Rose Sees Red (8 page)

“What did you think?” Callisto said.

I’d thought I was all alone.

Maurice was already standing in the street with his arm in the air, waving down a yellow cab.

“Can’t we walk?” I said.

“Through Central Park?” Callisto said.

“At night?” Caitlin asked.

“Don’t worry. I have money,” Maurice said, and we piled into the taxi.

I was squashed in the middle, trying to keep it together.

I’d thought Yrena was my friend. And now instead of having fun, she had put me in a bad situation—without even saying good-bye. I was going to be in a lot of trouble if I didn’t find her.

I had never been in trouble before, not really. I was a pretty good girl—not the Goody Two-ballet-shoes in Daisy’s mind, but not the kind of girl who got into the trouble I was imagining that I was going to be facing if I didn’t find Yrena and bring her back home.

I tried to calculate just how much trouble I could possibly get in. Probably a lot of trouble. So much trouble that I would be grounded forever. So much trouble that I wouldn’t get to go to college. So much trouble that I would likely have to live at home for the rest of my life and never be allowed to go on a date and end up as an old maid.

After all, I’d lost a whole human being.

I glanced out the window as we weaved in and out of traffic. The streetlights illuminated parts inside the cab. My hands. Callisto’s face. Maurice’s hair. Caitlin’s earrings.

“Can you go faster?” I asked the cab driver.

Even though I’d lived in New York City my whole life, I didn’t know where I was. Somewhere on the East Side, going downtown, was all I knew. If you’d asked me to point to it on a map, I would have failed.

I adjusted myself, trying to settle in. But I couldn’t relax. The pressure of trying to be cool in front of Maurice, Caitlin, and Callisto, who were acting like they actually liked me, was killing me.

“Why does your face look like that?” Maurice asked. I was squashed up next to him and he massaged my shoulders, like we did to one another in the warm-up exercise in the one acting class we had to take. Usually it felt nice, but now I was freaking out. “That’s how you look in dance class.”

“Like what?” I asked. But as I spoke, I realized that I had been holding my face in a grimace. No matter how I spun it, I knew it didn’t look very pretty.

I knew that I was not very pretty.

“All angry or something,” Maurice said. “Your face gets all frozen.”

I didn’t know if I liked the fact that he’d noticed my face in class. Or that I even did the face in class. It struck me that I felt that same mix of angry at myself and totally terrified whenever I was overwhelmed and out of my comfort zone.

There was no space outside. On one side of the street, buildings were pressed up next to one another, block after block. Only the green of the park on the other side gave some relief. Cars were honking. The taxi made a sharp turn. I fell into Maurice. He pushed me back up.

In class, everything went so fast and everyone was so on top of everything that it took every ounce of concentration to keep it together and keep up. Just like that moment right then in the cab. The night was slipping out of my fingers.

“Here, here,” Callisto said, banging on the plastic divide. The cab driver pulled over and we emerged from the cab at the bottom edge of Central Park.

“I gotta make a phone call,” I said, spotting a bay of pay phones. I left them standing there paying for the cab.

I had never been so happy that my parents gave Todd his own telephone for his own room. That’s what I wanted for my sixteenth birthday. But I wanted mine to be a rotary phone. Black. Todd had an orange one with push buttons. He thought it looked futuristic.

I slid the dime into the slot and dialed the number.

Come on. Come on. Come on.

Pick up. Pick up. Pick up.

“You’ve reached Todd. Rhymes with
Zod.
Land of Nod. And alien pod. Leave your transmission at the tone. May the Force be with you.”

“Todd. Are you there? Pick up.”

The phone clicked as someone picked up.

“This is Dungeon Master Hertreopo,” Todd said in a booming voice. “What do you want, Rose? And don’t say we’re making too much noise down here because I know you can’t hear us from upstairs. The garage is
soundproof
.”

“I’m not calling from upstairs,” I said.

Todd was quiet for a moment.

“Really? You went out?” He sounded impressed. “Where are you calling from?”

“Central Park South and Sixth Avenue.”

“Whoa!”

I could hear his lame-o friends in the background yelling at him to get back to the game.

“I need your help,” I said.

“You need my help,” he said. “Oh, how I like the sound of this.
Hey! Don’t touch that troll! And don’t move your dwarf into that hexagon until your turn!”

I imagined he and his friends were wearing costumes. God. I was going to owe Todd one forever. His nasal breathing
on the phone reminded me that he was the last person I wanted to owe one to. I was beginning to regret calling now.

“Have you noticed if the girl next door came home?” I asked.

“You mean Yrena, my love?”

“Yes, Yrena.”

“No, I haven’t noticed her. Besides, I’ve been playing D&D, and I don’t think that she goes out much. What’s going on?”

“I took her to a party.”

“You
what?
”

“I took her to a party.”

“And you didn’t invite me along?”

“You were busy with your dungeons. And your dragons.”

“You are hanging out with
Yrena!
Screw the dragons!”

I could believe that Yrena would be the only thing that would distract Todd from his fantasy world, because she was his ultimate fantasy.

“Wait. Are you lying?” he asked.

I was about to lose my patience. “I’m not lying.”

“Wow. Did she ask about me?”

“A little,” I said.

“Really?” Todd said excitedly. “I wasn’t expecting that to be your answer! What did she say?”

“Not much,” I said.

“Okay, but you made me sound cool, right? I need details.”

“Todd, I’m in a rush.”

“You said you needed my help. The price for help is details.”

I scrolled over the things that Yrena had said about Todd to try to come up with something that would satisfy him and not let him know that there had been a moment in a parallel universe when she could have been the only girl at his D&D party.

“She said that you seemed like you had fun,” I said.

“Nice,” he said. “Tell her I think the color blue looks good on her.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not? Just tell her that fuzzy blue sweater she wore last week when she was in her garden looked great. Ask her if she bought it at a store or if she knit it herself.”

“I can’t,” I repeated. “She’s not here.”

“So she’s not with you right now? Right this second? Call her over. I want to say hello.”

“No, I can’t do that,” I said, closing my eyes because it felt easier to tell the truth that way. “Because I’ve lost her.”

“Hang on.”

Cue: mumbling and rustling.

“Tyler says that there is a lot of activity next door. You know. With those suits.”

“KGB or CIA?”

“I don’t know, I can’t see their eyebrows.”

In a moment of panic, that made me smile.

“Rose. Those diplomatic kids are pretty isolated and insulated. She probably doesn’t even know how to get back home. You’ve got to find her.”

“Fine. Just keep a lookout and I’ll call you back in a bit.”

“Yeah, okay,” Todd said.

“Don’t say anything to Mom and Dad,” I added.

“They’d have to torture me first. And I have studied techniques…”

“Okay, bye.” I hung up the phone. I didn’t want to hear about Todd’s techniques for withstanding torture.

I started sweating.

I had to find someone, like a needle in a haystack. I was looking into the park, and I realized that as much as it sucked, New York City was a pretty amazing haystack.

Walking into the park at night was a bit magical. Like going into the forest that surrounds Sleeping Beauty’s castle. That was a part that I would like to dance, the Lilac Fairy. I suppose most people would want to be Princess Aurora, but I think ever since I saw the breathtaking performance of it at the American Ballet Theater with Natalia Makarova and Mikhail Baryshnikov, it was Martine van Hamel as the Lilac Fairy and Fernando Bujones as the Bluebird who thrilled me the most. I thought, in the end, that the Lilac Fairy had the biggest heart in the story and that was the kind of fairy that I wanted to be. I never minded afterward when Daisy and I played at being prima ballerina and she would insist on being the princesses and make me be all the other parts. Often it
was the other parts that got the more interesting movements of music.

It was quiet once we entered the park, the sounds of the city fading a bit to the background. As we stepped deeper into the park, we began to hear the party before we saw it.

Laughter.

Bottles rolling on the ground.

Squeals.

A rap.

“My name is Zizi or Zizzle D and I’m here with my friend Emily. We’ve got a little rap to do for you. About the girl who’s a popular screw…”

And then I saw it. It was really just a big old rock with kids standing everywhere on it. On the ground there were brown bags filled with snacks and six-packs of beer. Only this was just kids from Performing Arts, not from every school in the city. It was more gritty than the museum party. More mixed. Less elite feeling.

Mostly it was older kids. Juniors and seniors. And then the cooler freshmen and sophomores. All kids from all the departments were hanging out together.

When we got to the bottom of the rock, some kids turned to check us out, then turned back to what they were doing. Some of them waved. They knew we belonged.

Caitlin grabbed me.

“Look, it’s David Freddy and Elliot Waldman. Let’s start with them.”

They were sitting, legs stretched out, passing a joint between them with a bunch of kids sitting around them looking worshipful.

One of them was Caleb.

“Hi,” Caitlin said a little breathlessly. “We’re looking for our friend, a Russian girl…”

“If you want to be in the skit, sit down,” Elliot said. “We’ll see if we can fit you in.”

Caitlin immediately sat down.

“No way,” Caleb protested. “They can’t be in the skit.”

“We don’t want to be in the skit,” Callisto said.

“Well, I don’t know,” Caitlin said.

“This is
my
place,” Caleb said.

“It’s a rock in Central Park,” Callisto said. “You don’t own it.”

“We’re looking for my friend,” I said. “A Russian girl.”

“Who are you again?” Caleb asked. His brown hair was longer than short and shorter than long and parted just off center in a cowlick that made what could be considered average looks unaverage. He was skinny and wore a brown T-shirt with an army jacket and a pair of faded blue jeans. His eyes were dark hazel and serious. His lips were full and he had scruff on his cheeks, and in my opinion he looked like he was always scowling. It was probably just a side effect of his deep thoughts and drama department broodiness.

“Rose,” I said.

“Oh yeah—the one who throws things at me,” he said.

“The Russian girl would have come with that girl Tammy and some Science kids,” Maurice said.

“Tammy. Is she one of the goblin girls with the antique dresses and green hair? Smoking cloves?” Elliot asked.

We all nodded.

Elliot jerked his thumb over his shoulder to another part of the rock.

“Get her and leave please. This is my scene,” Caleb said.

Then he grabbed a beer from a brown shopping bag on the ground and cracked it open.

As we started to walk away, Caleb called after us.

“Rose. I can see your underwear.”

“Your brother is a jerk,” I said.

“I know,” Callisto told me.

“Imagine having to share a womb with him,” Caitlin added.

We made our way over to a bunch of girls all looking vintage-y perfect in their antique dresses and kid gloves. I didn’t see Yrena, but Tammy was sitting with them on the ground, trying to fit in.

“Hey! Maurice! I knew you would change your mind and join us,” she said, standing up as soon as she saw us. She wobbled a bit, totally tanked, and then stumbled over.

“Maurice,” she said. She pulled him into a big hug and clung on to him for a little bit too long. “I’m so glad you came. I like you so much.”

Maurice peeled her off of his shoulders.

“We’re looking for Yrena,” he said. “Have you seen her?”

“Oh, she went home,” Tammy said.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“I think so. I don’t know! I don’t even know her,” Tammy said. “I wish I could just go home. Just right now. Like Dorothy.”

Then Tammy clicked her heels three times but lost her balance and fell flat on her butt. She threw her arms up in the air dramatically.

“Help me up, Maurice!” she said. As he did so, she added, “I remember now. They went to the owl place.” Even when she was up, she still tried to hold Maurice’s hand.

“What’s the owl place?” I asked.

“Maurice, where does your mom keep her Oscar? Can I come over to your house and touch it?”

“Sure,” Maurice said. “If you tell me where the owl place is.”

One of the green goblin girls started laughing and talking to us.

“Night Birds,” she yelled at us.

“Where?” I asked.

“Night Birds,” Maurice said. “It’s a drama hangout.”

“Oh yeah, Night Birds,” Tammy mumbled to herself.

“Second Avenue between Fifth and Sixth,” Callisto said. “I know where that is.”

“Was she with Free?” I asked Tammy.

“What do you mean, is it free? It’s a
bar,
” she said, and laughed, like she thought I was dumb or something. Then she
turned to Maurice in an about-face and acted all sweet and syrupy. “Can I come with you guys?”

“Maybe another time,” he said. “The cab is full now.”

“Oh,” Tammy said. Then she put her hand up to her mouth and ran off to throw up.

“Come on—we know where she went,” Callisto said.