by Sarah Porter
I’d been about to sob but that made me laugh instead. “Who do you think is going to serve me cocktails?”
“My ID should be enough to cover both of us, surely. It is an official New York State license-to-persistently-exist, after all. Now ditch that gunk and let’s go.”
He dragged me to an amazing dark bar, all rippling mahogany and mirrors sliced up and arranged into glittering sinuous patterns, but the bartender wasn’t convinced that one driver’s license was enough and we got kicked out after a pretty short argument. It would have been embarrassing except that Dashiell was so funny about it that I kept cracking up, which probably didn’t help persuade anybody that I was twenty-one. And then we were wandering up Smith Street in the sunset, not sure where to go next, and I started to dread the moment when Dashiell would remember that he had something better to do, or actually everything better to do, and tell me to get myself home.
And that was when I saw my boots in the shoe store’s window. The air was just shifting toward blue and their red burst through it, blasted all the other colors in the world into shards, and gleamed at me. I felt like huge crimson roses were expanding through my chest. I felt like those boots were meant for me.
Dashiell watched my expression change as I saw them. “I almost forgot. We have some important shopping to do, don’t we, Ru-Ru?”
I hesitated. “I might have enough money left from babysitting. But it’s at home.”
“Oh, pah,” Dashiell said, and seized my wrist. The door chimed as we went in, Dashiell strutting and me bobbing along behind him like a toy on a string.
“We’re about to close,” the salesgirl snapped. Then she got a better look at Dash and her gaze went soft.
“We know what we want,” Dashiell told her. “We’ll be out of here before you can blink. Your shoe size, Miss Slippers?” He put his arm around me while the salesgirl went to fetch the boots and I made myself sit straight, though all I wanted was to bury my face in his shoulder and beg him to come home and never leave us again. Maybe I already had a bad feeling and I just couldn’t let myself be consciously aware of it. Maybe on some hidden level I was afraid for him.
The boots came and I laced them up. I could see them flashing at me out of the mirror, their shining leather becoming rubies running with fragrant juice, cherries that burst into flames, singing blood. I walked a few paces in them, but I already knew they were perfect.
“I can come back for them. You don’t need to spend your money on me, Dash. You shouldn’t. And Dad would probably get them for me if I asked.” I sat back down next to Dash on the bench and reached to untie them, but he caught hold of my hand and stopped me.
“Dad is absolutely not permitted to buy these boots for you. He can go ahead and get you all the things you don’t actually care about. But these, these smite your heart with bright desire. I can see it. And that means that I will be the one to give them to you.” He smiled, kissed my forehead, and handed the salesgirl a wad of cash without even looking at her. “Ruby slippers for you, my sweet Ruby-Ru. My precious baby sister. You’ll be wearing them home, now. And you’ll be thinking of me.”
That was my older brother, and when he gave me that kiss he only had three days left to live. That was the person my dad says never should have been born. The son he wishes he’d had the foresight to murder while he was still a baby. And I’ll never love anybody that much again.
All at once I’m positive I know the truth. I know now what really happened to Dashiell. How could I have been so blind?
* * *
Everett is in my room. I hear him behind me but I don’t turn around. He came in without knocking, and he shouldn’t think he has a right to do that, but I don’t actually mind. “Ruby.”
“Don’t call me that,” I say. “Either call me by my real name or shut up.”
He hesitates and then puts a hand on my shoulder. “Hey, Ruby Slippers. Are you okay?”
“No, Never-Ever, I am not. But at least things make more sense now. You know how Dash had been completely clean for six months when he died? He’d been passing the drug tests and he had that new job and a girlfriend and he was making plans for new video projects and everything? That last day he came here he was happier than I’d ever seen him. So it—it was not logical that he would go and shoot up again, right?”
Everett doesn’t answer so I twist on my chair to stare up at him. He’s silent, brows drawn. Doing his very best not to understand what I’m telling him. “But Dad explained that! Remember? He said when junkies get clean for a while they lose their tolerance, so when they screw up and go back on the drugs they think they can handle the same dose they used before, but they can’t, because their bodies are suddenly way more sensitive. He said that’s when a lot of overdoses happen, and it’s a really dangerous time. Remember, Ruby?”
“That’s what he wants us to think,” I say. “That’s the cover story. But better late than never, right?”
Everett gapes at me like I just slammed him in the guts. His pale face takes on an eerie green glass glow like the sky during a tornado watch. Then he grabs me by the shoulders.
“Ruby. Ruby, that did not happen. What you are thinking—it did not happen. Never. Never. If you think that way you are going to go literally insane and get locked up, okay? Dad was just saying—what he said—to get through to you.” He’s wheezing and he turns away from me to take a pull on his inhaler, still gripping me with his free hand. “Take it back.”
Maybe I went too far, not by thinking it but by saying it out loud, even to Everett. “I didn’t say Dad did it. Not personally. But I bet he knew about it. Dashiell—you know he made a lot of people really upset. Like that insane bitch who got him fired a year ago? She was definitely rich enough to hire someone, right? That’s the thing, somebody just had to make it look like an accidental overdose, and they’d know that nobody would suspect anything. Like, Oh well, looks like he messed up. That’s just how it goes with those people!”
Everett’s holding his head at a strange angle, tipped down and away from me, but he’s still shaking it hard even as he tries to catch his breath.
“Dash was sleeping with that woman. She was giving him money. She just got mad when he disappeared on her and freaked out at Hugo, and Hugo didn’t want to offend a big client like her.” Hugo is a famous video artist and Dashiell worked as his assistant. For a while.
“So how does that prove she wouldn’t want to murder him? Maybe just getting him fired wasn’t enough revenge for her.”
“No, Ruby.” Everett is getting more of a grip on himself now. “Stop it right now. Don’t think this ever again.”
“I do think it!” I’m starting to yell. Out of everybody in the world, I thought Everett was the one person I could trust to open up his mind and really hear me. “Dashiell was clean. So he died of an overdose, sure, but that doesn’t mean he did it to himself! He was clean. He was getting better. He told me he’d finally realized that he really wanted to live. But no one is ever going to prove it if we don’t!”
I’m thinking of what our dad said—that Dash was killed by the darkness inside him. Like he was just some self-destructive loser. No. I won’t accept that, and I won’t let the world believe it, either. There’s another truth, a different truth, if I could only find it.
Everett’s still shaking his head. He has big, gray, heavy-lashed eyes, just like Dashiell’s—they’re the only thing about him that anyone could call beautiful. Mine are greener.
“Ruby. Ruby, you were the only one who believed that. I mean that Dash was going to stay clean. I hoped and everything, but I never really thought it was going to last.”
I stand up. “You’re saying you didn’t have any faith in him.”
Everett sighs. “It wasn’t like that. But I understood what the heroin meant to him. Philosophically.”
All I can think is You too, you too. All I can think is how I’m so alone now that it’s like I’ve been buried alive. But at least it’s finally clear: I’m the onl
y one who will fight for Dash, now that he can’t defend himself.
I push past Everett—he doesn’t try to stop me or anything—and head straight for the front door.
Now do you believe I love you, Dashiell? But actually I know perfectly well that he wouldn’t. This wouldn’t be nearly enough to convince him. I’ll show you, Dash. I will.
EVERETT
Something catches my right wrist as Ruby walks by and gives me a little tug. Then the feeling disappears. I turn and look at her, surprised that she would touch me when she’s in such a foul mood. Her arms are hugging her chest, though. It couldn’t have been her.
And then she’s gone, her footsteps snapping down the hallway. I hear the front door swing open and then closed. I hear her key turn. Fine, I tell myself. Let her go. Let her be like that. I don’t need her and her drama. But I’m still remembering the sensation on my wrist. I thought for a second that it was a hand, but now I think about it there was no warmth and no texture like skin. It was more like empty energy in the shape of a hand. A slight prickling and pressure with no matter behind it. Force, even a little bit of force like that tug I felt, is matter times velocity. So what I felt is physically impossible. Therefore it did not happen and I am going as crazy as Ruby if I let myself believe in it.
Fine. Settled.
Except that I know what that pressure, that feeling with nothing behind it, was trying to tell me. It wants me to follow Ruby. The sane thing to do is ignore it. So I try. I lock my muscles tight and stand as still as I can in the middle of her room, trying to feel nothing.
And then I give up and go after her. Because I know, somehow, that I’ll be sorry if I don’t. It’s like I have to choose between acting insane now, or feeling so terrible later that insanity is actually the rational choice.
I stop to put on my jacket, and by the time I get down to the street she’s one long block away, already crossing 5th Avenue and walking straight and hard like she knows exactly where she’s going. I semi-run until there’s only about half a block between us and then I just follow her, watching her shiny red boots flash back and forth. It’s cold out, a disgusting gray November day, but she isn’t wearing anything over her blue dress and her arms are bare and blotchy red. She’s carrying a handbag but that’s it. She turns on 3rd Avenue then again on Union, heading toward the Gowanus Canal. I shouldn’t be doing this, I know. I should turn around and go home. I do not want to deal with her putting on some huge freak-out if she sees me.
When she gets to the bridge she stops and leans over the stinking water and for a moment I’m afraid of what she’s going to do. Then I see that she’s just taking those stupid butterflies out of her hair, one by one, and dropping them into the canal. She was wearing her hair looped up and it starts to fall over her face and shoulders in a big blondish mess. It looks like she hasn’t brushed it in a week. She yanks the last butterfly out and throws it as far as she can. Spitefully. Even from here I can see that.
If she looked around she would spot me, but I’m not worried about that anymore. She’s staring at the water too hard. It’s obvious she’s not seeing anything except the sick visions in her own head.
Then she’s walking on, fast, up the low hill past the brick houses with their front yards full of dried-up brown flowers. At Smith Street she turns right, weaving between the people out shopping. From the way she moves it seems like she doesn’t even realize they’re people. They could be a telephone poles or parked cars. Wherever she’s going, she’s in a big hurry.
Until she’s not. Suddenly she stops at a store window and just stands there, which means that I have to stop, too, and find things to pretend to look at. Bad timing since I’m in front of a restaurant and it looks like I’m stalking the women who are in there eating brunch. They glance up and smirk and I can see them thinking, Oh look! An insignificant nerd-boy, giving us the creep-eye due to our unspeakable hotness. I hurry backward and stare in the window of a dry cleaners instead. Anything can be fascinating if you look at it the right way, if you imagine you’re an alien seeing those shapes and colors for the first time. For a few minutes I manage to keep myself in that state of mind, where the clothes on their hangers become weird abstract entities. But Ruby won’t move. People start to veer out around her as they go by like they can sense that there’s something wrong with her, looking back over their shoulders as they pass. And at last a salesgirl comes out of the store and says something. Ruby jerks back like she’s been electrocuted, shakes her head, and flings herself up the street again.
When I catch up to where she was I peer in to see what the deal was. But it’s nothing special. Just shoes.
Next stop is a Rite Aid. I’m afraid I’m going to get stuck forever again but this time she’s back in less than a minute, ripping open some sealed plastic pack with her teeth. She pulls out scissors. Then she walks to the nearest garbage can ten paces away, chucks the packaging, flips her head upside down, and starts hacking at her hair.
Now people are really giving her room. Tan hair scribbles the sidewalk; pieces worm their way down the wind. And Ruby keeps chopping, running the fingers of her free hand through it to feel how short it’s getting. When she finally straightens up I can see that it’s asymmetric, bristling out around her ear on the right side, but angling in a long ragged waterfall on the left. It spills over her eye, drags down one shoulder. She shakes herself and stops to look at her reflection in a rearview mirror on a van, and takes one more snip at her new slanting bangs. Smiles.
Even from here I can tell it’s not a good smile.
I can barely imagine the shitstorm this is going to start when Dad sees her, or when she walks into school on Monday. Should I try to stop her before she does anything worse? We walk two more blocks and she swings into another store.
This time it takes longer. After a while I go sit down in a bus shelter across the street and wait. I can see from here that it’s a vintage clothing store. Maybe she’s finally calmed down enough to notice how cold it is and decided to buy a sweater.
No. When Ruby comes out her ugly blue dress is wadded in her hands and she’s wearing a black velvet one instead. Tight as far as the waist but then spreading out into a wide skirt. And, Christ, fishnet stockings. The only thing about her that’s the same as when she left our house is those shiny red boots. They look even brighter with all the black. Flashing like some kind of signal lights.
I don’t want to see it. She’s my sister, after all. But suddenly she looks chubby in a way that’s actually sexy, all big curves, and her butchered hair comes across as more dangerous than stupid, and she’s walking with a long, hard stride like no one had better mess with her. I’m not so sure now that she’ll be getting flack in school. As she walks she’s snipping chunks off her old dress with the scissors and letting the scraps fall to the pavement, so there’s a trail of blue dots behind her. Slash-Dot-Dot. Dash-Dot-Dot. Ruby isn’t normally someone who would litter, either. She excels at being the girl whom adults regard with approval.
I think of calling our dad and then decide not to. He’s probably digging holes in someone’s brain right now. And what would I say? That I can tell Ruby is losing her mind because she’s shopping on Smith Street? What else are girls supposed to do on the weekend?
Put it that way and I feel disgusted with myself.
If it wasn’t for the thing that snatched at my wrist, I’d just walk away and leave Ruby to her oh-so-fabulous makeover. Because that’s all it is, right? And anyway nothing grabbed my wrist, because grabbing is an action that requires an animate being with a body and willpower to do it, and there wasn’t one there.
Ruby turns left onto Atlantic. That should be the end of it. She’ll come home when she gets too cold and tired to keep on acting for some imaginary audience. Drama Queen Productions, except no one cares and no one is looking—except me. I stop at the corner and watch her walk off, still oblivious to me, smacking down her steps in a way that tells everyone to leave her the hell alone.
Then I g
o after her again, and I don’t even know why.
We start turning more often, zigzagging through Brooklyn Heights, so I have to keep closer to her. She pauses once to look in the window of a bar and then zooms off again. Another ten minutes and we’re crossing the big roads that surround Dumbo and then heading in the direction of the East River. Dumbo is what it always is, warehouses that have been turned into fancy loft buildings and fancy people in extreme outfits pushing strollers but still being semi-arty about it. You probably couldn’t find people anywhere who have bigger ideas of how important and glamorous and outstanding they are, like they think their lives are nonstop advertisements for something but no one really knows what.
Ruby’s walking downhill. It’s just a few blocks until we’re in the park, a wide stretch of green reaching down to the water. She pauses just long enough to throw out her ruined blue dress and the scissors, too. Fog sits over Manhattan and makes the skyscrapers fuzzy and gray. It’s not quite drizzling but water is mixed in with the air until the wind feels like a wet dog, and my jeans are starting to stick to my legs. The few people who are here are mostly leaving because it’s just getting colder and nastier out, and who wants to deal?
Right at the edge of the water there’s a bank of broken rocks, some big enough to sit on but most of them smaller. I watch while Ruby bends to pick up a grapefruit-sized chunk and then just stands there, cradling it in both hands.
Then she slings her handbag so the strap angles across her torso, opens up the bag, and stuffs the rock in. At first I can’t understand why she would want something like that, but I do know on some weird blurred level that this is the answer. This is the secret reason why I’ve been following her, the thing that I knew all along without knowing I knew it. She edges closer to the river until it’s licking the toes of her boots and stoops down for another rock. Crams that in her bag, too. Another step forward and the water spits up to her ankles. She’s leaning weirdly against the weight pulling on her. Another step, the river around her calves now, and she wobbles like she’s losing her balance.