When Rose Wakes (9 page)

“What’s that about?” asked a pretty Latina girl.

Courtney nodded toward Rose. “I get to play ambassador to the new girl.”

Rose watched the reactions on the faces of Courtney’s friends. There were four of them already at the table—the others probably in line for lunch—and their expressions ranged from disdain to amusement. Before any of them could say anything, a dark-haired, broad-shouldered guy came over and set his tray down next to Courtney.

“Hey, babe,” he said, lightly touching her arm. He glanced at Rose out of the corner of his eye. “How’s your day?”

“Perfect,” Courtney said.

“She’s babysitting me,” Rose volunteered, then blinked in surprise that she had bothered to speak at all.

The guy nodded. “Excellent. Will there be spanking if you get out of line?”

Courtney scowled in disgust but Rose couldn’t help laughing.

“You’re a pig, Eric,” Courtney said.

Eric threw up his hands. “Guilty as charged,” he said, then slid into his chair and picked up the milk glass from his tray. Before he could take a drink, his gaze locked on Rose and brightened. “Wait a second.”

He cocked his head, studying her. “New student. You must be Coma Girl!”

They all stared at Rose with new interest and she felt something freeze inside of her. Bad enough they treated her like she was beneath them, but now she was worse than nothing; she was a curiosity. A freak.

“How does that work?” the Latina girl asked.

A tall, pale brunette leaned back in her chair, appraising her. “Simple enough. You go to sleep and wake up and your clothes are all out of style.”

They all laughed. Another girl, lightly freckled, practically leered at her. “So how’d you wake up, Sleeping Beauty? One of the doctors give you a kiss?”

Courtney smiled, obviously enjoying her discomfort.

“You can grill her all you want once I have my lunch,” Courtney said, then turned to Rose. “Come on. They don’t give us much time.”

The two girls got into the lunch line, surprising Rose.
She had assumed that Courtney would have cut right in front. But then again, there were plenty of upperclassmen in line, and while Courtney obviously considered herself royalty where other sophomores were concerned, she must have some awareness of the limits of her power in the high school pecking order.

After receiving a plate laden with some kind of pasta, cheese, and red sauce creation the lunch ladies had labeled manicotti, Rose got herself a glass of apple juice and a small salad and started following Courtney back toward their table. Still wearing her backpack, obviously a wanderer with no real place of her own in the school’s student hierarchy, she felt like a puppy dogging its master’s heels.

“Rose!”

Nearly tripping over a pair of crutches an older guy had put down beside his table, she stumbled a bit and almost spilled her juice. When she’d found her footing again, she glanced back and saw that it had been Kylie who called to her from the end of one of the long tables with attached seats. She gestured for Rose to join her, indicating an empty seat beside her. Rose hesitated, glancing at the table full of Courtney’s friends. Did having an ambassador assigned to her mean that she had to stick with that ambassador? Would her failure to do so be perceived as disobedience? She didn’t want to get into trouble on her first day—she owed Aunt Fay and Aunt Suzette more than that.

Kylie called to her again, beckoning with one hand,
making a funny face to urge her on. Rose laughed softly and changed direction, glad now that she had not left her backpack at Courtney’s table.

She slid her tray next to Kylie’s and slipped off her backpack.

“Thanks for saving me from the torture of eating with those people,” she said.

Kylie smiled, popping a forkful of salad into her mouth and talking as she chewed. “Yeah, for a minute there I thought you were going to, like, totally ignore me. I was thinking they had taken over your mind or something.”

Rose plopped her backpack between seats and slid into the chair between Kylie and an orange-haired guy talking about football and the army like they were one and the same thing.

“No mind control,” Rose assured her. “It’s just that Mr. McIlveen paired us up and I don’t want him to be angry.”

Kylie had forked another bite of salad but now she used it to gesture toward Courtney’s table, making her point.

“You think Mr. Mac will be all disappointed that you ditched Courtney?” Kylie asked, brows knitted. “Not likely. He’ll be glad you found somebody you actually wanted to talk to. It’s not like he doesn’t realize Sauer and her cheer squad are bitches.”

Rose frowned. “Then why would he make her be my student ambassador?”

Kylie shrugged. “I think she was one of the sophomores who, like, guided the freshmen around at the beginning
of the year, so she sort of volunteered for the job. Besides, she knows all of the teachers because of her grandmother working in the office.”

Forking a bite of manicotti into her mouth, Rose glanced over the heads of the two girls sitting across from them and saw Courtney headed her way, darting between two of the long tables.

“Uh-oh,” she managed, before swallowing the food in her mouth.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Courtney demanded, leaning between the two girls across from Rose and Kylie.

“Eating lunch?” Rose ventured.

Courtney sneered. “You think you’re funny now?”

Rose felt her cheeks flushing, but with anger rather than embarrassment. “Look, Courtney, you don’t want anything to do with me and that’s fine. I can find the rest of my classes on my own.”

“Mr. Mac is going to think I blew you off.”

“I’ll make it clear it was the other way around,” Rose promised.

Courtney narrowed her eyes, then smiled in grim amazement. “Wow. Coma Girl gets her claws out.”

Rose shrugged. “I just didn’t want to spend my lunch as a punching bag for you and your friends.”

“Fine by me,” Courtney said. “Enjoy St. B’s. Hopefully I’ll never have to talk to you again.”

She stormed away. The two girls across the table stared at Rose.

“Wow,” one of them said.

Rose shifted uneasily. She did not like the admiration she saw in their eyes any more than she did the derision of Courtney and her friends. She just wanted to be invisible today.

“Are you always this scrappy?” Kylie asked.

Rose gave her an apologetic look. “I actually don’t remember.”

“Right,” Kylie said, nodding. “Coma Girl.”

Shocked to hear the nickname from her friend, Rose shot her a hard look.

“Hey, that genie’s out of the bottle,” Kylie said. “You’re never going to make the name go away, so you might as well own it. Make it yours. People want to call you Coma Girl, just nod and say, ‘Yeah, that’s me. Cool, aren’t I?’ Well, don’t actually say that, but wear that attitude. I mean, duh, it’s fascinating, right? Friggin’ coma and amnesia, you might as well be a superhero. People are gonna be interested, so let them.”

“I don’t know,” Rose said.

“Suit yourself. Just my two cents,” Kylie replied.

“For cheerleaders, those girls aren’t very cheery.”

Kylie arched an eyebrow, one corner of her mouth tugging upward in a lopsided smile. “Was that a joke, Miss DuBois?”

“Not a very good one,” Rose observed.

“No,” Kylie agreed. “But you get points for trying. And yeah, they’re cheerleaders for the football team, but they also make up about half the girls’ basketball team. They’re pretty good, too, Courtney and Ivy especially.”

“Ivy being?”

“Black hair, anemic-looking?”

Rose nodded. The tall one who had made fun of her clothes.

Kylie kept up a steady stream of chatter, segueing from gossip about teachers to her favorite bands to her take on the capricious nature of the universe. Yet she didn’t seem to be rambling just to hear her own voice. Kylie frequently paused to make eye contact and grill Rose about her thoughts on various matters, forcing her to think and engage. The girl had a voracious appetite for thought and a manic energy about her, and Rose found herself both exhausted and inspired by her company.

She’d only eaten half her lunch when the two girls across from them picked up their trays and departed. Worried, Rose glanced around in search of a clock, concerned that the period would be ending at any moment. When she turned around again, the seat directly opposite her was occupied once more.

“Oh, hey,” Rose said, smiling and sitting up a little straighter.

Jared nodded as though agreeing with her. “Hey. I just dumped my tray and thought I’d say hi. So, y’know, hi.”

Kylie laughed. “Listen to you, all mumbly and stuff.”

“Hi, Kylie,” Jared said.

“You two know each other?” Kylie asked. “You mean, you made more than one friend today and didn’t tell me? I’m deeply offended.”

“We met the other day in the office, when Rose was taking her admissions test,” Jared said.

Rose nodded. She knew that Kylie must be watching her closely—the girl was so observant—and she didn’t want to give too much away by her reaction to Jared. But he was very cute and she had been hoping all morning to run into him and wondering why she hadn’t.

“Here I am,” Rose said. “A St. Bridget’s girl.”

“What class did they put you in?” Jared asked.

“I’m a sophomore.”

Kylie smiled conspiratorially. “Oh, no! Jared, will your reputation survive you being seen sitting with us lowly sophomores?”

Jared seemed to think this over. “I honestly don’t know.”

Rose felt a sickly flutter in her chest, glancing from Jared to Kylie and back again, thinking for a moment that this really might be a concern. Then the two of them laughed and Jared threw up his hands.

“Ah, to hell with my reputation,” he said.

“
What
reputation?” Kylie teased.

Jared smiled at her, but then focused on Rose, and his eyes softened. “Listen, I’ve got to catch up with Mr.
Morse before my math class starts, so I’ve gotta take off. But I was wondering… I mean, there’s a party tomorrow night in Cambridge and I was thinking maybe you’d like to come.”

Rose felt her chest tighten, her throat closing up, as though no words would ever escape her lips again. Her aunts would never agree, and yet in the short span of her life that she could remember, she had never wanted anything more.

“It would give you a chance to meet some more people, y’know, away from school,” Jared prompted, disappointment beginning to dim the light in his eyes.

“I…” Rose managed.

“Would love to go,” Kylie finished for her, once again punctuating her words with a forkful of food. “Rose would love to go.”

Rose nodded to her, and then to Jared. “I would.”

Jared’s smile brightened, his charisma returning to full wattage. “Cool.”

“We’ll both be there,” Kylie said.

Jared didn’t even seem to notice—or he did, but didn’t care—that Kylie had invited herself along. He fished his cell phone out of his pocket with a glance around to make sure he wouldn’t get caught using it.

“Give me your cell number and I’ll text you the details,” he said.

Rose stared at him, blanking for five or six very long seconds. Then she laughed at herself, relief washing over her,
as she finally remembered the number and rattled it off to him. He keyed it into his phone, flipped it shut, and then got up from the table.

“See you tomorrow night,” he said.

“See you,” Rose echoed.

As she watched him walk away, Kylie leaned over and nudged her with a shoulder. When Rose looked at her, she grinned hugely.

“You, Miss DuBois, are having one heck of a first day.”

A
veil of white blots out the sky, snow falling swift and heavy, gusts of wind making the flakes dance around Rose as she hurries across the castle grounds. The village around the castle seems to vanish and appear with the whims of the storm, but Rose does not waver. Her path is true and she follows it unerringly, her dress and hair fluttering in the wind, her boots barely leaving a trail, prints filled by the sifting snow only moments after her passing.

Another time the beauty of the storm would have made her jubilant. Snow this early in September could only be magical, and Rose would have been delighted to run through it, to play and laugh and twirl like a little girl. But this is not another time and though the snow glistens and a wondrous hush has fallen over the castle and the village, she cannot cherish the moment, for it is filled with fear.

From somewhere not far off she hears a shout and she dances three steps to her left, spins widdershins three times, then lets her momentum carry her onward toward the trees.
If Rose does not wish to be seen, she will not be seen… not by those her father has sent out searching for her anyway. Like the snow, she is not entirely as she seems, not entirely uninfluenced.

Ahead, the Feywood seems a ghost of itself, spectral forest draped in a fresh blanket of white. Its beauty makes her catch her breath, but she does not allow it to slow her, forging on, slipping through the wintry snowfall as though a kind of phantom herself. But she is no phantom. She can feel her heart beating in her chest, feel the cold biting at her cheeks, taste the air slipping in and out of her with every breath. Rose is alive, but for how much longer, she cannot say.