Rosethorn (24 page)

The batteries of her disc player died in the second hour and so she had nothing but her thoughts, which turned from self-reproach, to longing, then delirium. As the sheriff's car passed her slowly once again, tantalizing her with the hope that maybe this time the deputy would stop and offer her a ride back to town, only to accelerate so that the dust blew in her face, Sera held her middle finger up so that he would have a nice picture of her in his rear view mirror.

"Fuckerrrrrrrrrrrrrr!"  She screamed down to the canyon below. Pleased that her echo reverberated for miles out, Sera started singing out loud.

She was on her third rendition of "Rock the Casbah," nonsensically twisting the lyrics in a British accent, when she noticed that the marker on the road indicated she had now walked for four miles.

“Oh th
e kitten told the boogeyman, you have to let that bugger drop! The boil down the desert wa--" 

She stopped abruptly as she rounded the corner and saw, like a cool black mirage down the road, parked underneath a tree, the back of the Mustang. She halted in her steps, measuring from this distance, the outline of Andrew’s
head and shoulders, whether it was still rigid with anger.

She took her notebook from her backpack and with her pen, scribbled hastily on a page. His eyes followed her on the rearview mirror as she approached the Mustang. He at last turned his head when she stopped by his rolled down window. He raised an eyebrow, but said nothing, his hand propping his chin expectantly, two long fingers grazing the side of his face.

Still unsmiling, she raised her opened notebook so that he could see, in big letters, “VENETIA OR BUST!” A laugh escaped him, which he smothered with his hand.

He shook his head and tried to look stern.

She quickly turned the page and scribbled some more:  “RIDE 4 APOLOGY?”

He laughed freely this time and held up his hands, “Well?”

Throwing the pen and notebook to the ground, Sera got on one knee and clasped her hands in an exaggerated attitude of begging. He kept laughing while she screwed her face to look as pathetic and contrite as possible.

“You think you’ve got me whipped, don’t you
?” He said as he looked down at her, his smiling blue eyes belying his mocking tone. “Get in.”

Sera got up and shook her head.

“What? What now?” he asked in frustration.

She opened the door and wordlessly pulled him out.

He didn’t resist as she led him back down the road, 50 feet from where she had walked, to a turnout, next to which an unmarked trail disappeared into the trees.

As they entered the woods, she dropped her backpack and turned to him, one hand pulling at his wet shirt, another tugging at his jeans.

Fumbling and clumsy in their recklessness, they engaged in feverish battle with zippers and buttons and straps, savage, hungry kisses as he pinned her to the rough tree trunk. She would find leaves and moss in her hair later and wince as she soaked the scraped skin of her lower back in the bath, and she would remember, with the sharp taste of wilderness and icy spring rains, Andrew pressed against her as he entered, his head buried in her hair and saying as if he was out of his mind, "Someday, I’ll stop chasing after you."

Chapter 17

July 9, 1986

The first night of Midsummer. I was horrible. I had been confident throughout rehearsal and knew all my movements but tonight I was half-a-beat behind the other fairies for our entrance and couldn’t catch up. I was better in our second dance, but how could I have goofed up so badly in something so simple? The others told me I was being too harsh on myself, that it happens.

Sweet Daniel gave me roses afterwards and told me he didn’t notice that I was behind the other girls. He thought I was fantastic. He came alone.

I must tell him soon that I cannot see him anymore, but something besides pity is holding me back from saying the words.

Nothing has actually happened, I tell myself.

July 9, 1986

I can’t concentrate on anything. I torture myself and am dissatisfied with everything.

I can't sleep easily and my whole body burns.

I wonder about him-who he is-and what goes on behind those eyes, that smile. I tell myself that he means to turn my head just to see if he can do so. I am mere sport.

But he cannot leave me alone. Alex.

I’ve cradled your face, scrutinized the blue, lingered on your lip, and licked the stubble of freshly cut hair. I’ve smelled you after water polo, scented with chlorine and sun or on a Friday night of beer—on you the bitter tastes so sweet. I’ve spanned your broad brown back, explored the lines of your palm and tested the grip of your long fingers. I’ve fallen at your feet and insinuated myself wantonly, slowly up your legs and dreamt of things I’ve never done.

So if the next time we meet, if ever we meet again, if I blush or turn away from you, if I cannot manage to squeak out a hello, it’s because too hotly I remember how I’ve already ravished you.

July 16, 1986

I can’t do this. I can’t, but oh, how I want, more than anything I’ve ever wanted, to be his.

Alex’s found me. After tonight’s performance, he was waiting for me outside. I was surprised and not surprised. It was as if I had always known he would come, drawn to me as I am to him. I tell him that I don’t know how to play this game—was that wise of me? Too honest of me? Should I have been coy and light? What part should I have played?

He tells me there is no game and I ask him, angrily, again I am angry, why he waits for his brother’s girlfriend, aren’t all the bridesmaids in the world enough for him, and doesn’t he have someone waiting in Connecticut? Aren’t you just being greedy, Alex, I ask.

And he stands there with a smile that is unfamiliar to him as it is to me, as if he should be the one wary of being hurt and not me. He tells me such lies, that he couldn't leave for L.A. in three weeks without at least trying, that for the first time in his life he wished he were his brother and had been the one to see me first.

They are lies aren’t they? I know he must be playing me, but I want to believe everything he's said. Yet I don’t want him to treat me as carelessly as he did that empty-headed bridesmaid, the girl in Connecticut.

So I'm angry and disgusted, but I don’t tell him to go away. And when he asks to meet me tomorrow, I don’t respond and try to look harsh. I'm not convincing, and secretly, truly, I have no conviction at all. He can already sense that I was won before he ever made his plea.

I’m afraid of how much I want him.

July 25, 1986

Alex tells me that I toy with him, that I'm worse than a tease. What game are you playing, he asks me with such frustration. With utmost control I put on a little smile, a light tone and tilt my chin. If anyone would know, a player like you would. I am not playing, he says to me. I laugh at him.

He meets me for a romantic movie, thinking in the darkness he could seduce me only to find he is with two girls, not one—innocent, thick-headed Esme between us eating the popcorn and candy he’s bought for me. He asks to meet me yet another day, warning me not to play the same trick. I tell him I can't, that I'm busy with rehearsal, then go out with Daniel, who still knows nothing, knowing full well that he would tell Alex.

You treat me like crap, he accuses.

Because I go out on a date with my boyfriend? I ask innocently.

Break it off with him, he commands, you know you belong to me.

Again I laugh at him. Belong to you? You don’t own me. You may own your girlfriend, you may have a dozen girls falling all over you, but you don’t own me. I give him nothing, nothing and yet he keeps trying.

Is he surprised that he tries so much? I think so. I don’t know how I'm so sure that not giving into him is the only way to bind him to me.

He calls me cold and cruel, amusing myself by reducing him to a dog.

Yes, I admit I want to bring him to heel. For he still seduces every girl, every woman he passes, even if it is with just a look. He flirts shamelessly with the waitress even as he's supposed to be wooing me in a fine restaurant in Sausalito, then is outraged when I go to the bathroom and never come back, having caught the bus back San Rafael, my tummy still full with the dinner he paid for. That was quite a night. I should have caught a ride with the car full of boys who wanted to pick me up, but chickened out. What did surprise me was how fast he got to the stop at the hub and boarded the bus to drag me off of it. We treated the drunken transients to a screaming match for ten minutes.

Don’t you ever fucking do that to me again, he yelled at me, looking as if he would just love to wring my neck, so close to my face I could see the pupils of his eye. But I have to confess at that moment, I would have welcomed it.

This being at war with him- for that is how it seems like sometimes-is not what I expected to ever feel about anyone.

Just give in, he says with his smile that melts everything that wants to be hard. I feel so thrillingly alive and fiery when I am with him. I spend hours thinking of ways to cross him and amuse him. And do both well, it seems.

Do you just chase me because I run? I ask him.

I chase you because you make it fun for me to chase you, he tells me.

He cajoles, he teases, he softens me with slippery smiles and shines his attention on me as if he were the sun.

I love that look on his face when he first sees me each time we meet, as if he was about to open a present. And I try to never disappoint, wearing all of my most beautiful clothes just for him, my most colorful and extravagant outfits, for I love it when he can’t take his eyes off me. Look at us, he said one time as we passed by a store window. We’re so fine, other people envy us.

Other times he's dangerously quiet. You’re wasting the time we have, he tells me. You’re driving me crazy.

We sit in his car all alone. I have not so much as given him a kiss-holding him off with such painful pleasure. You could take it from me, I said, right now. It’s just the two of us.

But I want you to give it to me.

He tugs at me and I tug at him. Despite all the screaming and angry fits, the unbearable frustration I inflict upon both of us, we both know it is not a question of if, but when.

August 7, 1986

What will it take, Stella, he asked tonight. I’ve run after you for weeks. Will I leave with nothing?

I’m sure you’ll find others who’ll give you what you want.

He tells me that no one else can give him what he wants, what he needs, but me, that every waking moment is spent in pursuit of me and when he sleeps he dreams of me in the red dress.

I laugh at him and turn away to go back in. Is that it? He asks angrily. I stop and turn around slowly. I walk to him and without a word, my eyes on his mouth, I meet his lips, at last after all these weeks. My whole body softens and yields in submission and I can feel triumph coursing through him.

We kiss until I bite him hard on his lip and he pushes me away in surprise, a drop of red on his mouth.

“What the hell
!” he blurts out, touching his bleeding lip, looking at me as if he had never seen me before. I can taste his blood inside my mouth and I lick my lips, feeling calm and powerful.

Even before the shock leaves his eyes, I know I’ve succeeded.

“When you kiss other girls, Alex,” I say as I back away with a smile, “I just want you to remember what I taste like.”

Even though I feel like staying to finish what I started and despite his protests, I quickly go inside and lock the door, my heart pounding with disbelief at what I had just done.

He leaves tomorrow. What will I do with myself?

August 8, 1986

He called me from the road. “Are you insane?” he yells, “Do you like doing this to me? What am I supposed to do when we’re six hours apart?”

“Oh, I know what you’ll be doing and with who.” I say casually, my whole body weak with wanting him.

He swears softly. It feels like a caress. “You knew exactly what you were doing.”

I turned off the lights in the bathroom, lit three candles, and started dancing naked in front of the mirror. Uninhibited, I danced as if the mirror was my lover. I closed my eyes and ran my hands down my body, down my pale breasts and dark nipples, down my stomach, round the span of my hips, the inside of my thighs. Dreaming, all the while feeling, that they were your hands. You have already ravished me just by the mere possibility. And no matter who else enters, I have already been possessed and chained, so yank me to you.

August 15, 1986

And suddenly I awaken from my dream. Midsummer is now over. I feel robbed of everything I have ever desired. School starts in less than two weeks. Am I supposed to go back to being a little girl obediently going to school to learn her lessons?