Slumber

by Tamara Blake

  Luckily, the ticket counter was still open by the time she reached Penn Station, and she was able to buy a ticket for the last train of the evening. Three service changes would get her all the way through the boroughs of Long Island to the Hamptons—and take three hours. By the time she’d caught a cab from the train station to the hospital, it was one in the morning, her purse was empty, and she felt like worry had burned a hole in her stomach. She’d kept in touch with Shelley by cell phone until the battery wore down to one bar, but then she had to stop calling or her phone would be completely dead. The nurses were keeping an eye on Shelley until she arrived, thank God.

  As soon as Ruby walked through the sliding glass doors of the emergency room, Shelley launched herself into her midsection. “What took you so long? Where’s Tam?”

  Ruby smoothed her hand over Shelley’s head. Thankfully her sister didn’t look any worse for wear. “Long story. Where’s the nurses’ station?”

  Shelley pointed to the desk under the ‘Welcome’ sign. “They’ve been really nice, Ruby. One of them got me a hot chocolate from the vending machine.”

  “That’s sweet,” Ruby replied distractedly. “I’ll find out what’s going on with Mom. Hang tight for a little longer, okay? I’ll be right back.”

  Keeping one eye on Shelley, she headed to the nurses’ station. The two nurses on duty exchanged looks when Ruby asked about Margie Benson. “Are you the other daughter, the one the little girl keeps telling us about?”

  “Yes, I’m Ruby Benson. I was in the city when my mom—” Ruby’s throat closed up. She cleared it, tried again. “I got here as soon as I could.”

  “Of course. I’ll get Dr. Bhalla. He’s been assigned to your mother’s case. Wait here.”

  Ruby waited until a man in a lab coat with a stethoscope around his neck emerged from behind the nurses’ station. “It’s not good,” the doctor told her shortly.

  Ruby felt the floor drop out from under her.

  “The mass on your mother’s thyroid gland is growing at an extremely accelerated rate,” he continued. “I’ve never seen such rapid growth before. The synthesis phase of the diseased cells is almost ten percent.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s as if a switch has been turned on in your mother’s body, feeding the tumor.”

  A switch has been turned on. Ruby stared blankly at the doctor’s tired yet kind face. All those expensive medicines, the time off work, all for nothing… “But she’d been improving,” Ruby said blankly. “The last few days. She’d been getting so much better —”

  “Sometimes there’s a temporary improvement before the patient takes a turn for the worse.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you understand what I’m saying?” Dr. Bhalla said gently. “If we leave the mass untreated, it could be lethal.”

  Ruby felt all the oxygen leave her lungs.

  “We recommend intensive chemo-radiation. Whether you opt for treatment or not, your mother will require a long stay in the hospital. In the last hour or so, her condition has degraded rapidly, so we’d need to start chemo immediately.”

  Ruby stole a glance at her sister sitting in the waiting room. Shelley had curled up onto one of the chairs, her head limp on her forearms as she dozed, as small and frail as a rag doll. “How long will Mom be in the hospital?”

  She listened to the doctor tell her that they needed to get her mother stabilized, run more tests, observe how she responded to the treatment. In other words, a long, long time. The bills would be crushing. Ruby tried to push the thought to the back of her mind, but it kept floating back to the surface. How were they going to cope?

  “Can we see her?”

  “Not now, we’ve given her a sedative. You should go home, get some rest. Do you have a relative you can call to come stay with you? How old are you?”

  “I’m seventeen. And no. There’s no one to call.”

  The doctor’s tired face grew a little wearier. “Let me ask the nurse to contact social services. There are resources —”

  “No, we don’t need any help, thanks.” Ruby turned away and slowly made her way back to her little sister, mind spinning. What was she going to tell Shelley? And what were they going to do now? They were barely making it as it was. Would she have to drop out of school completely so she could work? What about college? What about her future?

  Would Mom ever get better?

  Shelley roused from her doze when Ruby touched her. “Is Mom going to be okay?”

  “She’s gonna be fine,” Ruby said automatically. “We’re all gonna be fine.”

  Lying came so easily to her now.

  But she could tell she must still be a bad liar because it was clear that Shelley didn’t believe her at all.

  Ruby and Shelley dozed fitfully in the hospital waiting room until dawn when the buses started running again and she was able to get Shelley home. During the bus ride, Shelley never woke up, not even when Ruby carried her sister’s dead weight inside their trailer. She deposited Shelley’s limp figure onto Mom’s bed, crawled in beside her sleeping sister, and cuddled around her. But despite her exhaustion, Ruby had trouble getting to sleep. The events of last night seemed so unreal—the party, Tam, her mother’s collapse. Almost like it happened to another person.

  She finally fell asleep after an hour, the ruby pendant pressing against her throat, only to be awakened by her cell phone ringing at precisely 8 a.m. Groggily she stared at the number, which was unfamiliar to her. Then she realized it could be the hospital calling. Or her mother! In a flash her sleepiness vanished.

  “Hello, Mom?”

  “Am I speaking with Ruby Benson?”

  So it wasn’t Mom. “Yes,” she replied cautiously.

  “This is the Suffolk County office of Child Protective Services.”

  Child Protective Services?

  “We understand there are minors living alone without the supervision of an adult at 427 Sea Oats Lane. Is this correct?”

  Ruby scrambled off the bed as quietly as she could so she didn’t wake Shelley. “My mother is temporarily in the hospital,” she said. “But we’re fine. I can take care of my sister.”

  The woman on the other end of the phone said gently, “But who is taking care of you?”

  “I can take care of me.” Ruby winced at the unexpected quaver in her voice. “I’m seventeen.”

  “You’re still a minor. The law says that we can’t leave minors to fend for themselves. Are there any relatives you can stay with until your mother comes home?”

  She fiddled nervously with the necklace. “No.”

  “It’ll be best if we find somewhere you and your sister can be cared for until your Mom’s better. We have several foster care homes in your area —”

  “Foster care?” Was she still asleep and in the middle of a nightmare? She pinched the skin on her arm and it hurt, so no.

  The social worker went on. “We’ll arrange for a case worker to arrive at your home as soon as possible. Please be ready to leave immediately so we can place you under protective custody.”

  This can’t be happening. “Will Shelley and I be able to stay together?”

  “We will make every effort to find a home that will take both of you. We can’t make any guarantees, but we will try. Please know that this is for your own health and well-being.”

  Why do adults always say that? “I don’t understand how separating me and my sister while our mother is sick helps our well-being.”

  “I’m sorry, I know it seems harsh. But we have laws —”

  Ruby listened with half an ear to the social worker explaining the legal mumbo jumbo that meant she couldn’t stay in her own home, fighting the feeling that her life was spinning totally out of control. Last night she’d accepted that she’d have to drop out of school to care for Shelley and earn some money while Mom was sick. College and a drama program was a pipe-dream anyway. But to have the authorities come in and
put them both in foster care…

  When the lady finally hung up, Ruby found Shelley staring solemnly at her from the doorway of their bedroom.

  “Are they going to take me away?” Shelley asked.

  Ruby cast her eyes around their shabby living room with the broken-down furniture, the crappy plastic paneling, and the pitiful fake flowers on the windowsill, trying to see their home through the critical eyes of a social worker. They had no chance. At all.

  But she couldn’t tell Shelley that. “It’s Sunday. How about I make some pancakes for breakfast?”

  “Pancakes sound good. But I don’t want to be taken away from you.”

  “I won’t let that happen,” Ruby told her with more assurance than she felt. “I’ll think of something.”

  Just like it had last night, doubt flickered across Shelley’s face. Ruby realized that her sister was growing up far too fast.

  “So, how many pancakes do you want?” Ruby said with forced cheeriness. “I think I could eat about five.”

  Shelley perked up. “I can eat TEN!”

  They went to their cramped kitchen where Ruby got out the flour, milk, and eggs. She let Shelley help her mix up the batter and make a few misshapen pancakes and concentrated on trying to keep it together for her sister’s sake. Afterward, they piled onto Shelley’s bed and sang a couple of rounds of “Scarborough Fair.” Ruby wondered how many times they’d be able to do that in the future.

  What if Mom never comes home? How long can I keep social services away? I don’t turn eighteen for months…

  “Read me a story?” Shelley asked after they fell silent.

  “Sure, why not.” Ruby put her phone on the nightstand in case the hospital called. Shelley pulled out the faithful old copy of Fairy Tales from Around the World from where she always kept it under her pillow. Ruby read the fable “Snow White and Rose Red.” The story about two sisters and their encounters with magic was one of Shelley’s faves. When the story ended, she heard a soft snore. Shelley had conked out, nestled up next to Ruby.

  Guess I wasn’t the only one who didn’t sleep much last night.

  Absently, Ruby flicked through the book’s pages. The illustrations had always dazzled her, old-fashioned but beautiful, with creepy forests and ladies in ballgowns. How old was this book? She checked the copyright: 1901. Whoa, she had no idea it was over a hundred years old. Too bad it was so beat up it couldn’t be worth anything.

  Her gaze landed on a drawing of ‘Beauty and the Beast.’ Beauty, a pretty, belle époque girl with cupid’s-bow lips and curling blonde hair, was pleading with the Beast not to kill her father. A red rose lay on the cobbles between all three of the figures, and roses twined up the side of the Beast’s castle…

  The caption for the picture was written in curling script: Sir, forgive my father! He did not know he must not pick your roses!

  Something nagged at her. He must not pick your roses. Didn’t Violet say something random about picking roses the first time they’d met?

  Ruby shook her head. She’d had enough of roses. She was glad she’d thrown Tam’s back in his face. She could almost smell the thick air of Cottingley, with its scent of rotting blooms.

  Ruby turned the page at random, trying to put the whole place out of her mind.

  But she couldn’t. First she saw an illustration of a black stag leaping out of the woods to scare Snow White, just like the stag jumping in front of her minivan that day… Then a mysteriously locked room in the story of Bluebeard, which contained the bodies of his six wives. The room had a blue door…

  Like the one at Cottingley.

  The rose. The stag. The door.

  She felt the hair on her arms lift.

  “This is nuts,” she muttered softly so she didn’t wake Shelley. Was the stress making her crack up?

  She flipped to the back of the book, to the tales she didn’t often read because Shelley’s favorites were at the front. The spine fell open on a story titled ‘The Ruby Red.’

  Dread seeped into her.

  The illustration showed a turn-of-the-century beauty similar to one of those old-timey Coca-Cola girls, her alabaster throat circled by a ruby necklace, the stones like drops of blood against her white skin. Distress contorted the girl’s face as she clutched her neck. Ruby scanned the story: an impoverished but beautiful girl puts on an enchanted necklace which she can’t remove. The magical spell forces her to dance at a never-ending ball, for when she does stop, the necklace shrinks. The ending of the story was…unpleasant.

  The necklace fastened around Ruby’s own neck began to throb.

  No. No freaking way.

  Ruby eased away from Shelley’s slack body and went into the bathroom. She brought the necklace out from under her t-shirt. In the reflection of the mirror, the gold links and ruby pendant glittered, mocking her. In a sudden fit of desperation, she yanked at it. “Come off, damn it!”

  The chain jerked shorter. Visibly shorter, right in front of her eyes.

  “Oh my God,” Ruby breathed.

  In horror she stared at her reflection. The pendant now nestled in the hollow at her throat, and the gold links were so snug against her windpipe, she could barely get a finger in between her neck and the chain.

  Impossible, her brain told her.

  Unmistakable, her eyes said.

  Each time she tried to remove the necklace, the chain shortened. Don’t do that, Tam had said. You’ll make it worse. If she made one more attempt…

  It would strangle her.

  Her knees gave way and she sank down on the edge of the bathtub. This couldn’t be happening. Magic didn’t exist. Fairy tales were just stories. Maybe she was going insane or …or she was freaking out because of Mom…or…

  The pendant gave a little shake against her throat. As if it felt her fear and thrived on it.

  Ruby covered her face with her hands and tried not to scream.

  After a long minute, she brought her hands down and breathed deeply to calm herself. She couldn’t deny it any longer. Something unnatural was going on, and she knew who was behind it: Violet and Tam. Now it made sense why Tam didn’t seem to care that she’d stolen the necklace. And that he didn’t question her when she told him she couldn’t get it off.

  What were they doing to her? Was it some sort of sick, twisted game? But why? And why her? And who were they?

  She had to do something, otherwise she was doomed. And that meant confronting Tam, finding out what the hell was happening, and figuring out a way to free herself before it was too late.

  After last night, she never wanted to see Tam again. But now she had no choice.

  Chapter Ten

  “Ruby, are you in there?” Shelley was tapping on the bathroom door.

  Ruby drew in a shuddery breath. She needed to keep it together for her sister’s sake. “I’ll be out in a sec, Shells,” she called and winced at how thin her own voice sounded. Like she was terrified.

  Well, she was.

  She cleared her throat. The chain was so short now it gleamed over the collar of her t-shirt. But there was nothing she could do about it. She forced on a calm expression and opened the bathroom door.

  Shelley’s hair was mussed from her nap. “You were in there a long while,” she said accusingly.

  “Are you timing me now?” Hurt surprise flared in her sister’s eyes, and Ruby bit her lip. She’d never spoken that sharply to Shelley before. Her nerves were seriously on edge.

  “Hey, how about we play a game?” she said quickly.

  The hurt faded from Shelley’s face and she perked up. “Can we play Candyland?”

  “Sure.” A couple of games of Candyland, then maybe she could get Shelley coloring so she could find time to call Tam.

  Luckily Shelley didn’t notice the necklace, or else she didn’t bother remarking on it. But for the rest of the day, her sister never left her side, tagging along wherever she went like she was afraid Ruby would disap
pear too. She put Shelley’s clinginess down as a reaction to Mom being in the hospital. But it meant that that Ruby couldn’t find a minute to herself to make the call to Tam.

  The rest of the day passed in a blur. With Shelley glued to her heels, she managed to get a little housework done, fix something for the two of them to eat, and play endless games of Candyland and Go Fish. The whole time, though, the necklace rubbed her neck and worry dogged her mind. After getting Shelley bathed and into bed, the only thing she could do was crash on the couch, exhausted, staring into space and wondering what the hell was happening to her life.

  Ruby woke to her sister patting her face. Morning light streamed in between the blinds. Groggily, she pushed herself upright and tried not to wince as the pendant pressed against her windpipe. “What time is it?”

  “It’s eight o’clock.”

  Eight o’clock? How was it so late? Shelley had already missed the school bus.

  “Did the hospital call?” Shelley asked. She handed Ruby the cell phone, and Ruby scrolled to the menu. No incoming calls. She shook her head.

  Shelley’s lower lip trembled. “Are we ever going to see Mom again?”

  “Of course,” Ruby replied with a lot more confidence than she felt. “I tell you what. Why don’t you stay home from school, and we’ll call her later together?” Since you already missed the bus, and I have no way of getting you there, she added silently.

  Shelley instantly brightened. “That sounds really great!”

  Ruby ruffled her little sister’s head. “I thought you’d like that.”

  While Shelley ate a bowl of cereal and the last of the milk, Ruby debated about calling Tam so early in the morning. Would he get pissed off? Would he even be awake? She needed him to be in a good mood. This conversation would require delicate handling and possible ass-kissing—though Ruby was more in the mood for kicking.

  Instead, she punched the shortcut to Happy Housecleaners on her cell phone. It helped to do something practical. Once this…thing with the necklace was settled, if they had any hope of surviving the next few weeks with Mom in the hospital, they needed money. Ruby intended to take any shit job on their books that wasn’t Cottingley Heights…