Fatality Read online

  How deserted the little country road was. Above her, traffic raced by. Down here, it was quiet and empty. She yearned for a school bus or a delivery truck.

  The driver shadow disappeared. In a moment, the car shadow also disappeared.

  When her pulse eased off, she scrabbled back up her hill. No other car had stopped. Nobody had noticed anything. There was no one in the emergency lane and no dark SUV in sight.

  Rose leaned on the top of her stick, staring at all the bad drivers of the world.

  She didn’t want to get on the bridge again. But if she didn’t cross it, she wasn’t going to reach the trash on that end of her half mile.

  They’re not grading me, she reminded herself. I’m not going to get C minus because I skip some of it.

  She caught sight of the boy’s baseball cap. It had been swept up the grassy slope she had just cleaned. Rose caught it and wept suddenly over the kindness of strangers.

  When rehabilitation was over and Rose finally got home, her parents were sitting together, watching TV news. Rose hated television news. It made her queasy and uncertain, as if life, like tides, could come out from under her.

  She stood silently, not wanting to let Mom and Dad know she was home. What would they say? So, darling, how was rehab? Do you have a future in trash? Are you going to be a good, talkative girl from now on?

  The Loffts had had TVs in every single room, including Rose’s own bath. In that huge, elegant house …so much furniture, so many windows, paintings, sculpture, tapestries, collections …commentators called back and forth like dinner guests, from room to room, from channel to channel.

  Late that Friday night, alone in the guest room, sick of rereading her diary, Rose got out of bed to see who was there, but the conversation she’d been dimly hearing all night long came from televisions.

  She went from room to room, bare feet noiseless on the thick carpets or shining hardwood, Oriental rugs or Mexican tiles. The house was not full of people. It was full of television images, quivering reflections of humanity.

  Rose had crept back to her solitary room. Crawled between the sheets. Slept for hours, as if things might change while she was unconscious. But in the morning, things had not changed.

  Nothing would change here, either, so Rose went into the TV room and squished herself between her parents. “I’m a trash expert now,” she said.

  Her mother sighed, stroking the thin blond hair and taking Rose’s fingers in her own and examining them, as if she might find answers in the shape of Rose’s nails.

  Dad put his arm around her and gave her a fierce one-armed hug. He was a forgiving man. Except for one thing.

  Nobody could forgive that.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  IN THE MORNING, ROSE found that she lacked the energy for school. She lay in bed staring at the ceiling. Unlike Tabor, who could sleep and sleep, body molded into the mattress, sleep so deep he could hardly be shaken awake, Rose just woke up and got out of bed. She never lingered.

  Not today.

  I can’t get up, she thought. School is too much. Ming and Chrissie and Alan and the police and Mom and Dad. They’re all too much.

  She decided to stay home with a sick headache. She had never suffered from such a malady, but Chrissie’s mother quite routinely had migraines so bad she threw up. Rose had helped Mrs. Klein one horrible afternoon, bringing a hot-water bottle, lowering the shades, and mopping up the bathroom.

  I can fake it, she said to herself. I’ll tuck into a ball under the covers and whimper.

  Her father was ready to stay home from work to nurse her. Or summon a grandparent to spend the day at her side. “Daddy, I’m going to sleep all day,” Rose told him. “Don’t fuss. Please?”

  He was rumpled from sleep, having Tabor’s tendency to stay in bed, but never allowing himself to do it. Rose loved him so much she could hardly bear it and hugged her pillow to keep from hugging him.

  In a neutral voice that proclaimed she didn’t believe a word of this sick headache stuff, Mom said, “I’ll call every hour, Rose.”

  That would certainly keep Rose from going on any major expeditions.

  Mom sat on the edge of Rose’s bed. “Honey.”

  “My head is killing me,” said Rose, closing her eyes.

  “We’ve got a wide selection of medication,” said her mother. “Aspirin, Tylenol, Sudafed, Motrin, the list goes on and on. I’m not arguing with your decision to stay home, honey. I just want you to know how much you are scaring me. And Daddy. Today is the assembly you’ve been so excited about. Who qualifies for summer abroad and how to apply. And you’d rather hide out under the covers?”

  She had forgotten the assembly and the whole concept of summers abroad.

  “Rose, tell me what is going on. Please.”

  Now a headache really did throb. Since when could you just sign up for headaches? “Mom, don’t phone every hour. I need uninterrupted sleep.”

  Mom felt Rose’s forehead and throat, ran her cool, slim fingers down Rose’s arm to her wrist, and took her pulse. Then she kissed Rose’s cheek, the way only Mom kissed, long and motionless, as if actually joining herself to Rose. “I’ll call the school to let them know you’re ill.”

  Rose, who never went back to sleep, whose capacity for sleep was precise and limited, had fallen asleep again before her parents even left the house. Her second sleep was deep, and she was way down inside it when the phone rang.

  She woke with the thick, muddy mind of a nap, saw that it was eleven o’clock, and she had slept three hours. Three hours! At least her headache was gone. The phone rang again. Rose lurched around on the bed, throwing sheets and a blanket out of her way in a clumsy effort to get at the phone on the night table.

  It would be Mom checking on her. She mumbled hello.

  “Rose, this is Anjelica Lofft.”

  Rose was immobilized. She could feel a hundred things she hadn’t felt a moment ago. The wrinkled bedcovers under her thighs. The damp sweat on her forehead. The cool plastic surface of the receiver.

  She had not spoken to Anjelica in four years. During the whole week of school following Rose’s visit to the lake estate, Anjelica had avoided her. When Rose handed Anjelica a thank-you note, Anjelica simply nodded and walked away. A few weeks later, Anjelica Lofft left public school and entered a private academy. The following year, she lived in England. The year after that, Rose had heard Anjelica was at boarding school.

  Why would Anjelica Lofft make contact with Rose now?

  It was a school day. How had she known Rose was home?

  How had she known the female voice that answered was not Rose’s mother or one of her many other relatives?

  What did Anjelica Lofft want?

  What do I want? thought Rose. She disconnected the phone gently, withdrawing her hand from the receiver as if it might have changed substance; become china or glass. She smoothed the blanket. Folded the hem of the top sheet neatly over it, adjusted corners and fluffed the pillow. In normal circumstances, Rose never made her bed. It was one of the few fights she constantly had with her mother. Oh, Mom, for heaven’s sake, what do you think is going to happen to the bed? she would demand. The sheets are going to get dusty?

  Rose pulled on her bathrobe and ran downstairs to check the locks on the doors.

  They did not live in a town or a time when they worried about locking up. High crime in Rose’s part of the world was shoplifting at the discount mall. The Lymonds and their neighbors rarely worried about personal safety. Dad locked the house at night, but during the day they left the doors open so relatives and friends could come and go. In the summer, they never bothered to close the doors, let alone lock them, and one of the sounds of Rose’s childhood was the sound of wooden screens slapping against frames.

  She locked herself in.

  The phone rang again. Ring after ring trembled through the silent house, until finally the answering machine picked up. Rose, like the caller, listened to its little speech.

  For years
, Rose and Tabor alternated making the recordings. Tabor’s month would feature rock music and screaming, while hers—even when she was only five or six—would be calm and careful. When Tabor turned sixteen, the whole thing embarrassed him and he refused to participate. Rose, aching for Tabor’s approval, also refused, although she loved speaking into the recorder. Since then, Dad’s voice had said pleasantly, Hello. You’ve reached the Lymonds. Nobody is able to take your call. Please leave your name, the date, and your phone number and a short message, and somebody will get back to you. Thanks, and have a great day.

  “Dad,” Tabor would tell him, “nobody needs all that. It’s like you’re putting an advice column on your answering machine. Loosen up.”

  How could it be that Rose and Dad were the ones who did not loosen up?

  But it was not Anjelica trying a second time. It was Dad. “I hope I’m not waking you, sweetheart,” he said into the machine. “You were asleep when Mom and I left for work and she felt awful that she’d been suspicious of your headache. She didn’t want to wake you with phone calls after all. I said I’d check before lunchtime, so—”

  Rose scooped up the kitchen phone. “Hi, Daddy, I’m here, I was just slow.”

  “Feeling better?”

  “Lots. I slept till a minute ago. Isn’t that amazing? I never go back to sleep. The headache’s gone. I think I’m going to school after all and be there for my afternoon classes and then I have community service.”

  “It sounds so charitable when you call it community service,” said her father. “As if you’re reading out loud to lonely patients in nursing homes.”

  “Okay, then I have pseudojail time,” said Rose.

  Her father sighed. “I’ll let your mother know you’re headed back to school.”

  “Thanks, Daddy. Don’t worry about me.”

  He assured her that he would always worry about her; that’s what fathers did when their daughters were being idiots.

  Under the circumstances, Rose could hardly argue with his description of her. She went upstairs to put the yellow bathrobe back on its hook. She had so rarely worn the robe that it still had creases from its original purchase. She took the key she had not touched in years, inserted it in the headboard keyhole, and opened her cubby.

  It was empty, of course.

  Her only secret was gone.

  She dressed to look good in school and also to be properly protected against trash and dust downstairs, she got a glass of orange juice and drank it slowly.

  Outside the sky was crayon blue, furrowed and whipped with soft white clouds.

  Just so had the sky been crayon blue on the Friday she skipped swimming and came home early. On her way back to the Y to go to swim class after all, Rose had picked up fallen weeping willow wands and peeled away the soft bark. She liked to pretend she was an Indian woman and had baskets to weave. She remembered slicing them through the air, listening to the sharp, cruel whistle they made, as if she were whipping a bare back.

  By the time the phone rang, Rose had forgotten she was screening calls. “Hello?”

  “It’s Anjelica. Don’t hang up.”

  “You’re here!” shrieked Ming when Rose opened the classroom door to slip in late. “We thought the police had probably locked you up permanently.”

  “Or Milton Lofft tied you up in his cellar,” suggested Richard.

  “Or Milton Lofft gave you so much money that you left the country to live on a sunny Mediterranean isle,” said Halsey.

  “Or I woke up this morning with a sick headache,” said Rose, “so I went back to sleep for a while. You are all future screenwriters. Mrs. Baker,” she said to her English teacher, “I apologize for the disruption.”

  “It isn’t a disruption at all,” said Mrs. Baker, giggling as if she were twelve instead of forty. “It’s perfect timing, Rose. Guess what. You’re going to hate me,” she said happily. “For our free-style writing today, I assigned two paragraphs on Why Rose Lymond Stole a Police Car.” Mrs. Baker’s big happy smile continued to decorate her face.

  You’re right, thought Rose. I hate you. You are a rodent. I’m going to charge you with harassment.

  The hair on twenty-five heads gleamed in the light. Twenty-five faces turned her way. “I thank each of you for your kindness at a difficult time and especially for the example set by our teacher,” said Rose softly.

  Half the class was shamed. Heads dropped and faces flushed.

  The other half was delighted. She was a good talk show guest, the sort who filmed well. They grinned and hoped for more.

  Rose tried to stare Mrs. Baker into an apology. But the woman was giggling with the wrong half of the class, scurrying around collecting the Why Did Rose, etc., papers. “Chrissie, your paper is blank,” cried Mrs. Baker.

  “I had nothing to say on the topic,” said Chrissie politely. “Give me an F, please.”

  Over the heads of their classmates and the white rectangles of waving paper, past the thick body of Mrs. Baker in the dress she had outgrown years ago, Chrissie Klein and Rose Lymond looked at each other.

  She knows, thought Rose.

  Sick shock enveloped Rose. It had never occurred to her that one of her many girlfriends spending the night might have read the diary. Why had she not protected herself against such a thing? How many stupid things could she do all in a row, anyway?

  But that’s when slumber parties ended, she thought. We outgrew overnights in seventh grade. My very last slumber party ever was the weekend after I went to the Loffts’. I didn’t protect myself because I didn’t have more overnights. Which means Chrissie read my diary right then and there. She’s known all this time. Why didn’t I think of that? I just didn’t. I knew Mom and Dad would never trespass on me. Tabor wouldn’t bother, he didn’t care what I thought out loud or on paper. And if any of them had read the diary, we wouldn’t be in the police car mess. We’d be in another mess altogether.

  Rose felt like dust, suspended in the sun shaft. She sat at her usual desk, from which she did not have a sight line toward Chrissie. She liked to sit in front because she liked to follow the teacher’s remarks and never miss anything on the blackboard. Perhaps it was time for a change in attitude and seating position.

  When class ended, she found herself in the hall with Chrissie. “Thank you for standing up for me,” Rose told her. She was glad Chrissie was so much taller. She could look at Chrissie’s chin instead of into her eyes.

  “Sure. But that’s not the thing, Rose,” said Chrissie very softly. “The thing is that people aren’t going to understand.”

  Rose shrugged. It was the first real shrug of her life. “I don’t care.”

  ‘You’ve got to care, Rose.” Chrissie breathed intensely. “There’s something else going on. Anjelica called me yesterday.”

  Rose looked up, confused. A little frightened. “Anjelica called you?”

  “Exactly. I—” Chrissie broke off. “Oh, hi, Ming. How are you?”

  “Super, thanks. Rose, I hope you weren’t upset by class. We were just having fun.”

  “I was upset,” said Rose, thinking—Anjelica called Chrissie? But—“And it wasn’t fun, Ming.”

  “Oh, lighten up!” snapped Ming. “You’re the one who stole the cop car. You have to expect results from that kind of thing.”

  Rose was descended from a person who didn’t think about results. Had she inherited that trait?

  I’m going to throw up, she thought. I didn’t fake the sick headache after all. “Chrissie,” she said desperately, “I have one of those headaches like your mother gets. I’m going to be sick.”

  “Girls’ room,” said Chrissie instantly. “Run. Don’t mess up the hall, it’s just another confrontation nobody needs.” She grabbed Rose’s arm and they hauled around the corner and made it with no time to spare. Rose retched horribly into the nearest toilet.

  Ming came, too, soaking a paper towel in cold water so Rose could wash her face.

  Go away, thought Rose.

 
; But Ming didn’t go away. The subject that was so vital remained untouchable.

  “I have practice after school,” said Chrissie uncertainly. She was taller than Rose by five inches and taller than Ming by eight. It gave her control over the situation, and yet her voice did not sound as if she knew what was happening.

  And why did Rose herself feel that she, too, did not know what was happening? It was her diary, for heaven’s sake. She was the one person who surely knew exactly what was happening. “And I have community service,” she said firmly. “Or whatever you want to call it. Fresh air jail.”

  The girls stood in the stinking bathroom and laughed helplessly. “Oh, Rose,” said Chrissie. “It’s so impossible. It’s so not you! Or it is you, and I never knew you. And the way you handled Mrs. Baker! Awesome.”

  “Half the class didn’t get it,” said Rose.

  Chrissie explained rudely where that half of the class could go and the girls laughed again, even though Ming had been in the wrong half.

  And because friends were worth so much, Rose forgave Ming for being a rodent.

  And because friends were worth so much, Chrissie decided not to force the Anjelica issue right now. Time enough later.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ROSE ENJOYED TRASH.

  The sky was intensely blue, the air sharp and tasty. The wind never stopped and the trash whirled away before she could stab it, playing tag with her, hiding out in the trees. She stayed on the safe side of the guardrail.

  She did not think of profound things or shallow. She did not think of friend, family, or foe. She did not think of present or past.

  She did not think.

  Dinner that evening was almost pleasant. Mom was glad Rose had gone to school after all and Dad hoped she would not get more headaches. Mom wanted to know if Rose planned to apply for the summer abroad program. Dad said anxiously that he would miss Rose a lot while Mom said Rose needed to spread her wings.

  Rose said nothing, but they were getting used to it now and let it pass, and she went up to her room thinking that she would do homework, because homework was what she always did on school nights, but she couldn’t get started.