Imaginary Girls(69)

“—saw her the other day,” the guy driving was saying, “it was sweet.”

“—swear she was naked—” said the guy squeezed in beside me.

The wind kept clipping their words; I couldn’t catch it all.

“—told her to come out of the water—” the guy near the far window said, adding a few recognizable hand motions.

Owen’s voice was noticeably absent; he stared out his window at the passing trees. He wasn’t defending her, but at least he wasn’t talking about how he wanted to get in her pants. The others, though—they showed no signs of stopping.

The wind tossed their laughter around the car, shoving it in my face.

“Are you talking about my sister?” I yelled over the wind.

They didn’t deny it. “You can’t blame us,” one of the guys in the backseat said, “she’s smokin’ hot.”

“I heard she’s a freak in bed,” another said.

I covered my ears, hummed out the nasty words and the nastier pictures drummed up at the sound of them. The lies. The lies and lies and lies.

I was used to guys saying they loved her, confessing how they wanted her to marry them and have their babies, mushy things you didn’t expect guys to admit to, but this was only physical. They made her sound like an ordinary slut, nothing special about it. And Ruby was many things, more than any of them could know, but she wasn’t that.

“Shut up!” I yelled. “Stop it!”

The boys stopped, but when London saw how upset I was, she came alive in a way I’d never seen her. Her eyes had a whole new light in them, and a cruel smirk touched her lips. She spoke in a low voice right up against my ear. “Haven’t you ever heard anyone say that? They say that kind of stuff about her. They say it all the time.”

As she admitted this, some of Ruby’s own words entered my mind, slithering inside me as I felt London’s cold lips at my ear. “Stay in town,” Ruby had said, me and London both. “Don’t go anywhere else.”

Was this why? Outside my sister’s influence, did London turn into someone else, someone closer to who she was inside? Someone mean?

And the boys, too? Did everyone, absolutely everyone, turn against her?

I couldn’t get away from London’s mouth if I tried; the car was too small.

“Why does it bother you so much, what they say about Ruby?” London was saying, getting louder now over the wind. “Everybody in town hates her, don’t you know that?”

“Not true.”

“It is true.” I barely recognized her, lit up with lies about my sister, spouting them out of her skinny face. “She’s all up in my shit constantly,” she said. “You have no idea what she makes me do. She’s ruining my life. Sometimes I hate her, too.”

That’s when I said what I shouldn’t have said.

“She could have sent you back,” I said. “You don’t want that, do you?”

“Back where?”

“Back to . . .”

She held herself very still, waiting for it.

“. . . rehab,” I finished.

She laughed. “She couldn’t do that.”

But I kept going. “You can’t hate her. Without her, you wouldn’t even be here.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re not supposed to be here, London!” I shouted at her. “You should be kissing Ruby’s feet right now. You should be thanking her and calling her a saint. You’re not even supposed to be alive.”

London didn’t get it because all she said was, “Thanks, bitch,” and then she was laughing, like this was a huge joke the whole car was in on, and then she was saying what a ho I was for hooking up with Owen, and how everyone knew, and everyone said so, and I was just like Ruby except barely half as pretty, and then I lunged at her and grabbed her by the mouth and told her to shut up, not because she said I was half as pretty but because of what she said about my sister, and I thought she was going to bite me, but she just started screaming.

The guys yelled beside us, egging us on. The wind was rushing through the open windows, throwing my hair in my face. The guys in the back were telling us to stop fighting and go ahead and make out already. Even Owen was involved, looking at me for the first time since we’d gotten in the car, asking what the hell was going on.

I couldn’t be sure myself. I happened to look out at the road we were speeding down and I recognized the sign for the old turnpike. It had a weirdly bent squiggle on it to warn drivers how the road curved, but in the quick flash that I saw it and lost it, it showed me how far we were from anything I knew, so far I worried I’d never find my way to Ruby.