I take off my apron in the small back room and search for my phone to tell Kate about the cute gay guy I met and my new favorite coffee drinks. My phone is nowhere to be found in the holes and pockets of my bag. I dump out everything—my wallet, photos, gum wrappers, notes from friends, pens and pencils. Then I remember: it’s sitting at home charging in the window of my bedroom. Oh bother.
My hands shake from the caffeine, and my stomach longs for something to combat the sweets, so I’m off to a late lunch somewhere. But self-consciousness pervades me as I walk toward the outside door. People have come in and out of the Underground for the last four hours, going about their business. I find it strangely hard to force myself out the front doors. I even consider getting a scone and eating it in the back room.
Okay, Ruby, you’re fifteen years old. You can walk down the street, do a little window shopping, buy some lunch.
“Can I get you anything?” I ask the one couple in the room, who basically ignore me as they lean in and talk in romantic tones.
The tables are nearly empty now, but I feel vaguely guilty to be on lunch while Aunt Jenna clears them. “Do you want me to stay and help?”
“No, no, go explore a bit. The fog burned off, and it’s a beautiful day. If you find Greens, get me an Asian salad with dressing on the side. Do you need money?”
“Mom gave me some.”
One last glance around the safety of the coffeehouse, and I push myself into the warm sunlight of midafternoon. These brick grottos are full of interesting shops and boutiques. I notice a handcraft toy shop that Kate would love to explore with me, and a shop with musical instruments from all over the world dangling from the ceiling and resting against the wide windows.
But I don’t find Greens because the farthest I venture is to the gourmet pizza parlor in the courtyard next door. I reach for my cell phone to call Aunt Jenna about getting a pizza instead. Argh! No cell phone . . .
Without my cell, I’m truly alone. It feels like going to the mall and realizing I’ve forgotten my shoes. As I get in line at the counter, I hear someone else’s phone beep, and I look around like a hungry orphan at a banquet.
The walls of Antonio’s Gourmet Pizza are covered in pictures of famous people standing beside the owner, presumably Antonio. Harrison Ford, Cameron Diaz, Tom Hanks, the lead singer of Green Day, and others I recognize but whose names I don’t know.
The counter girl asks me if I want the couscous crust, and I say yes simply because I don’t know what it is. I sigh when I walk away, tired of feeling stupid. The tables are full, but I see a guy leave a table outside. That’s where I sit, with the number 17 on the iron tabletop.
The day is blue and bright. Hanging baskets cascade flowers from light poles along the street, and I think what a beautiful town this is. When have I done something like go to a restaurant alone? Never, I realize. I haven’t done anything alone in my fifteen years that I can think of. Even when I’m alone in my room, I have connections all around, thanks to the miracle of technology. Me at this wrought-iron table beside a huge planter of red geraniums waiting for my couscous pizza with people all around me—this is alone.
So this is what it’d be like in Europe, sitting at an outdoor café with the French or the Swedes (is it too cold in Sweden for outdoor cafés?) or the Austrians or . . . whatever country I’m in. Could I do it alone? Mom says that all the truest journeys are done alone, even if traveling with companions. It’s the inner journey that matters.
And strangely, just sitting here at a little table in this corner café, I sense such a journey stretching out before me. Once my pizza arrives, I lean back in the chair, cross my legs, and drink a sparkling mineral water.
But okay, when a lady’s phone beeps, I do reach for my purse.
When I get back to the Underground, the clock says 3:15. Kate and everyone will be out of school. Maybe she’s at track practice. Carson will be hanging out with his friends. Little Tony’s family will probably be making funeral arrangements, picking out his clothing, buying a coffin and plot of ground for his grave.
I try shoving those terrible thoughts out of my head, and instead I wonder if Nick will ask me to the upcoming prom. After all, he finally knows he likes me, and he wants to ask me something. There’s a dress in a store window down the street. I caught a glimpse of it on the drive in. It’s lime green and black, with a skirt that would twirl if I felt like twirling.
I imagine all kinds of Sound of Music twirling as I work in the coffeehouse. I imagine that I glance up at one of the customers and there’s Nick. His arrival is like the scene in Chocolat when Johnny Depp returns to the little chocolaterie for Juliette Binoche. Who couldn’t feel that all the way through the toes? What happens next as the movie credits roll . . . who knows and who cares? We know he’s taking her from her loneliness, and they’ll love each other for the rest of their lives.
“Ruby!” Aunt Jenna says loudly, making me jump and realize she’s been calling my name for a while. “Off in Rubyland again?”
“Sorry.”
“One of our regulars, Natasha, is at her table by the corner window. She’s waiting for a ginger currant scone and chai tea with rice milk. The tea is on the counter—just pour some rice milk from the lower fridge into a cream server.”
Natasha isn’t easy to locate. I hadn’t noticed the tiny table tucked behind the indoor stone fountain in a corner by the window. She’s fully engrossed in a book with a stack of other books and sketches spread out on the small table, making it impossible for me to set down the tea saucer and plate.
“Excuse me,” I say in a library-soft voice—why, I’m not sure.
She looks up as if surprised to see me, as if surprised to find herself sitting at her usual spot in my aunt’s café/movie house. It’s not a ditzy sort of look, but one that makes me think she’s still somewhere else, in whatever place that book took her.
“Oh yes, I apologize. Let me make some room.”
She’s old—like maybe fifty—and beautiful. I think she’s the most beautiful older woman I’ve met. Her hair is cut short, very short, in a way only certain women can pull off—and she’s one of those certain women for sure. Her earrings are black pearls, and she wears a matching black pearl necklace.
“What are you reading?” I ask.
“Short stories from a Croatian writer,” she says, turning the book over. She moves her books to a chair and thanks me as I set her tea and scone beside a paper with notes scribbled on it.
“Croatia? Is that in Europe?”
“Former Yugoslavia—Eastern Europe. Croatia is next on my list of places to visit—the Dalmatian Coast, to be precise. I’m hoping to go in the autumn, and then I’ll head for my favorite place to visit in October—the Austrian Alps. Have you ever been to Europe?”
I smile. “Uh, no. I haven’t. Not yet.”
“That’s the spirit. I believe you most certainly will, and not too far in the future.” Natasha gives me a confident look, as if she can see it clearly.
I can’t talk any longer; we have a large order for a team of advertisers having a board meeting.
As I’m cleaning tables later, I imagine myself over at Natasha’s table in thirty or more years. I’m chatting with a teenaged girl, telling her how I once worked here and then all about my world travels, encouraging her to venture out as well. The girl might ask about the book I’m reading. An art book written by me, or a travel guide written by me, or maybe it’s written by someone else, but I’m planning my next trip. My handsome husband shows up—Nick?—who says he’s booked our tickets and we’ll be spending the summer on a lake in Italy or on the coast of Brazil or in a small beach hut in the Cook Islands.
“Ruby,” Aunt Jenna calls, and again I realize that she’s called me more than once.
I really need to control my daydreaming.
My shift should be over. No one can give me a ride home. If Carson were here . . . but he isn’t, I remind myself. And he won’t be. I suppose I’ll need to learn publi
c transportation. There’s no such thing in Cottonwood, unless you count hopping on the nearest horse you see in a field.
I overhear Aunt Jenna on the phone, panic in her tone. “How sick are you? I know you’re sorry, but I just don’t know what I’m going to do tonight.” She hangs up and is punching in more numbers.
“I thought you left,” she says as I come into the kitchen.
“No ride. Austin can get me in an hour, but I can stay and help.”
“Where’s your mom?”
“She’s interviewing the owner of that boutique for one of her magazines.”
“What boutique?” But Aunt Jenna is by now flipping pages on her board, looking for any help.
“Listen, it’s no problem, Aunt Jenna. It’s not like I have plans.”
She sighs. “I will make this up to you.”
“That sounds good,” I say with a smile. “Let me just make a phone call, and I’ll be back out there.”
Aunt Jenna nods; then she closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and leaves with a renewed cheery look on her face. “Premiere Night officially begins.”
The only thing that made me hesitate about volunteering for tonight was my phone. My poor lonely phone, sitting on the windowsill in my room, ringing inconsolably with no one to comfort it. And what’s been happening back home? My friends will think I’ve died. Nick might be annoyed that I’m not around for whatever he needs to ask me. Prom, prom?
Mac answers the phone at the house.
“Hey, it’s Ruby. I need you to do me a favor.”
“Okay, but it’s gonna cost you.”
“Cost me? Cost me what?”
“Dearly.”
“Huh?”
“I saw that on a movie. They said, ‘It’s gonna cost you dearly.’ What’s a dearly?”
“Listen, I can’t talk long.”
“So you don’t know either?”
“I’ll explain later.”
“So you do know? Just tell me.”
“Mac! Listen to me. I need you to go up to my phone in my room and send Kate a text message.”
“Oh yeah, your phone keeps vibrating. I put one of my army men on it, and he stayed on for three seconds.”
“Mac. Focus. Listen to me. Get my phone.”
“Okay, hang on. It was plugged in over here . . .”
“You’re in my room?”
“Mom and Austin are putting up my bunk beds, so they said I could play in here. Where’d your phone go? I built a Lego fortress around it—oh, here it is!”
“Great. Now do you remember how to send a text?”
“It says you have twenty new messages.”
I hear a few beeps.
“And six missed calls.”
“Missed calls?” That could mean something. My friends only call when something’s important.
“Do you want me to read your messages to you?”
“No! Just go to contacts—do you see the button you push beneath contacts? Then scroll down, you’ll see the arrow keys—”
“I play games on Mom’s phone, remember. I know how it works.”
“Okay, send a text to Kate. Just say Ruby is at work and forgot her phone at home. She’ll call when she’s back.”
“I better write that down.”
My aunt calls my name from the front counter.
“I have to go—just remember it. You’re just telling her I don’t have my phone, and I’ll call when I’m home from work.”
“Home from work, will call . . .”
I hear people in the dining area of the coffeehouse.
“Promise you’ll put my phone back after that.”
“It’s gonna cost you.”
“Dearly, yes, I know.”
He laughs at that.
“I could take messages for you. ‘Ruby’s phone, Mac speaking.’ See how good I’d be.”
“No. Just send that to Kate and nothing else.”
“Oops.”
The last thing you want to hear your ten-year-old brother say when he’s using your phone is “Oops.”
“What happened?”
“I might have erased your messages.”
“What?!”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“Ruby,” Aunt Jenna calls again.
“Okay, forget it. Just leave my phone alone.”
“Sorry.”
“Mac”—I want to yell a slew of things at him right now—“now you owe me for this one.”
“Yeah. I owe you dearly.”
chapter six
Kate, it's so cool, I wish you were here.
This is what I want to type, if I had my phone with me.
I miss Kate terribly, wish I had her beside me, helping customers and whispering comments about the people who’ve come for Premiere Night.
The air simply buzzes with excitement like static electricity in your clothing.
“Ruby, take over the cash register—I need to make another batch of popcorn,” Aunt Jenna says. I see the tiredness in her eyes, but we have several hours yet to go.
Premiere Night brings out a different crowd from the daytime customers. Or maybe it’s some of the same people, but the night and event have transformed them into cool creatures of the art and film world. Artists wear their baggy jeans and expensive but faded T-shirts, a few visible tattoos, piercings, gauges in their ears, while other artist-types express wealth in their clothes, watches, and jewelry. Several of the girls look like runway models, and a few others could’ve been extras at the sorority house in Legally Blonde. My dirty black apron, Gap jeans, brown shoes, and Underground polo shirt don’t mix with any of the types here. And I can only guess what my hair and makeup look like, since I’ve been here since eleven in the morning.
I see Frankie. He waves and winks at me from a circle of people who talk and move like a flock of birds through the coffeehouse and down the stairs.
Kate would love this, and all the very hot guys. We’re always complaining about the lack of good-looking males at home, though I think that’s because we’ve known most of the guys at school since they were eating paste and pulling our ponytails. But if she were here, we could take up my aunt and mom’s hobby of creating stories for the most interesting characters. We might say that the guy with the Mohawk works at a tattoo parlor but has a secret love for poodles. The twin girls near the corner who look shy and unpretentious are daughters of a senator and plot to take the most-famous-twins throne from the Olsen sisters.
I miss Kate. I miss her with a strange gut-ache feeling. Or maybe it’s a mixture of loneliness and missing.
A dark-haired guy weaves through the groupings of people. His eyes—dark brown and serious—catch mine for a moment, then he walks toward the cinema stairs. Maybe it’s his intensity or a way about his casual style that reminds me of a young Johnny Depp. There’s also a young Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise and surely Chad Michael Murray’s younger brother.
The upstairs crowd soon disappears into the cinemas downstairs. I carry a few more empty mugs to the kitchen, where Aunt Jenna comes out of the walk-in cooler carrying an armload of containers. “Oh, Ruby, you should go see some of the films.”
But there are dirty tables to wipe, and popcorn litters the floor, and Aunt Jenna looks increasingly tired, which makes me worry. She’s had health issues for a number of years, which is also why she hasn’t had a baby.
Uncle Jimmy arrived some time ago and is doing dishes, though ever so slowly compared to Rayna. He keeps having trouble with the industrial dishwasher. He’s still in his jeans and T-shirt from being on a building site where he’s the foreman of a construction company.
“Next time,” I say and return to the dining area.
From the stairwell I hear shouts and applause rising from the theater below. I overhear snippets of conversation as people come up and down for coffee, popcorn, and sweets. The monthly special of popcorn runs out, and Aunt Jenna gives up trying to make more.
“We’re in survival mode now,” she says.
I take in the conversations . . . a wallflower no one really notices. It’s an illuminating position. I get to overhear a lot.
“That was the best I’ve seen.”
“We’ve got this night bagged, there’s no doubt. That film was perfect.”
“Let’s go to the beach after this.”
“Sure. Tell everyone to meet at the cove by Shellee’s.”
“Who is that with Shellee?”
“I don’t know, but he was staring at Blair, or so she said.”
“Blair thinks everyone’s staring at her. Okay, they probably are.”
“I don’t think she’s as great as everyone makes her out to be.”
“Are Crystal and Dylan still broken up? I saw her in his car this afternoon.”
They are the conversations of teenagers anywhere. These live in a different place, the names aren’t the same, and they have different interests from the kids back home, but overall the themes and emotions are the same. Socialize, make plans, dream big, have fun. The chemistry and angst between guys and girls, friendships and loves.
The conversations make me miss home. Remind me of people who know me, who talk about me for the good and the bad, who want to hang out with me. They’re all far away right now.
Will some of these people become my friends? I search their faces, looking for some telltale sign. Sometimes I’ve imagined going back in time to see myself walking by a future friend in the mall or at school. Maybe as a little kid, one of my future best friends played on the same playground as me. I wonder if I’ve walked past my future husband, if the love of my life might be in the cinema downstairs, or if he’s driving some highway with the music loud and an ache of longing in his chest for the mysterious her who is me, and only me.
Another group lingers near the counter, and I catch bits of conversations.
“Hey, did you ask your parents if we’ll meet them in Barcelona or Marseilles this summer?”
“They haven’t figured out the plan yet. My dad’s in Germany ordering a new Porsche. He couldn’t wait to see it, so he flew over to check out the production.”
Ruby Unscripted Page 4