Imaginary Girls(92)

I’d kept it secret so far, but there was something about London that made me want to tell her what I was doing here. To hint at least.

I wanted to see if she remembered.

Here we were, on the edge of the body of water where I’d found her that night. That boat was her boat.

London slept nights at her parents’ house now, and she was back the way she used to be before that summer, but she was still more connected to this than she realized.

And besides—I wanted to talk about Ruby; she was all I wanted to talk about.

“She likes to read magazines,” I told London, “glossy fashion ones. The fat, fall ones are her favorites.” I flipped through the thick, bright thing in my hands, fanning out its happy pages like it didn’t twist me up to do it. “You know, fall fashion—boot season.”

“Liked to,” London corrected me. “Liked to read magazines.”

“Likes,” I corrected her.

I looked past her at the water beyond us both, the water that seemed to have no end in the night, and there was no reason to think you could swim it—no one could.

“Only problem is they get wet,” I continued. “The pages get all stuck together and it’s pretty much impossible to read that way.”

London threw up her hands. “I know I should feel sorry for you, but I can’t anymore. You put on this show, to get people to pay attention to you, but guess what? It’s not working.”

She said it with her back to the water—oil-black in the blacker night—close up to it, nearer than Ruby would have wanted me to stand on my own, the heels of her feet practically inside.

She shouldn’t have done that. She was close enough to push.

But before I could do a thing—before I could even let myself think it—an answering splash came from the reservoir, close to the rocks now, right where we stood. It could have been a fish, or a rustle of wind, anything really. Still, I wasn’t expecting it and the noise startled me, but it shocked London—she jumped and skidded, almost belly-flopping into the frigid shallows, flashlight and beer bottle and all. The shriek she made hit the water and burst back up in our faces. It echoed against the rocks here and the rocks across the way. It flew through the sky. It filled our town and escaped to the next county.

So much noise, all the people down in Olive would have had to hear it—no one could have slept through that. They’d have gathered on their Village Green, boys and girls, moms and dads, the mayor’s daughters—the oldest Winchell sister who still looked after the youngest, like I pretended Ruby kept on doing with me—eyes cast up toward their watery night sky that hung below our airy one, to the surface, to London’s spindly legs, her bony ankles in striped socks well in reach.

Months ago, Ruby had said something I’d kept thinking about. Balance, she’d said, it’s all about balance.

Give and take, push and pull, this girl for that girl, one thing for another.

If not me—Ruby would never, ever let it be me—then would London do? Had they changed their minds and would they take her back now? Would it work if I threw her in? If I did, then would someone I wanted to see more than anyone in the world come walking out in her place? Someone wearing a sundress in the night, drenched through and showing blue shaking knees, a braid of seaweed for a toe ring, hair longer than I’d ever seen it, a new freckle I’d get to know on her nose? Was it wrong to wonder these things? Could anyone blame me if I did?

But London had distanced herself from the water; she wasn’t even on the rocks anymore. She was on flat, dry ground, closer to the bank of trees, as if about to make a run for it. She whipped around, eyes skittering. She was hyperventilating and couldn’t speak.

“See something?” I asked her.

“I thought—I almost thought . . .” Then she was shaking her head, shaking it away. She wasn’t going to say it out loud, wouldn’t let me have it, not this one little thing.

A sound came from the woods—one of the boys she’d come here with, shouting her name.

She snapped out of it. There was a party to go to, Owen’s party. He could walk again; everyone who was anyone in town would be there.

“Gotta go,” she said. And she took off, stepping fast into a trot, a trot that turned into a full-out run, unapologetically running away from me, as if I’d spooked her.

I could hear her crashing through the woods. Tearing past trees, pitching herself up and over the fence. In the near distance an engine roared; tire skin got lost on asphalt as they hit highway, and I was left alone, here at the edge of Olive.