Maybe especially not among the dead.
I take another breath, smiling gratefully as Emma slides another dish of ice cream into my hand, and continue. "The next night, with Ruth off to work the diner's night shift and her brothers off doing whatever it was they spent their evenings doing, Rose walked to her closet..."
***
Rose walked to her closet the way she imagined a bride would on the evening of her wedding. She'd worked all year to save her pennies for a prom dress, putting up with endless hours of babysitting and doing more odd jobs than she cared to count. Every cent she got went toward the dress. She hid her money in a shoebox under her bed, tucking it into the furthest corner, where her mother wouldn't think to look. Her brothers wouldn't steal from her, although it was best not to tempt them; the Marshall boys were still looking for their own roads out of Buckley, and they wouldn't deny her that chance. A prom night might not change the world...but then again, it might. If she got lucky, it just might.
The dress she'd purchased from the department store downtown was green silk, almost daring in the way it hugged her hips and waist, almost demure in the way it circled her chest and shoulders. The perfect dress. The color was right for her, whether her hair was lemon-bleached or its darker natural brown, and the matching shoes had been on sale. That was the final straw, the thing that decided her, even if it meant she had to work another month of Saturday nights while her perfect dress sat on lay-away, waiting for her to come and claim it. Even the store manager had smiled when she came to pick it up, paying her last five dollars with hands that were very nearly shaking. It was the perfect dress for prom. It was the perfect dress for everything.
It was the perfect dress to die in. But thoughts like that were a million miles from Rose's mind as she stepped out of her heavy cotton skirt and slid the silk up around her waist, feeling the fabric cupping her the way Gary sometimes did, when he was feeling daring and she was feeling wild. She pulled it up a little bit, letting the heavy fabric whisper against her legs, tiny silk kisses on her skin. But draw it out as she might, she couldn't make the process last forever. All too soon, she was looking at herself in the mirror, at the green silk bodice, at the matching ribbons tied oh-so-carefully through the tamed and tempered straw of her hair.
"If he asks me to go to the top of Dead Man's Hill tonight, I will," she whispered, the words wicked on her tongue, and watched the wanton blush spreading up her cheeks. She was going to get out of Buckley, she was, and one way or another, this was going to be the night that started her escape.
One way or another.
***
The hours ticked by as slowly as shadows creeping across the street at sunset, and Gary didn't come. Rose sat on the porch, keeping her back carefully lifted away from the wide slats of the porch swing, and watched the road with eyes that had gone from anticipatory into worried, and were now making the transition into angry. He hadn't come because he wasn't coming. Someone--his mother, maybe, or those pretty girls in school who didn't think a boy like him should go anywhere near a girl like her--had finally talked some of their brand of sense into him, and he wasn't coming.
She'd been a fool to think a night like this was ever intended for a girl like her. Rose stood, blinking back tears as she turned to storm back into the house, away from the summer air and the hope of something more.
Then she paused, hand stretched toward the doorknob. Paused, and thought.
There are those who'll say that every choice we make can change the future, and that every future exists, somewhere. In a thousand, thousand futures, Rose Marshall went back into the house, took off the green silk gown, chose another path. Maybe she sold the dress back to the department store and used the money she'd worked so hard for to leave Buckley forever. Maybe she confronted Gary at school on Monday morning, found peace, found closure. Maybe she just decided to wait a little bit longer before she turned off all the lights, and was still awake when her prom date arrived, greasy-handed from changing his tire, with a half-dead corsage clutched in one hand. Maybe. But those are other stories, and that isn't how this story chose to go.
The frown bloomed on Rose's face like the flower she was named for, starting small, but opening swiftly. By the time she wrenched the door open and stormed into her brother's room, it was in full display, petaled in anger, disappointment, and shame. Arthur and Morty were gone for the night, off on some mysterious errand, and they'd taken Arthur's truck, leaving Morty's clapped-out old car behind. He always left his keys in the dish beside his bed when he wasn't going to need them. Rose snatched them up and turned to go, not looking back, not pausing to change her clothes.