Caroline's Roses

For most people it would have been a lazy Summer afternoon, but not for the two children running down the hill to the lake. Alex ran a lot faster than Carrie, so he was always looking over his shoulder with a huge grin on his face to make sure she was still right behind him. The little girl was laughing, her wavy hair flying behind her as she followed Alex.
They stopped short just before they got to the large rocks that created a sharp drop from the edge from the start of the forest to the water. Alex held out his hand to make sure his friend didn't topple over the bank, but Carrie would be a lot faster to come to a safe stop than he would.
"I have to tell you something," Alex said as they tried to catch their breaths, both of them breathing heavily. For whatever reason, as soon as they were allowed back outside, they took it upon themselves to run out of view from Carrie's house as possible, as if their parents were going to call them back in at any time.
"What?" said Carrie, strolling to an edge in the rock that she and Alex often sat on before and after their adventures into the woods. A large tree sat a few feet away from the rock, where Alex had carved 'Alex and Carrie's spot' last Summer with the swiss army knife he 'borrowed' from his father.
The seven-year-old boy turned serious and moved to sit next to his friend, looking out over the lake. "My parents were talking about leaving again last night," he said without looking at her. "I think they were looking at houses this time."
Carrie didn't quite understand the concept of moving. She just knew that it meant her best friend since before she could remember would be leaving her soon and they didn't know if they would ever see each other again. "Why would they wanna do that?" she asked.
"I guess they wanna move to some dumb city somewhere. It's stupid if you ask me. I don't wanna leave, Carrie," Alex whimpered. "I wanna be here to go apple picking in the fall. I bet I'm tall enough to reach the highest apples if I climb!"
The little girl stared at her scabbed knees. A lump swelled in her throat, but this one hurt more than when you fell off your bike onto hot pavement. This was a whole new kind of hurt and she didn't like it one bit.
"Hey, don't cry," said Alex, slinging an arm around her shoulders. "Maybe I'll come back and visit!"
"But who am I gonna play with? You're the best adventurer. I'm too scared to go all the way around the lake by myself. I'm a scaredy cat and you know it," Carrie admitted, a tear rolling down her cheek.
The boy frowned, looking back at the water for a moment, and then turning back to her. "Nuh uh. You're plenty brave. You wanna know a secret? I'm too scared to do it without you, too."
"No you're not," Carry challenged, but a small smile made its way onto her face.
Alex nodded, "There it is," he said. "Carrie - no, Caroline - you're the bravest person I know." He used her full name, one that had been too hard for him to say when they were three and playing with firetrucks. The nickname had stuck since then, but he called her Caroline like her mother did when she wanted her to act like a "big girl".
"You're the best, Alex," Carrie said, reaching over to wrap her arms around her friend in a hug.
----
"Carrie."
Alex looked at her with both confidence and unease, a far cry from his typical out-going, class-clown demeanor. Caroline stared back with wide eyes. It took a minute for everything to click.
"...Alex?" she said after a moment, her voice cracking from the defensive tone she once had to something much softer. "Oh my God."
"Carrie," he said again, as if saying her name was like taking a cool drink of water. "Wow. I didn't even realize at school. I guess I was half expecting a six-year-old."
The girl swallowed, softening herself, but still staring at the teenage boy she once knew a long, long time ago. She could hardly believe it, but she could still make out the childish smirk and the messy hair amongst the muscles and five o'clock shadow that framed the sparkling eyes that she could never forget.
"Can I hug you?" he asked, a question that nearly broke her to pieces.
It took her a minute, but she nodded and Alex stepped forward timidly to pull her closer. Instead of forests and apple orchards, he smelled like cologne and shaving cream. Instead of being puny, his arms felt strong and his chest and shoulders were much more built than when they had last seen each other.
"I'm sorry," Caroline said as she pulled away. "This is kind of a lot to take in right now."
"Tell me about it," said Alex, cocking half a smile.
"It's been so long. We were just about to go into the second or third grade..." she trailed off; she couldn't seem to break her stare from him. "Everything was so different after you left." the realization of the truth behind her words hit her like a tidal wave as they tumbled out of her mouth. For a moment, the feelings that had ebbed away ten years ago came rushing back – her despair when Alex didn’t come over one day; the crushing sting when she realized that his house was completely empty. The sinking feeling that she wouldn’t see him ever again.
The boy nodded, tilting his head to the side. "I wasn't sure if your family would still be here. I had to check. I never forgot about you, Carrie." He shoved his heads into his pockets, looking at the ground with the smile still on his face. "How are they, by the way?" he asked.
"Who?" said Caroline.
"Your parents," answered Alex, looking back up at her.
She pursed her lips and crossed her arms. "Dead," she said bluntly, a little surprised he didn't already know.
"What?!" he said, eyes snapping open. "Caroline, oh my God, I had no idea. I'm so sorry," he said swiftly, moving closer to her again. "What happened? How long? I'm sorry. Is it just you and your grandmother?"
The girl sighed and hugged herself tighter. She led him to the stone bench and sat staring into the goldfish pond. There were lilac bushes behind it. They bloomed purple and white in May, and Caroline knew it was going to be a good year for them. You would be able to smell the bushes from feet away, the clusters would be so large and so healthy.
"It happened when I was in the seventh grade. It was… I guess they took their own lives, or at least that's what the medical examiner ruled it. I found their death certificates one day. I'm not sure if I believe that all the time. But that's what happened. I was pretty removed from all of that."
The explanation hung in the air like smoke. Alex looked like he wanted to cry when he glanced up at her. "I'm so sorry," he whispered.
"It's alright. It was a while ago," Caroline replied. She stared into the pond, realizing there still so much that Alex did not know, that she didn't want to think about right now. "Tell me about Manhattan," she said, dying to change the topic.
---
School the next day was strange. Caroline tried to go about her day as normal, but her head was still spinning from the afternoon before. Alex and Caroline stayed in the garden well past dinner time, until her grandmother called her in to ask if she was alright. He told her all about his life in Manhattan, how he never lost his sense of adventure, how he started learning to play the guitar and singing. In turn Caroline told him all about how she loved to learn, to read and to garden, and that she still liked to take walks to the edge of the lake from time to time and go apple picking in the fall. She couldn’t say it felt like old times, but she couldn’t say it was awful.
She went through her classes in a blur, barely able to pay attention. All she could think about were all the things she remembered from being a little kid – the lake, the time Alex taught her skip stones, all the things surrounding the death of her parents.
When lunch time rolled around, instead of going to the library to meet with her friend Remington like usual, she went to the cafeteria to see if Alex would seek her out. In the small amount of time that he had been going to her high school, he had already found a group of friends that he fit right in with. Whether they knew him from kindergarten or first grade was irrelevant; they got along and that was that.
He was seated at a table full of kids that were either in the Marching band or trouble makers. Musicians and punks; he blended right in. When he noticed her standing in the doorway, she smiled and waved and he almost immediately got up to talk to her.
"Come sit with me," he said, motioning for her to follow him back to the table. The gesture was almost too familiar it almost triggered another flashback to the two of them running to the lake in the summer, or the orchard to see who could reach the highest apples (it was always Alex).
"Meh," Caroline answered. "Not really my group of people. I usually just go to the library, but..." she trailed off, shrugging her shoulders.
"But what?" Alex pressed, smirking a little.
"I don't know," Caroline smiled. "I thought I would do something different."
"You thought you'd come check up on me, eh?" Alex teased. "Come on. I'll introduce you to everyone, it'll be fun. Unless you know all these people already - I guess you've been here a lot longer than me," he admitted.
Sighing, Caroline shrugged and began walking with him towards the table. "Hey, move over," Alex said to Jack, making the black-haired boy scoot over to create enough room for two people to sit next to each other.
"This is my friend Caroline," Alex said to everyone at the table, who shot him a raised eyebrow.
"We know," Said Rian. "She actually goes here."
Alex rolled his eyes and flipped him off, and Caroline just smiled and squared her shoulders.
"Since when did you make nice with the English girl?" Jacked asked, resting his chin on his hand and reaching for a carrot stick out of a bag that was placed in front of him. "I thought you two had a little scat after class yesterday."
"Turns out Caroline is my long-lost aunt. Crazy, right?" Alex joked, and everyone around him rolled their eyes - including Caroline.
"We used to know each other a long time ago," she said seriously. "He moved to the house that's across the street from mine."
Another kid at the table, Zack, looked up. "Where's that?" he asked.
"Orchard Lane," Alex jumped in. "Try not to stalk me, ok Zack? I know you have a developing crush on me, but my heart is already taken."
At his words, Caroline felt a small happiness inside her start to fall. Did he have a girlfriend from back home? For some reason, the little girl inside of her felt a little jealous. She had always been the center of attention - but they grew up, obviously. She shook the feeling off. It was reminiscent of when Remington got a girlfriend last year.
"So you guys knew each other?" asked Jack.
"Yeah; our parents were friends when we were kids," said Caroline. "So naturally we just played together all the time until he moved away. Then he came back a dimwit so I didn't realize it was him,"
"Burn," said Rian, grinning at Alex.
Caroline smiled. These were people she didn't normally interact with, but it was nice sitting someone different. She kept her circle very small, not because she wasn't popular, but because she was a homebody, and she was good with catching up with a friend for coffee in town.
"Hey, so my house tonight?" Zack piped up. "My parents will be out of town so we can be as loud as we want."
"Yeah!" Jack and Alex said in unison, both of them almost bolting up and smiling at everyone at the table. They looked at Rian, who nodded and returned the grin. "I'm stoked dude," said Alex.
Caroline looked at him quizzically, and Jack leaned over, in front of Alex's chest to say "Oh nothing, we're just getting together for an orgy tonight. Alex usually screams the loudest so its best to do it when someone's parents are out of town, you know?" he joked.
Caroline laughed and shook her head. "That sounds reasonable," she said.
"Band practice," Rian stated, shaking off the girl's confusion.
"You're starting a band?" she asked, and Zack and Alex both nodded. "What kind of music are you going to play?"
"The kind that girls want to take their clothes off to," said Alex, and everyone else at the table laughed. "But either way, you want a ride home from school? My parents let me take the car."
"Sure," Caroline nodded, smiling at him. Usually she walked to and from school, considering their street was only twenty minute or half an hour walk away from the high school. She looked up from the lunch table, craning her neck to see the crowded cafeteria, seemingly at the same time as a few other students as a lone, slender boy strolled across the floor with hands in his pockets. Dyed black hair and dressed in dark clothing, pale as the moon, Remington spotted Caroline and waved.
"I'll catch up with you later," Caroline said to Alex as she rose from her seat. He nodded and turned to look behind himself as well, looking Remington up and down. "Oh," said Caroline, looking at him. She waved Remington over. "This is my friend Remington," she told the table as the boy reached them.
"Sup man," said Rian and Zack at the same time. Jack nodded and smiled at him, but Alex got up and leaned against the the bench to shake the boy's hand.
"I'm Alex, I think we have a class together," Alex said warmly as he took his hand.
"Nice to meet you. I was wondering where you went," Remington said to Caroline, being completely short with Alex. "I don't get any service in the library, you know."
Caroline shrugged, feeling a little bad for not even thinking to send her friend a text. "Sorry," she murmured. "By the way, that's Rian, Zack and Jack," she said, pointing to each person in turn.
Remington nodded and smiled back. This was why she liked Remington - as cold and as dark as he appeared, he was one of the warmest, friendliest people she knew. He just preferred sitting in a quiet library as opposed to a noisy, bustling cafeteria during their lunch period. They had latched onto each other early on in middle school, when Remington transferred from Portland, Maine.
The bell rang, signaling the end of the break the students got in the day. The cafeteria was inundated with bodies going for the doors as students groaned or yelled, throwing their trash away and trudging back to class.
-------
Looking back on it, it probably would have been a good idea to at least ask Alex what color his car was, let alone what he drove. Caroline thought all of this as she stood a few feet outside of the large entrance to the high school, looking around and holding her hair out of her eyes as other students sped by. In an attempt to not look nearly as awkward, she pulled out her phone to stare at, hoping Alex might have sent her a text.
A few seconds later, however, he pulled up along the curb in front of her in a old green Jeep with a large grin underneath a pair of Ray bans. "Hope in!" he said through the open window as he moved a sweatshirt to the back seat.
Caroline smiled back at him and pulled the door open, stepping into the (mostly) clean Jeep and slamming the door.
"HI!" Jack yelled from the back. "Alex and I decided since you're the lady you get the front. This is a rare occurrence for me, so I hope you appreciate it," he said boisterously.
"Thanks," Caroline said, laughing a little at his silliness.
"What do ya think? I want my old man to put it in my name. I drive it around all the time anyways," said Alex. "Especially here. Not much use for a car in Manhattan."
"Nice," Caroline answered, looking out of the window as her school rolled by, eventually turning into the suburban scene surrounding it. "I couldn't imagine living in such a busy city."
Alex shrugged, draping his arm over the steering well and resting his other elbow on the frame of the open window. "It wasn't bad, I guess. There was always a lot to do, but you couldn't really run out in the middle of the street and raise hell at all hours of the night. It sucked in the winter time especially. I hated it growing up because I was so used to running around in the woods all day - to go from that to suddenly not even having a backyard was hell," he explained.
"What was that like?" Caroline asked. "Moving to a totally new city like that. Were you the toughest kid on the playground?"
"You know it," Alex scoffed. "No one wanted to mess with me. For real, it took me a while to actually make friends. I couldn't really come out of my shell or whatever."
He was cut off when Jack stuck his head in between the two seats, a weird look on his face. It was evident he didn't have a seat belt on at the time, so Alex break checked himself to make him fly forward, nearly ending up in Caroline's lap with a yelp.
"So," he said when he regained his balance and composure, "What did you guys get up to when you were little kids running around in the woods then? Were you little shitheads?"
"I definitely was," said Alex. "I'm the OG cool teen; sneaking out of the house since like age 6 to avoid nap time."
"It's true," Caroline chimed in. "He would show up in the backyard and I would come out too and we'd go out to the orchard and end up falling asleep anyways."
Her mind flashed back to those days when it would be early June and the petals were still falling off the trees; she and Alex would be laying at a far away trunk, tucked neatly out of sight from the house. They would be cloud gazing in the shade when they dozed off, their tired bodies worn out from not getting enough rest that day.
"Alex used to have the record for the most time outs in school too," she remembered suddenly.
"Oh shit, that's true," said Alex through his laughter. "I was damn proud of it too. Matt would keep track of it in that Ninja Turtles notebook every time someone got in trouble and the rule was that you couldn't get in trouble on purpose. Oh my God, the teacher fucking hated me!"
Jack looked between the two of them as they spoke, grinning as they told the tales of each other from their childhood. He placed his elbows on Alex's center console, resting his chin on his hands like a kid getting ready for story time before his afternoon nap.
"Remember when you fell in the lake?" Caroline asked, leaning sideways in her seat to look at both Jack and Alex, who was chuckling now.
"You pushed me," he claimed with a large smile.
"You deserved it!"
"Ah, she admits it!" Alex quipped. "She used to deny it all the time to our parents after I came home soaking wet one day."
"What did you do to deserve that?" asked Jack.
The other teenage boy leaned heavier on his elbow and motioned for Caroline to continue the story. "He put a toad down the back of my shirt and told me I was going to get warts all down my back the day before and I spent an hour in the tub making my mom scrub me 'til I was raw," she explained as Jack erupted in laughter.
"Hey," said Alex once Jack had quieted. "You ever walk all the way around the lake like we did after I left?"
As the words left his mouth, she felt herself freeze up and looked away to stare out of her window. A wave of fear and memories crashed over her as she considered the question and bit back all of the things that threatened to come tumbling out of her mouth. "No," she said simply.
And that was that.