Authors: Ava Zavora
“I bet she is."
“What?”
“Did you give her a charm?”
“Excuse me?”
“Did you give her a charm?”
“Would it matter if I did?”
She saw that they had come to the dead end which led to the park. Directly across the street was the stairs to the steep slope where the small cemetery rested. It could not be seen from the street, as it was dark and unlit and surrounded with oak trees. Instead of answering Andrew, Sera crossed the street and once on the other side, said, “I’ll meet you up there." She bolted up the steep wooden stairs as Andrew went around to the bike path.
Once she got to the top, Sera sprinted through the cemetery to reach the tree in the middle. Although it was dark, she had been there so many times that she knew each stone step and the placement of each grave by heart. She placed herself on the side of the tree trunk away from the path, breathing hard. Seconds later, she heard Andrew and his bike reach the edge of the cemetery.
“Sera
?” he called out uncertainly, unable to see her.
“Take the steps to your right." He whipped his head in the direction of her voice and tried to peer into the darkness.
“What?”
“Are you scared?”
“No! I’ve been here before at night.”
“Then do as I say,” she commanded.
Andrew dropped his bike and went up the stone steps to the dirt path down the center.
“Stop!" Andrew halted in his steps, facing her direction. “Now place your hand on the headstone to your right.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Goodbye then
,” Sera said promptly, moving away from the tree to the other side of the cemetery.
She heard him move quickly. “Okay! Okay. I’ve got my hand on it.”
Sera turned around and returned to the tree. She was grateful for the dark and put her arms around the trunk, leaning her cheek against the rough bark. She wanted to press herself close to it so that her heart would stop pulsing as if it was ready to jump out of her chest.
She tried to project her most somber and forbidding voice. “The headstone you’re touching is John and Maria Seaman’s. They died over a hundred years ago. If you don’t believe me, just feel the inscription.”
“I believe you.”
“Should you tell a lie while your hand is on their grave, their ghosts will rise from the depths of the earth and follow you to your death. So you have to answer my questions truthfully."
Andrew said nothing. Sera took a deep breath.
“Did you tell anyone about what I wrote?”
“No.”
“Do you plan to?”
“No.”
“You know that if you ever do that again, I’ll set the hounds of hell to torment you, right?”
Andrew laughed. “Uh, okay." Then, quietly, “I’m sorry. I really am. I always see you writing in it and I guess I was just curious. I didn’t mean to be an asshole.”
She nodded in the dark, then voice quavering a little, she asked, finally, “Why did you give me the
bullet?"
In the story she had written, the vampire, in his misery, had wordlessly placed one silver bullet in the demon destroyer’s pistol and pointed the barrel at his heart as she held it. That single gift meant sacrifice and surrender, an end to the war between two archenemies. Sera could not fathom why Andrew would give her such a thing. Or why he had prevented the big goon from beating the crap out of her. Surely, if he had been hellbent on bringing about her humiliation, which was so easily in his reach, he would not have lifted a hand or a foot to save her tonight.
Silence followed, seeming to Sera like an eternity. She wished she hadn’t asked, but she had to know. Darkness can reveal so many things, as well conceal them.
“Because...I thought you’d like it." His voice shone like a light. She could find nothing impure in it. “Do you like it?”
“Yes, I do,” Sera said, surprised. “I do,” she said again, more to herself. She felt her whole body warm. He couldn’t see her, but she wanted to hide nevertheless.
It was true then - something had irrevocably changed.
She fled towards the other end and did not stop, although he called out for her to wait, and was by the grove of trees by the playground before pausing and casting out to the shadows, “Good-bye, Andrew,” her voice softened by the night air.
After all these years away, Sera had begun to think she had only dreamt it.
Rosethorn still stood, mostly as Sera remembered, an oddly put together, eccentric Victorian mansion with spires and a turret, many gables, a delicate confection of gingerbread detailing and colorful stained glass windows. It was all there, even down to the whimsical winged lion weather vane sitting on top of the turret facing the sun.
To her surprise, she found that she had been holding her breath as she had driven toward it. Now that she saw Rosethorn still existed, that she had not dreamt it after all, a great breath expelled itself from her and the knot in her heart loosened.
She opened the unlocked gate, which she noted had been fixed, and started walking down the brick walkway. Again, she felt the sensation of each step taking her back to years ago and could almost hear fragments of forgotten conversations hovering in the air as if they had been captured and suspended in an invisible web.
Someone had recently trimmed back the rose briars that used to cover the brick path and stray stems littered the ground. There were green leaves sprouting all over the tall briar hedges and buds of green and red. In a few weeks the house will be surrounded by walls of crimson roses.
Standing on tiptoe, she reached for a blossom with deep red petals that had opened early and snapped it off. She inhaled the scent of her stolen rose, and just like that she was back---the young girl all those years ago, an illicit trespasser wandering in the rooms and nooks of the house before her, plotting out a life that had been so real to her that all that she had done and seen since then seemed insubstantial, as if the intervening years were a long dream and this, what had happened in this house, was the life she had truly lived.
Here she had been a queen, mistress of all she surveyed, and finder and keeper of its many secrets. The world had never seemed so large and full of possibility as it was when she had been here.
From a great distance, Sera heard construction, removing her from the past.
With some difficulty, she forced herself to come back to the present and approached the front door. She placed her hands on the roses carved on its surface, mimicking the white climbing roses that used to cover the front porch, but had now been severely pruned. Peering through the stained glass window, she saw that the inside was empty, although clean.
No one answered her knocking.
Following what sounded like loud stapling, she walked on the path adjacent to the carriage house,
observing that some work had already been done to the wood siding and the foundation of the porch, which had always seemed rickety to her. An old white pickup was parked by the carriage house.
She went to the back. A tall steel ladder was propped up against the eaves next to the turret. The roof on that whole side of the house had been ripped up and thrown into a large garbage bin next to where she was standing. Stacks of new black roof shingles were piled here and there on the skeleton frame. Almost half of that side of the roof was done.
A shirtless worker, padded knees bent on the roof frame, had his back to her and was steadily stapling shingles in place. The midday sun was baking here.
“Hello
?” she called out.
He kept on stapling.
“Hello!” she yelled louder, cupping her hands around her mouth. The roofer stopped and turned around, shielding his eyes to look down at her.
“Hi. Can I help you?”
Sera opened her mouth to speak, but found that she had lost her voice.
He looked at her, waiting. Even when seen from a distance she was astounded at how blue his eyes were.
She swallowed instead and lowered her head, thankful that she was wearing large sunglasses. She knew that he couldn’t see half her face, but she turned her head anyway.
“Sorry,” she mumbled to the ground. “Sorry." Her voice sounded shrill. “I was lost. Sorry to bother you." She started retreating fast, almost running back to the other side of the house.
A few more steps and she would be around the corner where she could do a full, if inelegant, sprint to her rental car. Her face burned.
“Sera?”
That night, Sera lay in the darkness of her room, restless and unable to sleep. Her skin felt charged with wild energy, as if every dormant nerve had sprung to life. She did not know what to do with herself. She looked in the mirror and saw a stranger there with bright, feverish eyes and a hungry mouth.
“What are you doing
?” she asked the girl in the mirror, hands on her still-hot face.
The next day, after mass, she walked to the library. She browsed up and down the stacks, unable to find anything that interested her. She left the library without a book, not knowing exactly why she was so dissatisfied.
Instead, she sat by the bank of the creek running next to the library and finding shade beneath the wooden bridge, she took out a new notebook bought from the drug store and began to write.
“Psst.”
Sera looked up and saw Andrew standing on the top of the opposite bank, looking down at her as he sat on his dirt bike. He was smiling at her and she realized that she was smiling widely back at him.
He stood just so for a moment not saying anything, his head tilted as if he were posing a question, which must have been answered without a word from her for he then rode his bike over the bridge to her side and down the bank, stopping right at the edge of her boot.
When he glanced at her notebook then looked away in an exaggerated swivel of his head, she laughed.
Encouraged, he suggested, “Let’s go creek-wading."
As if they had arranged to meet at that spot under the bridge and she had been waiting for him to appear, Sera nodded and put away her notebook. She took off her boots, which she stuffed with her socks, and tied them to the straps of her backpack.
Andrew on his bike and Sera on bare feet, they followed the creek away from downtown, in between houses, past backyards, and below bridges. Once in awhile, they would clamber up the bank, looking through fences at some of the grander houses in envy.
The air was fragrant with the smell of eucalyptus leaves and green grass turning golden in the sun. Sera could feel spring budding open to a full and glorious summer.
They had no particular destination, lingering in caverns hidden by twisted, ropy tree roots, which the creek had exposed over the years or trying to see if they could fit in the hollow of an oak tree which had grown on the creek bed. The creek wove through the middle of town but it felt like they were the only two people in it. The afternoon was expectant with murmurings of the creek flowing over rocks and a slight
wind swaying branches against a light blue sky.
As they walked further north, away from the center of town, the houses disappeared and they could no longer hear the faraway hum of cars driving down Venetia Boulevard.
Everything feels new, Sera thought to herself, as she glanced sideways at the strange boy beside her, who seemed at home in her secret places.
He talked about his family, his brothers, his friends, basketball, as if it was important to him that she know all these things, and she listened, surprising herself again and again that she liked the sound of his voice.
Who was he and where in the world did he come from? She had known him her whole life and yet all of a sudden he appeared to her as if she had never met him before. She knew she should feel suspicious. He had done nothing but mock her for years now. Yet, she could not reconcile that person with the one who walked and talked with her now.
He described his dream car, a mustang for sale that was parked by Roger Wilco, and gave her a long look then, which spoke of far-flung places, miles of road and the wind in her hair as she sat next to him, driving her anywhere she wished to go.
"Oh, here," he said casually as he fiddled with his pockets then brought out a CD, which he thrusted at her with his eyes cast down. "Since you let me listen to Stevie."
Startled, Sera took it from him, turning it over in her hand. On its face in big block letters was "METALLICA."
"You like them?” he asked, peering at her from behind a curtain of blond hair, his head hanging a little.
"I like that song, 'Enter Sandman.'"
"Listen to the first song on this side."
They waded through murky water to get to a clearing across the other side. There was a pebbly embankment in front of a grassy area, where she sat and opened her backpack. Andrew rested his bike on the dirt and sat next to her. She took out her disc player, inserted the CD, and put on her headphones.