I catch a glimpse of her narrowed blue eyes as she glances at me. “Of what?”
“Everything you just said. And . . . making the wrong decisions. Fucking everything up.”
I pinch myself. Above the elbow this time. Hard. My mouth is moving faster than my brain.
“Making the wrong decisions. Hello, vague city. Aren’t we all afraid of that?”
I ignore her smirk and ask, “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”
I slide my hand up my throat to make sure I’m the one talking. Tiny vibrations pulse beneath my fingertips, so I guess it is me. Ruthie is saying something back, so it had to be me.
“If this is a blackmail scheme, Cartwright, you’re being pretty transparent right now.” She moves to turn down the heat and I wish she could also turn back this conversation so I never asked that question.
“I wouldn’t do that.” I look at a champagne-colored mini-
van in the lane next to me on the expressway. The interior is lit up by a rectangle hanging between the front and back seats. A DVD player, but I can’t tell what it’s playing or who’s watching. “I just want to know. What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”
Ruthie tilts her head to the side, sucks in her bottom lip, and pushes it back out. “If you tell anyone this, I will murder you. That’s not a figure of speech. I will track you down wherever you’re dancing and pretend to care how you’re doing, but I’ll really be there to poison you.”
“Poisoning?” That seems tame for Ruthie.
“Let’s just pretend the anger management sessions will be working by then.” She clears her throat. “But I’m serious, Cartwright—”
I twist my body in the seat so I can face her. “I’m not going to tell anyone, okay?”
She speaks very, very slowly, so I can’t miss a word even if I tried. “In sixth grade, I got in a fight with Skye Richardson. It was bad. She pulled out a chunk of my hair, and I bit her arm so hard, it broke the skin.”
I shudder.
“My parents grounded me, but it was right before school let out, so part of my punishment was that I couldn’t go to summer camp that year.” She throws me a glance. “Look, I know a lot of people think camp is lame, but I was twelve and I really liked it. I felt like the people who came back every year . . . they were the people who really got me, you know? And I wouldn’t be able to see them for another twelve months because of my parents. It’s not like they would have let me fly across the country to visit.”
I can’t imagine Ruthie at summer camp, let alone enjoying it and making friends. She barely keeps it together at the studio.
“It was my mom, mostly. I know my dad would have given in, but she was really pissed.” Ruthie sighs. “They were calling me Cannibal Girl at school and it got back to her and . . . there’s one thing you need to know about my mom: she has bipolar disorder.”
Oh, shit. I have a bad feeling I know where this is going and Ruthie must sense it, too, because she pauses before she says the next part.
“She was really open about me knowing, though. They told me when I was little. I wanted to be helpful, so she made up this routine where she’d start the coffee in the morning and I’d get her pills from the bathroom. Set them next to her mug. It’s just what we did and she always trusted me and . . . I started messing with her pills. I switched them out.” Ruthie pauses again, never takes her eyes off the road. “I was so mad at her. I’d actually watch her take the medicine, knowing it was the wrong pill, and I didn’t feel a thing. It’s like I was in a fog.”
She stops for a minute and I want to ask her what happened next, but I don’t dare speak before she does. She’s going to finish. Ruthie is nothing if not thorough.
“She ended up in the psych ward for, like, two weeks.” Her eyes blink deliberately a couple of times, as if she’s firmly placing herself in the present. “They thought she wasn’t taking her meds, and my dad was a wreck, trying to figure out what had happened. It was a mess and it was all because of me,” she finishes, letting out a long, low breath.
“You didn’t know—” I begin.
“I knew what I was doing. I haven’t seen one of her meltdowns because she’s been taking her medicine regularly since I was adopted. But I’ve heard about them and they don’t sound pretty. I didn’t think about the fact that she could die. Apparently her lows are really low.”
I run my hand along the smooth leather of the car seat. “Did you ever tell her?”
“No. I mean, I’ve thought about it. A lot.” Ruthie looks in the rearview mirror as she changes lanes, starts making her way toward the exit for Ashland Hills. “I’m almost eighteen, so I know it’s not like they’d give me back to the agency or anything, but . . . sometimes I worry that they think I’m a bad seed. They’ve had me since I was a baby and I turned out like this anyway. It must be in my blood. If I told them about the pills . . .” She shakes her head. “I couldn’t. That’s too far, even for me.”
I don’t know what to say. I didn’t realize Ruthie was quite capable of what she just described. She’s a fighter; everyone knows that. But I didn’t know she was calculating. Vindictive when she can’t solve a problem with her fists.
For the next few minutes it’s just me guiding her to the Ashland Hills train station and her nodding as she goes straight ahead after the four-way stop or makes a right onto Magnolia. I point her toward my car. It’s fairly nondescript, a hand-me-down from my mother when I turned sixteen, but she studies it like a fancy sports car as we drive up.
“So you really do drive. I was starting to doubt it.”
“My parents would like me to believe my car turns into a pumpkin if I drive into the Chicago city limits.”
She gives me a distant smile, then says, “Now you know my deepest, darkest secret. I almost killed my mother. Who’s basically the nicest person alive. Probably would have made an excellent TV movie, huh?”
“Something like that.” I return her smile even though we both know there’s nothing funny about it.
Her blue eyes go very serious. “Do you think I’m terrible now?”
“No. Everybody makes mistakes.”
It would have been really bad for Ruthie if she’d gotten caught, or if something even worse had happened to her mother. But she didn’t get caught and she didn’t tell anyone.
“What’s your worst thing, then?” Ruthie prods. “It must be pretty bad if you’re asking about mine.”
Her tone is just gentle enough to jar something. Like earlier, my mouth seems to be opening on its own with no direction from me. The words crawl up from my stomach where they’ve been hiding, boxing at my insides until I am sore and raw.
They creep through my rib cage and skate by my heart and when they burst free from my lips I feel like I’m breathing air for the first time in months.
“I dated someone who might have done something really bad.”
A warm rush flows through my body, followed by chills. I said it. I’ve put it out there and now there’s no going back.
But I said it so fast that Ruthie is confused. “He might have done something really bad or you might have?”
“Him. I don’t know for sure. I still don’t know if he did it, but I think he might have.” I press my hands against my thighs. “And things might have been different if I’d told someone about him. Nobody knew we were together . . .”
“Maybe it’s not too late,” Ruthie says, her tone encouraging but not forceful. Perhaps that’s what I heard in her before, a little hint that I can trust her. I don’t know what it is but it keeps me going.
“He got caught,” I say, gulping in more air. Breathing in until I feel as if my lungs might pop. “He’ll be in trouble anyway, but if I tell someone about us . . . all about us . . . it might help people.”
One person in particular.
“And if you don’t, you have to
live with it.” Her voice is clear but when I look over, her eyes are cloudy and I know without asking that she’s reliving the ambulance ride to the hospital and the way people kept telling her it would be okay because she was just a little girl and little girls shouldn’t worry themselves with things like this.
“. . . Donovan.”
“What?” She turns her eyes on me and she’s back in this moment. “What did you say?”
Shit.
But I try again. I am still sick and scared when I think about facing Chris in the courtroom, regardless of what I say. But at least I will have said this part to someone already, even if I never say it again.
“My ex-boyfriend. He’s the guy accused of kidnapping my friend . . . Donovan.”
I whisper but it’s quiet in the car and Ruthie doesn’t have to strain to hear me. She remembers when he disappeared, has seen the news like everyone else. Her face pales in the light from the parking lot lamp and there it is. That’s what it looks like when you tell someone the worst thing you’ve ever done. It’s mostly Ruthie staring at the same spot on the windshield for so long, I lose track of time.
“I read an article that said he’s thirty.” She pauses, then adds, “Years old.”
“He told me he was eighteen.” I swallow. “He didn’t look old. He was my first, he . . . I loved him. So much, Ruthie.”
She lets out a breath so long and loud, it would be comical if we weren’t discussing the worst thing I’ve ever done.
“God, Cartwright. He . . . So when you were together, he was . . .” I can see her doing the math, adding it up, calculating just how stupid I was four years ago. “Have you told anyone else?”
I shake my head and when I look at Ruthie I’m sorry that I do.
Her eyes are brimming with pity. I don’t know what I was thinking by telling her. I wasn’t thinking. I had no control over my body, over my own vocal cords. I had to let it out somehow but Ruthie doesn’t understand. Why would she?
“Cartwright, I—”
“I know.” My hand is already on the door handle, ready to escape before she has to tell me what she really thinks of my confession. “It’s gross. I’m leaving. Thanks for the ride.”
“Stop,” Ruthie says in a scary voice. Her fighting voice. Then it softens as she says, “I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry.”
So she’s not angry. Just sorry for Donovan. Maybe sorry she ever became friends with me.
“Cartwright?” Ruthie is giving me a sad look that seems almost as out of context as the words that follow. “I mean I’m sorry about what happened to you.”
“That he lied? Yeah.” I rub my eyes. I’m tired. Of talking, of thinking about Chris, of regretting everything I didn’t do four years ago. “I’m sorry he wasn’t the person he said he was, either.”
“That’s not what I—” She presses her lips together for a while before she asks, “You had sex with him?”
I nod, but even as I answer, “He was my boyfriend,” I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
She stares at my face so hard, I want to look away but I can’t. That’s not part of the deal. You don’t get to look away when you’re talking to someone about the worst thing you’ve ever done. You’re either all in or you’re out.
“It doesn’t matter if you liked him or not. He still . . .” Ruthie hesitates but she doesn’t look away because she knows the deal, too. She swallows. She blinks twice as she says my first name for the first time in ages, as she talks to me in a voice so pained, it chokes her.
She says: “Theo, don’t you know he raped you?”
Rape.
Rape.
Rape.
No. That’s a word for what happens to women who get jumped on street corners or girls whose dates won’t take no for an answer. I was in love with Chris. He didn’t force me to be with him or drop something in my drink so I didn’t have a choice.
Sure, he was a little too rough sometimes, but rape? It’s what people think he did to Donovan, but he didn’t do that to me. We had sex and he left without saying goodbye but he didn’t rape me.
I have to get out of here. My shaking hand jiggles the door handle and I step outside so I can get away from Ruthie, from that same pathetic expression she’s been giving me since I brought up Chris’s name. I can’t handle her looking at me like I’m the one people should be feeling sorry for.
Ruthie gets out of the car, too. Her curls catch the watery beam of the parking lot light as she stands by the hood. They glow whitish blue like the sky at dawn and she looks like an angel now more than ever.
“Cartwright—”
“He was my boyfriend. He didn’t . . . You can’t go around telling people he—” My tongue twists around my own words and I can’t say the one that makes my chest constrict. “You can’t, Ruthie.”
She lets out a deep breath, a translucent cloud that curls over the hood of her car and disappears into the night air.
“You can’t tell, Ruthie. You can’t. You can’t tell. You can’t say anything.” I repeat this over and over until she’s standing in front of me, until Ruthie Pathman’s arms are wrapped tight around me in the empty parking lot of a train station.
“Promise you won’t say anything.” My face is smashed into the shoulder of her wool coat, my voice muffled, but there is no doubt what I said. “Promise me, Ruthie. You have to promise. You have to—”
“I won’t say anything.” She pulls back to look at me, to look dead in my eyes as she says this, and I believe her.
Perhaps I’m being foolish. I have to believe there’s someone I can trust.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I WAS SUPPOSED TO RIDE TO SCHOOL WITH DONOVAN THE LAST day I saw him, but he ditched me.
We rode the bus during winter because it was cold and our parents didn’t like us traversing the icy roads with our flimsy bike tires. But once spring hit, we were free to bike to and from middle school, and we always took advantage of it.
The bus smelled like dirty gym socks on a good day and there was always some sixth-grader crying in one of the front seats. Plus, riding our bikes gave us more independence. We didn’t have to be outside immediately after the last bell rang, and we could stop off at the convenience store if we wanted to waste some time before we went home.
And once we met Chris, that’s what we always wanted.
I’ll never forget the Monday we showed up after school and Chris wasn’t there. Mondays were his afternoons behind the register, but the gum-smacking cashier told us he’d quit.
Quit?
“Yeah. Just stopped showing up,” she said, flipping through the back half of a tabloid. Tiny star tattoos swam around her wrist and her hair was a watered-down red that frizzed to a stop at her shoulders. “Told Larry not to hire him.”
“Why not?” I crossed my arms as I stared at her.
“Because I knew he’d pull some crap like this.” She paused on a picture of an actor sporting a house-arrest ankle monitor. “He was lazy and I think he was stealing, too. Thought he could get away with it ’cause he was cute. Wasn’t that cute.”
The cashier shook her head. I looked at the name tag hooked above the pocket of her yellow polo. Her name was Penny.
“Larry called him a couple hours ago,” she said around a mouthful of strawberry bubblegum. I could smell the artificial flavoring across the counter, see the pink wad as she twisted and pulled it around her teeth. “Says his phone was off.”
Donovan and I exchanged a look. He must have been in trouble, like a car accident. Or maybe he was sick and that’s why he couldn’t answer his phone.
“Did he . . .” I paused, not wanting to give away too much. Just in case he showed up and got his job back and Penny started asking questions. But I had to know, had to do as much as I could while I was there. “Do you have an address? We . . . we need to talk to him.”
“I don’t . . .” But I didn’t know how to finish. I couldn’t tell her that I wasn’t some little girl who came in after school to hang on the counter and stare at him while he was working. I was his girlfriend. The crush stage had passed months ago.
Penny swapped her tabloid for one on the counter behind her. “He’s gone, girl,” she said, giving me one last look. “And I don’t think he’s coming back.”
Donovan disappeared exactly two weeks and a day later.
• • •
After he was so short with me, so secretive (“We don’t have to do everything together”), I marched back down the stairs and out the door and got on my bike, trying to fight back the tears. First Chris had disappeared, and now Donovan was being weird. Too private.
Everyone was pulling away from me—but nobody was telling me what I’d done wrong.
Later, when I was in the principal’s office, there was nothing I wanted to do more than pull away myself. I was seated across the desk from Principal Burns and next to Donovan’s mother. The office was freezing and I was starving. I hadn’t eaten lunch. I’d sat in the cafeteria with Phil and stared at my cheeseburger and fries until they were cold, sitting on my tray in a soggy, abandoned pile. Not eating felt good. It made me feel strong. In control.
“Theo, can you tell us one last time what he said to you?”
Principal Burns had a kind face. I knew I wasn’t supposed to think so, but the lines around his mouth and eyes were comforting, like a grandpa. And he made sure to tell me right away that I wasn’t in trouble, but when I saw Donovan’s mother, saw the worry behind her eyes, I knew something was very, very wrong.
I took a deep breath before I began telling them what I’d already said at least five times. “He said he had to take care of something. But that he would show up later and we’d ride home together.”
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