Finding Ruby Starling

by Karen Rivers

  I love you forever. Even though you messed up. I think that’s the right thing to do.

  Love,

  Ruby

  Jedgar,

  Did you watch it? I wanted you to watch it before I explained it, so now I’ll explain it, even though I guess you can guess what happened. Somehow the date we left for England was also the date of the Walk to Remember — the walk we do every year with the McNays and all those other people who had a kid who they really loved with their whole hearts who had to go earlier than anyone wanted. I’ve told you about this. We remember Ashley Mary Jane and write notes and let them go on balloons and listen to people doing speeches about being parents who lost babies, and everyone cries and sings and eats sandwiches and eventually starts to have fun, even though it feels both right and wrong to have fun when you’re at a party to say good-bye again to some kids who died when they shouldn’t have.

  I felt so terrible that we were in England for that, because it’s all they get, the McNays. That’s all that’s left of Ashley Mary Jane, letting go of balloons and remembering her. It sort of feels like we all have to do it at once, so the power of that will somehow reach her. That sounds totes ridic, of course, but it’s how it feels.

  So we made a different arrangement this year and did our walk at the cemetery near the village where Ruby lives. I mean, obviously the McNays weren’t there, or any of the other people, but we Skyped it to them even though the time zones were off, so it was the morning for them. We got the perfect rainbow balloons too. Balloons are just better in England! Like everything! Different and better! (And — if you can believe it — specially made so that when they burst, the pieces aren’t harmful to wildlife, they just disintegrate!) Everyone wrote a note to Ashley Mary Jane that said “Thank you, Ashley Mary Jane, for Ruth’s heart” and things like that. And we all sent them off at once, to the other side of the world. I bet she felt our love more than ever this year in heaven or wherever.

  The one bit that I only showed you, on the camera, is that I also wrote a note and sent it off on a different balloon. Only one balloon, all by itself, a blue one. I wrote, “Forgive.” It felt like it meant something, even though I don’t know who it was meant for. All of us, I guess.

  I don’t think anyone saw but you. And that’s OK. It wasn’t for anyone else. Just me. But I knew you’d get it. And when that blue balloon floated up next to all those colorful ones, Jedgar, it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. It was the most amazeballs thing EVER. In a weird way, it was like everything bad and hard and horrible that I’d been feeling floated up with that balloon. I guess, technically, that should make me feel lighter, but I felt more stuck down to the ground than ever. I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

  See you in a couple of days!

  Ruth

  Ruth,

  Are you back home now? You must be, but I think it’s night there now. I have a clock on the wall set to your time, so I don’t get muddled, and it says it’s 1:00, but I don’t know if it’s 1 in the morning or in the afternoon without figuring it out properly. So if you’re sleeping, don’t answer this note!

  The thing is that when you and Delilah went off to sit on the bench and have a good long chat about everything — I’m sorry she was like that, it’s like she suddenly woke up to the idea that you’re real and she had to know everything about you right away. Well, anyway, while you were over with her, I wandered away from Fi and the rest of them and down to the river. There weren’t any leaves. I was a bit disappointed because it felt like there should be, like that would have been a right ending to our story. I could have thrown them in, but that would have been like cheating a bit somehow, I think. So I sat down and put my feet in. The water was lovely. I put on my iPod and was going to listen to STOP but I changed my mind. I re-read this message I’d got earlier from Fi’s cousin Berk. I was looking at my feet, all distorted in the water, thinking, Now it’s starting, this whole thing. I’m going to be 13 soon and maybe Berk will be my first boyfriend. I felt a bit happy about that, so I was smiling, and that’s when I noticed that the Mole had wandered down behind me and was sitting there, just staring at me awkwardly like he does, scratching at his head like maybe he had nits.

  But he wasn’t, actually. I don’t know why I said that about the nits. I suppose that’s something that Fi would have said. He said, ‘It’s cool you have a twin, Ruby, yeah? S’like a film’. And I said, ‘It is like that, totally’. But then, Ruth, something funny happened in my stomach, like flapping, like how they say you have butterflies. I think it was his voice. I don’t know what it is about it. So anyway, I went and sat next to him. He smelled lovely, actually. Not just like soap and detergent, but something else. Grass. Of course, we were sitting on the grass, so maybe it was just that he smelled summery. Anyway, he said something like, ‘School next week then’. And I said, ‘Yes’. And he said, ‘I like school. I’m good at it’. And I said, ‘I expect you are. My sister Ruth is smart too. But I’m better at clothes and things’. And he said, ‘Yeah, you always look nice’. And then I said, ‘Thanks’. I don’t know how it happened, but then we snogged again.

  Then he said, ‘I’ll see you then’. And I said, ‘Yes, OK’. Then he got up and walked away.

  I sat there for a good bit, watching you in the distance talking to Mum. I guess you could have seen us, if you’d looked up, but you were looking at her the whole time. It felt funny, like I was looking at myself. But anyway, after a while, I opened my messages again and deleted that note from Berk.

  I can’t explain why I didn’t tell you this sooner. It’s funny, isn’t it, that now we are officially sisters, I felt shy about the snogging. Telling you about it, I mean. Strange, right?

  You know what else is strange? Life. One minute you are just plain old you, then suddenly you have a twin in America, or start fancying your best friend’s brother, or someone brings the dinosaurs back from extinction, or you look on the Internet one day and see that SHORCA! has gone viral. (Which it did. 50,000 hits? That’s amazeog. I’d never have thought that 13-year-olds made that.) Or your mum turns out to be so complicated. Or your nan turns out to be someone you didn’t think she was. Or you have a very frightening-looking dog who is actually turning out to be your favourite thing ever.

  And the thing is that everything overlaps. The important minutes and the not-so-important minutes, and you want to say, ‘Wait, don’t snog me now, I’m just processing all the minutes that have happened’. As though you expect it all to come in a sequence of digestible bits, like the kibble that Peaches eats. Everything in its own separate compartment. But then it doesn’t. It all comes at once in great big rushes, everyone with all their own stories going on, and everything overlapping at once, like tiny silken threads, and it all makes a big picture, do you see? It all makes one big gorgeous, strange, true life.

  I have to go. Chlophie and Fi are here and I’m going to take them to the Thrift to buy their school clobber. They are trying to read what I’m writing! Get lost, you lot, it’s PRIVATE.

  Oh, they want me to tell you that you’re fab and your teeth are super glam and they’re so happy they got to meet you, even if it was just for twelve seconds while you were crying and waving good-bye from the taxicab. They are shouting at me now to ask if they can come and stay if they save enough money to go to America one day, but not to worry, because that’ll take them yonks as they’re always spending their allowance on nail varnish and nice shoes. OK, CHLOPHIE! I TOLD HER!

  And Fi says, ‘Hiya’.

  Anyway, if you’re not sleeping, WRITE BACK RIGHT AWAY, RUTH QUAYLE!

  Love,

  Ruby

  SHORCA!:

  The TRUE and TERRIFYING Tale of the

  Shark/Orca That Ate Everyone on the Coast of

  Oregon and Some People on Washington and

  California Beaches, Also

  Written and directed by Jedgar Johnston

  (with Ruth Quayle)

  Show GIRL and BOY racing
down the hill to the beach on a hot sunny day to sound track of really great music. BOY trips and scrapes his knee.

  BOY: I’m bleeding!

  GIRL: It’s nothing! Let’s go swimming!

  BOY: But what if sharks smell blood and attack?

  BOY and GIRL look at each other, then fall all over themselves laughing. They run into the water, which is crowded with swimmers and waders.

  A fin approaches slowly through the water, then disappears.

  GIRL: (screams)

  BOY: (screams)

  GIRL: (screams more)

  BOY: (screams more)

  SHORCA chomps up BOY and GIRL and several other people (paper drawings) and then burps underwater. Show burp bubbles rising to the music.

  VOICE-OVER: BEHOLD, THE SHORCA. THERE IS NOTHING ELSE IN THE OCEAN QUITE AS DEADLY — OR AS SMART — AS THIS BEAST. SHE CAN BE FRIENDLY. SOME DIVERS EVEN SUGGEST SHE’S … FUNNY.

  Show PAPER DIVERS filming SHORCA frolicking in the deep, doing twirls like a ballerina, sticking her weirdly long tongue out at the camera. Show PAPER DIVERS laughing.

  VOICE-OVER: BUT WHEN SHE FEELS LONELY …

  Show PAPER TEENAGERS looking zitty and slouchy and annoyed, reading THE CATCHER IN THE RYE and being intense. Pull back “camera” to reveal they are at the beach. Show SHORCA flopping up onto the beach. PAPER TEENAGERS scream apathetically. SHORCA eats them before belly flopping back to sea.

  VOICE-OVER: FATHERED BY A SHARK WHO DIED SHORTLY AFTER HER BIRTH, AND MOTHERED BY A WHALE WHO ABANDONED HER FOR MYSTERIOUS REASONS, SHE IS UNIQUE. A SPECIES UNTO HERSELF. ALONE IN A WORLD THAT DOESN’T COMPREHEND HER. DOOMED TO A LIFETIME OF BEING MISUNDERSTOOD.

  Show MAP OF COAST OF AMERICA and trace PATH OF SHORCA. Cut to multiple scenes of SHORCA chomping BEACH PEOPLE. Spinning postcards indicate where the SHORCA is currently striking. Background dialogue is screaming in all different languages, but mostly English and Spanish.

  VOICE-OVER CONTINUES: LIKE ALL MAMMALS, SHORCAS CRAVE THE COMPANIONSHIP OF ONE OF THEIR OWN KIND.

  Play sad music as SHORCA searches the deep for one of her own, and along the way chomps basically every marine mammal that she sees, which all scream similarly to BEACH PEOPLE in a combination of different languages.

  VOICE-OVER CONTINUES: AND THEN …

  Show GIRL and BOY (similar to first GIRL and BOY but different) at the beach.

  GIRL: It sure is hot! I wish we could swim.

  BOY: But … but … what about SHORCA?!

  GIRL: I miss the water. You know what? I’m going to dive right in.

  GIRL dives into water. Ominous music. Show BOY through watery-surface type effect. Show GIRL surfacing and swimming and not being chomped.

  BOY: Wow! You weren’t chomped!

  Show SHORCA rushing toward GIRL — similar fin effect to earlier.

  BOY: GET OUT OF THE WATER! THE SHORCA! THE SHORCA!

  Show second SHORCA also rushing toward GIRL.

  Show both SHORCAs slamming on their brakes, the large wave of water pulling the BOY into the water too.

  BOY: Now we will die for sure!

  Show the SHORCAs recognizing each other. Play swelling of music as they tap noses and do elaborate fin handshake. SHORCAs spin/dance off into the sunset. The BOY and GIRL get out of the water and sit on the pier, watching the SHORCAs swim away. BOY and GIRL are holding hands.

  VOICE-OVER: THE SHORCA, NO LONGER ALONE, NOW FEELS COMPLETE.

  THE TWO SHORCAS LIVE IN THE DEEP WATERS OFF AUSTRALIA, WHERE THEY PERFORM FOR TOURISTS.

  THE TOURISTS FEED THEM HOT DOGS.

  EVERYONE LIKES HOT DOGS.

  THE SHORCAS ARE HAPPY.

  Camera cuts away from hot dog-eating SHORCAs, uplifting music swells.

  Credits roll.

  If you enjoyed FINDING RUBY STARLING,

  check out THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ME,

  featuring Tink Aaron-Martin, Freddie Blue Anderson, Ruth Quayle,

  and fun and heart from A to Z!

  Praise for THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ME:

  “Rivers has created a warm, funny, fast-paced story about an endearing middle schooler who keeps her cool and sense of humor when events spin out of control.” — School Library Journal, starred review

  “Cleverly woven through the titular encyclopedia … is the touchingly real and often humorous story of a preteen’s struggles with family, friendship and first love.” — Kirkus Reviews

  “Tink’s first-person narrative is vibrant and exuberantly opinionated, whether she is describing life with her hairless cat or pondering the meaning of her first kiss.” — Publishers Weekly

  Read on for an excerpt!

  Aa

  Some kind of lava.

  Almost always the first entry in any encyclopedia.

  And, more important, the very first entry in the Encyclopedia of Me, Tink Aaron-Martin. Exclamation point! Ta-daaaaa! Dance for joy! Etc.!

  The fact that “aa” is a word at all is the most terrific thing I learned from reading the entire set of encyclopedias.1 I’m sorry, but it’s true. Things that are not true include the sentence, “I read the entire set of encyclopedias.” But I did look at most some of them. They are quite attractive. The edges of all the pages are dipped in gold dust that shimmers like a pop star’s eye makeup.

  In my defense, it’s too hot to read.

  Likewise, it is also too hot to write. But that won’t stop me! I am an unstoppable force of encyclopedia-writing brilliance! I am …

  Grounded. Which means that I have a lot more spare time than the average almost-thirteen-year-old.

  I expect this book will take a long time to write — a week, if Hortense, our hairless catlike animal, stops bothering me; ten years, if she continues to claw at my legs and head in a desperate attempt to get attention and/or love, which is hard to come by when you look like a shriveled handbag. I don’t mind how long it takes, as I happen to love writing almost as much as I enjoy reading.

  There is a chance that this book will become a bestseller and I’ll become rich and famous! Of course, there is also a chance that Prince X will land in my backyard in his own private helicopter and whisk me away to his palace, which is to say, there is no chance at all. Sadness.

  So, back to “aa,” which was what I was doing before I had to stop to explain to you about the encyclopedia. “AA” (all caps) is also a battery type and a bra (of no) size and what you shout after a volcano erupts and you are running for your life from the river of jaggedy lava, as in “AAAAH! THE AA!”

  That’s not something you’d read in a regular encyclopedia, trust me.

  This is not a regular encyclopedia.

  It’s better.

  Aardvark

  Apart from beginning with two As, and thus being as fantabulicious as “aa” and “Aaron-Martin,” the most noteworthy thing about aardvarks is that an aardvark is the mascot of my sad, crumply little school, Cortez Junior High.

  I wish I was making a joke, but I’m not. Not about the relative crumpliness of the school itself, and certainly not about the pure, unadulterated sadosity of having an aardvark in your cheering section. It’s very hard to get enthused about a sport when the thing that is cheering you on is a giant, slow-moving, piglike mammal that in real life drags itself on stubby legs through hot sandy deserts, snuffling ants, and hoping to die.2

  Inexplicably, it was decided that this creature should also be purple. As you might have guessed, my school places last in most sporting events. In comparison, the mascot of our chief rival, the Prescott School for the Unnaturally Athletic, winners of every sporting event they have ever taken part in, is a large and ferocious, normal-colored lion.

  You never want to get a detention on game days. Because then you have to wear the Aardie suit and spend hours running for your life from the (not) hilarious antics of the Prescott Lion. It is like being mauled by a vicious carnivore with paws the size of tennis rackets while entombed in a cocoon of stale sweaty socks and old spitballs as your so-called friends die too young
from fits of laughter while occasionally shouting your name and whistling.

  Aaron, Baxter (Dad)

  My dad, Bax Aaron, is a plumber. Nobody calls Dad “Baxter.” He says that “Baxter” sounds like the name of either a fat orange cat or a manservant on a British comedy, and he is neither, although he’d not-so-secretly have liked to be on a British (or any) comedy. Dad spent his whole life wanting to be an actor on TV. But he’s a plumber because his dad was a plumber and so plumbing was his thing to fall back on. The moral of this semi-tragic story is that you should probably make your “thing to fall back on” a lot more fun than plumbing. (Unless you enjoy plumbing, in which case, you should go for it.)

  Dad is completely movie-star good-looking, so why he is not a famous actor is a mystery to most. Everywhere we go, women eyeball Dad like they wish they could capture him and keep him forever, like a piece of art or a hunk of cheese. Dad is generally oblivious and/or is very good at acting oblivious, more evidence of his incredible and overlooked talents.

  Dad likes salads featuring tiny cobs of corn, Rollerblading, motorcycles, and reggae. He says reggae is his people’s music, but I am one of his people and I don’t like reggae at all. Frequently, he can be found dancing to the reggae that plays in his head, making him resemble a deranged person with an uncontrollable twitch disorder. He knows how to play a banjo, a guitar, a ukulele, and a strange stringed thing that is called a lute. He is quite brilliant musically, another gift I did not receive in the gene lottery.

  Dad is British, and yes, he has an accent. He is African-American,3 except not American. In Britain, they say “African-Caribbean.” Dad would never say “African-Caribbean-American-Jamaican” or whatever. “Black” is an OK thing to say, at least in our family. Other families feel differently, or so I hear. The worst word is “colored.” Don’t ever say that unless you want to get punched directly in the stomach by me. I’d punch your nose, but I likely can’t reach it, especially if you’re tall, unless I stand on a chair, and you’d probably escape before I got properly positioned.