She opened her mouth. Then she closed it because we could hear voices down below in the yard. Jonah had come back, with London.
Ruby went to the edge of the widow’s walk and called over the railing, “Did you fix the flat?” They spoke some, and then she turned to me.
One thing she’d forgotten to bring up to the widow’s walk was a pair of sunglasses, so she covered her eyes with a hand while she looked at me. That way, she could see me, but I couldn’t see all of her.
“Lon said she’s driving in to town to hang out with her friends, those girls, I can’t remember their names,” Ruby said. “She wants to know if you’d like to go, too.”
“Me?” I said.
“Yes, you. She invited you.”
“Did you tell her to?”
She didn’t answer that. “Maybe you should go. Like I said before”—she tapped at her head—“I do feel a migraine coming.”
She lifted the hand from her eyes and gave a faint smile. When the light hit her face, all at once she did look a bit ill, which was odd, as she’d looked close to perfect before.
“You sure?” I said.
“Yeah, yeah,” she said.
I doubted her story of the headache. She kept flicking glances at the reservoir, acting like she and it had some business to take care of. But to do so she needed me well out of the way.
Ruby leaned over the railing. “Who’ll be there again?” she called to London.
I heard London rattle off some names. Vanessa, Asha, a Cate or a Kate.
“Okay, then, that’s all right,” Ruby said.
I took a step to go downstairs and join London, but Ruby wasn’t done with me yet.
“Chlo,” she said, “could you do one thing for me? Keep an eye on her?”
“Why?” I wasn’t about to explain what I saw in the pool. She probably wouldn’t believe it; no one would.
“Because I asked you to,” she said.
“Okay,” I said, slipping a leg through the window. “I’ll keep an eye on her. Are you sure you want me to go out?” I was hesitating, hovering at the windowsill, knowing I wouldn’t argue if she called me back.
“Yeah, I’m sure. Oh wait. I thought of a second thing. Stay in town, you and London both. Don’t go anywhere else. Promise me.”
“I promise.” I put my other leg through. She didn’t call me back. “You’re not staying out here, are you? Not with your migraine and all?”
She shrugged. “I like it up here. I’ll probably be in this same spot when you come home.” To prove it, she reclined the lawn chair and stretched out, as though she wouldn’t just sit up as soon as I was gone.
Still, I felt her watching me as I balanced along the boards of the hallway and went down the stairs. I felt sure she wanted to call after me, take it back, all of it: telling me to go with London of all people, distracting me with stories about the reservoir of all places, making up that story about that Winchell girl and her little sister . . . But she didn’t call for me, and it wasn’t until I was in the passenger seat of London’s parents’ car, window rolled down and my hair ratting up in the rushing wind, that I realized this was my first real moment apart from my sister since I’d come home.
I wasn’t sure who I was without her anymore. Now I’d find out.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WITHOUT RUBY
Without Ruby, I turned quiet next to London and her friends.
It was London’s idea to go to the graveyard—to get high. If we smoked up in the car, she said, the cops or someone’s parents could drive by and see. This sure wasn’t what Ruby had in mind when she sent me off with London, I knew that, and yet I was reluctant to text my sister and fill her in.
I was left standing in the parking lot as they set off in the direction of the old cemetery. I looked across the road back at the newer cemetery, the one with the tall iron gate and the neatly mowed lawns, the one where London herself would have been buried if time had gone another way.