Waking Rose: A Fairy Tale Retold (26 page)

She wandered around the first store and passed into the second, casting her eyes around for something remotely beautiful. The sales rack looked interesting, so she started to slide hangers aside and study different items.

It was only after a few minutes had passed that she began to feel as though someone were watching her. She looked around, perplexed, but saw no one, and returned to her shopping, but more aware. Then she looked up abruptly, and her eyes met a girl’s eyes across the store. Donna.

The blond girl was also going through a rack of clothing. Seeing Rose, an odd smile crossed her face. Rose dropped her eyes, and felt the chill again. Tara had told her at the cast party that Donna’s medication was helping her, but that sometimes she was unpredictable. Rose didn’t like dealing with unpredictable people.

Feeling as though she were running away, she shouldered her purse and walked out of the store.
I’m only being prudent
, she told herself. She passed into the next store, an Indian boutique which had caught her eye when she first walked in.

Here at last were clothes that reminded her of New York City. She found a black dress that was so sleek that she had to try it on, and a beaded jacket. With eager anticipation, she went into the large dressing room to try on the clothes.

They fitted well, and Rose studied herself in the mirror, wondering if there was any way she could justify buying them. There was no way she could afford them now, but some stores had layaway plans, and perhaps she could leave a down payment...she ruminated, and decided at last that as gorgeous as they were, she didn’t need them now.

A bit sadly, she patted the fine garments and hung them back on their hangers. But before she opened the door of the dressing room, something made her pause and crack it open.

Peering through the slit, she could see that Donna was in the store, looking around. There was a strange-looking thug-like girl, wearing a nose ring, whom Rose didn’t recognize, standing next to her. Rose remained still, watching them. After a moment had passed, Donna turned to her companion and nodded, and they both walked out of the store.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Rose slipped out of the dressing room, and returned the garments. She thought to herself that she might as well return to the sales rack she had left so abruptly in the other store. There was a purple sweater there that had interested her.

Now feeling a bit foolish, she sidled out of the store, glancing around, and when the coast was clear, she went back into the store.

She found the sales rack and chose a position where she could see the entrance but where she was partially obscured. After a moment, she found the purple sweater and was just considering it again when she caught sight of Donna and her friend coming into the store. It wasn’t clear whether or not they had seen her.

Without a second thought, she shrank down beneath the sales rack. She saw two sets of legs walking towards her, and felt behind her. There was a rack of long formal dresses, and she slid between the folds and backed against the wall, completely hidden.

Her heart pounding, she listened. The footsteps came closer, passed around her. She heard Donna blowing out her breath.

“I could have sworn she was just here,” Rose heard Donna musing.

“Why are we following this girl?” her friend asked.

“She made my life miserable this past semester. A real snob. I wonder what she would do if we cornered her someplace?”

“She looks like the type who would freak out easily.”

“Yes, she is. Come on, let’s go back and check that other store.”

The footsteps passed away from Rose’s hiding place, but she still tensed, listening. After a long moment, she crept out and got to her feet.

“I am
not
the type who freaks out easily,” she said under her breath indignantly. But all the same, she was uneasy. If Donna had been a completely sane person, Rose would have defiantly remained where she was, daring a confrontation, but in this situation, she thought that Fish would recommend caution.

Fish...if only she could contact him. She peered out the door and saw that there was a sign for a phone booth just across the mallway.

Swiftly, she walked out of the store and glanced around the mall. No sign of Donna. There was a group of teenagers passing by, and she joined the fringes and crossed to the phone booth, slipping out of the group as they passed the corridor.

She hurried to the recess where the phone was, pulling out her purse and finding her phone book and a phone card, wishing that she had her own cell phone. Rapidly, she dialed Fish’s cell phone.

There was no answer, just an electronic message saying that the cellular customer was out of range. Frustrated, she slid her phone card again and tried calling his home.

After three rings, the answering machine came on. She cleared her throat, feeling a little silly, but said relentlessly, “Hello? Fish, this is Rose. I wanted to call you because...I’m at the mall in Meyerstown, and Donna is here, following me around. Right now I don’t see her... but, well, you’re not there, so I can’t ask you what I should do. I guess I’ll just try to get out and go home. I’ll give you a call later on. Bye.”

She hung up the phone, watching the passing people. Still no sign of Donna.

Hastily, she walked down the corridor and hurried towards the entrance. She tried not to look around too obviously as she walked, but she was scanning the crowds all the same. As she passed the fountain, her eyes traveled up to the second level where more crowds walked. Then she saw a familiar blond figure looking down at her from the balcony, as though she had been waiting for Rose. Donna pointed at her, and Rose’s throat tightened. She saw Donna and her friend race away—probably towards the escalators to get back downstairs.

Now Rose threw decorum to the wind and ran. She sped down the slippery tile floor and turned the corner to the exit more quickly than she should have and almost fell.

But she recovered, quickly exited the building, and made her way back to Paul’s car.
I’m not scared
, she told herself,
I’m just extremely anxious to leave
.

As she pulled out of the parking lot, she caught a glimpse of Donna and her friend standing at the entrance of the mall. Then the girl pointed in her direction. Rose drove out of the mall parking lot at a pace that was slightly above the speed limit.

By the time she had passed through two lights and gotten back on the highway, she had started to relax again. She was trying to decide whether she should just go back to her dorm rather than returning to the barn.
I shouldn’t have gotten so nervous,
she chided herself.
You’re starting to behave like Blanche
. As a teenager, her older sister had a rather timid nature, and to Rose, had always seemed to be shying away from some as yet unseen peril.

The words of Donna’s friend echoed in Rose’s mind:
She looks like the type who would freak out easily.

“No, I’m
not
,” Rose said out loud. She wasn't going to let Donna win by going home now.

This time she was sure to take the correct exit, and she drove up to the old farm without further mishap and parked the car in front of the abandoned house. She got out of the car, and the wind rustled through her hair and skipped onto the grass around the barn, waving to it as though in greeting.

Returning to the barn was now like returning to an old friend, and she patted the worn doors as she slipped inside. “Hello again,” she said softly. Talking out loud when she knew she was alone—or should be alone—always reassured her.

She climbed up the ladder to the hayloft easily, whistling. There was a faint rustling above her, and she knew she was frightening mice. “Boo!” she said as she reached the top, and grinned at the empty loft. Since she was all alone in the place, as an extra precaution, she pulled up the ladder after her and set it on the rickety boards at the top.

Continuing to whistle, she pulled out the stack of boxes where she had left off, and started to go through them. The very first new box she pulled out was filled with notes from her father’s work. She sifted through them rapidly since they were clearly organized. As she worked, she was barely aware of the wind whistling through the old barn, rattling the windows and bumping the door.

After getting sidetracked in the next box of miscellaneous newspaper clippings that her dad had found interesting, which Rose also found interesting, she had to stop and remember exactly what she was looking for. After going through the box, she replaced the lid and reached for the next box.

To her surprise, it was filled with photos and mementos from the family—children’s drawings, play programs, birthday cards. She looked through them briefly, recognizing members of her dad’s family—cousins and uncles and aunts. About halfway through the box was a curious package—a large leather envelope, tied with a black string.

Rose pulled at the knot and it came undone a bit grudgingly, and the four points of the front opened like a large leather bud to reveal a neat stack of assorted papers. On top was a letter that began, “Dear Dan,” in a handwriting that Rose was convinced was her own. But as she read it, she realized that this must be a letter from her mom, when her mom was her age. It was a summer letter to the boyfriend she had just met the previous semester, chatty, faintly romantic, with a wistful last sentence: “Looking forward to your next letter—boy, you write long ones! I’m so glad. Sincerely, Jeannie.”

There was no date, but Rose was sure that this must have been one of the first letters her mom had written to her dad. It was clear that this folio was for documents of special importance. She looked at the next one. It was another letter from her mom, this one from further on. At this point, they must have been talking about getting engaged. It was a bit more serious in tone. “I think that I’m ready for whatever God has next for us both,” her mother had written. “I’m so glad to have found you, as silly as that sounds.”

It didn’t sound silly at all, Rose thought. She wished that she had some of her dad’s letters to read. Maybe Mom had them somewhere.

The next few letters were business letters—one informing her dad that he had won a scholarship, the next a Christmas letter from an employer that said, “Your bonus check is enclosed.” The next, a note from a publishing office saying, “We’ve accepted your article for publication.”
Maybe Dad’s first writing job,
she thought. She set the letters aside to take with her.

The next thing was a white lined pad, and on the top line was a sentence reading, “Interviews with Tennille, Nurse at R.G.M.H.”

Rose took a deep breath. Here it was, the material she had given up looking for. Her dad had separated it from his other notes because he must have felt it was significant. Why had he left this behind? Possibly it had gotten mislaid.

Feeling the bumpy surface of the pad with her fingertips, she scanned over it, but quickly got lost. There were too many medical terms for her to follow. It didn’t seem to be much about patient abuse, but there were a lot of references to organ surgery. She turned to the next item and found a single sheet of paper, also in her dad’s handwriting. It was more of the interview, done at a later date.

“Proof of what I saw is the following: there was a man in a coma, a poor man in good health, who had gone into a coma during an accident. I had started to suspect that something was strange about his case...”

Then followed a lot of medical information. Rose’s eyes jumped to this sentence, “I realized that the comatose patient had symptoms similar to withdrawal…” More medical terms. “But he was never left alone.” 

There was a margin note scribbled in a tense masculine hand. “Saw doctor administering dose. Only eyewitness?”

More medical terms. “Then the patient’s family was found. They wanted him transferred…Change in his chart…The following drugs were apparently given. I collected them from the trash can. Five vials propofol…”

The barn door slammed in the wind, but Rose ignored it.

There followed another list of drugs with names Rose didn’t recognize.  Just then a sound broke into Rose’s consciousness, distracting her. There was a car outside.

Abruptly she closed the folio, swiftly retied the cord, and silently thrust it into the box. She crouched down, listening.

There was no further sound, and she wondered to herself if she had imagined it all.

She waited. The wind rushed over the hill again, and the door of the barn thumped open and shut. Silence. The timbers creaked—or was it footsteps? She didn’t dare to move.

As she listened, she suddenly began to wonder if she had indeed been alone all this time, as she had assumed. Was there someone here? The moaning breeze continued to work its noisy way through the barn, and she found it hard to figure out if there was someone moving through the barn in addition to the invisible hand of the wind.

I’m being silly
, she told herself.
There’s no one here. Maybe I even imagined that car.

But suppose she hadn’t? Thoughts of Donna and her weird friend flitted through her mind again.
More nonsense
, she told herself, licking her lips. But the pit in her stomach told her that there actually was some danger—real danger—here.

Steadily and silently, she rose to her feet and peered around the edge of the loft. There was no sign of anyone. Tentatively, she lifted her foot and took a step forward, noiselessly. She had more of a view of the barn below, but still no one.

Another step. Another. She made herself breathe normally, expecting to see Donna’s grinning face hovering below any moment. At last her foot stepped onto the creaking loose boards at the edge of the loft. She stood in silence, looking down. There was still nothing.

On edge, her eyes traveled slowly over the contents of the barn, sensing that something was amiss. The door banged open and shut again, and was still. The old machinery and scattered hay looked the same as before.

Then she saw a brown snake lying coiled up on the barn floor and caught her breath.