This Lie Will Kill You

by Chelsea Pitcher

  No, Ruby had insisted. They needed to pay. They needed, at least, to confess to the terrible things they’d done, and explain why. Why had they found the most beautiful soul on the planet and stamped it out? Why had they taken the love of Ruby Valentine’s life? And why, when the police rounded them up, had they lied through their teeth? Were they scared?

  Or did they think he’d deserved to die?

  Everyone at Fallen Oaks High thought Shane was a monster, and that was why he’d died. Because of the video. Because of the lie. But if the girls could prove his innocence, he would be remembered as the grinning, beautiful creature that he was.

  “We did it,” Brianna whispered, taking Ruby’s hands. “We cleared my brother’s name. We saved him, Ruby.”

  “We didn’t.” Ruby’s voice cracked, the fire was crackling all around them, and for a moment, it seemed the world would crack open and swallow them whole. But it didn’t, because only one of them was meant to leave.

  And one, to stay.

  In the final moments of the circus, Brianna took off the mask. Tossed it, away from the line of fire, into the darkness. Set Doll Face free and turned to meet its maker. Ruby Valentine, the girl with the rosy cheeks and perfect bow lips. Eerily pale eyes. “It was never really mine,” Brianna said of the mask. “But you needed someone . . .”

  Ruby had needed someone to play the villain, so she could be the hero. She’d needed someone behind the scenes. And so, after the porcelain mask had been made, Brianna had plucked it from Ruby’s hands and slipped it on.

  Funny, it had fit perfectly.

  “And a star was born,” she said, squeezing Ruby’s hands. “And a star went out.”

  Ruby clutched her fingers tightly. “I thought I could do this, but I can’t. I can’t say goodbye.”

  “You can do anything you want. Don’t you know that? You could set the world on fire, or you could save it.”

  “Bri . . .” But what else could Ruby say? The circus was falling down. The night was turning black, where it wasn’t surrounded by flames. And Parker had gone quiet, the entire house seemed empty, but there was no way out of it.

  There was no way out of this.

  “I wanted the world to know who my brother was,” Brianna said, as Ruby studied her face. “I wanted to bring you back. I knew what it would cost.”

  The stars glittered above their heads. Dark and light, black and white. Everywhere else, red. But Brianna knew that where she was going, she would see blue. In the bright twilight sky. In the rising waves of the ocean. Everywhere she looked, she would see him.

  “You have to go,” Ruby managed, her breath coming out in little gasps. “You have the key to the back gate?”

  Brianna nodded. The back gate was covered in foliage, so hidden she’d hardly been able to find it. “I have it,” she said, forcing a grin. She didn’t say, You could come, you know? She didn’t say, I’m scared to go alone. She knew that Ruby had to stay. Ruby had a life and a future here, and maybe she’d set the world on fire. Or maybe she’d save it. When Ruby’s arms went around her neck, Brianna gripped her tightly, letting herself be held. Letting herself be loved, one last time. Then, pulling out of their embrace, she kissed Ruby’s cheek and slipped into the darkness.

  She disappeared.

  36.

  RING MASTER

  By the time Juniper returned to the mansion, the fire was in full bloom. Maybe it was for the best, she told herself. As much as she hated the thought of greeting a smoking skeleton, it was better than watching her classmate burn alive and not being able to stop it. She’d heard Parker hollering as she’d raced across the lawn, had heard doors rattling, but that rattling had stopped.

  The world had gone silent.

  No, wait. Someone was murmuring, like a child playing alone in a closet. Soft whispers and gasps. Secrets shared, only with the wind. Juniper listened for a minute.

  “I promised,” Ruby said, kneeling on the far side of the pool, too close to the fire for Juniper’s liking. “I promised to protect her, but she had to go.”

  Juniper stepped closer, her heart in her throat. Her hands were clamped firmly over her mouth, in case a strangled sound slipped out and warned Ruby of her approach. Who the hell was Ruby talking to?

  Oh, there he was. Dressed in a black top hat and matching suit. The ringmaster of the circus, with ebony hair and startling blue eyes.

  Shane Ferrick.

  It wasn’t him, not really. Shane had burned up in a fire, and this was only a sad imitation. A puppet instead of a real boy. A doll. But Ruby was talking to the life-size replica of Shane Ferrick like he was actually there, and it scared Juniper more than anything she’d seen that night. It hurt Juniper more than anything she’d seen that night, because she’d never really wanted to see Ruby as broken. Even when the cracks in her pretty porcelain friend became clear, over and over again. What was that old saying?

  When someone shows you who they are, believe them.

  Ruby had been showing Juniper the broken parts of herself for years, showing the chips and the cracks. The long, jagged scar over her heart. That scar had appeared the first time her father slid his fingernails into her arm, and had deepened the night he disappeared. That scar had become a chasm after the five of them took Shane Ferrick and reduced him to a pile of ash. When she thought of it like that, it almost made sense to see her childhood friend kneeling beside an inferno, talking to a doll.

  That doll was the only boy who’d ever been kind to her.

  Juniper crept toward her, feeling oddly intrusive. Ruby wasn’t murmuring anymore; she was just kneeling there, running her fingers over Shane’s face. Pale porcelain cheeks that would never turn back into flesh, no matter how many tears Ruby spilled onto them. This wasn’t a fairy tale. This was real life, and in real life, puppets didn’t turn into boys. Sleeping princesses didn’t wake with a kiss. And all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Ruby back together again.

  “Hi,” Juniper said, the hitch in her throat making her sound like a child. When Ruby glanced up, she looked like a child, and for a minute, they stared at each other, transported back to a time when happiness was a possibility. Love. Friendship. Then Juniper’s eyes trailed to the body lying beside the patio doors, clad only in white, and the ugliness came crashing into her, filling her lungs with smoke. Stinging her eyes.

  “How . . .?” she began, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the rest. Maybe Brianna had trapped herself within the wall of flames. Maybe Parker had dragged her, kicking and screaming, against her will.

  Or maybe Ruby had made her disappear.

  She had to go, Ruby had said to the doll of Shane. She was still stroking his face. And Juniper, desperate to get her friend away from the fire, did what anyone would do in that moment.

  She lifted the doll by the armpits and dragged him away from the house.

  Ruby followed them into the darkness, jerking along like a puppet on strings. After that, it was only a matter of picking a place to sit, so Ruby could look at both of them. Once they’d made it halfway across the lawn, Juniper sat down beneath a towering unicorn, and Ruby sat beside her.

  “I know,” Ruby said softly, when Shane’s hand was in hers. “I know it isn’t him.”

  “Okay.” Juniper’s gaze flicked to the doll.

  “I know you think I’m crazy, but—”

  “I don’t throw that word around. That’s Parker’s job.”

  “Not anymore.” Ruby snorted, slapping a hand over her mouth. Juniper’s heart sank. If Ruby could watch a person transform into ashes, and laugh at his memory like that, maybe everything she suspected was true. Or maybe Ruby was so tired of being followed around, threatened and manipulated, she couldn’t help but feel elation at the thought of being free.

  Yes, that had to be it, Juniper thought, making the same old excuses for her friend. She knew she was doing it, just as she knew, with sudden clarity, that she’d have clung to a doll too, if she’d witnessed Ruby’s de
ath.

  Had Ruby witnessed Shane’s death? No one had bothered to ask her, because it hadn’t seemed as pressing as what Parker had witnessed, and what he’d done to get Shane into that car. But now, Juniper wondered about it. If Ruby had seen Shane’s body go up in flames, it might explain the inappropriate reaction she was having now to Parker’s demise. The longer she sat there, watching Ruby cling to a porcelain hand, the more reasons she came up with for why her friend was innocent.

  She isn’t innocent, Juniper thought, tearing her gaze from the sad little tea party in front of her. She did something, even if she didn’t do all this.

  That, really, was why Juniper had returned to the scene of the crime, instead of escaping with Gavin. Even if Ruby wasn’t the Ringmaster, or Doll Face, she was something important. The Disappearing Act. And yet, all night she’d been right in front of their faces. Disappearing into thin air wasn’t Ruby’s trick. There was only one person Juniper could think of who had disappeared into thin air, and Ruby had never let them forget it. Ruby had never stopped talking about it, because she’d wanted someone to figure it out.

  Now, taking Ruby’s free hand in hers, Juniper looked into her eyes and searched for the person in there. Searched for the soul. There was a spark of something, a pale, flickering spark like the hope at the bottom of Pandora’s box, made weaker by all the anguish and rage, but it was there.

  Juniper saw it. And so, she pushed out the words, “Tell me how you did it,” and watched the light in Ruby’s eyes flare. That was good. That meant she wanted to talk. But before she could open her mouth and tell a story of masks and deception, Juniper cut her off. “Tell me how you killed your father.”

  37.

  DISAPPEARING ACT

  Ruby was used to the yelling. She knew how to get out of the house in a pinch. Knew which windows creaked when you opened them, and which ones didn’t. Two months into her sophomore year, her father had yanked her arm so hard, he’d dislocated her shoulder, and Ruby hadn’t even cried. She’d never get used to the pain, but she’d learned little tricks to lessen it.

  To kind of . . . drift away.

  But when Mr. Valentine smiled, Ruby had no tricks. When he laughed, she just froze, staring at him. That was the part that people didn’t understand. The brightness in him. The way his laughter could comfort you, and wrap around you like an embrace. Hold you close when you felt broken.

  The evening before he disappeared, Ruby was sitting on the couch with her father, watching The Maltese Falcon. They were tossing popcorn between them, sometimes catching it in their mouths, sometimes losing it down a shirt or in a couch cushion. They were laughing. When he turned to her, his eyes twinkling with mischief, Ruby’s breath faltered.

  “What?”

  A grin, slow and sly. “Guess what I got back today?” he asked, pulling a key ring out of his pocket.

  “Really? It’s ready?”

  “Yep.” He tossed the keys into her lap. He wasn’t offering her the car. The family would never be able to afford something so extravagant. But after months of trying to fix the old, rattling clunker himself, Ruby’s father had finally given in to the family’s prompting and let a professional take a whack at things.

  Now the car was up and running, just in time for Ruby’s first driving lesson. “What are we sitting around for?” She leapt up from the couch. “These are prime driving hours. Up. Up!”

  Her father laughed, spreading out on the couch. Giving no indication that he was going to hop up and play passenger to her frenetic driving. But now that the offer was on the table, there was no way Ruby was going to give up on her prodding. Wild horses would have to drag her away from the car. The authorities would have to show up at her house and cuff her to the radiator, because if they didn’t, she was driving.

  Tonight.

  “Come on, come on! I did all my homework, and the dishes. Twice! I’ll brush my teeth right now. I’ll put the girls to bed, come on!”

  Her father was chuckling, turning up the volume with the remote to block her out. But it was only a joke. She knew it was a joke, and if she pushed him, just the right amount, he’d give in.

  “If you teach me to drive, I can take you to work in the morning. How cool would that be? You could stumble out of bed, and it’d save you the trouble of fully waking up, and—”

  “Ruby. My darling. My firstborn. You are not driving your father to work. You have school.”

  “So what? I’ll have plenty of time, and you’re always saying that work is kicking your ass. This way, you can zone out while I—”

  Uh-oh. Had she taken things too far? She didn’t like the look on his face. That smile had slipped away like a mask falling off, and now he looked pensive, a little bit pained. But it wasn’t like she’d said anything he hadn’t muttered a million times before. Work was kicking his ass. Bills were kicking his ass too. So was life. It seemed like the only thing that made him happy was snuggling on this couch with various members of his family, getting lost in a movie. But Ruby didn’t want to get lost. She wanted to find things, to slip off in the middle of the day with Juniper and go on an adventure. To drive Parker into the heart of the forest. Life was waiting out there, and all she needed were keys and a little parental supervision, until the state decided she could handle things on her own.

  Falling dramatically to her knees, she clasped her hands together and begged. “Please, Daddy? Please. I’ll love you forever. I’ll bake you cakes. If you take me driving for ten minutes, I’ll do the laundry and—”

  “Fine. Fine!” He pushed off the couch, running a hand through his tousled ginger hair. “My God, girl. I don’t know where you get all this energy.”

  Ruby shrugged, trying to keep from grinning. From gloating. From feeling like she’d won. This tug-of-war was their thing, and most of the time, it was a joyful dance that left them both giggling. It transformed them into better versions of themselves, the kind without burdens. Without sadness. She pulled him toward the door. There was still light in the sky, and if they hurried, they’d be racing down Old Forest Road in no time. That road was nearly abandoned. On nights like tonight, you could hit seventy without fear of collision, the wind whipping through your hair and the whole world smelling of the trees. And all the terror you carried, clutched to your chest like an infant that never stopped wailing . . . all the pain would soften to sweetness, and you could breathe again.

  They’d come to the door. Ruby’s heart was racing, maybe a little too fast, because maybe she caught sight of the lights in the driveway. Later, she couldn’t be sure. The front door was framed in glass, but that glass was warped, making it hard to know for certain what waited on the other side. It wasn’t until someone knocked on the door—pounded, actually, in that telltale way that officers did—that she realized what was happening.

  She wasn’t the only one. Before the door was opened, before the stranger announced himself in a booming voice, Ruby’s father looked down at her, and that look was cut from glass. Fury twisted his features, bleeding into sorrow. And then, in the span of a couple of seconds, Ruby thought she must be the one wielding the glass, because her father looked injured.

  She stepped back. She stepped back, because she was the teenager and he was the parent, and already, they were slipping their masks on before the strangers burst in. Already, they were rehearsing their lines, though they’d never performed this play before. Ruby sucked in a breath. She told herself, with absolute authority, that she would not cry.

  Then came the hour of being sequestered in her bedroom, fending off impossible questions from a total stranger. A woman. It was a tactical move, a trick to make Ruby more comfortable, and maybe there was logic behind it. Maybe being trapped in her room with a strange, abrasive man would’ve made Ruby angrier. And Ruby was angry. Ruby was defensive.

  And through her teeth, she lied.

  She lied when the woman asked if her father had gripped her with bruising fingertips and dragged her from one room to the next. She lied about fu
rniture stumbling into her path and stairs that came upon her too quickly. Over and over, she lied. Then, when the woman pulled out the dolly, the stupid, cliché dolly, Ruby shifted into the truth. When the woman asked her to point out any places on the doll where she’d been “touched,” Ruby pointed to the heart. She said, “My father loves me.” She said, “My parents are soul mates, and any love they feel for us is a reflection of that love.”

  The woman didn’t have anything to say to that.

  It only took an hour. An hour for her family to unravel. An hour for their palace of glass to shatter to the ground. After, Ruby found herself looking at the carpet, expecting to find shards in her feet. She could see glass glittering all around them, even though nothing tangible had broken. When everything is broken, do you even notice the individual parts? Or do you just keep looking around, trying to blink the glass from your eyes and failing miserably?

  Everyone was blinking.

  No, everyone was crying, except for Mr. Valentine, because five minutes after the officers left, he was gone. But he hadn’t disappeared. All he’d done was visit one local tavern or another, doing the thing he’d promised her mother he’d never do again. All he’d done was ingest mass quantities of whiskey—his drink of choice from his wilder, off-the-wagon days—and return in the dead of night, when everyone was sleeping in the master bedroom. Everyone but Ruby. She was alone in her room, tossing in her bed. She’d even managed to slip into that half-asleep state, where darkness curled around the edges of her consciousness, the sandman desperately trying to get a grip on her.

  He’d grab her, and she’d slip away.

  Then, in the cold, quiet hours before dawn, Ruby looked up and saw him in the doorway. The sandman, she thought at first, blinking groggily. Her second thought was that it was a stranger. He looked like a stranger, bloodshot eyes staring down at her. He smelled like a stranger, because Ruby had been little when he’d chosen his love for his family over his love for oblivion, and she didn’t remember the sour-sweet smell of it. The sharp sting in the air. She pushed to her elbows, ready to scream for help or call—God forbid—the police, but hey, at least they’d be doing their jobs this time. Catching an actual criminal and protecting the family.