The Wise and the Wicked

by Rebecca Podos

  Ruby tugged again on her sleeves. A party was a time to glory in Chernyavsky pride, and she supposed she could’ve shown a bit more by putting a little effort in. Ginger and Dahlia looked like the prettiest witches at the prom despite their thrift-store style.

  Oh well, it was too late now.

  “I have to go,” she mumbled. “Like, go. Cover for me?”

  Lili frowned. “We’re not supposed to leave. Can’t you hold it for a few minutes?”

  “I don’t know,” Ruby snapped, clutching her stomach dramatically. “Want to place bets?”

  “Oh, fine.” Her cousin walked with her to the very back of the living room, then shifted to block her from view as she slipped into the hall.

  As she made her way toward Vera’s room, which Cece had promised to pick for her private spot, Ruby stopped to look at a framed black-and-white photo perched on a little antique side table. It was of Galina, maybe in her early thirties, and Vera, a few years younger. They stood on the banks of a lake in their high-waisted bikinis, stomachs sucked in. Maybe Polina had taken the picture, though Ruby couldn’t picture her on that shore, the toes of her sensible shoes in the pebbled sand, a summer breeze stirring wisps out of her tight, steely bun. Maybe a man had taken it, one of her aunts’ fathers, or even Evelina’s, tan-skinned and sunscreen-slick, handsome in a mustachioed, old-fashioned way. She couldn’t imagine that either—a grandfather or a great-uncle—even though she knew that powers or no, Chernyavskys did not get pregnant by wind pollination. Men were there, and then they weren’t.

  Boys, too.

  Shoving aside unwelcome thoughts of one boy in particular, Ruby went on, knocking softly at Vera’s bedroom door. It opened a crack and Cece peeked out warily, then stepped back to let her in. “Did anyone stop you?”

  “I wouldn’t be here if they did, Cece.”

  Vera’s room was much like the rest of the house, with its rich wood furniture, heavy curtains, tobacco smell and strange collections. On one pale pink wall, a display rack of delicate plates. On top of a bureau, a row of colored glass bottles, empty, their fading labels in every language. And on a little table in the corner between two mismatched, high-backed chairs, the Recordings.

  Ruby had held the book, thick with uneven yellowed pages, its brown leather binding water-spotted, one time only. She’d written down her Time at her own party three years ago. And yet it hadn’t occurred to her that the book she and Cece had been after months before would be present at Cece’s own party.

  All they’d had to do was wait.

  Ruby wasn’t sure what the book could tell her that Evelina could not, but this was Cece’s moment, her plan, and—wracked with guilt as Ruby was—she would let her have this.

  She moved forward, but Cece stepped in her path. “Wait, Bebe.”

  Despite their nearness, her cousin wasn’t looking at her, but down at their shoes.

  “What, Cece?”

  “It just feels wrong. It’s everyone’s Times. Ours and Oksana’s and Lili’s and my mom’s, these are their futures—”

  “Their maybe futures,” Ruby corrected, because what else had it all been for?

  “I know, but still. We can’t just read them, Bebe. It wouldn’t be right.” Though her voice was high and anxious, it was firm; she’d decided.

  Ruby threw her arms up. “This was your plan! I mean, do you want to change your Time, or not?” Her cousin’s chin crumpled. Ruby took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, okay?”

  Cece pressed her lips together and breathed through her nose. “Fine, how about this: we won’t read anybody’s entry that’s still alive. It would be wrong, and it wouldn’t actually help us anyway. Like, how would we know whether it was gonna come true? It’s the older ones that matter, right? Besides, they’ve already been read when those women died, so . . . technically . . . they’re not secrets anymore.”

  She had a point. And Ruby wasn’t at all sure she’d want to read about the deaths of her sisters and aunts, even their maybe deaths, so she agreed and swept a hand for Cece to lead the way.

  Hovering over the little table, Cece reached out to touch the book. She pulled her hand back, then tapped the cover lightly with her fingertips, as if testing a fence for electricity. When nothing happened—no shocks or sprung booby traps—she sat in one of the chairs, pulled the heavy Recordings into her lap, and opened it. Ruby stood over her shoulder, watching.

  There was no table of contents, just page after page filled in as their ancestors saw their Times; aunts and great-aunts and grandmothers, and great-grandmother Vladlena, and the women who had come before. Because of course, Vladlena hadn’t sprung from nowhere. Ruby had no idea whether she’d been born in the woods—Polina had never said—but resolved to ask Evelina that night, if she had the chance.

  The earliest entries were scrawled in ink-speckled Russian, and therefore useless to the quest at hand. But even without touching them, Ruby felt the pulse of time, and power, and blood. The weight of history. The doomed flutter of the lives of women she’d never met, but stored inside of her anyhow. She’d heard them all calling out to her at the Mahalels’.

  Take everything . . .

  Ruby clamped her muscles around a shiver, wondering what kind of answer they’d expected.

  Flipping carefully through, Cece found Polina’s entry, penned in clumsy English. “Why didn’t she write in Russian?” she wondered aloud. “If she was sixteen, she’d have just gotten here.”

  “Maybe so her daughters could read it when she died,” Ruby guessed.

  It was exactly as Vera had read it. And though Ruby hadn’t been alive for Galina’s Reading, it, too, was as she’d expected when they’d turned a few pages, having heard the stories.

  Entry in the Chernyavsky Recordings

  September the 4th, 1942

  I watch my children through the window. Two little girls, walking hand in hand down the street, so like Vera and myself at their age. When they’re gone, I let the curtain fall in place and return to my shop. I sell tea to Americans, promising them better health, calmer sleep, peaceful hearts. It is a good business, and I am old enough and wise enough to have made a life for us at it, even if it isn’t a fancy life. I sip my own cup, and think of my little sister—it’s been a few days since we’ve spoken. Maybe I will call her. But I think of my girls, and I think I want to be near her instead. I will visit, and we will speak of our childhoods, and drink a tea to help us remember the best and oldest of times. As soon as I finish my cup, I decide, that is just what I’ll do.

  —Galina Chernyavsky, age 15

  It was sweet and sad at once, especially when she pictured Vera listening at her sister’s Reading, but as she’d expected, it didn’t tell them anything new.

  Why, then, was there a strange look on Cece’s face?

  “What?” she asked.

  “This isn’t Galina’s handwriting.” Her cousin flipped back and forth between Polina’s entry and Galina’s. “I think . . . I think they’re the same.”

  Ruby squinted, inspecting Polina’s entry once more, the bold pen strokes, narrow o’s and spiked m’s and n’s. She recognized them from the writing on the key ring, and from notes she’d seen stuffed inside books in Polina’s library, and the recipes her great-aunt had always pinned to the kitchen walls.

  They matched Galina’s entry, too.

  “So Galina didn’t write her own Time?”

  “Or she did,” Cece said, shifting uncomfortably on the chair, “and this isn’t it.” Her cousin lay the book as flat as she could on the tabletop, pressing the pages down on either side, and ran a finger in the seam between them.

  Draping herself over Cece’s shoulder, Ruby did the same. The sheet of paper with Galina’s entry looked like any other page, but right at the binding, nearly too close to see, there was the slightest of ripples. Like a tear that had been meticulously mended until it was barely detectible. Nobody would ever notice, unless they were searching for it. And who would be? The only one who’d held the Re
cordings in Galina’s lifetime, the same Chernyavsky who’d recited their grandmother’s Time at her Reading, would be—

  Cece drew the same conclusion. “Polina had the book when Galina died. It had to be her.”

  Why would Polina have tampered with her sister’s entry?

  “There’s something really wrong about this,” her cousin muttered, letting the book fall closed.

  “I know. Come on.” But as Ruby stood to leave, Cece didn’t.

  “Bebe . . . I’m not done yet.”

  “Oh.” Ruby lingered, then took a step back. “Oh.”

  She wished that she could wrap her arms around Cece, or better yet, throw the once-lush, now-sun-faded embroidered quilt on Vera’s bed over their heads and forget about the Recordings, the family, the party. But tradition was tradition, and with a sympathetic smile, she slipped out the door, leaving Cece alone to set her fate down in permanent ink.

  Still, that didn’t mean her fate was permanent. Not anymore. Evelina might be unreachable for the moment—back in America for nearly two months, she still had yet to buy a phone—but she’d return with whatever ingredients she needed, and the answers to this new question as well.

  Whether Ruby had realized it or not, she’d been waiting for Evelina since she was ten years old; a week or two more wouldn’t hurt her.

  Besides, she had her own task to complete in the meantime.

  • Twenty-Seven •

  Dov returned to school on Monday, and with him, opportunity.

  She’d known he was coming back. They’d been texting nightly (and daily) though not about anything important. In fact, at times when Ruby might’ve texted Cece—to report on a particularly stupid episode of Finding Bigfoot, for instance, or to recommend a song that wasn’t by Creatures Such As We—she’d found herself telling Dov instead. To maintain her cover, she told herself. To make sure he had no cause to doubt Ruby after telling her the truth. And when he sent her updates from his convalescence (“Day 6: Gatorade ran dry this morning, and Talia bought jalapeño Cheez-Its instead of hot & spicy. Send help”), she answered right away, and with passionate combinations of emojis and exclamation points. So that he wouldn’t forget about her while he was healing, wouldn’t suddenly stop liking her, wanting her . . .

  She wished that she could tell herself it was all for the plan. She was using Dov, and that was inescapable. It was scientific fact.

  But she also wanted Dov, wanted to be around him, wanted him in her present, and in her uncertain future. That was fact, too.

  She did not know how two such truths could coexist, and so she tried very hard not to think about it.

  Ruby heard his signature, surprised-sounding laugh before she saw him—not seated with the slacker bros but across from Cece and Talia. Flustered, Ruby rushed through the lunch line, piling random and uncomplimentary food up on her tray—a cold bagel, a ketchup packet, a little cup of fruit cobbler she didn’t take a spoon for—and hurried to her table.

  He looked much healthier than she’d last seen him, without the gray-tinged skin or fever sweat, his sweats exchanged for a cream-colored knit sweater and dark jeans. His brown eyes were no longer sunken, but lit up as she slid onto the bench beside him.

  “See, Ruby, Dov’s back,” Cece said, as subtly as if through a bullhorn.

  “It’s true, I’ve finally been liberated. The flu was a bitch. Anything good happen while I was barfing?”

  Talia wrinkled her nose. “My charming brother.”

  She hadn’t glanced Ruby’s way yet, which was no surprise—in the week since their showdown in the locker room, Talia hadn’t had a word to say to her. If Cece noticed, it wasn’t in her nature to bring it up, but to speak more sweetly, to smile more widely, to pretend that everybody was happy and everything was fine.

  Dov lurched across the table to tug one of Talia’s braids before she swatted him off. Then he turned to Ruby. “So hey, there’s a thing at Petey’s tonight.” He gestured vaguely toward his usual table, where no bro in particular stood out. “He says it’s to celebrate my triumphant return. But it’s really because his dad is staying with his girlfriend tonight, and Petey has the house.”

  “Your parents don’t want you home after, you know, being sick?”

  “Dad wants me home by nine, but he goes to bed at like eight, so he won’t notice if we’re a little late.”

  “What about your mom?”

  “She’s working late, but she doesn’t care. She doesn’t worry about me like that.”

  On the bench opposite them, Talia shifted, looking as though she wanted to speak. But when she met Ruby’s eyes at last, she clamped her mouth shut and turned away, her face a mask of indifference.

  “I’ll go. Meet at your house first?” With his mother gone, this was the perfect chance to take what she and Evelina needed.

  “Deal.” Dov scooped up her hand, squeezed, then dropped it to heft his cheeseburger.

  Ruby cooled her cheeks after his public display of affection by plotting, doing her best to ignore Cece’s delighted grin.

  The Mahalels’ house smelled green when Dov let her into the mudroom, like fresh-cut flowers. She sniffed to see if it was him—if he was wearing cologne for what would be their first public date—but Dov was his usual mixture of Old Spice and cleanish, comforting laundry, and something extra that reminded Ruby of their first kiss: a sharp, bright smell like the tinge of ozone after lightning.

  “My dad wants to meet you before we go,” he said shyly, pushing fingers through his disorderly sweep of black hair. “Is that okay?”

  She nodded; anything to get inside. “Does he know about me? I mean, about us?”

  “Yeah, and he wants to know your intentions,” Dov said, expression serious.

  “I’ll tell him your virtue is safe with me,” she answered.

  His frown cleared as he laughed, brief and loose and honey warm.

  Mr. Mahalel was a small but sturdy middle-aged man in shiny loafers, a white button-up, and a burgundy sweater vest; Dov had told her in a text that his father owned this exact make and model of vest in one dozen colors, and rotated them daily. Black hair clung to the crown of his head, though not by much, and wire-framed glasses perched on the brown wedge of his nose, which he scrunched in greeting when they entered the kitchen—a Talia-like gesture. “Hello, young lady,” he said with a very light accent. He was stirring a pot on the stove, but tapped the sauce off his wooden spoon and set it deliberately on a spoon rest before reaching out to shake her hand.

  “Ruby,” she clarified, in case he didn’t know.

  “Of course you are.” Though Mr. Mahalel didn’t smile, his eyes crinkled. They were the darkest brown and round like Dov’s, only half the size. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Ruby.”

  Again, she wondered what his wife had told him, whether she’d explained everything. If this were a normal date, if she and Dov were normal, she might be nervous to meet her maybe-but-unconfirmed-boyfriend’s father, and would ask about his job, tell him she’d always loved science, ask where he went to school and what he’d studied. But with the knowledge of her true purpose heavy in her chest, she simply nodded at the stove and said, “That smells good.”

  “It’s Talia’s and my signature dish. She’s supposed to be helping, but she’s wandered off. Find her before you go, Dov?” A timer beeped and he drew open the oven door, the perfume of baking fish billowing out.

  “Sure,” Dov said, taking her hand to lead her away.

  “Nice to meet you,” she called behind them.

  His father looked up, glasses clouded with steam. “And you. You’re welcome here anytime, Ruby. Anytime.”

  At that, she decided he didn’t truly know who she was.

  “Let me find Talia really quick, then we can go,” Dov said in the hallway, leaving her at the bottom of the stairs.

  The second he was gone, she hurried back toward the mudroom, meaning to sift through the coats that hung on the pegs. Surely there’d be something in one of his
mother’s pockets. She’d take a heel if she had to, though where she would keep it at the party, she wasn’t sure—

  The door to the downstairs bathroom swung open, narrowly missing her as she rushed by. She pressed herself against the wall, and Talia Mahalel blinked back at her in the hallway.

  “Oh, right. I forgot you were coming.”

  This wasn’t the time to start a fight with Dov’s sister, especially when she was supposed to be feigning weakness and fear.

  But this wasn’t just about Ruby.

  For all that she was—for the moment—keeping the Mahalels’ secret from Cece, Talia had lied to her cousin for months. She was constantly lying to her, pretending to love her back while her mother was plotting against Cece and her family. And she must be plotting—whether the Volkovs were in Saltville because of the Chernyavskys or the opposite, as Mrs. Mahalel claimed, their families were clearly as tangled as snakes wrestling in the forest underbrush. The mysterious “business” that had brought the Mahalel’s to town could only be about them. And as the only Mahalel girl and her mother’s true heir, why would Talia have been kept in the dark?

  Rage boiled in Ruby’s small body until it escaped with an almost audible hiss. “You don’t like me.”

  Talia smirked. “That’s insightful.”

  “No, I mean you never did. You didn’t like me before I found out about you. Why?” She wanted to rattle this truth out of Talia, force her to finally admit that she knew who Ruby was, and had all along. What did her pretense matter now, if the fight was about to begin?

  “Ruby, I honestly never cared about you either way,” she said coolly, crossing her arms. “The only one I care about is my brother.”

  “Like I care about Cece—”

  “Who doesn’t need you to protect her from me,” Talia snapped, composure slipping. “She’s a big girl.”

  “Then why haven’t you told her who you are?”