Asha, Vanessa, and Cate already had the only three swings, so the rest of us were left standing in the grass.
“This is lame,” Owen said. He made a move as if to walk off, but I must have startled him when I saw the light flashing, because he stopped and turned back.
The light was coming from inside Damien’s pants pocket—my cell phone. It wasn’t a new text message from Ruby, it was an actual phone call from Ruby, an event that was really quite rare.
I grabbed for his pants and answered her call. “Ruby?”
“Chloe!” she shouted. “Did you want me to think you got kidnapped? To call out the dogs? Send an APB? What were you thinking, Chlo!”
“Ruby, I’m okay, I’m fine, really . . . what’s an APB?”
“I dunno, something cops do. Whatever, Chlo, it doesn’t matter, I was worried!”
“I’m okay, I swear.”
I could hear her take a long, deep breath to calm herself. She held it in, then let it out and said, “You have all your legs?”
“Both legs,” I said, smiling.
“And toes? All ten?”
“All my toes. How’s your head?”
“Fine now. You sure you’re okay? No one tried to—”
I stopped her before she said anything we didn’t want said. “No one tried anything, Ruby. I’m here with London and, uh, you know, Vanessa and Asha and . . . Cate. We lost track of time, that’s all.”
“That’s not all of who’s there,” she said, and she said it as if she were watching the scene right now from a hiding spot concealed in the trees.
“And Laurence,” I mumbled. “And Damien. And . . .”
“And?”
“And O,” I said. “Owen’s here, too.” His face was unreadable as I confessed him being there; I couldn’t tell if he wanted her to know or not.
There was a long beat of silence on the other end of the line as she took this in. She could have yelled, and everyone would have heard, and I would have been mortified. But she saved her true response to that for later.
“I see,” she said. “So what’re you doing that’s so interesting you lost track of time and couldn’t text your sister even though I know you have a clock on that cell phone?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Where are you then, doing this nothing?”
“Just”—I eyed London and her friends—“no place really.”
“Are you at the reservoir?”
“Why would you think that? No, we’re not at the reservoir.”
“You sure?”
“I swear.”
Everyone was looking at me now. “We were in the cemetery,” I whispered. I walked away to the fence.
“Okay,” she said. She didn’t seem the least bit surprised.
“The old cemetery.”
And, here, before I had the question on my tongue, she was saying, “The one that used to be in Olive. My favorite one.”
“So you knew about that?”
“Sure. Parts of Olive got moved before the water was flooded in. Roads got rerouted, and some houses were picked up and stuck somewhere else, and then there were the cemeteries and what they did with them . . . I’m sure I told you before. What did you think, all this time we were swimming on people’s graves?”
“I—I don’t know.” The way she’d told it, maybe I had thought that.
“Oh no,” she said. “All the graveyards were relocated first. Sometimes people did their own families, and could you imagine? One of us having to dig up our mother?”
“No,” I said. I couldn’t—didn’t want to—imagine that.
“So you were in the graveyard,” she said. “I’m glad you two stayed in town like I told you.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But when I was up there . . . I saw . . . the mayor.”
“What do you mean you saw him?”
I turned and caught everyone still eyeing me. They couldn’t know what we were talking about. Maybe they thought I was inviting Ruby here, or that Ruby was inviting herself. Their eyes said something I couldn’t quite decipher because none of them were Ruby and I wasn’t used to reading anyone’s eyes but Ruby’s. Something about . . . about how I should try to keep Ruby from coming if I could.