Imaginary Girls(77)

She’d said things like this to me before, about being sorry, about leaving me alone, always after she’d sobered up and had her meetings. It didn’t matter what I said back. I could hum with thumbs in my ears, or use an onion to cry. It was all so temporary. Only the things Ruby said to me could be counted on forever.

Still, I realized in this moment that I wasn’t mad at her. Maybe another girl would be, to have this kind of mother, but what Sparrow didn’t know is that I didn’t need a mom, not when I had Ruby. My heart was already full.

“How drunk are you?” I asked. “Will you even remember this tomorrow? That we talked?”

“I remember everything,” she said. She enunciated very carefully, as if she wanted to make sure it sunk in. “Everything , Chloe. Every single thing.”

The dark of the room felt dimmer as she said that. Here, I felt sure, this here was what she wanted to communicate to me. It wasn’t about regret or love or how bossy Ruby was—it was this. She saw what I could see, and she wanted me to know that.

Out of everyone in town—even London—she was the only one who did.

“Do you remember . . .” I started, expecting at any moment for a text from Ruby to come through to keep me from talking, expecting someone to ask for my ID, expecting Pete to run out of beer, expecting a blockade that didn’t come, “do you remember sending that box to me in Pennsylvania, when I first moved in with Dad?”

She nodded gravely.

“The feathers made a big mess on the floor,” I said.

She waited. She knew what I was going to say next.

“And the obituary,” I said. “From that newspaper across the river. Do you remember sending that?”

The film over her pale eyes was impenetrable, stuck in place no matter how many times she blinked. A windshield so fogged, the wipers couldn’t clear the way to see. When I looked into those eyes, I had to assume she had no idea what I was talking about. There was no way she could know.

Only, her mouth opened and these were the words it said: “That poor girl. Her poor parents.” She knew exactly what I meant.

“I told you,” she continued. “I remember everything, even the things I don’t want to. I remember before, and I remember after, and I remember when it all changed. And now you’re home.”

My spine was on fire. My fingers prickled with heat, hot static fizzing through my body from end to end. “But . . . how?” I asked. I lowered my voice. “No one else does.”

“She lets me,” she said. “She’s always let me.”

Our mother saw more than I’d ever guessed, because Ruby wanted her to. But imagine being a drunk, known in town for passing out in the supermarket and sleeping off benders in the town jail—no one would believe a thing you said then. Imagine how mad you’d think you were, to be cursed to remember. It was a cruel, bitter thing Ruby had done. I happened to think our mother deserved it.

“You know what?” she said suddenly. “You shouldn’t’ve come in here. I shouldn’t have asked you. I shouldn’t’ve gone out to the car . . .” She stood. “You should go now.”

And it was right then, on cue, that a buzzing sounded. It felt like a moth had found its way in from the rain and climbed my leg, beating its wings inside my jeans so I would let it out. My phone, set on vibrate. This was a text from Ruby—and she’d sent it now, at this moment, to show she knew where I was. And who I was with.

The text itself said nothing about that, though.

ok come home. u need to pack. can’t stay in this house. we’re out

We were leaving Jonah’s? I guessed her talk with him hadn’t gone so well.

I eyed our mother, the first person we’d ever picked up and moved out on, when Ruby was seventeen and I was eleven-and-a-half and we decided to live in our own filth instead of having to share filth with our mother.

I texted back: r u picking me up? bc i’m not on green

My breath was held when I got her reply:

  call Petey. u know he’s always good for a ride





CHAPTER TWENTY


  I’M THE ONE


I’m the one who made it happen, but I wasn’t certain until then.

It was when I slipped my toe in. When I did what Ruby said I shouldn’t—and more where that came from, with boys and rides out of town, with our mother, the last person Ruby wanted me talking to, all of what I’d done radiating from my skin like fever sweat once I stepped out of Pete’s car and into her arms. She knew something was wrong without me having to tell her. She’d sensed it before, and now for sure she knew.