Imaginary Girls (7 page)

But I didn’t want that.

If this were a story I was telling, if it were
my
story and Ruby let me tell it, Owen would turn in his seat and he’d say—

A buzz sounded. I looked down to find my phone blinking.

didnt forget you chlo. just wanted u 2 come see

See what? I was in the backseat and Pete was still driving and all I saw of Owen was the back of his head.

When we reached the quarry, Owen leaped out as soon as we stopped. A jumble of cars crowded the gravel lot out of sight of the main road, but Ruby’s big white Buick wasn’t among them. Knowing her, she’d volunteered some poor sap for the position of designated driver and secured us a ride.

There was smoke in the air—faint, I could feel it in my throat—and a flicker of warm light filtering out through the woods. A bonfire.

I left my bags in Pete’s car. I had to: The party was deep in the quarry and the only way to reach it was down a freshly trampled path through the trees. Pete led the way, with me close behind, and then Owen. I stopped short once, and Owen, who was nearer than I expected, stepped on the back of my shoe.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

“Sorry,” I mumbled back.

And in the night beneath oaks and pines and other trees I’d never bothered learning names for, he and I were closer than we’d ever gotten, close for three, four, five countable seconds, until he stepped away and went slipping past and his arm brushed my arm and he smelled like cigarettes and I wished he smelled different and he was gone.

I’d lost Pete, so I walked the rest of the path with my arms out, feeling my way until the trees broke open. My feet found gravel and the noise hit and I started sliding down the declining slope toward the bottom. It was a pit, a cavernous hole filled with people I used to know. Or people who knew Ruby, so they had to at least pretend they knew me because I was her sister. Here, back home, that’s the first thing I was.

Ruby was near—somewhere. I could sense her in the dark.

I reached the bottom of the pit and looked up at the other slope, a gleaming red crest in the night to show where the bonfire was burning, and where I’d find her.

Waiting for me.

Waiting to hear about the cold shoulder I gave the state of Pennsylvania. She’d ask, I’d tell, we’d be in sync again, and then the summer would get started, picking up where we left off two years ago, on a warm night like this one, before it all went so wrong.

I was almost up to the top of the other slope when someone stopped me. A hand drawn closed around my ankle. Pulling me down.

“Chloe! I heard you’d be here!” some girl said. She was stretched out on the gravel slope with a few of her friends, and I guess we knew each other, or used to. Then other girls were there, and guys, and remember-this and rememberthat, and was I living with Ruby now? and really? and wow and, hey, did I want a beer?

My pocket buzzed. Ruby again. ur here!

She was somewhere in the dark—she could see me, but I couldn’t see her.

Then another text: im SO thirsty

And one more: meet me up at the keg xo

Which was strange, because she didn’t exactly like beer—it fizzed. And maybe this should have been my first clue that she’d set me up. I should have known meeting her here had nothing to do with some party, because Ruby didn’t care about showing her face at parties, even her own.

But all I could focus on was finding that keg in the dark, and, as I did, climbing over the people sprawled out on the slopes, trying not to step on anyone’s hand.

It was up at the keg that my eyes finally adjusted to the low light. I could see where we were: either an old construction site or a place where gravel was stored. There was a crane in the distance, blocked off by stacks of concrete slabs. The air was thick with dust, brushed up by all these trespassing feet. The trees, they were everywhere around us, and the mountains, they were out there in the dark, pale imitations of the ones found in day.

I could see clearly, and then I couldn’t.

It felt like I was looking up at the surface from deep below. I was down under, and getting sucked deeper, covered in bubbles from all my thrashing, lungs blowing up tight with unbreathed air. So familiar, like I’d been there before.

Time pooled around me, spun me in a washer, jerked to a stop. And I was back here, as if it hadn’t happened. I was here.

And so, it turned out, was
she
.

“Hey, Chloe,” she said. “Long time no see.”

She was at the nozzle, controlling the flow of beer. I could see her hand holding the plastic cup she was filling, red plastic, the foam rising, white foam, the cup tilting to sift the foam, the hand holding it, the five fingernails on her hand.

“Take it,” she said, passing me the red cup. “There’s not too much left in the keg anyway, so you may as well or the guys’ll hog it.”

She wasn’t who I expected to find—not now, not here.

But I didn’t say that. I took the cup, put the cup to my lips. Opened the lips. Held out the tongue. Tipped the cup back. Took one swallow.

“See you later?” she said.

“Yeah.” That’s all I said, all I could say. Because the girl who was talking to me wasn’t a girl I thought I’d ever be talking to again.

Was I even at this quarry? Standing at the edge of this gravel pit? Holding this cup?

I’d turned away, taken a step in some direction, because I wasn’t beside the keg anymore and now two familiar arms were around me, a familiar voice in my ear.

“Chlo! You’re here!” Ruby cried. She pulled back to take a look at me.

I must have been making a peculiar face because she laughed and snatched the cup from my hands and poured out the rest of my beer. “What are you doing!” she said. “You
hate
fizz.”

Ruby looked just as I remembered, as she had three weeks ago, but she was a stranger to me all of a sudden, red-eyed in the firelight, weird.

“That’s—” I choked out. “That’s—” I pointed toward the keg. I couldn’t get control of my mouth to make it say the name.

“Pabst,” she said. “Tastes like puke before you’ve puked it, I know. Don’t worry, you don’t have to drink it.”

“No, no. Not the beer.”

“Oh no, that bus ride was worse than you texted, wasn’t it? Did you really almost crash? Did you get lost on the thruway? Did you hit like a whole herd of deer?”

She was distracting me, trying to get me to tell a story about something else when the story was right here.

London.

But that couldn’t be London filling another cup of beer from the keg, I was positive. Not London talking to that boy. Not London with the stripes on her sleeves, a hand up to her mouth to keep from laughing. Not her hair chopped more uneven than I remembered, bleached closer to white than before, though still showing off both her ears. No. Not London’s laugh, though it sounded like hers, lifting up over the bonfire and echoing through the quarry. The dark night, the party noises were tricking me, the fire was making me see things, I was the one who’d gone all weird.

Then London looked up and met my gaze. She smiled. And it was her—it couldn’t have been anyone else.

London, who was buried close to two years ago, was somehow still alive and standing right here.

I looked to Ruby to get her confirmation, but we weren’t alone anymore, so we couldn’t speak freely. “Petey,” she was saying, “watch it with the hand.”

Pete was there with us. He was shaking out his hand, like he’d been slapped, saying, “A guy’s gotta try, right?”

Ruby glared at him. “No,” she said, “not twice. Not with me.”

“But, Ruby,” I said, and I wasn’t talking about Pete and where he put his hands.

She knew. She was looking at the keg, too. Then loudly, for Pete’s benefit, she said to me, “You know that girl London from school, right?” Her mouth said those words, but her eyes said something far different. Her eyes had the red lights in them. Her eyes were telling me to not say what I wanted to say.

I had the reins of the story then; I could have turned it in any direction I wanted. Back down to the bottom of the pit, or straight-flash into the bonfire, or up into the tallest of the tall trees. The story you choose to tell isn’t always the story you believe. So, out loud, I said, “Yeah, I know her from school.”

And Ruby smiled, placated, and closed her eyes. All at once she seemed tired, a little wobbly on her feet like she had to sit down. Pete reached an arm out, even if he’d get slapped for it, as if she might need to lean on him. But she didn’t. Quickly she shook her head and opened her eyes to show the green I remembered, the green she was known for, her bright and searing green, and said, “That’s what I thought. You had French class together, right?”

“Right,” I said, my voice faint.

“So you want a beer?” Pete said.

“Chloe doesn’t drink,” Ruby snapped, silencing him.

She took a step closer to me. Her arms were around me again, her elbows and wrists and fingers slung tight at my neck to keep me with her. She could have put a hand over my mouth, but she didn’t have to; I wouldn’t say a thing.

She hugged me close and I swear she breathed these words into my hair as she did, “See, Chlo? It’s just like it used to be.”

And—suddenly, without any explanation or mystery needing to be unraveled from any undiscovered corner of the universe—it simply was, and I had no idea how.

Because, look: There was London, like things were back the way they’d been before. Like it had never even happened. Just like Ruby said.

L
ondon didn’t know she was supposed to be dead. Anyone who did wouldn’t be laughing so loudly, opening her mouth that wide and letting out those sounds. A girl in her grave wouldn’t knock back that Pabst like she didn’t care how it tasted, then smile so sloppy and let the beer dribble down her chin.

She looked happy, in a way I didn’t remember her. She was near the fire with three other girls. She glowed, though I guess it was from the flames, because the girls with her glowed, too. We all did. She was alive, as alive as me.

“I think I—” I started to say. “I think she—” But Ruby wouldn’t let me finish.

“You thirsty?” she asked me, which meant we would discuss all of this later. “I’ll get you some water. Petey, keep an eye on my baby sister and don’t you let her go anywhere near that fire, all right?”

He nodded, and Ruby slipped away. There she was, crossing the gravel in boots that skimmed her shins, and then there she wasn’t, sundress swallowed by the night.

Just as I remembered her.

“I need to sit down,” I said.

Pete hopped to attention and led me over to a slope of gravel. Agreeing to take care of me wasn’t entirely selfless. I could see how he was counting on some reward Ruby would never be game to give him, picturing that reward as he helped me to the ground, rewinding and playing it back as he reached out to pat my head, caught in freeze-frame as he missed my head by a mile and clocked me in the chest instead.

There went his reward.

“Crap,” he said. “Did I punch you in the tit?”

He had, but I wasn’t about to acknowledge that. “Don’t worry about it,” I heard my mouth say. My eyes were still on the bonfire.

“You okay? You sure? You’re not hurt?” His voice was dripping sap and concern like he’d just run over my puppy, but this concern was really only for Ruby.

Ruby, who’d kill him dead if she thought he’d hurt me, no matter what history they shared. Ruby, who’d duct-tape him to a tree with his pants to his ankles and leave him there through the night to let the wood creatures at him. The raccoons and skunks, the black bears that climbed these mountains, the animals that came out only at night with their sharp claws and rabies-soaked teeth.

Pete must have known all that. But I bet he also figured if he could get me on his side, he’d have a real shot with Ruby. That’s how it used to be: The way to Ruby’s heart, they’d all assumed, was through her little sister—it’s how I got my very first iPod. But I never did put in a good word for any of her suitors. It wouldn’t have worked. Ruby’s heart had room inside for me only.

I realized Pete was watching me. “You look so much like her . . . with your hair like that,” he said. This was something he shouldn’t say, we both knew it, so he changed the subject, fast. “Jonah doesn’t deserve her, y’know? How’d
he
get so lucky?”

This was the first I’d heard of any Jonah. Apparently, my sister had a new boyfriend.

Pete kept talking, all dejected. “He just moves to town and gets my girl and—” He stopped short. “Don’t tell her I called her ‘my’ girl. I know she’s not.”

I shrugged. “She’s not anyone’s.”

Pete didn’t matter. My eyes kept going back to the fire—to the girl beside the fire—to London.

“You see her?” I asked him. Ruby wasn’t there to stop me. She’d walked away.

The fire itself was made of tree branches, built up to a pyramid with a hot burning center, arranged for inevitable collapse. A bunch of people hung around watching. I recognized some kids from when I last lived in town, the summer after eighth grade and before the start of high school.

Names came from under water, bobbing up one after the other: Damien something. Asha something. Vanessa something. Allison and Alison; Kate and Cate. And, of course, London Hayes.

My finger went to her, pointing so I didn’t have to let her name touch my tongue. “There,” I said, “there in the stripes.”

Her stripes were black-and-white, horizontal. Prison stripes.

He craned his neck to find them. “That chick London? Yeah . . . what about her?”

“You see her?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“You
see
her? Tell me you see her.”

“Dude, I said I see her. She’s right there.”

Pete was still on his feet. High up above me was his talking head. Above that were the mounds of gravel, like mountains of glittering black-eyed coal. And above them the real mountains, the Catskills, unreadable and flickering in the night like static on a busted TV.

This place had been a construction site. People had planned to build something here, in this patch of gravel where I was sitting; blueprints made and rooms measured, roads mapped out. I felt it around me in the night, what could have been. The walls and floors and windows taking shape, the roof closing in, the automatic doors automatically closing.