Imaginary Girls(49)

No human being could take credit for changing fate.

Except for Ruby.





CHAPTER TWELVE


  I’LL TELL YOU


I’ll tell you what happened if you want,” London said. She’d taken a few steps from the group and was lying on the ground just outside the stone platform of the mausoleum, playing with the grass surrounding an unvisited grave.

“Okay,” I said. I stretched out, too, and let the setting sun warm my face. I kicked off Ruby’s boots and put my toes in the cool grass.

“I don’t remember any ambulance. But I do remember these really weird things.” She hesitated. “I think it’s all right to tell you. Ruby said I shouldn’t tell anyone, but . . .”

“Ruby said?”

That’s when we heard yelling. It had been so slow, the afternoon gone in a haze, but now there was commotion on top of the hill. Stomping. Shrieking. A heady, musty scent billowing out from somewhere up above.

Asha called down an explanation. “Laurence kicked that tomb thing open. There’s a whole room inside!”

Soon we were all up there, pushing in to see for ourselves, and just as soon, we were vacating the small, dark space filled with cobwebs and reeking of mildew, nothing worth stealing that anyone could find. But it was then, as I was the last to leave, that I saw the words etched on the inner wall.

Dust tried to hide them from me, but I could still make them out.

Beloved Mayor of Olive, the words seemed to say, the dates below showing 1851–1912. The name itself was partly crumbled out, some letters lost to the years, but when I carefully dusted it clean, this is what it read: W lt r Winchell

Rest in Peace

Mayor Winchell, the last mayor of Olive before the town got itself drowned, according to Ruby. Now his name was known for marking a streetlight.

I returned to one word, putting my finger to it to wipe decades of grime away, tracing the O and the live, the name of the town I’d never pictured existing above the surface, though it had, before the reservoir wiped it away. Ruby had said so, but now I knew for sure: The person in this tomb had lived in it.

I was rubbing at my eyes, wondering if I’d smoked too much, how even if I hadn’t, it must’ve seeped into my brain anyway, that I’d breathed it, that all along I’d been breathing it, because now I was hallucinating. My mind was carving words into the walls and my eyes were duped into reading meaning into them.

I touched the words once more and noticed London hovering in the tomb’s doorway.

She moved slowly through the dusty air like it was thicker than it felt, a plodding, ceaseless bobbing nearer and nearer to me. And once she stood beside me, as near as I let her get, I felt the chill of her, the creeping cold radiating from deep inside her icy bones.

I remembered how she looked at me at the bottom of the pool. How she wanted me to know just what she was made of.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, though she had to know, she had to. Now her long, thin finger was tracing the name of the town the way mine had. Her finger was bitter cold, stinging my hand before I moved it away.

She read the word and didn’t blink.

“That’s the town,” I found myself telling her. “The one at the bottom of the reservoir that Ruby always talks about.”

“I know,” she said.

“You do?”

“I know things,” she said. “Ruby tells me stuff.”

She slunk back against the wall, and as she did it seemed that the shadows were moving all around her, crouching low as if they had a hold of her by the legs. Maybe we weren’t alone in here; maybe we had company who’d come out to listen.

My own legs were getting heavier now. I felt it at my ankles, the familiar tug, and before it could fully bring me back—to that night, the night London remembered differently—one of her friends poked a head in.

“You guys, we’re so bored!” Asha shrieked, breathless. “You know what we should do? Go on the swings! In the rec field!”

Vanessa ran up next. “We totally should. What do you think, Lon?”

“Sure,” London said, her face expressionless. Maybe what she really wanted was to stay back alone with me, in this darkened tomb, just the two of us, but she ended up giving in and following her friends.

I couldn’t get my heart to stop thumping for minutes after.

We left the mausoleum to find that, outside, dark was clearly falling. For a moment, I wasn’t sure how long we’d been inside that tomb. It was here when I thought to check my phone, to see if maybe Ruby had texted.