“Comfortable, Chlo?” Ruby’s voice rang out from her side of the mattress—as if she knew right then on whose face my mind had been lingering.
“Yes, Ruby,” I said from my side.
“G’night then,” she said, choking it out almost, like she had a dry, scratchy spot in her throat. Like being here with me again, tonight, was making her feel emotional.
I waited for her to say more, but she didn’t. She had her back to me, but after some long moments her arm reached out, and her hand tapped my hand to be sure it was still there. I tapped back.
Then we both went to sleep and let my first night home dissolve into day.
CHAPTER EIGHT
RUBY SLIPPED
Ruby slipped over to my side of the bed and wouldn’t budge, though I tried and tried to wake her. The clock showed that it was morning, and far later than I usually slept, but Ruby was still deep under. Her long hair trailed across the tangled sheets and reached down for the shadowy dust bunnies kept beneath the bed. Her arm circled one of my pillows, and her legs had kicked aside my legs.
“Ruby?” I said, removing a lock of hair from her cheek.
“No, don’t,” she said in response. Then she rolled over onto her stomach so I couldn’t see her face. She was only talking in her sleep.
Sometimes, I knew, if I spoke to Ruby while she was dreaming, she’d speak back. We could have entire conversations, ease out her hidden thoughts, the ones she didn’t even know she had. I wondered if any boyfriends ever knew about this.
But I didn’t want to wake her, though it was long past breakfast and she must have been starved. I slipped my legs out from under the sheets and that’s when I felt it: something cold and crumbly, down near where we had our feet. I peeled back the sheet to see the dirt spilling out all over the bottom of the bed, as much on my half as on hers. Her legs were covered in it, streaks of dried mud almost to her knees. Her feet were crusty and brown and you couldn’t even see what color her toenails were painted.
I was positive her feet had been clean when she’d gone to bed.
“Ruby?” I said, poking her hip. “Did you go outside while I was sleeping?”
“You can’t go,” she mumbled, eyes still closed.
“Not me,” I said. “You. Where’d you go?”
She sighed a nonanswer, making it clear she wasn’t getting up, not yet.
The house wasn’t quiet any longer. There was noise coming from somewhere downstairs, a gasping, choking, whinnying roar . . .
The buzz saw, as promised. Had to be.
But Ruby still didn’t get up. She could sleep through smoke alarms and neighbors’ house parties. She’d once slept through a storm that almost took out our apartment, using a hundred-year-old oak as a wrecking ball, and she might have stayed sleeping, even while it crushed her, except she woke to make sure I was okay, because being crushed was one thing, but she couldn’t live with herself if she let something crush her sister.
Going down to the first floor was difficult to manage even in daylight—there was no banister on the stairs and no walls, and I had to hold on to air. There was no breakfast in the kitchen, and the dishes in the sink had a week-old glow.
I found Jonah in the backyard and watched him for some time. I peeked around the corner of his house, my back flat against his unpainted siding, fingering his splinters.
He had black hair; it curled. And tattoos, all up and down his arms.
He was skinny but strong, in that ropey way Ruby liked on a guy. From behind, you could see his shoulders working as he used the buzz saw, ripping through a block of wood, pushing his weight into it.