Imaginary Girls (28 page)

I stood up.

I’d heard Ruby. Something about wine. Something how everyone knew she didn’t drink beer, so why didn’t they bring wine? How self-centered of them, how rude.

She was mostly teasing—and of course she didn’t mean me—but she wouldn’t drop it. I edged away from the shore to listen.

“Go get some for me, Lon,” she was telling London.

But London didn’t seem to be at my sister’s beck and call any longer. “Tell Pete to go,” she told Ruby. “You know he will.”

“Petey’s trashed. He’s about to pass out.” As Ruby said it, Pete wobbled on his seat on the log. He was drunker than he’d seemed only minutes ago.

Ruby set her sights on Owen.

“How about you go, O?” she said. “And none of that gas station wine either. Nothing in a box. I want something good and red and worth every penny. Here, take a ten. You can cover the rest, right?”

“I’m baked,” Owen said. “I can’t drive.”

“London has her parents’ car—she’s got it parked on the other side of those trees,” Ruby said. “She can drive. Can’t you, Lon?”

“Yeah, but I don’t have fake ID,” London said. She stood there, near Ruby, her mouth open as if she wanted to protest more, but then she caved. She caved as my sister knew she would. “But I’ll drive,” London said. “If someone’ll go with me.”

Ruby gathered up a sigh, like she was beyond exhausted by this conversation and about to let go of the idea of wine, and break up the party while she was at it, and maybe slash a few tires on her way home, but then she lifted her head, and I knew she wasn’t done yet. I felt the heat in her eyes even from where I was standing.

She took her time looking around the circle—from Owen, who was trying to bum a cigarette; to Pete, so falling-down drunk he seemed about to somersault into the newly blazing fire; to a kid tending the fire with a big stick; to London, who was standing there in a shirt as white as the bikini I had on and you could see the fire reflected in it, making it appear like she had a chest full of flames. Then Ruby’s eyes landed back on Owen, where she’d started in the first place.

“London, you’ll drive. Owen’ll go with you. I know he has ID. I’ve seen it when he buys beer at Cumby’s. Says he’s twenty-five and some guy named Dave from Georgia. Dave’s a Sagittarius. Isn’t that right, O?”

His head nodded up and down like she had it on a string.

London, too, was stuck on a pin, legs dangling. The flames covered her stomach, fanned into her face. “All right,” she said. “There’s barely any beer left anyway. But where? Nothing’s open.”

“That place east on the highway will be,” Ruby said. “Phoenicia Wines. It’s open twenty-four hours.”

“All the way out there?”

“Yes,” Ruby said. “It’s not far. Fifteen minutes to get there, tops, if you speed.”

I expected Owen to argue, but he only nodded, put his arm on London’s shoulder. “Yeah, whatever. Let’s just go.”

“I’m driving,” London insisted as they walked toward the trees.

At first, I thought Ruby wanted Owen out of my face so it would be less painful. But then why didn’t she just tell him to leave, and take London with him?

It wasn’t until Owen and London were in the trees and couldn’t be seen anymore that it hit me. Maybe Ruby didn’t know what she’d done, how dangerous it could be to have London in the driver’s seat if they were headed outside town.

Ruby must have not realized.

I turned to tell her. I turned and saw she knew already. I was sure she did, by the air around her, the heat of it, the energy crackling in it. By the way she stood beside the fire, watched it grow. I knew in the way I knew all things about my sister—without her having to use words to say. She knew exactly what would happen when London drove across the town line into Phoenicia. Hadn’t I told her I’d seen it with my own eyes?

I grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the crowd, toward the water. The reservoir beside us sucked in a breath, listening. “Why’d you do that?” I hissed. “Owen could—The car could—You could kill him.”

“
I
couldn’t kill him,” she said, palms up in innocence, “
I’m
not the one driving.”

There was glee in her answer, undisguised delight.

“But—”

“He did something he shouldn’t have, Chlo. He should have known better. He hurt you. No one hurts you. Did you think I’d just let something like that be? Just walk away tonight and do nothing? If you think that, you don’t know me at all.”

“You shouldn’t have let him go.”

She looked at me as if she could see me quite clearly in the dark. “If you’re so worried about him, then why didn’t
you
stop them, huh?”

“Because . . . because you said.”

“You don’t always do what I say,” she pointed out. “You didn’t wait for me by the car, did you?”

I shook my head.

“And if I told you to swim across the reservoir right now, and bring us back a souvenir while you’re at it—would you?”

We both looked out for the other shore across the way. It was too dark to find it, and the moon had dimmed to nothing and wasn’t helping, but it was out there, we knew. If I swam a straight line from here to the void of blackness ahead, if I stayed down, and kept kicking, I’d make it there sometime. If they didn’t swim up and catch me first.

“No,” I said. “Because you wouldn’t ask me to. Not again. It’s too dangerous.”

She didn’t respond. I took the flashlight from her hands and turned it on toward her face. I saw how she watched the water, warily, as if expecting a serpent thing to come coil a tentacle around her leg. Yet her eyes sparkled at the same time, and her bare leg was out and waiting, as if daring it to grab her, taunting it to try.

She gave me a nudge. “Move back, Chlo. You could fall in.”

I climbed off the rock to the one next to it, farther away from the water.

After a while, she called for me.

“Chlo?” She was only one rock away, but she sounded distant. “What time is it? How long have they been gone?”

I pulled out my cell phone to check the time. Maybe a half hour had passed since Owen and London had left, I wasn’t sure. I told her the time.

She concentrated for a moment on this, and then her eyes shot closed. She sunk down on the hard, cold rock, spent.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I don’t feel so good,” she said. “I’m very, very tired.”

I knew she’d been trying to do something right then, a psychic burst of energy to warp the world her way. But it looked like the strain of it would kill her first.

“Ruby, stop. Sit up.”

She pulled herself up slowly, as if it took great effort.

“Look at my eyes, Chlo. I think I’m getting lines. Can you get wrinkles when you’re only twenty-one? Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

She aimed the flashlight beam at her face. It washed her out, bright as it was, but there were visible lines I hadn’t noticed before. She’d never looked this tired.

“What’s going on?”

“Balance, Chlo . . . Give and take. Push and pull. You for her, her for you. I think they’re mad that I tried to have it both ways—to keep you alive and her, too.”

“But what’re they going to do?” I said, getting scared now.

“Do I have to chop off my own arm and hand it over?” she said, speaking nonsense. “Because I’d do that, I would. If you could keep yours.”

“Okay,” I said. “But what are you talking about?”

She lifted her arm slowly, the arm still attached to her shoulder, and pointed out at the trees in the distance. “Look,” she said. “It’s too late to take back.”

She was the one to notice it first, but then, all at once, everyone noticed, and they were running toward it, and shouting. Ruby stayed put. I hesitated for a second, and then I, too, started running. We were all converging on a figure in a bright white shirt.

She looked ghostly as she emerged from the trees, her body birch-white, her short hair almost the same color as her clothes, as if she’d rolled around in baby powder to give us a good scare. The palms of her hands were up in the air, waving.

London had come back—alone.

She was a blinding bright spot against a backdrop of dark trees and then she was surrounded. By the time I reached her, there was a small crowd. A friend was propping her up. You could see bits of gravel on London’s hands and blackened skid marks on her knees as if she’d crawled down the road and through the woods to reach us.

Questions were thrown at her: “What happened?” “How’d you get here?” “Where’s O?” “Omigod are you hurt?”

London took a step away from the crowd, it seemed toward me.

“I must’ve blacked out again,” she said.

I glanced back at Ruby, but she hadn’t left her spot at the edge of the water. From this distance, she looked like any other brown-haired girl sitting on a rock under the stars. All that sky overhead made her look small.

“I think there was an accident,” London said. “I think. I mean, I don’t remember. Where’s my parents’ car?”

Then more questions, and London’s friends surrounded her again, and I couldn’t get to her, I couldn’t see her face or hear what she was saying. I thought of when I found her in the rowboat, and then when everyone knew, and everyone saw, and you couldn’t think with all the yelling and the splashing and the need to get away.

I could see the accident as clearly as if I’d been in the car as it happened, in the back, watching. Speeding down the dark road, no cars ahead, no cars behind, and then the blur of a traffic sign to the right, the town line crossed, and the girl at the wheel gone. The car would keep going even without her frail weight on the gas pedal. The wheel would veer even without her hands there to make it turn.

Owen wouldn’t know what was happening at first. He’d shout, “Watch the road, Lon!” The windows would be down, so his ears would fill up with wind. He wouldn’t be wearing his seat belt.

When he realized the driver’s seat was empty beside him, it would be too late to jump in and take over. Far too late to hit the brakes. He wouldn’t know how to stop the car. The last sight through the windshield would be the thick, oncoming trunk of a tree.

Then, inexplicably, by some kind of cruel miracle, the girl would reappear, but outside the car, dozens of yards away.

She’d be back inside the town line, a town—she wouldn’t know this—she couldn’t ever leave.

Her parents’ car gone.

Her friend with it.

And she’d have no idea how.

If you were driving on Route 28 late that night, you might have seen the girl in the middle of the road, looking like she’d dropped from the hatch of a low-flying plane and only just got to her feet after the fall. She would have been dazed. She wouldn’t have moved out of your way, so you would have pulled up near her, rolled down your window, called out, “Are you all right? Do you need a ride?”

“I blacked out again,” she would have said, and run off—a streak of white into a dark nest of trees.

That was how I pictured it.

Now Pete was rushing to his car, off to find his brother. And Asha was frantically trying to reach Owen on the phone. Damien was crying like a girl. And Vanessa was peppering London with questions. Cate was staring into her flashlight, and Kate, who I’d forgotten was there, was trying to find her shoe. Others had phones out searching for signals, and a boy I didn’t know was saying, “This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening,” though it was, most definitely it was.

Ruby wasn’t there at all.

I turned around, toward where she’d been sitting on the rock. Did she see what she’d done? Did she regret it? Would she wind back the clocks to set it right like last time? Could she? Was there something wrong with me that I believed she could?

Only, she wasn’t on the rock anymore. She wasn’t on the shoreline or near the fire that was puttering out to nothing. She was gone.

My eyes went to the reservoir. And out there, drifting somewhere in the dark middle, was what may or may not have been a rowboat, with a person hunched over in it, a person who may or may not have been my sister.

Her arm moved. For a second there, I thought she may have been signaling to me.

If there was anyone in the world I knew, it was my sister. Ruby, who’d been there the day I first opened my eyes. Ruby, who’d raised me. Ruby, who kept all my secrets even if she didn’t reveal all of hers. Ruby, whose bathing suit I was wearing right then so I looked more like her than maybe ever.

Balance, she’d said. Something about balance.

Sometimes you look at someone and, if you know them well enough, like really know them, you can be sure to guess what they’ll do before they do it. You may not understand why, may not ever understand it, but you don’t need to know the whys and the hows of things. Sometimes you only need to stop them.

I dove in. I was swimming like Ruby had told me not to. Swimming so far, I lost track of shore. If you’d been watching from the waterlogged streets below you may have seen the white blur of my sister’s bikini—easy to spot against the dark reflected night.

Ruby used to say I’d never drown, that I couldn’t, my body wasn’t built that way. Slip me under, and I’d emerge with fins for feet. Water turned to air once it reached my lungs. That was one of her stories and we’d all heard it a hundred times.

Another was the story of Olive, one of the nine towns flooded to make this reservoir. What was it that made the people not want to vacate it for some other surface town? What tethered the two girls from her story here and made them have to stay? She’d never explained that.

And after the steam whistle sounded out, did the girls stand with backs straight and eyes closed while the dams were raised and the water rushed in, steeling themselves for impact and then letting themselves get washed away when the wall of water hit? I imagined so. And, after, did they ever wonder what was up here, ever think of climbing out? These were things I’d never know.

All I knew was to keep swimming.

When I finally reached her, she looked into my eyes, which were almost like her eyes but barely half as green, and she opened her mouth and she said, “I’m really going to miss you, Chlo.”