“It’ll live,” she says. “Though we’ll have to wait and see how rough it looks next bloom.”
Next bloom, meaning next year. I’ll take the reprieve.
“Great, thank you, Mrs. Stieg.”
I elbow Campbell.
“Thanks,” she says, halfheartedly.
“And here,” Mrs. Stieg says. “Take these home for your sweet mother.” She hands me a freshly gathered bouquet of roses, from a non-trampled bush. They are bright yellow, and they smell even stronger than the Mister Lincolns did.
“Young lady,” Mrs. Stieg says, facing Campbell. “Running wild around this town isn’t going to get you very far. You have to respect your elders.”
“I do,” Campbell says, but I grind my teeth at the statement. Not all elders deserve our respect.
“Did you girls know I was married for forty years?” Mrs. Stieg asks. I feel Campbell straighten beside me. It’s subtle, but there’s a tension there that wasn’t a moment ago, and it’s echoed in my own body.
“That’s great,” I mutter.
“My husband wasn’t perfect, you know,” Mrs. Stieg presses on. “Men aren’t perfect. But it is their job to provide for their families, and that is stressful for them. Do you know what a woman’s job is?”
Campbell’s hands clench at her waist, and I fold my arms over my chest.
We know where this is going, and it has nothing to do with the roses or Cammy’s bike or her friends that are boys, and everything to do with the other night. When I think of how scared we were, I feel like I could be sick. The combination of bile and the sweetness of roses is overwhelming.
“To support their husbands,” continues Mrs. Stieg, unaware of how close I am to throwing up in her rose beds. “To forgive them. To manage that stress. And to do so privately. Without embarrassing them or causing a fuss. Do you girls understand?”
And this is when quiet, always-thinking Campbell decides to speak up.
“That’s really fucking stupid, Mrs. Stieg.”
She turns on her heel and marches across the road and into our home, slamming the door behind her.
Mrs. Stieg’s mouth is open. She turns to me, and I know she’s waiting for my apology. Or maybe my apologies, plural.
I’m sorry for the noise.
I’m sorry for the disturbance.
I’m sorry for Campbell swearing at you, and I’m sorry I ever knocked on your door for help.
“Thanks for the roses,” I offer instead, and follow Campbell home.
Part of me knows it’s stupid. We’ve made an enemy where we needed a friend. But another part of me knows that Mrs. Stieg was never going to help us. Her generation was taught that appearances mattered most. That being a good wife is somehow better than being happy. Or safe.
Mom puts the yellow roses in a vase on a table at the bottom of the stairs, next to the wilted red ones our dad gave her earlier this week. They smell so strongly as they wither and die that I nearly gag every time I pass them. I smell the roses and think of women let down by other women. Women who are told their obedience is more important than their voice, not by their husbands, but by their mothers, their friends. Women willing to watch each other get hurt for the sake of image and tradition.
After a few days, I can’t take it anymore, and I march the vases out to the trash cans and dump the flowers on top. I want to leave them there so Mrs. Stieg can see them in the garbage, but I don’t. I bury them under a bag, and even the trash is a more welcome smell than the rotting sweetness of those flowers.
Chapter Six
ON MONDAY, WHEN WE WALK PAST Mrs. Stieg’s home to get to our bus stop, something catches my attention. Beyond the crows lining her fence, in the far corner of her garden, another bush has been decimated. Not just broken like the first bush, but pulverized. All that’s left is disturbed dirt and pieces of crimson petals, smashed branches . . . nothing is intact.
When I point it out to Campbell, she shrugs, but there’s something there—something in Cam’s big brown eyes that shine with pride—and I know that if I checked her bike right now, I’d find matching bits of crimson petals on the tires.
I don’t check.
Chapter Seven
SOMETIMES IT FEELS LIKE I’M STANDING on a precipice, and there’s nothing below to catch my fall.
When I feel like this, I reach for someone else’s words to pull me back. To remind me that the world is bigger than my home. Bigger than Auburn. It’s the best thing I inherited from Mom—her love of words. She loves classic literature and poetry, and every memory of my childhood smells like the stacks of paperbacks she’d stash all over the house. She made books our home in a way our house never was.
But now I can’t stand the classics. She always said they were romantic, but someone always ends up brokenhearted or dead. Or brokenhearted and then dead. As though tragedy is the only ending that has meaning.
These days, I’ll take journalism over literature. I’ll take truth over grief. Leave romance at the door, I’m a newspaper girl.
But I still have to take lit class, and we are learning Tess of the d’Urbervilles, so I’m not done with the tragedies quite yet. I slip into class early, flipping through the chapters we were supposed to review this weekend. When Liam enters the room, we make eye contact, and he nods at me.
I quickly look down at my book.
But when he sits at the back of the room, I can’t help glancing at him. Naturally, Liam sits with the most popular kids, but in AP English it’s a special subset. The very smart populars. They sit with their desk pushed up to their boyfriend or girlfriend, somehow always just at the periphery of following the rules. Alexis and Brody are on-again, off-again, but today their desks are pressed tight, and his arm is wrapped around her shoulders. They are both tall and blond and leggy and athletic. People always stereotype popular teens as dumb, but they’re just teens with better-than-average social skills. Why stop at homecoming court when they can have Harvard? Especially when there’s nothing that would keep them from actually going.
On the other side of Brody is Amelia. She is definitely Harvard material. She has perfect teeth and parents who are surgeons, and she can probably quote both Austen and the latest Glamour magazine. The truth is, I’ve always been a little envious of Amelia. It seems like she’s friends with everyone. She’s approachable. Even if I wanted to be warm, inviting, I wouldn’t know how to untangle myself from all the barbed wire I’ve placed around me. It’s in the set of my jaw. The way my shoulders turn away from people. “Proceed with Caution” screams my body language, and it’s the only language I know anymore.
When my gaze returns to Liam, his desk is like an island. I guess he isn’t really a lone wolf when he’s the kind of guy who perpetually has a girlfriend, but somehow he still looks alone. Set apart. Like he has a little buffer around him. I think by senior year in such a small town, our social interactions are almost on autopilot. It’s been a long time since any of us has looked up. Or at least that’s true for me. Which is why I probably wouldn’t be noticing Liam if he hadn’t mistaken me for Lyla Jacobs.
Mrs. Riley launches into our Tess lesson, and I try to stop thinking about Liam and focus on her. Mrs. Riley teaches with Ms. Frizzle–level enthusiasm. She’s eccentric and loud. She runs the newspaper, too, so I’m used to her antics, but it feels a little offbeat when we are discussing gender inequality in the nineteenth century.