She climbed the creaky steps and called again. “Ruby?”
Still no answer.
But in the doorway of her bedroom, Olivia stopped, slumped against the frame. Ruby was there, in her bed, the hat still perched on her head. She was propped up against all the pillows, reading magazines. She smiled up at Olivia when she saw her there.
“These are great,” she said, and held up some chocolate truffles.
They were a gift from Winnie, who had started sending Olivia all the castoffs from the You! kitchen.
“You eat weird stuff,” Ruby said. “It must cost a fortune, huh? It’s good, though. I liked that chutney a lot, with all those chunks of—what, pears or something? I put most of it on the crackers with the cracked pepper. Not bad. I mean, all pepper is cracked, though, right? Unless it’s in those little balls like at restaurants when they come over and grind it up for your salad. They always do that in movies.” She licked the chocolate from her fingers, then asked, “Are you like a gourmet cook or something?”
Her face was blank and innocent. She was not a robber. She was just a teenager in trouble.
Olivia wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry from relief.
“My friend works for a magazine,” she told Ruby.
“Cool,” Ruby said. “I love magazines. You don’t have to concentrate on them the way you do on books. I’m not a big fan of books.”
Realizing its potential power, Olivia added, “She works for You!”
“No shit? That is like so cool.”
“You must have been starving,” Olivia said. The bag of food that Winnie sent was nearly empty.
“I’m always starving. I bet I’ve gained fifty pounds. No joke. Ben told me I look like I swallowed a pig. He said I’m like a snake. You know, there’re these snakes in South America that swallow pigs whole. So they’re like skinny on top; then they bulge out in the middle because there’s this whole pig inside them, and then they’re skinny again.” She grinned a toothy, chocolate-smeared grin. “Ben says that’s what I look like. One of those snakes.”
Ben.
Olivia wondered if she should try to find him next. Or his parents.
“Do you think those snakes kill those pigs first? Before they eat them?” Ruby was asking.
Olivia shrugged. “I don’t know. I would think so.” Ben’s parents should be notified, she decided.
“There is so much I don’t know. It blows my mind,” Ruby said, shaking her head. “And nature,” she continued. “Nature totally freaks me out. Like tornadoes and typhoons and hurricanes.” She ate another truffle, studying it after each bite. “And babies,” she said finally. “The way they get made. I mean, they come out of just a gob of come. A whole baby.”
“And an egg,” Olivia said stupidly.
“Remember Betsy?” Ruby said suddenly. “My friend who told me that if I didn’t do it on the fourteenth day, this wouldn’t happen? She also thought that you couldn’t get pregnant if you did it standing up, because the come just like falls out of you. That’s how she got pregnant. But Planned Parenthood made her watch this tape that explained stuff, which is supposedly where she got this other misinformation.”
Olivia did not know where to begin with Ruby. She sat on the very edge of the bed and tried.
“I don’t think Planned Parenthood gives out misinformation,” she said.
Ruby nodded. “Uh-huh. Betsy says so.”
“What did Betsy do with her baby?”
“Abortion,” Ruby said offhandedly, chewing her truffle. “Get this. They ask her if she wants like liquid Valium or if she just wants to do it without anything. And so Betsy says, ‘Oh, liquid Valium? Like I drink it?’ And they go, ‘No, it’s an IV.’ So Betsy says no thank you, even though she loves a good high for free, like anybody, because her boyfriend paid for everything—the abortion, and even for a year of the pill. So anyway, she doesn’t get the IV, because the thing about Betsy is, she is terrified of needles. Once she even bit her doctor when he gave her a shot. And another time, she puked when she got a needle. She asked this lady if it hurt a lot—you know, the abortion—and the lady said there might be a little cramping, so Betsy figures big deal, right? A little cramping’s better than having a baby, right? So they don’t give her anything, and it hurts so bad, she freaks out. I mean, she really freaks. And she sees everything. She says there wasn’t really anything to see, not like a whole baby or anything. But there was something. They called it ‘tissue.’”
Ruby’s voice went all soft and she said, “That’s why I didn’t do it. I was too scared.” She blew a long stream of air out through her teeth. “Except now I’m more scared. It would have been over, you know? Now it’s like there’s a baby in me. It is so creepy.”