Imaginary Girls(21)

She was distracting me, trying to get me to tell a story about something else when the story was right here.

London.

But that couldn’t be London filling another cup of beer from the keg, I was positive. Not London talking to that boy. Not London with the stripes on her sleeves, a hand up to her mouth to keep from laughing. Not her hair chopped more uneven than I remembered, bleached closer to white than before, though still showing off both her ears. No. Not London’s laugh, though it sounded like hers, lifting up over the bonfire and echoing through the quarry. The dark night, the party noises were tricking me, the fire was making me see things, I was the one who’d gone all weird.

Then London looked up and met my gaze. She smiled. And it was her—it couldn’t have been anyone else.

London, who was buried close to two years ago, was somehow still alive and standing right here.

I looked to Ruby to get her confirmation, but we weren’t alone anymore, so we couldn’t speak freely. “Petey,” she was saying, “watch it with the hand.”

Pete was there with us. He was shaking out his hand, like he’d been slapped, saying, “A guy’s gotta try, right?”

Ruby glared at him. “No,” she said, “not twice. Not with me.”

“But, Ruby,” I said, and I wasn’t talking about Pete and where he put his hands.

She knew. She was looking at the keg, too. Then loudly, for Pete’s benefit, she said to me, “You know that girl London from school, right?” Her mouth said those words, but her eyes said something far different. Her eyes had the red lights in them. Her eyes were telling me to not say what I wanted to say.

I had the reins of the story then; I could have turned it in any direction I wanted. Back down to the bottom of the pit, or straight-flash into the bonfire, or up into the tallest of the tall trees. The story you choose to tell isn’t always the story you believe. So, out loud, I said, “Yeah, I know her from school.”

And Ruby smiled, placated, and closed her eyes. All at once she seemed tired, a little wobbly on her feet like she had to sit down. Pete reached an arm out, even if he’d get slapped for it, as if she might need to lean on him. But she didn’t. Quickly she shook her head and opened her eyes to show the green I remembered, the green she was known for, her bright and searing green, and said, “That’s what I thought. You had French class together, right?”

“Right,” I said, my voice faint.

“So you want a beer?” Pete said.

“Chloe doesn’t drink,” Ruby snapped, silencing him.

She took a step closer to me. Her arms were around me again, her elbows and wrists and fingers slung tight at my neck to keep me with her. She could have put a hand over my mouth, but she didn’t have to; I wouldn’t say a thing.

She hugged me close and I swear she breathed these words into my hair as she did, “See, Chlo? It’s just like it used to be.”

And—suddenly, without any explanation or mystery needing to be unraveled from any undiscovered corner of the universe—it simply was, and I had no idea how.

Because, look: There was London, like things were back the way they’d been before. Like it had never even happened. Just like Ruby said.





CHAPTER FIVE


  LONDON DIDN’T KNOW


London didn’t know she was supposed to be dead. Anyone who did wouldn’t be laughing so loudly, opening her mouth that wide and letting out those sounds. A girl in her grave wouldn’t knock back that Pabst like she didn’t care how it tasted, then smile so sloppy and let the beer dribble down her chin.

She looked happy, in a way I didn’t remember her. She was near the fire with three other girls. She glowed, though I guess it was from the flames, because the girls with her glowed, too. We all did. She was alive, as alive as me.

“I think I—” I started to say. “I think she—” But Ruby wouldn’t let me finish.

“You thirsty?” she asked me, which meant we would discuss all of this later. “I’ll get you some water. Petey, keep an eye on my baby sister and don’t you let her go anywhere near that fire, all right?”

He nodded, and Ruby slipped away. There she was, crossing the gravel in boots that skimmed her shins, and then there she wasn’t, sundress swallowed by the night.

Just as I remembered her.

“I need to sit down,” I said.

Pete hopped to attention and led me over to a slope of gravel. Agreeing to take care of me wasn’t entirely selfless. I could see how he was counting on some reward Ruby would never be game to give him, picturing that reward as he helped me to the ground, rewinding and playing it back as he reached out to pat my head, caught in freeze-frame as he missed my head by a mile and clocked me in the chest instead.