Page 4 of Roses & Ruin

Crestfallen, I take my suitcases to my side of the room. The room doesn’t feel quite so cozy anymore. There are angry, slammy sounds behind me, and each one shrinks the room until I feel claustrophobic. Nine months of this? That sounds unimaginable.

I unpack as quickly as possible. Luckily, two suitcases doesn’t take me too long. I consider changing into dry clothes, but a quick glance out the circle window tells me it’s still drizzling. Remy starts to sing some off-key Chappell Roan, and that settles it: I’m out of here.

I dig my orientation packet out of my backpack, pull my hood up, and scurry out the door.

Chapter 2

The rest of the week goes by in an overwhelming flurry of info sessions and mixers. At orientation, I meet two girls, Charlie and Naomi, who are from the Boston area and went to high school together. I hadn’t realized before coming here that Payen is kind of a hidden gem; most of the student body seems to be Massachusetts locals, and I’m very much the out-of-state outlier. Still, Charlie and Naomi ask for my number and invite me to get dinner in the cafeteria with them.

It’s Sunday and I’m sitting underneath the oak tree on the grassy quad beside Coupland Hall, facing the dorm’s front door. It’s been drizzling all day, but I’ve learned to always have my rain jacket with me. I don’t mind sitting out here in the fog. It never mists like this in California, with that grating perpetual sun. It’s strangely validating, this moody, wet weather.

My phone buzzes. My mom, requesting a FaceTime. Crap. I need to answer this. Other than a few texts, I’ve been holding out on talking to them until I have more updates to share. I take a deep breath, roll my shoulders, paste on my sunniest smile, and answer the phone.

“Hi, Mom!” I beam at the screen.

“Rosie! Your dad’s here too.” Mom’s face fills the camera. “Are you sitting outside?”

“The campus here is so beautiful. I can’t get enough of the…the trees and weather.”

“We have a weather alert for Fairford, pumpkin.” Dad’s spectacled face shoves into view. “Why are you out in the rain, Rose?”

How do I tell him that the worst sound in the world has become Remy’s keys in the door? I can’t stand sitting in the room with her barbed silence, but I’ve since learned that sitting alone, not knowing when she might return, not knowing when that jingling sound might happen, is somehow worse. I hold up my ratty copy of Frankenstein, grinning sheepishly.

“For atmosphere?” I say.

“Haven’t your professors already given you your reading list?” Dad groans. “College texts are no Mary Shelley, Rose. It takes most of my third-years weeks to cut through a single Heidegger—”

“Stop, Tom. It’s her emotional support book. Remember how many times I read Death on the Nile that first month at Irvine?” Mom gives me a kind smile. “Sweetheart, how are you?”

“Fine,” I say, too quickly. Uncertainty flashes in Mom’s eyes, so I try again, slower this time. “It’s…an adjustment. Like you said it would be. But I’ve met a few people. Um, Charlie and Naomi.”

“Oh. Oh, Rose, that’s fantastic. And did you happen to stop by—”

“Yeah, I checked out the counseling center on the second day. I’ve got someone I can talk to.”

Technically, nothing I’ve said is a lie. I did walk by Payen’s Center for Mental Health on the second day. I know that inside, there is a counselor I could talk to, if I felt so inclined. I’m exhausted just thinking about it: starting from the beginning, telling some psychology graduate student my life story, only for them to ask if I’ve ever tried melatonin or chamomile tea before bed.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve suffered from vivid, gruesome nightmares where I die in different, terrifying ways. Imagine being a five-year-old at a sleepover and explaining to the other kids that the reason you woke them up with bloodcurdling shrieks was, well, because you’d just felt your actual blood curdle. I tried to explain every death to the kids at school, to my parents, my teachers, and how the worst part of all was how real it all felt, more real, even, than when I was eating my Cheerios in the morning or sitting in the back seat of the car while Mom listened to Ira Glass’s nasal voice on NPR. I tried to explain that somehow, horribly, in my nightmares, my deaths felt more vivid than my actual life.

It did not, as you could imagine, gain me very many friends. But it did gain me very many therapists. My poor parents tried to help, tried to understand why their little girl was so strange and haunted when her life was simple and sunny. When I started middle school, I couldn’t take the disappointment in their eyes when another treatment didn’t work, so I told them that the therapy was working and the nightmares had gotten better, but it was a lie.

All that had changed was I’d finally stopped talking about them.

“That’s great, pumpkin,” Dad says. “To tell you the truth, we’ve been so worried, especially on today of all days.”

Everything inside me goes very hot, then very cold. I had forgotten. Today is the anniversary of the accident. I stand up suddenly, scrubbing my face.

“Right,” I say thickly. “Of course. No, no, I’m…I’m all good about…that.”

“Are you?” Mom peers shrewdly into the camera. Even across three thousand miles, I can’t meet her gaze. “You haven’t had any…episodes?”

“Jeez, of course not!” My laugh feels and sounds manic. “No, no, it’s— I’m all good. Haven’t thought about him in a long time.”

“Him, Rose?” Dad says.

Shit. Right. He is not a him because he does not exist.

“That, I meant. The accident. I promise I haven’t been thinking…” I shake my head so hard, the tail of my braid whips my cheek. “I’ve been too busy, too much new stuff. Like, did you know they serve banoffee pie at the dining hall on Fridays?”