Roses

Roses

(“Sometimes I steal flowers from your garden on my way to the cemetery but today you’ve caught me and have demanded to come with me to make sure the “girl is pretty enough to warrant flower theft” and I’m trying to figure out how to break it to you that we’re on our way to a graveyard.”)

“Well?”

Kyle stared at the fiery young woman. Her white hair billowed like a sheet, strands curling and twining together, matted flyaways blowing around her ears. The wide brim of her sunhat put the majority of her face in shadow, all except the tip of her nose and her grimly set mouth. He looked at the flower in his hand, quivering in the breeze.

“Well, c’mon let’s go, then.” Kyle’s vision uncrossed. What had she said?

“Hm?” Kyle asked. The girl plucked the flower from Kyle’s fingers, tucking it in her hat. She tilted her chin up slightly to look at him, revealing the rest of her nose, and freckles everywhere.

“We’re going to go see the girl you’ve been stealing flowers for. Because no one just steals flowers. So, you’re going to take me to this girl, and I will determine if she’s pretty enough to warrant flower theft. Mmkay?” Kyle frowned.

“Girl?”

“No one just steals flowers, flower thief.”

“I can’t steal it if it isn’t yours.”

“You’re on my property and took that flower. So legally that’s also vandalism. Anything else, flower thief?”

“Just know...If you come with me, you’re not going to find what you’re looking for,” Kyle sighed. He started walking and she ran up beside him.

“What do you mean?” she asked. Kyle just shook his head. “Is she not pretty enough to warrant flower theft?”

Kyle looked off to the side of the road, silence rubbing between the two. Of all the places he could have taken those flowers from, he’d chosen the yard around with the prettiest flowers. Of course, every flower had its thorns; the white- ironically thornless - roses that grew in this girl’s yard also came with an apparently protective owner. There were flowers along the countryside here anyway. But no, he had elected to find the best flowers. Of course he had. Stupid, stupid.

This time, the girl had remained quiet through Kyle’s silence. His thoughts slowly gave way to his present, breathing in and sighing out. The tension hung thickly as the girl waited. Kyle looked up to the sky, cloudy and gray today like it had been the last couple times he had come to “steal” flowers. He sighed once more.

“You keep saying girl.”

“Guys like daisies, everyone knows that. So it has to be a girl.”

“Oh really?” Kyle looked to the girl. She nodded. The straw sunhat still hid the most of her face. Even walking, the girl had kept her hat on. In reality, the sunhat wasn’t strange by any measure, but as it was cloudy, Kyle was taken a bit off guard. She seemed to be keeping her distance still.

“Well, you’re wrong.”

“It’s a guy?” she asked. Kyle grunted his affirmation. “Well. Guess I judged that one wrong.” The girl under the sunhat shrugged. “Does he really like the roses?”

“I don’t know,” Kyle responded lightly. She hummed. Kyle cast a glance at her out of the corner of his eye, frown deepening the corners on his face. Kyle turned his gaze back front. The grass along the side of the packed-down dirt road they were walking was growing trampled, tire tracks in the grass from cars that frequented the area. “Miss, just so you know...We’re not walking into what you think we’re walking into.”

“Well, I was wrong about you being gay, so any other surprises can’t be much worse,” the voice from under the sunhat said.

“I’m not gay,” came the deadpan. The sunhat stopped moving, turning to face Kyle. He caught a quick flash of what could have been brown before the sunhat dipped to cover her eyes again. Annoyance twanged somewhere deep in Kyle’s stomach. He ignored it.

“Then why are you bringing a guy one of my roses?” she asked. Kyle shrugged, resuming his walking. We’re going to a cemetery, miss. I’m not “stealing” your flowers because I like it, or to romance someone. We’re far past that point now. Not that he knew how exactly to say that. “Is he sick, injured? A good friend, maybe? It can’t be a birthday. You’ve been stealing flowers for too long for that.”

“True.” Kyle began to see the familiar signs of the cemetery. The bright, light green started changing to a lush, darker color, thickening and rising higher, scraping to Kyle’s ankles. Kyle began to avoid looking at the girl gardener who had followed him. He studied the thick grass, stomping carefully on mushrooms he found. The thought of anything feeding on his friend made his stomach writhe and boil. “Sick would be the...most...accurate way to describe it, I suppose,” Kyle said carefully.

The girl remained quiet. Kyle itched to look at her, assess her, gather her thoughts, but he resisted, instead picking up the pace. He wanted to get her in there then get her out. He would have time to privately visit later. The gnarled, wrought gateway glared at the two as they entered the cemetery. Looking down, Kyle saw his constant footsteps to the gravestone that captivated him had worn a path through the beaten grass. Kyle followed his path.

The gardener girl cleared her throat once. Kyle jumped six feet in the air at the delicate noise, tensing every muscle in place, effectively freezing. She apologized, the words melting instead of being absorbed. It didn’t register that she had said something to him. Kyle was stuck in a floating bubble of sorrow, enveloped in a sealed fishbowl where he could see, but nothing seemed quite real. Everything was hazy, unreliable. Kyle’s body stopped in front of the grave. His knees made a crunch sound as they landed on dead and dying roses from past visits.

“Elder,” her voice came from behind Kyle, shattering his fishbowl and bringing him, gasping and panting, back into his reality. “Your friend’s name was Elder?” she asked.

“He was my mentor. But yes. Elder.” A flash of white drew Kyle’s vision to the side. The girl had knelt beside him. She plucked the flower from her hat.

“Here,” she whispered. Kyle’s fingers closed around the stem of the rose. A honey-lemon smell lingered in Kyle’s nose even as he laid the flower to rest in front of the headstone. Kyle’s shoulders grew heavy and warm, the honey-lemon smell strengthening significantly.

“I’m sorry I accused you of flower theft,” she murmured. “I didn’t know it was noble-cause flower theft.” Kyle sighed, nodding. “My name is Saj, by the way.”

“I’m Kyle.”