When You Were Mine

by Serle, Rebecca

  Scene Three

  When I leave Cal Block, I walk all the way back to the church. I know it’s where I’m going before I start. I didn’t fight hard enough for our friendship when we were kids, and I missed out on ten years with her. I didn’t try hard enough when she was here, and now there won’t be another chance. The least I can do is take it upon myself to say good-bye.

  I arrive dusty and sweaty. The parking lot is crowded, and there are photographers outside, trying to catch a snapshot of the grieving family. I slip up to the entrance and jostle my way to the front, where a security guard asks me for my name.

  “Rosaline,” I say.

  “Rosaline what?”

  “Caplet. I’m her cousin.”

  He checks the list and shakes his head. “I’m sorry, miss, there’s no Rosaline on here.”

  “But I’m her cousin,” I say.

  “I just follow orders,” he says. “No one not on this list is allowed in.”

  I stumble backward, dazed. Inside, women in large sunglasses and black low-cut suits are huddling around each other, clutching their Chanel purses to their hearts like children. These people don’t even know her. But then, neither did I.

  I take out my cell phone, planning on calling Charlie, my tail between my legs, when I see my father standing outside. He’s by a tree about three meters from the church, and he’s leaning against it, squinting up into the sunlight.

  “Dad?”

  He sees me and smiles. “Great minds think alike.”

  “I’m sorry they didn’t let you in,” I say.

  My dad shakes his head. “It’s okay. I don’t deserve it.”

  “Yes, you do. You want to be there.”

  “Sometimes, cookie, that’s not enough.” He puts his arm around me, and I lean my head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry about all of this,” he says. “How are you holding up?”

  “Dandy.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  “I don’t even think it’s hit me yet. I just can’t believe he’s gone.”

  “I know,” he says. “Me either. I think about Rob’s father—” He clears his throat. “No one should have to lose a child.”

  “People think Juliet killed them, you know. That it was suicide.”

  My dad pauses. “And what do you think?”

  Then it hits me, the thing I’ve been thinking since that night sitting on my kitchen floor with Juliet. And when the words spring up and form, I know they’re true. “It was an accident. She’d never do anything to hurt him. She loved him.”

  My dad nods, then looks at the church. The photographers have settled, and the doors are closed. We stay that way, he with his arm around me, staring ahead, until the first mourners come out. “Sleep sweet,” I whisper as we both, in our own way, try to say good-bye.

  Days turn into weeks, and still I don’t feel like time starts again. I go to school, I go to my classes. I nod and smile and say hello, but I’m not really feeling anything. I’m falling, and I know I should stick my hand out, should try to grab on to something and stop myself, but it’s like I can’t see. Not blind, exactly. More like my eyes are closed. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to figure out how to open them.

  Nothing helps except music. It’s the only thing that makes me feel like I’m still alive, sitting at the piano after school. While the house is still quiet and my parents are out—at work or running errands—I can lose myself. The notes carry me away from here. Not back in time but somewhere else entirely.

  I’m comfortable here. Whole. Like nothing’s missing.

  Charlie and Olivia come by toting board games and vanilla lattes and bags and bags of Twizzlers. They stay up late and come by early. Sometimes Charlie comes and listens to me play. She thinks I don’t know that she sits on the porch and waits for me to finish, but I hear her the second she arrives. She still slams car doors and jingles her keys. She’s never been an inconspicuous person. Blending in just isn’t her thing.

  We don’t talk about what people are saying at school. The murmurs in the bathroom, the hushed whispers when I pass by in the halls. It’s getting quieter, but slowly. I almost fear the day people stop talking. Like a dull fade to black where Rob won’t be seen anymore. Or remembered. I’m not looking forward to the darkness.

  “Why don’t we go out?” Olivia says. Today she’s lying in my bed next to me flipping through a magazine she brought over. Charlie is sitting on my floor, stretching.

  “Rose?” Charlie mumbles.

  “I don’t really feel like it.”

  “Come on. You’ve barely left the house in weeks.” Charlie pops up from the floor and catapults herself onto the bed next to us.

  “This isn’t like a breakup,” I say. “I don’t need to go get drunk to get over it. I’m never getting over it.”

  “Who said anything about drinking?” Olivia says. “I just meant food. A movie. Something.”

  “Anything,” Charlie adds.

  “Fine, a movie. No food.”

  “Not even popcorn?” Olivia asks, but I can tell she’s kidding, and even I have to smile.

  “If it’s synthetic, we don’t have a problem.”

  “What’s playing?” Charlie asks as we tromp our way downstairs.

  “Who cares.”

  My parents are in the kitchen sipping coffee.

  “We got her up,” Charlie says to my mom. “Where’s our medal?”

  My mom comes over and folds me into a hug. She’s been doing that a lot lately. Like if she holds on tight, she can keep me together.

  “Well, I’m glad,” she says, trying not to look hurt when I pull away. “Have fun.”

  My dad raises up his mug like he’s toasting us, but he looks tired. And sad. I think this has been the hardest on him.

  Charlie tries to hold my hand in the car, but I keep my palms planted firmly in my lap. She puts on her iPod, and we all get kind of quiet. A few times Olivia tries to play the “Remember when?” game, but all our stories just remind us of Rob, and we give up quickly. The movie theater is next to Grandma’s Coffeehouse, and we park right in front, the way Olivia always does when she runs in on Wednesday mornings. We’ve been to the coffeehouse all together a few times, mostly when we’ve had a sleepover the night before, but I don’t think I’ve been once this year. The same woman is still behind the counter, and as we slam doors and walk up to the theater, I realize I don’t know her name. We’ve been coming here for probably ten years, and I’ve never bothered to ask.

  Olivia buys us all tickets for some movie with the blond girl from that vampire show she’s obsessed with. Charlie gets popcorn and two different kinds of candy, and we take seats in the back on the left-hand side. It’s where we’ve been sitting since the seventh grade, when we started going to movies together alone, without our parents. I stuff my hand into the popcorn and shove a few kernels into my mouth, but they just taste like cardboard. The candy has no taste either. Even the movie looks dull. Like it’s in black and white instead of color. I sit low in my seat and let the screen carry me away, lull me, so at least for the next two hours I’m only half conscious.

  When the movie is over, I tell Charlie and Olivia I’ll meet them outside. I use the restroom and splash some water onto my face. I shouldn’t recognize myself. It’s been weeks since I looked in the mirror and even longer since I’ve had a proper shower, but here I am. Rosaline, just like always. Even Rob’s dying couldn’t make me disappear.

  I’m walking out of the bathroom when I see them buying tickets. Len and Dorothy. She is laughing and smiling, and he’s paying. Are they on a date? She holds up a bag of popcorn, and he sticks his mouth in, tongue first, and flicks a kernel up. The rational part of me knows they are just friends, but the other part of me, the part that trusted him, is seething angry. He hasn’t even said he was sorry. He didn’t even call after Rob died. He didn’t even ask if I was okay. We’ve barely spoken during bio, going through the activities like strangers, and we haven’t talked about wha
t happened at my house. He’s barely registered my existence.

  He sees me but immediately looks away. Great, so he’s ignoring me again. Just like he did at the funeral. It’s not like everyone else at school isn’t treating me the same way. Except I thought Len was different. I trusted him. And he’s proven to be exactly like everyone else.

  I storm over to them and grab his arm. Hard.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Hey,” he says, looking from my hand to my face and back down.

  “Were you going to say hello? Or were you just going to keep ignoring me?”

  Dorothy laughs nervously next to him, but he doesn’t look at her. He just keeps looking at my hand on his arm.

  “I thought we were friends,” I continue. “I thought you’d care.”

  He looks up, and his eyes search mine. “I do,” he says.

  “Well, my friend just died. My cousin just died.” I cough the words out like they’re rotten.

  “I know,” he says. “I was there.”

  “Oh, you mean at the funeral? Could have fooled me. You didn’t even say hello.”

  Len shakes his arm free from my grasp. “Honestly,” he says, “I thought I’d be the last person you’d want to hear from.” His voice is quiet, and he’s holding his arm close to his chest. “That’s why I haven’t said anything. In school or otherwise. I didn’t think you’d want me to.”

  “Well, you thought wrong,” I say. And then, before I walk out to the car, I add, “Not that it matters anymore anyway.”

  “Do you want us to come in?” Charlie asks.

  I shake my head. “It’s fine. I’m tired.”

  Charlie nods, and Olivia squeezes my shoulder from the backseat. “We’re here,” she says. “We love you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You have to let us help,” Charlie says. “Please.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “Talk tomorrow.”

  I unbuckle my seat belt and grab my purse. I slide out of the car and shut the door.

  “I’ll miss practice today,” Charlie calls through the window. She’s smiling, her red hair catching the last sinking rays of sun.

  “You’re a stalker,” I say.

  “And you’re really good, Rosie. You know I wouldn’t sit around and listen to half-baked talent.” Her lips blow kisses as she swings out of the driveway, chauffeuring Olivia home.

  I see a letter on the porch when I get closer. My mom has sorted the mail and left it out. I pick it up and walk inside. There is no return address, but the handwriting is familiar. I sit down on the stairs and thread my finger under the envelope flap, wiggling it from side to side until the seal pops. A photo slides out. It’s yellowed on the back, and the corner is ripped off, like it’s been torn out of an album.

  It’s a picture of two children, a boy and a girl, sitting at a piano. They are seated on the bench, facing away from the instrument. She’s wearing a pink-and-white dress and he has on khakis and a collared shirt. The two children aren’t looking at the camera but instead at each other, oblivious, lost in their own conversation. And they each have a Twizzler dangling out of their mouths. The little girl is me and the little boy is Len. It’s a picture from a recital at Famke’s.

  I turn the photo over, and there is a note on the back, scrawled in the same handwriting I now know so well. From hours spent in the bio lab, homework assignments, and corrected quizzes.

  Rosaline,

  I’m sorry for those things I said. I meant some of them, but not all. I still care about you. I’m here, whenever you want me to be.

  Always,

  —Len

  I take the picture and stand up. Then I climb the stairs, walk down the hallway, and go into my room. It’s not until I’m in bed that I realize I have the picture pressed up against my heart.

  Scene Four

  My birthday this year comes too quickly. It’s January first before the calendar can right itself from stumbling over Christmas. The morning usually begins with my mom making pancakes in the kitchen. Banana and chocolate chip. We’ve been having them since before I can remember. She makes hot cocoa with espresso and we all sit around in our bathrobes and pretend it’s snowing outside, which it never is.

  “Just once, I’d love to have a white Christmas,” my dad says every year, “but I’d be just as happy for it to show up on your birthday.”

  That’s how I feel about Rob. I half expected him to come over on Christmas. Usually I wake up before six. It’s one of those habits left over from childhood. The excitement to see what I’ve gotten and what kind of gifts are under the tree. I went downstairs and just stood in the living room, looking out to our lawn through the double glass doors over toward his house. I stood there for hours, until my mom came and wrapped a blanket around me and forced me back to the couch. I was convinced, somehow, that if I stared long enough, I’d see him. That if I waited long enough, the universe would get tired and let him slip back to me.

  I have a habit of waking up early on my birthday, too, but today I wake up at nine. It’s dark in my room, and if it wasn’t for my clock on my nightstand, I’d have no idea what time it is at all. My phone is flashing on the floor beneath me—three new text messages.

  Two are from Olivia. She wrote the text of a birthday card and got cut off. The third, I know before I read it, will be from Charlie. She always sends me the same thing every birthday morning: Happy birthday, bisnatch. Time to party.

  The familiarity of the text sends me back flat against my pillows. Previous birthdays come sweeping in like leaves blown in the wind. Images and memories swirling around me. Charlie’s text and Rob’s visit, always in time for pancakes. Hot cocoa with my family. Presents and laughter and always the promise of more. Playing with our Christmas gifts from the previous week and running around on full stomachs. Dinner together and sometimes even the slight champagne headache from New Year’s Eve the night before. A new semester of school. Times in which forever just seemed like a given. In which time seemed like a stroll on Olivia’s beach in Malibu: casual and unrushed.

  Last year on my birthday Rob came over for brunch. My mom made her traditional pancakes, and we all sat around and joked about how long it would take my dad to set up the new DVR my mom had bought him for Christmas. Afterward my parents started cooking some elaborate birthday dinner, and Rob and I drove over to Olivia’s house. Charlie and Ben were there, and Jake, too, and the six of us spent the afternoon baking brownies and watching Casablanca. We ended up burning the first batch because we forgot about them in the oven, but the house smelled like chocolate for the rest of the day. I remember lying on Olivia’s couch and thinking there was nowhere else in the world I’d rather be. It was perfect.

  My mom knocks softly on my door and comes inside. She sits down on the edge of my bed and then moves closer, placing one hand on my forehead.

  “Happy birthday, baby. Are you coming down?” She starts running her hand through my hair the way she used to do when I was little and sick.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Just thinking.”

  She nods and motions for me to sit up. I slide until my back is flat against my headboard.

  “Look, Rosaline.” Usually my mom only uses my full name like that when she’s mad at me, but it’s my birthday, and something about the way she says it makes me think of Len.

  “You never call me that.”

  My mom dips her chin down and kisses me on the forehead. “It’s your name, sweetheart. It’s who you really are.” She smooths my hair with the back of her hand. “Sometimes things happen in life that we don’t understand. That are unreasonably cruel.” She stops and touches my cheek. Her hands are warm. She probably already started cooking. “But that doesn’t mean you curl up and give in. Do you understand?”

  I blink back tears, and she stands up, going over to my window. She pulls back the blinds, and light comes pouring into my bedroom.

  “There are still some surprises left,” she says. “Come and see.”

  “What?”
>
  She doesn’t respond; she just keeps looking outside. I toss back the covers and realize it’s kind of cold in my room. I wrap my robe around me and go to stand behind her. When I get there, I gasp.

  All across our lawn down below, covering our outdoor furniture and lining our deck, is a delicate white blanket of snow.

  “It’s beautiful,” I say.

  “So are you,” my mother says. She puts her arm around me, and this time I let her. I lean my head on her shoulder. I’m as close to anyone as I have been since Charlie collected me from my floor weeks ago, and maybe because I feel protected, for just a moment, it slips out.

  “It was my fault,” I whisper. I’m blinking, my eyes struggling to adjust to the influx of light. “I know Juliet didn’t pull the wheel. It was Rob. He was drunk. He came to see me, and I turned him away. He should never have been in the car. It was my fault he died.”

  “Is that what you think?” My mom takes her arm away from me and crosses it against her chest.

  “It’s just true,” I say. “He should have been with me. I could have stopped this.”

  “No,” my mom says, “that’s not how it works.” She wanders away from the window and over to my desk. She picks up a picture and sets it back down. “I realize I don’t know exactly what happened between the two of you. And there was all that stuff with Juliet. . . .” She loops her finger in the air a few times like she’s trying to hurry herself up. “But one thing I do know is that we don’t get to choose when we leave this world. And we don’t get to choose when others leave either.”

  She drops her hands to her sides and sighs. “Honey, think about your dad. He didn’t speak to his brother for ten years.” She closes her eyes like she’s trying to get the words right. “That was a choice,” she says, “and he missed out on getting to know his niece. We all did.”