Wild Roses (11 page)

I went outside, took out my telescope. I was
out there a long time, and I was looking at the moon. Thinking how many people
looked at that very same moon. Wondering if maybe Ian was looking at that same
moon now, too. And it was like I had almost called him to me, when I heard
those

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bike tires. I thought I imagined them. I
actually walked to the edge of the lawn, because I couldn't believe my own
hearing. But there it was--the sound was coming closer. It was him, all right,
and suddenly all of the bad things just lifted up. They just rose and made room
for Ian Waters as he rode, a bit wobbly, down that gravel street, as he laid his
bike down on the grass. I needed something to take the place of the scary things
in my life right then, and my heart surged with this ridiculous giddiness, went
from bad to good with the simple sight of his coat.

Bright orange maple leaves from our trees had
begun to cover the lawn over the last few days. When Ian walked toward me, his
shoes and pant legs shish-shishtd through them.

"This is so weird. I was just thinking about
you," I said. My heart filled with wonderful-fantastic. "You were?" "Just this
minute."

"What were you thinking?" He stood close. Put
his hands on my arms.

I forgot what friends could say and what
friends couldn't. I forgot all about his leaving in eight months. It was so good
to shove aside what was happening in that house behind me and have something
else take that space. I would take five minutes of wonderful-fantastic, if
that's all I could have. "I was thinking that maybe you were looking at the
moon, too."

"Can I?" He nodded toward the
telescope.

"Sure."

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He dropped his hands, moved to the telescope,
and peered in. The wind blew in a gust, picked up an armful of the leaves, and
tossed them around. A few made a run for it down the road, turning mad circles.
Ian's hair blew around too. There was something about smelling his shampoo that
made everything feel it was right where it should be.

"It looks like ... the moon," he laughed. "It
really looks like the moon." "I know it."

Ian shoved his hands in his pockets. "Are you
all right out here? It's getting cold," he said, and he was right. October had
done that sneaky October thing, changed a season on you without you noticing it.
Fall always came with a sudden realization.

"I'm great," I said. I had a nice little cozy
bonfire going on inside. Warm, toasty happiness. His care made everything just
fine. "I like the cold. It smells good out here. Can you believe it's almost
Halloween already?" I said.

Ian looked up, surveyed the sky with those eyes
of his. He didn't want to talk about Halloween. "Cassie," he said to the sky,
and then looked at me. "I've been thinking a lot about you lately."

My heart avalanched. Raced my stomach to my
feet.

"Me too," I said.

"I've never met anyone like you before. You're
. . . real. I like that."

Ian reached up to my face, tucked a strand of
my hair behind my ear.

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"So pretty," he said. I closed my eyes.
Listened to the leaves scratching along paved driveways and the road. I felt
Ian's warm breath near my cheek, knew we were about to kiss. I felt as if I were
being sucked in, taken captive. He could have asked anything of me and I would
have followed, led along by this joy in his presence. I leaned into him. His
coat smelled as good as the night-- like coldness and fall and burning
leaves.

We kissed. Soft lips, night breeze, drowning.
Dangerous, willing drowning.

We had already pulled away from each other when
the headlights shined up the street. Headlights, oh, shit-- Dino. Instant fear
reaction. Instant guilt at being caught, and the sudden remembrance that there
were way too many reasons not to be doing what I was just doing.

I stepped away from Ian, and real life filled
the space between us as Dino parked his car in the drive and just sat there in
the driver's seat, watching us. This, Ian and me, it was something I couldn't
do. I just couldn't. Not only because Dino would be pissed, and he certainly
already seemed pissed, not only because our lives were fucked up enough already,
but because of what would happen to me if I let myself feel this much, this
deeply, this good. Ian was leaving, and when he did I would feel this much, this
deeply, this destroyed. I'd already seen what happened when you let your
passions have their way. There were plenty of images to choose from--take your
pick. My mother counting pills lined up along the bathroom counter, round yellow
pills like dress buttons. My Dad's

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haunted post-divorce eyes, the chaos in my
mother's post-divorce house, bills and dishes and laundry, all the evidence of a
life out of control. My father with the Cavalli books spread out over his bed.
Broken and destroyed hearts. I was only seventeen. It was too soon to be part of
a train wreck.

I broke away, ran into the house before Dino
got out of his car. I left Ian Waters standing alone on the lawn. I saw his
face, enough of it, anyway, to see that he was surprised and hurt, but I didn't
care. I told myself I didn't care. What mattered was avoiding the train wreck. I
ran upstairs to my room, shut the door. I shut it all out behind me. Shutting
doors was the solution of the day. I tried not to imagine Ian standing there
outside, making his way home to that house by the ferry terminal. I just said to
myself No. I held that snow globe with the bear in it, turned him upside down.
He was the more sensible one of us. Sure, he was floating aimlessly, but he
would never leave that glass dome. He would stay inside that place, even if it
snowed and snowed.

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CHAPTER SIX

"Cassie? I need to talk to you about
something," Mom said to me in the morning. What a surprise. After last night I
knew we would be having this conversation. She sure hadn't wasted any time--I
was in the bathroom getting ready for school. I had just brushed my teeth and
was doing a quick toothpaste survey, seeing if I'd ended up with a white
toothpaste drip. I swear, every day I end up with a spot of toothpaste in a
different location. It's like a game of Where's Waldo.

"What?" I said. I knew what.

"It's about Ian."

"What about him?" Defensiveness crept up my
spine, settled somewhere in my throat.

"Look, I don't know what the situation is. . .
." "There is no situation," I interrupted. Which was

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mostly true. There wasn't going to be a
situation anymore.

"Okay, fine. If that's the case, great. There
are just things you don't understand here, about this. If you were to get
involved . . . okay, Cassie, stop with the face. Let's just say you were. It's
not a simple thing. Not even for you."

"I know that. That's why I'm making my own
decision about it. You don't have to tell me that." I was angry. I didn't feel
like I was the prime concern here. "Tell me, though, because, you know, I just
don't get it. I don't get why Dino should have such a problem with me and Ian,
anyway. Can't Ian have friends? What, he'll be contaminated like the kid who
lives in the bubble? Or does Dino just not want me to be happy?"

"Come on, quit it. It has nothing to do with
Dino not wanting your happiness. He's got a responsibility to Ian. Ian's got to
stay focused. Dino's got to stay focused too. It complicates things
unnecessarily."

"For Dino."

"For Dino, for Ian. For Ian's family Ian is
coming here for training. Professional training. This is his life course we're
talking about. He needs this scholarship. Think about him, too. Dino had to have
a talk with him last night."

"Oh, great. Just great." Humiliation. Like we
were a couple of kids caught playing doctor. Shit.

"He can't be coming over here with you on his
mind when he needs to be dedicated to that violin right now. There's a lot at
stake here. Yes, for Dino, too. The structure,

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the chance to help this kid succeed--it's a
stabilizing force. It means a lot to him to have the chance to help Ian make it.
Cassie, let's just ... if we keep things . . . uncomplicated ..."

"I already told you, I'm not going to get
involved with him. You can tell Dino to relax. Ian's going away, I know that.
It'd be stupid."

"Exactly. I don't want to see you get your
heart broken, either."

"It'd be stupid," I said again. "Nobody has to
talk to anybody anymore."

"Dino's record deal, this concert--it's all
final. His three pieces have got to be finished by March. He's got to write.
Ian's audition is right before that. Let's just get through those two things.
Remember what's best for Ian, if you care about him. Help me out
here."

"Mom, okay." Jesus. I got it. It was over.
Finished. I'd decided that before she even opened her mouth. Before Dino ever
opened his to Ian.

"Things will calm down after March."

"All right," I said.

"I love you, and I'm sorry things are crazy
right now." "I love you, too," I said.

"You got toothpaste there by your collar," she
said.

I walked past their open bedroom door and could
see Dino's figure in bed, the hunch of his bare shoulders. Even as he slept
there you could feel the unease in his form. I resented the lack of peace he had
brought my mother and me, resented the fact that you could look at

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that sleeping back and see a possible eruption,
a mountain of problems rather than the quiet security that sleeping shoulders
should make you feel. I wanted the safety of someone folding warm laundry, or
plunking down a bag of capably chosen groceries, or fixing a broken lawn mower.
But in that bed was the meteor we lived with instead, who brought unshaven
torment and sheets of notes written in almost cliched fury and shoved in the
kitchen garbage along with the coffee grounds and crushed Cap'n Crunch box. It
occurred to me then that all we want a good part of the time is to feel in safe
hands.

If you've ever made a decision not to have
something you really want, you'll know how I felt over the next few days. Sure,
there were these moments of resolve, of Zen-like peace that lasted all of a few
seconds. But mostly I was pissed off. At my mother and at Dino and at the world
that didn't arrange things in a better way. At my own chicken shit
self.

It wasn't the kind of pissed off that was
raging and full of energy, but the variety that was flat and snappish and
lethargic. I was going through life in a fog, an expression that was true in
every sense. I felt like I was watching and not really participating, like my
life source had called in sick and was wrapped up in a quilt somewhere, zonked
on cold medicine. And the fog was a literal truth, too--for those days it lay
around in wispy streams, around the water and on the lawn in the morning, as if
the clouds had pushed the wrong elevator button. That's what fog is
anyway--lazy

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clouds. Clouds without ambition. The fog was
eerie and beautiful, soft and thoughtful, and it usually lifted in the afternoon
to an annoying display of sun that made the October orange colors so bright that
they hurt your eyes. Everything glistened with dew, and it was vibrantly cold
out. I didn't want that, the cold that made you want to put on a big coat and do
something useful and happy, like rake leaves. I wanted the rain again, or just
the fog, looking miserable and spooky.

I went through the motions at school, caring
even less than usual about the fact that Kileigh Jensen highlighted her hair or
that rumors were flying about what Courtney did with Trevor Woodhouse, which
everyone knew anyway by taking one look at them. The things that I might have
laughed at, the fact that Sarah Frazier wore enough makeup for her and two of
her closest friends, for example, or the coincidence that Hailey Barton's bra
size doubled right about the same time that two Chihuahuas disappeared from the
area, didn't even seem very funny.

My emotions were manic-hormonal, and when
Jeremy Libitski got up and turned in his math test after, I swear, five minutes,
I started to get all panicky. By this time you know better. You know there's
some kid who always turns in his test after five minutes and you have that
oh-shit moment of realization that you're still on the second question. You know
to tell yourself that he's either some super-smug genius or just went along
answering B to everything. But I panicked, and even the easy stuff seemed
suddenly complex to the point of total confusion--

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Name:, for example. This is how messed up I
was.

On Friday it was Halloween, and I decided to go
to Brian Malo's party even if I wasn't really in the mood. I thought that maybe
being with my friends would help me remember where I was before I even met Ian
Waters, and remember that I existed fine without him before. It's strange, but
you can feel excitement in the air on Halloween night, even if you're staying
home, as if all the energy of those little kids too jazzed to eat dinner is just
zipping around the atmosphere. We carved pumpkins the night before, and I Just
Said No to those intricate designs that take three days without food or sleep to
carve-- haunted houses and cat faces and Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper
done in gourd. I did two triangle eyes and a frown and tried to put a tooth in
there, but it fell out and I had to stick it back in with a toothpick. Mom, who
for the last few days had been talking to her friend Alice a lot on the phone
and walking around Dino as if she were carrying a feather in cupped hands,
carved the same thing she did every year, a music note. Dino came out of his
study and watched us light the candles and sat there in the dark with us, which
is probably a metaphor, come to think of it. Since Mom confronted him with the
blank pages, he'd been defensive, then well behaved. It reminded me of Mom (a
leadfoot) when she gets a speeding ticket. First, she's ticked off at the cop.
Then, for three days running, she won't go a notch over the speed limit. After
that, she's back to her old extreme and dangerous ways.