-1-
“This is my favorite. Dr. Season’s wife bought it back from India,” Mom explains stirring the little paper cup of tea with a wooden stick.
We were standing in front of the fully equipped tea cart in Dr. Season's waiting room. Mom had texted her to get an appointment for me and Spencer but Spencer wasn’t up to it and stayed home with Dad.
I take a sip of the tea as we head back to Mom’s car. The spiced tea is warm and perfect. It makes me think of the Starbucks chai Nova got me yesterday and the taste sours in my mouth.
Dr. Season wanted to talk about PTSD and trauma when the only thing on my mind was Nova saying something stupid and spending the rest of his life in jail. I saw a Netflix show all about how cops were always tricking people into confessing to shit they hadn’t done.
“Um, Mom ?,” I say when we get in the car.
“Yes, honey ?,” she says pulling the keys out of the ignition to shut off the car and look at me.
“Do you remember when I turned 13 and you said you’d always trust me until I gave you a reason not to… and that as long as I’m being honest you’d support me ?”
She nods.
“Mom, I feel like Nova really needs my help. He didn’t do it, I swear on Gran’s grave--”
“Mason."
“Can we please go back to the school and get my car ? I need to go find the other students who were with us so we can all give Nova an alibi--”
Mom sighs.
“Maybe Dad and I can call their parents and we can talk--”
“I think I have to do this on my own. Please ? I promise I’ll be back before dark.”
She sighs and starts the car.
“Fine. But you will text me where you are every single hour.”
***
-2-
I didn’t even realize Connecticut had a country until I drive to Rose Fierro’s house.
Last night Mr. Emile told me Google Maps wouldn’t know the address so I’d had to plug the coordinates into a GPS app. It feels like I’ve been driving down the two lane road in the middle of farm country for an eternity.
I finally spot a hand painted sign for Le Fleur Marche USA swinging on a wooden post and make a hard turn.
The long paved driveway leads up to big ass farmhouse set on picture perfect green land with no houses for miles on either side. In the distance I see a stable with two horses in the stalls and beyond that a glass hothouse.
I still don’t have Rose’s phone number so I have no choice but to knock, unannounced, on her front door.
The door cracks opens and I’m greeted by a huge St. Bernard that size of a pony.
It sniffs me enthusiastically and then playfully jumps up and down in the doorway barking before each jump. The dog is lovingly pushed aside as the woman from yesterday, who I assumed was Rose’s mom, squeezes between the door and the enormous dog.
“Hi, Mrs. Fierro is--”
“It's DeLune, but---oh, play nicely, Rochester, he’s a friend!—you can call me Clara,”
“Oh, um, Ms. Clara--”
“Just Clara is fine.”
“Oh, sorry. Um, I’m Mason--”
“I thought so! Emile’s at the university but he said you were coming,” she smiles and then shouts into the house. “ROSE, I TOLD YOU IT WAS YOUR FRIEND! COME DOWN HERE!”
Clara leads me into the house, Rochester trotting along happily beside us.
The house looked like something out of a magazine and smelled like flowers. We sit at the kitchen table and she invites me to eat from a cheese tray that also looked like it was from a magazine shoot. I can’t even identify most of the things on it.
Rochester plops himself in front of Clara and then looks up at me as if to say “I wish you fucking would” and somehow also “Aren’t I adorable ? Watch my adorable head tilt.”
“I just can’t believe yesterday,” Clara says, petting the dog’s fluffy head. “It’s a miracle no one was hurt… of course that only means it will be out of the news in a matter of hours.”
We sit for almost 20 minutes. She tells me Rose’s father is in the flower business. He’d moved here temporarily to test daffodil bulbs in a type of soil only found in Connecticut. She mentioned Rose only came to our school because all the private schools had waitlists. Then goes in on how she normally lives overseas but came to America since Mr.Emile, their friend and renter, had a post at Yale and she didn’t want to be alone in Europe with Rose.
I eat a couple of the fancy crackers with some kind of creamy white cheese and something called fig jam before Clara sighs and excuses herself to go upstairs.
She comes back down leading Rose behind her. Rose is dressed in a knee length mint green floral dress. She doesn’t look at all like she’d just been lying around the house. Rochester circles Rose cautiously and then settles back under the table when she doesn’t acknowledge him.
Clara picks up a small woven basket from the counter and puts on a pair of oversized shades.
“I’m going to get some tomatoes from the garden,” Clara announces. “We can have caprese salad for lunch.”
I expect Rochester to follow Clara but he just curls up under the table as if to go to sleep.
Rose fixes her eyes on me. She has both of them again and I couldn’t unsee the slight differences between the real one and fake one.
“I thought I might see you again soon,” Rose sighs. “Where is your chaotic blonde friend ?”
I guess no one had filled her in. She’d been whisked away before Nova has been arrested and they hadn’t said his name on the news yet.
“Nova’s in police custody…They think he had something to do with the shooting.”
“Did he ?,” she asks, eyebrows raised.
“No…I mean…maybe ? Inadvertently. We just need to tell his Dad that we’ll give the police an alibi for him. I came here since when he wasn’t with me he was with you.”
She thinks this over, folding her arms.
“Where’s Arrow ?”
“Why ?”
“We need to get him too,” she says. “People…have a tendency not to believe me.”
“He’s even harder to find online than you are--”
“I know where he lives.”
“You do ?,”
“Well…I think I do. My mother gives piano lessons to some of the refugees as part of her foundation work.”
“Refugee ?”
She then makes a series of sounds with her mouth I could never hope to repeat.
“What ?,”
“It doesn’t translate to English,” she explains. “It’s that place near Eastern Europe that had that violent civil war in the 90s. I think they just call it Homeland in English--,”
“I think I heard of that. I had no idea Arrow was from there.”
We didn’t learn about the Homeland civil war and the genocide that followed in school but I’d had a teacher at my old school that did his Master’s work about it. He’d use any excuse to bring it up in class and one time he had to stop halfway through a story about it because one girl had gotten so upset she puked.
It had happened over a decade ago and the country had been so small it was mostly unreported in American news.
Rose stands, pulls a white coat from a coat rack and slings a matching purse across her shoulders.
“Come on then. I assume you have a car ?,” she says. “The refugees mostly live in the same area. I’ve been once before I can give directions to the neighborhood. ”
“Shouldn’t we tell your mom we’re leaving--”
She sighs and pulls a piece of paper from a stationary set on the table by the door. As she pens a note, Rochester starts stirring again. He leaps from under the table and bounds towards the front door, his tail wagging excitedly.
“Shoot. That’s Papa,” Rose says under her breath. “Come, let’s go out the back.”
I catch a glimpse of the white-haired man walking towards the front door as Rose pulls me out the back.
---
-3-
“Are you sure this is right ?”
“Well, I thought it was around here…” Rose frowns as I turn down another city block.
We’d spent the last hour making circles in a working class Hartford neighborhood of packed rowhouses and abandoned store fronts. We must be close because we kept circling a convenience stores and even a cupcake shop with signage in an Eastern European looking language.
I spot a family walking down the sidewalk. The dark haired woman is pushing a double stroller with two babies inside and the man is holding the hands of two other little girls. They remind me a little bit of my own family and the mom looks nice enough.
I slow the car and the adults go stiff, giving us an intense stare down as I crank down the window of my old ass car. The dad looks like he could take on The Rock and Jason Statham at the same time and I suddenly regret everything.
“You lost ?,” the man grunts.
“Uh--,” I manage.
“We’re looking for Arrow--,” Rose says, leaning over me to speak to them.
“Why ?,” he glares.
I get the feeling we shouldn’t say too much but I don’t know if Rose gets that.
“We’re just his friends,” I interject. “We wanted to make sure he was okay…after yesterday.”
“He’s fine.”
“Leon,” the woman scolds him with a playful slap. “They’re being kind. Friendships with outsiders is important to American kids--”
“Aria-”
They seem to remember we are still there and start speaking in a language I can’t understand. After a few words the woman turns to us.
“Arrow is in the green roofed house at the end of the street,” she smiles.
I nod my head in thanks and we drive up the street to the standalone green roofed Victorian style house. It has a welcome sign in their language.
The front entrance has an empty check in desk with a sign in sheet. Beyond it I can see a sparsely furnished living room where some preteens are playing video games. The walls are covered in motivational posters and laminated rule sheets.
It’s a group home.
I think about how no one had been waiting for Arrow at the school and about his country’s genocide. He must be an orphan.
“Um, excuse me is Arrow here ?,” I call to the preteens.
Some of the boys playing the video game look at us, a few do a double take at Rose but then go back to the game. They talk in their language and then one of the younger boys gets up and shouts Arrow’s name upstairs.
Arrow comes down the stairs seconds later. He’s barefoot and wearing a faded t-shirt covered in holes and pajama pants that were too big for him. His eyes go wide and he stops in his tracks when he sees us.
“Hi, uh, I need to talk to you about Nova,” I tell him. “He--”
“Let’s go upstairs,” Arrow cuts me off.
“Ms. Isobel said no visitors or going outside--,” one of the younger boys says.
Arrow brushes the boy off and signals for us to follow him upstairs. More rules are posted on the walls about respect, picking up clothes, bathroom etiquette and quiet hours. There are four bedrooms and each room is labeled with two boys names in bubble letters on a dry erase board. Except for the closet-sized room at the end of the hall-- it just says Arrow on the door’s dry erase board.
Arrow shuts the door and I feel like I’m in a coffin. Rose looks even more uncomfortable than I do. The room is clean but definitely smelled like a guy.
I fill Arrow in on what happened to Nova and explain that I need him to be Nova’s alibi.
“I can’t,” Arrow says. “I’m not a citizen yet and I don’t want to get involved in a crime. Besides, Isaiah Prince admitted he was the one who helped the killer. The police came and took his stuff last night--”
“Wait, Isaiah lives here?”
“Well, they are from the same country,” Rose adds.
“No we’re not—not really,” Arrow says. “We’re from different ethnic groups. He just lives here because of some other trouble he’s caused. Isaiah….gets indoctrinated into things so easily--”
“The shooter stole Nova’s phone and jacket and wore it while he was shooting,” I tell him. “He might have wanted to frame Nova because Nova rejected him. What if Isaiah lies to get Nova in trouble like the shooter wanted? It'll be his word against Nova's.”
Arrow seems to think about this.
“Isaiah did bring the shooter here a few times. The guy seemed pretty manipulative,” Arrow admits. “Fine….you guys saved my life at the school yesterday so I’ll give a statement but that’s it…I just need to change. Just stay here.”
He grabs a handful of black clothes off his floor and goes to the bathroom in the hallway, leaving Rose and I squished together in his tiny room.
Rose puts her coat on the twin bed and sits atop it. I sit on the little half desk and notice a faded picture of three soldiers sitting in the back of a truck cradling big military guns and smiling together. The man we asked directions from is one of the soldiers in the picture. The other two are a man and woman who are dead ringers for Arrow.
“Do you think these are his parents ?,” I ask Rose giving her the picture.
She peers at it.
“They must have died in one of the camps---”
“No,” Rose says handing the photo back. “She’s still alive.”
----
- 4 -
I drive us all to Nova’s apartment so we can tell his Dad we’ll all give statements.
The car ride is awkwardly quiet and I’m glad the Haley-Grace’s apartment is only a 5 minute drive from Arrow’s neighborhood.
“Holy shit, look,” Arrow says from the backseat when we pull up.
Three police cars are parked in front of the small garden style apartment complex and police are going in and out of of the apartment.
Nova’s dad is sitting on the grass with is head in his hands and Mr. Grace is out of his wheelchair and on the ground beside him, rubbing his back and glaring at the police. Mr. Grace is wearing boxers under his coat and Mr. Haley is wearing sweats. His hair is wet, falling down to his mid-back. .
“I can’t believe you fucking did this, this is all your fucking fault.” I hear Mr. Haley say into his hands. “You’re not supposed to fucking do this to me, Luce. After everything I--You and your motherfucking guns.You should rot in jail for all I fucking care.”
I’m suddenly not so sure about any of this.
Plus it didn’t seem like a good time for us to show up. I’m about to say as much but Rose is already out of the car. She closes her door and Nova’s parents look up and see us. I get out and Arrow follows behind, wrapping his arms around himself.
Mr. Haley rubs his knuckles over his eyes as we approach and puts on a smile for us.
“Mason. Hi!,” he says standing.
“Hi…Um, did they release Nova ?,” I ask, hopeful.
“No, I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Mr. Haley says. “They only let Luce out because they couldn’t accommodate his disability. The police are finishing up their search warrant so it’s not really not a good time for you to be here--”
“Um, this is Rose Fierro and Arrow Grigori,” I say. “We were all with Nova during the shooting. We know he had nothing to do with it. I was wondering if you could tell us who to talk to so we can give a statement.”
“He saved us,” Rose adds. “He took apart one of the shooter’s guns when we were attacked--”
“He did ?,” Mr. Grace asks and for the first time he looks almost proud.
“Yeah,” I add. “And he got a laptop out of a locked cabinet by melting the lock with a lighter.”
“Of course he did,” his Dad says under his breath.
“Oh, shit, wait” Arrow exclaims suddenly and then looks over at Nova’s parents. “I know how we can prove he was with us.”
***
I don’t make it home before dark like I promised Mom.
The police question us for six hours. First they interview us separately, then in pairs and then together. I have to handwrite and sign my statement and even though our stories are all similar it’s not enough for them to let Nova go that day.
The thing about Nova is that he leaves something behind wherever he goes and the police went through it all. He’d taken selfies and pictures of Arrow on my phone during the shooting, he’d made a draft Snapchat on my phone and his hair was all over the library.
But they only let him go 4 days later when the fingerprint on the cigarette butts he and Arrow smoked, and left on the library floor, came back as a match.
They police drop all charges a few days later when a security video comes out from the store across the street of the shooter walking out of the school with Nova’s jacket the day he lost it. According to Isaiah the shooter had a fantasy of Nova helping them and wanted to implicate Nova, but hadn’t really thought it all the way through.
When I see Nova again he hugs me and makes me promises I know he’s going to break.
But I still hold him to the last bet he’d made.
***
-5-
“Just so we’re clear I’m only paying for all of you today,” Nova announces as he set the overflowing tray of food on the table. “The rest of the week I only have to buy for Mason…I believe those were the terms of our bet.”
“It was your bet,” I remind him.
Nova slides next to me in the booth and pokes a straw into his smoothie.
Rose takes her plain biscuit off the tray and inspects her hot tea, Arrow takes the black coffee and sausage burrito and I grab my egg McMuffin and iced vanilla latte.
“Today is going to be so fucking weird,” I say, open a ketchup packet.
School had been closed for two weeks since the shooting and today was our first day back since it happened.
“I heard they are going to have metal detectors and uniformed police in the school now,” Arrow says, adding creamer to his coffee.
“Wonderful,” Rose adds glibly, tasting her tea black and then frowning at it disapprovingly. “Just wonderful.”
“I’m so taking you to Starbucks after school today for a pink drink,” Nova grins at her.
“I told you,” she says. “I don’t like sweet things--”
“I know. It’s just for you to hold for my Instagram. It totally matches your aesthetic--”
“You can’t go anywhere after school,” Arrow reminds him. “We have detention for the next two weeks,”
“Oh, fuck I forgot,” Nova exclaims. They'd gotten detention for smoking on school ground. “We almost died. The no tolerance policy bullshit should have been suspended like in a Purge situation. Were we really supposed to follow the rules and act like nothing was happening ?, ”
“I think that’s the point,” I tell him. “Like, if we act scared or change stuff it means the person who wanted to scare us won.”
“You’re so fucking corny,” Nova teases me.
We eat in silence, except for Rose who doesn’t seem to like any of McDonald’s finest at first but then tastes my hash browns and likes them so much she eats all of ours.
“Okay,” Nova claps his hands. “Fuck it. Let’s do normal then. Let’s talk homecoming--”
“They cancelled it--,” Rose starts.
“But I have on good authority they’re going to reschedule it during spring break,” Nova grins. “We should all get dates for each other.”
“Pass,” Arrow grunts.
Rose pointedly says nothing.
“I’ll pass too,” I add.
“Oh, come on Masooon--,” Nova whines
“Hm,” Arrow hums. “I actually know a girl who likes you.”
“Fuck, really ? Is she cute? Do I know her ?” Nova asks.
“No,” Arrow frowns. “I mean, no not for you. For Mason. I heard her say she likes Mason.”
This information only makes Nova even giddier.
The school year had started off rough but now I was getting free McDonald’s breakfast for a week, officially had more than one friend at school and maybe even a potential girlfriend ?
Harrison High was turning out not to be as bad as I thought.
------
A/N:
I know, I’m so corny but this was the original title of the serial. I'm going to play in this world one more time with Night Out. And since this section was short I'm going to jump right in and share the first part of Night Out. No pranks!