The film over her pale eyes was impenetrable, stuck in place no matter how many times she blinked. A windshield so fogged, the wipers couldn’t clear the way to see. When I looked into those eyes, I had to assume she had no idea what I was talking about. There was no way she could know.
Only, her mouth opened and these were the words it said: “That poor girl. Her poor parents.” She knew exactly what I meant.
“I told you,” she continued. “I remember everything, even the things I don’t want to. I remember before, and I remember after, and I remember when it all changed. And now you’re home.”
My spine was on fire. My fingers prickled with heat, hot static fizzing through my body from end to end. “But . . . how?” I asked. I lowered my voice. “No one else does.”
“She lets me,” she said. “She’s always let me.”
Our mother saw more than I’d ever guessed, because Ruby wanted her to. But imagine being a drunk, known in town for passing out in the supermarket and sleeping off benders in the town jail—no one would believe a thing you said then. Imagine how mad you’d think you were, to be cursed to remember. It was a cruel, bitter thing Ruby had done. I happened to think our mother deserved it.
“You know what?” she said suddenly. “You shouldn’t’ve come in here. I shouldn’t have asked you. I shouldn’t’ve gone out to the car . . .” She stood. “You should go now.”
And it was right then, on cue, that a buzzing sounded. It felt like a moth had found its way in from the rain and climbed my leg, beating its wings inside my jeans so I would let it out. My phone, set on vibrate. This was a text from Ruby—and she’d sent it now, at this moment, to show she knew where I was. And who I was with.
The text itself said nothing about that, though.
ok come home. u need to pack. can’t stay in this house. we’re out
We were leaving Jonah’s? I guessed her talk with him hadn’t gone so well.
I eyed our mother, the first person we’d ever picked up and moved out on, when Ruby was seventeen and I was eleven-and-a-half and we decided to live in our own filth instead of having to share filth with our mother.
I texted back: r u picking me up? bc i’m not on green
My breath was held when I got her reply:
call Petey. u know he’s always good for a ride
CHAPTER TWENTY
I’M THE ONE
I’m the one who made it happen, but I wasn’t certain until then.
It was when I slipped my toe in. When I did what Ruby said I shouldn’t—and more where that came from, with boys and rides out of town, with our mother, the last person Ruby wanted me talking to, all of what I’d done radiating from my skin like fever sweat once I stepped out of Pete’s car and into her arms. She knew something was wrong without me having to tell her. She’d sensed it before, and now for sure she knew.
She wasn’t the only one who’d become aware.
Something else knew now, too.
I looked down to find it pooling up over my ankles, murky and thick, more brown than green, churning with sticks and bits of leaves and scattered trash, its surface crawling with thick patches of slow-traveling mud. The reservoir had somehow made its way up here. The water was spreading its fingers over the gravel driveway and the dirt yard, no higher than ten inches in places, but risen up enough to hide all trace of ground and swallow shoes. The back porch was even with the water now, coasting at the same level across the whole yard.
Ruby pulled me out of the floodwater to a high-standing stone, one of the few left visible from the walkway that had once led from the driveway to the front steps of the house. We stood together on the tall stone, teetering, our four feet and four legs locked together to become one conjoined person, except she was taller and tanner and had wading boots on, and I was only me.
“It’s coming up,” she said. “I don’t know how it’s coming up from all the way over there, but it is.”
“Yeah, but it’s stopped raining,” I said. “Maybe it’ll go down now.”