Page 77 of Roses, Pearls, and Hot Summer Nights
I closed the door, but I didn’t bother to lock it. They would be back, I realized with a shiver of pleasure. Barrett’s words banged around in my head, but my brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders yet. I remembered him saying there were cameras everywhere, which meant that their parents would know they’d all spent the night with me. They would certainly know about the party.
I gnawed the tip of my finger, remembering again how they all described their family as weird, and I wondered if they meant stuff like the cameras. If their parents stepped away from active parenting after Phoenix got taken, though, maybe there were psychological reasons for their distance. I wasn’t an expert and wouldn’t pretend to be, but I wondered if it would be considered benign neglect. Then again, the cameras might just be so they could see if anyone else got taken.
I shook my head, because I wasn’t going to figure out years of their family dynamics in one morning. I needed to grab a shower before they came back to pick me up, in a half-an-hour, if Barrett kept his word. When it came to scheduling, he was the kind of person who made me think he usually got what he wanted.
I showered quickly and tugged on a pair of shorts, a gray t-shirt and, my new sneakers. I wanted to put on my old ones but thought better of it, assuming the shops would be pretty snooty.
I remembered my bodyguards and thought with amusement that I didn’t want anyone else to get punched just because they were rude to me in a store. I could play the part.Again.Isn’t that all this ever is?Pretending so everyone else will treat me a certain way?I wondered if anyone lived legitimate lives, wherethey got to be judged on their choices and behavior rather than the package they presented on the outside?
Finally, I grabbed Dina’s pearls and left the room, planning to return them. Her laughter greeted me when I reached her bedroom, so I tapped on the door, which swung open to reveal her wearing her bathrobe on the phone.
I handed her the pearls, and she blew me air kisses before she shut the door again.
My brow arched in amusement.Well, apparently people don’t get going here very early. If so, maybe no one would think anything about how late I slept that day.
I took the stairs in her house two at a time then bounded back to my assigned bedroom. With about ten minutes to spare, I could dry my hair. I remembered the party, and how it didn’t seem to help with those girls, so instead, I braided it again. I would rather use the extra time to read Dina’s journal, anyway.
NOVEMBER 1ST, 1966
To myself, since no one else will ever read this,
I almost quit writing altogether. What is the point, really? My uncle let me sign up for a secretarial class at the local branch of the library. He says if I do well enough, he will consider sending me to secretarial school, so long as I give him half of what I earn for two years, whether I live with him or not. I took the offer, because I think he might be getting ready to throw me out anyway. I would like to have some kind of career when he does, rather than not. I’m not sure exactly how easy it will be to find work because I don’t have a high school diploma, I’m not sure he knows or even cares, but the library program only asked myage, not my education. For the moment, I am just glad to have something useful to do with my time and energy.
During the walk there and back every evening, I see a man leaving work. He smiles at me, so I smile back. Finally, he stopped to speak to me one day. I’ll confess, I don’t and didn’t think he was very handsome. Still, he was tall and his smile was nice enough. It looked like he combed his blond hair, so when he asked me to dinner, I said yes.
It went fine, but he doesn’t make me laugh. His name is Bruce, if it matters. It turns out that he and his friends have a little Halloween party every year. He invited me to attend. I’ve never done anything like that before, so I said yes. I worried for a week about what to wear before I decided to do my best impression of Twiggy. I sewed my own dress, and it ended up short, white, with some red fruit somewhere between the shape of an orange and an apple spattered across the pattern.
I’ll admit I don’t sew that well.
But I put my hair up so that it looked short, since I’m not cutting it for the sake of the costume, then painted my cheeks red. I thought I looked really nicely put together for the event.
We never made it there, so I can’t say how it would’ve gone. I had to stop writing for a moment because my hand is shaking so hard at the very memory of it. He tried to do things to me that I won’t even write here because I don’t ever want to think of them again.
Things I might have been okay with doing with someone I loved, but not with him. His smile no longer seemed kind.
There was no party, either.
I ran home, my feet sore in my platform boots. When my uncle got a look at me in my costume, he beat me. Not the constant slaps like before, but he actually beat me. He kept hitting until it seemed his arm got tired. He used his shoes.
I don’t know where I got the strength to get up when he finished, but I did. I can barely sit today, my behind is so sore, but I managed to run. I didn’t even know where I was headed when I left but I arrived at the Lents; store in the middle of the night. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go, since they were only the people I wanted to see. It seemed unlikely they would even be there at midnight, but they were, getting things ready. Working hard.
Nathaniel took one look at me, hugged me against him before he realized it hurt me, then brought me inside. I must have fainted? I’ve never fainted before in my life, but I don’t remember things for a time. I woke up in their apartment this morning. It seems I was carried there, basically unconscious, and they all slept on the floor of the bedroom as guards. I don’t even know whose room it is, if I’m honest.
When I told them what happened, Victor left immediately. I didn’t know where he was going or what he would do, but he came back with all of my things. I asked him how he managed to get them from my uncle and he said the man would no longer be a problem in my life. He said I never need to see him again.
I burst into tears then, my relief so great. I just cried and cried. Maybe because my parents are dead? Maybe because my life is a whirlwind? Maybe because these men don’t hate me, and seem to still care, even though I told them I couldn’t believe how they were raised, or that they thought I could live like that, too.
I had no understanding for them, but they seem to still love me.
I may have to lie back down. Right now, I don’t care about anything that makes them different.
D
I didn’t considermyself stupid, but I wished she’d outright say what I began to suspect was different about the Lents. If I was right, I didn’t think Dina ever picked a husband. Maybe she had, officially, but she had loved all of them and they all loved her. I got up to look out at the ocean outside. Needing air, I opened the door out onto the patio to feel the sun, the breeze, and to listen to the constant roar of the water. The smell of the salt air helped, clearing my mind as if it dusted away the cobwebs.
If it was some strange family tradition, it explained Rosalind’s behavior and why none of the guys got jealous when I kissed their brothers. They called their family weird, but they protected a secret about them. Those secrets made them keep most people at arm’s length.Yes, I’m pretty sure I’m right.
Dina gave me the diaries, so she had to know I would eventually figure it out. Why would she give them to me, then? I wasn’t shocked, not like she must have been, at the idea. Having seen awful people and watched enough anime, I knew what monsters looked like. They were absolutely not monsters. How exhausting it must be, though, to never be able to tell the people around you who you really are, because in their society, people judged based on exterior presentation of a specific mode of living. Anything beyond the normal became wrong, so simply by not being the norm, they failed the standard.
