Imaginary Girls(86)

I sat on a log, away from the water, near where some boys tried unsuccessfully to build a fire. While they rubbed sticks in the dirt, grumbling about a pack of wet matches, Pete took a seat on the log beside me and slung an arm around my shoulders. It was too dark to see him, but I knew what I’d see if I could. A guy Ruby had and didn’t want anymore. A guy who loved someone who’d never love him back.

“What do you want, Pete?”

“Just saying hi,” he said. “Chill.”

“Hi.”

“Guess your sister’s back.”

“She was always coming back.”

We sat there in awkward silence until he said, “Hey now, I saw that before. Sorry about my brother. He’s a dick, what can I say. Here, have some of my beer.”

I grabbed it, though Ruby could have been out there watching, and I took a swig, downing more than I should. Not even Pete’s spit on the mouth of the bottle stopped me.

“Thanks, Pete.”

He patted my leg.

“Listen, you don’t really like my brother. Between you and me, he’s a loser. He wet the bed till he was nine. The kid’s selfish as shit. Take, for example, tonight. He’s got a stash in his bedroom like you wouldn’t believe, and he won’t share a little with me?”

I shrugged and still he kept talking.

“Not to mention that he left you on the side of the road. I heard about that.”

His hand, as he said this, kept patting its way far up above my knee.

“Um. Pete. If my sister sees, she’ll bite that hand off.”

He snatched it away.

“You know something?” he said, slurring just enough to let me know he was about to say something uncomfortable. “In this light, you look just like her. Did I ever tell you that?” He leaned in and took a sniff of my hair. “You even smell like her.”

I stood up.

I’d heard Ruby. Something about wine. Something how everyone knew she didn’t drink beer, so why didn’t they bring wine? How self-centered of them, how rude.

She was mostly teasing—and of course she didn’t mean me—but she wouldn’t drop it. I edged away from the shore to listen.

“Go get some for me, Lon,” she was telling London.

But London didn’t seem to be at my sister’s beck and call any longer. “Tell Pete to go,” she told Ruby. “You know he will.”

“Petey’s trashed. He’s about to pass out.” As Ruby said it, Pete wobbled on his seat on the log. He was drunker than he’d seemed only minutes ago.

Ruby set her sights on Owen.

“How about you go, O?” she said. “And none of that gas station wine either. Nothing in a box. I want something good and red and worth every penny. Here, take a ten. You can cover the rest, right?”

“I’m baked,” Owen said. “I can’t drive.”

“London has her parents’ car—she’s got it parked on the other side of those trees,” Ruby said. “She can drive. Can’t you, Lon?”

“Yeah, but I don’t have fake ID,” London said. She stood there, near Ruby, her mouth open as if she wanted to protest more, but then she caved. She caved as my sister knew she would. “But I’ll drive,” London said. “If someone’ll go with me.”

Ruby gathered up a sigh, like she was beyond exhausted by this conversation and about to let go of the idea of wine, and break up the party while she was at it, and maybe slash a few tires on her way home, but then she lifted her head, and I knew she wasn’t done yet. I felt the heat in her eyes even from where I was standing.

She took her time looking around the circle—from Owen, who was trying to bum a cigarette; to Pete, so falling-down drunk he seemed about to somersault into the newly blazing fire; to a kid tending the fire with a big stick; to London, who was standing there in a shirt as white as the bikini I had on and you could see the fire reflected in it, making it appear like she had a chest full of flames. Then Ruby’s eyes landed back on Owen, where she’d started in the first place.

“London, you’ll drive. Owen’ll go with you. I know he has ID. I’ve seen it when he buys beer at Cumby’s. Says he’s twenty-five and some guy named Dave from Georgia. Dave’s a Sagittarius. Isn’t that right, O?”

His head nodded up and down like she had it on a string.

London, too, was stuck on a pin, legs dangling. The flames covered her stomach, fanned into her face. “All right,” she said. “There’s barely any beer left anyway. But where? Nothing’s open.”