There was a threat in there, somewhere.
“She won’t go, okay?” she said. “I told you I played a little trick to get her out—I said it was just for a visit, a day trip. But she goes back all the time to say hi. So much so that they barely know she’s even away. And, besides, she spends her nights—Oh my God, Chlo, your lips are bright red! It’s like that time you lost a tooth and I thought someone punched you and that I’d have to beat up a first-grader! I about got out my brass knuckles and everything.”
I wiped at my mouth, but the cherry stain wasn’t coming off. She kept telling me little bits of things and then distracting me with others. Where was London spending her nights?
It was here that my phone began blinking. “Someone’s texting you,” Ruby said. There was a slow-motion moment, extended to thick liquid, when I wanted to reach out and get the phone before she did, but she got to it before me.
Owen, I thought. Please don’t say anything my sister shouldn’t see.
She read the message without expression. Then she hummed to herself and clicked off the phone.
“Who was it?” I wanted to take my phone from her, but she had it in her lap.
“Someone’s thinking about you, too, if you were wondering,” she said.
I’d have to explain, reveal what I’d let happen while she was out, which would open up the floodgates and show she couldn’t trust me. I’d have to—
“Don’t look so freaked, it’s only London. Who’d you think it was?”
She smiled and tossed the phone to me. “I thought it was your dad, too. But he’s old. He probably doesn’t know how to text.”
The message read: Come to town. On Green. Can u get ride?
“What do you suppose they’re doing on the Green in town?” she said.
“Hanging out, like usual.”
“I’m thinking you should go. For a bit. Just don’t stay out too late tonight.”
That wasn’t what I expected her to say.
“It might be a good idea for you to get scarce for a few hours tonight. Have you noticed Jonah loafing around doing the mopey eyes? I get the sense he wants to talk to me. Do you get that sense, too?”
I nodded.
“Text her back. Tell her I’ll drive you over soon.” She wandered to the window. “Chlo, look! Outside . . . Is that a balloon?”
She pointed out there, where in the thicket a bright pink helium balloon was perched in an outstretched bouquet of thorns. It had landed there so delicately it hadn’t even popped.
“Think it’s one of mine?” she asked.
I could see a peek of her handwriting. “Definitely.”
“I guess the wind decided to shift in a different direction. Stupid wind. Who said it could do that? I didn’t give it permission.”
She must have seen the look on my face, the one that revealed how, inside, where I loved her unconditionally no matter what she did, where in fact she could do whatever she wanted and I’d never hate her for it, I believed everything she said. I’d just taken her statement quite literally. I thought she really could control the wind.
She started giggling.
“That balloon’s for you,” she said. “Go out and get it.”
“What . . . now?”
“Yes, now. I’ll drive you after you go get the balloon, Chlo.”
Before I knew it, I was leaving the room, as if on command, heading downstairs, past Jonah, who really did seem to be moping, and outside to the pricker bushes to rescue the balloon. The farther I got from her, the more clear my head became. She was a field of static, but I’d reached the edge. I was stepping onto smooth, flat ground beneath a clear blue sky. I couldn’t see her at the window anymore.
Not even Ruby could control all the elements of the world we lived in. Something had to slip. Someone had to get punched in the mouth.
I pulled the pink balloon from the thorns, careful not to pop it. In faded permanent marker, the command said:
try as hard as you can to make me cry
This balloon was for me, she’d said, as if she knew already what I’d do.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN