Hugo & Rose (3 page)

Rose's father held back and watched her go. Still unaware that she was doing it on her own.

She was about to make the turn when he shouted, “That's my big girl, Rosie!”

Rose, surprised by the distance of her father's voice, turned toward it and let go of the handlebars. The wheel jerked to the side, suddenly perpendicular to the bike, forcing the whole contraption into a complete and sudden stop.

From where he stood, Rose's father watched as her small body pitched up and over the handlebars. A little rag doll landing headfirst,
crunch,
on the asphalt.

*   *   *

She was not scared. At least, not at first. And she wasn't in pain. She was simply on the ground, whereas a moment before she had been in the air. And before that? Where had she been before that? Rose couldn't remember.

Somewhere, beyond the expanse of pebbles and tar of the road, she sensed movement. Feet running toward her.

And then there was the hot, bare sky and her father.

Rose anchored on his face. Her father's unshaven face. It was stricken. Terrified. He was shouting something, looking at her, but she couldn't tell what it was he was saying.

It was then that she became scared.

Her father's fear infected her. It welled up through her tiny body, invading her chest, her limbs, her neck. Fear poured out of her, bubbling over, spilling out of her ears, running out of her eyes.

Rose drowned in her father's terror, sinking further and further away from him until she couldn't see him at all.

*   *   *

“It's about time you got here.”

The beach smelled of caramel. And so did the little boy.

Rose was confused. “Where is here?”

“I dunno. Here. Here is here … I guess. Here is where I've been waiting for you.”

Rose sat up, the pink sand shifting under her bottom.

“Here,” wherever it was, was beautiful. A short expanse of beach emptied out into a gulf of clear, warm water. In the shallows, Rose could see the flashing of piscine bodies as schools of fish shifted and flocked in the current. A gentle kiss of a breeze carried the scent of salt and lilac across the water. Mounds of sea grass clutched at the sand, before yielding to a sun-speckled forest.

They were in a tent of some kind. White sheet walls, sloping up to big top peaks. Like the blanket forts she made for herself on rainy days … but so much bigger. Grander. Like the circus, almost, but lighter, prettier. A pavilion.

“Want a snack?”

The boy offered her a seashell. A small cowrie. Like the ones on the necklace she had brought home after her trip to Hawaii with Mom and Dad.

Something about that thought bothered her. What was it? Rose pulled her legs in and shook her head.

The boy shrugged and popped the shell into his mouth. Cracked it with his teeth.

“Are you crazy? Don't do that.”

“Why not? They taste like candy.”

He offered Rose another, this time the slightly larger fan of a bivalve shell. His teeth crunched down again.

Rose took it. She let her tongue flick across its surface, bracing herself for its saline grit.

Instead a sweet warmth rolled over her. The warmth of Sunday breakfast. Butter and maple and flannel pajamas.

“It's good, right?”

The boy turned onto his belly, digging into the sand for more seashells.

At age six, Rose didn't really make a habit of looking at boys. To her, they all seemed to be loud, dirty things with a proclivity toward hitting—not worth as much study as, say, the Toys “R” Us circular or the back of the Cap'n Crunch box.

But this boy was different, as much as this place was different, and Rose took a moment to really look at him.

He wore a black vest over a white shirt and a loose pair of pants that ended below his knees. He looked a bit like a pirate, Rose decided, or more likely a stowaway on a pirate's ship. A plucky cabin boy like in that Swiss Family movie.

He had brown eyes. Rose had never noticed the color of anyone's eyes before save her mother's and her own. Rose decided that she liked his brown eyes. They were the color of chocolate.

His hair was curly and too long, as he kept having to brush it out of his face. It was that color that is neither blond nor brown but somewhere in between.

His smile started on one side and crept its crooked way across his teeth, before activating the dimple on the other side of his face.

He was a big kid. About the size of the second graders at her school. The size of kids who can read chapter books and tie their own shoes.

And as Rose had already noticed, he smelled of caramel.

“I'm Hugo. What's your name?”

 

three

Hugo had been waiting for her for “like a million years.” Or so he said. And while he'd been waiting he had done a little bit of exploring, though never straying too far from the beach.

“Come on, there's something I want to show you.”

He grabbed her hand and pulled Rose up to the crest of a sandy ridge.

“That is Castle City.”

From the horizon rose a mass of shining spires of all different shapes. Some were rounded and some were pointed. Others had jagged bits that stabbed at the sky. There were hundreds of them all collected together behind a single unbroken wall.

Around it all hung a yellow halo of sorts, giving the place the look of a city in a snow globe.

“That's where we have to go. Because that's where everyone is.”

“Everyone?”

“Everyone. In the whole wide world.”

“Even my daddy?”

“Especially your daddy.”

Rose looked at this boy. This Hugo. He seemed to know what he was talking about.

“Is he in trouble?” Rose almost remembered something … felt it tickling at the back of her brain. Her father's face, worried about something.

“Yes. Kinda. Maybe. They need us to rescue them.”

“Oh.… From what?”

Hugo shrugged. “I dunno. Something bad. There's gotta be some reason why they're all in there and we're the only ones out here.”

“Huh.”

Rosie sat on the edge of the ridge and considered the city. Considered everyone she loved being inside, and herself and this boy being the only people outside.

She was not used to being the person doing the rescuing. In neighborhood games, she always elected to be the princess in the tower. She had never considered being the knight. She had never considered herself a hero.

“Hugo…” She tested the feel of his name. “Aren't you … aren't you a little scared?”

He scoffed. “Nah. What for?”

And he smiled at her in such a way that she could not help smiling back.

*   *   *

Since everyone in the whole wide world was in the Castle City, there was nothing for it but for them to go there.

She and Hugo had filled their pockets with seashells and set out in the tall saw grass that lay in the direction of the city.

“How long do you think it will take us to get there?”

“Dunno. It doesn't look too far. All morning?”

“Is it morning?”

“Feels like it, doesn't it?”

Rose noticed that the towering blades of grass were in fact shiny with dew and that they seemed to be that particular shade of green one sees only in the early hours of the day.

“Yeah. I guess,” she said, wanting to agree with this older, smarter boy.

They walked in silence for a bit. The blades clattered against one another as they pushed them out of their path.

“You wanna sing a song?”

“A song?”

“Sure, sometimes I do that. When I'm walking. You know any?”

Rose knew lots of songs, but she was afraid Hugo might laugh at the ones she knew by heart. “If I Knew You Were Coming” and “How Much Is That Doggy in the Window” seemed too babyish to sing on an adventure.

She shrugged.

“You know this one?” His voice rose in a sweet trill across the grass: “When you're alone and life is making you lonely, You can always go…”

“
Downtown!”
Rose loved this song. Knew it from her time at the roller rink.

Hugo smiled at her, excited she was catching on. “When you've got worries, all the noise and the hurry, Seems to help, I know…”

“
Downtown!
” they shouted together.

Hugo had a better hold on the lyrics than Rose, but she filled in the gaps with “dedums” and soon they were racing their way to the end.

And you may find somebody kind to help and understand you

Someone who is just like you and needs a gentle hand to

Guide them along

So maybe I'll see you there

We can forget all our troubles, forget all our cares

So go downtown

Things'll be great when you're downtown

Don't wait a minute more, downtown

Everything's waiting for you, downtown

Hugo finished by grabbing Rose around the waist and swinging her in an open patch in the grass. Her bare feet swung out from beneath her and she clung to his chest, smiling up into his tucked chin.

He tumbled sideways, and they both fell to the ground. Curled into fits of giggles. Rose rolled to her side and watched as he sat up. Brushing off his hands.

“You're funny, Hugo.”

“So are you, Rosie.”

*   *   *

Hugo spent the morning teaching her songs as they walked. “The Crocodile Rock.” “I Was Made to Love Her.” “The Love You Save May Be Your Own.”

Rose absorbed the lyrics and the melodies as they kept pushing forward. She almost forgot what it was they were meant to be doing … the learning of songs seemed to be reason enough to be walking through the grass. Simply spending time with Hugo.

But then the saw grass ended.

They reached a clearing, which finally afforded them a view of the horizon. Castle City remained stubbornly the same size in the distance, yet they had been walking for hours.

Hugo was quiet. Disappointed.

“We need to get there. We need to rescue them.”

Rose nodded. Serious in that way that only a child can be. Seriously serious.

“Maybe we're doing it wrong. Maybe we need to try to get there a different way.”

*   *   *

The different ways they tried led them through the landscape of the island, which they discovered was an island because they spent a great long while walking on the sand and ended up in precisely the location they had left.

It was just after that journey that they found the Plank Orb bobbing awkwardly in a rocky cove.

“What is that … thing?” asked Rose, not sure what to call it. “Some kind of boat?”

Hugo waded out to it, careless of his pants getting wet.

The “thing” rocked gently in the waves. It was clearly made out of wood, the kind of blockish two-by-fours one's father picked up at the hardware store for home projects.

But somehow these lengths had been curled around an open space, creating a kind of wooden bubble that rose and fell with the water. The whole thing was weathered and gray, splintery like an old fence.

Hugo caught the edge of something on its top. Pulled it toward him.

“There's a way in!”

Rose watched from the shore as he hefted himself up onto the contraption and disappeared into a door at its peak.

She decidedly did not want to climb onto that thing. She decidedly did not want to follow Hugo into that darkness. Or get her skirt wet. Or any of it at all, thank you very much.

He poked his head out. “Come on, Rosie!”

Rose crossed her arms. Determined to stay.

And yet, she took a step into the water. And then another. And another. All carrying her toward the strange wood bubble and Hugo.

He held out a hand to haul her up its side and helped her down into the cavity below.

It was dark and close. The sound of water straining against wood filled the space with its thumps and groans. There were windows, round shuttered portholes covered in chipped white paint. Through these Rose could see the crystalline waters of the cove, the distant movement of fish.

“Did you see this?”

Hugo held up a length of wet chain that threaded between two small holes in the floor.

“What's it for?”

He smiled and slammed the door above them shut, plunging them into a warm, wet dim. He crouched to the floor and yanked the chain.

The Orb lurched and dropped under the water—pulled like a bead on a string.

Rose put her hand to the window, her mouth making a perfect small “o” as the marine world swept past them at a clip. Candy-colored reefs populated with small creatures drew close before they were pulled away.

“Where are we going?”

Hugo shrugged. “Dunno. But I feel like … like it's going to be somewhere important.”

“I feel that way, too.”

They pressed closer to the window. The sunlight cut a dancing path through the water beyond the Orb. Large bodies of whales rolled in the deep distance.

Rose thought about how she had not wanted to get into the Orb at all; how if she had stayed on that shore as she had wanted to, she never would have seen any of this. She was grateful to whatever impulse it was, shame or fear of being left behind or some other, more powerful force that had pushed her into the water.

“I like it here,” whispered Rose.

“Me too.”

*   *   *

It took them an hour to get her to stop crying when she finally awoke.

Her father sat vigil next to her tiny body for the five days it took for her to emerge. He had traced the events of that afternoon over and over again during that time, listening to the beeps and blips of the monitors. He tried to decide which mistake was the one that led him here, to this hospital room, talking to doctors who told him nothing.