I could also tell you how, in the two years we dated, Rose was my first everything. First kiss, first touch, first girl to see me naked and lustful without bursting into laughter (although she was the first to do that, too). We did more eventually. We did everything. Whatever she wanted. Rose dictated the rhyme and rhythm of our sexual awakening, and I loved that. I never had to make up my mind when I was with her.
By the way, I have no problem admitting I was nervous as hell the first time we actually did it—both of us offering up our so-called innocence during an awkward Thanksgiving Day fumbling that happened on the floor of the locked linen closet at the inn. For an awful moment, right before, as I hovered above her on the very edge of a promise, I feared I wouldn’t be able to—my ambivalence runs deep—but Rose stayed calm. In her steady, guiding voice, she told me what to do and just how to do it. I was eager to listen. I was eager to be what she needed.
I don’t know. There’s more to say, of course, much more. Two years is a long time in a short life, especially when you’re in high school. But that’s not the Rose anybody wants to read about, is it? Tragedy is infinitely more interesting than bliss. That’s the allure of self-destruction. Or so I’ve found.
But I’ll end with this: I miss Rose. I’m even glad I met her, despite what happened on that mountain. There were bad parts, yes; if I had my own days of darkness and suffering and pain-imposed sensory deprivation on account of my headaches, then in between her moments of verve and brashness, Rose had her own kind of darkness—bleak and savage, like a circling wildcat waiting to eat her up. What she needed during those times was for me to keep her alive, and for two years, that’s exactly what I did. And whether I did it by making her laugh or making her come or shielding her from her fears of tomorrow by giving her all my todays, I did it because she told me to and because I loved her. Truly.
So why’d I kill her?
2.
IT STARTED LIKE this: the summer before our senior year, Rose and her twin brother, Tomás, were supposed to spend six weeks in Peru with their grandparents. It was their first time traveling to South America alone, and honestly, the trip sounded fucking awesome—even if Tomás had to be there (he was a real dick—a total snob about all things Teyber, and as much as I hated the place, I hated the way he hated it more). But Rose didn’t want to go and I didn’t understand this and my not understanding made her not want to go even more.
“You won’t miss me,” she growled, as we lay face-to-face on her queen-size four-poster bed. “You want me gone.”
I winced at what I could tell was the first tightening surge of an oncoming migraine. “What are you talking about? I’ll miss you. Of course I’ll miss you. More than anything.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
“Things will be different when I get back.”
“Why will they be different?”
Rose kicked her legs. Her bare heels made smudges on the wall. “Because we’ll be different people then. We won’t be who we are now.”
“We’ll be different tomorrow, too,” I said. “That’s the way it always is. You can’t count on anything to stay the same.”
“Well, six weeks is a lot of different.”
She was right, of course—plenty of small differences had a way of adding up to something largely unknown—but it seemed to me Rose was the one who would be doing most of the changing. I’d seen her photographs from her previous trips to Lima, vistas awash with sandy beaches and sparkling water. It would be winter there, but other than the frigid Humboldt current swirling up from the south, their winter consisted of foggy days and occasionally having to wear a sweatshirt at night. Not to mention Rose would be spending most of her time at the university where her grandfather was a linguistics professor. That did give me pause. I could easily picture all the Peruvian college men she’d meet, the handsome ones with perfect hair and dark eyes, who’d smoke unfiltered cigarettes and speak with her in Spanish and take her out for coffee, then maybe drinks, then dinner, then—
You can understand my concern.
Still, I thought, as my migraine settled in and really began to take hold, I’d never been anywhere outside of the county, much less the States, a fact unlikely to change anytime soon. To encourage Rose to stay here, in a town she hated, just to be with me while I went nowhere was foolish. Selfish, even.
Still, I thought, maybe some separation would be good for us, a learning experience. After all, Rose would be going off to college the following summer. The promise of her future was bright, dazzling, while mine, on the other hand, consisted of staying in Teyber and taking care of my mother. Rose hated talking about it, but the fact of the matter was the boyfriend she’d picked out of her high school lobby was not only broke as hell but also bound by blood—and worse—to a woman who wasn’t her. So we needed to get used to being apart, to see if the long-distance thing would work.
Still, I thought, maybe I just needed some goddamn time alone.
For once.
I thought a lot of things that day, I guess. But what I said was this:
“Go.”
—
My mother got into a car accident two days after Rose left. It’s tempting to see that as an omen of some sort, proof of the intervening hand of fate, but it’s hard to read too much into something that’s happened before and is almost sure to happen again. This time she missed a turn on the interstate at around one in the morning and ended up twenty feet down the hillside embankment with the Ford’s front end smashed in. She, however, had nothing worse to show for it other than a broken wrist, a bad attitude, and cuts from the glass.
I was mad at her for the accident. I remember that. There were no skid marks and my guess was she’d fallen asleep while drunk, although she insisted she’d swerved to avoid hitting a fox that had run into the road. She didn’t deny the drinking; the grim daughter of even grimmer Estonian immigrants, my mother learned young that the most effective form of rebuttal was silence. Regardless, the car she’d ruined wasn’t just hers but mine, and I knew I’d have to work two jobs to pay to fix it.
After she’d taken a cab home from the hospital and gotten herself settled in bed with her bottle of Vicodin—all while willfully ignoring the ruined Ford I’d had towed that now sat in the street leaking antifreeze in front of our sagging bungalow—I slouched my way down to the auto repair shop on Bloomington to see if they would work with me on a payment plan or barter of some kind. I could do oil changes, at least. Rotate tires. Take out the trash.
When I got there, Avery Diaz, the owner’s daughter, was standing behind the counter. I’d known Avery since elementary school; we’d been in most of the same classes. She was smart. We were friendly. Seeing her got my hopes up and I explained my plight as humbly as I could.