Imaginary Girls(10)

This was what I was thinking as I stood there in the music hallway. I made my heart go numb, listened for the wind, and on it what she’d want me to say.

“You didn’t call,” he said.

I kept listening.

“You said you’d call,” he said. And then—the cinder-block wall at my back slick with its own sweat, or with mine—I remembered. Maybe I did say I’d call. Maybe he said he’d call me, and I said no, no I’ll call you.

Anyway, that’s something Ruby would have done.

He was still here, blocking my exit with a clutter of music stands and an old bassoon.

I surveyed him as Ruby would, had she been there across the corridor, near the cracked viola and crate of dusty sheet music, taking stock. Definite points on the hair: It was cut crooked and fell into his eyes. But his pants were too tight and slung too low. And his shoulders were set too cocky; he thought having me that one time meant he had me still.

He was talking, saying I’d been the one to ignore him, not the other way around. Acting like it’s the boy who’s supposed to stop talking to the girl after unmentionables are traded in the backseat of a car, not the girl. He’d obviously never met anyone like my sister.

“What’s the matter?” he was saying. “Didn’t you want to?”

I shrugged one shoulder. (Ruby, should I say I did?)

“You didn’t say you didn’t want to,” he reminded me.

I shrugged the other shoulder. (Ruby, should I say I didn’t?)

“So.” He took a breath. “What’re we doing tonight?”

That’s when my phone vibrated from inside my pocket. I was able to slip out from under his arm, through the jumble of music stands, past the bassoon, into the center of the hallway, to freedom. I checked my phone to find a text.



don’t get too comfy. im here 2 spring u. ps what’s up w yr room? where are the wheels?



It was Ruby—and somehow she’d figured out where I was sleeping at my dad’s: a tiny camper without tires set up on the back lawn, bed cavity overtop the steering wheel that looked out onto the flower garden, a net between me and the bees. It was pretty convenient; I’d even strung an extension cord from the garage so I could watch TV.

I wasn’t sure how she knew, and wondered if she’d been talking to my dad, or my half-siblings, or my stepmother, to find out that once the weather turned warm I’d vacated my room in the house in favor of the camper.

And what did she mean she was going to spring me? Was she here?

My answer came immediately after, with another text:

  my pink glasses! been looking 4 these 4ever chlo!





No one had told her about the camper. She was inside the camper, going through my stuff. She must have found the sunglasses I’d swiped the summer I left—the ones with the pink-tinted lenses that she said made a person happy to see through, like a drug you could wear on your head.

The boy—his name was Jared—was eyeing my phone suspiciously, with a protectiveness he didn’t deserve. “Who’s that?” he asked.

“I have to go,” is all I said, because Ruby was here.

I didn’t know how things could be the same for anyone, how we could still be having this conversation, how anyone could be having any conversation, didn’t know how I could pretend to be content living my days in this ordinary life, in this ordinary hallway, with this ordinary boy, now that she was here.





CHAPTER THREE


  RUBY TRIED


Ruby tried to convince my dad. She tried in all the ways she was used to trying: her eyes staring him down until no light could escape and there was nowhere else to look but straight at her.

She tried with misdirection and misleading topics of conversation, with the subterfuge no one ever saw coming until days later, when they went searching for their wallet and thought they remembered it opening wide for one quick moment in Ruby’s hand. She tried talking low; she tried talking loud. She tried being sweet; she tried being mean. Behind the closed door, where I couldn’t see, I know she tried.

I waited outside his home office with my stepmom. She wasn’t anyone special—if Ruby and I ever happened upon her in conversation, we avoided calling her by name.

She had two children who, since we had the same father, carried half my blood in their veins, just like Ruby did, the exact same amount, though I didn’t feel connected to them in any real way.