Lock and Key(13)

Cora crossed the room, taking a sip from the mug in her hands as she headed into the bathroom. We went past the shower, double sinks, and sunken bath into a room beyond, which turned out not to be a room at all but a closet. A huge closet, with racks of clothes on two walls and floor-to-ceiling shelves on the other. From what I could tell, Jamie’s things—jeans, a couple of suits, and lots of T-shirts and sneakers—took up a fraction of the space. The rest was all Cora’s. I watched from the doorway as she walked over to one rack, pushing some stuff aside.

“You probably need a shirt and a sweater, right?” she said, studying a few cardigans. “You have a jacket, I’m assuming. ”

“Cora.”

She pulled out a sweater, examining it. “Yes?”

“Why am I here?”

Maybe it was the confined space, or this extended period without Jamie to buffer us. But whatever the reason, this question had just somehow emerged, as unexpected to me as I knew it was to her. Now that it was out, though, I was surprised how much I wanted to hear the answer.

She dropped her hand from the rack, then turned to face me. “Because you’re a minor,” she said, “and your mother abandoned you.”

“I’m almost eighteen,” I told her. “And I was doing just fine on my own.”

“Fine,” she repeated, her expression flat. Looking at her, I was reminded how really different we were, me a redhead with pale, freckled skin, such a contrast to her black hair and blue eyes. I was taller, with my mother’s thin frame, while she was a couple of inches shorter and curvier. “You call that fine?”

“You don’t know,” I said. “You weren’t there.”

“I know what I read in the report,” she replied. “I know what the social worker told me. Are you saying those accounts were inaccurate?”

“Yes,” I said.

“So you weren’t living without heat or water in a filthy house.”

“Nope.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “Where’s Mom, Ruby?”

I swallowed, then turned my head as I reached up, pressing the key around my neck into my skin. “I don’t care,” I said.

“Neither do I,” she replied. “But the fact of the matter is, she’s gone and you can’t be by yourself. Does that answer your question?”

I didn’t say anything, and she turned back to the clothes, pushing through them. “I told you, I don’t need to borrow anything,” I said. My voice sounded high and tight.

“Ruby, come on,” she said, sounding tired. She pulled a black sweater off a hanger, tossing it over her shoulder before moving over to another shelf and grabbing a green T-shirt. Then she walked over, pushing them both at me as she passed. “And hurry. It takes at least fifteen minutes to get there.”

Then she walked back through the bathroom, leaving me behind. For a moment, I just stood there, taking in the neat rows of clothes, how her shirts were all folded just so, stacked by color. As I looked down at the clothes she’d given me, I told myself I didn’t care what the people at Perkins Day thought about me or my stupid sweater. Everything was just temporary anyway. Me being there, or here. Or anywhere, for that matter.

A moment later, though, when Jamie yelled up that it was time to go, I suddenly found myself pulling on Cora’s T-shirt, which was clearly expensive and fit me perfectly, and then her sweater, soft and warm, over it. On my way downstairs, in clothes that weren’t mine, to go to a school I’d never claim, I stopped and looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. You couldn’t see the key around my neck: it hung too low under both collars. But if I leaned in close, I could make it out, buried deep beneath. Out of sight, hard to recognize, but still able to be found, even if I was the only one to ever look for it.

Cora was right. We got stuck in traffic. After hitting every red light between the house and Perkins Day, we finally pulled into the parking lot just as a bell was ringing.

All the visitor spaces were taken, so Jamie swung his car—a sporty little Audi with all-leather interior—into one in the student lot. I looked to my left—sure enough, parked there was a Mercedes sedan that looked brand-new. On our other side was another Audi, this one a bright red convertible.

My stomach, which had for most of the ride been pretty much working on rejecting my breakfast, now turned in on itself with an audible clench. According to the dashboard clock, it was 8:10, which meant that in a run-down classroom about twenty miles away, Mr. Barrett-Hahn, my homeroom teacher, was beginning his slow, flat-toned read of the day’s announcements. This would be roundly ignored by my classmates, who five minutes from now would shuffle out, voices rising, to fight their way through a corridor designed for a student body a fraction the size of the current one to first period. I wondered if my English teacher, Ms. Valhalla—she of the high-waisted jeans and endless array of oversized polo shirts—knew what had happened to me, or if she just assumed I’d dropped out, like a fair amount of her students did during the course of a year. We’d been just about to start Wuthering Heights, a novel she’d promised would be a vast improvement over David Copperfield, which she’d dragged us through like a death march for the last few weeks. I’d been wondering if this was just talk or the truth. Now I’d never know.

“Ready to face the firing squad?”