I climbed to the landing and looked down, teetering at the edge where, in a finished house, there’d be a railing so you couldn’t fall through and break a leg. She kept to a dark spot in the living room, hovering in a gap of space where I had trouble seeing her. There was also a giant fern, a tall chair, and a love seat in the way.
“Go to bed, Chlo. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Why are you treating me like a child?”
“Because you’re acting like one. Getting stoned—you reek, FYI. Not telling me where you were. Not meeting your curfew. Not to mention filching my boots—those ones with the heels are almost my favorite pair, Chlo. Like my second or third favorite.”
I tried to protest, but she had a hand raised. A shut-your-trap hand, one like she’d never raised up to me before. Just like we’d never had a fight before. Not ever before this, not even once.
“This isn’t why I wanted you home,” she said. “You won’t turn into her, Chlo. I won’t stand here and let it happen.”
“You’re the one who told me to go!”
“I did,” she said, more to herself than to me. “It seems like everything I do has consequences now. I do one thing and something else falls apart. I fix that and”—she heaved a sigh—“never mind. Go to bed, Chlo. Tomorrow we’ll have dessert for breakfast and breakfast for dinner. Tomorrow we’ll talk. All right?”
I nodded.
I left her then, half hidden behind the love seat and the chair and the towering fern, but I watched from the window in the hallway upstairs as she went outside and walked the section of porch Jonah had been building for her. Watched as she walked it like a runway, the wind billowing up inside her translucent dress and spooling out her dark hair, making it seem like she was the one we should really be keeping an eye on. Watched as she walked to the end, studied the stretch of darkness for some minutes, poised as if she were about to do something fantastic and I’d be the only one awake to witness it, then watched as she turned around and walked all the way back.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IT’S TIME
It’s time we had the talk,” Ruby announced. We were out on the widow’s walk again, the sky swollen with clouds and bursting blue, the hammer and tap of Jonah down below traveling up to us as he worked on the latest addition to the porch, and Ruby herself, apparently no longer mad at me, glowing and smiling and patting the lawn chair so I’d come close and sit.
“What talk?”
I took my seat and noticed the batch of helium balloons tied to the far rail. They were big and round and came in a variety of colors, much like the ones we saw at the birthday party in the park, but Ruby’s balloons were tied tight with red ribbons, knotted in a bright bunch to the wooden post. She must have had nothing else to use for strings.
Though my sister was smiling, and all the gray had drained from her eyes, she still sounded serious enough.
“The talk, the one we didn’t have last night. There are things you can and can’t do, and we need to talk about them.” She counted on her fingers, repeating all the things she’d already told me. The phone, I shouldn’t answer it. I shouldn’t leave town, I shouldn’t eat raisins in front of her (this was new, but I should know that raisins sickened her, and who’s to say they don’t grow back into grapes once they’re swallowed?), I shouldn’t go to the reservoir, she didn’t want me smoking even if she sometimes did, no drugs and no drinking, obviously, and she didn’t think too highly of Owen and if I wanted to like a boy I should make an effort to find another.
This was where I stopped her. “Why? What’s wrong with him? He’s Pete’s brother. You were with Pete.”
She shuddered. “Don’t remind me.”
“Then what?”
“Owen is too pretty,” she said. “There’s something ugly about a pretty boy who knows he’s pretty and assumes everyone else knows it, too.”
What a funny thing for her to say.