Imaginary Girls(36)

I nodded, though she didn’t move for the door.

“Speaking of boyfriends . . .” she said. “I guess you met Jonah?”

I nodded once more but didn’t comment.

“He’s good with his hands, huh?”

I made a face.

“He’s useful, Chlo. Don’t you go and be mean to him yet. So who else is out there? I don’t want to let them see me till I know.”

“Some guy, Pete’s friend, I dunno. And . . . and I guess, uh, yeah, I saw Pete’s brother, Owen, out there with them, too.”

The heat of my cheeks warmed the kitchen, like she’d left the oven on. I wasn’t sure if she noticed.

Ruby never got this kind of heat in her cheeks. She didn’t have to stop short inside a doorway to catch her breath after she’d been standing near someone. Didn’t pause longer than she should, wondering if he’d followed her. Pause a long time wondering, until it was clear he wasn’t following, because why would he? Boys didn’t follow me the way they did my sister. A boy once followed her around town for miles, tailgating her car and trailing her cart in the supermarket, and when she whirled around to ask what he wanted, he said he only wanted to say hi.

Come to think of it, maybe that had been Pete.

Ruby headed for the door and slipped out. She was gone for awhile. She was gone long enough for me to shower and get dressed and put on a dab of her lipstick and make myself a second waffle. She was out there for so long that I wondered if maybe she wanted me to join her and I’d missed the signal or something.

But then I looked out the great window in the living room, a window as wide as the room itself and showing the full expanse of the reservoir as if our whole world was made of it. There, in the backyard, were Pete and Pete’s friend and Pete’s brother and Jonah, and they were all working together, lifting boards of wood in an assembly line, apparently inspired to do some work on the veranda.

My sister had her back to me and was caught standing in the dirt, the wind playing with the hem of her dress, tossing it like wild rapids around her clean, bare legs. She must have felt me looking because she turned then, to give me one of her smiles. A smile for me and me only. No boys had ever seen this smile. They thought they were close enough to my sister to be loved by her, but they couldn’t, wouldn’t ever get that close—not in the way I already was.

She came in through the sliding glass door and said, “It’s Wednesday. We should watch movies.” Because on summer Wednesdays that was what we used to do, and the day after, Thursdays, we did laundry, but only if we felt like it, and on Fridays we’d do some shopping and make a pit stop at the town pool.

For now, we sat on pillows beneath the ceiling fan and flipped on the cable.

“I forgot to tell you,” Ruby said. “I don’t like you going in the backyard when it’s still light,” she announced randomly. She lifted her face to the ceiling fan, which was on high, and let it cool her cheeks.

“Why?” I said. “Afraid I’ll get sunburned?”

“No,” she said, “though good point, you do burn easily, your skin is so much fairer than mine—I bet you my dad was Latin, like from Panama or Puerto Rico, didn’t Sparrow say he spoke Spanish? I bet he went back to whatever country he came from and it’s so gorgeous and sunny down there so that’s why we haven’t seen him since. And your dad speaks only English and he’s as pale as a newborn rat.”

“Are rats pale?”

She shuddered. “They live their lives in the dark, don’t they? Just don’t go in the yard in the daytime. Anyone could see you out there. And you know what? If you go out there at night, do me a favor and stay on the veranda. You could step on a nail. Also, I don’t like that boy, why’d he ask if you were coming back out? I told him it’s Wednesday and Wednesday’s the day we watch movies so, no, you were not coming back out. Plus, please don’t answer the telephone. Let it ring like I do. And”—here, a glance at the sundress I had on, a short blue one I’d helped myself to from her closet—“you look cute in that dress. It’s yours. I want you to have it.”

“Thanks,” I said.

I was still stuck on the thing about the boy who’d asked for me. But she didn’t bring him up again.

She just said, “Got it?”

And I said, “Yeah,” though I wasn’t sure I understood even half of it.

And then she rested a cold hand on my arm, and the air whipped up by the ceiling fan made it even colder, and she said, “It’s Wednesday, Chlo. What movie should we watch?”