Killing Ruby Rose (The Ruby Rose Series)

by Jessie Humphries

  Before I could voice my confusion, she promptly turned tail and exited the room.

  Leaving me wondering what had just happened.

  CHAPTER 4

  Art, schmart. I didn’t get it. And certainly not much of this stuff created for the Huntington Beach High School Art Fair.

  I walked around the muggy, fried-food-scented cafeteria, just like the rest of the sheep, staring and baahhing at the individual pieces. I found myself lingering in front of a violent explosion of black, purple, and red paint on white canvas. I think it was supposed to be abstract, but it was probably just some emo kid’s attempt to throw something together for a grade. To me, it looked like one of those inkblot tests psychologists used to determine a person’s emotional well-being. Good thing Dr. T didn’t use this kind of thing on me.

  I pulled my notebook and pen out of my backpack and tried to formulate my thoughts. We were supposed to find two pieces of art that “appealed” to us and then write down why. It was an official assignment, which meant I had to do my best if I wanted to stay on the rails of my valedictorian train track. One that was increasingly steep and treacherous these days.

  I took a sharp breath and narrowed my eyes on the textured colors.

  The first words that came to mind were blood spatter, grim reaper, and—

  “Seriously, do I have to force feed you normal?” Alana appeared beside me, looping her arm through mine and dragging me away from my morbid tendencies. “Come over and see the painting of La Jolla Cove that I did. It has blue skies and sunshine.”

  “Does it have chubby little baby seals in it, too?” I put my pen behind my ear and followed.

  “No, seals are too loud and ugly and smelly. But maybe in the distance there’s a certain hot boy in board shorts kissing a certain brown girl in a bikini.” She licked her lips in a way I didn’t need to see.

  “Are you ever going to grow out of the boy-crazy phase?” I teased her.

  “Don’t be jealous,” she said. “Kissing’s no crime. You should try it again sometime. You know, like therapy. And I know someone who would be happy to help with the treatment.”

  “Alana, give it a rest, for, like, a day,” I said, finally pulling away from the WWF armlock she had on me. Plus, who would want to kiss me anyway? My Social Point Average had taken an even deeper nosedive after the shooting.

  “Just sayin’.” She continued through the crowd to the center of the room, where I was beginning to suspect a trap. “Anyway, some guys think it’s cool that you know how to use a gun. It’s very Bond girl.”

  I stopped. Suspicion confirmed. “Is that Liam over there, also admiring your work?” It was a rhetorical question—Liam was hard to miss. He was like a man among boys, at least in stature. His face was different, though—somehow fresh, innocent, clear. Like all the extra light in the room found its way to him, and to his light-brown, sun-bleached hair hanging over those big, bright eyes.

  Regardless of the light, I didn’t like entrapment. I felt my fuse ignite—my highly flammable, dangerously short fuse.

  “What? He likes good art.” She stopped to face me with puppy-dog eyes and a guilty conscience. “Rue! He likes you, all right? He asked me to set this up. He feels like you’re unapproachable. Sort of the story of your life!” She reached out to grab me by the shoulders, and I quickly deflected both hands. She knew better. After all, that’s how we met. In fourth grade, when she moved to Huntington Beach from Hawaii, I found her in the corner crying while a couple of fifth-grade girls made fun of her tattered shorts and old flip-flops. I couldn’t help myself—I had to tell the girls where to go. And when one girl tried to push me into the corner with Alana, I broke the girl’s nose. Alana and I had been best friends from then on, and she’d seen my quick reflexes get me in trouble a few times since.

  “I’m kind of going through something right now, OK?” I said under my breath so half the student body didn’t witness the public confrontation. Extra would just love to interview Big-Mouth Taylor over there, who never stopped staring at the bleeding, withering Ruby Rose, now having a tiff with her best friend. Oh, how Taylor loved competing for the limelight and gaining the upper hand. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was behind the whole LeMarq incident just to ruin me. “I’m begging you, Alana, I just need some space right now.”

  “Liam wants to be your friend, Rubik’s Cube. It’s not like he’s asking you to marry him,” she argued, not under her breath. I could feel the crowd start to take notice. Deep down I knew she was only trying to help me. Under different circumstances I wouldn’t have minded her matchmaking efforts.

  “I don’t need any more friends right now,” I countered. “Not ones that don’t understand boundaries, anyway.” I clenched my jaw and stormed off.

  Alana never stopped. It wasn’t that I didn’t still feel wildly drawn to Liam. It was that there was no room in my life for distractions.

  “If you’re not careful, you might not have any friends left!” she yelled after me as I disappeared behind a papier-mâché bust of a deformed alien. I almost reached out and punched that stupid warped head for staring at me like I was the weird one.

  I wandered aimlessly until I found myself in the least populated corner of the cafeteria and slumped against the wall. The sticky linoleum floor was full of dust bunnies, long-lost Cheetos fragments, and other unsanitary droppings I tried to block out.

  I concentrated on my shoes instead—a useful strategy I busted out from time to time. Oh, how I loved the strappy, black-leather Calvin Klein wedge heels hugging my feet. Classics. Always loyal, always kind. These little beauties would never surprise-attack me in the middle of school, would never care more about their careers than my happiness, would never die and abandon me to a life full of more questions than answers. Wait. A scuff?

  “Damn it,” I mumbled. I tried to wipe it clean with my thumb and a little spit. But it did no good. I’d have to wait until I got home and found my Kicks Kleaner.

  Just great. Here I was, stuck in the proverbial corner of life—and not just because of the ever-sticky linoleum I was sitting on. Now I didn’t even have anywhere to focus my disruptive thoughts. What, exactly, was I supposed to do? Stew in my guilt for snapping at the one person who still wanted me as her best friend? I wished I could distract myself by searching online for a new pair of shoes, but if I was caught on my cell phone I’d have more problems than I needed today. Cell phones weren’t allowed during school hours.

  Taking my chances of making eye contact with someone, I looked straight ahead. I still had to find another piece of art that “appealed” to me so I could finish my assignment. But I didn’t want to get up.

  I hoped I could see something worth looking at from here. Something that wouldn’t inspire thoughts of death, betrayal, or scuffed shoes.

  About twenty feet away I noticed a black-and-white charcoal drawing. It was a sketch of a young girl with long, straight hair parted down the middle. It was really well done. Perhaps a little too well done for this bush-league art fair. I stood and wiped stray guck off my red skinny jeans and made a beeline for it.

  This had to be some kind of egotistical-Freudian-thought-processing-dysfunction, because as I got nearer, that girl in the sketch started to look a hell of a lot like me. Slightly upturned nose. Dimple in the left cheek. Long neck. What the H?

  Who put this here?

  In the bottom right corner of the picture, old-fashioned, scrolly letters read:

  Love, D. S.

  Who was that?

  And now that I was up close, there was something very disturbing about this sketch. It wasn’t just her face, it was the tattoo on her arm. A winged demon screeching at me, threatening to tear me apart. I’d seen that exact tattoo before on Charlie LeMarq.

  Oh no. The world suddenly went fuzzy and dark, like I was seeing things through stained glass. I scanned the room for the nearest escape to fresh air, and instead of finding a clearly marked exit, I found another face that took the last of my breath a
way. Across the crowd, stood a man with a goatee who looked a lot like Detective Martinez.

  A falling sensation rushed over me, and a sickening crack echoed through my skull.

  “Ruby, can you hear me?” A raspy male voice lingered above.

  “It’s Ruby Rose!” a girl shrieked through the clamor. “Someone call 911!”

  “No! Somebody just get me some water,” Alana ordered.

  I opened my eyes to find a three-headed monster looming over me. Then my vision cleared, and I made out Liam, Alana, and some tiny freshman girl, all fussing over me.

  “No, don’t call 911—I’m fine. I just need some water, like Alana said.” I sat up and reached for the water bottle in front of me. As I drank, I felt the blood rush to my cheeks. Liam’s arms were firmly wrapped around my shoulders—with at least a hundred inquiring eyes watching, and dozens of smartphones taking pictures.

  So much for the “no cell phone rule” only I was dumb enough to follow.

  Among the first of my unclear thoughts was: The tabloids are going to think it’s an early Christmas. A close second: This is impossible—Ruby Rose doesn’t faint. Lagging behind: Is Martinez really here at the art fair? Couldn’t be, because he’d be here now among the crowd. Trailed by: I hope I don’t have leftover cafeteria Cheetos in my hair. And finally: I gotta get out of here.

  I got up and broke out of the literal and metaphorical grip Liam had on me. The sea of students parted as I made my way toward the exit—everyone moved except for Taylor. She just stood there gloating in all her non-fainting, anti-Ruby glory. With her arms crossed and dark hair pulled into a tight ponytail to accentuate her cat-like eyes, she said, “You OK, sweetie?”

  “Excuse me,” I said, as my shoulder checked hers, knocking her off balance. Maybe one day I’d get the opportunity to teach her how I really felt about her constantly calling me sweetie. But not today. I speed walked out the double doors, and then sprinted through the parking lot, begging the ocean breeze to cool down my red-hot cheeks and spinning brain as I ran. I was pissed. And light-headed. And losing control. I didn’t even care if I got in trouble for leaving school early.

  Shaking from anger and embarrassment, I climbed into Big Black and hugged his steering wheel. I immediately turned up the volume of my favorite “explicit language” rap song. I needed Big Black, I needed to be alone, I needed—a fat chocolate shake with whipped cream ASAP, and I needed to get out of this parking lot before Alana or Liam came running after me.

  As I peeled out, images of the girl in the sketch kept floating to the top of my consciousness, no matter how hard I tried to push them back down. I had to find out who she was, and who’d put the sketch of her there. It was meant for me, I was sure. Well, not totally sure. I should have checked with Alana and asked if she saw it, too, just to make sure I wasn’t having a psychotic split or mental breakdown. After all, I thought I’d seen someone who looked a lot like Martinez in that same moment, and he wasn’t there. Plus, I’d never fainted before. Not like that, anyway. I passed out once during a karate match, but that was a one-off, and the only time I’d ever allowed a roundhouse to land on my body.

  Fainting in the cafeteria was different: I’d had a visceral reaction to seeing that demon tattoo. It was the same tattoo LeMarq had on his arm. The exact same fangs and webbed wings. The exact same look of evil in its eyes.

  Whoever lured me and LeMarq to the warehouse had also delivered that sketch to my school with the Love, D. S. signature. He was toying with me, communicating with me. There was no way that drawing was a coincidence. The girl looked just like me, just like Riley Bentley. These were clues. Whoever this crazy-ass D. S. was, he was speaking to me in a language I didn’t understand.

  When I was almost at the Dairy Queen (which I personally kept in business), my phone vibrated in The Cleave. I looked down at the screen to see who the culprit was. A picture of D. A. Jane Rose’s new campaign poster winked back at me. Glamour Shots had nothing on this baby.

  I had some headshots quite similar to this one, from back in the days when my mother had ceaselessly prodded me to compete in beauty pageants. Lame. Some things never changed, and not just because Mom’s plastic surgeon kept it that way. She put a higher priority on appearance than anything else. Instead of the popularity contests, all I’d wanted was to compete in karate—something I was actually good at. If it hadn’t been for my dad’s training in negotiation and his willingness to take her bullets for me, I’d still be her beauty queen hostage.

  I declined her call. The wall between us had grown to around shoulder height even before Dad died, and now it was well over eye level. I couldn’t even see her anymore without a decent pair of four-inch Kate Spade platform heels.

  Ten seconds later she called again.

  She must have heard about what happened at school. There was no point in not answering. She’d track me down eventually, and I’d pay the price.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “What’s going on? Where are you? I just got a call—”

  “Mom, calm down.” As a seasoned prosecutor, she should’ve been trained not to pose several compound questions at once. Very objectionable in a court of law. “I’m fine. I promise.”

  “Alana called. She told me you fainted and ran out of school?”

  Objection: Leading question.

  “Yeah, I don’t think I’ve been eating my five major food groups. I just need some protein and some rest.” I lied with a frightening ease.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said flatly. “Alana said you were upset.”

  Objection: Hearsay.

  “No, I’m not upset. Just embarrassed. I need to grab some take-out and lie down for a while.”

  “You’ve been acting very strangely lately.”

  Objection: Facts not in evidence. She barely sees me, how would she know?

  “I’m very worried about you, honey.”

  Objection: Badgering the witness. I’ve told her a million times to stop calling me honey.

  “Jane! I said I’m fine.” Two could play the name game—she hated when I didn’t call her Mom. “I’ll see you tonight. That is, if you get home before midnight.” Switching the focus to her always won the argument.

  “No, I’ll be home in fifteen minutes. We need to talk. You’d better be home then, too.” She hung up.

  As I pressed “End,” I wondered what wrong button of hers I’d pressed. She never wanted to talk. She was never home before nine or ten. And she never hung up on me.

  Great.

  CHAPTER 5

  I practically inhaled my chocolate shake—and it soothed every hot corner of my soul. Albeit temporarily.

  I flung my backpack off my shoulder and collapsed onto my bed. I felt sick. Sick from the chocolate overdose, sick from my fight with Alana, sick with images of that sketch, sick with light-headedness from fainting, and sick with dread of the impending interrogation by my mother.

  What was I going to tell her? The truth? Ha. She would feel obligated as an officer of the court to inform the appropriate authorities of all my missteps. Plus, my full and not-yet-entirely-disclosed side of the story was insane:

  So, Mom, I didn’t mention it before, but I had more of a hand in the killing of LeMarq than you thought, due to my OCD hobby of following killers in my spare time. And, oh yeah, there might be a chance that one of the other killers I was following is connected to the dude who lured me to that warehouse on Water Street. Oh, and now he’s sending me messages through the school art show. But don’t worry, it’s all good. Let’s just pretend none of it happened.

  Uh, no.

  I crammed a pillow over my face so I could scream. But mid-scream, I realized that was about to turn into a throw-up, and I stopped.

  The rumble of the garage door below let me know I had to get a grip on myself. I ran into the bathroom and washed my face with cold water, scrubbing off all my eye makeup in preparation for the inquisition. I would be stone faced. I would be savvy. Mom might have known how to int
imidate criminals and suspects. But I knew how to box her out.

  “Rue-girl,” she hollered from downstairs. “I’m home.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  I stared myself down in the mirror and whispered, “You can do this.”

  I met my mom in the kitchen, where she still had her sunglasses on like she was some kind of hungover rock star. Even her stylish little A-line bob was askew. It looked darker than usual, so black that it maybe even had a hint of blue. She’d been going progressively darker since last year’s polling data showed her darker hair produced a better Latino vote. If she thought I was a disappointment in my choice of guns over dolls, I felt the same way about her choice to embrace her Mexican heritage because it was convenient for political points. I’d never even met one member of her family. Her mother died when she was in law school, before I was born, and despite the fact that her father was still alive and unwell somewhere in San Diego, she hadn’t spoken to him since he walked out on them when she was eight. I knew she had extended family spread across Southern California, but I stopped asking about them years ago when I learned my questions put her in a dark mood.

  She was pouring herself a glass of wine. Liquid courage. Not fair—I didn’t get any.

  “Mom, it’s only two o’clock.” I grabbed an apple off the counter—Granny Smith was my only ally here. “Should I be worried about you?” I had to stay on the offensive.

  “Ruby,” she said, putting down the bottle. “Let’s not do that.”

  “Do what?” I asked innocently, sitting down on a barstool across from her.

  “Let’s not shift attention to me, when this is about you.” She finally took off her Gucci sunglasses, revealing puffiness around the eyes I wasn’t expecting. She bit at her Restylane-injected lips—an old nervous habit, and one Dr. Syringe-Happy in Beverly Hills had warned her to break.