At the bottom of the staircase, I literally bump into Torrance. We round the wall between the hall and the kitchen at the same time, colliding near the bottom step.
“Whoa. Morning.” He smiles and holds up a mug, standing barefoot in his jeans and a rumpled shirt. “I was just bringing this to Liddy.”
“I … jeez.” I close my eyes.
Torrance clears his throat. When I open my eyes, he smiles. “Ruby,” he says cautiously, “I hope this doesn’t make you uncomfortable.”
“You mean that you never went home last night?”
He stares, waiting for me to answer the question for myself. Then he shakes his head. “Liddy’s awake. Maybe you two should talk.”
“No. I’m just …” I look down at the stairs, then up at his handsome face. “I had a long night that sadly didn’t include a whole lot of sleep. I didn’t notice your truck last night. You just surprised me.”
“You sure?”
Seeing him all sleepy-eyed and rumpled on the steps throws me for a loop. I feel weird standing in front of him in my pajamas. Suddenly, I want to get dressed and get out as much as I want to appease my inner sloth.
“Yeah,” I nod. “I am. But will you do me a favor? Tell her I went for a hike?”
“Are we good?” he asks.
“Perfect.” And we are, for the most part. My real problem is Ezra; seeing Torrance just reminds me that love takes two and that I’m minus my second until Ezra and I talk.
I putter around the kitchen for a few minutes until I’m sure Torrance is gone, then quickly change out of my pajamas, paying little attention to my knotty hair or pale face. I don’t even brush my teeth, just grab my sweater, and backpack and run out the back door with my compass, Swiss Army knife, and a thermos of coffee. Strong coffee, I have to give Torrance that.
Crisp air zaps my skin but does nothing for my budding headache as I briskly make my way up the mountain. Closer to the plateau, I try to wipe Ezra from my thoughts. Walking out on me at Marta’s gives me a perfect out. Except I don’t want out. Despite everything, my heart is sure that the real Ezra isn’t the boy who left me alone at the party last night.
In the clearing, I pull tracing paper from my backpack and absently layer it over a ruin wall. My hand moves, rubbing charcoal over the wall’s grainy surface. I let my senses take over, drifting until the clearing starts to hum. Except this time the humming is crisper and more resonant, like voices, not static. I think I hear someone say, “Open it,” and jump, losing my charcoals to the ground.
For just a moment, the air is so thick it’s suffocating. Then something flickers near my side, like a candle petering out, and a figure darts between the trees to my right. I whip around, holding my breath. My skin tingles and I’m this close to hyperventilating.
“Seriously, Ruby,” I say out loud, reaching to pick up my charcoals. “Have you lost your freaking mind?”
“Up here,” a familiar voice answers, “I’d encourage you to keep an eye on it.”
“Leo!” I sputter, jumping about half a mile. “I hate it when you do that!”
Leo flashes a cocky smile.
“You almost gave me a freaking heart attack.”
“It’s a pleasure to see you too.” He chuckles.
Bits of flora stick to my everything. Fall has settled in, and the forest seems to be shedding. Shaky, I brush dried leaves from my knees, leaving my rubbings on the ground.
“How was your camping trip?” he asks casually.
Still breathless, I step back, putting a good few feet between us. “Not that it’s any of your business, but good.”
“Good?” He grins.
“It was great, Leo. Wonderful.” I shuffle my toe through a small pile of leaves and pine needles. “What do you care anyway?”
“Why are you always so touchy, Ruby?” He raises his dark eyebrows high on his forehead.
“Why are you so cocky?”
Leo sits down on the ground and pats the dirt next to him. “Don’t be like that. I just want to visit for a while.”
Reluctantly, I sit down across from him, dropping my chin on my knees while I pull my legs in, curling into a ball. Above the mountaintop, the sun seems to explode against the brilliant blue sky. Everything in the clearing glows orange in hues that set the plateau on fire. Leo follows my gaze to a patch of wild lavender growing like a weed against a crumbling ruin wall, its purple deep against the brown adobe.
“Is your background Pecos?” I finally blurt out. “Or Jemez?”
“Nope.”
Leo’s grin irritates me. “What then?”
He smirks but doesn’t answer.
“If this is how you get your girl,” I sniff, “I get why you’re always up here alone.”
“You’re obviously still attracted to me.” Leo looks straight ahead, examining the ruin like I bore him. “I don’t blame you.”
After a beat, he leans forward, swooping in to kiss me before I can stop him.
“Leo!” I shout, slouching away. “Are you completely mental?”
Avoiding Leo’s eyes, I grab my water bottle and rubbings and shove everything into my backpack. When I move to stand, he follows and grabs my arm. “You can pretend all you want, Ruby. But you can’t deny there’s something between us.”
His bulk looms over me, but I stand my ground. “Yeah, it’s called your ego.”
“No.” He rubs a finger against my inner elbow, sending an unwelcome spark down my spine. “It’s physical.”
“Are you for real?”
“Last I checked.” He smiles.
I wrench my arm from Leo’s hand. “You’re disgusting, you know that? Newsflash—I have standards. You should look the word up sometime.”
Leo closes his eyes, still broadcasting that infernal smirk. “‘Standard: an accepted example of something against which others are judged or measured; a moral principle of behavior.’” He puts his hands on his hips and opens his eyes. “Who’s your barometer?”
If I had something to chuck, I’d chuck it hard, aiming straight for his perfect face. Instead, I flip him the bird and run toward the middle of the ruin. A tiny part of me hopes Leo will follow so I can kick him in the balls, but when I look back, he’s gone.
I turn in circles, weaving a path through the clearing.
What the hell, Ruby?
The sky shimmers like a mirage, fading to a bruised kind of black and violet. Above me, a huge sapphire orb eclipses half the eastern skyline. Disoriented, I step back and trip over the boulder, flailing as my behind hits the ground.
My mother appears over me. A blur of almost holographic features, she moves her mouth but makes no sound. Holding my hand out, I reach for her. A couple of feet divide us, and as she extends her arm to bridge the gap, a large object falls from the sky. Rough and grainy, it looks like a rock, except its bulk slowly unfolds in the space between us, unfurling spindly limbs like a giant, mutant spider.
My mother’s soundless words hit me like a shockwave. Still sitting, I jump up. Her voice fills my head, and the rock-thing bursts into a million pieces of black confetti that whirl slowly like ash to the ground.
Go back! she says firmly. And be wary of the Watcher.
Her body flickers, rising slightly off the ground, vanishing, then pulsing to life. I desperately want to grab her and hold her down, to ask what she means, but something tugs hard on my arm. Pulling away from it, I fight while the forest fades, swallowing me up again in blinding light.
“Ruby!”
I sit bolt upright, gasping. Once again, Leo crouches over me. He looks almost terrified. Leveraging his outstretched hand, I stand and steady myself.
“Are you all right?” Leo asks, doing a good job of faking genuine worry.
Still disoriented, I shake my head slowly. “I was here in the forest, but not. I saw planets I swear don’t belong near Earth.” I reach out for his arm again, using it to catch my balance.
“That’s crazy,” he says. Except the way he looks at me
, it’s like he knows exactly what I’m talking about.
Suddenly scared of Leo, I whip away from him and run down the mountain, startling at the sound my own footfalls make as I step over dried twigs and leaves. Brushwood snaps at my legs and scratches my arms, and by the time I run into our backyard, my eyes are puffy, and my legs burn like I’ve run a marathon.
Breathless, I wipe a shirtsleeve quickly over my face and slip off my shoes near the back door, hoping to sneak inside without alerting anyone. Even when my eyes are dry, Liddy has this uncanny ability to tell when I’ve been crying.
The door swings open as I reach for the doorknob. “Ruby! You have perfect timing.” Liddy grabs my arm and swiftly maneuvers me past Torrance, who’s sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper.
“What’s up?” I ask, trying to sound indifferent.
She pulls me past the archway into the living room. Before I can protest, Ezra’s straw cowboy hat catches my attention, along with his dark eyes peering out from beneath it.
“I was just about to leave,” he tells the wall near the front door.
I touch my hair, which must be standing out in a million directions and pull bits of leaf off my sweater. “Then why don’t you?”
“Well, I’ll just leave you two. Hon,” Liddy whispers as she wipes dirt off my chin, “I’ll be in the kitchen.”
Liddy leaves the room, and Ezra clears his throat, ruminating before speaking. “Can we talk?”
My head is still screaming, and my first instinct is to throw a shoe at him, but I grab his hand and pull him outside to the front porch. “Okay. Talk.”
Ezra nods at Torrance’s truck. “That Torrance’s?”
I shrug, hoping he won’t dwell on it. He searches my face, and I imagine how terribly messy I look through his eyes.
“Is that why you’re crying?”
“I’m not.”
“Ruby,” he sighs.
“It has nothing to do with Torrance. I just … I was up at the ruin. Something happened. I saw something, Ezra.” I’m definitely not about to tell him about Leo, especially not after his altercation with Angel at Marta’s party last night.
He pulls a hair off my lip and frowns fiercely. “Saw what?”
“My mother.”
Ezra opens his mouth a little but then closes it, as if suddenly rethinking his response. “Are you okay?” he asks tentatively.
“Yeah. I’m just having a really bad morning.”
Ezra sighs and fidgets with his belt buckle. I watch his long fingers flick the silver edge, scraping at its intricate design. After a moment, he reaches out and hooks my chin. “I really don’t like you going up there.”
“I’m drawn to it,” I admit.
He pulls me close, breathing into my hair. “If something happened to you …” He trails off, pulling me against him even tighter. “Ruby, I’m sorry about last night. I shouldn’t have left you.”
“We shouldn’t have gone,” I whisper into his chest.
“You mean I shouldn’t have gone.”
I push away, forging space between our bodies so I can see him better. “No, Ezra, I mean we shouldn’t have gone. We’re together, aren’t we? We do things together. That’s how it works. At least, how it’s supposed to.”
“Well, look how we turned out last night.”
I wince and sit down on a porch step. The sun hangs in the eastern sky. My eyes burn, but I force myself to look at it anyway, turning back to Ezra afterward so nothing but his outline shows clearly, as though the sun erased the rest of him completely.
“Ez, you can be really charming when you want. I don’t think people would be so quick to judge if they saw that side of you. Your face shouldn’t define you. It does, because you let it.”
Ezra sits down on a step a couple of feet away, pursing his lips together. “You think people had a better opinion of me when my face was different?”
“I don’t know. Did they?”
“Except for you, no one’s ever seen past my face either way.” He stares at me, as though dumbfounded by my cluelessness. “People see what they want. This way at least I don’t have to live by anyone’s stupid rules, or conceptions, or conditions.”
“Are you really feeding me that I’m-a-lone-wolf-in-a-grim-world crap?”
Ezra’s grin catches me off guard. “I wouldn’t say I’m a wolf, Ruby.”
“Fine. A donkey then.”
I expect him to argue, not beam at me affectionately. “Look, I knew how things were going to play out last night—I told you. And I went anyway. Can’t you give me a little credit for that?”
“If you admit you’re not as jaded as you pretend.”
“You have zero idea what it’s like to be stared at all the time.” He exhales, resigned to a fate he obviously cares a lot more about than he lets on.
“Then tell me.”
Ezra shakes his head. He takes off his hat and tosses it on the stair next to him, letting it divide us. “Ruby, it wasn’t just me they were whispering about last night.”
Ezra’s skin near glows in the sunlight. His cheek looks soft and warm, and I reach out and touch it. “Don’t worry about me so much.”
He drops his face into his hands and holds it there, speaking through his fingers. “I do. Since the day you forced your way into my booth to avoid Angel.”
My throat constricts a little. I croak out, “Really?” then cover my mouth, mumbling into my hand. “Why?”
“Because I’m crazy about you.”
“You are?” I nearly squeak.
“Could you be more clueless?” Ezra tips his head toward the sun. “Just tell me what to do to make this right.”
I push the hat away and scoot to his side, winding my arm around his broad shoulders. His checkered cotton shirt is soft and warm against my skin, inviting every atom of my affection. “You’re already doing it.”
“I’m really sorry,” he says, searching my face.
“I’m sorry too. All I really want is for you to give us a chance.”
Ezra hooks my chin with a finger again, moving in closer. “My heart is yours. I want you entirely, Ruby, even though I know I’m undeserving.”
My own heart hammers out an uneven beat. Between that and my aching head, I barely hear him. “I don’t always get what you see in me either,” I say, pretending I’m not paralyzed, and breathless, and suddenly, unbelievably happy. “But I trust your judgment.”
He takes my hand and winds his fingers through mine. “I want us to be together. Despite how wrong we are.”
“It’s not wrong,” I whisper. “Just hard. There’s a big difference.”
Ezra stands up and pulls me close, wrapping his strong arms around my back near where my rear meets my spine, fitting my curves as though he’s the last missing part of a near-completed puzzle.
“Like a jigsaw puzzle,” he whispers into my hair.
I look up at him. “Did I say that out loud?”
He nuzzles my ear with his chin. “I don’t need to see your face to know what you’re thinking.”
In Ezra’s arms, I come alive. I stop thinking about Leo, and the ruin, and my mother. I stop worrying about whether I’m going crazy or maybe dying from some rare brain tumor. But with Ezra it isn’t just physical; the attraction is intuitive and elemental. Our minds, like our bodies, are united. He holds me, and it’s like I see the air crackle around us, sparkling in vibrant bursts of white and blue and yellow. He smells like sun and fresh air, and when he kisses me, he tastes like oranges. Right now, he could have a face like the Devil for all I care; our connection is absolute and intense, and I know he’s mine completely.
Fifteen
Four-Letter Words
A week before my birthday, Liddy gives me a letter from Mom. Mom asked Liddy to hold it until I turned eighteen, so Liddy put it away, then in the drama that followed Mom’s death, forgot about it. Until last night, when she finally unpacked the last of her boxes. From my bed, the letter glows in the morning sun. I�
��ve been staring at it, propped unopened on the ledge of my easel, for hours now, terrified of what’s inside.
Wrapped in a thick blanket, I get up and shuffle to the envelope, then flop back into bed, gripping the square tightly. Across the envelope’s crisp surface, the words: “To my darling Ruby” leap out at me in my mother’s blocky script. My hands shake, so I bite my nails, wondering what could possibly be so important she had to write it down.
After a few anxious minutes, I rip the envelope open—fast, the way you rip off a Band-Aid, hoping to be good and finished before you realize it’s off. The envelope holds a single sheet of paper, and I read it while I hold my breath.
Ruby, love, you’re finally eighteen. Can you believe it? Eighteen, and really more Liddy’s child than mine. Two peas in a pod you both are, and I couldn’t be more grateful. My guess is, I’m not there to celebrate with you, and knowing you, you’re mad. I don’t blame you, sweetheart, but I want you to know nothing you or Liddy did brought any of us to this moment. I’ve always loved you and always will. I regret nothing, least of all you and the joy you’ve made of my life.
If you’ll allow me, I’d like to leave you with something wise. So here it is. Don’t let your head be your only guide, and don’t let anyone convince you your instincts are wrong. Pay attention. Look past the obvious. Accept things beyond your control, but always fight fiercely for what’s yours. Don’t let anyone convince you that you don’t have enough strength. It’s that fight, in the end, that defines all you are and become. I want you to be happy, Ruby, and when you learn to trust yourself, you will be. You are already true. One day, you’ll be True of Heart.
Happy birthday.
Love, Mom
Through tears, I read the letter over and over. Mom must have known she was going to die. Cryptic as her words are, that much is evident. I read the letter again, and then one more time, letting my heart break just a little more as I go over every line.
Distraught, I lie back on my bed, staring at the tips of the pine trees out my window where they meet the sky. Mom’s words haunt me, because I don’t know what they mean, even though my gut tells me they’re important. No matter how I think about them, I can’t purge the feeling that something is off, and that suspicion follows me around the next few days, hanging over my head like the Hindenburg.
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