Imaginary Girls(47)

The drawing was Ruby by Ruby. And below it, so you could make no mistake who was responsible, etched out in red chalk, it read:

  RUBY WAS HERE





For some reason, she wanted her mark there, and she wanted no one to forget it.

I dragged my eyes from the chalk mural to find Owen glaring openly at it. He hated what she’d done to the mausoleum, this showed clear in his face, but maybe his hate went deeper than her drawing ability. Maybe he hated the one person in the world who I loved.

I knew that art wasn’t one of Ruby’s talents, but no one seemed quite willing to point this out. So I said, “It’s sort of”—surprising myself as the word found my mouth—“hideous, isn’t it?”

Owen had been leaning on the bench across from me, toking up, but when I said that, he stopped slouching and paid attention.

“Oh no,” said Vanessa. “It’s not. Not at all.”

“It’s not hideous,” Cate said sharply, as if she herself had drawn it.

Did they think I was trying to trick them?

I stepped closer to the mural, touched Ruby’s bulbous head. “She looks deformed, don’t you think?”

Damien laughed, then choked on the laugh, then pretended he was only coughing. Laurence cracked a grin and didn’t bother hiding it. London, who hadn’t said a word about the mural yet, had a look of grave concern on her face, as if she were watching me step out too far on a patch of ice. If it cracked, I had no way of knowing if she’d reach out a hand to pull me back in. Ruby wasn’t here to see if she didn’t.

“I wouldn’t say deformed . . .” Cate said.

I watched her, waiting to hear what she would say.

“It’s like a, like a”—waving her hands now, trying to talk faster than the thoughts would come—“like a Picasso or whatever,” she finished.

Most everyone murmured in agreement.

There was a chill in the air, one that couldn’t be explained by the wind, because it was summer and we were all sweating. A chill not even explained by the fact that we were in a graveyard where a bunch of dead people were buried and some of us were maybe sitting on them. A chill that, I guess, was explained by me.

Or by London.

She was breathing like she had two working lungs inside her, as any living person would, but that’s not what was in there, was it? I couldn’t keep my eyes off her chest, the rhythmic rise and fall of her ribs—the simplest thing and yet so wondrous of a thing, too, because it was her, and I didn’t totally believe in her yet. There was a time not too long ago when I didn’t think I’d ever again see her breathing.

I still questioned if she was really here. I could turn to pass the joint, skipping over myself and giving her the next drag, and there’d be no hand to take it. No fingers reaching for my fingers. I’d hold it out for her, bright and burning, and she’d be gone.

But while I watched her, what she was watching was my sister’s picture. She kept her eyes on it like it could come alive at any moment and step off the wall onto the nearest grave, chiding us for what we said. What I said.

Like, somehow, it knew.

“What do you think, London?” I said, startling her. “About the picture.”

Would she lie to me because I was Ruby’s sister and everyone always only told me things they thought Ruby wanted to hear? Acting like my ears were on her head, or my mouth was in her ear? Would London say it was like a Picasso?

Before she could answer for herself, Damien said, “Don’t ask her, she probably helped draw the thing.”

“She did not,” I said automatically. Then added, “What do you mean she probably helped?”

“London and your sister were like this,” he said, twining his two fingers together to make one twisted lump of a finger. “All spring.”

“You were?” I asked London. No matter what she said, there was no way two people could be close the way Ruby and I were close, not if they weren’t sisters. It went beyond biology, beyond years spent together, beyond secrets kept. It wasn’t possible.

Vanessa spoke up. “It’s not like that. It’s far more pathetic than that. Right, Lon?”

London looked uncomfortable now. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. She coughed, though the joint wasn’t even near her.

“London’s like her little pawn,” Vanessa spilled out. “She does whatever your sister wants, whenever she wants it. Ruby’ll text her at two in the morning, and London’ll fly out and like get her a lemonade or whatever. She’ll drop everything if Ruby wants her. If Ruby says she can’t do something or go somewhere, or I dunno who knows, Lon just says okay. Like it’s God talking.” Vanessa snickered at this and then shut up when no one else joined her.