“Ruby!”
I sit bolt upright, gasping. “What the hell was that?”
Leo hovers over me. “Jesus, are you all right?”
“What just happened?”
“I think you fainted.”
Mom’s words echo in my head. Watchers are forbidden to mix with True of Heart.
“Ruby?” He shakes me.
“I must have.” I blink.
“It’s probably the altitude. You’re not used to it yet.”
With Leo’s help, I stand and steady myself. “How long was I out?”
“Less than a minute.”
“Jeez, Leo. You actually look worried.”
“You dropped like a rock. Why in the hell wouldn’t I be?”
“Because you’re a jerk,” I mutter. Thinking about how Leo’s stupid face made my knees shake just ten minutes ago infuriates me.
“You’re white as a sheet,” he says, following me slowly away from the ruin. “Are you sure you can walk?”
I rub at a lump rising behind my ear. “I think I hit my head.”
“You should have someone look at it.”
I nod, eager to get away from him. Hitting my head hard enough to hallucinate probably isn’t a good thing. Hallucinating my dead mother is unnerving.
Ignoring my screaming headache, I make my way down the mountain. Half of me hopes Leo will follow, half hopes he’ll drop through a rift in the ground.
Silently trailing behind me for a while, Leo finally stops on a woody slope about a quarter mile above our backyard. “You sure you’re going to be all right?” He asks. “I really should get going.”
I stop walking, nodding unconvincingly. Dragging my shoe through bits of broken leaves, I suddenly feel displaced. My heart feels unsettled, like it’s not sure where it belongs.
“Go,” I tell him.
Obviously, making things right isn’t one of Leo’s priorities. What’s worse is that it shouldn’t be a surprise. Leo may as well be a ghost because he’s definitely the ultimate stranger.
Thirteen
Wild Open Spaces
“That boy could come up to the door and knock like a decent human being!” Liddy yells from the kitchen.
Ezra’s beat-up truck rumbles in the driveway, Ezra inside it, hitting his horn in annoying spurts, as if the first few beeps weren’t enough to announce his arrival. I grab my duffle bag and backpack and quickly run down the stairs, rushing past the kitchen toward the door.
In the hallway, Liddy stops me. Decked out in her fuzzy green bathrobe, she puts her hands on her hips and strikes an intimidating pose. “No way. You’re not going anywhere until I officially meet him.”
We lock eyes, two trains headed straight for each other. Liddy wins; I jump track first, sighing heavily as I drop my bags on the porch and run to Ezra’s truck to drag him back into the house. Ezra doesn’t argue, but he isn’t thrilled about it either. Still, he shuts the engine, climbs down, and shuffles to the porch.
At the steps, he tips his straw cowboy hat at Liddy and smiles. “Ma’am.”
“Liddy,” she replies, a little short because Ezra called her by a title, she, herself, reserves for octogenarians. She scans his face before she speaks again, but appropriately, not in horror and not for too long. “It’s good to finally meet you. Ruby has said a lot of kind things.”
Ezra coughs, covering his mouth, hiding what looks like a smile. Liddy is just being nice, but Ezra isn’t dense either. “Likewise.”
“Ruby tells me you live nearby.”
“Yep. About a mile east off Sawtooth Road. In the densest part of the forest—about thirty acres worth of dense actually.”
Liddy’s face turns cloudy, morphing from her normal unruffled expression to concern. “You live up there alone?”
He nods slowly. “Yes, ma’am. Liddy.”
“For how long?”
“For a couple of years. The land’s been in my family since before the Civil War. I grew up there.” His voice is light, but his tight-lipped smile is a tipoff; he isn’t particularly happy about being interrogated by an attractive but pushy woman in a fuzzy green bathrobe who has only heard bad things about him from most everyone else.
“How old are you, Ezra?”
“Twenty.”
Twenty. I wasn’t sure myself.
“You’re awfully young to live up there all alone.”
Ezra inhales and grins awkwardly. “I get along just fine. And I’m not alone. I’ve got the ghosts of Glorieta to keep me company. They’re almost like family. But a lot less judgmental.”
Liddy squints and takes a sip of her coffee, holding the mug to her lips for a moment longer than it takes to swallow. “Do your parents live in New Mexico?”
“My mother lives in Jemez. My father’s dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he answers evenly. “No one else is.”
Liddy flares her nostrils disagreeably and looks him up and down, taking in his frame while she searches for a psychological hole to peg him in. She isn’t used to being spoken to so acrimoniously by anyone but me. Best guess, he’s either earned her respect for holding his own while she questions him, or majorly blown it for being so condescending. With Liddy, there isn’t always a whole lot in-between.
“Um,” I break in, “Ezra, don’t you think we should get going?”
Liddy answers before Ezra can. “Are you camping at El Morro or somewhere else around Grants?”
“There’s a campsite at the monument. We’ll set up camp before we head out. We’ll be in, or near the park the whole time. Tomorrow we’ll drive into Grants before heading back to La Luna. I’ll make sure Ruby calls you.”
“Fine.” She kisses my cheek and relief floods through me. It wasn’t my intention to turn one little overnight trip with a friend into a battle. Liddy and I have enough on our plate between us already.
Ezra and I say our goodbyes, throw my stuff in his truck bed, and then head off down I-25 toward Grants. We don’t talk much at first; Ezra’s face is hard to read and at times he seems downright sullen.
“I’m really sorry, Ezra,” I tell him after we pass Santa Fe.
“For what?”
“Liddy.”
He smiles. “She was just doing her job.”
“That’s a gracious way to put it.”
“Still think you’ll make it through the night?” he asks.
“You mean with you?”
“I mean roughing it.”
“You think I can’t?”
Ezra smiles wickedly. “I have every confidence in you.”
“I may be from LA, but I know what I’m doing,” I assure him. “I’ll be fine.”
He sighs. “Why’d you come with me, Ruby? To piss Liddy off?”
Rather than answer, I stare at his profile for a good long time, willing to bet he knows that isn’t the reason. Willing to bet he knows that despite his face, he still has this charisma that draws me—an allure I still don’t understand.
On the radio, a woman wails on about how she stood by her husband while he hit the bottle, then her, and then left her for an RV park and a redheaded waitress with high-class hands. Ezra fiddles with the dial, turning up the song while he simultaneously pulls his hat down, as though covering his face to block out the shame of it all. Maybe trying to drown out my stare as well.
“What a load of crap,” Ezra mumbles.
“It’s why I hate country.”
He chuckles. “It’s why I love it. Just when I think my life couldn’t be worse, along comes the lady with the drug-addled, alcoholic, sex-addicted husband. It’s like watching reality TV—only slightly less annoying.”
“Misery loves company, right?”
Ezra twitches and turns to look at me. “What makes you think I’m miserable?”
“You act like it.”
“No, I don’t. You just assume I am.”
I shoot Ezra a sidelong stare, debating whether or not to argue. Maybe he isn’t. I do
n’t believe him. But it’s true I don’t know him very well.
We drive through Albuquerque without speaking, merging from I-25 onto I-40. Near Acoma, as the land turns from a sinuous golden brown to more rugged ochre, Ezra turns the radio off and sighs deeply, as though marshaling up the energy to talk to me again. I hold my hand out the window, resisting the wind, waving at eroded earth and the cornflower sky.
“You know, I followed a girl a lot like you out to college.”
My heart skips and my stomach tightens. I’ve wanted to know more about Ezra since Pecos, but I’ve never mustered the nerve to ask again.
“What do you mean, ‘a girl like me’?”
“Attractive. Smart. Mouthy.”
“Thanks, I guess.” I pull my legs up on the seat and turn toward him, resting my cheek against the seat rest. “What made you think of her?”
Ezra shrugs. “Caroline was a real … well, let’s just say she was high-maintenance. But she was gorgeous, so I did my best to ignore her tantrums.”
“You think I’m high-maintenance?”
“No. You’re beautiful.” Ezra turns and meets my eyes. “Honestly, Ruby, you’re surprisingly unaware for someone so beguiling. It’s hard to believe that you’re really as unassuming as you come off.”
Beguiling. That makes me blush fiercely.
“How’d you meet her?” I ask softly.
“She transferred to Pecos in eleventh grade, from Denver. Every boy on the football team had it for her. I know it’s hard to believe, but once upon a time, when I wanted something, or someone, I got it.”
“I’ve heard,” I mumble.
“Caroline wasn’t particularly nice, but she was sharp, and she looked good on my arm.”
“What happened?”
Ezra looks away, facing the mountain range lingering, on its peaks for so long I think he’s decided to stop talking. He takes his hat off and throws it on the mat at my feet, then runs a hand through his dark hair, pulling at the ends. “I’d planned to go to the UNM in Albuquerque. But she asked me to apply to Harvard with her instead.”
“And you got in.”
“Yes. I got in, and I followed her. Though I shouldn’t have.”
“Why?”
“I loved her. At least I thought I did.”
“You loved her?” I bite back my smile; he seems so serious. “What’s so bad about that?”
“She didn’t love me back. By the time I found the nerve to tell her how I felt, she was already in love with one of her professors. I’d been too busy lauding my successful conquest to notice.”
I rub Ezra’s knee. His voice is heavy with resignation, and I suddenly want to hug him. “Did you come home because you broke up or because …” In the air, I circle my face with a finger.
“Both. I couldn’t get over the idea that she broke up with me. Until then, girls came easy, they never left.”
“From what I hear, Ezra, you did a lot of leaving.”
He sets his jaw in a scowl and stares at the road. “You might call it poetic justice.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s true though, isn’t it? And it’s what you were thinking.” He grips the steering wheel with both hands, glancing over at me. “Until I fell in love with her, I never thought much about people beyond what they could do for me. Even after we broke up, I was more or less ticked she had the gall to leave when I still loved her. It never occurred to me to think about why she didn’t love me back—not until later.”
“After she left?”
“After this happened.” Ezra tips his chin at his reflection in the rearview mirror.
“What did happen?” I ask tentatively. “I mean, if you’re ready to tell me.”
His grip on the steering wheel is so tight his knuckles turn ashy. I look away, at mountains that give way to plains that give way to cascades of pockmarked lava, frozen in time. Off the side of the highway mounds of solidified black rock rise and fall in waves, transforming the landscape into a haunting memory of the once active El Malpais region, a chain of volcanoes stretching some twenty miles west of Grants out to El Morro.
“I’m not even sure I really loved her. Being with her made me feel valuable. I guess I made the mistake of believing that her being with me meant I was worthy. When we broke up, it confirmed all the things people whispered about me back in La Luna. I felt empty, and I kind of fell apart. And I blamed her for it. I wasn’t willing to look very deep, you know? But somewhere inside, I also badly wanted to know why I wasn’t good enough. I wanted to know what I did wrong. After she left, I literally got down on my knees and prayed for an answer.”
“Oh … oh no,” I whisper expectantly.
“The next week, I was in an accident. I never saw her again after that. And that was fine because I couldn’t bear her seeing me.” He sniffs, jerking his head slightly. “In some ways, I suppose I got what I asked for.”
Ezra is calm, but I realize I am crying. No matter how bad he was before, no one deserves that kind of punishment.
Ezra keeps his eyes on the road. His stonewall makes it easier to wipe away my tears and gather my faculties. After several minutes that hang between us like a wet towel, I breathe a long breath, expelling much of the tension I’ve been carrying around since he first invited me to go to Grants. Steadily it leaves my body, unraveling like a sweater until there’s nothing left but fine, loose threads.
“I’m so sorry,” I finally whisper. I don’t know what else to say. Words alone won’t convey how sad I am for him, just like words can’t express what it must have been like to lose everything—because really, from what I’ve gathered, Ezra’s face was his life.
Ezra coughs, clearing his throat. “I’m sure you are. You know, you’re maybe the only person I know who really understands what it means to be seduced by the surface of things. How utterly useless the surface of anything is.”
“Beauty’s a bitch.” I frown.
“Ruby, my guess is you don’t give beauty the credit it’s due.”
“No, I just don’t let myself get caught up in superficialities. Real beauty is so much more than shiny objects and first impressions.”
Ezra places a hand on my chin and gently nudges my face toward the passenger window. “Then look around.”
When I blink, squeezing out a new batch of tears, the land comes into focus. Everything looks bigger and crisper, brighter than it did just minutes ago. We pass a field of mustard flowers so yellow they’re blinding, so defined they stand out against the blue sky like cardboard cutouts pasted against a painted backdrop. The landscape flourishes. It has no agenda and no desire to impress me, and in being so unassuming, it does.
Ezra exhales. “People are ugly. I’m a prime example. But the land—there’s something so pure about it.”
“That’s because it’s inanimate.”
Ezra gives me a look I interpret as a warning.
“What I mean,” I quickly add, moving my hand toward the windshield, “is that it’s easy to trust what you see because trusting doesn’t require you to look past the surface.”
He shakes his head disbelievingly. “People see what they want to, Ruby. And most folks don’t see real beauty for what it’s worth when it’s right in front of them. Even when they do, they hoard it. Lord knows I’d keep it all to myself if I could.”
“Really? I feel compelled to share it. I mean, I’d probably stop noticing all of this after a while if I didn’t occasionally get to see it through someone else’s eyes.”
“That’s the other problem with beauty, it fades quickly.”
I watch his face, but he’s turned back to the road and won’t look at me. “I don’t think so, Ezra. It’s more about what you do with it. If you’re selfish with it, like everything else, you destroy its integrity. Without perspective, everything looks different after a while. Sharing is a good thing. Nothing can be all yours without a price.”
“I suppose that’s why my exterior finally matches who I am belo
w the surface.” He smiles a distant smile, but his voice is cynical. “I’ve always been a selfish jerk.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You’re very trusting.”
“That’s bad how?”
“It’s naïve.”
Ezra turns left off the highway onto a smaller road that leads through a field of wildflowers. Off the side of the road, a sign indicates we’ve reached El Morro. Ahead of us, rising above the valley, a massive sandstone bluff surrounded by sunlit pines and flowers meets the jewel-toned sky.
“I’d rather trust you until you give me a reason not to,” I say quietly, awed by my surroundings. “That’s not naïve. It’s what friends do.”
“Ruby, you don’t pay enough attention when you look at me.”
“I don’t care about your face, Ezra. Why don’t you get that? And I don’t think it, or you, are ugly. It’s the fundamental you, the you underneath all your bullshit, that stands out. I’d like that guy regardless.”
His eyes twinkle. “You like me?”
“Yeah, kinda.”
Ezra parks his truck in the empty parking lot near the ranger station. He walks around to my side and opens the door, offering to help me down. “Let’s go in and get a permit. We can set up camp afterward.”
I take his hand, holding on to it even after I climb down from the truck, and follow him into the station. We register, and a tall ranger with cornflower hair and the sweetest smile directs us toward the campsite, supplying us with maps and information about El Morro’s history. She speaks to me directly, barely meeting Ezra’s eyes. Her standoffishness makes me sad, and I wonder how often Ezra has to deal with clueless people.
At the ranger’s direction, Ezra parks his truck near campsite number seven. Though El Morro sits squarely in the middle of nowhere, which is primordial enough, the campsite doesn’t feel particularly primitive; we’re allowed to pull Ezra’s truck right up to the actual clearing.
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