For barely a flicker of a second I thought otherwise. I thought about how maybe this wasn’t happening at all, except in some locked-off part of my mind where sane people retreat only when they’re dreaming or doped up on cough syrup.
It could be that somewhere off Route 80 in Pennsylvania you’d find a trailer propped up on cinder blocks and in it a girl who’d lost her mind. She’d be forced to stay out there because her dad wouldn’t let her in the house. Her trailer door would be padlocked from the outside. But if you found that trailer and peeked in through the peephole you’d find her eye staring back. An eye darkly circled, sunken. A crazy eye. That girl would call herself Chloe. She’d say her sister was magic. Her sister brought people back to life, made them into more than people, made them something other. Her sister could force you to do things and think things and bend to whatever she said. This Chloe had seen it; she was watching it happen right now. She’d scream this at you and claw at the trailer door and you’d do the smart thing and run away.
Because this was impossible. Ruby was, and London was. And yet, somehow, here we all were, as Ruby decided we would be.
And now the balloons were on their way.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
RUBY STILL SAID
Ruby still said there was no reason to worry about Jonah. See? There he was down in the yard, building up the railing around the back porch so she wouldn’t slip off. Hammering hard at it. Measuring to keep it straight. Sanding it smooth.
There he was ignoring the real, paying work he had in his shed so he could keep remodeling the house for her—because he knew it was what she wanted.
Ruby was dressing for her evening shift at Cumby’s while keeping an eye on him out the window. She was dropping a short black vintage slip over her head and dipping bare feet into motorcycle boots, combing out her damp hair and letting it air-dry into loose curls down her back, coating her lips in wine, her favorite lipstick color and her favorite drink, then pressing her lips on the small white square of a store receipt to blot them dry. She looked like she was going out dancing rather than to restock and restyle the candy aisle by color (white, pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown) and fill a few gas tanks. Every other employee wore a uniform smock to work at Cumby’s; Ruby wore the smock once, on her first-ever shift, said it pinched, and never put one on again.
She dropped the receipt in the general direction of the trash can, but it missed, fluttering to the floor, the flower print of her lips captured for always.
“I’m forty minutes late,” she said, glancing at the time. Even so, she didn’t rush. She took a moment to observe herself in the mirror over the dresser—mostly checking for food in her teeth, as we’d feasted on a tub of roadside-stand blueberries and whippets of whipped cream for dinner. Then, as if in preparation for the harsh fluorescent lights in the store, she perched a pair of sunglasses on top of her head and left the room.
I followed her out into the hallway and climbed after her over the gate. “What if I went with you?” I said.
“What, to work? To help me at the pumps and tell people to take-a-penny, leave-a-penny, though all anyone ever does is take? I know you love me, Chlo, but you’d be too bored and I couldn’t do that to my baby sister. I’ll be back later tonight, with treats.”