Lock and Key (40 page)

“Right,” I said. “I guess not.”

She sat back, twirling a pen in her hand. Finally, after a moment, she said, “So . . . how’s Nate doing?”

I shut the brochure. “I wouldn’t really know,” I said. “We’re kind of on the outs these days.”

“Oh,” she said. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay,” I said. “It’s just . . . it got hard. You know?”

I wasn’t expecting her to respond to this, really. But then she put her pen down. “His dad,” she said, clarifying. I nodded, and she smiled sadly, shaking her head. “Well, I hate to tell you, but if you think keeping your distance makes it easier not to worry . . . it doesn’t. Not really.”

“Yeah,” I said, looking down at the brochure again. “I’m kind of getting that.”

“For me, the worst was just watching him change, you know?” She sighed, brushing her hair back from her face. “Like with quitting swim team. That was his entire world. But in the end, he gave it up, because of this.”

“He gave you up, too,” I said. “Right?”

“Yeah.” She sighed. “I guess so.”

Across the green, there was a sudden burst of laughter, and we both looked in its direction. As it ended, she said, “Look, for what it’s worth, I think I could have tried harder. To stick by him, or force the issue. I kind of wish I had.”

“You do?”

“I think he would have done it for me,” she said. “And that’s been the hardest part of all of this, really. That maybe I failed him, or myself, somehow. You know?”

I nodded. “Yeah,” I said. “I do.”

“So,” a dark-haired girl with a ponytail said to Heather, sliding into the empty seat beside her. “I just spent, like, a half hour working on Mr. Thackray, and he’s finally agreed to let us plug our fund-raiser again this afternoon during announcements. I’m thinking we should write some new copy, though, to really make an impact, like . . .”

I started to move down the table, our conversation clearly over. “Take care, Ruby,” Heather called after me.

“You, too,” I told her. As she turned back to the girl, who was still talking, I reached into my pocket, pulling out the few dollars’ change from my lunch and stuffing it into the SAVE OUR BEACHES! jar. It wasn’t much, in the grand scheme of things. But it made me feel somewhat better, nonetheless.

Also slightly encouraging was the fact that while I hadn’t been of help to Nate, I didn’t have to look far to find someone who
had
benefited from my actions. Not now that Gervais was front and center, at my picnic table, every weekday from 12:05 to 1:15.

“Again,” he said to me, pointing at the book with his pencil, “remember the power rule. It’s the key to everything you’re trying to do here.”

I sighed, trying to clear my head. The truth was, Gervais was a good tutor. Already, I understood tons more than I had before he’d begun working with me, stuff even my early-morning help sessions couldn’t make sense of. But there were still distractions. Initially, it had been me worrying about how he’d interact with Olivia, whether he’d act so goopy or lovesick she’d immediately suspect something, and rightfully blame me. As it turned out, though, this wasn’t an issue at all. If anything, I was a third wheel now.

“The power rule,” Olivia recited, flipping her phone open. “The derivative of any given variable (x) to the exponent (n) is equal to product of the exponent and the variable to the (n-1) power.”

I just looked at her. “Exactly right,” Gervais said, beaming. “See? Olivia gets it.”

Of course she did. Olivia was apparently a whiz at calculus, something she had neglected to mention the entire time we’d been sharing our lunch hour. Now that Gervais had joined us, though, they were in math heaven. That is, when they weren’t talking about one of the other myriad, inexplicable things they had in common, including but not limited to a love of movies, the pros and cons of various college majors, and, of course, picking on me.

“What exactly is going on with you two?” I’d asked her recently after one of Gervais’s visits, which I had spent alternately struggling with the power rule and sitting by, open-mouthed, as they riffed on the minute details of a recent sci-fi blockbuster, down to the extra scenes after the credits.

“What do you mean?” she asked. We were crossing the green. “He’s a nice kid.”

“Look, I have to be honest,” I told her. “He likes you.”

“I know.”

She said this so simply, so matter-of-factly, that I almost stopped walking. “You know?”

“Sure. I mean, it’s kind of obvious, right?” she said. “He was always hanging around the theater when I was working. Not exactly slick.”

“He wants to be friends with you,” I told her. “He asked me to help him do it.”

“Did you?”

“No,” I said. “But I did tell him he could help me with my calculus at lunch. And that you might, you know, be there.”

I kind of spit this last part out, as I was already bracing myself for her reaction. To my surprise, though, she seemed hardly bothered. “Like I said,” she said with a shrug, “he’s a nice kid. And it’s got to be tough for him here, you know?”

Ah,
I thought, remembering back to what she’d said to me about having things in common. Who knew Gervais would count, too? “Yeah,” I said. “I guess you’re right.”

“Plus,” she continued, “he knows nothing is going to happen between us.”

“Are you
sure
he knows that?”

Now she stopped walking, narrowing her eyes at me. “What?” she said. “Do you think I’m not capable of being clear? ”

I shook my head. “No. You are.”

“That’s right.” She started walking again. “We both know the limits of this relationship. It’s understood. And as long as we’re both comfortable with that, nobody gets hurt. It’s basic.”

Basic,
I thought.
Just like the power rule.

Calculus aside, I had surprised myself by not only keeping up my end of the deal I’d made with Jamie but actually feeling slightly confident as I sent off my applications back at the end of January. Because of ongoing worries about my GPA, I’d done all I could to strengthen the rest of my material, from my essays to my recommendations. In the end, I’d applied to three schools: the U, Cora’s alma mater and one town over; a smaller, more artsy college in the mountains called Slater-Kearns; and one long shot, Defriese University, in D.C. According to Mrs. Pureza, my guidance counselor, all three were known to take a second look at “unique” students like myself. Which meant I might actually have a chance, a thought that at times scared the hell out of me. I’d been looking ahead to the future for so long, practically my entire life. Now that it was close, though, I found myself hesitant, not so sure I was ready.

There was still a lot of the year to go, though, which I reminded myself was a good thing whenever I surveyed what I had done so far on my English project. One day, in a burst of organization I’d hoped would lead to inspiration, I’d spread out everything I had on the desk in my room: stacks of notes, Post-its with quotes stuck up on the wall above, the books I’d used as research—pages marked—piled on either side. Lately, after dinner or when I wasn’t working, I’d sit down and go through it bit by bit waiting for that spark.

So far, no luck. In fact, the only thing that ever made me feel somewhat close was the picture of Jamie’s family, which I’d taken from the kitchen and tacked up on the wall, right at eye level. I’d spent hours, it felt like, sitting there looking over each individual face, as if one of them might suddenly have what I was searching for.
What is family?
For me, right then, it was one person who’d left me, and two I would have to leave soon. Maybe this was an answer. But it wasn’t the right one. Of that, I was sure.

Now, I heard Harriet call my name, jerking me back to the mall, and the present. When I looked up, she was waving me over to the kiosk, where she was standing with the reporter.

“This is my assistant, Ruby Cooper,” she said to the reporter as I walked up. “She had on that necklace the day I hired her, and it was my inspiration.”

As both the photographer and the reporter immediately turned their attention to my key, I fought not to reach up and cover it, digging my hands into my pockets instead. “Interesting,” the reporter said, making a note on her pad. “And what was
your
inspiration, Ruby? What compelled you to start wearing your key like that?”

Talk about being put on the spot. “I . . . I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I just got tired of always losing it.”

The reporter wrote this down, then glanced at the photographer, who was still snapping some shots of the necklaces. “I think that ought to do it,” she said to Harriet. “Thanks for your time.”

“Thank you,” Harriet said. When they’d walked away, she whirled around to face me. “Oh my God. I was a nervous wreck. You think I did all right?”

“You were great,” I told her.

“Better than,” Reggie added. “Cool as a cuke.”

Harriet sat down on her stool, wiping a hand over her face. “They said it will probably run on Sunday, which would be huge. Can you imagine if this gives us an even bigger boost? I can barely keep up with orders as it is.”

This was typical Harriet. Even the good stuff meant worrying. “You’ll do fine,” Reggie said. “You have good help.”

“Oh, I know,” Harriet said, smiling at me. “It’s just . . . a little overwhelming, is all. But I guess I can get Rest Assured to do more, too. Blake’s been pushing me to do that anyway. You know, shipping, handling some of the Web site stuff, all that. . . .”

“Just try to enjoy this right now,” Reggie told her. “It’s a good thing.”

I could understand where Harriet was coming from, though. Whenever something great happens, you’re always kind of poised for the universe to correct itself. Good begets bad, something lost leads to found, and on and on. But even knowing this, I was surprised when I came home later that afternoon to find Cora and Jamie sitting at the kitchen table, the phone between them. As they both turned to look at me, right away I knew something was wrong.

“Ruby,” Cora said. Her voice was soft. Sad. “It’s about Mom.”

My mother was not in Florida. She was not on a boat with Warner or soaking up sun or waiting tables in a beachside pancake joint. She was in a rehab clinic, where she’d ended up two weeks earlier after being found unconscious by a maid in the hotel where she’d been living in Tennessee.

At first, I was sure she was dead. So sure, in fact, that as Cora began to explain all this, I felt like my own heart stopped, only beating again once these few words—
hotel, unconscious, rehab, Tennessee
—unscrambled themselves in my mind. When she was done, the only thing I could say was, “She’s okay?”

Cora glanced at Jamie, then back at me. “She’s in treatment, ” she said. “She has a long way to go. But yes, she’s okay.”

It should have made me feel better now that I knew where she was, that she was safe. At the same time, the thought of her in a hospital, locked up, gave me a weird, shaky feeling in my stomach, and I made myself take in a breath. “Was she alone?” I asked.

“What?” Cora said.

“When they found her. Was she alone?”

She nodded. “Was . . . Should someone have been with her? ”

Yes,
I thought.
Me.
I felt a lump rise up in my throat, sudden and throbbing. “No,” I said. “I mean, she had a boyfriend when she left.”

She and Jamie exchanged another look, and I had a flash of the last time I’d come back to find them waiting for me in this same place. Then, I’d caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and seen my mother, or at least some part of her—bedraggled, half-drunk, messed up. But at least someone had been expecting me. No one was picking up my mom from the side of the road, getting her home safe. It was probably only coincidence—a maid’s schedule, one room, one day—that got her found in time.

And now she was found, no longer lost. Like a bag I’d given up for good suddenly reappearing in the middle of the night on my doorstep, packed for a journey I’d long ago forgotten. It was odd, considering I’d gotten accustomed to her being nowhere and anywhere, to finally know where my mother was. An exact location, pinpointed. Like she’d crossed over from my imagination, where I’d created a million lives for her, back into this one.

“So what . . .” I said, then swallowed. “What happens now? ”

“Well,” Cora replied, “the initial treatment program is ninety days. After that, she has some decisions to make. Ideally, she’d stay on, in some kind of supported environment. But it’s really up to her.”

“Did you talk to her?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No.”

“Then how did you hear?”

“From her last landlords. The hospital couldn’t find anyone to contact, so they ran a records search, their name came up, and they called us.” She turned to Jamie. “What was their name? Huntington?”

“Honeycutt,” I said. Already they’d popped into my head, Alice with her elfin looks, Ronnie in his sensible plaid.
Stranger danger!
she’d said that first day, but how weird that they were now the ones that led me back not only to Cora but to my mother, as well.

I felt my face get hot; suddenly, it was all too much. I looked around me, trying to calm down, but all I could see was this clean, lovely foyer, in this perfect neighborhood, all the things that had risen up in my mother’s absence, settling into the space made when she left.

“Ruby,” Jamie said. “It’s all right, okay? Nothing’s going to change. In fact, Cora wasn’t even sure we should tell you, but—”

I looked at my sister, still seated, the phone in her hands. “But we did,” she said, keeping her eyes steady on me. “That said, you have no obligation to her. You need to know that. What happens next with you and Mom, or even if anything does, is up to you.”

As it turned out, though, this wasn’t exactly true. We soon found out that the rehab place where my mother was staying—and which Cora and Jamie were paying for, although I didn’t learn that until later—had a strong policy of patient-focused treatment. Simply put, this meant no outside contact with family or friends, at least not initially. No phone calls. No e-mails. If we sent letters, they’d be kept until a date to be decided later. “It’s for the best,” Cora told me, after explaining this. “If she’s going to do this, she needs to do it on her own.”