Rouge(93)

“Mother, no!”

I try to run to her again, but Creep’s still holding me fast. I watch the emergency men lift Mother from the floor onto some kind of bed. They lift up the bed and carry her like the seven dwarfs carry Snow White’s body. I see Snow White in her glass coffin when they carry her away, please don’t take her away. But Creep is carrying me into my room now. There, he sits me on the bed and holds me down by the shoulders. Looks at me with new eyes. “You better stay in this room for now.”

“Where are they taking her?”

“She had an accident. We’re going to the emergency room.”

“Please let me come!” I try to get free, but he’s still holding me down. He looks down at the floor and I follow his eyes. But there’s no trail of red powder on the floor anymore. All is gone like nothing. Nothing at all happened. Magic, Tom said. Only my hands are red now.

“I didn’t mean to,” I whisper. I can hardly speak because I’m sobbing, shaking. I can hardly breathe. I hear them carrying Mother out the front door, toward the red flashing lights outside. Away from me. I feel the hurt in her heart. It makes my own heart hurt like never before. I look back up at Creep. His face has no expression at all.

“Please,” I tell Creep. “Please let me go with her to the hospital.”

And he just shakes his head. Leaves, slamming the door. I hear the slam of the front door soon after. I feel the slam in the back of my head, in my chest.

I run out to the front door but the siren’s sounding and the ambulance is already pulling away, speeding down the island road toward the river, the bridge to the city. I’m alone now. More alone than ever before. Standing in the living room in my dirty white dress with my red hands open and empty. The phone is ringing and ringing, it will never stop ringing. I pick it up before I remember about Stacey, the garden.

“Let me speak to your mother.” A woman’s cold voice. Russian accent thick. “Now.”

I hang up. The phone rings again.

Covering my ears, I run to Mother’s bedroom. The door is wide open. The jar of night cream named after the sea is open, oozing its red onto Mother’s white wicker vanity. The drawer full of her red lacy things is open too, the lacy things spilling out like red tentacles. The jagged star of dead violets and smoke has been shattered against a wall. Someone broke the gold brush that never brushed my hair in two. But the red dust is gone. No evidence of it anywhere.

The phone is still ringing. Alla wanting to tell more, wanting me arrested. I have to get away from here. Mother won’t look at me ever again. Mother will never love me again. She’ll never forgive me even though I am so sorry, Mother. I can’t breathe. Creep is going with her to the emergency room and he’ll never leave her side now. He’ll be her knight in shining armor forever. Protecting her from me.

Tom.

I need Tom.

But Tom hurt Mother. Tom, you said it wouldn’t kill her. You said we were just taking my Beauty back, that it would hurt only a little. Belle, what am I, a monster? Isn’t that what you said?

But I don’t hear Tom’s voice in my head anymore. He’s gone like Mother is. Somewhere on the other side. Didn’t he promise he would take me with him? Definitely, Tom said.

I remember the folded picture in my pocket. I pull it out and stare into his kind, light-filled eyes. I think of Tom’s eyes. Red as my trembling hands.

Do you trust me? he said.

Yes, Tom, I trust.

Seth, Tom said.

I shake my head. No. Run to the mirror in the corner of my bedroom. Once it was Mother’s and now it’s mine. Once it was cracked and hidden away, and now it’s sealed and here with me. Heart pounding, slow steps, eyes closing and opening, wanting and not wanting to see what’s there. Will he be there? Tom, will you be there on the other side, waiting? To take my hand? To take me with you to the other world? To save me from all this. Please save me from all this. I look into the dark, shining glass. But all I see is my red face, my red hands. White dress dirty and torn. The scratches on my arms still black and raised. My bruise isn’t glowing anymore, just an ugly blotch on my forehead. My hair’s one big dark tangle. I’ve never looked more ugly, more alone. I’ve never looked more like Father’s child. Tom is nowhere. Not in the mirror, or a breath on my neck, or even a voice in my head. I don’t feel him on the other side of the glass like I did before. It feels like a light there went dark. I look down at the crumpled picture in my fist. Something in me is sinking, drowning. The not-breathing feeling. I knock on the glass.

“Tom,” I call, and my voice sounds broken.

Nothing.

I knock again and again. “Tom, where are you? Will Mother be okay? What did you do to her? Please. Please take me away like you promised. I can’t stay here. I can’t stay.” And my voice sounds more and more broken. Like my heart is right there in my words, breaking like my words, and still I call for him.

Now I hear a knock at our patio door. From a pounding white fist. The fist wants to come in. It won’t take no for an answer. I know the fist. I know the eyes of ice peeking through the door. Alla. I pound on the mirror so hard the glass cracks, but I don’t feel the pain.

“Tom, please! Please take me away from here. Please save me. I can’t stay.” But even as I say this, as I knock and knock on the cracking glass, even as I scream his name, my heart is breaking. I remember his face like a sunrise in my bed. Smiling in the dark when he said, Nothing saves us. Nothing saves us in the end.