Roses and Rot (6 page)

Rumor was that while the food was decent, the service was indifferent at best, which may have explained why it was nearly empty during happy hour in the first week at an artists’ colony. Marin
was in the back corner, across a table from Gavin, waiting for me. Getting together here had been their idea, and Marin had been oddly shy when she brought it up.

“We’re apparently the first set of siblings ever to be here at the same time, so he’s curious. Plus, well, I’d like to introduce you.” She was bent over her dance bag, face obscured by a curtain of hair.

“So I can see if he passes inspection?” I joked.

“It’s just a drink. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

“It’s fine, Marin. Of course I will.”

After only a five-minute wait, the bartender slid me the bottle of blackcurrant cider I’d ordered. Unopened, no glass. I reached over and borrowed the bottle opener, then took my drink to the table. Marin made introductions.

“A pleasure, Imogen. How are you finding Melete so far?” Gavin asked. He made the polite question feel genuine, as if my answer mattered.

“It’s lovely, thanks.”

“Marin tells me you’re a writer.”

“Yes.” We were all doing very well at this particular round of small talk.

She stood up. “I think that’s our food getting cold. I’ll be right back.”

Gavin leaned across the table and lowered his voice. “Are you happy to be here? I didn’t want to ask in front of your sister.”

“I beg your pardon?” Apparently, the small talk was over.

“Marin mentioned that you had some reluctance about applying. She was worried that you only came here because she asked.”

She hadn’t told me that. “I really am. She did push me to apply, but I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t wanted to, and I’m glad I did.

“How do you like working with my sister?”

“Marin’s a brilliant dancer.” For a second, as he watched her walk back with our plates, his poise slipped away, and he looked real, like he was breath and blood, instead of a magazine page. Then the second passed, and that unreal perfection fell on him like a shadow again.

Silence slid over the table and stretched, cat-like, as we ate. Marin fidgeted, picking at her fries with nothing like her usual appetite. Gavin raised his eyes to her face every time he drank, using the motion as a cover.

It struck me that I was chaperoning the world’s most awkward date. Or a date that might have been less awkward if I wasn’t there to witness it. “Marin, do you know where the ladies’ room is?” I grabbed her arm and pulled her with me without waiting for her answer.

The door swung shut behind us. “I feel like an enormous third wheel. Be honest—would you rather be alone with him?”

“Maybe?” Marin said. “I mean, not when I asked you. It was supposed to be drinks, so you could meet him, then things started to sort of happen.”

I grinned. “That’s adorable. Okay. Go back out there. I’m going to get a really important phone call.”

She hugged me. “Thanks, Imogen.”

I waited a couple of minutes, then walked back to the table. “Marin, Gavin, I’m so sorry. My mentor just called and asked to move up our next meeting. I promised her I’d have pages, and I don’t have anything written. Will you excuse me?”

“I’d be a terrible example if I didn’t,” Gavin said.

“We’re fine.” Marin smiled. “Go.”

“Lovely to meet you, Gavin.”

“And you.” He stood as I left, perfectly polite, perfectly correct.

On the way out of the door, I looked back. They were deep in conversation, leaning close across the table. Impossible at this distance to say what they were talking about, but at least they were talking, instead of sitting in silence and not quite looking at each other. Then Gavin reached out, tucked Marin’s hair behind an ear, and she smiled. So did I.

Strange, but somehow also comforting, to think that even one of the dance world’s most beautiful people was still human enough to get flummoxed about a crush.

Since I had used needing to write as an excuse to leave, it only seemed fair that I actually go home and do that. I picked up my pen and used the scratch of the nib across the page as white noise, shutting out everything but the story.

Once upon a time.

Once upon a time, all the clocks chime midnight.

Cinderella flees from the ball as her illusion unweaves. Beauty races toward her Beast before the last echo of the clock falls silent.

Illusions fall. Magic ends. The clock chimes.

Nothing lasts forever, and midnight is a purposeful stop. A pause to remind you that there is always a clock ticking. There will never be enough time, and for every Beauty who saves her Beast, there will be a voiceless mermaid who dissolves into sea foam.

But there is another thing about midnight. It is when illusions break. When you can see the truth beneath them, if you are looking. There is always a crack in the illusion, a gap in the perfection, even if it is only visible with the ticking of a clock.

Midnight is when you look, if there is a truth you need to see. If you are brave enough to bear what you witness.

For just a moment, the smoke dissipates, the mirrors shatter, and
the glamour is gone. All that’s left is the truth of the story, the truth in your heart, your darkest secret.

A glass shoe, abandoned on the stairs.

Once upon a time.

Tick.

Tock.

Pen down, and I rolled the tension from my shoulders, shook the stiffness from my hand.

It’s easier to see the places where things end. Endings are clear, endings are dramatic, endings are obvious events. A pair of panties, not yours, found, the slap of a hand across a face, a ring returned. Something that was, and isn’t, now.

Beginnings are hidden in the shadows of time, are gradual, are two half-glances in a dark bar. Tiny things that no one even notices, but that hold everything.

After a week, I had been at Melete long enough for it to start feeling like it was mine. Part of that familiarity was from running over and through the place until my feet knew the ground beneath. I felt connected, like I had learned Melete’s borders and boundaries, like it had shown me its secrets.

I ran through the falling light of evening, arms loose, the muscles in my thighs warm. Grass bent and sprang beneath my feet, and I heard the rush of the river under the rush of my breath.

I had started running my freshman year of high school as a way to not be in the house, to escape. Even that small escape hadn’t been easy, but it had been possible. According to my mother, “letting herself go” was the cardinal sin a woman could commit, and being overweight or out of shape were both major signs of a woman letting herself go. She checked the sizes on our clothing, and if they
were what she considered to be too large, the clothes would disappear from our closets, leaving us the choice of whittling ourselves back into the size she felt was appropriate, or using our own money to buy replacements that would disappear at the next inspection. So if I wanted to run, all I had to do was tell her that I thought I was gaining weight. She would narrow her eyes, pinch the flesh under my arm or on top of my thigh, and tell me that I certainly could stand to tone up. The freedom was worth the humiliation.

I learned to love the motion of running, the action itself. The fact that I could trust the muscles in my legs to carry me, if I needed to go. Running made me feel strong and capable. Like, if I ran far enough, I could outrun everything—that my thoughts would just go white, and there would be nothing in the world but movement.

Once I had been able to move out of my mother’s house, I had stopped trying to outrun my life and ran for the pleasure I felt in movement. Legs and arms the tick of a metronome, distance disappearing beneath my feet. Now, I ran to clear my thoughts, to untangle plot threads, to ground myself in my own skin, something that was necessary to counterbalance all of the hours I spent living solely in my head.

I kept to the path, weaving through the fellows’ houses, then the studios, then the other buildings that ringed the Commons—including what looked like a completely empty There—then farther out, into the woods. The air smelled rich, green as the trees, and a breeze cooled the sweat against my skin. Birds called their evening greetings, and something else, smaller than I was, chipmunk or squirrel, ran through the forest as well.

The sun slid farther toward the horizon, and I turned around, looping my steps back on themselves.

I emerged from the forest and ran back through the populated
areas of campus. The mentors’ houses, the fragrant air of the rose garden, the artists’ studios. Some of the dancers’ studios had walls of enormous glass windows. They could be curtained over for privacy, but tonight, Marin had left hers uncovered. As I ran past, I saw them, Marin and Gavin, dancing. I stopped.

I don’t forget how talented she is. I’ve seen Marin dance almost my entire life, and I’ve seen her talent since I was aware enough to know what that meant, to know how much better she was than the other girls onstage in pink tights and tutus. I’ve gone to her performances and watched recordings. But sometimes the reality of her ability slips from my mind until I have a reason to be reminded of it, and here, like this, she was breathtaking.

Marin exploded through the air, in and out of Gavin’s arms. Every arch of her wrist, every movement described by her leg, was like watching a story in a language I hadn’t known I understood. When they danced together, it was clear that Gavin was the best partner Marin had ever worked with. I could hear the music, just seeing them move. They were the song.

My abused muscles quivered in the cold, and I stood, transfixed.

It was a catch and lift they were working on. Marin flung herself into the air toward Gavin, and his hands pushed her higher still, until she was poised just on the edge of his grasp.

Then a toss and she flew again, spun, and dropped back into his hold, but only after almost, almost falling. Beautiful in its peril, trust enfleshed.

Again and again they ran through the motions, making slight adjustments that I couldn’t see. But I could see that she flew higher, fell faster. My heart raced to watch it.

Then he said something, and stepped closer, and it was not with the grace of a dancer, but something very mortal, hesitant and
nervous. And even though it was a not a wild flight through the air, there was peril in Marin’s answering movement, as she stepped into the circle of his arms. Peril, but grace there, too.

And then his hands moved on her body, and her mouth touched his, and I turned away, and I did not watch.

The Mourning River, which Marin could see from her window, cut through the grounds at Melete, dividing the place almost exactly in half. Clear and swift-flowing, it was arched with bridges, installed with the same sense of artistic chaos that suffused the rest of the design here. I stood in the center of a miniature version of the Thames’s Tower Bridge, and I could see the Rialto Bridge just downriver. The experience was like standing on a fold in a map, impossible geography made solid.

I still hadn’t gotten over the slight feeling of unreality that Melete gave me. The night before, I had felt the sensation that someone was watching me work so strongly that I had to close my windows and curtains before it went away. I had slept fitfully, and woken up before dawn feeling like the shadows were staring at me.

But the late morning was bright and clear. Light dappled through the leaves of the trees, and I closed my eyes and tilted my face toward the warmth.

“Those trees are my favorite.”

I looked toward the voice.

“The ones you were looking at. They’re called elf maples.”

He might have been an elf, the modern film version, all red-gold hair and cheekbones so sharp you could cut yourself on them, worn jeans, and a T-shirt as green as the leaves. He smiled, and I felt heat rise just under my skin.

“It sounds like a name from a fairy tale,” I said, and it did, so much that I filed it away in my brain for later use, imagining people who made their houses in trees, and stepped, dryad-like, out of them. An entire forest of trees that were also people, the rustling of their leaves a slow, ongoing song with seasonal movements.