Imaginary Girls(18)

It was like a home abandoned before the floodgates opened and the water came spilling in. She’d gone away and wasn’t coming back. She’d gone away, and she didn’t tell me where to find her.

I saw the few things she must have forgotten: an orange zip-up sweater bunched up on a hook behind a door; a toe ring in the sink drain; a book of matches blotted with the dark pressed smudge of her lips, one full row of matches left to burn.

Dusky impressions on the carpet showed where her furniture had been. This here a table, that there a couch. The air was stale, unbreathed. The refrigerator had been pulled from the wall, fat black cord dangling. Inside the fridge was a perfectly preserved plum, petrified around the marks of her teeth to show where she’d taken one small bite, then let the plum be, like it might get sweeter in a day or two. She often sampled fruit this way, even in the supermarket.

“Ruby?” I called out. Her name echoed through the empty apartment, bouncing back at me from the ceiling, and when I looked up, I saw her scrawl:

Ruby

Like anyone could forget she’d once lived here.

That’s when I heard the screech of tires outside. A car had come to a sharp stop in the parking lot below. I stepped to the edge of the second-floor walkway outside Ruby’s apartment, my heart beating fast, but the car wasn’t an old rusted Buick on its last legs; it wasn’t even white and she wasn’t in it. Then I recognized the person lurching out of the driver’s side door bellowing my name.

The guy was one of Ruby’s ex-boyfriends, and there were many. This one, Pete, had shaggy hair, a scraggly chin, and wore a pitted Pixies T-shirt so old I could see through to the sweat shining on his skin. Years ago, Ruby had dumped him as she’d dumped all the others, but he never did seem to get the hint and go away.

“She said to look for you here if you weren’t on the Green,” he was saying. “She said to drop you at the party and she’ll meet you there.”

“Ruby sent you?” Still, I started down the stairs.

“Thanks,” he said once I reached him, “thanks a lot.”

“Why didn’t she come get me herself?”

He waved that question away as if it were a puzzle he sure couldn’t answer, one of those mysteries of the universe that scientists chase after their whole lives, like the Big Bang and if it really happened, or life on Mars.

“You know Ruby,” he said. “C’mon, get in the car. The party’s way out at the quarry and we’d better get there before the beer runs out.”

I did know Ruby. I knew her better than anyone could possibly know her, the way no guy could come close to knowing, no matter how long he was with her and what, behind closed doors, he thought they did.

I’d seen her in ways no one else had. I’d heard the names she called every boy she’d been with, names that would haunt them forever if they knew. I’d seen her happy. I’d seen her sad. I’d seen her when we both hennaed our hair, the mud mixed with paprika and egg yolk that dripped down her scalp and turned her ears orange. I’d seen her laugh so hard she peed a little. I’d seen her so mad, she punched a hole in the wall. And I’d seen her after, her knuckles scratched and swollen, but her eyes clear and wide open, when she said it didn’t matter—nothing mattered but her and me.

Yes, I knew Ruby. But even I couldn’t understand why she wasn’t there to meet me and had sent some random ex in a sweaty nineties T-shirt instead.

It wasn’t until I got closer that I realized someone else was inside the car, sitting shotgun in the shadows.

“You remember Owen,” Pete said, motioning at his younger brother. “Aren’t you guys in the same grade?”

“Not exactly,” I said, eyeing his silhouette. “He’s a year ahead of me.”

“Same difference,” Pete said.

I felt it as soon as I piled my bags in the backseat and scooted over to sit behind Owen. That intense craving to be in his orbit, close enough just to see him—even around a corner would do. I felt the hope crawling under my skin. The thrumming pulse. The hot stars crowding my eyes and tightening in a lasso around my head.

Oh, Ruby.

Did she have anything to do with this?

She must have. She’d sent Owen’s brother, Pete, to pick me up, figuring there was a good chance Owen would be in the car. Though I’d been careful not to say it out loud, how I felt about him, I’m guessing she’d always known. No secrets could be kept from her, not anymore, is this what she was telling me?