In Search of the Rose Notes (20 page)

More scribbling. As Charlotte wrote, I realized I’d never asked Rose why she liked aliens best of all of the black-book topics. I wished I hadn’t been so caught up in defending my Druids that I’d forgotten to ask.

“Anything else you can remember that she said?”

“Umm, yeah. That when we go to the Bermuda Triangle, you and I, we should bring a good boat. And she’s not coming with us.”

I could hear Charlotte flipping to a new page on her notepad. “Why not?”

“Because… I don’t know, because it’s unrealistic, I guess.”

Charlotte hesitated. “Okay, so you guys finish talking. And you mentioned she said good-bye. Does she seem sad or serious, like it’s a real good-bye? Like, forever?”

The question startled me. Thinking back, now, it seemed like maybe it had been that kind of good-bye. But probably I was remembering it wrong. Probably I was just remembering being sad myself—which I still couldn’t explain.

“No,” I said slowly. “Not exactly.”

“And do you say good-bye back?”

“I don’t remember.” That was the truth. It was terrible to think now that maybe I hadn’t.

“And do you go right inside?”

“No.”

“Why not? It was cold outside.”

I paused. The truth was that I did this often—hung around wasting time outside to shorten the amount of time I’d have to be alone with Mrs. Crowe before my mother got home. It wasn’t that I didn’t like her. There just wasn’t enough to talk about with her. In warmer months I walked down to the bus stop and killed time looking for four-leaf clovers in the big clover patches along the sidewalk. But this wasn’t something I would mention to Charlotte.

“I do that sometimes… . I just felt like being outside for a little bit. I was collecting a few leaves.”

“And you watched Rose walk up the hill.”

“Not
all
the way up, of course. I can’t see that far. But the first couple of steps away from my house, yes.”

“And how long were you in the yard?”

“It felt like a while. Till it was pretty much dark.”

“Okay. That’s interesting. I didn’t know that. Do the police know that?”

When they’d talked to my mother, the police had only been interested in Rose. Not what I’d done after Rose had left me.

“No,” I said.

Charlotte sucked in a breath. “Did you hear
anything
coming from farther up the hill?
Anything?
”

“Like what?”

“Like… um, a struggle. Or like…” Charlotte’s voice lowered to a whisper. “Like screaming. Like Rose screaming.”

No, I hadn’t heard any screaming. As the sky had grown dark, the only noise was from a car or maybe two buzzing up the hill. But the mention of screaming—combined with the memory of talking Druids with Rose—reminded me of something Charlotte had told me once about the Druids. When they captured people in wars, they’d imprison them in hanging baskets that they would set on fire. And then they’d use the shape of the smoke and the sound of the screams as a way to tell the future.

I sat up just slightly, disturbed to remember this information. When Charlotte had first mentioned it months before, it hadn’t sounded like much. But now it did. Now that the last thing I’d told Rose was that I’d believed in Druids. If I believed in Druids, I had to believe in everything about them, not only their beautiful, mysterious stones.

“Did you just remember something?” Charlotte demanded. “Did you remember her screaming?”

The cruelty of it was as real as Stonehenge still was. Maybe more. I could feel it. So what was to stop a person from doing such a thing to Rose, or to any of us? And why did Charlotte have to keep mentioning screaming?

“No.” I sank back into the pillows. “It was pretty quiet. I picked up a few leaves I liked, and I went inside.”

“Are you absolutely positive you didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary?”

“Yeah,” I said.

But that night, while I was watching TV with my mother, I started to doubt my answer. We were watching
Who’s the Boss?
and
Growing Pains,
a lineup that could usually bring me out of any sad funk, despite my mother’s clucks at the shows’ stupidity. But I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I should’ve heard something. That maybe Rose had screamed and I hadn’t heard it. It felt to me like I was always missing things I should have heard.

Just a couple of weeks ago at school, Mrs. Early had told the whole class we weren’t to ask her for a lav pass during the half hour before lunch anymore, and I’d gone up to her a few minutes later and asked her for one. When she freaked and the whole class groaned, I suddenly remembered that she
had
been saying something to the class, scolding us about something, but I’d tuned it out.

Lately I noticed how little I actually listened to people. That’s the thing about being the quiet girl. Everyone’s talking around you, and eventually, people stop expecting you to participate. So you stop listening, because it has nothing to do with you. It’s all other people’s noise, other people’s business. Sometimes your own quiet starts to drown out everything else. And you get lazy.

You always hear about how crazy people “hear things.” But no one ever talked about “not hearing things,” which was much closer to my problem. And it worried me sometimes. Now maybe it had kept me from hearing Rose. Maybe Rose had been screaming and I just wasn’t listening.

Chapter Twelve

May 24, 2006

I resisted checking my e-mail for about a half hour, chopping up vegetables and chicken for the evening’s curry. When I stopped and checked it on Charlotte’s basement computer, though, Sally had already written back. Sounded like fun, she said. Actually, she was feeling kind of claustrophobic this week with her seven-month-old Max, and it would be nice to have an excuse to get out for coffee. There was a shop called Caffeine’s on Bridge Street in Fairville—did I know it? Was that close enough for me? Would Charlotte be joining us?

I don’t know why I was so surprised at first. While Sally and I weren’t friends, we hadn’t anything against each other. And we were both outcasts of the innocuous, invisible type. Did that mean we were more connected than I’d realized? Or was Sally just bored out of her mind?

I wrote back that Caffeine’s would be fine and asked for a time, saying I was free almost anytime before three o’clock tomorrow.

I didn’t mention Sally over our curry. Charlotte and I talked mostly about the upcoming weekend. Her mother had called and seemed dismayed that she might be missing me. She’d probably be home by late afternoon Saturday and wanted to know if I’d still be around. Maybe Paul and his kids could come over. Maybe we could have a little cookout. Would I be willing to stay that long? she’d wanted to know. I told Charlotte I’d call Neil and see if that would interfere with any of his plans. I doubted it would. And I was sticking around for at least an extra day to check out the Sally Pilkington situation—what would one or two more be after that?

Charlotte remained at the table after I’d started to clear the dinner dishes.

“There’s something I think you should know,” she said carefully. “Something happened yesterday. I didn’t find out till after you left. Paul was trying to call while we were out.”

“What’s that?”

“They questioned my dad a second time. Paul was pretty rattled. We were on the phone for a couple of hours.”

“They questioned your dad about… Rose?”

“Yeah,” Charlotte said, handing her plate to me. “You know, with us always flipping out over you being the last one to see her, I think we often forgot that he was the last
adult
to see her alive… . I suppose the police put more stock in that than we did.”

“Makes sense,” I said, rinsing her dish. “They’re really covering all their old bases, I think. With everything that happened yesterday, I forgot to tell you—they called me in to chat with them, too.”

Charlotte’s eyes widened. “What?
When?
”

“Yesterday.”

“What’d they want to know?”

“Just had me go over my spiel about that day. Rose walked me home. Dropped me off. Kept walking. Didn’t see anything suspicious.”

“That’s all?” Charlotte got up, grabbed her purse off the counter, and sat back down in her kitchen chair.

“Yeah. Pretty much.”

“How’d they know you were here?” She was pawing through her purse, extracting crumpled tissues, gum wrappers, and several red pens. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“They called me on my cell. They got my number from my voice mail at home. And I told them I was here in Waverly.”

I decided to skip the second question. I hadn’t told her because she’d already been driving me crazy yesterday. And because I hadn’t been sure what she and her cub-reporter boyfriend were up to.

Charlotte pulled a squashed cigarette pack out of her purse and pressed it between her palms, staring at me. I thought she was going to ask me again why I hadn’t told her. She didn’t.

“The weird thing isn’t that they were asking him questions,” Charlotte said slowly, drawing out a cigarette. “It’s that he wouldn’t answer them.”

I stopped loading the dishwasher.

“Apparently it started out cordial,” she said, thumbing her lighter several times before it sparked. “But there was a point when he stopped. Refused to keep talking to them. Refused until he could talk to a lawyer. That’s what upset Paul.”

I watched her puffing away for a moment, trying to determine if she was upset herself. It was hard to tell—she wouldn’t look at me.

“So it upset Paul…” I said. “But how about you?”

Charlotte shook her head. “The thing about Paul is, he’s naïve. In a tough situation, my dad has been known, on occasion, to take the hard-ass position. The problem with Paul is that he keeps allowing himself to be surprised by it.”

“The hard-ass position? What does that mean?”

She shrugged and blew a slow, elegant stream of smoke over the kitchen table. “Like, being an ass to a cashier who accidentally gives him the wrong change. Or when he has a fender bender, he always gets out of the car screaming. Never apologizing. Never, never apologizing. That sort of thing.”

“I see,” I said quietly.

“I just thought you should know. So you didn’t end up hearing it from someone else.”

“It’s been a while,” I said, “since I’ve been part of the Waverly grapevine.”

“Well. Still.”

I hovered over the dishwasher idiotically, wondering what I should say next. It seemed I should ask if she wanted to talk more about her dad, but to ask would imply that there
was
something to talk about. And she seemed to be trying her best to convey that nothing was amiss—only that poor old dainty-hearted Paul had felt that way.

“I wanted to tell you last night,” she said, before I had a chance to decide, “that I’m sorry about the whole
Looking Glass
thing. I don’t know if that’s why you took off last night. Or if it was because I made you guys go take a look at Aaron.”

I wondered if this whole business about Aaron had just been a way for Charlotte to assure herself that the police interest in her father wasn’t worrisome.

“Oh, don’t worry about it…” I said, struggling to sound reassuring.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to get into it with her again—about Aaron or the
Looking Glass.
How many more rounds of “You wrote them / No I didn’t” did we really need to go through? And what good would it do?

“I’m sorry if I upset you,” she said. “It was insensitive how I brought up the
Looking Glass.
I never should have. Or at least once it was clear you didn’t want to talk about it…”

“I was just thinking today,” I said. “I was thinking about how sure you were that I’d written them. And I was thinking about how weird that was, considering how close some of them are to what Rose wrote. So close it’s almost as if someone was looking at one while writing the other. And that makes it especially weird that you think it was me. Because you were the one who had access to those little dream notes she’d written when we were kids, not me. Seems a little odd that you think I’d remember that stuff so clearly five years later, in high school, and not consider that
you
were the editor of the magazine and
you
were the one who had Rose’s dreams written down and filed away in a box.”

Charlotte sighed and drew on her cigarette again. “I brought them up because I wanted to tell you that when I first read them, I felt that way, too. Even then.”

“Felt what way?”

“That I’d never forgotten her. That even though we were just kids when she disappeared, I felt we owed her something more. That we weren’t ever supposed to give up on her. I couldn’t put her out of my mind either. I was glad to see that the feeling was mutual.”

I hesitated. Yes, the feeling was mutual. But I’d never written about it.

“Charlotte,” I said slowly,“I’m only going to say this once more. And if you can’t take it seriously, we’re never, ever going to mention it again.”

I waited until Charlotte was looking me straight in the eye.

“I didn’t write them.”

She continued to smoke for a moment. “Okay,” she said gently.

“ ‘Okay’ meaning you really believe me?”

Charlotte hesitated again. “Yes.”

“Did you write them?”

Charlotte stubbed out her cigarette. “No.”

“Well, then who did?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t have a clue,” she said, folding her arms. “Since I always thought it was you. Who do
you
think?”

“Well, I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I have some thoughts on the matter. Hold on a sec.”

I ran to the bedroom and brought back my purse. I showed her the
Looking Glass
excerpts that seemed to be about Brian Pilkington, along with the article about his accident.

“You looked this up today?” she asked after reading the article.

I nodded and decided to leave out the exchange with Sally for the time being. I felt shady enough just admitting I’d looked up Brian’s accident.

“Remember his accident and her disappearing were around the same time?” I asked.

“You don’t think maybe Sally—”

I struggled to think of the right reply, but Charlotte didn’t wait for one.

“Hey,” she said. “You know how the rumor was that Rose was seeing someone else and that it pissed off Aaron? Maybe it was Brian. You think? And remember how you said you thought she wasn’t herself after the new school year started? Maybe it was because of the accident. Maybe she was upset about what had happened to him. And maybe somehow
Sally…”

I shrugged, unsure if I should add anything.

Charlotte shook her head. “But Sally wouldn’t know… . Yeah, kind of a long shot.” She screwed up her face, thinking.

“Listen,” I said, “you want to talk about it on a walk? I just realized, I’ve been here a few days and haven’t even walked around the block yet. Haven’t even cruised past my old house.”

Charlotte gazed at the article and the
Looking Glass
poems for a moment before answering.

“Oh,” she said apologetically. “Jeez. You know, I have a ton of correcting. Maybe you ought to go ahead.”

The Psychics:

December 1990

Charlotte wouldn’t just let me eat my Oreos for once. She could have Oreos almost whenever she wanted. She didn’t understand that for me they were more than a snack. They were an event—an event that didn’t need to be combined with conversation.

“There’s something I’m sure they haven’t tried,” she said.

“Huh?” I said, even though I knew she was talking about the police again. The police and Rose and how badly they were screwing everything up. Even with a mouth half full of Oreos, Charlotte couldn’t shut up about Rose.

“Psychometry,” she said carefully.

I dragged my front teeth into the white cream round, splitting it into two perfect half circles. I knew I didn’t need to bother to ask Charlotte what psychometry was. She was going to tell me whether I asked or not.

“You use an
object,
” she continued. “You read the history of an object. Like, something someone used to wear. Or, like, a key or a glove or something.”

“Mm-hmm,” I said, scraping one of the half circles clean with my teeth. I wondered if anyone had ever used Oreos for a phases-of-the-moon project at school. They were perfect: cream white against a dark round sky.

“I haven’t told anyone about this,” Charlotte whispered, reaching under her pillow.

My heart flip-flopped as she slid her hand out from under her lilac pillowcase, and I felt oddly relieved when she produced a curved pink plastic object. I’d pictured—for a moment—something more along the lines of a sheep’s heart filled with nails.

“It’s Rose’s banana clip,” she announced.

“How’d you get that?”

“She left it in our bathroom.”

“When?” I demanded.

“About a week before she vanished. I found it by the sink.”

I didn’t like how Charlotte seemed to enjoy saying “vanished,” like we were in a movie or something.

“Why didn’t you give it back?” I asked.

She looked exasperated. “We’re lucky to have this.”

“We’re going to read the banana clip, you’re saying?”

“Well, I’ve been trying to read it already. It’s been under my pillow for a few days.”

“And has it told you anything?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve had only one dream I could remember, and it was about my overdue library books.”

“Oh.”

Charlotte pushed the clip across the bed toward me. “I don’t think it’s going to tell me anything. But you might have better luck.”

I tried to enjoy my last bite of Oreo before replying. “You want me to sleep on this thing?”

“Well, actually, we should start with you just trying to read it while you’re conscious.”

I stared at the banana clip. I didn’t like banana clips. They made you look like you had a Mohawk. And I couldn’t remember Rose ever wearing one.

“How does it work?”

“I think you get messages from the object by touching it. So you start, I think, just by holding it. Maybe close your eyes, too.”

I gazed into the bubble-gum pink teeth of the clip. I tried to imagine Rose’s streaky, dirty-blond hair threaded into them. It was the thought of Rose’s hair that made me toss the banana clip aside.

“This is stupid,” I said.

“No it’s not.”

“Yes it is. Rose lost this clip before she disappeared. It was in your bathroom before she was even missing, right? It doesn’t know anything about what happened to Rose.”

“The
clip
doesn’t know anything,” Charlotte explained, her voice rising. “Nobody said the clip knows something. It doesn’t have
thoughts.
The idea is that it was hers, so by reading it, touching it, we can pick up on what’s happening with her.”

I looked at the clip skeptically. “How come I don’t remember her ever wearing a clip like that?”

Charlotte shrugged. “You’re not here every time she’s here. Like my parents’ anniversary.”

I looked away from the clip. I hated the Pepto pink of it—it was giving me a stomachache. And I couldn’t help but think Charlotte was putting me on, trying to get me to pretend to extract insights from some stupid banana clip she’d maybe dug out of her own jewelry box. So she could expose me for the fraud I was and then laugh.

“I don’t think it’s hers,” I insisted.

“Well, I
know
it’s hers. And I think we should try everything we can to find her. Even if it seems stupid.”