Elizabeth Rosen
When the door of the car opened and Andrea stepped out, news spread like a static shock, a spark to make you shake your hand and curse and laugh at the stupidity and wonder of it. We hadn’t seen her for a long time, maybe the whole school year or more. Even in the purpled darkness of the little secondary spur off the main road that wound along the riverside park, lit only by streetlights at the entrance and exit of the spur, we could feel her arrival.
As she extracted herself from the back seat, she twisted her skirt back into place and swiped fingers through shoulder-length hair. Word went from car to car, group to group. Heads tipped to receive the news. We turned curiously, even if we couldn’t really see from where we leaned against bumpers, beers in hand, scrunchies double-banded around our wrists and Izod shirt collars turned up around our necks.
It was no surprise to us that it was the back door. We knew that she had been sent far from us to an all-girl Catholic school across the river to stop the stories. To stop the behavior that started the stories. It was a thing the kids who parked at the river on Friday nights had talked about, sharing bottles of booze, hopping from car to car to exchange word of what the week had brought us all, passing news, casting glances, always of longing, never of satisfaction.
A boy climbed out of the backseat after Andrea, accepted a red plastic cup from a friend with a shit-eating grin. He carried it gallantly over to Andrea, bowed low and held it out to her, face turned to the ground. It might have been a joke, but Andrea accepted the beer like royalty, without comment or acknowledgement.
Taking a swig, she tipped her head back and gargled and spit off to her side. Those standing close heard the splash on the concrete sidewalk. A scandalized whisper flashed up and down the parked cars, a low rumble of delight underneath. Catholic school had clearly not taken. She stared at us steadily as she drained her cup. Those close enough to see later said there was something fierce in that stare, a challenge not just to the adults who’d sent her away, who tried to rein her back, but to all of us to make something of it.
Two girls she’d been friends with at her old school joined her. Together, they walked down the middle of the street, parked cars on either side. They stopped to say hello, to receive an offer of a bottle, stepping closer to this group or that to hug a former acquaintance, to acknowledge the acknowledgment of her return, to accept a proffered joint, take a hit.
Later, we would discuss her white boots, scuffed but still reflecting the blue light of the streetlamps she walked under. We would wonder amongst ourselves whether she would be returning to the Catholic school when summer ended. Wonder whether the whispers of so-and-so’s cousin joining her there were true. Furtively, we would examine one another’s glorious, ripe bodies and speculate. Could she really care so little for the hushed tittering that preceded and followed her like parenthetical brackets? We wanted to anoint ourselves with such indifference. But that was later, while we sucked on Tic Tacs and painted our nails and discussed the highlights she wore in her hair, too garishly-apparent to our laser-sharp scrutiny.
In the moment, as the warning-call “Cops!” went up, we lowered our cans to the pavement and stepped away so no officer could tie body to drink. As the patrol car rolled slowly through our ranks, armored to repel the hostile glares of teenagers, some few of us—maybe those who’d never had a drink to begin with – would glance in Andrea’s direction and see that she paid no attention to the car rolling past. She was looking instead at the river that carried the cast-off waste of the city out to the gulf, there to sink to the sand and silt of the bottom.
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Colorwise, Elizabeth Rosen is an Autumn. She thinks telling stories is a fine way to stay sane in an otherwise insane time. Originally from the South, she now lives in a small town in Pennsylvania where you can often find her wherever books congregate. Her stories have appeared in Pithead Chapel, North American Review, Baltimore Review, Flash Frog, New Flash Fiction Review, and lots of other places you can learn about here: www.thewritelifeliz.com.