In Search of the Rose Notes

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Authors: Emily Arsenault
Tags: Fiction, General, thriller, Contemporary, Mystery & Detective, Mystery, Adult
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you know?”
    I nodded. I hadn’t walked there at night. I’d never had any reason to. But I knew where she was talking about. Charlotte didn’t look up or reply.
    “Whenever I’m walking there at night, I’m always scared to death for that minute it takes to get past it. The littlest noise in the trees and I take off running. My heart pounds like crazy till I can make it back to my house.”
    “What’re you afraid of anyway?” Charlotte wanted to know.
    “Well… everything. When I’m walking up that little bit of road, I believe in anything scary, even if it’s stupid. Ghosts, vampires, Freddy Krueger…”
    “Werewolves?” I said.
    “Not before,” Rose said. “But now. Now I’ll think about it every time. Now I’ll have to hold my throat while I walk by those trees.”
    “Don’t bother,” I said. “The werewolf will just rip your arm off anyway.”
    There was a knock at Charlotte’s door.
    “Come in,” she called.
    The door opened, and Paul poked in his head. My face burned red. It was several minutes before that I’d pointed out how hairy his dad was, but maybe he’d heard. I’d die if he’d heard. Having Paul hear it was totally different from having Charlotte and Rose hearing it.
    “Rose,” he said, “can I talk to you a second?”
    “Yeah,” Rose replied, leaving the black book on the carpet as she got to her feet.
    Paul closed the door behind them. Charlotte smiled to herself as she drew a delicate pair of red lips on one of her wooden heads.
    “Maybe we ought to try to see what they’re talking about,” she whispered.
    “Maybe.”
    “You go,” she ordered, still whispering. “You go out to the bathroom and—”
    “No,” I said. “You.”
    “They’ll notice me,” Charlotte pointed out.
    Her reasoning was mean. They’d notice her but not me. Unfortunately, it was also correct. I stormed out of the room to show my annoyance, but as soon as I was out the bedroom door, I realized I’d made a mistake. It would look to her like I was following orders.
    I slammed the bathroom door to show her I wasn’t doing what she asked—and to ruin any plan she might have to sneak around behind Paul’s and Rose’s backs. I blew my nose, flushed the toilet, and washed my hands. On my way back to Charlotte’s room, I heard Paul and Rose talking in his bedroom.
    “But it’s better for us to say something. If we wait till he does—” Rose was saying.
    “ You aren’t thinking of me, ” Paul interrupted. “Why should I fuck my life up—”
    I stiffened at the F-word. I’d never heard Paul say it before—he was just as strict about that stuff as Charlotte. It would have surprised me less if Rose had said it. Rose loved to swear.
    I crept quietly by Paul’s half-open door. They were sitting close to each other on Paul’s bed. As Charlotte had predicted, they didn’t notice me. Or didn’t care that I was there.
    “It’s not about you or me,” Rose argued as I moved away from the door.
    “Would you like someone to go to jail?” Paul whispered. “Would that make you happy?”
    “Happy?” Rose said, her voice breaking as if she might cry. “How could happy have anything to do with it?”
    I returned to Charlotte’s room and closed the door hard.
    “Whadya find out?” she whispered.
    “Nothing,” I said. “I just went to the bathroom. I’m not a spy.”
    “I think they’re getting together.”
    I said nothing.
    Rose returned a few minutes later, settled back onto the carpet, and picked up her black book as if nothing had happened.
    “What were we talking about?” she asked, in way that seemed to me a little fake-cheerful.
    “Werewolves,” I reminded her.
    “We were talking about how Joe Dean is probably a werewolf,” Charlotte chimed in.
    “All guys are werewolves,” Rose said, staring into the book.
    “My mom sometimes says men are pigs,” I said, because it seemed sort of related.
    “Hmm,” Rose said. “Pigs and wolves are very different.”
    “So

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