Wild Roses by Deb Caletti Page B

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.
    When I left, Mom and Dino were doing
something
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    they never did--just sitting on the couch and
watching a movie. Very regular couple. Very non-genius of Dino. His arm was
around my mother, sucking up. This was what his illness was like. A crash. Then
enough quiet to make you think it might be getting better. Then an earthquake.
And Mom would just buy into it. That's how bad she wanted things to be
okay.
    I walked to Brian's, because I liked to see the
little kids with their costumes flowing out behind them as they ran, their
parents calling Thank you! to open doorways, the miniature ghouls and power guys
and gypsy girls. I remembered sweating like a sumo under rubber masks, and as a
kindergartener, parading around the classes of big kids. I remember pouring out
my candy on the floor when I got home from trick-or-treating, picking out the
Butterfingers and separating similar things into piles. I remember my Mom
wearing a witch hat to answer the door, and my Dad holding my hand when we
crossed the street, and me sleeping in my bride costume when I was six. Yes,
okay, I had a bride costume, so don't give me any crap about it. That night, the
streets were full of the sound of tennis shoes running on pavement and of the
spooky music some people played when they answered their doors. The air smelled
like singed pumpkin lids and the beams of flashlights bounced around the
darkness, and for some reason