Page 14 of Tangled at the Root
I’d woken up sweaty and shaky but completely fine. The bruises had rapidly faded into my brown skin in the bathroom mirror as I’d watched, like it’d been waiting for me to check just so I’d feel more out of my mind with every blink. And indeed, I’d told myself it had been a nightmare, the fading bruises a trick of the light. My chest ached with phantom pain, my throat, despite looking outwardly fine, felt bruised and swollen, a small flake of what had to have been anything but dried blood clinging to the top of my right breast.
I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m starting to suspect performing this ritual and understanding my ancestry isn’t the only reason my grandmother had sent me here. It isn’t the reason she’d warned me about the house being alive.
Since I’d stepped foot in it, I’ve felt like it knows why I’m here.
What I don’t know is whether it’s trying to help me or stop me.
“Well, good luck with that,” I say, indirectly speaking to both the house and Rosemary, needing to leave, right the fuck now.
I can’t let anything stop me. I can’t—Iwon’tfail.
I’d spoken on the heels of the radio’s latest song, just as the next one starts to play.
The familiar sound of strummed guitar strings makes me freeze. I try not to otherwise react, but I can’t help the way my eyes immediately fly up to meet Rosemary’s, my hands twitching in my lap.
Something in her scent changes as our gazes lock, making all the hairs on my body stand on end, my breathing speeding up. My claws have retracted, and it takes everything in me to keep them that way.
I’m drowning in memory. In the two of us, standing beside each other in the corner of a darkened hall, staring enviously out into the swaying crowd of our coursemates. Free to kiss and touch and grind with absolutely zero care in the world. Free to simplybe.
God, I hadn’t even been able to hold her fuckinghand.
She’s glancing at me from underneath her eyelashes, her pulse skittering nervously—obvious,waiting, but all I can do is swallow, too overwhelmed and afraid to move. Wanting to, but knowing I shouldn’t.
I need to stand up. I need to leave.Now. End this moment before it grows into something wild and unmanageable.
I don’t move.
Then, looking like a literal dream, my lovely, brave Rosemary stands and strolls to my side of the table, hips swaying softly in her silk skirt, and holds out her right hand.
5: A TRICK OF THE LIGHT
I’ve been possessed. It’s the only explanation. All the reminders that I need to keep this strictly business have been muted, hushed over by the opening notes to an intimately familiar song.
I’m standing over my ex-best friend, holding my hand out expectantly, my throat too thick to speak the words I’ve wanted to say in so many iterations.
Do you want to dance?
Will you dance with me?
Can I have this dance?
Dance with me, Genevieve!
When she takes too long to react, shame burns in my throat and cheeks and I make to retract my hand.
But her palm is suddenly in mine, her grip firm but loose. My skin tingles, and my heart thumps hard against my rib cage. Ifmy afro wasn’t in braids, every single strand would be standing straight up like I’ve just been electrocuted.
We’d been so tentative when we’d first become friends, so careful around each other—two reserved girls each with less than favourable social experience, hovering and gravitating around each other’s orbits so that every accidental touch felt like being struck by lightning.
Genevieve had been braver than me, back then. A palm on my shoulder. A hand wrapping around my forearm. Fingertips brushing against mine when we passed each other something. Then, eventually, teasing shoves. Grabbing my wrist to pull me in a certain direction. Innocent little touches that built up until I no longer jumped or flinched.
When I shyly began doing the same, she’d never reacted, at least not too obviously. But I’d always been perceptive of her—our silences making space for all my other senses to angle toward her like a flower in sunlight. Every time I’d returned a touch in kind, she’d gone briefly still, before practically melting like she wanted to sink into me.
She stands, closing the space between us, and I promptly forget how to breathe. She’s half a head taller, and it has never felt more apparent than now, her head tilted down so she can keep her eyes locked on mine.
Her arm wraps around my waist, the fingers of her left hand tangling with those of my right. My free hand moves up to her shoulder, and we both shiver when my bare palm finds a place on her equally bare skin, the muscles underneath flexing at my touch.
The house morphs, the space between the dining and sitting area expanding until we have our very own dance floor.
