Imaginary Girls(50)

The light was flashing, and Ruby’s texts went on for a whole screen:

  dreamed we ate mushrooms growing on ceiling & u

had only 4 toes

4 toes ON EACH FOOT not only 4 toes! omg what if u had only 4 toes????

did u hide the good cereal? want frosting chlo

migraine gone away. u should come home

come home now. miss u

starting 2 worry. y not answering? y not home yet?

worried

worried

worried

think i need new boots we shld go shopping

btw could u bring home cereal?





“Wow, are those all from Ruby?” Asha said, leaning over.

“I should call her,” I said.

“Please don’t,” Cate said quickly, then she had her hand over her mouth to show she hadn’t meant to say that, not out loud in front of me.

Vanessa started talking for her, trying to ease the damage. “What she means is, maybe you don’t want to call her right now? Maybe we should go across the street to the swings first? And you can call her after?”

“I should at least text her,” I said, pulling up her number on my phone.

But then Damien had my phone, then Vanessa had it, then Laurence, then Damien again.

Owen wouldn’t have anything to do with my phone—or me—and stood at a distance, hands behind his back so no one would make him catch it, but then he opened his mouth, and he said some words in my general direction: “Do you have to tell her every single thing you do? She’s not your mother.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t have to.”

I never had to. Her hand wasn’t at my throat forcing me to open up and spill so she could know all. She never dug around inside me, grabbing secrets to pull out; she didn’t have to go digging, since she knew them already.

“Good,” Owen said.

Owen had never seemed enamored by Ruby. Sometimes it felt like a typhus epidemic had taken out an entire village but spared one lone person and that was him. Not even I had the immunity. It made me distrust him, but somehow, against my better judgment, which meant against all words of Ruby-wisdom in my head, it made me like him more.

“Okay,” I said, and didn’t ask for my phone back, and soon I was following everyone down the hill, headed for the rec field across the road. It was night now and I was crossing the dark street, free of traffic, and running across the lawn to reach the swings. I was well aware of the chain-link fence just beside us, on the other side of which was the newer of the two graveyards, the one that maybe, if I’d only known where among the headstones to go searching, would have revealed an empty plot in the grass that should have been London’s grave.

Asha, Vanessa, and Cate already had the only three swings, so the rest of us were left standing in the grass.

“This is lame,” Owen said. He made a move as if to walk off, but I must have startled him when I saw the light flashing, because he stopped and turned back.

The light was coming from inside Damien’s pants pocket—my cell phone. It wasn’t a new text message from Ruby, it was an actual phone call from Ruby, an event that was really quite rare.

I grabbed for his pants and answered her call. “Ruby?”

“Chloe!” she shouted. “Did you want me to think you got kidnapped? To call out the dogs? Send an APB? What were you thinking, Chlo!”

“Ruby, I’m okay, I’m fine, really . . . what’s an APB?”

“I dunno, something cops do. Whatever, Chlo, it doesn’t matter, I was worried!”

“I’m okay, I swear.”

I could hear her take a long, deep breath to calm herself. She held it in, then let it out and said, “You have all your legs?”

“Both legs,” I said, smiling.

“And toes? All ten?”

“All my toes. How’s your head?”

“Fine now. You sure you’re okay? No one tried to—”

I stopped her before she said anything we didn’t want said. “No one tried anything, Ruby. I’m here with London and, uh, you know, Vanessa and Asha and . . . Cate. We lost track of time, that’s all.”

“That’s not all of who’s there,” she said, and she said it as if she were watching the scene right now from a hiding spot concealed in the trees.

“And Laurence,” I mumbled. “And Damien. And . . .”

“And?”