Rose of No Man's Land (19 page)

Rose, That Guy Was A Creep, I said. You Couldn’t Really Hear His Voice But There Was Something Wrong With It. He Sounded Like A Swamp Monster. Remembering his phlegmy tones made my skin go bumpy all over again. He was what Ma would call
a bad actor.
Maybe even
a sick puppy.

He can’t be that bad
, she reasoned.
He lives on Revere Beach. Right in those big condos I bet. Those are expensive.

My head was shaking like it was its own battery-powered instrument. I wasn’t even aware of shaking it. My body was refusing to go.

C’mon man, where’s your sense of adventure? Don’t you know how to lie? We’ll just lie. It’ll be cool. Maybe he has beer.

I liked the idea of beer but there had to be another way
to score some. I mean, I managed to drink beer all the time and I’ve never had to go over to this creep’s beachfront creepshack.

No, I said wearily. I Can’t Lie. I Really Can’t. I’m Not Good At It. It’s Exhausting. That’s Why I Got Fired Today, ’Cause I’m Such A Bad Liar. I Can’t Keep It Together. You Don’t Want Me On Your Lie Team. I’ll Bring You Down.

Rose crammed the phone back into the plastic purse. Every time she pushed something into the useless bag, something else toppled out. The Chapstick rolled down the sidewalk. The roll of cash spilled out, unfurling on the ground. I gasped a little at the wad of cash, the underwear money, the pantie-bulge. It uncurled from its tight bundle like something alive, a magical money-flower blooming on the cement. That’s A Bunch Of Money, I said.

And I’m going to lose it all in this stupid purse. What’s up with this?
She stuffed it all back in and wrenched the zipper shut. Its metal teeth split in the middle, opening like a plasticky pink mouth. I hoped Kristy didn’t care too much about this particular broken purse. I thought she probably was too wise to my capacity for destruction to leave me with anything she truly cared about.

Fuck
, Rose mumbled.

I’ll Put It In My Bag, I said. My backpack was limp and empty. There was nothing in it but my house key pinging around inside the cavernous darkness like a little satellite in outer space. Rose handed me the purse. It was sort of shaped like a hot dog and the cigarettes and cash poked out the top like the fixings on a truly bizarre mall food item. The ultimate food court meal. Dirty money and Marlboros
in a hot pink plastic bun. I put Rose’s ratty cigarette pack in my pack’s inside zipper pocket, then tucked the roll of bills and the cherry Chapstick in there with it. Rose’s items were all nestled together. Her own house key was dangling around her neck on a piece of stringy rope, like a little kid. I threw the telephone and the busted purse inside the pack and zipped the whole thing up.

Let’s hitch to the beach
, Rose decided. I felt locked into something scary, like the minute after the lap bar comes down across your thighs. How it doesn’t ever come down low enough, how you can feel all the wiggle room you’ve got, how you can imagine that when the coaster does its famous loop you’ll just slide right out of the car. And you wave your hands wildly to tell the tweaker dude working the ride that maybe your lap bar isn’t down all the way, that it feels a little loose, and he just thinks you’re another slavering yahoo with your hands in the air. And he yanks his crank and the car begins to climb.

Rose said about hitchhiking:
it’s no big shit.
She said she does it all the time, that once she hitchhiked all the way up to Nahant, wherever that is.
In Massachusetts
, she told me. Massachusetts is where we live, but I never think about it like that. I just live in Mogsfield. Sometimes I wind up over in Medford, or Malden, and I think I’ve been to Everett once. Revere is always there with the beach and the crappy carnivals, and Boston is of course a famous city, but I’ve only made it there on a couple of school field trips. I know from history that Massachusetts contains a lot of well-known areas. Salem, where all the witches were killed. Somewhere is Plymouth Rock where the Pilgrims climbed off their boat, somewhere else is where the later Pilgrims went nuts and dumped a bunch of tea into the ocean. I’ve
heard of a village where everyone wears bonnets and churns butter and pretends like it’s the olden days all the time. They’re not Amish, they do it for show. You can pay an admission to enter their village and watch them milk cows. It’s sort of weird if you think about it. Imagine if Mogsfield became an old-timey village like that. Like in the future there were townies lining up in their radiation-proof spacesuits to watch people decked out in the sweats and flops of yesteryear doing crazy long-ago things like sitting on their asses on a busted couch watching the tube, or tossing frozen foods into giant vats of oil over at Ye Olde Shopping Malle. Anyway my point is, Rose was living in a larger world. I might live in Mogsfield but Rose, it seemed, lived in Massachusetts. She got around. It added greatly to her sophistication, this hitchhiked trip to Nahant.

What’s In Nahant? I asked.

The ocean
, she said.

Big Whoop, I said. The Ocean’s Right In Revere.

No, this is the
real
ocean
, she told me.
It’s the ocean the way you see it in books and nature magazines. It’s the natural ocean.

Like Waves And Cliffs And Stuff?

Yes
, she nodded.
Big rocky cliffs. Nobody’s around. There’s grass and flowers and shit growing out of the rocks. Tons of bugs.

Lots Of Bugs And No People, I summarized.

Yeah
, Rose said. She took a breath. She looked like she’d like to be there in Nahant right now, all alone with the bugs on a side of a cliff.

Weren’t You Scared, Being Alone On A Cliff?

No
, she laughed.
Why?

Well, What If You Fell In? Off The Cliff? People fall off cliffs all the time in nature. I once knew a girl named Cora whose mom died when she fell off a cliff. Ma told me she died hiking. Who knows how Ma gets gossip when she doesn’t leave the house, but she does. It’s like it comes through the mail slot with her checks and paperwork. She told me Cora’s mom died hiking but I thought that meant hitchhiking. I was pretty fascinated with hitchhiking, having seen an old CHiPs rerun featuring a really amazing blond girl in tiny shorts and roller skates who went hitchhiking and got into some sort of trouble and had to get rescued by Ponch and Jon. I think in my head Cora’s dead mom became the hitchhiking blond girl, who seemed very glamorous, and I figured death by hitchhiking was a sort of cool, TV-land way to die. And so I told the other kids in the neighborhood all about it. So Cora found out that I was telling everyone that her mom was a hitchhiking roller-blader and that’s how she died. Cora had long and wavy brown hair and a light blue plasticky jacket with
Hello Kitty
on the back in a pair of overalls. Her face was all splashed up with tears and she was telling me her mom hadn’t died from hitchhiking. Yeah, She Did, Cora, I told her. I thought maybe nobody’d ever told her the truth about how her mom died. I thought I was breaking some real life-changing news to her, I remember infusing my voice with gentleness. And still Cora cried.
She fell off a cliff!
she shrieked. Her snot and her tears mingled, her face was a waterfall, the features blurred under the rush of fluids. I shrugged my shoulders. I knew what my Ma said. I Know What My Ma
Said, I said. Later, that night, I told Ma what happened.
She did fall off a cliff!
she snapped at me.
She died hiking, not hitchhiking! You’re a real pip.
I stared blankly. I didn’t know what hiking was. And I still haven’t ever done either, haven’t ever hiked or hitchhiked, both sports being branded with badness and general death-producing danger in my head. And here was Rose, a girl who hitchhiked in order to go hiking.

I don’t fall
, said Rose.
I’m a Capricorn. A mountain goat. We can do anything. What sign are you?

Pisces, I said. Rose laughed.

Yeah, you’d fall. You’d fall right in and drown.

Thanks, I said, stung. Thanks But I Actually Wouldn’t. I Can Swim Fine.

It was a joke
, Rose said. I decided against elaborating on my other concerns about her trip to natural Nahant, such as serial killers and other up-to-no-goods lurking along the cliffs, just waiting for some solitary city teenager to stroll by for their sick happiness. Clearly Rose paid no heed to the possibility of serial killers and their friends. It occurred to me that really I had my whole dumb equation ass-backwards. Rose was the loner here, Rose was the glamorous mystery. She stood at the curb with her tiny thumb hustled out, her chin pointed up like she had a real attitude problem. Her nonhitching hand was stuck to her hip, the bony piece of which jutted up like a shark fin from the fabric of her nightgown-dress. I tried to imagine if I would pick Rose up. I would not. She looked like something crazy would happen once she climbed into the car. The bearer of dramas that you’d become tangled up in.
There in the setting sunlight she looked like some neglected twelve-year-old who was hitching to the local jail to visit her pops. Once you picked her up you’d be buying her hamburgers, you’d be saving her alcoholic mom, dragging her sloppy stinky body to Alcoholics Anonymous, you’d be buying Rose a real dress and leaving that gauzy number in a Dumpster somewhere. A whole cinematic idea arced around Rose. I was bummed that I had such a hard time seeing my own theatrical potential. It’s probably hard to get that sort of understanding about yourself. What was easier and more immediate was to become Rose’s cinematic sidekick. I stepped off the curb, my backpack limp on my shoulder.

The first car that stopped, Rose was, like, forget it. It was some crapped-out number that firstly didn’t even look like it’d make it to Revere Beach, and secondly was already crammed with people, dude-people who looked wicked unsavory.

Heeeeeeey!
the dude in the front passenger seat hooted out the window.
You ladies off to the Palace?

Um, no, Rose said. There was so much in those two words.

We’re going to the Palace, but we could drop you ladies off somewhere first. If you’re sure you don’t want to come along?

If you’re sure you’re a lady
, the kid in the backseat said. He said it in that way, like when you pretend to be coughing but you’re really saying something shitty. He choked the words into his hands, but there were too many words. That gag works best with words, like
douche bag
or
lezzie.
Wicked slick.

I Heard You, Slick, I snapped at him.

Slick!
the kid next to him howled, poking him in his stupid tank top. All of them wore tank tops, low under the armpits, revealing an eyeful of boy-boobie. Also they sported gold chains and baseballs hats twirled at various quirky angles.

How’d you guess my name was Slick, beeyatch?
The car was rumbling with laughter and I felt sick. I wanted them to leave. Even though it was true that I looked like a boy I just didn’t like how they said it. When Rose said it earlier it was like I was tough, could ass-kick in a fight.

Get out of here
, Rose swished her hands like she was shooing off a small dog.
We’re not going with you, man.

We don’t have to go anywhere
, the driver leaned past his friend, sprawling across the steering wheel. He was demonstrating a relaxed vibe. Staying slumped, he crawled the car a little closer. I moved back toward the bench. See, I knew the hitchhiking thing was a shitty idea. It’s so hard to get rid of dudes when they attach themselves hostilely to you. At least they were in a car and we could run in the opposite direction if we needed to. But that’s so humiliating. Running away sucks. I don’t get beat up but I just feel fucked-up from it for hours. Like my mind got beat up. I looked at Rose. I gave my head a jerk in the away direction, but she was ignoring me. She was glaring at them.

Get out of here
, she repeated. The guy in the front passenger side leaned further out the window. He smiled a big smug smile at her. His eyes were sort of slitted and teary and I figured they were all fucked-up. All fucked-up and on their way to the Palace, a totally stupid gigantic dance club
complex right here in Mogsfield. The place was divided up into different awful dance clubs. Like there was a room with male strippers where people like my mom went to get tanked and throw themselves at the stage. One section was called Rascals and it was for kids sixteen and up. That place was famous for being date-rape central and it was probably the one where the hoopdie full of losers was heading.

Front Passenger licked his lips, which were large and chapped. Dry from dehydration, from too much drinking and smoking.
I’m going to stay here and look at you
, he google-eyed Rose.
I like looking at you. You’re funny looking.
The geniuses in the back cracked up.

C’mon Rose, I said. I was getting twitchy. Shit like this is exactly why I don’t leave the house. And then Rose went totally nuts. She tugged her dress up in a quick flash, her hand sunk down her drawers. When her hand came back it was clutching what looked like a dead mouse. A coagulated blood-lugey slid off the side of the mouse, which Rose was holding by its ropey tail. It was Rose’s tampon. The blood splattered the sidewalk. The guys all roared. There was a second of delayed stoner reaction, and Front Passenger jumped back, hitting his head on the rearview.

What the fuck!
all the dudes screamed. I heard the words
sick bitch
and maybe something really tired like
slut.
And then Rose twirled the tampon around like some perverted Wild West hero. She spun it by the string, flicking blood from the drenched cotton, and she let it fly into the car. It whacked Front Passenger in the face. It bounced off his acne-speckled cheek and came to rest on his tank top. He jerked and spazzed as the blob of tampon snagged on
his gold chain, as it rode up onto the skin of his clavicle and then plunged down under the shirt.