Oh, she’s going to be mad.
chapter ten
FRANKIE: What color are you?
ME: Huh?
FRANKIE: Do you know how often you say that?
ME: Say what?
FRANKIE: HUH?
ME: You ask me the strangest questions.
FRANKIE: And you love them so much. You think about them later in the day while you're serving coffee and pumpkin bread. Admit it.
ME: I do. Aquamarine.
FRANKIE: Aquamarine? That's not a color.
ME: Yes it is. If it's in a Crayola box, it's a color. What's yours?
FRANKIE: Red. of course. Flamboyant Red though I don't think Crayola has that. Why. ick. aquamarine?
ME: I don't know. For once I'm giving an answer off the top of my head instead of thinking it over all day. while I'm serving coffee and pumpkin bread. Maybe it's orange. Autumn is my favorite time of year, and I was thinking of painting one of my bedroom walls orange.
I look at the wall behind my bed and try imagining it a dark orange color. It’s late evening, and I’m still wearing my Underground polo shirt, and my homework books from Day 2 at Marin High surround me. Sepia-colored prints of places around the world would go well on a dark orange wall.
My laptop chimes as friends keep talking to me online. I comment back here and there, but Frankie is definitely the most interesting of the bunch. Kate’s at the movies with some people I don’t know very well, and though she says she forgives me for forgetting her yesterday, it obviously hurt her feelings. And who can blame her? I can tell it’ll take her awhile to get over it.
My phone vibrates on the desk beside me—Frankie again.
FRANKIE: So you need to think about your color. Aquamarine is not it.
ME: I'll give you an answer by tomorrow.
FRANKIE: What were you before?
ME: Huh?
FRANKIE: See. huh again!
ME: LOL
FRANKIE: It changes you know. Life turns us different colors for different times in our lives. There was a time I was gray, a dark charcoal gray for a very long time.
ME: Ah, yes. I think I've seen myself as gray.
FRANKIE: So ready to see the town?
ME: Huh? Okay. I'll stop saying that.
FRANKIE: Tell me where you're at, and I'll take you round.
ME: Not sure I can. I have homework. Julius Caesar and logarithms.
FRANKIE: I won't have you out long.
ME: Hang on.
FRANKIE: Oh right, American Girl must ask permission from Mommy.
I race down the stairs with my phone in hand to find Mom, and I wonder what I believe about homosexuality. And then I wonder why I’m wondering about this right now. But still, I know what most Christians think, what my dad and my grandmother would say. Grandma Hazel will start sending me Bible tracts if she hears I have a gay friend. And I know what the extreme conservative Christians have projected on gay people—that they should be hated, that they are evil. Mom gets really upset about people like that and sometimes goes on a rampage, saying she’s going to write all these articles or a book about it. Our pastor in Cottonwood preached a sermon about it; he says love them, don’t condemn or judge them as we shouldn’t condemn or judge anyone, treat them as Jesus would treat anyone, look at the sin in our own lives, etc.
Between my room and the living room, I decide that I don’t really care to figure it all out right now.
Mom is working on her laptop at the coffee table, with Mac doing his homework beside her.
“We’re working here. Don’t interrupt, please,” Mac says and then smiles at me.
“My new friend wants to pick me up.”
Mom gets that look—eyebrows pinched together and a slight frown. “Why don’t you guys just hang out here?” She glances at Austin, who’s in a chair reading the paper.
“He wants to give me a driving tour of the area.”
Mom shakes her head. “No. We have to meet him first.”
ME: They said no.
Frankie: I'll talk to them.
ME: You don't know my mom.
FRANKIE: She's a tyrant?
ME: No. But she can be strict.
FRANKIE: Parents love me. Or let me rephrase. Moms love me. Dads and brothers, not so much.
ME: I wonder why.
FRANKIE: I can't figure it out.
Then Austin says, “You should let her go. After we meet him.”
Mom looks at Austin. “What? Why?”
“She needs some friends,” he says.
Mom is quiet a moment, then says, “Okay, but after we meet him.”
Stepdad saves the night.
Mac peeks at Frankie from the top of the stairs, and I give him an angry wave to go away. I hear his laugh as he hurries off to his room, probably both disgusted and fascinated at my “boy-kissing” friend. I’m just glad Carson isn’t here right now.
“Hello, Frankie,” Mom says, coming out of the kitchen. “Did you have dinner?”
“Yeah, I’ve already eaten. Penne pasta and white wine mushroom sauce.”
“Yum,” Austin says, coming in behind Mom. He shakes Frankie’s hand, and I make the introductions.
“Well, it’s Lean Cuisine. I’m a frozen dinner connoisseur. Gotta keep the figure lean and mean.”
Before they can respond, Frankie starts asking question after question about the house. “It’s one of the coolest houses I think I’ve ever seen,” he says after getting the history and gazing around.
Austin even shows him the garage with the arched door and access to the backyard where the fruit trees are blooming. They like Frankie, just as he predicted.
“So you’re going to show Ruby around?”
“Yep, it sounded like she needs to get out. And I promise to drive your daughter carefully, and I promise, really promise, that I won’t kiss her.”
That shocks me, but Mom chuckles. “It’s nice to know she’s safe then.” She keeps laughing quietly as she follows us toward the door.
“Ew, kissing, gross!” I hear from Mac upstairs, and I want to slink away to my room.
But nothing fazes Frankie.
“Sorry about my brother,” I say after the friendly good-byes and Mom’s invitation for Frankie to come to dinner sometime—when Austin is cooking, she says with a laugh.
“Cute kid. Now ready to see some of Marin?”
We drive the hilly streets up one side of the mountain to the other where the rough Pacific waters beat against the cliffs.
Frankie chain-smokes but doesn’t offer me one. He drives with the window cracked and holds a cigarette like someone from a movie, cool and casual-like. It almost makes me want to start smoking. He finally parks at a place that overlooks the water, with the sunset faded into the water and nearly turned to darkness. And for some reason, I tell him about little Tony Arnold in the Christmas program with me and now dead from a drug overdose.
We get out and walk barefoot on the beach, and Frankie strips down to his boxers and goes running to the water. I laugh as he jumps the waves and finally goes diving in. That water is freezing! But as I watch Frankie swim alone in the ocean, a sense of contented solitude surrounds me. A sense of knowing that this is the time and place for me.
It’s not Frankie in particular or the rhythm of waves or the bright moon coming up behind us as the last light disappears out across the ocean. There are plenty of troubles in this new life. But a gentle strength reminds me that I’m going forward in life’s pathway, and nothing in the world needs to stop me now.
chapter eleven
I don’t have to wander the lunch periods alone anymore, like the first day when I bought a sandwich and then moved from place to place as if I had somewhere to go. If anyone had actually been watching me, I’d have appeared pretty ridiculous.
Today is the second day Frankie has lunch with me, but this time he brings me to his table of friends. Before moving to Marin, people like Bart, Axner, and Janice might have freaked me out a little with
their tattoos and piercings. Bart is the size of a small giant and wears all black and black eyeliner. Axner is short and stares at me intensely, then smiles widely and shakes my hand. Janice gives me a cool nod of welcome, then rests her head back on Bart’s shoulder. Another guy and girl arrive at the table.
“This is Redden. My gay brother, but not my gay lover,” Frankie says in a singsong voice, and they high-five.
“Nice to meet you,” I say awkwardly, not sure how to respond to Frankie’s flamboyance sometimes. Is the guy really his brother, or just called that ’cause he’s gay too?
“So, Frankie, this is your experiment into conservative Americana,” says a girl who just arrived. She’s a hard and cold mix of beautiful.
“This is Blair. Blair, be nice to my Ruby.”
“It won’t be easy,” Blair says and gives me a long condescending look that moves up and down my body.
Blair continues to make rude comments and references to me throughout lunch. I wonder what she has against me, and decide to ask Frankie later. And just as I now have one friend, I get the idea that I now have an enemy too.
Aunt Jenna picks me up from school, and we go straight to the Underground. I write Kate on my way to the coffeehouse, but she doesn’t answer.
My twelve-hour day last week (was it only last week?) and working yesterday provide a comfortable familiarity. I’ve learned the espresso recipes and even get a few compliments. Some of the regulars know my name, which makes me try harder to remember theirs. I look for Natasha, but she doesn’t come in today. When someone orders the pumpkin bread, I think of Frankie. What color am I? Who asks questions like that? He’s one of the most unusual people I’ve ever met—and I love him for that.
ME: I think I'm purple.
I write to Frankie when I get home, once again so tired that it’s hard to walk up the stairs to my room. I have homework and I’m hungry, but I know I need to talk to Kate before I sleep.
ME TO KATE: Can you talk?
KATE: So you don't like Nick now?
ME: Yeah. I do.
Something’s up with Kate, though her words make me realize that I haven’t so much as asked about Nick in two days. And I never called him like I said I would. There was something Kate was going to tell me about him, and I never even asked.
ME TO KATE: It's not easy fitting in here and keeping up with the old.
FRANKIE: Purple huh? Like Prince or Barney the dinosaur.
ME TO FRANKIE: Purple like me.
FRANKIE: Hmmm. You know purple is sometimes considered the gay color.
ME: Well, not that purple either.
FRANKIE: Is there something wrong with gay purple?
ME: Uh, I didn't mean anything by that.
FRANKIE: LOL Kidding. So what are you up to, Purple? You're going to have to explain that by the way.
ME: Unpacking my room, starting homework, and talking to friends online.
FRANKIE: Busy busy.
I take a drink of Diet Pepsi and accidentally push a book and school papers that fall behind the desk. It takes wedging my feet against the wall and pulling to budge the heavy desk from the wall. As I pick up the papers, I notice that a board on the back of the desk is loose, with an edge of something sticking out of the bottom of the board. I carefully pull out an old photograph. It shows a woman sitting on a stone fence with the sea in the background.
I write to Frankie and forward to Kate:
ME: I just found a really old photograph behind my aunt's desk.
KATE: Cool. So you aren't going to say anything about what I said?
ME: What did you say?
RE-SENT FROM KATE: So we're the old? All of us in Cottonwood are the old and it's too hard keeping up with us?
ME: Oh! I didn't mean that. Knock it off. You know I didn't mean it that way.
FRANKIE: An old photograph in your aunt's desk? Maybe auntie has a dirty little secret.
ME TO FRANKIE: It's an old photograph, like at least fifty years. And don't talk about my aunt that way.
FRANKIE: Oh, a mystery for Nancy Drew. Hey, you could be Nancy Drew, that's a good title for you.
ME TO KATE & FRANKIE: On the back it says To my beloved Beatrice. This one photograph I release from my collection to you. Thank you for coming to the shoot that day by the sea. May the future hold such wonder as our days in France. Yours always, E
KATE: Cool.
That’s about all the interest those two have in the photograph. As if they are the same person. I smile to myself as I consider that.
Kate and Frankie have to go at the same time. I’m distracted over the picture, staring at the woman’s face—she’s quite beautiful in that old-fashioned way—and wondering who she is.
I realize after she says good-bye just how strange Kate has been acting during our conversations. She must be mad at me, and I’ll need to address that soon. Though usually she’ll outright tell me she’s angry. Quick and unexplained good-byes aren’t like her.
I try to focus on my WWI workbook questions while only occasionally talking to one friend or another. Mostly it’s the same catching up on the same details of Cottonwood: someone was in a fight and it’s the big scandal, Randy is going to enter a snowboarding competition, Alisha’s boyfriend is cheating on her but she doesn’t believe it, Nikki picked out a yellow dress and Nick refuses to get a yellow tie for prom (and he still wants to talk to me, but I’ve been avoiding that conversation), Felicity agreed to go to the prom with Josh though she really wants to go with Harlen . . . stuff like that.
I keep looking at the photograph. It’s distracting me from the 1918 assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Bosnian Serb student in Yugoslavia. Finally I run downstairs with the picture in my hand.
“Mom, do you know a Beatrice or someone with the initial E?”
She’s working on her laptop, sitting on the couch with papers spread all around her. The fire crackles, and part of me thinks to come downstairs and do my homework at the coffee table near her.
“Uh, E? There’s Ernest Hemingway,” she says, her eyes not moving from the screen. Her reading glasses are inching down her nose.
“I mean in our family. Or someone Aunt Betty would know.”
“Hmm. Aunt Betty’s name is actually Beatrice. Why?”
“Mom, Mom!” Mac comes running from outside. “Ruby, Ruby!”
“What, what!” I say.
“Come out here quick. You need to see this guy.”
Mom and I give each other a knowing look and sigh, then get up and hurry to the front door. Just then a guy makes a circle and waves, riding a sort of motorized unicycle with a headlight and what appears to be a solar panel rising above him on a metal bar. He tips his hat at my stare and is gone before I can wave back or smile or respond at all.
“Only in Marin,” Mom says.
Back inside, I show Mom the picture. She studies it and reads the back. “This is interesting.”
“Do you think this is Aunt Betty?” It’s strange to imagine my quirky old aunt as this young, thoughtful woman.
“The photograph looks like it’s from around the fifties or maybe older. So it could be her.”
“Did she go to France when she was young?”
Mom sits back on the couch and picks up her laptop, then pauses. “You know, I think there was some scandal with Aunt Betty when she was in her early twenties. She ran off to Europe or something. We’ll have to ask her when she returns. If she’ll tell us.”
I survive Day 4 of Marin High.
Lunch with Frankie and his friends helps a lot, except for Blair.
“So you’re a Christian?” she asks with a short laugh.
For a second, I hesitate. Usually I might be embarrassed or intimidated by such a question, but she makes me want to fight back. “Yeah.”
“And why would that be? Why are you a Christian?”
Frankie comes to my rescue. “What are you, Blair, darling?”
“I’m Blair. I believe in me,” she says with c
onfidence, and the conversation thankfully goes another direction.
Then I see Super Jock across the quad. He followed me around earlier, again calling, “Hey, New Girl.” When he sees me sitting with Frankie and friends, a surprised expression comes over his face. I think he’ll leave me alone now.
A strange pride surrounds me as I sit with Frankie and friends at lunch. Maybe it’s that I’m hanging out with the kind of people I’d be terrified to sit with before. Maybe it’s just that I’m no longer sitting alone.
Hours later, when I arrive at work, I see a check with my name on it. My first job, my first check. It’s for $87.50 after taxes. I want to kiss it and jump up and down. Instead I slide it into my purse and get my apron, already picking out things to spend it on.
The first three hours of work slide by. My favorite trio of old men is there, as usual. They sit around talking about their most recent marathons or news and politics or their aches and pains. And they love flirting with me, which is quite humorous since they’re certainly all over seventy.
I’m cleaning beneath a small table where a cute little kid made a very uncute mess when I hear some girls talking at a table nearby.
“I’ve seen her before,” I hear someone say.
Wet globs of cracker are stuck to the table legs. The girls are looking at me. Do they really think I can’t hear them from only three tables away?
“She just moved here from some hick town.”
“How do you know?”
“My mom knows her aunt. She wanted me to be friends with her or something.”
I hit my head on the table but keep cleaning.
“Her name is Amethyst or Emerald or something like that.”
“It’s Ruby,” I say, finally standing. “Can I take any of those plates for you?”
“Ruby—that’s like an old, old, old-fashioned name,” one girl says. She’s blonde, beautiful—the stereotype for all those mean girls in every teen movie known to mankind.
I say, with the nicest of smiles, “Yes. Or Ruby for the slippers that Dorothy wore.”
Ruby Unscripted Page 8