Blue Rose (A Flowering Novel) Read online

  Blue Rose

  A Flowering Novel

  Copyright 2013 Sarah Daltry

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any written, electronic, recording, or photocopying without written permission of the publisher or author. The exception would be in the case of brief quotations embodied in the critical articles or reviews and pages where permission is specifically granted by the publisher or author.

  This is a work of fiction. Any names resembling any persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental.

  Find Sarah Daltry online at http://sarahdaltry.com

  Published by SDE Press

  Cover by Shoutlines Design

  Also by Sarah Daltry

  Novels

  Lily of the Valley (Flowering)

  Blue Rose (Flowering)

  Bitter Fruits (Eden’s Fall #1)

  Backward Compatible: A Geek Love Story

  Novellas

  Star of Bethlehem (Flowering)

  The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

  The Quiver of a Kiss: The Seduction of Helen of Troy

  Coming Soon

  Orange Blossom (Flowering)

  Ambrosia (Flowering)

  Immortal Star (Bitter Fruits #2)

  Daughter of Heaven (Bitter Fruits #3)

  Scandal

  Primordial Dust

  How Quick Bright Things

  Acknowledgments

  This isn’t a traditional acknowledgments section, because I wanted to say something about this novel in particular, as well as about Lily of the Valley. Jack and Alana have problems. Sure, Lily does as well, but both Jack and Alana have been through some serious traumas. They handle it differently; Jack turns to alcohol and thoughts of suicide, while Alana seeks therapy and takes too much medication. They both tend to use sex to hide their pain.

  In real life, though, these things happen. Suicide is the number three killer of young people in the United States, and rape/abuse statistics are terrifying. The events of this novel are horrific, and Alana doesn’t always handle things all that well, but who would?

  If you or someone you know is either suicidal and/or has been sexually assaulted, please help them. Because I love these characters, but I love living people more.

  Society for the Prevention of Teen Suicide: http://www.sptsusa.org/

  RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network): http://www.rainn.org/

  “This hour I tell things in confidence;

  I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.”

  Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”

  This is dedicated to anyone who has been broken, but has healed or is ready to heal.

  1

  Four. My life has been shaped by four people. Four men, to be more specific. My father, my stepfather, my best friend, and my boyfriend. The first two shaped it in horrible ways, but what I am, who I am, is all because of four men.

  My pants are fraying around the hem and the heel of my left shoe is loose, but I walk into the office exuding confidence. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last twenty years, it’s that weakness will kill you.

  The receptionist looks at me and rolls her eyes. She hates me. I don’t know why she hates me, but she’s not even subtle about it. Once a week, I come in here, and once a week, she makes a big show of how much she hates me.

  “Dr. Mellon isn’t in today,” she says, like I just strolled in out of the blue for a therapy appointment, hoping my psychiatrist would be ready to see me.

  “I know. I have another intake screening. A Dr…” I rummage through my purse, looking for the notepad where I wrote down the name. I should have typed it into my phone, because my purse is just a collection of scraps of paper, but somehow I manage to find it. “Jonkowski.”

  “I see.” Apparently this is upsetting to the receptionist, whose name I still don’t know, because she purses her lips, types something into her computer, and then sighs, quite loudly. “She’s in a meeting. Please have a seat.”

  I’ve been coming here for two years, since I turned eighteen and my pediatrician felt I needed more “adult” treatment. My mom has crappy insurance, so every ten to twelve weeks, I have to go through yet another intake assessment to verify that I’m still in need of services. Dr. Mellon is the fourth therapist I’ve had in two years. Sometimes they take the recommendation of the agency and allow me to continue my path of counseling, and sometimes I have to start over. A lot comes down to the intake appointments, which are basically just another hour of me repeating the same damn story I have to repeat a few times a year.

  I should just write it down. Maybe they could fax my statement over to the insurance company and some entry level representative could decide if I’m actually screwed up, if what happened to me deserves an hour of therapy a week and a perpetually renewable Xanax prescription.

  The receptionist glares at me some more. I’m guessing she’s forty, maybe a little older. She’s overweight, but she isn’t even ugly. Except for her personality. Maybe if she put more effort into being a decent person and less into glaring at me, she would be happier. I flash her a huge fake smile, but she just rolls her eyes and turns back to her computer, muttering something under her breath.

  Anxiety builds inside of me. It’s ironic, being anxious before therapy about anxiety, but I don’t like meeting new therapists. Even if I didn’t have to recount my whole stupid story yet again, I would hate it. I never know if I’ll like them. Some are really nice, but some… I had one therapist tell me, during an intake assessment, that I caused all my own problems by being promiscuous and having no morals. This was after I told him what had happened to me, and why I do what I do. I left crying, anxious, ready to fight. Instead, I went to the bar, got drunk, and called Jack; we ended up fucking in the bathroom, which was great, until I got sick and spent the rest of the night puking.

  I pull out a compact and look at myself. I used a lot of makeup, but you almost can’t see the black circles under my eyes. I need to sleep more. Lately, it’s been getting worse. I know it probably started that night, when Jack told me about that girl, but I can’t tell him. He deserves to be happy. I just need to buy more cover up.

  A chime goes off at the receptionist’s desk and she looks at me like I might steal something, before she heads off into the area where the offices are for a minute. When she returns, she’s with an older woman. This new woman has salt and pepper hair and is fairly pretty, even though she must be close to sixty. Her light brown pantsuit is a little ridiculous, but her smile more than makes up for it. I immediately like her. I’m always wary of female therapists, because even after what men have done to me, women are often worse. Women didn’t shape me, but they blamed me. They made me feel bad about myself. Women didn’t physically place the scars on me, but they contributed to the majority of them. A man only put one there.

  “You must be Alana,” the woman says, her voice hinting at a slight Southern accent. “I’m Dr. Jonkowski, but please, call me Melinda.”

  I take her extended hand and shake it, but my nerves get the better of me. I end up knocking my purse onto the floor from the chair, spilling all the contents inside. Condoms, tissues, my Xanax and my birth control, cell phone, and a ton of random junk slide across the floor. The receptionist picks up the condoms and birth control and she tosses them at me, glaring again. Melinda grabs the rest of the stuff, and my purse, and leads me by the arm into the back hallway. Her touch is comforting, and I already hope that the insurance will let me see her. They probably won’t, because I feel like she might even be able to help me.

  Her office is full of plants. Like, a lot of plants. There’s a futon instead of a couch, with a knitted blanket
over the back of it. I sit on the futon and she takes a seat across from me, in a battered armchair. She has a clipboard on the coffee table between us, but she doesn’t pick it up. I recognize the forms. She needs to ask me a bunch of questions that I have already told countless people before.

  “Would you like some tea before we start?” she asks, even though she’s already seated. I feel a little guilty nodding, but she did offer. “Chamomile okay?”

  “Perfect.”

  She makes the tea and I watch her. I feel like she could be a relative, making tea and just acting like we’re old friends. She’s saying something about the tea cups, about buying them at Windsor Castle, about the queen being in residence during her visit, but I can’t focus. My brain is swimming. Although I appreciate her efforts at putting me at ease, I know what comes next, and I hate telling my story.

  Almost as if she reads my mind, she hands me my tea, sits, and says, “You don’t need to talk about anything you’re not comfortable talking about.”

  “I thought that was why I was here. So you could decide if I warrant treatment.”

  She looks at me. “Do you think you warrant treatment?”

  No one has ever asked me how I feel about it before. I nod slowly. “I don’t know how to be alive,” I tell her.

  “Are you suicidal?”

  I shake my head. Jack is the depressed one. He’s the suicidal one. I have never considered killing myself. I just don’t know how to feel anything. “No, I mean, I just… I’m nothing.”

  “What makes you say that?” she asks.

  “I just take up space.”

  She sips her tea, thinking. “What do think you should be doing?”

  “I don’t know. But I don’t do anything. I just exist. I feel nothing. I am nothing. I envision this life, this entire future, but I realize it’s vague, abstract. I offer nothing.”

  “That’s not true. I can already tell you that you’re a beautiful young woman. Smart, eloquent.”

  I nod. “Beautiful…”

  “What’s wrong with being beautiful?” she asks thoughtfully.

  2

  My panda slippers were well past worn, but my parents told me we couldn’t afford new ones and my birthday was a ways out. The soles were torn, to the point where I was almost barefoot, minus a thin layer of fabric, but I liked them. I really didn’t need to be wearing them anyway, since it was July and a million degrees, but even though I’d be starting junior high in the fall, I still felt like a kid.

  It was ridiculous, too. I was growing up faster than the all the other girls my age and I’d been wearing a full C cup bra for nearly a year now. It was awful. The girls hated me for looking like I did; they called me a slut and told me I was fat and ugly all the time. I didn’t think I was, but I did feel huge next to them. I had curves where they didn’t, and most days, I just wore the biggest clothes I could find to hide them.

  The guys thought it was hilarious. They snapped the back of my bra like it was the best prank ever, and they made up nicknames for me. They weren’t even creative nicknames. Their favorite was Boobs, like it was brilliant and they were witty for thinking of it. But I wasn’t twelve yet and it was torture to be different.

  I wasn’t thinking about them tonight, though. The summers were a respite, a break from the harassment at school. We couldn’t afford summer camp or the local pool or really anything, so most days, I sat at home reading or drawing. My mom had been traveling a lot lately for work, but since my dad was unemployed, she needed the extra income. It was lonely, but no one was making fun of me for having tits and that was basically the highlight of my summer.

  I’d just finished a great book, about a girl with a magical phone that let her call herself in the future and get advice about the decisions she was making. Of course, she kept changing her mind based on the conversations with her future self, sending her adult life into chaos. I loved thinking about myself ten years in the future, wondering what I would be doing, if I’d be married, if I’d be in college and away from here. Although I didn’t have a lot of friends now, I sort of envisioned myself as popular, maybe a cheerleader, maybe with a gorgeous boyfriend. I figured I would keep doing well in school and then I could go to a top university and maybe I’d be a vet or even a lawyer. Something important.

  The light was on in the kitchen, even though it was well past midnight, but I’d stayed up reading and I was thirsty. I crawled out of bed, wearing my tattered nightgown and slippers, and I headed to the kitchen for a drink. I was standing by the sink, sipping the glass of water, when my dad spoke to me from the adjoining living room. I hadn’t even realized he was up.

  “It’s after midnight. Christ, Alana, what are you doing?”

  I turned to face him. He was sitting in the dark, watching something on TV. The sound was off, but the light was flickering through the room. I could just barely make out his silhouette on the couch. It really sucked that we didn’t have the money to buy another TV. We always had to share and we fought a lot about who watched what. Although with me reading and my mom out on the road, I guess my dad could watch what he wanted finally.

  “I was thirsty,” I explained.

  I put down the glass and went to the doorway of the living room. The TV was angled toward him, making him eerie in the darkness. I didn’t know why all the lights were off, but he was always freaking out about wasting electricity. Still, it was kind of creepy to sit in the dark like that.

  “You really shouldn’t walk around dressed like that,” he told me.

  I looked down at myself. The nightgown was old, but I didn’t have a lot of clothes, and I liked this one. It was a little small and I’d grown several inches, so it was really more of a long shirt than a nightgown. It wasn’t too tight around the chest, though, and that was a big plus for me.

  “It’s just you,” I said.

  He didn’t say anything at first, just coughed. Then he patted the couch next to him. “Come here for a minute.”

  I still think about that decision, and I wish I had had a magic phone to call my future self, who would have warned me not to do it. But he was my dad. You don’t grow up afraid of your parents until they do something to warrant it, and when they do, well… then you know why people are afraid of other people.

  I sat next to him and looked at the TV. It didn’t register at first what I was seeing. I was still young and the people on the screen were doing things I didn’t understand. At least not then. But my father saw me look and that was the invitation he needed, I guess. His hand covered my mouth, although I didn’t scream when he ripped my nightgown off. I didn’t even process the fact that he was only wearing his robe until he got on top of me and told me he wanted me to do the things the people were doing in the movie.

  He pulled my underwear off and threw it on the ground, holding my legs open. I knew, as he did those things to me, that nothing would ever be the same for me again. I wouldn’t be a cheerleader. I wouldn’t be a vet. This night, this moment, would forever define me. My slippers fell off as he pushed himself inside of me, tearing me apart, holding my mouth so I couldn’t scream. I didn’t know where to look. I didn’t want to see his face, didn’t want to remember the way he seemed to enjoy it, but I didn’t want to see the TV, either. They seemed to enjoy what they were doing as well, but it was horrible. How could anyone enjoy it?

  “I’m sorry,” my father repeated as he moved on top of me. “You’re beautiful, Alana. You’re just too beautiful to resist.” He grabbed me everywhere, kissed me everywhere. I don’t know how long it lasted. Probably not long, but it felt like forever. In many ways, it was, because when it was over, he wouldn’t look at me, and he told me to go to my room. I was broken, ruined, but even then, I thought it was a mistake, some kind of accident.

  He continued all summer, though. When my mom was out of town, he made me sit with him and watch those movies, while his hands touched me everywhere. He would tell me what things he liked on the TV and then make me do them. He taught me a lot tha
t summer, but they were not things an eleven-year-old girl needed to know, and they were definitely not things she should learn from her dad.

  I thought maybe he would stop when my mom came home from her trips, but it only changed how it happened. He didn’t have the freedom to make me watch those things. Instead, he would wait until she went to sleep and then sneak into my room. Sometimes he got on top of me and put himself inside me. Sometimes he made me use my hands or my mouth. A few times, he touched me or put his head between my legs and did things to me. I never cried. I never said anything. He did it every night for three months.

  It stopped when my mother came home early from a work trip and found him on top of me on the couch, with one of his videos playing. He was still inside of me as she registered what was happening. He didn’t even move, didn’t try to explain. She made him leave, but we never talked about it. It had happened; there wasn’t much that could be done about it anyway.

  That year at school, the taunts got worse. I was the school slut, and now, I couldn’t even argue. Because I really was.

  3

  “You don’t believe that still, do you?” Melinda asks.

  I shrug. “I don’t know. I understand what he did, but if I wasn’t pretty… if I didn’t have tits, if my mom didn’t have to work…”

  “No,” she says. “That was entirely on him. You cannot blame yourself for that.”

  “I don’t blame myself. I just think sometimes people get dealt shitty hands. Mine is pretty bad, I guess.”

  “Is your father the reason you see someone? The reason for the anxiety?”

  “Among others,” I reply.

  “Do you want to talk about them?” she asks

  “Do you have that much time?”

  She nods again, finally picking up the clipboard. “I can already say, Alana, that I will strongly advocate for your insurance to allow you to continue to see me. Would you like that?”