“No snack? No dinner?” Betty asked softly.
“Nothing.”
“I’m sure Cook could fix you some soup. And there’s angel food cake that Cook baked. That’s very soft, you know. Your grandmother will be so disappointed. She enjoyed her time with you in the greenhouse.”
But Rose was already off, tearing up the stairs to her bedroom. She flung her books on the desk and flopped onto the bed. Beating her fists into the pillow, she sobbed, “Why . . . why did you have to die, Mom? How could you?”
There was soon a sodden patch against her cheek. It was as if she had cried an ocean into that pillow. The last thing she remembered hearing was the scraping of her grandmother’s walker outside her bedroom door and then Rosalinda’s voice. “Leave her be, Betty . . . leave her be.”
It was the plinking of raindrops against the windowpane that woke her up. Outside there was only pitch black. The glass of the windowpane was a sheet of sliding water. Except for the sound of the rain, the entire house was quiet. She felt a gnawing hunger and decided to go to the kitchen and find something to eat. Passing her grandmother’s room, Rose could hear Rosalinda snoring softly. She made her way down the stairs toward the kitchen. She dared not turn on a light, but her eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness.
Under a glass-domed platter, a cake perched. It had already been cut into and seemed to invite her to take a slice. There was a knife set beside the platter. Quietly she removed the dome cover and cut herself a piece. She was just about to take a bite when she looked through the kitchen window that had a fine view of the greenhouse. She noticed that the glass roofs seemed to glow. How could this be on such a pitch-black and moonless, rainy night? she wondered. It was as if the greenhouse possessed a moon of its own. She set the piece of cake on the counter and went out through the kitchen pantry and across a hall that led into the glasshouse from the rear, the door Cook always used when delivering dinner to Rosalinda.
As she stepped into the greenhouse, the air swirled with the scent of the jasmine vines that now tumbled from the cupolas, almost reaching the floor. The tray of love-lies-bleeding that she had thinned out had burst into bloom, with dangling blossoms like pendulous ruby necklaces. Foliage that had barely unfurled was now thick and stirring softly in a phantom wind. It was as if magically a fragrant jungle had sprung up around her. There were no longer trays neatly arranged in rigid rows awaiting her grandmother’s tender attentions.
She looked up once more at the cupolas, but there were no cupolas. A flawless blue sky stretched overhead, and beneath her feet was a woodland path. Ahead she heard a meow. September? Rose stopped abruptly and listened. All was silent, and then suddenly she heard a giggle.
“Grandmother?” she called out softly. Hesitantly she continued down the path and soon heard footsteps. She realized that she must be far beyond the confines of the greenhouse. There were no walls of glass. The roofs had dissolved into this bright new morning, and straight ahead there was a girl. She wore a sapphire-blue dress that reached the ground. It was trimmed with ornate braid. The bodice was tight-fitting and heavily embroidered. From beneath the hem of the skirt peeped pointy-toed scarlet shoes. Those shoes! Rose thought. What she wouldn’t give for those shoes! The girl’s bright red hair was arranged in a circlet of elaborate braids atop her head, although a few strands streamed out from the braids like escaping flames. They looked at each other, startled.
“Guards! Guards!”
What in the world? Rose wondered as a man came around the bend in a fitted jacket emblazoned with brass buttons, gold epaulets, and ballet tights! Had she stumbled into a Shakespeare play? She didn’t wait to ask but turned and bolted.
She ran breathlessly through the thickets of shrubbery laden with large exploding blossoms, burrowed through openings in the tall hedges and tangles of brush. Soon she smelled the familiar muggy odor of the greenhouse and the path gave way to the neat aisles with the tray tables of seedlings. The long, dangling vines of the jasmine had retreated in an orderly fashion to the airy realms of the cupolas. She heard the welcoming patter of the rain against the glass. It was once more pitch black. She raced up the stairs and back into her bedroom, where she shut the door firmly, then slid a chair beneath the handle to jam it, to lock out whatever it was she had encountered.
This was a dream, just a dream, she told herself. It couldn’t have happened. None of it. It was as if she had just emerged from a fever dream. She was afraid to go to sleep. Sketching always calmed her. So, sitting at her desk, she picked up a pencil and began to sketch what she could remember of the shoes and the dress. The shoes were incredible. There was a circular jeweled buckle on them, and from that a brighter red piece flared like a single batwing. Bat shoes! How cool was that?
Then, going to her computer, she decided to type her first entry in her blog in nearly two months.
* * *
Call these my dream shoes. They tiptoed into my dreams last night, or maybe I tiptoed into theirs.
And they’re not from a landfill! Yes, I know that my last post on shoes was about the three hundred million shoes that are dumped in landfills. It’s become a real environmental problem. In my last school, we did a student project with Planet Earth’s recycling program and went to a landfill and reclaimed shoes. But tonight it wasn’t a landfill, it was a dream, and I saw these! Manolo Blahnik, step aside, please. Sweet dreams!
* * *
The next morning when she went downstairs, Cook greeted her warmly with a twinkle in her eyes.
“Didn’t like my cake, did you? One bite and left it on the counter.”
“Oh, sorry.” She looked down and saw scratches on her arms, as if they had been torn by thorns or the brambles of a thicket. Then it wasn’t a dream?
Chapter 4
“I Don’t Exactly Hate You . . .”
Rose’s phone was turned in on Monday. It was “found on the school grounds,” a likely story. She expected the Mean Queens had done something awful with it, but so far it seemed all right. Rose was relieved. She even began to think that perhaps it had fallen out somehow when she, Myles, Joe, and Anand had gone outside to collect leaves for microscope slides in science class that day. So life went on uneventfully. But as hard as she tried to banish the thoughts of her strange experience in the greenhouse, the memories lingered. The girl in the sapphire-blue dress, the wonderful pointy-toed red shoes, the guard in tights, the cupolas that had dissolved into the sky of another day, a new morning. The more she thought about it, the more dreamlike it became. Except for that meow. She had heard the meow just before she glimpsed the girl. The cat’s cry lasted longer in her mind than the scratches on her arms from the brambles.
She began once again to help her grandmother in the greenhouse. She wanted to prove to herself that in fact the jasmine had not miraculously grown long enough overnight to reach the ground. And she was right. The flowers were still suspended a good twenty feet above the floor of the greenhouse. And the seedling heads of the loves-lies-bleeding were sealed shut, with perhaps just a thread of the deep red color showing through.
“Oh, it will be another month or more until they open,” her grandmother said when she noticed Rose looking at them so closely.