*****
The following morning, Rosetta woke with what felt like heavy weights chained to her eyelids. She had lost track of how many hours she had spent tossing and turning, making her bedsheets into a mess, as tangled and confused as her thoughts. It took an obscene amount of effort just to reach her hand out blindly and slam it down over the alarm clock's snooze button. Her heart felt as tired as her body when she flickered between the land of her dreams, all soft filters and unspoken beauty, and the real world, harsh and ugly. Where the land of souls fit in, she might never know. It was somewhere in the in-between, somewhere in the cracks of a fracturing dam, somewhere between swimming and drowning, and somewhere that was quickly blurring what Rosetta considered real and false.
When the alarm sounded again, Rosetta dragged herself upright and let her feet slam gracelessly onto the cool wooden floor as she rubbed the grogginess from her eyes. Her head ached, and her neck was sore—she must have slept on it wrong. She sighed as she tried to banish the memories of her dreams from her thoughts; they were so full of a cognac hue and Italian accents that they were almost too vivid to stomach.
Robotically and methodically, she fell into her morning routine. Get up, drink some water, get dressed, sling a bag over the shoulder, and be prepared to face the world when it is time to step out the door. As Rosetta pulled a maroon beanie over the half-tamed explosion of hair on her head, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and stared for a moment. She did not look any different after meeting Luka properly, but exteriors could be deceiving. She felt changed, like a house that had been recently sold and rearranged to shelter new lives, in a way that she was not sure she could get used to. The days of schoolgirl crushes were long since past, but Rosetta was not sure how else to describe the infatuated thoughts slowly overtaking her mind. After a moment or two more, she realized there was, perhaps, one minor change in her appearance—her eyes were just the slightest bit brighter with innocence. She almost cringed at the thought, remembering how it felt to have such shining, untainted innocence obliterated. That, she reminded herself, is never happening again. Innocence, she had learned long ago, was not just for little children. It was for anyone who wanted optimism, who searched for sunny skies instead of accepting that rain would always be coming sometime in the future, and who wanted to conquer the world with peace. Precious delusions, truly. But the unfortunate people with red welts on their faces from reality's stinging wake-up call were forced to adopt more idealism, more pessimism, more realism. Innocence and optimism may have driven innovation, but the low-lying realists were the ones walking through the trenches and making it possible, all the while peddling skepticism to one another. One force could not exist without the other, to be sure; it was just impossible not to wish that one was above the clouds again after they spat one out and cast them to the rock-solid ground below.
Rosetta slung her backpack over her arm and headed for the door, hoping that the brisk walk to her university in the morning air would help wake her up, or at least help her clear her head. To an extent, it did, passing all the familiar buildings and areas of the city bristling with nostalgia. Like the playground she had toddled off to with Rachel in tow nearly every night when they were finally old enough to trek through small portions of the world on their own, it gave her a sense of peace that was hard to come by as of late. Tragically, whenever she passed a possible iteration of her future, something cold and unforgiving gripped at her throat and forced her to tear her eyes away. She watched couples snuggled together on wooden benches with trepidation, uncertain about whether or not she would ever solidify herself a future with someone she could find happiness forever. When she saw a golden-haired teenager tuck a daisy behind the ear of the girl at his side and press a gentle kiss to each of her olive-toned cheeks in turn, a tiny spark of hope flickered in her chest. Conversely, she felt outright fear when she was pushed out of the way by sour, bitter-looking, middle-aged people that careened through the streets at breakneck speed with perpetual frustration and anger written over their faces. That was a future version of herself that Rosetta would never accept, because she knew it was a version of herself that she could never love, no matter how necessary or inevitable all the pent-up rage might have been.
"Whoa, you look like somebody stole your puppy!" Rosetta's head whirled toward the direction of the familiar voice, immediately seeing Lily pulled up to the curb beside her in the shiny red car that had cost her a near-fortune—she had literally been relying on a casual date a day to get a solid meal in, and had managed it for as long as she had needed to. Well, Rosetta had fed her once or twice, but that was a tradition of theirs, regardless of what the monetary situation was. "Can I interest you in a stylish ride to the glamorous place that is our prison?"
"College is not a prison," Rosetta argued lightheartedly. She was relieved to see Lily's familiar, sharp, bright, heavily made-up face. The emerald eyes peering out at her from behind thick, dark lashes and eyeliner that had been applied with a generous hand felt like a safe haven from the complicated storm that had brewed in her head overnight. Rain was building up behind Rosetta’s eyelids, and she was beginning to worry that it might start to slip out. "We have to pay to get in, and most of the inmates would love a solitary little room if it meant they could take a nap."
"You're not wrong, I guess," Lily grinned, "but that makes it all the worse. Get in, Beanie."
"Beanie?" Rosetta parroted incredulously as she rounded the front of the vehicle and slid into the leather passenger's seat. The door slammed shut behind her with a satisfying thud.
"I thought it was cool! Isn't it cool to use nicknames when you're calling out to a friend from behind the wheel? I saw it in a movie once; it looked cool," she defended. Upon the sight of Rosetta's doubtful expression, she sighed in what appeared to be defeat. "Fine. Not cool. Now," she chirped, seeming eager to change the subject, "what is the matter with Rosie?"
The nickname sounded harsh to her ears now—too innocent, too pure for the thick-skinned survivor she had morphed into, and too much like who she wanted to be somewhere deep within her soul. When she had made the jump from naïveté to realism, she was not sure, but it was a leap she wished she could take back. Still, like the footprints leading up to a snow angel, it was impossible to perfectly replace them without a clean slate, and they were a constant reminder that life made its puppets take steps toward things they thought would be beautiful, only to find that the steps used to march toward loveliness marred the beauty all along.
"I'm fine. You?" Rosetta tried to brush it off.
Lily scoffed as she stepped on the gas pedal. The sleek car hummed to life and streaked onto the road. "That is grade-A crap, Rosetta," she said with a roll of her eyes. Then her expression softened. "Is it your mom? Is everything okay?"
Rosetta curled her arms around herself protectively and slouched into her seat, wanting to be as small as possible. "No, it's not that," she said. "I'm fine. It was hard, but it's hard every year, you know what I mean?" A twinge of guilt tugged at her heartstrings, and she added, "I shouldn't be complaining. It's so much harder for Rachel. She spends so much time with Dad, and she took him there just like every other year. I think it destroys her, seeing him so far away. She doesn't know how to care about someone without pouring herself completely into their existence."
"Few people do," Lily said wisely. "Either way, someone else's pain doesn't negate yours, Rosie."
Rosetta shifted awkwardly at that. It was not a mentality she had been able to grasp yet. Her heart seemed bound and determined to outright deny her own problems if someone else was worse-off.
"You'll never be happy if you live thinking that you can't deal with your own life before everyone else’s is sorted. None of us ever really gets sorted. We're all just pretty messes," she sounded thoughtful as she spoke, "and, in my case, gorgeous messes with extra sequins."
"And, in my case…"
"Don't even say you're not pretty," Lily cut her off. "But sequins aren'
t your thing, are they? You're more of a stardust girl, aren't you?"
"Flattery will get you nowhere." Rosetta managed a genuine smile that felt like the first one in ages. It was refreshing, like a scalding-hot shower after a bone-chilling day in midwinter. She turned her face toward the window and stared at the dewdrops that had collected on the glass, presumably in the early, misty, bleak morning. It struck her that this morning was the second time she had experienced the particular dawn of that particular day. It had been bright and shining in Vogogna, brimming with all the colors of autumn and all the vibrancy of fireworks exploding across the sky. Over Albany it had been almost tearful in nature, decorating blades of grass with little gems of water and mimicking the subtle gracefulness of a bird swooping through the air, piercing the veil of silence with its sweet song. There was something strangely liberating and lovely about both iterations of the same day, and something strangely right about having seen them both.
"Trust me, I know," Lily jested. She turned onto the street of their university and headed for the parking lot. "Seriously, what's the deal? I'm not letting you out of my car until you tell me, so unless you want to miss the class that you're paying so much for..."
Rosetta threw her hands up into the air in defeat. "Ugh, all right, fine," she groaned. "Why do I let you give me rides? It always ends up in some sort of interrogation!"
Lily laughed, and her head fell back against the seat as she did so. "Because you love me. Now, spill! You seriously look like somebody stole Christmas! Or, even worse, the candy canes!" Rosetta gnawed indecisively on the nail of her left thumb, and Lily pushed the hand away from her lips with a good-natured groan of disapproval. Rosetta mumbled a thank you out of gratitude; Lily had been trying to help her break that habit for weeks now.
"Okay, well, here's the 'deal'," Rosetta said, though coughed might have been a little more accurate a term for the noises she made. The words were rough and stuck uncomfortably to the back of her throat and the roof of her mouth, somehow balking at the concept of being spoken. "It's, well...I can't believe I'm about to say this, but it's about a guy, Lily." She waited for some sort of gaping expression or teasing remark, but none came. Perhaps Lily could sense how distressed the situation was really making her. All her usual playful banter and confident snark were gone, leaving nothing but a quiet listener to sit before her. "Look, you know how I told you about that weird out-of-body experience I had a while ago?"
"Vaguely," Lily nodded. "That really freaked you out, didn't it? What does that have to do with anything?" she gestured impatiently for Rosetta to continue.
"I'm getting there," Rosetta said chidingly. "It did freak me out at first, yes. But then I got curious. You know how I am, Lily. If I get curious about something, I have to learn about it, and I learn by experience, and..." Realizing that Lily was far from amused with her rambling chatter, Rosetta collapsed against the cool leather seat beneath her and rubbed at her temples. "Sorry. What I'm trying to say is that I did it again."
"You what?"
"It wasn't a nightmare, Lily," Rosetta plunged into an explanation before all the confusion on the tip of Lily's tongue could spill out in the form of jumbled speech. "I researched it, and it's called astral projection. It means that your soul is literally apart from your body for a little while, and you can go see things. You can see the world, Lily."
Lily was so silent for a moment that it was almost painful. "Your soul separating from your body?" she repeated incredulously. "Rosie, I don't mean to be a downer, but that sounds kind of impossible. I mean, you, of all people, should know that all that paranormal stuff is a bunch of explainable scientific phenomena. You must be dreaming."
Rosetta rolled her eyes. "I didn't tell you so you could act like my…" The word ‘mother’ almost slipped out before Rosetta caught herself and rebalanced the cool, personable nature of her tongue. "…professor. I was sure that it had to be a dream at first, too. But there are so many accounts of it, I thought there might be some truth behind it, so I followed these steps I found online to induce it. It worked."
Lily looked like she wanted to continue arguing over whether the experience was true soul travel or simply a series of bright, shining dreams, but Rosetta was far from in the mood for skepticism, and Lily seemed to pick up on that.
"Nobody can see me when I'm traveling like that, Lil. Other souls usually look like a weird mist, and people in their bodies look normal. None of them can interact with me, as far as I can tell. Until..." she trailed off, remembering the pink of the cherry blossoms, the pink in her cheeks, and the pink reflecting in the water, forming a moving mosaic around Luka's reflection in the hue within which infatuation is hidden. "I met someone. Luka, that's his name."
"Luke?"
"No, it's Luka. It's Italian, I think," Rosetta said. "I saw him once, but then I had to come back to my body." Rosetta decided to omit the fact that it was technically Lily's fault that their initial introduction had been thwarted by her incessant knocking. The last thing Rosetta wanted was for her best friend to suspect that she was fabricating an elaborate story of dreams and uncertainty just to guilt-trip her for waking Rosetta up at such an inconvenient hour, because that notion could not have been farther from the truth. "Last night, I looked for him again, and I found him. We talked for a little while. He was really nice, he gave me space, and he asked to meet me again."
It appeared that, presumably for the sake of the conversation, Lily had suspended her disbelief at the notion of souls leaving bodies for a midnight roam over the spiritual surface of the world. "Okay, well, what'd you say?"
"That's just it." Rosetta was starting to bite her nails again. "I agreed! Why did I do that, Lily? I don't want a relationship! I barely know him, and I don't think I want to like him, but it's not that easy. You should hear him. He's like a living, breathing poem, or metaphor, or something pretentious like that. He's different from anyone I've ever met." She groaned. "Now, I can't decide what to do! Do I go meet this guy? Or do I just ignore him and pretend it never happened? I keep thinking about him, and I think this is what a crush feels like."
"Fascination? A desire to be close to him? You find yourself questioning whether you'd really choose chocolate over a dude because of him?" Rosetta nodded at every question. Lily pursed her lips, looking half-amused and half-concerned. "Oh, yeah, Honey, that sounds like a crush to me."
Rosetta frowned. "That's what I was afraid of. I can't be in a relationship, Lily!"
"Okay, well, skipping over all the parts where this sounds totally crazy and impossible, and how I literally would not believe anyone telling me all this if it weren't you," Lily said, "why not?"
Rosetta faltered, trying to put all the reasons buried deep behind her fears into words. "Well, for one thing, I hardly have the time, especially when it comes to when I'm supposed to be sleeping. What if my grades drop?" she questioned.
"If you're already dedicating time to this astral projection thing, it sounds like it won't cost much time from your schedule," Lily pointed out.
"Well, that's great, except there are plenty of other reasons why I shouldn't put myself at risk of a relationship. I'm too responsible; I'd be like a second mom if I dated someone who would leave in a heartbeat, anyway. Not to mention that I have so much baggage! I mean, how do you tell someone that you kept your family off the streets and you went hungry so they could eat after your Mom died and your Dad fell into some sort of consuming mental void?"
"You told me," Lily said, "even if it did take a while. It's just a matter of trust." Rosetta opened her mouth to argue, but nothing sensible came to mind. "Look, can we just call this what it is? You're scared of getting your heart broken again, especially since it could get broken in an entirely new and scary way. This isn't about responsibility or baggage, it's about you wanting to keep yourself totally safe forever."
"Well, so what if I do?" Rosetta snapped, more harshly than she had intended to. "It's not a bad thing to want to be—"
"I didn't say
there was anything wrong with it," Lily interrupted, looking sorely displeased that Rosetta had spoken to her so unkindly.
"Sorry. I know you're trying to help, and I'm sorry," she apologized.
"It's chill," Lily forgave without a second thought. "The point is, it's not good if all that safety comes at the expense of every risk you ever have the chance to take. Forget the specific case of Luka, and put it into perspective. You're telling me that you don't ever want a relationship because it might break apart one day. Do you really think that's sustainable, in the long run? I mean, are you okay with being single your whole life?" The question was not cold or offensive, but genuine.
"I don't know. Maybe?" Rosetta shrugged. Hesitance was shredding her insides and leaving her anxious and worried. "But that opens up a whole new cesspool of problems!"
"Ew. Cesspool. Gross word." Lily said.
Rosetta rolled her eyes.
"Sorry, I'm listening."
"The thing is...assuming I dare to even think about a relationship, a point that I am nowhere near yet, for the record...what if I don't pick the right person?" When Lily did not speak, Rosetta presumed it was because she was waiting uncharacteristically patiently for an explanation. Rosetta could not deny that Lily's inexplicable tenderness with her was something that she appreciated immensely. There were few people Lily seemed to have any intention of sheltering and caring for, but Rosetta was one of them, and it usually felt like she was near the peak of Lily's priorities. It had taken her a few years, but she had slowly grown accustomed to feeling grateful for that instead of feeling guilty. "I mean, what if I pick someone when they seem right—maybe even perfect—and find out later that I made the wrong choice? What if I put years of my life into this and get bitterness out of it? What if it's all fake and I'm suddenly alone one day?"
Lily's eyes were full of compassion and understanding. "I get it," she consoled gently. "You're scared. It's natural to be scared." She paused, and patted Rosetta's hand comfortingly. "You've been through a lot, Rosie, and I think maybe you're just running from anything that might drag you back to the way you were after your mom...you know. And maybe, subconsciously, you're afraid of turning into your dad one day and letting loss take you over. But don't you remember that you're stronger than whatever grief might come your way?"
Rosetta remembered being forced to her knees in the graveyard by the spirits of the past as they grappled for her throat and squeezed tears from her eyes. She remembered having the resolve and control to keep her head up whenever someone else could see. She remembered being sad, being broken, being lost. She did not remember being strong.
"I'm sensing doubt," Lily said. "You are, Rosie. You are the strongest woman I know! Whatever you want to do, I'll support you, okay?" Rosetta nodded, feeling tears of gratitude building up behind her eyes. "If it were me, I guess I'd go meet this Luka dude. You don't have to be in love with him, you know. You can just be friends at first, or forever, if you'd feel safer that way. If he's the right kind of guy, he'll respect that."
Rosetta swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded. She felt marginally better about the whole thing, a feat that only a best friend could manage. Lily had a gift for spinning chaos into golden advice, making the mess of Rosetta's life seem organized—even methodical—on rare occasion. Maybe trust could come in steps. Maybe love could be controlled. Maybe she could reign in the madness, the grandeur, the silky, quiescent affection of her dreams and her adventure and let it all feel just a bit more sensible.
Was that what she wanted? Of course it was. Or maybe not. Maybe she wanted something nonsensical and glorious, something fiery and explosive, something that blazed with the flames of fantasy, and something that tore through her like a shooting star through the canvas of the sky. Maybe that was what she wanted, no matter how much it would hurt. Where was she to draw the line between bruising with repression and bleeding with expression?
"Now, want to tell me some more about this astral what's-it-called on the way in? I'm still skeptical," Lily shrugged, "but maybe I can be convinced."
Funny, Rosetta thought, that the one thing in my life that was crazy a day ago now feels like the only thing I understand. Dreams could make people feel strange things, and reality could make them do unthinkable ones. Upon that realization, Rosetta became more than a bit fearful of what the middle ground was capable of.