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Your name is Roxy Lalonde. A year ago, you adopted a young girl named Rose. Personally, you can’t think of a finer name for your daughter.
Though, if you were to be perfectly blunt, you never imagined yourself becoming a mother or raising a child. The thought of marriage and reproduction rarely crossed your mind for most of your being an adult. Motherhood simply had not called. However, now that it’s happened, you’re certain the universe was just biding its time before introducing Rose into your life.
Although, if you’re still being blunt, she did not adapt to the change as well as you did. She never had a mother or even any kind of parent before you, and you suspect that, even after a year, she’s still getting used to the idea of an “overlord.” She’s snippy, sarcastic, petty, passive aggressive, quick to backtalk, prone to scathing remarks, inclined to minor acts of revenge, and overall a little mean. Take yesterday for example.
After witnessing her try to wrangle a ball of yarn with a pair of oversized heavy knitting needles, you gifted her a set of much more appropriately sized knitting needles. Two hours later, a knitted infant onesie appeared outside your bedroom door. Attached to it was a note that read: ‘Since you seem to be expecting a tiny-hand baby.’
Never mind that you took the onesie, preserved it in acid-free paper, vacuum sealed it, and stored it in an airtight plastic container that sits in the attic now. Who knows? There might be babies in Rose’s future, and you’d like to be a little more prepared than you were when taking in an incredibly messy, sometimes very smelly teenage girl who treats you like an on-demand taxi to the library.
There is… quite a lot you thought would’ve disqualified you from becoming the guardian of a child. For one is your high-functioning alcoholism. It was never really an issue before Rose, but according to the agent who briefed you on Rose’s case, he assured you that you were algorithmically selected as the best candidate, and who are you to argue with algorithms?
(Actually, you are one to argue with algorithms, it’s your goddamn job.)
That isn’t to say you aren’t trying to be better. You have made leaps and bounds in cutting down your alcohol consumption. It was punishing, a kind of torture you didn’t know existed, long nights fighting cravings, cold sweats, tremors. But you did it. You are going to be the best fucking example for Rose so that she can see change, real change, is possible. You need her to know that you will only ever do what is best for her.
Though, some days you worry you’re doing too much. You have no real idea what a child physically needs, nor do you have any clue how to raise your girl to be a smart, confident, good person. You didn’t exactly have a stand-up example in your own parents, and parenting books are full of horse shit written by conceited, wealthy know-it-alls who have never had to raise a child as special as your Rosie. Right now, you’re throwing spaghetti at walls to see what sticks.
You knew it would be difficult. You knew you’d be making it up most days. But god, it’s been a year and she hardly listens to a word you say. She treats you like her landlord whom she pays rent with awkward dinners and reluctant movie nights—like she has to force herself to be around you.
Most of the time, you attribute it to her still adjusting to her new life. It was a big change for her! You fondly recall the curse she let slip when you pulled up to your house (re: mansion, as she insists).
What little she has shared with you about her time at the agency was mundane and innocuous, but you’re not an idiot. Those stories were deliberate and strategic, well timed, and told with such a monotonous disinterest so as to dissuade you from prying. Not that it’s worked. Not that you’d ever give up so easily.
You’re determined to do this right. Your daughter deserves it.
You are in your office when it happens, typing an email and sipping a green smoothie. You took a huge step back from your position at Skaianet and mostly work from home nowadays. Your employer was oddly understanding of your request to work remotely, but you aren’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. That old man is unpredictable and way kooky.
There comes a small knock at the door. You look up from the computer, a little surprised and even uncertain if you heard that correctly.
Pushing yourself away from your desk, you walk over to the door and open it. On the other side is Rose pinching her nose with one hand and cupping her other hand underneath her blood-soaked chin. Pink tears run down her face, mingled with the blood also trickling from her eyes.
“Holy shit!”
Later, you’ll mentally flog yourself for such a horrible reaction when clearly Rose needed you to be a beacon of calm, but the moment gets to you.
Rose’s face screws up tight and she barely gets out through a closed throat, “I can’t make it stop.”
Blood bubbles and spits around her lips.
You allow yourself another moment to be stunned, but then a sort of instinct you never knew you had kicks in; your child is bleeding and scared.
You put an arm around her shoulder and immediately guide her into the nearest hall bathroom. You instruct her to lean over the skin while you unravel half the roll of toilet paper and begin sopping up blood.
“When did this start?” you ask, tearing off a fresh couple of squares for her to pinch her nose with.
“About ten minutes ago, maybe,” Rose says. Blood gushes out of her nostrils in the few seconds it takes to swap hands. It splatters in the white sink like an awful scarlet Pollock.
“Any pain? Are you feeling dizzy? Do you need to go to the hospital?” You rip more toilet paper off the roll, the skinny cardboard tube spinning rapidly in the holder. You reach under and around Rose’s hand to wipe off her mouth and nose, a fruitless effort. More blood seems to seep out of her very pores. It’s slightly unnerving, not to mention the streams of ruby blood coming from her red, bloodshot eyes.
“No, it’s not that. I don’t need to go to the hospital,” she says, voice pinched and nasally and choked with fear.
You check her pupils, test the back of your head on her forehead, wrack your brain for any scrap of information that might be marginally helpful.
“Rosie, you’ve lost a lot of blood and you’re already anemic. I think we should go to the hospital. Stay here while I grab my keys and- and a box of tissues. Mom’s going to get you some help,” you assure her.
“No, Mom, it’s not that!”
You jerk to a stop in the doorway, having all but prepared yourself to sprint through the house in heels to grab your things.
“It’s… it’s the other thing.”
For a split second you think she’s referring to menstruation, as her language is vague and seemingly purposefully obfuscated. You turn around to give her a confused look.
“You’re not usually this coy, sweetheart, what’s going on?”
She has a moment where she looks at her feet, your feet, then closes her eyes, and you really start to worry. This is very abnormal behavior from her, and just as the thought starts to form in your head, she confirms what you feared.
“It’s the visions. They won’t stop.”
Her voice cracks. Your own heart aches.
You take her into your arms as she starts to cry. Well, cry as best she can with a pinched bleeding nose. You hold her close by the back of her head and let her unleash a wicked torrent of pink colored tears.
Something important to note is that your daughter can see the future. Technically speaking, she can see probabilities and likelihoods of certain events taking place, and she will correct you on that. It was in her file, it was how the agent described her abilities, and it was how you managed to avoid several minor disasters in the past year at her clairvoyant word. But as far as you’re concerned, that’s just seeing the future.
It took a few months for you to believe and come to terms with the truth, but the reality is your daughter has incredible powers, and it’s a terrible burden.
She doesn’t have complete control over her powers, and sometimes, like now, she has these… episodes where dozens of different visions come to her all at once. And she usually hates when you try to intervene and help, but you’ve never seen it get this bad, bad enough for her to come to you and bad enough to start crying.
Between hiccups and gross, wet sniffles, Rose painfully mumbles, “I don’t want to know the future. I just want to be a normal kid.”
You kiss the top of her head before burying your nose in her blonde hair, squeezing her tighter.
“Oh, Rose, sweetie…” you start to say.
“Don’t say anything, just don’t. I already know I’m not normal, I’ll never be normal, but my powers make me special, I should embrace who I am, blah blah blah… fuck…” She gasps sharply, a bit like a sob and a laugh. “I thought saying that sardonically would make me feel better but I just feel worse”
“Well, what do you need me for? You took the words right out of my mouth, smartass,” you risk making a joke, which fortunately lands. Rose laughs for real this time and rolls her eyes, sclera mottled with blood.
Rubbing her arms, you finally pull away and pay no attention to the red Rorschach test on the front of your white dress.
Rose accepts the clean toilet paper wads you push her way. It’s terrifying being the person a child relies on for reassurance, who expects you to know everything and have all the answers. It’s sort of like holding a lightning rod in a thunderstorm. A numbing buzz runs through your nervous system and you’re sick in the stomach, but you won’t fail her. You can’t.
“You know what usually helps pick me up when I need a system reboot?” you ask, thinking fast and talking out of your ass. “I have this special drink I make when I’m hungover. Wait here, I’ll go make it for you. It might help shake your brain loose or something.”
With that, you hurry to the kitchen to prepare your foolproof hangover concoction. It’s never let you down once!
In the bathroom, you carefully pass Rose the shot glass of cloudy liquid and instruct her to take it like a shot, just toss the whole thing back. After skeptically confirming there is no alcohol in it, she grimaces and throws her head back, downing an ounce of miracle cure.
Almost immediately she starts hacking and puckering her face. She stumbles back, body practically convulsing against the sucker punch to the taste buds and spit glands.
“That’s lemon juice! Your hangover cure is lemon juice!” She howls and bounces in place a few times waiting for the sourness to finish their assault on her senses.
You get a kick out of seeing her wrestle with the lemon juice, but your stomach will continue to twist in knots until you learn if it worked or not.
“I’m going to get you back for this,” Rose coughs and pounds her fist on the sink counter a few times. She shakes her head to clear away the rest of the overbearing sensation, but once gone, she pauses. “They’ve stopped. How did you know that would work?”
“Um. You know, I don’t know. Lucky guess maybe?”
Whatever relief she’d been feeling vanishes and she sags forward until her forehead hits the edge of the sink, uttering the teenage anthem, ugh. You somewhat guide her to twist around so she can sit on the toilet. Whether she accepts it or not, she’s anemic and just lost a fair amount of blood.
You leave for a second to grab a hand towel from the linen closet, then run it under some cold water and begin wiping off your daughter’s stoic face.
“Want to talk about it?” you ask quietly after a moment. You turn the tap back on and rinse out the towel. Dark red water swirls down the drain, out of sight and gone forever.
“No.”
You tilt her chin up and wipe down her neck. Halfway through washing her off, you somewhat remember that she’s perfectly capable of doing this on her own and otherwise would have hissed and demanded to clean herself, but strangely she sits on the toilet, calm and fairly docile.
“Are you sure?” you ask again after some time.
“Yes.”
Once Rose is cleaned up, you rinse the towel one last time, then wring it out and drape it over the edge of the basin. You expect her to abscond after that, but to your surprise she sticks close to your side while you walk to the kitchen to put the shot glass in the dishwasher.
“Hungry?” you ask, thinking maybe all that stress has given her an appetite and that’s why she followed you.
“No.” She slides onto a bar stool.
The rush of the river underneath your house fills the silence. For you, it’s long become a comforting background drum that powers your home and makes you feel less alone at night. For Rose and guests, it’s still a bit unsettling hearing the sounds of water rushing past at high speeds just under your feet.
You wipe your hands on a towel, then lean on the bartop, thinking hard about what your fickle daughter might be thinking, but you’d sooner cure cancer or solve world peace before cracking the enigmatic brain of one Rose Lalonde.
She seems more than content to study the sleek white marbling and avoid eye contact. You know you should say something to break the tension, but historically nothing you do is received well. She’s just too… distrustful, and you can’t exactly solve that problem by asking her to trust you. Quite the fucking conundrum you find yourself in, Roxy.
——
Some time passes.
“Can we order a pizza?”
You’re struck by the odd phrasing of her request. Rose is obnoxious about perfect grammar—possibly to spite you and your love of texting lingo, abbreviations, and shorthands—and she more than knows the difference between ‘can’ and ‘may’.
You spend more time pondering the seeming mistake than deciding which pizza parlor is going to get your expensive patronage.
“Have somewhere in mind?” you figure you should ask.
“No?” she retorts, giving you that classic teenage ‘are you an idiot or just stupid’ look. “We’ve never had pizza before. How would I know where my preferences lie if I’ve never tried it before?”
“What? Never had pizza—but we’re New Yorkers! That can’t be right, Rosie…” You cast your mind back to all the pies you ate while in college. You’ve definitely had tons of pizza, you love pizza! It’s so easy to order when you’re drunk. Distantly, a second thought occurs to you about how lucky you are you still have a killer figure after all the junk you ate while deep in the trenches of a double major, grad school applications, and battling your nagging mother about visiting.
“Aside from the fact that we live in upstate rural New York, you keep insisting on trying to make home cooked meals for a growing girl such as me. Although, in some alternate universe that lasagna you made could have been considered pizza…” She mulls that over while you grab the home phone and dial the first parlor that came to mind.
“We’ll start with the classics, then. Would you want a two liter?”
“Grape soda, please.”
You don’t have it in you to tell her most places don’t have two liters of grape soda, so you roam around the first floor out of her earshot while you place the order and bribe the delivery driver with a fifty dollar tip if they’ll pick up a grape soda from the store. By the time you hang up, Rose has moved to the couch and is scrolling through the TV channels. Her shirt is still covered in blood, as is your dress. The fact she hasn’t changed feels odd. Though she’s a surprisingly messy girl, you wouldn’t expect her to be okay stewing in dried blood and bad memories.
You flop onto the couch beside your daughter and drop your head onto her shoulder. She allows this in a rare fit of tolerance. Today is just all sorts of strange, isn’t it?
Rose ultimately lands on the weather channel. A serious-looking brunette solemnly predicts heavy rain showers later tonight with a chance of localized thunderstorms. You don’t miss how Rose tilts her head, more focused on the reporter than the radar map showing a massive yellow and green blob migrating north.
“It’ll be a lot worse than what she’s saying. Flash floods. A tree is going to get struck by lightning and catch fire.”
You consider her vision. “Nah, my money’s on it’ll be bone dry. Not a drop of water, you’ll see.”
She huffs. Rolls her eyes. Regrets having an overbearing, doting and unfunny mother.
“Are you a contrarian for the hell of it?” she asks.
“Yes. And I’ll save you the trouble, it’s absolutely because of my mother.” That earns a humored chuckle out of her. Your smile couldn’t be any wider. “Why don’t you get cleaned up for dinner? Pizza should be here in about thirty minutes.”
“No. I think I’ll wait.”
Your happy mood deflates a little. You wonder if she realizes she’s being a little contrarian herself, always doing the opposite of what you say to spite you, to stick it to the Woman. She’s a funny girl, that way. You debate putting your foot down firmer, but just as quickly you figure this isn’t a battle worth fighting. You’ll at least make sure she’s cleaned up before dinner.
Heading to your room, you peel out of the stained dress and put on some lounge clothes and a robe. You also spend a moment in front of the vanity mirror to touch up your hair, but you pause mid-thought, examining the look in your eye that doesn’t have a name. Stress? Anxiety? Overwhelming fear, crushing doubts? You have a daughter. A daughter who needed you today, and you almost failed her. You totally panicked and improvised everything, when instead Rose should be able to rely on you to have answers for these things. It’s not just how to deal with menstruation cramps or handle a crush; this is showing her how to act under pressure, how to deal with a crisis.
You have to do better than today, Roxy. You’re better than this.
The pizza arrives on time, and you heavily tip the poor teen they made drive out in the heavy rain. He flicks the hood up on his windbreaker and hurries back to his idling car, just as a gust of wind nearly lifts him off the ground Wizard of Oz style. You close the door before anymore rain spills into the entryway.
“Rose, pizza!” you shout, knowing there’s almost no chance she heard you, selectively or not. She wasn’t on the couch when you came back downstairs. You figured she was getting cleaned up, but some minutes go by and there is no sign of her.
With a sigh, you stand up from the bar stool and make your way upstairs to knock on her door.
“Rose? Pizza’s here.”
You count to five. Maybe she’s in the bathroom.
A quick check proves she is not.
You go back to her bedroom and knock again, calling her name while suppressing a surge of worry. Eventually your hand finds the door knob. Conflict wages war inside you. You promised you’d never enter her room without permission. You know what it’s like to have your privacy violated. You’re supposed to be better. But concern wins.
You twist the knob and push the door open. Her room is dark and empty.
Okay, okay don’t freak out. There are plenty of places she likes to hide in. When she first moved in with you, she found whatever tiny space she could fit herself and a flashlight to read.
Though, of course, she isn’t in any of them that you check. That’s when, while hurrying down the ladder to the attic, you spot a pair of missing shoes by the front door.
Your heart drops.
The weather has only gotten nastier since the pizza was delivered. In the very distance, thunder rumbles from lightning strikes just close enough to be concerning. And your clairvoyant daughter decides to take a little evening stroll.
You’ve almost gotten your second foot shoved into your rainboots when the front door opens and in comes a sopping wet Rose. At the very least, she has on a jacket with the hood up, but something still snaps inside you.
“Young lady, what were you thinking!?”
She jumps, actually jumps at the sound of you raising your voice. Her eyes go wide. She shoves off the dripping hood and looks like she’s about to retort, but you cut in, too impatient for snark or disrespect.
“It is storming outside and you didn’t tell me where you were going and- I-I looked everywhere for you! I didn’t know where you were! I thought something had happened to you or you had gotten hurt, but you can’t just do that to me, Rosie, my heart just can’t handle it.” You gasp and force yourself to take a breath before the tears come on. Taking a physical step back, you put a hand over your eyes and force yourself to calm down. Replaying the way your baby girl jumped makes you sick to your stomach. You’re not doing better, you’re not, you have to be better.
There’s the sound of Rose closing the front door. She moves quietly. The cautious hesitancy hangs in the air with each of her actions as she bends down to take off her muddy shoes.
With time, you manage to muster enough strength to be somewhat calmer as you ask in a clipped voice, “What were you doing outside?”
Without speaking, Rose unzips part of her jacket, and a tiny head pops out—a little black kitten, nothing but skin and bones and shivering. Rose focuses her attention on the cat, running a thumb between its ears.
“He was going to die. The rain was going to sweep him into the river. I almost didn’t make it.”
You consider her words. They seem earnest. She would have no reason to lie, especially when she has the proof right in her lap.
“I…” you start but quickly realize you have no idea what to say. “I don’t want to punish you for doing a good thing. Because that’s who you are, Rose, someone with a good heart and a brilliant mind. But you can’t just do stuff like that, you can’t disappear without telling me where you’re going.”
She opens her mouth. You sharply raise a hand.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. It’s a complete mystery. Tomorrow isn’t guaranteed for me. When I couldn’t find you, I didn’t have a way of knowing if I’ll ever see you again. Can- Can you imagine what that was like for me? There was a chance I’d never know what happened- why you—” You choke back a wave of tears. The thought of losing her is horrible and so cruelly vivid in your mind. Dead, or dying, alone and in pain and scared. Doesn’t she get how scary the real world is for everyone else?
You finally glance over at Rose to see she’s also crying, just silently. It takes a lot of effort to cry without making a noise.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” she says and sniffles hard.
You feel like the worst mother in the world for making her cry. It isn’t gratifying. It doesn’t reaffirm some twisted power dynamics between you two. It just leaves this aching hole in your chest.
“You’re okay, dear. You’re going to be okay,” you say and reach out to wipe a tear from her face. She accepts the touch but begins to cry harder.
“How do you know?” she cries, a painful sincerity to her voice. “How can you say that when you don’t know? I don’t even know if I’m going to be okay.”
You pull her into a hug, sandwiching the cat between you both. She removes a hand from where it was supporting the cat to wrap around you.
“A mother just knows.”