I had London’s elbow in my side, could feel her hip bone cutting into mine. When I touched her, she was hard ice, and even skinnier than she looked, as if her one layer of skin was her only cushion.
Our town had a small center, but the township itself stretched up the mountain and down into the valleys that touched the mountain’s edges. It spread out along the reservoir, which had once held the town of Olive, and also other towns, though I’d never bothered to know their names because Ruby never bothered to tell me.
This party we were headed to was beyond the town limits. The town of High Falls was in a whole other school district. It wasn’t a place Ruby went to often, if at all.
As we drove, London whispered: “What’s going on with you and O? Are you hooking up?”
I averted my eyes.
“Are you?” she said, loud enough to be heard over the music.
I shushed her, but Owen hadn’t turned around. He hadn’t turned around in his seat up front even once.
It wasn’t something I wanted to talk about right there, with Owen close by, but before I could think up a good answer, I realized the conversation in the car had turned when we weren’t paying attention. Even with the music up and the wind rushing in the open windows, I could hear the guys talking about her, my sister.
“—saw her the other day,” the guy driving was saying, “it was sweet.”
“—swear she was naked—” said the guy squeezed in beside me.
The wind kept clipping their words; I couldn’t catch it all.
“—told her to come out of the water—” the guy near the far window said, adding a few recognizable hand motions.
Owen’s voice was noticeably absent; he stared out his window at the passing trees. He wasn’t defending her, but at least he wasn’t talking about how he wanted to get in her pants. The others, though—they showed no signs of stopping.
The wind tossed their laughter around the car, shoving it in my face.
“Are you talking about my sister?” I yelled over the wind.
They didn’t deny it. “You can’t blame us,” one of the guys in the backseat said, “she’s smokin’ hot.”
“I heard she’s a freak in bed,” another said.
I covered my ears, hummed out the nasty words and the nastier pictures drummed up at the sound of them. The lies. The lies and lies and lies.
I was used to guys saying they loved her, confessing how they wanted her to marry them and have their babies, mushy things you didn’t expect guys to admit to, but this was only physical. They made her sound like an ordinary slut, nothing special about it. And Ruby was many things, more than any of them could know, but she wasn’t that.
“Shut up!” I yelled. “Stop it!”
The boys stopped, but when London saw how upset I was, she came alive in a way I’d never seen her. Her eyes had a whole new light in them, and a cruel smirk touched her lips. She spoke in a low voice right up against my ear. “Haven’t you ever heard anyone say that? They say that kind of stuff about her. They say it all the time.”
As she admitted this, some of Ruby’s own words entered my mind, slithering inside me as I felt London’s cold lips at my ear. “Stay in town,” Ruby had said, me and London both. “Don’t go anywhere else.”
Was this why? Outside my sister’s influence, did London turn into someone else, someone closer to who she was inside? Someone mean?
And the boys, too? Did everyone, absolutely everyone, turn against her?
I couldn’t get away from London’s mouth if I tried; the car was too small.
“Why does it bother you so much, what they say about Ruby?” London was saying, getting louder now over the wind. “Everybody in town hates her, don’t you know that?”
“Not true.”
“It is true.” I barely recognized her, lit up with lies about my sister, spouting them out of her skinny face. “She’s all up in my shit constantly,” she said. “You have no idea what she makes me do. She’s ruining my life. Sometimes I hate her, too.”
That’s when I said what I shouldn’t have said.
“She could have sent you back,” I said. “You don’t want that, do you?”
“Back where?”