Imaginary Girls(29)

But when I looked over at Ruby, she let the wind off the reservoir touch her anywhere it wanted and she didn’t do a thing. She had her eyes on the water, not the least bit intimidated.

She was an ant before a bear. She was a girl before a speeding eighteen-wheeler truck. And yet she didn’t act like it. Here was the second deepest reservoir in the state and she showed none of the awe most people did when they gazed at it. She didn’t let out a sigh and say what a beautiful treasure it was. She acted like it was a challenge, like she was waiting to see who would break eye contact first. She looked on as if it would wither up in a dry spell and she’d go down there and celebrate by stomping around in its dirt.

Then, when I felt sure something was about to happen, she turned her face away.

“That’s what I wanted to tell you,” she said, as if we’d never paused in conversation. “The reservoir. It’s so close.”

“You could walk to it,” I said.

When we lived in the heart of town, the reservoir used to be a ten-minute drive; we’d have to stow the car somewhere secret before going on foot through the trees. But this new house where Ruby lived had been built to be as close to the water as possible without trespassing on city property. The city of New York still owned the water and the land surrounding it, though they weren’t here to keep an eye on it. Ruby was.

“It looks closer than it is,” she said. “You have to cross the road to get to it—you just can’t see. There’s a hole in the chain link, and there’s this little path I know of over the rocks, but—” How serious she grew here. How cold her hand was, now that it grabbed mine around the wrist, her skin chilled to the same temperature as the wind. “But, Chlo, don’t go down there. Just don’t.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Promise?”

I nodded.

“You won’t go near it,” Ruby announced. “You won’t. C’mon, let’s show you the house.”

We left Pete’s car where she’d parked it, inches from toppling over the hill. The subject of the reservoir was closed and tucked away, as were other subjects as far-reaching as mothers we were avoiding and girls come back to life. The night was filled with strange things, but what wasn’t strange was being together with my sister again. That was the one thing that felt right.

We followed a path of stones to the house, with Ruby leading the way, saying, “Watch where you walk, step only on the stones, that’s why they’re there, no, don’t walk on that one, walk on that one, that’s right, that stone there,” until we reached a series of short, squat steps and then a door. It was unlocked, and unpainted, and had a hole where the knob should be. Even so, she opened it wide and ushered me in.

Indoors, with a few lamps on to see, the house was revealed to not exactly be a whole house yet. It was a house in progress, one being built up around us as we stood inside. The walls and floors were half-completed, formed from scraps and panels of wood, electrical wires for who-knew-what gaping out from above. And yet furniture was arranged in the room—a table and chairs, a love seat on one side, a couch opposite. It looked like someone had insisted on moving in too soon. Or that the furniture was planted here first, and then the walls of the house were put up around it.

Ruby made no comment on the state of the house. She took a practiced step over a hole in the floor, indicating where to put my feet to avoid falling in, and then gave a quick tour of the downstairs: kitchen to the right, living room and den to the left, bathroom through this hall and around that bend. There were more doorways than it seemed there should be, if the only rooms downstairs were the ones she mentioned, but when I asked where the extra doors led, Ruby smiled and said sometimes you need more than one way to reach the outside.

There was no introduction to Jonah, the new boyfriend, whose house Ruby treated as her own. She said he was around somewhere, but she didn’t feel like looking. I’d meet him tomorrow, she said. She’d get him to make us breakfast or something.

Up a set of stairs, turning sharp corners without a banister to hold on to, we reached the second floor, where a hole in the floor meant for a ceiling fixture was poked through with a glowing pole of light. I could see wall frames where eventually there’d be walls, but now I could see through the walls—as if I’d grown X-ray eyes. It seemed that if you walked down a hallway, only when you reached the end would you know if it held a room, because we walked down one and there was nothing, and then we walked down another and there was a door.