That was my after-school job now—they let me take over my sister’s old shifts; I barely had to ask. I worked behind the register, carding kids for beer and selling instant cheese pockets, and I’d learned to pump gas the way Ruby used to, keeping the weight of the hose balanced on my hip.
If I nicked a few magazines off the rack while at work, no one docked my pay, but it wasn’t due to some kind of powerful sway I held over the guys in the store. I saw how they looked at me when I pumped a tourist’s tank—nervous that I’d crack and take hostages. The only person who came on purpose during my shifts to get his tank filled, and looked me in the eyes when I was filling it, was Pete.
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.