by Abby Wilder
"You know I don't expect anything."
"But you should," he said. He stopped walking and looked at me. "I want to be able to do something for you. Are you busy this weekend?"
"What are you planning?"
Ruben's dimples creased. "You'll see."
Saturday arrived and I woke to Ruben tapping against the glass. I dressed hurriedly, mumbled something at my mother, and crawled out the window.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"I'm taking you on a tour," Ruben said as he led me through town. "I've spent a lot of time wandering this town, since, well, since you know, and so I started thinking that it could be the one thing I could do for you, the one thing I could give you." Ruben walked in step with me. "I'm going to take you to all the places I love in this town that I never really got to experience before, not like I do now. My favourite places."
We walked down the street, careful not to interact as we passed people until we reached the centre of town. Ruben stopped and pointed up. In the middle of Puruwai there was a water tower. It was only kept for its historical and aesthetic appeal and it hadn't been used to store water for a long time. Years ago, people used to climb up the levels of stairs inside and stroll around the narrow walkway at the top to see the surrounding views of the lake, the mountains, and town spread out below.
"Up there?" I asked.
Ruben nodded. "It's amazing."
"What if it collapses?" I said, staring up from the safety of the ground.
Ruben rammed his shoulder against the thick wooden door. "It won't."
I frowned and peered up at the brick walls. "That hardly reassures me."
"Just trust me, okay?" With one last push the door opened just wide enough for us to slip through. Inside was dark and dust danced in the light coming through the crack of the doorway. Iron stairs followed the curve of the building, winding up and up and disappearing into the ceiling.
"It will be worth it," Ruben promised, and he bounded up the stairs, not hesitating when they creaked under his weight. I followed more hesitantly.
The building was cut into five levels, each one two stories. The stairs formed a continual loop around the edge, clinging to the side of the brick with little more than a few bolts and screws. I tried not to think about how rusted and old they looked. Each window framed a different aspect of the town; the roof of The Fat Stag, which had the name of the town painted boldly across it; the scaffolding wrapped around the hotel, ready for the next stage of construction before its opening next season; the sprawled out supermarket, and of course, the lake. Finally, we reached the top and Ruben pushed open the narrow doorway that led outside. The wind was strong and a wave of vertigo washed over me as I looked down. Ruben merely grinned and threaded his legs through the bars of the feeble railing that separated us from the edge. He let them dangle in the air and patted the spot beside him, but I shook my head and pressed myself against the wall.
"I won't let you fall," he said.
I finally steeled myself and sat down, not looking over the edge, but instead, fixing my eyes at the mountains in the distance.
"They look so small," he said, nodding to where a family crossed the road below. He hooked his chin over the top rail and stared down at the ground. "Judah and I used to come up here when we were kids and our parents were busy at the hotel. Dad spent hours talking on the phone and Mum would follow the interior decorator around, barking orders that were never heeded. They never checked up on us. We'd creep inside and play on the stairs having sword fights. Strangely, it never occurred to us to come all the way to the top and look outside. But I've spent a bit of time up here in the last few months. Do you know that over there," he pointed to a small house on the edge of town, "the old lady sunbathes in a bikini? The things you see when no one knows people are watching. She must be near on eighty." He laughed. "Good on her, I say. People need to live the lives they want to live. She also has two dogs that live on nothing but the finest cuts of steak, while she eats the cheap stuff to save money. Rufus and Sewell they're called."
I frowned and peered across at him. "How do you know all this?"
He shrugged. "I get bored."
I looked down at the narrow streets patterned in a grid and the wide sweeping road that followed the lake, and wondered how many times he had walked them in the months since his death. The houses and the stores looked odd from above, as though someone had painted them, and I tried to picture him wandering through their rooms, unlocking their secrets.
Ruben placed his hand in the space between us, palm up, and waited. I slipped mine into his, and his fingers pressed against my skin. With a contented sigh, he leaned back and looked up at the sky. "Do you remember the first word I said to you?"
I thought back to the cemetery, the first time we met, which seemed like only yesterday and yet a lifetime ago. "Blue," I said, wrinkling my forehead in confusion. "Why did you say that?"
He chuckled. "There is a lot of time to think when you're dead, and with no one to talk to, no one to listen, I started thinking about what I would say if I had the chance to be heard again. I imagined what I would say if I just had one word."
"Blue seems like an odd choice," I said.
"Give it time," he urged. "At first, I started thinking about the words I had read that were the most pleasant sounding, not visually pleasing, and nothing to do with their meaning, but just sounded beautiful when you said them. Words like serendipity."
I screwed up my face. "I don't think that one sounds beautiful at all, reminds me too much of stupidity."
"Oblivion?" he suggested.
"Better," I agreed. "Though I still wouldn't consider it beautiful."
"Well, one day, I was sitting up here, staring at the sky which was the most brilliant shade of blue, and then down at the lake, which, of course, is famous for its blueness, and it just hit me."
"Blue?" I repeated, unconvinced by his fascination with the word.
"Say it again, slowly. Blue."
And so I did. "Blue." I noticed the way my lips pursed together, the way my tongue touched the roof of my mouth before flicking down, the way it sounded.
"See?" he said. "It sounds even more beautiful when you say it."
"Blue," I said again, then shook my head. "I'm still not convinced."
"No?" he questioned. "Well it's the most beautiful word I can think of, and believe me, I've spent a lot of time thinking about it. It's almost like blowing a kiss." Ruben laughed and shook his head. "I really have spent entirely too much time alone, haven't I?"
I inched closer to the edge and hooked my chin over the railing, my hand still clinging to Ruben's. "I read an article once that 'cellar door' is the most beautiful sounding phrase in the English language."
Ruben hunched his eyebrows, pondering. "I still prefer blue. I had spent so much time thinking about it, wondering what I would say if I was granted just one word for someone to hear, and when you came along, and you looked at me, and you saw me, and you spoke to me, the only thing I could think of was blue."
"Maybe it will grow on me," I said.
I looked over the landscape, my fear of the height slowly dwindling, and followed the curve of Stone's Throw Road. I could just make out the shape of Flynn's car travelling towards his shop.
"So you don't work for Flynn?" I said.
He shook his head. "That is all Judah. I can barely tell one end of a car from the other."
"Did you really think I wouldn't run into him at school?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "I didn't know what else to do. I guess I was just hoping you wouldn't find out. Stupid, I know. But it's hardly as though I could tell you the truth."
"Iridescent?" I suggested when the word popped into my head.
But Ruben shook his head and grinned. "Blue."
"So how much of the stuff you've told me is Judah and how much is you?" I asked.
"Not sure, to be honest. It's been hard to keep it all straight in my own head."
"Do you feel
any different? Do you feel, well, dead?"
"Not really. Some things are different, like I don't get cold, I don't get hungry, and sometimes, if I try to reach out and touch someone they shudder like they felt me. The first time it happened was with this lady at the supermarket. I was following Mum around, watching what she put in the trolley, which was mainly wine, by the way, cheap wine." He shook his head and laughed. "She would be appalled if anyone knew she drunk cheap wine, and this lady walked straight into me."
"You didn't just pass through her, you know, like they do in movies?"
"It doesn't seem to work that way. A wall's a wall. A person's a person. They walk into me and they don't feel it, but I sure do. And this lady did. She shuddered and looked back at me but she didn't see me, she stared straight through me. But then, I've walked up to other people and literally punched them in the face and they didn't even flutter an eyelid."
"You've punched people?"
"Wouldn't you? If you were wandering around and no one could see you, no one could feel you? Isn't there someone you'd love to punch?"
I laughed. "Can't say I've ever thought about it before."
"Well, I have. I've had a lot of time to think about things like that."
I was still pondering words in the back of my mind. "Luminescence?" I offered.
"Blue," he repeated again.
I sighed. "So why do you think some people have an awareness of you and others don't?"
He shrugged and twisted his head, ignoring the beauty surrounding us and looking only at me. "It seems death holds just as many questions as life." He scooted closer to the edge and swung his legs. "I have thought of something, though, a reason I might still be here."
"What?"
"Judah. Well, Judah and Cara. It's my fault they're not together. I've watched them both for nearly a year and it's my fault they are both so unhappy. Maybe I'm meant to fix that."
Chapter Eighteen
Lennon
The next stop on Ruben's tour was too far to walk, so we went back to the house and took Elmo.
"Where to?" I asked, waiting to start the car.
"It's a secret."
"You might want to tell me if you expect me to drive."
"Stone's Throw Road," he instructed.
Surprisingly, Elmo started first try and I headed through town, down by the lake and towards Stone's Throw Road. Ruben's eyes avoided the cross on the railing sheltering the road from the cliff that plummeted steeply to the water below.
"Incandescence," I said. "That's a beautiful word."
"Still not as beautiful as blue," Ruben said as we turned onto Stone's Throw Road. He nodded for me to pull over to the side where we would get out and walk. We crossed two paddocks, startled a flock of sheep, and walked into a copse of trees planted so perfectly straight that the setting sun filtering through them cut lines of light and dark across the ground. We came to a clearing on the edge of the lake with the ruin of a dilapidated house standing forlornly in the centre.
"I used to come here when I needed to be alone," Ruben said, leaning against the moss covered fence.
"There's no driveway," I said, looking around the clearing.
"What do you mean?"
"The house is in the middle of the forest, on the edge of the lake, and there's not even an old dirt trail leading to it. How did people get here?"
Ruben laughed. "In all the times I've been here, that's never occurred to me. Come on, I want to show you something inside." He nudged the door with his shoulder and it groaned against the floorboards before giving way. Gingerly, he stepped over a gaping hole in the floor, dirt exposed under the rotten boards.
We walked through the old house slowly, taking in the beauty of each room haunted with memories. "I wonder who used to live here," I said, as the first drop of rain sounded on the roof.
Ruben stuffed his hands into his pockets and looked around what was left of the room. "I'd like to imagine it was a family. A mother and father, two children; one boy, one girl. The mother liked to bake and used to sit pies on this windowsill here to cool, just like they did in nursery rhymes. And the father was a farmer, and the kids walked to school each day. At nights, the whole family would gather in the lounge by the fireplace and listen while the mother played songs on the piano."
"So you haven't put much thought into it," I teased. "Is there a piano?"
Ruben shook his head. "No, but I'd like to think there was."
The rain started to fall in earnest and Ruben led me down the hallway and into another room, one with more roof cover than the others, and somewhere we could shelter from the rain. There was a broken, glassless frame of a window facing out of the porch, looking over the lake, and an overstuffed and old chair sitting in front of the fireplace. Someone had left twigs and pinecones in the hearth. Every inch of wall was covered in scraps of paper, bold pencil sketches covering each of them.
I walked over and traced the outline of an owl with my finger. "Did you do these?"
He nodded. "Before."
I didn't need to ask what he meant.
"It was my hideaway. I came here when I needed to think."
I paced the floorboards, following the walls of pictures. Trees, birds, people. I stopped when a familiar face peered back at me. "Is this Cara?"
Ruben smiled sadly and nodded.
"Sienna said you two dated." I was surprised how much it affected me to even say the words. It was hard to think about his life before, a life which I was never part of.
"We didn't," he said quickly. "Not really. I guess we hooked up a few times."
I didn't look at him when I said what I said next. "Like you did with Sienna?"
He laughed nervously. "Perhaps we should leave the past in the past."
The pictures changed on the second wall. They were all the same; a hand lying limply on the grass, nails chipped and broken, and a thin line of blood trailing down the arm. The image was repeated over and over, the lines darker and bolder with each replication.
Ruben stepped in front of me. "That's why I need to help them. Judah and Cara, I mean. Judah loved her, he still loves her, but I kind of got in the way."
"Sienna mentioned something about that too," I said quietly.
"We need to convince her that Judah is innocent."
I sat down in the chair and the sharp straw-like stuffing dug into me. "And how are we supposed to do that? Find the real driver? If the police couldn't do it, I can't see how we can."
Ruben sat on the ground, crossing his legs and chewing on a dry blade of grass. "We do it together."
"You can't even talk to them."
"But they can see you. I can talk through you."
"You want me to tell them about you?" I asked. "They'll think I'm crazy."
"It's worth a try, don't you think? If we get Judah alone, we'll be able to convince him. I can tell you things that only I would know."
"That's all very well for you to say, you're not going to be the one they laugh at."
Ruben scooted across the floor and sat at my feet, pleading with his sweetest of smiles. "Please?"
"I'll think about it." But I had already melted to his request.
"That's all I can ask." He turned and leaned with his back on my legs, tipping his head against my knees. "I can't tell you what it means having you with me. I was beginning to wonder, with no one to witness my life, with no one aware of my existence, if I was even real. With you here, there is less doubt."
"Less?" I asked.
He twisted his head around to look at me and grinned. "There's always the possibility that you are simply imagining me."
I reached down and pinched his arm.
"Ouch," he said, and rubbed his hand over the red welt, feigning a pout.
"You seem pretty real to me." I grinned. Looking over to the wall, I studied his drawings. His style was bold and rushed. Always in black. "Do you still draw?"
He followed my gaze to the sketches and sighed. "I've tried, but they never la
st." He tilted his head back so he was looking at me upside down, the back of his head still resting on my knees. I ran my fingers through his hair and he closed his eyes.
"What would you draw?" I asked. "If someone could see what you drew again?"
He moved away and reached across to grab the sketch pad and pencil lying on the ground. "I've drawn lots of things," he said, as he started moving the thick pencil across the page. "My headstone. The rusty old Ferris wheel down by the lake." His tongue slipped through his lips and slid back and forth in concentration. "But every time I leave, when I come back they are all gone. It's like as soon as I take my awareness away, things return to how they really are. A world I'm not a part of." He scribbled furiously, hunched over the page, hands moving quickly, and occasionally brushing away stray filings of lead. When he finished, he asked, "Do you think you'll be able to see it?"
I leaned forward in the chair. "Show me."
He turned over the page and held it up. The lines of my face stared back at me in bold black.
"All I see is you," he said.
Chapter Nineteen
Lennon
I didn't know how to feel about Ruben. He was like two pieces of a puzzle that looked as though they wouldn't match up, but when you put them together, somehow, they fit. In my head, I knew the facts. I knew he wasn't there, not really. When we stood side by side in my mirror, only my reflection stared back, but if I reached out and touched him, he was as real as anyone I had ever known. He was as real as me.
But my mind kept playing tricks, flipping from fear to confusion, tossing me in and out of infatuation with him. Each time I found myself alone, Ruben appeared, begging for me to follow him somewhere, showing me places I hadn't seen before. But there was one thing he wanted me to do, one thing I could help him with, and I wanted to try.
"Wait up!" I yelled across the carpark to Judah, who leaned against his car, arms crossed and scowling.