Rose Rock

If anyone asked Perry when she started to gain her patience, she would probably tell them that it was the month she met Douglas. She learned quickly that to be friends with little boys in the summertime, one must abandon their modern sense of schedule. That June, life happened in numeric increments known only by the young: seconds were defined by kicked rocks, minutes by innings of baseball. Hours and days were forgotten things, tucked away into bedside dresser drawers upon waking up. Perry measured her time in scabs. She immersed herself in their language, recounting her recent history from the details each had. Color, shape, size – if she could see all three, it was as telling as any diary entry. You could tell an awful lot about someone by the scabs they had, she figured.

The first two she got were his fault. Two patches on her knees; a pair of tiny little garnets embedded within her. It was the first Saturday of the vacation, and the world was still nostalgic for the spring. In the dry, crisp, inoffensive warmth of the morning, she was sitting cross-legged on a stone bench in her home’s backyard. She was reading one of the classics her mother had been poring over. It had been the obsession of the ladies’ book club two weeks prior, and Perry quietly collected it from the kitchen table after breakfast. She only understood about half of the words, but was determined to immerse herself in the world of her mother’s yellowed reverence, nevertheless. She liked the months when it was warm enough to read in the garden. Surrounded by the roses the two of them had planted in April, her body eagerly folded into a small, meditative thing, planted in cement roots and imagination.

All delusions of maturity fade, though, and this one’s eraser came in the form of tanned, smooth hands grasping the top of the wall across from her. After some struggle, a boy emerged, sitting upon the tips of her mother’s vines, peering down. His hair was chopped short, speckled blonde and chocolate like a wild colt. His toothless grin bordered on maniacal.

“Hullo.” He said.

She glanced up from her book, surprised, before studying him for a moment. “Hi.”

“My name’s Douglas. I live next door now.”

“My name’s Perry.” The sun emerged from the clouds, and the once-cool bench began to cook slowly under its glare.

“Perry’s a weird name. What’cha doin’?” His eyes were two small buttons, beady and colorless. They blazed with enthusiasm as he absentmindedly picked at a leaf on the ivy, tearing it away piece by piece.

“Reading a book,” she replied. She felt no need to lie to him, and never would as long as she knew him. “it’s called Washington Square.”

“Oh. I don’t like books.” He stood, now towering over her. “You wanna come play?”

Perry looked at this new boy, artificially six feet tall and glowing in the morning light. She glanced back inside, thinking about where her parents might be. Would they even notice her disappearance? Mom was surely in her room, and Dad would be at the rec league fields until dinnertime. She only wasted a second more to ponder her choice, before closing the book. Most of the words didn’t make sense anymore, anyway. Pleased, Douglas reached down, offering his hand. “You shouldn’t go out your door. It’s more fun to climb up here. Wanna try?” She did want to try. Grasping his forearm with one hand, she hopped and swung her other onto the ledge of the wall. In turn, Douglas yanked her arm, and soon enough Perry also found herself above the ivies. Her newfound companion was a little shorter than her, she now saw, and his cheeks were peppered with near-imperceptible freckles. Only his front two teeth were missing, to her relief.

“Look at how cool I’m gonna look! Watch me jump down!” He pointed downward exaggeratingly, before leaping off the ledge and onto the sidewalk below. He kicked wildly in the air, hollering while landing in a controlled stumble. She giggled and readied herself to do the same. One push with a pink sneaker, and Perry was soaring. Her limbs remained in a triumphant superhuman posture as her body rotated forward, crashing into the cement elbows first, knees second. She laid on the ground for a moment with tears welling in her eyes, as her torn skin carved its pain into the dull ache of the impact. Douglas stood above her, his countenance unsympathetic. “Crying’s for babies. You’ll look really cool when you do it next time.” He offered his hand once again, and Perry took it, thinking of next time. She would look back on this as the moment she fell in love with him. Her tears never fell.

Immediately, they were inseparable. Dougie quickly proved to be a welcome addition to the boys’ clubs of the neighborhood, though they teased him relentlessly for spending most of his time with a girl. His cool, devilish charisma didn’t wane in the face of these allegations, and while he never defended Perry’s status, the teasing was soon abandoned for being ineffectual. Instead, the other boys found ways to remind her directly that she was unwelcome. She became the first to test all new plans or dares, as well as the one to face the punishment when they scattered away to secret hideouts. Her scabs became badges of honor: elbows, knees, shins, each screaming her right to be taken seriously. Douglas liked noting when a new one was forming and when the sweet spot to pick it off in one clean piece was. They would leap off the wall together every morning, him beaming with pride when she stuck the landing. Each day, they ventured further and further from her garden. Books became just words on paper.

Summers faded into school years, then into summers again. Douglas’s mom cut his hair short. Perry wore jeans to protect her knees. One day, she stopped taking the blame for things she didn’t do. She grew confident and declarative. She was the only girl, and therefore had more to prove by speaking up, so her insults were biting and quick-witted. Her voice grew stronger, and she used it to proudly exclaim all the swears the boys had only just begun to whisper tentatively. She had already learned them all from Douglas when they practiced in her basement before dinnertime. She enjoyed when he came over for dinner, if only because she saw another side of him: around adults, the boy that chased dogs and pissed in backyards for fun was polite, even charming. He rationed out pieces of his personality in rhythmic tiptoes, with the healthy dash of fear all little boys have around parents. She didn’t like going over to his house as much. His family was larger. His brothers and sister grinned menacingly when they saw them together, calling out “Ooh, didn’t realize you were bringing your girlfriend over for dinner, Doug!” It seemed that the only time he was embarrassed to be around her was in the presence of this teasing. Still, she shrugged it off, because that’s what Douglas would have done. She just invited him over more.

Fourth grade fell into their lives (or rather, they fell into the lives of fourth graders), and Perry felt the adrenaline of her first fight. A new boy, new like Douglas had been, sat curled within the school playground’s tunnel one day: her seat. She noticed him as he played wall ball with the other boys later that day, and stomped over to him, fists clenched. “You took my spot.” She growled.

He stopped, craning his long neck towards her. He was too tall for his body, his otherwise normal limbs awkward within the comic proportions of youth. “Huh?”

“The tunnel. That’s my spot.”

He blinked, not understanding. “Oh.”

He returned to his game. She stepped in front of him, standing on her toes to match his height. “Promise you won’t take my spot again!” she demanded.

“Who says it’s your spot?” he asked, only now becoming interested in the conversation.

“Me! I do!”

“Go away, Perry! You’re being dumb!” another boy, one of the neighborhood ones, chimed in. She stuck her tongue out.

“I can sit there whenever I want.”

“I’ll kick your teeth out if you ever sit there again!”

He folded his arms over his chest and huffed. “You’re a bitch.”

The spark hit the gasoline, and in an instant she ignited. With a roar, she lunged towards him, her small fists landing blow after blow against his jaw. He yelped and kicked back as they careened into the wall, a solitary storm of innocent hatred. The kids gathered around, trying to diffuse and goad and participate. Eventually, a teacher called the lunchtime whistle, and a bruised Perry spit on a long-necked boy with a torn shirt collar.

She still measured time by scabs, but now the ingredients were altered. Scraped elbows were from uncut nails that drew lines in her blood. She didn’t trip onto her knees, she was thrown onto them. The boys were all eager to hit a girl, and each impact made her learn how to hit them back harder. Douglas always cheered her on in fights, most of which were over petty things that could easily be forgotten over a night’s rest. Sometimes Perry would run home after a fight, crying over the words the boys had called her. Douglas was always a short distance behind, picking at leaves from the ivy while he told her how much she roughed them up. “Cole’s a sissy, you know. I saw his mom give him a band-aid after a paper cut once.” He laughed, the sound reckless and soothing. She couldn’t help but smile through the tears.

“I bet she kissed it better, too.” She added, and they giggled to each other until the pain went away. By the other wall, the year’s roses bloomed.

The months drifted past in this way, their youth washed out of them harshly but never totally. Middle school happened, and Douglas learned to skateboard. Perry was called a lesbian for hanging out with the boys so much. Her scabs became invisible to everyone but her. They discovered music one night while combing through his brother Michael’s stuff, music that was angry and fast and new. By seventh grade, she was practicing dark eyeliner in the mirror and playing the bass guitar she had gotten for Christmas. As the world changed around them, the young girl and boy that leapt off the garden wall each remained the anchor of the other’s life. One week in December, when they were fourteen, Douglas told Perry that she cried too much over pointless things. She stood stiffly, walking inside while “Dude, it was just a joke!” echoed from her front yard. She didn’t speak to him for days, until she heard from another boy that his parents were getting divorced. That night, she sat on the garden wall, two coats on, watching the dim lamp light from his room next door. She knew he would see her. Slowly, mechanically, sheepishly, he emerged minutes later and sat next to her. They remained together, in silence, for hours. All was forgiven.

A month later, Douglas left the neighborhood. He lived with his mother, who moved to a five-minute drive away. The boy with a toothless grin didn’t smile as often as he used to. Perry began going home with him after school, listening to him drone on about history facts while she absentmindedly strummed her guitar. She was pretty good, now. Some of the guys wanted to start a band and had asked her if she was interested in joining. She told them she was, if they would fuck off and get some actual talent first. She slept over less and less, after his mother asked her to sleep in a different room than him. Her dad would drive her home, honking twice as she opened the creaking screen door to the world beyond Douglas’s kitchen.

A year in high school concluded unceremoniously, and Perry finally began to feel like things had changed. The boys that she had once pushed to the ground and given noogies to began whistling as she walked through the school halls. She flipped them off each time, but still couldn’t help wrapping her oversized cardigan around her closer. She dyed her hair a deep emerald green, and started rubbing her tattoo when she felt nervous. It was a stick-and-poke of a raincloud on the side of her stomach that her friend in art class gave to her, and it was also the most important thing in her life. As for her best friend, he had also changed. She never noticed, but the boy with the speckled blond hair (which now rolled over his ears in a shaggy mop) became handsome as he fit into his newfound height. His skin remained kissed by the sun, and his eyes still blazed brilliantly in their darkness. His voice had dropped the summer before high school, and was now gravely and implicit. He, too, was noticed by others at school, and as a sophomore Perry learned that he was equally frightened by it. They confided in each other deeper than they had ever before, through long nights and telephone calls and nervous glances as the other was flirted with. It took Perry two of his dates to realize she was jealous. It took her one of her own to know that she never had eyes for anyone else.

Their confession was awkward, as first loves deserve to be. On a hot spring night that seemed to beg for summer, she outed herself as bisexual, which he only seemed to barely understand. Her confession transitioned the conversation towards the intimate, a topic that had been an unspoken taboo between them. She chose her words carefully, a mental projector recounting every time a girl had asked if they were dating. All delusions of subtlety fade, though, and Perry circled around the issue one too many times for him to not notice. He was doing the same, as if they were two runaway trains missing every opportunity to change course. In minutes, they collided on his bedroom floor, the years they had shared pouring out of every crack in the wall and drowning them in a flood of themselves. He was clumsy and indelicate as a lover, but she didn’t care. He was angry and fast and new, and she gripped onto him tightly, falling in love with the ugliness of it all.

Soon, they began kissing in public, and Perry was a child for the second time. They were not careful with their love: they let it blaze, unafraid of extinguishment from anyone. Her best friend became her beloved, and they spent collective days wondering how it had taken them so long. She smoked a joint with him for the first time and vomited from drinking with him for the first time, before deciding she preferred the former. She didn’t mind staying in during parties, but his excitement every weekend proved to be too infectious to ignore.

Perry cried when she finally purchased her own car, and she ventured further away from the garden than ever before. The guys that wanted to start a band actually had fucked off and gotten some talent, so she filled her trunk with their guitar cases and amps and laughter. Douglas, who now went by Doug most of the time, was always with them, although he played nothing. “I’m the only groupie you assholes are ever gonna have, so you better cherish me while I’m here,” he joked, through the rustling of taco wrappers and marijuana-infused coughs. They began to play at house parties, and then the house parties of the friends of the people that threw house parties. Once, a man with a nose ring gave her a card and told her to give him a call if she ever wanted to talk about touring. Across the room, Douglas saw them talking, and sullenly stormed into another to do his first bump of coke. The night filled itself with accusations, and Perry ripped the card up and threw it out her window on the highway, going eighty-five as tears began welling up, but never spilling, in her eyes.

Douglas would often tell her that he was afraid of other boys. “You’re so perfect,” he said, stroking her hair as they laid naked in his bed, “I know they want to take you for themselves.” He rarely left her side. Even while she was playing, he would stay on the dance floor, scanning silently to see if anyone was eyeing the bassist – now bleach-blonde – for too long. He would spend nights crying to her, telling her that he wasn’t good enough for her. His tears became hers, and she spent hours awake, wondering how she could prove to the boy she loved more than anyone that he was. She found few answers in the shrouded posters that dotted her ceiling. She was the first person he told when he was finally diagnosed. Her solidarity with him filled any room she entered; they walked side by side, fighting his battles as a unit. Her voracity for combat never waned, and it was her turn to tell him how long it took to pick off his scabs.

There were bad days, and then worse ones. By so thoroughly entrenching herself in his war, the defeats were deafening blows to their trust. Parties were no longer fun. Instead, Perry drank to forget Douglas’s sobs, which turned to screams, which turned to threats. It was a game of which they were the only two players, and Perry’s occasional victories were only ever pyrrhic. Douglas preferred a cocktail of opiates, booze, and stimulants to compete with. They brought out his favorite expression, one he only shared when he faced Perry in her car, with her head bowed in shame. “Then I’ll just save you the trouble and kill myself….you stu-pid, fuc-king, cunt…” They broke up for twenty minutes on his eighteenth birthday, before he begged to have her back. She loved him, so she said yes. They had the greatest sex of Perry’s life, and he promised he’d never let her go again. She laid against him afterwards, dreaming of ivy leaves.

But there were also good days, and then better ones. Although he didn’t remember, the Dougie that met Perry atop the garden wall still haunted every inch of her lover’s frame. He would emerge from places that little boys tended to congregate in, waiting patiently in sidewalk shadows, popsicle stops, and perverted jokes on Sundays. On the day of their anniversary, Douglas drove her out to the country to pick strawberries. They would take turns collecting the softest samples from the vines and crushing them between their fingers to form a smeared paint. “Whoever dyes the other the most wins, ‘K?” he proclaimed, mischief hanging heavy in his voice. They spent the day chasing each other through the fields, laughing, red fingers waving threateningly. When he finally scooped her into his arms and kissed her, she could almost imagine his front two teeth disappearing behind his smile again.

“I love you and your gross fingers, Perry Rossi.” His words were the sun itself.

She looked upon this tall boy in faded jeans and worn sneakers, and she instantly knew wonderful and terrible things about herself. She was deeply, maddeningly in love with him, he who that burned so hot he had forgotten what is was like to not be blistered, and she accepted him for everything that he was. She would take the tears, the drugs, the nights too loud and too quiet, the fists in walls – because she had this. This one statement, so simply and frequently uttered between them, yet impossible to ever recreate the meaning of again. She told the boy, whose eyes were remorseful and hopeful and kind and adoring, that she loved him too. She felt her chest swell with pride. This one was hers.

The girl that once tried to read Washington Square graduated high school and decided to take a year off. Douglas didn’t have the grades to go to a good college, so he stayed with his mom and worked at the auto shop up the road. Perry and the remaining members of the band decided to try and get a manager, and she often found herself wondering where she would be if she had kept that card. That July, she drove to his house, certain she would be smiling when she saw him. She entered the home, noting with a delightfully childlike sense of lust that his mother wasn’t there. She opened his bedroom door to find him sitting on his bed cross-legged, shivering. Photographs of them from this year’s prom and last’s peppered the walls.

A small, rectangular mirror sat beside him, next to a few orange pill bottles. She swallowed hard. He turned to face her, slowly. Tears poured from his eyes. “I’m so sorry..” he mumbled.

“It’s…it’ll be okay, baby.” She sighed, smiling sadly. “We can talk to your therapist, maybe speak about rehab—”

“No. Not that. We’re not talking about that.” His words came in harsh, shuddering waves.

“What then, Dougie? What are we talking about?” She held out her hand, as a thick silence expanded between them. Perry would later remember it as the closest she would ever be to the sensation of drowning.

“I can’t be with you anymore.”

Her heart faltered, sloshing in instant miles of mud. She did not understand what was being said to her. She opened her mouth to speak, and another voice escaped that she did not recognize. “But I’ve given you everything.”

“No. No. No. You’ve given me you.” He shook his head viciously. “You’ve given me myself as you see me. I can’t do that, anymore. Your version of me. I’ve been with you so long, I…fuck, I don’t even know if there ever was a Doug.”

Her voice was microscopic.

“Was there a Perry?”

Douglas shrugged. A sage of the modern fucking era.

“You can’t love me. You don’t, really. You just love yourself. You love that you have a mirror…look, like this mirror – in me. But you are not…me. You’ve brought me to places I can’t be at, and I’m done, okay? You can’t control me anymore. You can’t hold me in my own fuckin’ head, trapped by my own thoughts screaming that you’re gonna get sick of me and break…break my heart-!” he gripped his hair, pulling it out in strands. She couldn’t move her arms to stop him. “Maybe Perry is real. But, I don’t know..” the light in his eyes that she knew for so long dimmed, then shut off. “..I just don’t think I can stand what you do to me anymore.”

She fell a trillion stories. Every mended wound exploded outwards at once. Every moment they had shared sped away from her so quickly that she wondered if she had simply imagined it all. That this boy with a faint mustache and an LVHS Drama Club t-shirt was a stranger, and that she was a stranger, and that everything she knew was out of the pages of a book.

Voicelessly, she turned. She took a step away from him. She heard his breath catch in his throat, the way it always did when he said something he regretted. “Wait, Per..no….noo….I didn’t mean it, baby..” he moaned, standing up behind her. He was far away from her now. The overwhelming scent of roses filled her nostrils.

Onto the carpeting of the living room. She allowed it to be absorbed only through her peripheral vision. How much time had she spent here? Months? What type of scab was it?

“Perry, PLEASE!!”

The kitchen. The garden wall. The ivy. Watch me jump down.

“I fucked up, ba-by, please!!! If you leave, I’ll have ruined up the only good thing in my life!! I’ll kill myself for treating you this way! Please, come back, just give me one more chance!!” he screamed so loudly veins she never knew were there crisscrossed his forehead. She didn’t turn to see.

She left him there, shuddering and trembling in his poisonous stupor. The patio door opened and closed without intermission, creaking. She wondered if her drummer still needed help moving into his new apartment. Maybe she’d give him a call. The summer sun hummed peacefully above her, its warmth comfortably blanketing the nape of her neck. Her heart was still numb, but she felt the gaping, open, bloodied wound it held now. It would leave a nasty scab. Perry quickened her pace. For the first time, she couldn’t guess when it would clot.