Imaginary Girls(68)

Ruby wouldn’t have suggested I come to town if she’d known about this. I was treading on dangerous territory—the kind Ruby wouldn’t want me stepping on. But she didn’t know how far I’d gone already.

“Hey,” he said, walking over and getting me at some distance from everyone else. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“About what?” We were near the gazebo now, a favorite place of my sister’s. I thought of how she’d talk to boys, how she’d barely have to utter a word and how they’d follow. Any boy would do. Sometimes she’d pick the ones she shouldn’t. She’d swoop in, pluck them from their girlfriends, and then set them back down after, heads full of fog.

But Owen didn’t go inside the gazebo. He stopped, and glanced back at the guys, then said, “What I wanted to say is, we shouldn’t tell anyone what happened.”

“I . . . I wasn’t going to.”

“Like you shouldn’t tell London and you shouldn’t tell your sister, or you know, anyone else.”

“Your friends, you mean.”

He nodded. “Mostly your sister.” For a second, he looked scared. Then he hid his eyes with his hair so I couldn’t see.

“What do you think she’d do?” I asked.

He wouldn’t answer. “We should get back. Before they think something’s up.”

I had this image of him—gone before I blinked—him, belly-up under a night moon, broken and not breathing. Or better yet, the same moon and him, but this time he’s sinking into deep water and there’s no boat to hold on to. Then I shook it away and I wasn’t thinking anything violent that involved him, nothing that would get me sent to prison.

“What?” he said. He saw I wasn’t moving.

That’s when we heard a horn honking and spotted the red car at the edge of the field. There was London, leaning out of the window, arms out. The car she was in was filled with boys and smoke; their sound and smell leaked out to us from across the grass.

“O! Chloe!” she yelled, trying to get our attention. “You guys coming or what?”

Owen didn’t need more than that. He was in the car, taking shotgun without anyone fighting him for it, and I was soon crammed in the backseat beside London. We took up one seat, with two other guys in with us. It happened fast, that’s what I’d have to tell my sister, it happened so fast that I didn’t realize we were headed out of town until we made the turn onto Route 28, and the car veered away from the reservoir, not toward it. I didn’t realize until I looked up and saw us speed under the traffic lights. We were leaving town and I’d promised my sister I wouldn’t—I’d promised her London wouldn’t leave, either.

“Where are we going?” I asked London.

“That party,” she said, like I knew.

“What party?”

“You know. The one at the cliffs in High Falls. Why’d you think I texted? We may as well drive out there now and start drinking early.”

Everyone in the car seemed to know where we were headed. The guy driving was someone I didn’t know but who seemed to know me by the way he asked after my sister. I’d call her when we got there, I told myself. I’d tell her then.

I had London’s elbow in my side, could feel her hip bone cutting into mine. When I touched her, she was hard ice, and even skinnier than she looked, as if her one layer of skin was her only cushion.

Our town had a small center, but the township itself stretched up the mountain and down into the valleys that touched the mountain’s edges. It spread out along the reservoir, which had once held the town of Olive, and also other towns, though I’d never bothered to know their names because Ruby never bothered to tell me.

This party we were headed to was beyond the town limits. The town of High Falls was in a whole other school district. It wasn’t a place Ruby went to often, if at all.

As we drove, London whispered: “What’s going on with you and O? Are you hooking up?”

I averted my eyes.

“Are you?” she said, loud enough to be heard over the music.

I shushed her, but Owen hadn’t turned around. He hadn’t turned around in his seat up front even once.

It wasn’t something I wanted to talk about right there, with Owen close by, but before I could think up a good answer, I realized the conversation in the car had turned when we weren’t paying attention. Even with the music up and the wind rushing in the open windows, I could hear the guys talking about her, my sister.