Imaginary Girls(8)

I must have seen her outside school sometimes. She knew Ruby’s friends, could be spied in the backseats of their cars as they spun their way around the Green. Plus she was friends with Owen—I couldn’t help but notice—the boy I tried hard not to hold in my heart as he barely ever looked my way. Also, I’m pretty sure one time she borrowed my pen and never gave it back.

I knew she was at the reservoir that night, even though she wasn’t invited.

That’s all I knew.




Just weeks into living at my dad and stepmother’s house in Pennsylvania, my mom mailed me a package. She was sober again and must have realized she should show a stab at missing me, for, I guess, my sake. But the box was no attempt at amends. It was more a junk drawer than a care package: a spilled cache of feathers and beads from the craft store in town where she worked weekends; a rock from, I figured, the Millstream, dusted in our town’s dried mud; some menstrual tea (seriously?); a dog-eared book on power animals (hers was the sparrow, she said, which she’d also taken on as her new name; Ruby said it was actually the vampire bat); and nothing whatsoever from Ruby.

You might say my mom was harmless if you didn’t know any better. Hair down past her waist like she was going for some world record, beaded necklaces, gypsy skirts. She really did force people in town to call her Sparrow. But that was only the role she liked to perform for whatever audience hadn’t slipped out the back; it was her aria in the shower for whoever needed to pee and got stuck listening.

In reality, my mom had a hard side, made of tin and pounded flat to deflect all emotion, thanks to the poison she poured down her throat. That’s why, in the care package, she’d also included one last thing: the obituary. Like she wanted to make sure I didn’t forget.

Ruby would have shipped me the severed tip off her own finger before sending that. She would have guessed about my reservoir nightmares: the rowboat bobbing, knowing that at any moment the floating inhabitants of Olive could pull London down to their waterlogged Village Green by her rotting, black toes, and then my toes, and then me. We didn’t need to talk about it for her to know the last thing I’d want was a reminder.

My mom barely knew me. If Ruby hadn’t witnessed me come out of her body, I would’ve thought I’d been picked up on the side of Route 28 in the spot where we found that couch.

The obit had been neatly scissored out of a newspaper from the township across the county line. My mom had gone out of her way to get this one for me special, going so far as to cross the Mid-Hudson Bridge to check the papers there. In it was a photo of London with her former long hair and the complete absence of a smile. You couldn’t see her ears. The text about her was short and vague: lost too soon, mourned and by who, in lieu of flowers donate to this cause, the usual. No mention of how she died, or where.

It didn’t say what kind of drugs she’d been on; that was tacky to tell the world, I guess. It was also tacky for my mom to send it to me.

Ruby, she would have torn the obit to shreds and burned it in the fireplace. She would have cranked up the stereo to forget it, played something vintage, like Rick James or 2 Live Crew, something raunchy and loud and undeniably alive to get those words out of our heads. She would have, if I’d stayed.




That was the last I heard of London for a long time. My mom didn’t send another care package—she slipped off-radar, as she tends to—and Ruby’s sporadic text messages filled me in on other subjects entirely.



dreamed we rode wild horses dwn the mntain. u lost yr hat but i found it don’t worry




dreamed we shared a phantom boyfriend & his name was Georgie. cute but made of vapor. smelled like lemons




dreamed we lived in a big blue blimp. the clouds had berries for snacks & u were always hungry




my boots miss your feet




my head misses your hairbrush




my car misses your warm butt



And sometimes, deep in the middle of the night when she had to know I was sleeping, she texted a simple two characters: xo

I missed her, too.

My dad never spoke of what propelled me to move in with him after all these years. Still, he’d look at me sideways sometimes, as if waiting for the first sign of mutation. Like at any moment I could hiccup, have a spasm, pop out an extra head, and then he’d have one more mouth to feed. There was therapy, for a while—the freebie kind with the school guidance counselor—and there were chores. Taking out trash. Cleaning the garage. Dishes, landfills of dishes. Distractions, all.