In Search of the Rose Notes Read Online Free PDF Page B

the unconscious can be upsetting or frightening, they believe, if revealed too rapidly or without proper guidance.’ Woo-hoo. Charlotte, do you know what that means?”
    Another glance between Rose and Paul. Paul grinned at her, unaware, probably, of the little banana string stuck to the corner of his mouth. His eager, toothy smile always made me think of an overly enthusiastic camp counselor. I wondered when he’d date someone, too. Probably not for a while. He wasn’t nearly as cool as Rose.
    “Yeah,” Charlotte said.
    “Yeah? Pretty serious stuff.” Rose clicked her pen rapidly again, holding it loosely next to her ear. “It means it’s really dangerous, what we’re doing.”
    “I know, ” Charlotte said, glaring at Rose and then Paul.
    Rose ignored Charlotte’s snotty tone and clicked her pen once more, smiling just slightly as she gazed down at the paragraph she had written. Seeing her expression, I wondered if the dream had been a joke. She could have made it all up just to make Charlotte and me look silly. Magic carpets, after all, were not what I’d imagined a sixteen-year-old would dream about. Sixteen-year-olds probably dreamed about the things that occupied their lives, like kissing and blue eye shadow and algebra. Maybe her dreams were full of things we were too young to hear about. Or maybe Rose was a little like me. Maybe her dreams, too, were full of things she didn’t want other people to understand.

Chapter Three
    May 21, 2006
    We didn’t mention Rose at all during dinner, which consisted of pizza and red wine. (“I haven’t had time to grocery-shop yet,” Charlotte explained. “Sorry.”)
    Instead we caught up on the most innocuous of topics. Charlotte’s job—two years now teaching at Waverly High, where we’d gone as kids—was it still weird? And me—my pottery, the community college, the aging hippies in my night classes. Neil—how he’d finally finished his master’s and was really happy to be with U.S. Fish & Wildlife, which he’d always considered a sort of dream job.
    As we lingered over our pizza crusts, I gazed around the room, marveling inwardly at finding myself in this kitchen once more. It had been updated somewhat. The ugly mauve wallpaper was gone, replaced with a simple cream paint. Sometime along the way, someone had painted over the dark cabinetry with a dusty-blue shade. Still, that color retained the kitchen’s shadowy feel. There was a thick canopy of trees on the kitchen side of the yard, so this room had never gotten any light—and still didn’t. The old smell of the Hemsworth house—cigarettes, imitation maple syrup, and dryer sheets—was still there somewhere, just discernible under the floral-cinnamon mix of someone’s attempt to cover it with scented candles.
    Charlotte sighed, trying to follow my gaze around the room.
    “So,” I said, sensing that my silence had grown uncomfortable for her. “What made you leave the paper for teaching anyway?”
    Charlotte sighed again. “You mind if I have a cigarette?”
    “Of course not.”
    “It wasn’t so much that teenagers inspire me.” She fished a pack of Camels out of her tote bag and grabbed a lighter off the coffee table. “You don’t smoke, do you?”
    I shook my head.
    “It was that there’s only so much you can do with an En-glish background, and things went a little sour between me and the Voice management. You know I was the general-assignment reporter for Waverly and Fairville, right? Everything was going pretty well until I had to do this story about the fire department’s radio transmitter. This was years ago, now. Hard to believe. Anyway, there was a new fire chief, and he had this bee in his bonnet about the radio transmitter. The frequency assigned to the fire department is really close to the one assigned to the police department, so apparently for years there’s been interference and they’re always hearing blurbs of each other’s communication, sometimes blocking up the