Rosethorn (3 page)

"I think that's more insulting to Mrs. Grunty."

"Ooh, what about this?  I break into his locker, plant cigarettes and beer, and then make an anonymous tip to the Vice-Principal that he's got contraband."

Warning signals should have flashed when she arrived at Miss Haviland's that Saturday morning and there was nothing vile waiting for her at the shed and Andrew was unusually quiet as he stained the deck in the back. She was just about finished fertilizing the vegetable bed with chicken manure, patting the dirt with her spade when she heard a cough behind her. Turning, she saw Andrew leaning coolly against the wall with an exultant smile.

"Bruised innocent,” he began to recite,

“cowering in my ivory tower

stubbornly awaiting the," pausing, as he sneered,

"unicorn's return

I would trade these secret gardens

these childhood friends and myths

I would break down these ancient castle walls

for that day when I

walk away with you."

A strangled shriek escaped her.

"Is that, like, supposed to be a poem because it doesn't rhyme."

"How, how---" Shaking with rage and trying not cry, she gripped the spade handle. "Dare you read my-"

"Do you plan on riding the unicorn with Mr. Leach?  Because I think he's married, with three kids." Collapsing into a fit of laughter, he stumbled back against the wall.

"I hate you
!” she screamed before throwing a spadeful of manure at him, taking no pleasure in the fact that her aim was true, and the cretin was now covered in stinky black. She threw aside the spade and ran, grabbing her violated backpack from the porch. Only when she had jumped on her bike and pedaled away as fast as she could did she succumb to hot, noisy tears.

She was trumped, she admitted as she fled to the creek, leaving her bike
underneath the bridge by the park and tearing through the water, running until she couldn't breathe. She had been bested by a cretin who took bonehead classes. All the 70-plus ways she had conceived to humiliate him put together couldn't equal her suffering now.

She wanted to disappear into the woods or dissolve into the water to be carried away to the sea. Huddling against a bent and crooked tree, she built a small pyre of twigs and dried moss on the pebbly bank and slowly fed its puny flames with page after page of her now defiled notebook. Her sobs increased in violence as she pictured him telling all his friends, who would tell everyone else, and come Monday, it would be all over the school - details of her infatuation with Mr. Leach, her poems and stories, her most private thoughts thrown about and twisted in mockery. She had been too insecure to let even Allison read any of her pieces. That someone so vile was the first to lay eyes on them, that her precious words should come out of his ignorant mouth, was too much to bear. They’re all ruined now of course.  

Dully, she heard water splashing, then footsteps approaching, and the scarecrow appeared from around the bend in sopping wet clothes that stuck to his skinny frame, bits of black still clinging to him as if he had hastily hosed himself.

She stopped mid-sob and quickly wiped her face with her sleeve. She refused to look at him even when he stood inches in front of her and continued ripping each page and feeding it to the fire as if he wasn't there.

"Let me get this straight," He panted, as if they had been in a briefly interrupted conversation, "So when you say you hate me in your notebook, is that with 'the heat of a thousand fiery infernos' or 'the chill of the coldest Siberian wasteland in winter?'  Which is it?"

She paused, hand trembling in fury, and snarled, "You know I'm shocked. I had no idea you could read."

"Why are you such a bitch?  No, I really wanna know. What have I ever done to you?"

Stunned, Sera dropped her notebook on the ground and stood up. "Excuuuuuse me?!"

"Who put that stick up your ass?" He took a step towards her and she recoiled from the stink of him.

"Un-freakin'-believable. You break into my backpack, read my journal, and then ask me why I despise you?"

"You've been looking down your nose at me even before that."

"That's physically impossible
,” she spat as she turned her face up to him, her head barely level with his chest. "You think I don't know all the times you and your friends have made fun of me?"

"What are you talking about?"

“I’m not deaf you know. I hear you guys laughing at me every time I pass by. You know what you are?  A coward. At least I tell you to your face that I think you're the slimiest, most despicable, lowest, filthiest," She saw a flicker of something in his eyes, but didn't care, emphasizing each word with venom, "ingrate ever to exist. So go ahead, tell everybody what I wrote in my journal. Make fun of me. It'll just prove what a low life you are."

"Not only are you a bitch, you're completely crazy."

"Oh, so I imagined it when you sent that fake editorial." She had thought her piece on the lack of civic duty among teenagers had been her finest. She had titled it, with Mr. Leach’s approval, as “Apathy and Ignorance."

The following week, however, Mr. Leach had printed, in spite her vociferous protests, Andrew’s brief letter to the editor. With the byline “I don’t know and I don’t care,” Andrew’s answer to her article was replete with grammatical errors and stated that “some people should get of their high horses especially since they don’t do nothing for nobody but whine and think a lot of themselves."

"The First Amendment," Mr. Leach had reminded her, "Applies to everyone. His opinion is just as legitimate as yours."

“Even if he’s unfamiliar with the English language
?” she had vainly asked.

"C'mon. You have to admit, that was funny shit
,” Andrew now laughed.

"You heckled me when I won the essay contest. 'I demand a recount!'"  She mimicked in a deep voice.

"Dude, wasn't that in, like, eight grade?"

"Jenny Ferguson's party." Her voice trembled. "When you asked me if I had parents." She could still remember everyone's eyes on her, her happiness at finally being invited to a party deflating with the realization that she would never be like them, that she would always be set apart.

"That was a million years ago. You hate me for something I said when I was nine?"

"Everyone la-, laughed at me."

"They weren't laughing at you. They were laughing at me. I didn't even mean it like that."

She turned away from him, angry at herself for having said too much. He bent so that he was eye level with her. "So?  You told Mrs. Bearsh you didn't want to do the adobe project with me. You called me stupid."

"That was a million years ago,” she mocked. "You care about something I said when I was nine?  Besides, you sure proved me wrong." There was that look in his eyes again and this time, Sera felt the unwelcome pinch of regret. She sat down next to the fire, picked up the remains of her notebook and dropped the whole thing in its flames.

"Anyone ever tell you that you take yourself too seriously?"

She snickered. "This from a guy who thinks everything's a big joke."

He sighed as he shook his head. "Well, your poetry sucks."

Sera jutted out her chin and balled her hands into fists.

"But I just wanted to tell you that story about the destroyer of demons, with the silver bullet and the vampire and the prophecy---that...doesn't suck."

She looked up, surprised, searching for irony in his face. Finding none, she buried her head in her arms, appalled at the way her heart unexpectedly surged.

"Just go away!"

She heard him wading back from where he came and only when he turned the bend did she quickly snatch her charred notebook from the fire and stomp on its burning edges with her soggy boots.

*****

"We haven't heard anything." Allison said, as she leaned back against Paul, who had his arms around her waist.

"Nope," Paul agreed, nuzzling Allison’s neck, making her giggle.

Sera looked away. Although Allison and Paul had been going out for four months, she still had not gotten used to someone, even if he was the enigmatic, older Paul Goldthorpe, being so free with her best friend. Allison thought that she was being loyal by not abandoning Sera and riding off with Paul to somewhere private during lunch, but Sera just felt like a backward third wheel.

"He's probably just lulling me into a false sense of security," Sera muttered. It was Wednesday already and there had not been even a whisper of any rumors circulating about her.

"Anytime, Sera," Paul said. "Just say the word."

Sera laughed. "Thanks, but I think his dad's a cop and so are two of his brothers."

"Oh, there are ways," he said mysteriously.

"Who are you, Don Corleone?" Allison gave him an affectionate kiss, which turned into a long, extremely uncomfortable to watch lip lock. Sera opened her chemistry book and pretended to study.

"What the," she heard Paul say in a low voice. Allison and Paul were looking at something behind her. She turned around and saw Andrew and his friends walking towards them, his unsmiling face slightly pink.

They stopped as one in front of her.

"Hello."

"Hello?" she replied as if it were a question.

She heard one of his friends laugh and be quickly elbowed by someone but she didn’t know for she couldn’t take her eyes off Andrew, looking back at her with his steady gaze. No one spoke in the awkward silence and then Andrew turned around to go, his friends following behind him. Sera watched them walk away.

"What was that about?" Allison turned to her.

Sera shook her head. "I’ve no idea."

*****

The next Saturday, she held her breath when she got to Miss Haviland’s, wondering if it would be another dead animal that awaited her or would he employ something more cruel?  She couldn't imagine anything worse happening. She hesitated before opening the gardening shed, mentally preparing herself not to cry out loud at whatever lay inside, having already devised a few possible counterattacks of her own.

When she did open the doors and saw what was beside her gloves, Sera stood still for a few minutes staring at it, uncomprehending. A silver bullet stood on its base and glinted in the dim interior of the shed. When she brought it out, its metal felt cool against her skin then warmed as it shone in the morning sun.

“It’s silver-plated." She did not hear Andrew approach, but did not startle when she heard his voice next to her. “The kind that can kill vampires."

She could see his white T-shirt and big shoes at the corner of her eye and could smell that his clothes had been freshly laundered. Beneath that scent she could smell the soap on his skin as he stood close to her.

She turned a little and still looking at the bullet in her hand, she whispered, although they were both alone, “Is this for me?"

“Yes."

She couldn’t raise her eyes to him, so just murmured grudgingly, “Thank you” to his shirt. He paused for a moment, still looking down at her then walked away. She stood by the open shed door long after he had left, the bullet in her hand, bewildered.

She put the bullet in her pocket, where it burned the whole day, and didn’t take it out again until she came home. A part of her thought without a doubt that it was a prelude to some elaborate trick, but she had not detected any guile or mockery in his manner nor in his voice. She kept turning around and around
in her mind what he had said about vampires. Clearly, he meant her story. But why?  She could not find an answer.

When she did not see him again for the rest of day, Sera felt somewhat disappointed, but relieved that she didn’t have a chance to confront him. She took the bullet out of her pocket and set it on top of her drawer, lay in her bed and looked at it as it shone in her room.

She wanted to call Allison and have one of their all-night gabfests, the kind they used to have before she and Paul started going out, but it was Prom Night, and Paul, as a senior, was taking Alli. She was alone, again, her best friend in a fairy tale of which she was no part, Cinderella at the ball in her dazzling white gown and gloves, on the arm of the coolest boy in school.

Restless, she decided to go to the movies that night. She would have to learn to be by herself. She lied to her grandmother and pretended that she was going to meet Allison at the corner of the Boulevard like they usually did, knowing that she would not be allowed to stay out late by herself.

It took her 15 minutes of brisk striding, blasting “Stand Back” on her disc player over and over again, before she reached the old Venetia Theater. Tonight they were playing a mismatched double feature of a romantic comedy and a horror movie. Both had premiered earlier in the year and were no longer playing elsewhere. The theater was in near-decrepitude, having seen better days many years ago. The seats were musty and upholstered with stained red velvet faded into a dusky pink. Well-worn velvet curtains hung in near tatters on either side of the big screen.

Troy, Harry, and Glenn were anemic-looking college kids who had been running the popcorn and candy stand, selling tickets and manning the projector for several years now. They all wore Jamaican knit caps of yellow and green and Che Guevara or Bob Marley T-shirts. Whenever one of them opened the door leading up to the projection room, the smell of pot would waft out.