Cursed, Book One of The Devils Roses, Page 2

  I looked down at my suddenly mushy cereal and played with the mound with my spoon trying to smile imagining how my mom would smile when she told a joke and always ended up laughing too hard to finish.

  I wanted to smile at the happy memory but the previous sad memory was blocking my brain from sending signals to my lips.

  I didn’t like to think of such depressing thoughts before breakfast but that morning seemed to feel worse than most days. I had been certain I was starting to come around but the bad dreams hadn’t helped.

  “Earth to Aimee, how does this look?”

  I looked up from my lost gaze to see my sister, my identical twin except hair and eyes posing slightly as she modeled a pair of black leggings with huge grey boots and a silver sweater hanging off the left shoulder.

  Silver was in fact her favorite color.

  Alise not Alice was stunning, which sucked because we were complete opposites where she had dark black hair like our mom and silver eyes I had blond and blue. My eyes weren’t even pretty blue, more like grey. It was as if they tried to become silver like my sisters but quit part way.

  We shared every other feature, which seemed to work on her whereas on me it looked uneven and plain. We were both five feet seven inches, one hundred and thirty three pounds, long and lean but not as athletic as our bodies would suggest.

  Our mom had always been a very lean woman even when she had been pregnant with two huge twins.

  “You look fine, why do you even care?” I asked with a hint of disapproval, well maybe not a hint.

  Alise rolled her eyes and grabbed a banana, “Oh my god Aimee you eventually will have to face the outside world, mom wouldn’t have wanted us to shrivel up and die inside.”

  I flinched at her saying the mom word like she was giving motherly advice. Seeing the distress on my face Alise sighed continuing slightly less harsh, “She’s watching us from heaven and she’s going to worry about you if you don’t snap out of it. You’re going to disappoint her by not living not the opposite.” She stormed out the door to her car.

  Alise's words stung and while I knew she was right I couldn’t make myself move past what had occurred eight months prior. I felt the walls starting to close in around me, as the air got heavy.

  I ran up the stairs to my room and dove onto the carpet beside my bed. The carpet rubbed against my elbows harshly as I fished the secret envelope out from under the bed. Once the treasure was in my hands I opened it ever so softly so as not to tear the plastic bag within the manila envelope. I held the plastic bag under my nose and let the fragrance fill my nostrils. The sweet smell filled the air around me becoming my oxygen.

  The walls started to come down a little as suddenly I was somewhere else. Somewhere safe where the smell of my mom made all the bad feelings small again.

  I felt tears threatening me as I began to chant softly, “You existed, you loved me, you existed.”

  I smelled the perfume that had maintained its strength thanks to the protective plastic bag. My heart was beating out of my chest but I closed my eyes and let the world stop so I could feel her even if it was for a moment. I opened my eyes relieved and closed the bag gently and put it back in the manila envelope and safely tucked it under my bed again.

  I decided on the way back down stairs I would visit my mom after school and see if I could just get a small feel of her again. Sometimes being at the side of the road where I had been when my mom died made me feel her in the air like a hug sent in a letter that even though it wasn’t real the intent made you feel warm just the same. I sat there for hours sometimes talking to her or just being there where I knew my mom could sense me too.

  Alise honked the horn on the car impatiently at me as I ran down the stairs and grabbed my book bag and walked out of the door to my sisters frowning face staring at me through the windshield. She was shouting at me but I ignored her and took an extra long unnecessary second to lock the house, it was these small victories that got me through the day.

  I never spoke to my sister about our mom even though I wanted to tell Alise that being a little sad wouldn’t kill her and acting like it had actually impacted her life even remotely wouldn’t make her look weak, only human. She had seemed to cruise past our mom’s death like nothing had happened, she cried a modest amount at the funeral on Saturday and shopped with friends on Monday. I had stayed in bed for two weeks till my father threatened calling my grandma to come help me through this. I resented his wanting to be the only one suffering through it.

  I slumped into the seat of my sisters car watching the road blur by the window like an impressionist painting left out in the rain as Alise talked in a steady and unyielding stream on hands free the whole ride with one of her friends in what was a series of OMG’s and Seriously on both their parts. I often wondered if it was a modern day Morse code.

  I had always been painfully shy whereas my sister was painfully outgoing, slutty was the words only the truly brave used. I had felt myself withdraw even more in the last few months since our moms passing.

  Our father like me mourned quietly to himself withdrawing to his office pretending to work but we knew he sat there surrounded by a million reminders of her. I too had my own reminders of my mom like the stolen nightgown and a few other key items, which I had locked away in Ziploc bags and smelled like a serial killer. I had tried to take the perfume and soap but alone they didn’t smell enough like my mom so I stole some clothes that hadn’t been cleaned yet. It was the right mix of her and soap that mattered. I had kept them under the bed for eight months without anyone seeing. I couldn’t explain my need to smell them even to myself so I tried not to think about how creepy it was.

  Alise blathered on with her friend Giselle while I watched out the window waiting for it to start feeling like a regular day again. In eight months I hadn’t been able to get that feeling back.

  “Ok girl peace out.” Alise looked at me as she clicked the phone off, “Can you believe that? Jaime is going to freak when she hears that shit.”

  I shrugged not answering not only did I not know what she was talking about but I didn’t care about my sisters’ shallow friends.

  Alise groaned as we pulled into the school parking lot, “Aimee if you don’t find normal again, well your nerdy normal anyway, they’re going to lock you away for depression in one of those places where the girls don’t shower and all become lesbians.”

  I stifled a laugh as she ranted on.

  “Like a week ago I heard Mrs. Sinclair talking to the guidance counselor about you. They are noticing your inability to find happiness again. No one said you have to forget mom but you need to remember you are still alive.”

  I felt my wall come up even higher as my emotions tried to make me feel something about my being alive. Before the car was even fully parked I was out of the door walking to the school. The cold air washed me free of any lingering effects of my sister’s attempt at reasoning with me, I just focused on the dirty lesbians in the asylums around the country, it made me smile even if it was just a tiny bit.

  I crossed the courtyard to my first class knowing my body was rejecting my sisters reasoning from head to toe, it exhausted me to try this hard to be sad. I had sensed my body wanting and needing a small amount of happiness but I had fought those emotions and feelings. If I became a happy kid again I wouldn’t remember how badly it hurt to lose my mom.

  I coasted through my classes doodling thinking about the dream I’d had. It had been a repeat I was certain. I remembered seeing the look on my fathers’ face, it had been fear. I knew my dad was worried about me but he was not one to be pointing fingers, especially not lately. He had seemed to be in a rough patch and hadn’t really come out of his office except to ground Alise every other day. She swore up and down she had caught him sitting in his walk-in closet under moms’ dresses and clothes touching them.

  The bell rang for lunch before I realized I had even gone to a second period class. I looked down at the homework assignment I had written down
amazed it was a coherent sentence. I picked up my books and slipped from the class not making eye contact with anyone.

  “Aims wait up.”

  The voice belonged to my bff, he was the only person who seemed to be able to see me past my sadness. I knew one day I would snap out of it and resurface because Blake still saw me. I was confident that if I ever got too lost in my pool of despair he would reach his hand in and pull me up. I stopped walking and turned to see Blake running up the stairs to my locker. He was not handsome in a traditional way; he was tall and thin but not skinny. His blue eyes stood out against his dark hair but the thick glasses and constant looking down muted the color of his eyes. He was always stuck in a book or iPhone or itouch or chess game.

  He rarely made eye contact with other people. I was not one of these people; I was his best friend and the only person able to beat him in chess besides Mr. Mac our chem. teacher who held the chess club meetings.

  “Hey Blake.” The words left my mouth so softly I thought for certain he hadn’t been able to hear them.

  He smiled at me barely looking up from his iphone, “You look like shit today Aimee. Enough with the black already.”

  He was probably the only person able to make that comment and make a smile cross my lips. It felt unnatural for me but I left it there anyway.

  “I like black.” I tried to be serious as I closed my locker and we started to walk. I felt a small piece of myself resurface whenever he was around.

  He shook his head as he looked me straight in the face, “No you don’t and you are starting to look like one of the Goths. It’s hard to hang in the nerd crowd when you scare the nerds. We scare easily.” He walked forward and opened the door to the cafeteria for me.

  I shook my head, “I’m in mourning Blake and it’s a full year before we wear colors again.”

  He laughed, “That’s for widows in the eighteen hundreds. I miss you in spring colors and shorts. I really miss you having color on your skin. I miss your eyes how they used to sparkle now they’re dull like fish eyes. When that Aimee comes back I think I’ll have a party.” my heart made a little skip.

  I tried to stop it but couldn’t. My heart disobeyed me and skipped for Blake, a little.

  I walked through the door laughing, “Who will come?”

  He smiled revealing the whitest teeth ever; it was an actual OCD for him. I knew that I could reach into his pocket at any given moment of the day and find floss.

  “The chess club, matheletes, obviously us science geeks and actually I really like the kids at the newspaper. They’re not as smart as we are but they know politics and a lot of them believe the CT’s Aimee and I have to respect that.”

  I laughed again even though it hurt my side to do it, my laughing muscles had grown soft and weak over the past winter. Blake believed in CT’s, Conspiracy Theories. He believed nothing the media wrote unless they were students in university still or working for some low budget paper that relied on a mailing list as opposed to general publication for the masses.

  He smacked me in the arm frowning, “Dude did you see the Facebook posts coming off my mom lately?” I smiled at him calling me dude. I shook my head as he took off on a tangent.

  “Clearly people don’t get the whole its for connecting or reconnecting with people, its not twitter. My mom has what she ate for lunch yesterday, she has that she went to her yoga class, she has that she bought a new bra and for her friends to check that store out. WTF dude, like what the hell. I told her that from now on I’m posting everything I do in a day.”

  His face was red as he ranted, I loved his rants.

  “I told her tomorrow my Facebook is going to read, “Blake McGinnis had a great shit today, came out with very little pushing. I just want to thank Kellogg’s for upping the fiber count in the cereal.”

  I started to laugh again as we walked to the nerd table where the other nerds raised eyebrows at me laughing.

  “I think then about three hours later I will put, “Blake McGinnis just held his cat Chuck down and sniffed his neck fur.”

  I couldn’t even stop myself if I wanted to; the laughing was starting to actually get quite painful.

  His arms flailed about now, “Then I think at around seven I will post, ‘Blake McGinnis is questioning his humanity and had a bad thought about his neighbors.’ Then at least my mom will have something to think about. Jesus I get tired of reading this crap.”

  I smiled thinking about something other than myself for a few moments and just enjoyed Blake’s friendship.

  That was the moment, on that day in that moment I felt like the Grinch as my chest expanded and my heart seemed to shake off its icy winter coat and let a small amount of the spring sunlight in. I didn’t know what to do with the new sense of freedom I was having inside of me but suddenly the school looked brighter, I noticed the other kids talking and making movements which before I would have ignored obsessively.

  After lunch we walked into class and for a split second I felt a tiny amount of peace, Mr. Mac was smiling at the class explaining how to get ready for our latest experiment. The sunlight shone into through the windows and the air sparkled with dust and inspiration.

  For the first time without feeling like I had betrayed my mom I looked forward to something. Chemistry was my favorite class and not for the same reason as all the other girls which was Mr. Mac looked much more like a student than a teacher having only graduated with his masters two years before.

  He was very handsome but I only noticed it after my sister pointed it out. Something about his face didn’t do it for me, he was handsome but not my type.

  I loved the reaction of chemicals and the predictability that came with knowing the elements. It was a controlled environment. Blake loved the class too but he loved it because Mr. Mac was Blake’s hero, he held three degrees and a masters by the time he was twenty-four.

  On the way home from school I took a detour instead of the bus or a ride with Satan, aka Alise. The long road never cleared with huge trees on either side of it and thick brush on the edges of the forest making it impassible.

  I felt a small sense of serenity as I saw the spot and smiled knowing my mom was waiting for me. The wind blew my long blond hair up in the air like a tornado was sucking it up as the cold concrete froze my legs but I tried to ignore it all as I talked to my mom.

  I had gathered the new dandelions of the year in my pocket on the way to her spot and was making myself a crown as I sat there talking.

  “So then Mr. Mac said that I could just do my own project since my partner wasn’t there, again. God I don’t know what’s up with her but it’s been like four classes and she’s still sick. Maybe it’s the plague. I really like Mr. Mac mom, he treats us like people not students. He is an actual chemist too, not a gym teacher filling in a spot.”

  I finished my crown and placed it on my head as a tear rolled down my cheek, “there mom just like you made.” I pushed back my pain and smiled, my mom didn’t need to see me sad like that all the time.

  Suddenly it was there, the warm wind.

  My skin lifted with a shiver as I closed my eyes and let the wind surround my. I knew people made fun of the fact I would go and sit on the side of the road beside the tree where I’d made the mark.

  The fact my mom hadn’t died anywhere near this spot was what made me the town weirdo but in truth someone had died in this spot, I had, which was why I was haunting it.

  Twenty-eight hundred people only populated the little seaside hamlet of a Town. In Port Mackenzie everyone noticed when Don James’s quiet daughter sat on the side of the road talking to a tree.

  I looked at the mark on the tree feeling slightly ashamed of hurting it that way. There in the torn bark and skin of the tree was my blood making a cross. I had pulled and ripped the bark in a panic cutting my hands up so I would never lose this spot. The spot where my moms warm wind had hugged me for the first time. I was surprised that the blood hadn’t washed away in the winter rains but the tree held on
to enough color that I could always find it. The bloodstain was old and brown now but if you knew where to look you could see the cross faintly. Maybe the tree knew I needed it so it stopped the rain from washing it all away. I smiled at the tree grateful someone understood me.

  I sat there staring at the mark realizing I had come a long way in the last few months and soon I would be normal again, I could feel it, my heart was healing.

  Blake was part to blame with his funny sarcastic ways that cheered my up even when I resisted. I smiled thinking about him distractedly. I wondered if we would ever become lovers or if we would just get married. I knew we were perfect for each other; it just made sense and really all that was in the way was both of us were unbearably shy and inexperienced. I had wanted a boyfriend for a while before my moms’ accident, something romantic like an Austen movie but I just couldn’t face the feelings I was having now that I didn’t have a mom to give me advice.