Imaginary Girls(62)

“I meant that’s a good thing,” Owen said. “Everyone says you look like her, but I don’t think you do. I kinda like that.”

What a terrible thing for him to say. I wanted to go back inside, leave him to wait out in the driveway all by his lonesome, even if it took an hour for his friend to show.

He stood up. “There’s my ride.”

The car stopped halfway down the driveway, at the wheel one of his boys, one too lazy to even pull all the way up to the house. Owen waved and went for the car, and I wasn’t sure how long I sat out on the steps. I knew he wouldn’t be back. And it was only just getting dark—Ruby wouldn’t be home from work for hours. But I sat, very still, my knees pressed together, my chin balanced on them, my eyes open for as long as I could stand it and then my eyes closed.

In time, I became aware of it behind me. How it held there in the distance, heavy, breathing over my shoulder. How it had been there all along, keeping track of everything I did.

I was walking around the back of the house when I heard it. The voices carrying. Somehow, from the edge of the reservoir and across the road, then up the hill and into the yard of the house, I could hear the voices.

Jonah came out of the shed when I started walking down toward the water.

“Owen left?” He stood in front of me so I’d have to circle around him to get past.

“We were just talking,” I said. I took a step to the side and he took a step to the other side and then I was free and clear to take the hill.

“I thought you couldn’t go down there,” he called after me. “Ruby told me that.”

“I can do whatever I want.”

“Clearly,” I thought I heard him say.

I spun, searing my eyes at him, or where I thought he was, but he must have slipped back into his shed, out of sight, and I ended up glaring at a tree.

I crossed Route 28. Down at the reservoir, I found the path without anyone having to tell me where to look. There was a flap hanging loose from the chain-link fence and I crawled in easily. The voices carried through the trees; the bright orange No Trespassing signs practically lit the way. I followed the voices as they trickled out from down the shore, getting farther and farther away from the house. When I was close enough, I crept behind a large rock at the edge, ducked down, and listened.

I heard Ruby before I could see her. I heard a whisper in the wind, then a splash.

“Who cares if you’re naked? No one can see you, Lon. God.”

Another splash.

“Hear anyone down there, Lon? See anything?”

“It’s . . . cold here, Ruby. This spot right here is really cold. Why’s it so cold?”

My sister sighed, showing her impatience. “What do you see?”

I peeked up over the rock and caught sight of Ruby. Her arm was stretched out into the growing night, one finger pointing. The middle of the reservoir hovered, glimmering faintly under a sliver of moon, completely still though it was fluid and should have been moving in the wind. My sister was on the very edge of the waterline, on a pile of rocks that had once been an old town wall before the reservoir was flooded, keeping careful not to dip her boots in. London was down in the water, in up to her waist, her pale hair a daub of light in the deepening darkness, her arms crossed to hide her bare breasts.

Afraid she’d see me, I ducked back down.

“Aren’t you gonna come with me?”

“Not me, just you tonight.”

“But I’m cold. Can you throw my shirt back? I—Okay. Okay. Okay, I’m going.”

The splashing became even then, in strokes, as London made her way into the deep. She went so far, I couldn’t hear her. Not at all. She was out there for way too long without any sound and I was starting to get worried, so I peeked back over the rock again and there was a moment—long and drawn out, as my sister stretched on shore, arching her back and reaching her arms, as if this could take a while and she was getting comfortable—where I couldn’t see London in the water at all. Where I thought she’d vanished, got herself sucked down to the deep crater of the bottom and wouldn’t emerge again in this lifetime.

I was about to stand up, to call out, when I caught a pale flash in the water and realized it was London’s bleached head.

She came swimming out, dripping and shivering once she reached the shore, looking paler and skinnier than ever before, and my sister quickly threw her clothes at her to cover up.

They left soon after, following a different trail lacing through the trees. Two red lights—the brake lights on Ruby’s white Buick—pulsed and then snapped off as the car pulled away.