Kissed (The Thorn Chronicles) (3 page)

As we exited the bus, I walked away from her hoping she wouldn’t follow.

She did anyway. “Come with me to the office.”

I almost said no, not wanting to risk the fallout, but I looked at her with her bouncing hair and I faltered. She had something I wanted, something I’d never allowed myself to want until now. She had freedom from her dad. So I took her to the office and made my first friend in eight years. In my mind we were already having whispered sleepovers and painting each other’s nails. Then I shook my head. No way would Mother ever let me paint my nails.

Ruth and I slipped quietly through the crowded lunchroom that smelled of body odor and pancakes. We both got breakfast. I followed Ruth towards an empty table. It seemed a bit odd that she was the new girl and yet I followed her.

An elbow jammed into my back. I stumbled forward and dropped my tray spilling French toast and sausage all over the floor.

“Oh, shit, I’m sorry,” a voice said behind me.

I looked up and saw a very handsome boy smiling down at me. He had coarse brown hair that curled around his ears and it looked like he hadn’t shaved in a few days, but he had a smile to die for. I forced a smile back as I knelt down to clean up the mess.

“It’s okay,” I muttered.

He helped me clean up and handed me back my tray. For a minute I debated just taking the tray back to my table and eating the food anyway. Dinner last night was hardly any food. Usually I ate better at school than I did at home anyway so I ate everything I could at school. But the French toast was folded in half and I could see a few hairs stuck to the sausages. I sighed and dumped the tray in the garbage. I found Ruth sitting at a table nibbling on a few grapes.

“Where’s your food?”

“Someone ran into me and it spilled everywhere. I’ll have to wait for lunch.”

“Here, you can have some of mine. I don’t like sausage.”

I reached for the fork when a tray appeared in front of me. The same boy stood there with that stupid grin on his face again.

“I really am sorry, Naomi. I’ll be more careful next time.”

I stared at the food for a few seconds. Nobody was that nice to me. Ever. I looked up, but all I saw was the back of his head as he walked back through the crowded lunch room and sat at a table by the door with a bunch of seniors.

“He was hot. How do you know him?” Ruth asked, bringing my attention back to my own table.

“I don’t.”

“He knew your name.”

I shrugged but smiled to myself anyway.

After breakfast, Ruth and I joined the throng of people moving out of the cafeteria and into first period. Boys stared appreciatively at Ruth’s long legs and visible cleavage. It irritated me, she really shouldn’t show so much skin. She didn’t seem to notice. Instead she studied her schedule and chattered on.

“Oh, what if I get lost? And who is this Mrs. Darkworth? She sounds scary.”

I snorted.

“She’s funny,” I began when a hand closed around the back of my arm and the taste of breakfast was replaced with the taste of cough syrup and the sound of the cafeteria became the sound of a thousand fingernails on a chalkboard.

A voice whispered in my ear. “Come, meet my friends.”

I blinked and looked up. The pinched face of Dwayne Yerdin stared down at me. His eyes were blank and his mouth was twisted into a sneer. My attempt at suppressing the memory of last night shattered. The cough syrup taste grew stronger and I nearly covered my ears to drown out the noise. The crowd pressed in around us. Ruth continued walking unaware that I was no longer beside her.

“I don’t want to meet your friends.” I jerked my arm a little to free it, but he held fast. I strained my neck around to look for Ruth, but she was gone.

“I thought in light of our little agreement, you might be interested in meeting them.” His breath smelled like rotting tomatoes and kitty litter. I cowered away and nervously moved my braid so that it ran along the front of my white blouse and not the back. The memories became clearer.

I shook my head, this could not be happening. The kids around us stood so close, even if I could free my arm, I would not be able to make a quick getaway. Trapped again.

“You were so agreeable last night, I think I may need to have a talk with your father. I signed up for a girl who would listen to me and not question what I wanted.” Of course, my father. He wouldn’t be happy with me if I disobeyed Dwayne.

Dwayne pulled me over to his group of loser friends. He left his hand on the back of my arm where there was a layer of cloth protecting me from his skin. Thank goodness he didn’t try to force me to hold his hand. The crowd parted easily for him. Probably because of the stench. He put his arm around me and tugged me close. I held my breath because he had either forgotten or just didn’t bother to put on deodorant. His faded yellow t-shirt had a brown stain across his stomach. It looked a little like dried blood.

“See, I told ya I had a girlfriend.” He used his other hand to brush his greasy blond hair out of his eyes.

I squirmed and tried to extricate myself from his grip.

“She don’t look very happy to be your girlfriend,” said one of the short losers.

“Sure she is, why don’t you give me a kiss Naomi?”

The look on my face must’ve revealed my horror because at once the entire group, with the exception of Dwayne, burst out laughing. He pulled me closer and instinctively I shoved against him. Not hard or anything, hurting him would be impossible. I just wanted to get away. A sound like a bomb exploded in my ears and a taste like blood coated my tongue.

Dwayne let go with a yelp. “Bitch, what did you do that for?”

I had no idea what I’d done. He let go, but I didn’t do anything. Or did I? In my confusion, I pushed through bodies and headed for the library. Curse words floated behind me as I stepped on toes and rammed into shoulders. Dwayne kept pace.

Behind us one of his cronies yelled, “She’s too pretty for you, Dwayne. You’ll need to find an uglier one to bribe to be yer girlfriend.”

He finally caught up with me and grabbed my arm, whispering low and fast in my ear, “You’ll pay for that. You wait.”

I pulled away but he had a hard grip and he was looking at my hand curiously.

“Where is your ring?”

“What ring?”

“The one I gave you last night.”

“Um, I left it at home. I didn’t want to lose it.” Truthfully, I had no idea what happened to it.

“You’ll wear it, you little bitch. It’s proof that I own you.”

When the bell rang, he pushed me away and stalked off. I stared for a minute at the place where he had been standing. The impossibility of it all swirled around in my head like a storm cloud about to break.

#

After school, Ruth jogged up behind me, looping her arm through mine. I cringed as her fingertips rested on the back of my hand, but the familiar burning sensation did not come. Her fingertips were cool and soft. I still unhooked my arm. She was too close. Her white flip-flops slapped the ground.

“Hey, what happened this morning?” her voice was breathless near my ear.

“I got lost in the crowd. Sorry.”

“No problem. Do want to come over tonight? My parents would love it if I brought a friend home.” She tugged on my arm and looked at me like a baby deer. I could just see it, Ruth and I at her house baking chocolate chip cookies, her foster mom laughing as we stole cookie dough out of the bowl. And then that night, we’d lay awake and whisper about the things we were afraid of and I would tell her all about Dwayne and my father. I shook my head. If I told anyone about Father and Dwayne, they’d kill me before I could spill anymore.

“I can’t.” I looked over my shoulder just as we got on the bus. Dwayne stood there glaring at me. His lips curled into a cruel smile as he slid his fingers across his throat. It seemed so unreal and brash. No one made threats like that, right? So I did something very uncharacteristic of me. I slipped my hand behind my back and flipped him off.

My boldness shocked me. Never had a curse world slipped from my lips. Let alone a vulgar action. Cursing was punishable by placing a hot coal on the tongue in front of the whole congregation. Most of the time, women were not allowed to witness anything in the main sanctuary but sometimes, if someone was being punished, they would force us to watch. About a year ago, we witnessed the punishment of a foul tongue. The boy was small, nine or ten. His mother stood in front of me. I heard her whisper that he’d said “shit” when he dropped a heavy rock on his foot and broke his toe. Unfortunately for the boy, his father heard it.

The noise that came from his mouth when they placed the burning ember on his tongue was not human. I never saw the boy or his mother again. I hope she took him and ran.

I would have to burn my finger.

My mind spun with the implications of the last twenty-four hours. My life changed in a way that even I couldn’t comprehend and that was just on the things that were happening
to
me. Inside, I was changing too. My mind had somehow cleared of the fog I’d been in for the last eight years. The home I lived in was not just unusual, it was wrong. I wanted out.

When I arrived home, I dropped my bag in my room, paused for a second to admire the bowl of Kaisers, and snuck out to the greenhouse before Mother could catch me. I was afraid that if she saw me, she’d see the guilt on my face. The guilt of making a friend. The guilt of defying my father. Not that they’d ever come out and said I couldn’t have friends, but it was more or less a given and so far I hadn’t deliberately disobeyed them. Which was good. For every act of disobedience one of my fingernails would be ripped out with a pair of pliers. I hated witnessing that one at church.

To my surprise, the greenhouse looked the same. No petals littered the ground, just the usual thorny vines climbing over the door and the multi-colored flowers in every corner. I brushed my finger along the table. Spotless. That table hadn’t been spotless in years. Was I going crazy? Was all of this some weird tale my brain spun to protect me from reality?

My Kaisers were starting to regrow and evidence of my fit was gone. The floor had been swept clean. I’m not a neat freak, I prefer my space to be organized chaos. My room couldn’t be that way because my mother insisted on cleanliness, but she never entered the greenhouse.

The floor was always covered in dirt and leaves and I had plants stashed everywhere. I could find all of them, but no one else could. Now the table and floor were clean and I had a bowl full of Kaiser Wilhelm’s in my room.

The kiss. Real?

I shook my head. A hallucination. My greenhouse did that to me sometimes. I’d hear, see or smell things that were unnatural. That’s all this was. A fantasy gone too far. Yet, I could still taste the honey and cinnamon. And his face, I could picture clearly, even though I hadn’t even seen him. I made him the boy who bought me a new tray of breakfast. I sighed and wished that the life I lived in my head was real. Fantasies like this couldn’t hurt anything. In fact, they helped when I thought about Dwayne. Maybe life with him wouldn’t be so bad if I could close my eyes and pretend he was someone else, someone kind and handsome.

Several of the roses were in full bloom. I stopped to sniff a few and I deadheaded a couple of bushes, but then remembered I had a mission. Next to the table sat a small plastic set of drawers. I opened a drawer and pulled out my laminating paper. In my backpack I had a small picture of Ruth. I printed it off during photography. My second favorite class. My first was my agriculture class. I got to spend eighty minutes every other day in the greenhouse at school. Course, they didn’t teach us anything about roses. We grew Spider Plants, Swedish Ivy, and Poinsettias instead. The kind of plants we could sell at Christmas or Mother’s Day, but I still learned a ton.

Photography was less exciting but better than gym or drama. Anytime we got a new student, we got to take their picture for the school newspaper. I didn’t go with them to photograph Ruth, but I still took a copy. She deserved to be out here with my roses, but her rose was not in the greenhouse at all. She belonged outside.

I took a lot of pictures of people. Some people I knew, others I didn’t, but every person belonged with a rose. Well, Father didn’t and neither did Dwayne, but everyone else did.

On the pot of my Collette Roses was my mother. And my late grandmother was attached to my White Angel rose bush outside. She taught me to love my roses and she was my angel. She taught me how to breed and prune roses. Because of her I could continue getting new ones. Whenever I created something new, I thought of my love for my Grandma. When Grandma died, I locked myself in her greenhouse for three days surrounded by our roses. That day her greenhouse became mine. I couldn’t bear the thought of life without her.

For the last couple of years, I’d been searching for someone to go with my Ruth Alexander roses. And now I had someone. Ruth was perfect in every way. Not only did her name match, but her hair matched the bloom color. Well almost. Ruth’s hair was more orange than apricot, but it was close enough. I finished laminating the picture, punched a hole through the top and drew a long string through the hole.

The well-worn path to my outside garden meandered through the woods for several hundred feet. Birds chattered and squirrels ran up and down the trees. At the end of the path stood a trellis covered in bright sunset colored roses. When I reached the trellis, I tied Ruth’s picture to a sturdy stem near the ground.

Next year, I wouldn’t be around to see Ruth bloom. I sank to the ground. The damp earth seeped into my skirt, chilling me. When I married Dwayne, I would be forced to stay in my house all day and not be allowed to go to school. My day would consist of scrubbing floors, cleaning toilets, and trimming Dwayne’s toenails. He would sit on the couch and make me bring him his dinner and if my father had his way, we would be like rabbits, producing child after child. My stomach churned thinking of sex with Dwayne. He would be my whole world. If he wouldn’t allow me to do something than I couldn’t do it. He’d never allow me to do anything that would make me happy. Like roses.