When Rose Wakes (13 page)

“You’re Coma Girl,” Kylie went on. “Basically, you are Sleeping Beauty. Subconsciously, you’re totally identifying with the story and your aunts’ whole weirdness is twisting it around.”

“Do you really think so?” Rose asked.

Kylie shrugged. “I’m not a shrink, but it does make a weird sort of sense, doesn’t it?”

Rose smiled hesitantly, and then with more confidence as a weight lifted from her. “Yeah. Actually it does. Maybe I’m not completely nuts after all.”

“Well, not
completely,
” Kylie said.

“Hey!” Rose said, bumping her gently so as not to spill any coffee. Kylie laughed and tried to return the favor, and this time they both spilled a little.

“Noooo!” Kylie cried theatrically, licking rivulets of coffee from the side of her cup.

They both giggled a little and then Rose thanked her.

“For what?” Kylie asked.

“For listening and not thinking I’m weird.”

Kylie smiled. “Oh, you’re definitely weird.”

They heard the party before they even saw the house. A left turn off of Mount Auburn put them on Walpole Street, where a shop selling candles and scented oils sat on the corner beneath a darkened second floor whose window glowed with a neon sign advertising psychic services. Beyond that, however, Walpole Street turned into a quiet oasis away from the trendy sprawl that extended blocks away from Harvard Square. Trees grew in the narrow spaces between houses that had long ago been converted into apartments for students who hadn’t, for whatever reason, managed to score housing on the Harvard campus. Music thumped the night air, rattling windows, and Rose could feel the rhythm exploding against her as she and Kylie passed several tall pines and saw the house, its second floor lit up with festive colors. People milled about behind the windows, their voices a blended murmur even at a distance.

A birthday party, Jared had revealed via text this
morning, in honor of a girl named Chloe King, whose sister was a part-time model and part-time Harvard student. The description had summoned a certain glamour in Rose’s imagination, but the reality quickly proved less impressive.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t have brought a present?” Rose asked as Kylie led the way up the front walk.

“For Chloe King? No. She’s a bitch.”

“Then why are we here?”

Kylie glanced back at her. “You’re here because Jared invited you. Which, by the way… totally jealous. He’s not just hot, he’s sweet. It’s like he’s all soulful and reads classic literature and stuff, but he’s funny and so damn cute, but he doesn’t even know how cute.”

“Wow,” Rose said. “So, you like him? You should’ve said—”

Kylie brushed it off. “God, no. He’s not my type at all. I like them big and kind of dopey. Besides, a guy like that’ll break your heart, and I want to be the heartbreaker.”

Rose laughed, not sure if she was joking, and wondered if Jared Munoz would break her heart.

“Anyway, that’s why we’re here. You’re here for Jared, and I’m here because I like parties. This thing is going to be crashed by a ton of people… from St. B’s, from Harvard, and probably just from the neighborhood. Girls like Chloe operate on a more the merrier philosophy. She wants attention. The more out of control the party gets,
the more she thinks she’s awesome. The cops will probably break it up in a few hours—”

“Cops?” Rose said worriedly.

“—and Chloe will think that makes her a celebrity, or something,” Kylie finished, grabbing Rose by the wrist.

The storm door hung crookedly on its hinges and creaked as Kylie opened it, a screech so loud it was audible even with the music and the voices. Rose allowed herself to be tugged across the threshold even as a whole host of second thoughts filled her. Two guys with beers and cigarettes pushed past them, headed out onto the front steps presumably to light up. One of the guys, older and tragically handsome, gave her an appreciative look that made her face flush with embarrassed heat. A bar had been set up in one corner and two girls in tight tops and short skirts were pouring drinks.

Rose leaned in toward Kylie so she would be heard over the music. “Won’t they be arrested if the police come?”

“Maybe!” Kylie said. “It depends on who they catch drinking.”

A dreadful anxiety settled in the center of Rose’s chest. She had imagined there would be things going on at this party that her aunts would deem inappropriate, but this was so much worse. So much more. In the front room people laughed and talked and drank, some of them clustered around a table arranged with hundreds of dollars’
worth of Chinese food and stacks of paper plates. In its midst was a cake. But in the back, through a short hallway Rose glimpsed amidst the gathered revelers, people danced to the thumping rhythm, guys and girls grinding against one another in a manner that didn’t quite shock her but certainly made her uncomfortable.

Perhaps this had been a bad idea.

“I don’t know about this,” she said.

Kylie linked arms with her. “I’m not drinking. Nobody’s going to care if you do or not. Come on, let’s find Jared.”

Together they weaved through the crowd. Kylie introduced her to half a dozen people in the space of just a few minutes and Rose tried to file the names away for later. A guy named Dom, who was in chorus with Kylie, turned out to be very funny, and when Kylie mentioned Rose might join, he chimed in with her attempts to recruit her. They managed to locate a cooler full of sodas and drank those. Despite the volume of the music, Kylie kept a running commentary going, trying to familiarize Rose with the gossip on those people they saw from St. Bridget’s. But after half an hour they still had not run into Jared. Rose checked her phone several times to see if he had texted her, but no luck, and Kylie refused to let her text him.

“You don’t want to seem desperate,” Kylie told her.

After a while they left the front and went into the short hallway, but Rose pulled back when Kylie went to
enter the room with the dancing throng. Instead, she diverted them to the left, drawn by a clattering noise and a peal of good-natured laughter. They walked into the kitchen, where a bunch of girls had gathered and were filling boxes with empty beer bottles and a tiny table had been stacked with maybe a dozen presents. A blonde in a fitted green top and tight black pants was carefully pouring rum into a bowl of red punch. Ice and sliced oranges floated on top.

Rose recognized her just from the way she stood.

When Courtney glanced up from the punch bowl and saw her, her face mirrored Rose’s surprise.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Courtney muttered to a curvy brunette.

The other girls in the kitchen turned to look at Rose and Kylie. Two of them Rose recognized from Courtney’s table in the cafeteria at St. Bridget’s. Others looked older, presumably Chloe King’s sister and her friends or roommates. If Chloe herself was in the room, Rose had no idea which one she might be.

“What are you doing here?” Courtney asked.

“We were invited,” Kylie announced.

Courtney practically sneered, looking over at the older girls. “By who?”

“None of your business,” Kylie said.

“Really? That’s your wittiest quip?” Courtney said. “‘None of your business’? Want to take a few minutes and try to come up with something clever?”

Kylie opened her mouth to reply but Rose grabbed her arm and gave it a squeeze, silencing her.

“Actually, clever would be wasted on you, so, no,” Rose said. She dipped her head in the direction of the older girls, who were smirking at the way Courtney bristled at the insult. “Sorry for the intrusion.”

Loving the annoyed scowl on Courtney’s face, Rose led Kylie from the kitchen with a smile on her face. She had no interest in staying any longer at the party. If Courtney and her friends were mixing punch, they were obviously pretty tight with Chloe, and Rose did not feel like celebrating the birth of one of the shallow cheerleaders or basketball bitches who were part of that clique.

“That was a thing of beauty,” Kylie said.

“Let’s get out of here,” Rose replied, guiding her through the crowd, glancing around in the hope of a Jared sighting.

“Hey, Coma Girl, wait up!”

Rose turned to see Courtney and her two friends making their way through the room. One girl had a stack of plastic cups and the other carried the punch bowl in both arms, moving carefully so as not to slosh any over the sides. But Courtney had a clear plastic cup full of punch in her hand and she held it out like a peace offering.

“Don’t run off so fast, Rose,” Courtney said, a thin smile turning her features even icier than usual. “Have a drink first. We’re going to toast Chloe’s birthday. Raise a glass. After all, you were invited.”

Even over the music, fifteen or twenty people turned to watch this exchange. Rose felt the pressure of their attention. She didn’t want to come off as a party crasher, no matter how many of them had also come without a real invitation, and if Courtney was going to pretend to be nice, Rose didn’t want to be seen as a bitch herself.

Almost involuntarily, she reached for the cup.

Courtney pretended to stumble and splashed the cup of rum punch all over Rose’s blouse, the sticky, icy liquid instantly soaking through the fabric, the red stain spreading. A lot of people laughed, but she saw several recoil in disapproval.

“Oops,” Courtney said, covering her mouth in a theatrical show of regret. “I’m soooo sorry.”

Kylie started toward the girl but Rose put an arm out to stop her. The music still pounded the air, but conversation had dropped to whispers of scandalized amusement. All eyes were on Rose. She thought about how she would explain the stain to her aunts—not the punch, but the rum. Surely the smell would be impossible to hide.

She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. But in her encounters with Courtney, first at school and now here, Rose had discovered that underneath the anxiety that always seemed to be bubbling on the surface of her thoughts, she possessed a steely core. She had stood up to Courtney before, and each time it infuriated the girl more. That was what had driven her to this new cruelty. She wanted to humiliate Rose into subservience and silence.

A bold smile blossomed on Rose’s face. That wasn’t going to happen.

“Wow, Courtney, that was
awesome,
” she said.

Courtney’s grin was full of malice. She started to reply, but Rose forged ahead.

“Really, congratulations on the success of your oh-so-cunning plan,” Rose said. Shocked at her own behavior, but also exhilarated by it, she began to unbutton her shirt, knowing that if people had been watching before, they would be staring in riveted fascination now. “I mean, you could have put a little effort into it and come up with something truly cruel, maybe used just a tiny sliver of imagination, but then you would have ruined the image you’ve obviously worked so hard to build.”

Feeling as though she had stepped outside herself, as though she watched this brash behavior through someone else’s eyes, Rose stripped off her stained shirt and mopped the sticky dampness of the punch from her belly and her bra-clad breasts.

“What the hell are you doing?” Courtney asked, wide-eyed.

Rose glanced over at Kylie. “Can I borrow your jacket?”

Kylie said nothing, silenced for once by her own surprise. She slipped off her jacket and handed it over.

“I just want you to know that I get it,” Rose said as she put on the jacket and began to button it. “Okay, I’m Coma Girl, but I’ve seen enough movies and watched enough bad TV since I woke up to know how it works.
Blond cheerleader, keeping your place in the hierarchy through sheer nastiness. It’s a classic. I get that it would be hard to come up with an original spin, so it’s easier to just be a cliché. Job well done. You’ve achieved it. You are a cliché.”

Courtney’s smile had vanished. She glanced nervously around at all of the people who were watching the show, including her friends, but none of them jumped to her defense.

“You… you…” she said.

Rose shrugged. “I know. I went off script. But don’t worry. You don’t have to say anything. Have a drink. Raise a glass to Chloe. It’s her birthday.”

With that, a cheer went up. People hooted and applauded and shouted happy birthdays to Chloe. Courtney stared furiously at Rose, but others moved between them, the crowd filling the spaces, some teasing Courtney and others smiling at Rose, full of sudden admiration and goodwill.

“That was epic,” Kylie said into her ear.

Rose felt cold inside, but a warm ember began to burn off that chill. She smiled.

“Thanks,” she said, holding her ruined shirt in one hand. “I can’t believe I just did that.”

Kylie’s friend Dom joined them and soon they were part of a cluster of half a dozen St. Bridget’s students chattering about cliques and clichés and the spanking—as Dom called it—that Rose had just given Courtney. When
Rose glanced around a few minutes later, Courtney was nowhere to be seen, lost in the crowd or having retreated back into the kitchen.

Rose wanted to leave. She could have stayed and basked in the approval of people who had enjoyed Courtney’s humiliation—and probably also enjoyed the sight of her in a wet bra—but now that her own pleasure at having slapped the girl down had begun to wear off, the victory felt hollow and a little ugly.