by Sarah Dessen
“You know what they say. Opposites attract.”
I nodded, and for a moment we both just looked down at the party. I could see Jamie now, out in the backyard, standing by a stretch of darkness that I assumed was the pond.
“So,” Cora said suddenly, “how was the mall?”
“Good,” I said. Then, as it was clear she was waiting for more detail, I added, “I got some good stuff. And a job, actually.”
“A job?”
I nodded. “At this jewelry place.”
“Ruby, I don’t know.” She crossed her arms over her chest, leaning back against the rail behind her. “I think you should just be focusing on school for the time being.”
“It’s only fifteen hours a week, if that,” I told her. “And I’m used to working.”
“I’m sure you are,” she said. “But Perkins Day is more rigorous, academically, than you’re used to. I saw your transcripts. If you want to go to college, you really need to make your grades and your applications the number one priority.”
College? I thought. “I can do both,” I said.
“You don’t have to, though. That’s just the point.” She shook her head. “When I was in high school, I was working thirty-hour weeks—I had no choice. You do.”
“This isn’t thirty hours,” I said.
She narrowed her eyes at me, making it clear I just wasn’t getting what she was saying. “Ruby, we want to do this for you, okay? You don’t have to make things harder than they have to be just to prove a point.”
I opened my mouth, ready to tell her that I’d never asked her to worry about my future, or make it her problem. That I was practically eighteen, as well as being completely capable of making my own decisions about what I could and could not handle. And that being in my life for less than a week didn’t make her my mother or guardian, regardless of what it said on any piece of paper.
But just as I drew in a breath to say all this, I looked again at her red eyes and stopped myself. It had been a long day for both of us, and going further into this would only make it longer.
“Fine,” I said. “We’ll talk about it. Later, though. All right? ”
Cora looked surprised. She clearly had not been expecting me to agree, even with provisions. “Fine,” she said. She swallowed, then glanced back down at the party. “So, there’s food downstairs, if you haven’t eaten. Sorry I didn’t mention the party before—everything’s been kind of crazy.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
She looked at me for another moment. “Right,” she said slowly, finally. “Well, I should get back downstairs. Just . . . come down whenever.”
I nodded, and then she stepped past me and started down the stairs. Halfway down, she looked back up at me, and I knew she was still wondering what exactly had precipitated this sudden acquiescence. I couldn’t tell her, of course, what I’d overheard. It wasn’t my business, then or now. But as I started to my room, I kept thinking about what Denise had said, and the resemblance she claimed to be able to see. Maybe my sister and I shared more than we thought. We were both waiting and wishing for something we couldn’t completely control: I wanted to be alone, and she the total opposite. It was weird, really, to have something so contrary in common. But at least it was something.
“. . . all I can say is, acupuncture works. What? No, it doesn’t hurt. At all.”
“. . . so that was it. I decided that night, no more blind dates. I don’t care if he is a doctor.”
“. . . only thirty thousand miles and the original warranty. I mean, it’s such a steal!”
I’d been walking through the party for a little more than twenty minutes, nodding at people who nodded at me and picking at my second plate of barbecue, coleslaw, and potato salad. Even though Jamie and Cora’s friends seemed nice enough, I was more than happy not to have to talk to anyone, until I heard one voice that cut through all the others.
“Roscoe!”
Jamie was standing at the back of the yard, past the far end of the pond, peering into the dark. As I walked over to him, I got my first up-close look at the pond, which I was surprised to see was already filled with water, a hose dangling in from one side. In the dark it seemed even bigger, and I couldn’t tell how deep it was: it looked like it went down forever.
“What’s going on?” I asked when I reached him.
“Roscoe’s vanished,” he said. “He tends to do this. He’s not fond of crowds. It’s not at the level of the smoke detector, but it’s still a problem.”
I looked into the dark, then slowly turned back to the pond. “He can swim, right?”
Jamie’s eyes widened. “Shit,” he said. “I didn’t even think about that.”
“I’m sure he’s not in there,” I told him, feeling bad for even suggesting it as he walked to the pond’s edge, peering down into it, a worried look on his face. “In fact—”
Then we both heard it: a distinct yap, high-pitched and definitely not obscured by water. It was coming from the fence. “Thank God,” Jamie said, turning back in that direction. “Roscoe! Here, boy!”
There was another series of barks, but no Roscoe. “Looks like he might have to be brought in by force,” Jamie said with a sigh. “Let me just—”
“I’ll get him,” I said.
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Go back to the party.”
He smiled at me. “All right. Thanks.”
I nodded, then put my plate down by a nearby tree as he walked away. Behind me, the party was still going strong, but the voices and music diminished as I walked to the end of the yard, toward the little clump of trees that ran alongside the fence. Not even a week earlier, I’d been running across this same expanse, my thoughts only of getting away. Now, here I was, working to bring back the one thing that had stopped me. Stupid dog.
“Roscoe,” I called out as I ducked under the first tree, leaves brushing across my head. “Roscoe!”
No reply. I stopped where I was, letting my eyes adjust to the sudden darkness, then turned back to look at the house. The pond, stretching in between, looked even more vast from here, the lights from the patio shimmering slightly in its surface. Nearer now, I heard another bark. This time it sounded more like a yelp, actually.
“Roscoe,” I said, hoping he’d reply again, Marco Polo- style. When he didn’t, I took a few more steps toward the fence, repeating his name. It wasn’t until I reached it that I heard some frantic scratching from the other side. “Roscoe? ”
When I heard him yap repeatedly, I quickened my pace, moving down to where I thought the gate was, running my hand down the fence. Finally, I felt a hinge, and a couple of feet later, a gap. Very small, almost tiny. But still big enough for a little dog, if he tried hard enough, to wriggle through.
When I crouched down, the first thing I saw was Mr. Cross, standing with his hands on his hips by the pool. “All right,” he said, looking around him. “I know you’re here, I saw what you did to the garbage. Get out and show yourself. ”
Uh-oh, I thought. Sure enough, I spotted Roscoe cowering behind a potted plant. Mr. Cross clearly hadn’t yet seen him, though, as he turned, scanning the yard again. “You have to come out sometime,” he said, bending down and looking under a nearby chaise lounge. “And when you do, you’ll be sorry.”
As if in response, Roscoe yelped, and Mr. Cross spun, spotting him instantly. “Hey,” he said. “Get over here!”
Roscoe, though, was not as stupid as I thought. Rather than obeying this order, he took off like a shot, right toward the fence and me. Mr. Cross scrambled to grab him as he passed, missing once, then getting him by one back leg and slowly pulling him back.
“Not so fast,” he said, his voice low, as Roscoe struggled to free himself, his tags clanking loudly. Mr. Cross yanked him closer, his hand closing tightly over the dog’s narrow neck. “You and I, we have some—”
“Roscoe!”
I yelled so loudly, I surprised myself. But not as much as Mr. Cross, who immediately relea
sed the dog, then stood up and took a step back. Our eyes met as Roscoe darted toward me, wriggling through the fence and between my legs, and for a moment, we just looked at each other.
“Hi there,” he called out, his voice all friendly-neighbor-like, now. “Sounds like quite a party over there.”
I didn’t say anything, just stepped back from the fence, putting more space between us.
“He gets into our garbage,” he called out, shrugging in a what-can-you-do? kind of way. “Jamie and I have discussed it. It’s a problem.”
I knew I should respond in some way; I was just standing there like a zombie. But all I could see in my mind was his hand over Roscoe’s neck, those fingers stretching.
“Just tell Jamie and Cora to try to keep him on that side, all right?” Mr. Cross said. Then he flashed me that same white-toothed smile. “Good fences make good neighbors, and all that.”
Now I did nod, then stepped back, pulling the gate shut. The last glimpse I had of Mr. Cross was of him standing by the pool, hands in his pockets, smiling at me, his face rippled with the lights from beneath the water.
I turned to walk back to our yard, trying to process what I’d just seen and why exactly it had creeped me out so much. I still wasn’t sure, even as I came up on Roscoe, who was sniffing along the edge of the pond. But I scooped him up under my arm and carried him the rest of the way, anyway.
As we got closer to the house, I heard the music. At first, it was just a guitar, strumming, but then another instrument came in, more melodic. “All right,” someone said over the strumming. “Here’s an old favorite.”
I put Roscoe on the ground, then stepped closer to the assembled crowd. As a guy in a leather jacket standing in front of me shifted to the left, I saw it was Jamie who had spoken. He was sitting on one of the kitchen chairs, playing a guitar, a beer at his feet, a guy with a banjo nodding beside him as they went into an acoustic version of Led Zeppelin’s “Misty Mountain Hop.” His voice, I realized, was not bad, and his playing was actually pretty impressive. So strange how my brother-in-law kept surprising me: his incredible career, his passion for ponds, and now, this music. All things I might never have known had I found that gate the first night.
“Having fun?”
I turned around to see Denise, Cora’s friend, standing beside me. “Yeah,” I said. “It’s a big party.”
“They always are,” she said cheerfully, taking a sip of the beer in her hand. “That’s what happens when you’re overwhelmingly social. You accumulate a lot of people.”
“Jamie does seem kind of magnetic that way.”
“Oh, I meant Cora,” she replied as the song wrapped up, the crowd breaking into spontaneous applause. “But he is, too, you’re right.”
“Cora?” I asked.
She looked at me, clearly surprised. “Well . . . yeah,” she said. “You know how she is. Total den-mother type, always taking someone under her wing. Drop her in a roomful of strangers, and she’ll know everyone in ten minutes. Or less.”
“Really,” I said.
“Oh, yeah,” she replied. “She’s just really good with people, you know? Empathetic. I personally couldn’t have survived my last breakup without her. Or any of my breakups, really.”
I considered this as Denise took another sip of her beer, nodding to a guy in a baseball cap as he pushed past us. “I guess I don’t really know that side of her,” I said. “I mean, we’ve been out of touch for a while.”
“I know,” she said. Then she quickly added, “I mean, she talked about you a lot in college.”
“She did?”
“Oh, yeah. Like, all the time,” she said, emphatic. “She really—”
“Denise!” someone yelled, and she turned, looking over the shoulder of the guy beside us. “I need to get that number from you, remember?”
“Right,” she said, then smiled at me apologetically. “One sec. I’ll be right back. . . .”
I nodded as she walked away, wondering what she’d been about to say. Thinking this, I scanned the crowd until I spotted Cora standing just outside the kitchen door with Charlotte. She was smiling, looking much happier than the last time I’d seen her. At some point she’d pulled her hair back, making her look even younger, and she had on a soft-looking sweater, a glass of wine in her hand. Here I’d just assumed all these people were here because of Jamie, but of course my sister could have changed in the years we’d been apart. She has her own life now, my mom had told me again and again. This was it, and I wondered what that must be like, to actually get to start again, forget the world you knew before and leave everything behind. Maybe it had even been easy.
Easy. I had a flash of myself, just a week earlier, coming home from a long night at Commercial to the darkness of the yellow house. How much had I thought about it—my home or my school or anything from before—in the last few days? Not as much as I should have. All this time, I’d been so angry Cora had forgotten me, just wiped our shared slate clean, but now I was doing the same thing. Where was my mother? Was it really this easy, once you escaped, to just not care?
I suddenly felt tired, overwhelmed, everything that had happened in the last week hitting me at once. I stepped back from the crowd, slipping inside. As I climbed the stairs, I was glad for the enclosed space of my room, even if it, too, was temporary like everything else.
I just need to sleep, I told myself, kicking off my shoes and sinking down onto the bed. I closed my eyes, trying to shut out the singing, doing all I could to push myself into the darkness and stay there until morning.
When I woke up, I wasn’t sure how long I’d been asleep, hours or just minutes. My mouth was dry, my arm cramped from where I’d been lying on it. As I rolled over, stretching out, my only thought was to go back to the dream I’d been having, which I couldn’t remember, other than it had been good, in that distant, hopeful way unreal things can be. I was closing my eyes, trying to will myself back, when I heard some laughter and clapping from outside. The party was still going on.
When I went out onto my balcony, I saw the crowd had dwindled to about twenty people or so. The banjo player was gone, and just Jamie remained, plucking a few notes as people chatted around him.
“It’s getting late,” Charlotte, who’d put on a sweater over her dress, said. She stifled a yawn with her hand. “Some of us have to be up early tomorrow.”
“It’s Sunday,” Denise, sitting beside her, said. “Who doesn’t sleep in on Sunday?”
“One last song,” Jamie said. He glanced around, looking behind him to a place I couldn’t see from my vantage point. “What do you think?” he said. “One song?”
“Come on,” Denise pleaded. “Just one.”
Jamie smiled, then began to play. It was cold outside, at least to me, and I turned back to my room, feeling a yawn of my own rising up, ready to go back to bed. But then I realized there was something familiar about what he was playing; it was like it was tugging at some part of me, faint but persistent, a melody I thought was mine alone.
" ’I am an old woman, named after my mother....’”
The voice was strong and clear, and also familiar, but in a distant way. Similar to the one I knew, and yet different—prettier and not as harsh around the edges.
"’My old man is another child that’s grown old....’”
It was Cora. Cora, her voice pure and beautiful as it worked its way along the notes we’d both heard so many times, the song more than any other that made me think of my mother. I thought of how strange I’d felt earlier, thinking we’d both just forgotten everything. But this was scary, too, to be so suddenly connected, prompting a stream of memories—us in our nightgowns, her reaching out for me, listening to her breathing, steady and soothing, from across a dark room—rushing back too fast to stop.
I felt a lump rise in my throat, raw and throbbing, but even as the tears came I wasn’t sure who I was crying for. Cora, my mom, or maybe, just me.
Chapter Six
I could not prove it
scientifically. But I was pretty sure Gervais Miller was the most annoying person on the planet.
First, there was the voice. Flat and nasal with no inflection, it came from the backseat, offering up pronouncements and observations. “Your hair’s matted in the back,” he’d tell me, when I hadn’t had adequate time with the blow-dryer. Or when I pulled a shirt last-minute from the laundry: “You stink like dryer sheets.” Attempts to ignore him by pretending to study only resulted in a running commentary on my academic prowess, or lack thereof. “Intro to Calculus? What are you, stupid?” or “Is that a B on that paper?” And so on.
I wanted to punch him. Daily. But of course I couldn’t, for two reasons. First, he was just a kid. Second, between his braces and his headgear, there was really no way to get at him and really make an impact. (The fact that I’d actually thought about it enough to draw this conclusion probably should have worried me. It did not.)
When it all got to be too much, I’d just turn around and shoot him the evil eye, which usually did the trick. He’d quiet down for the rest of the ride, maybe even the next day, as well. In time, though, his obnoxiousness would return, often even stronger than before.
In my more rational moments, I tried to feel empathy for Gervais. It had to be hard to be a prodigy, supersmart but so much younger than everyone else at school. Whenever I saw him in the halls, he was always alone, backpack over both shoulders, walking in his weird, leaning-forward way, as if powering up to head-butt someone in the chest.
Being a kid, though, Gervais also lacked maturity, which meant that he found things like burps and farts hysterical, and even funnier when they were his own. Put him in a small, enclosed space with two people every morning, and there was no end to the potential for hilarity. Suffice it to say, we always knew what he’d had for breakfast, and even though it was nearing winter, I often kept my window open, and Nate did the same.
On the Monday after Cora’s party, though, when I got into the car at seven thirty, something just felt different. A moment later, I realized why: the backseat was empty.