sweating because I'm nervous. I keep touching the memory card in my pocket to make sure it's still there.

  Up ahead, Nick Lively—how can you miss him with that tan?—stands beside a black media van, fixing his hair in the driver-side mirror. His eyes stray up to mine, but he doesn't register I'm that girl until I've already ducked behind Maggie again.

  "This was such a bad idea, bb," I hiss to her. "Can we leave?"

  She loops her arm into mine and squeezes my hand tightly. "Fat chance. We're in this together. Balls to the wall, right, bb?"

  "I hate that expression."

  The crowd is thick with high schoolers. We elbow our way to the front where a line of Myrtle Beach's finest stand looking bored and tired. But two of them have Holly's trademark peacock feather clipped behind their ear.

  "That's so sweet!" Maggie coos. "They're paying homage!"

  This isn't exactly how I pictured the vigil. I expected more… I don't know, music? Noise? Girls crying in the streets while their fifteen-year-old boyfriends console them? But no one's crying. There's a solemn, heavy shroud hanging over the crowd, despite the colorful array of peacock feathers poking out of rampant ponytails and fishtail braids, no one can seem to shake. Like everyone is afraid of being too loud. It's silly—I mean they can't exactly wake the dead or anything. Somewhere in the sea of people, a lone radio fades into "My Heart War," and people flick out their phones and light their lighters in honor.

  A slice of blue fin cuts through the crowd to my left. I tell Maggie I'll be right back and dive after Boaz. He stops at the outskirts of the crowd, taking a pack of cigarettes out from under his black kilt. It matches his black tuxedo t-shirt. "Boaz," I whisper, and he almost jumps out of his skin.

  "Jeez Louise, bro-ho!" He slaps his heart. "You wanna give me a heart defunct? Ever heard of not sneakin' up on the man while he's at a fuckin' cemetery?"

  "Sorry," I apologize earnestly. Making sure no one is close enough to hear, I add, "Where's Roman?"

  He puts his lips to the tip of the pack and extracts a cigarette, putting the rest back into his kilt. "Readin' every fuckin' rag mag in the state, probs."

  "I didn't rat."

  He snorts, taking out a matchbox, and lights his cigarette. He inhales a lungful, savoring, and blows it out in a ring.

  I purse my lips together. "You know I wouldn't."

  "Do I?" He doesn't sound bitter, just amused. "My Heart War" crescendos, Roman and Holly's voices combining with the vigil's voices, roaring the lyrics like they're the last words on earth. It's chilling, as if she's here in the weirdest way. Sort of spooky and...and really tragic. "You know," he goes on, "no one even bothered about her side of this. Roman's always been either the martyr or the culprit. Who's Holly? The victim. No one cares if she isn't."

  Maybe now's the time to tell him about the pictures on the memory card. It'll clear everything up. I begin to reach for the memory card in my pocket when I pause, my eyebrows furrowing. "What do you mean, if she isn't?"

  "Bro-ho, she was in love. Serious love. For-shit love."

  I retract my hand. "With Roman?" Was she who the song was meant for? Has he loved her all this time?

  He doesn't say yes or no. He sucks another lungful of smoke and blows it out over his head. "A few months before she died she got this tat. Ya'aburnee. It means 'you bury me.'"

  The smoke snakes like a gray river into the blue sky.

  "Ya'aburnee?" I echo, remembering the article from The Juice. A cold shiver races down my arms, and I quickly cross them over my chest to rub them away. When Dad died, I was mopping the stage of sweat from the rock show the night before. We were thirty minutes to opening, and Dad had been counting the stocks, his pen making sharp checks down his list. I still hear the sound when I'm swabbing the floors, that echoing chhhick, chhhhhick!…

  The next thing I knew, he put down his checklist and leaned against the counter. Geoff asked him, "Hey, boss, you okay?"

  "Yeah, I'm just a little lightheaded is all. Can you check and see how many dark ales are in the fridge?"

  Those were his last words.

  He dropped like deadweight to the ground, his pen skittering across the floor, sharp and screeching. I dropped my mop and catapulted off the stage. I think I knew then that I wasn't going to make it in time. I think I knew at that very moment. But knowing didn't stop me from shaking him, yelling at him, trying to keep him alive until the ambulance arrived. My fingers had tightened so hard around his suspenders the paramedics had to wrench me off of him, crying, kicking and screaming, because I thought that if he could hear my voice then he'd come back to life even though his lips were blue and his eyes never looked once at me. They just kept staring, staring, toward something beyond me to nothing at all.

  Ya'aburnee isn't the act of burying someone. It's the empty chair at dinner. It's when everyone forgets to turn off the freezer light at the bar because Dad always did. It's checking pants for suspenders even though no one in the house wears them anymore.

  Red suspenders—I remember. Red suspenders like the ones Roman wears.

  Boaz shakes his head. "Hols found me out in Vegas. The band had been together a few months, right? I was playin' at this luncheon thing for terminal kids where they served these shitty little shrimp balls and mini-dogs. Terrible grub for cancer kids, lemme tell you. I went to take a piss, right? There was only one bathroom and I had to piss. So, I knocked to see the hold-up and check it—it was Hols. She'd started her red river of doom and didn't have a supply of torpedoes."

&nbs
p; I'm not sure what's more shocking, the fact that Boaz just called tampons torpedoes, or that he was ballsy enough to cut in line. "You're kidding."

  "Nope. And guess who saved the day? Yeah, that's right. Yours truly. Got her stoppers and personally delivered 'em. Crisis averted. Next thing I know, I'm playin' in a fuckin' pop-rock band."

  I can't help but imagine Boaz picking out tampons in the feminine hygiene section of a grocery store. "How come these things always start with unmentionables?"

  Boaz grins then and elbows me in the side. "Because, bro-ho, those are always the best stories."

  The crowd continues singing along with "My Heart War." It really isn't that bad of a song, once you listen to the words, but they pale in comparison to the song on his CD. If he ever returned to music, would he make more songs like it? Terrible, bittersweet, perfect songs you knew by heart and lit candles to? Songs you put on every playlist, stopped for on every radio station for?

  His first chance at fame turned out for the worse, but everyone deserves a second chance, right? I'm sure Bon Jovi didn't get it all right on the first try—and we all know how the Boss's first marriage went.

  Suddenly, an arm slings around my shoulder. Maggie leans over me, vibrating with excitement. "Oh my God, I can't believe I'm here, bb! I can't belie—" Her words clog in her throat the second her eyes land on Boaz. "Oh, holy hotsticks, Boaz Alexander? You're Boaz Alexander? Junie, is that Boaz Alexander?"

  "Maggie," I introduce, "this is Boaz. Boaz, this is Maggie, my best friend."

  "Why, hello." She suddenly strikes her hand around me out for him to shake.

  He brings her hand up to his lips instead. "Hey hey, good lookin'."

  I've never seen Maggie melt so fast in my entire life. "Marry me?"

  He wiggles his eyebrows.

  I roll my eyes. "Where's Roman?" I ask again.

  "No idea," Boaz supplies, not taking his eyes off of Maggie. She blushes under his gaze.