Between the kids lingering in the hall giving me sideways glances, and my pounding head, Racine’s minute seems like forever. I count to 256 before she reappears, dragging Ashley behind her.
“Tell her!” Racine barks.
Ashley stares at her toes, clicking them nervously against the linoleum floor.
“Now!” Racine shoves Ashley forward, prompting her to look up at me.
“I overheard you guys talking about your mom’s letter in the bathroom the other day,” Ashley blurts out. “Everyone is saying you’re so bitchy lately because of Ezra, and I thought if they knew, they’d lay off.”
Hearing her, I’m not sure whether to laugh or punch her.
“She only wanted to make things better,” Racine adds.
“I’m really sorry, Ruby,” Ashley pleads. “For real.”
Ashley looks so stricken I feel bad for her, big mouth and all. “I wish you hadn’t.”
“I’m totally sorry,” she says again. “I’ll do anything to make it up to you.”
My chest feels tight for so many reasons. It isn’t fair to blame it all on Ashley. And I really don’t want to drag it out. “Thanks for sticking up for me, I guess.”
Ashley beams. “Really?”
“Yeah, but you can carry my books for the rest of the day.” Before she can answer, I dump my backpack over her shoulder, doing my best to pretend I’m done with it.
Ashley fist bumps my arm. “Props,” she smiles sweetly. “I’m down with whatever.”
Ashley and Racine flank me protectively as we walk to fifth period. Knowing they have my back makes the day slightly more bearable but walking down the hall is a little like parting the Red Sea. People stand to the side as we pass, clearing a ribbon of space in the otherwise crowded corridor.
By the end of fifth period, I just want to leave. Between the rumor mill and my fight with Ezra, my stomach feels queasy. I must look queasy too because when the bell rings, Racine insists that I ditch last period.
“I’ll go with you,” she says. “We can stuff our faces with malts and fries.”
“No. It’s okay, Ray. I’d rather be alone.”
Racine agrees to cover for me and make up a story in case anyone asks why I missed sixth period. “Go home and eat a pint of ice cream or something,” she says as she hugs me.
Walking slowly, it takes me ten minutes just to get from Pecos High to Frontage Road. I’m tired, physically, and emotionally, but alone is exactly what I don’t want to be. I want to call Ezra. He may owe me an explanation, but I can probably forgive his morose mood yesterday in exchange for a few reassuring words. Resigned, I stop under a big oak tree and make myself call him.
“What?” Ezra snips when he answers the phone.
“What yourself,” I snip back, surprised by his abrupt greeting. “You didn’t call me.”
“You didn’t call me either.”
“I’ve been in school all day.”
“I didn’t call you because you didn’t call me.”
“You’re the one who walked out. That’s stupid.” It’s so stupid, I giggle.
He sighs. “Neither of us are very good at this, are we?”
“No.”
“And?”
“And …” my voice cracks. “I left early. I’m having a really bad day, Ezra.”
“Do you want me to come get you?”
“Will you? I’ll meet you down by the park on the river, if that’s okay.”
His voice softens. “All right, give me ten minutes.”
I run to Pecos Park, plunking down on a hill near the Pecos River when I get there. Moody as I am, my heart still jumps when I finally hear Ezra call my name. His voice lifts my spirits, and I fling myself at him as soon as he’s within spitting distance.
“Whoa.” He catches me in his arms, lifting me off the ground. “Are you trying to kill me?”
“I’m happy to see you.”
Ezra sets me down and holds me at arm’s length, staring into my eyes. Silently, he pulls me onto the grass and sprawls out, resting back on his elbows before speaking. “I’m really sorry about yesterday, Ruby. Can we agree that we’re both head cases and be done with it?” he asks, dazzling me with a hopeful smile.
“If you tell me one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Why you took off so abruptly.”
Ezra’s mouth twitches. “I’m good at pushing people away—force of habit.” He looks at me sadly, but with an enormous amount of affection in his eyes. “I didn’t want to leave, Ruby. I was afraid of what’d happen if I stayed. I don’t want to mess this up.”
“I don’t mean to argue, but leaving made things better how?”
“It just did.” He frowns again, then smiles.
“I wish you’d at least try to explain. I mean, I’m here, and I’m listening.”
“You won’t understand.”
I drop my head on his shoulder. “Maybe, maybe not. I don’t understand you half the time as it is. But I still love you.”
Ezra turns and looks at me. On the surface, at least, he doesn’t seem angry or happy, and his complete lack of emotion takes me by surprise.
“How can you?”
“Why do you always question everything I tell you?” I frown at him.
“Ruby, I think my heart just stopped.”
I fill my lungs, holding my breath until they feel like bursting. “You were an ass yesterday. But I haven’t been so great the last few days either. I’m not always good at admitting how I feel, especially lately. But I do love you, Ezra. Because you’re you.”
Ezra grasps my arm, pulling me closer. He kisses me gently, weaving his hands through my hair. After a few moments, he pulls back without letting me go, putting inches between our faces. “Say it again?”
Ezra’s eyes are darker than usual, but they’re also soft, and vulnerable, and completely intent on breaking my heart. “Later.” I smirk. “After you earn it.”
“You drive a hard bargain.”
“Yeah—because I’m not a patsy.”
Ezra laughs. “Amen to that.”
I blush, hiding my face in his scratchy shirt. “Will you take me home now?”
He looks at the ground, letting a veil of hair fall into his eyes.
“I know what you’re thinking, and I promise I won’t jump you again.”
Ezra runs a finger under my chin. “Ruby, I’d live inside you if I could. But sex isn’t something you can take back.”
“I’m not a child, Ezra. And it’s important to me, too, you know.”
“There’s just … things I need to get straight first.”
“Things?”
“Things,” he says resolutely.
“I hate it when you’re cryptic.” When he’s cagey, and he wears cagey like a second skin, I second-guess everything. I analyze every word out of my own mouth and worry about what I should and shouldn’t tell him.
“Maybe I’m just nervous.” He smiles.
I raise my eyebrows suspiciously. “Ezra Lucero nervous? Right.”
“I know you girls think we’re all about sex, Ruby, but you’re not the only ones who choke when it comes to getting close.” He looks flustered, which makes me giggle.
“So, you all, like, just want to be held?”
“You know, that’s exactly why we don’t share this stuff in the first place.” Ezra pushes me flat on my back in the grass. He leans over my body. “You’re gorgeous. You could wear rags and roll in the dirt, and you’d still be the hottest girl in New Mexico. It’s not like it’s easy for me to keep my distance.”
“Thanks,” I smile, pretending I’m not thrilled he thinks so.
He traces my lip with a rough thumb. “Why’d you leave school early?”
“Ashley spilled the beans about Mom’s letter. The entire school, and I mean everyone, had me in their crosshairs.”
“Give it a day. I promise, tomorrow they’ll be on to someone else.”
Ezra pulls me up off the grass and walks me to h
is truck. On the drive home, he clutches my hand like it’s his lifeline, squeezing so hard it almost hurts, so hard our fingers feel indivisible.
“Will you come in?” I ask shyly when he stops the truck in front of my house.
Nervous tension bounces between us. I feel it physically, but I also know that whatever happens, until it happens, it’ll have to be his call. Like the tide, I’ll ebb and flow. Right now, I just really want to be near him.
Ezra agrees to come inside. He walks me upstairs and lies with me on my bed. His body has this tremendous pull, but I do my best to keep my hands off him. Instead, I vent about Ashley’s “helpful” big mouth.
“Why is it so hard for you to let people in?” he finally asks.
“It’s not. I just don’t want to be known as the weird girl whose crazy mother committed suicide.”
“Then don’t be the weird girl whose crazy mother committed suicide.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“It’s exactly that easy. What other people think doesn’t matter.”
I mumble into his shirt. “Why are you so perfect?”
Ezra wraps his arms around me, pulling me snugly against his chest. “I’m obviously not.”
I run my hand up his arm, letting it rest on his shoulder. His shirt is soft, like worn cotton, and I pull at it, rubbing the fabric between my fingers. “Ezra, yesterday when I tried to take your shirt off, why’d you stop me? Because of your scars?”
He shrugs against my pillow. “Insecure, I guess.”
“What’s the tattoo on your arm? Can I see it?”
After a pause, Ezra sighs and slowly unbuttons his shirt, sliding it down off his left shoulder. Colorful ink graces his skin. It’s beautiful, and intricate, and a lot like Leo’s. “It’s a totem, right?” I reach out to touch it, but Ezra pushes my hand away. “Your Pecos clan?”
He twists his head to look at me, startled by the question. “How do you know that?”
“I looked it up at the library,” I answer shyly, a little embarrassed to admit I’ve been so nosey. “I wanted to know more about you after that night at El Morro.”
He lets his head drop back against the pillow. “Surprise, surprise.”
“Are you mad?”
“No, should I be?”
“For snooping?”
He chuckles. “I’m used to that about you, Ruby.”
“It looks a lot like another tattoo I’ve seen. Like Leo’s. I asked you about him, remember? The guy I keep running into near the ruin.”
“Yeah?” He pulls his shirt up over his shoulder and quickly buttons it. His expression is hard to read. But his voice is gruff and laced with just the tiniest amount of jealousy. He may be angry, and because I can’t tell, I’m not sure whether or not to keep going.
“I don’t like you going up to the ruin, Ruby.”
“I got that the first dozen times you told me to be careful.”
“I mean it.” He cups a hand over my cheek, stroking my face. “I like it even less knowing about this Leo guy. Do me a favor. Don’t go up there anymore.”
“At all?”
“Yes.”
I sit up all the way, staring down at him. “But I like sketching the ruin.”
“You also like tripping and hitting your head, or fainting, or whatever. Just humor me.”
I hate being told what to do. But enough of me is still sufficiently unnerved by what happened the last time, that for the time being at least, he doesn’t have to twist my arm.
“What if I can get Racine or Angel to hike with me?” I ask cautiously.
“How am I supposed to answer that?” He cocks his head, looking exasperated. “Even if I liked Angel, my answer would still be no.”
“Why don’t you like him?”
Ezra clasps his hands behind his head, clunking back against a pillow. “Trust me when I say it’s mutual.”
“I got that. And I know why he doesn’t like you. I just don’t understand why you don’t like him. Does it have to do with playing football together?”
“Actually, the only time we got along was on the field.”
“Really?”
A lone ray of sunshine crosses my bed, catching his eyes, turning them golden violet. “He was good.” Ezra shrugs.
“Wait, what?”
“He played fair. And he made sure the rest of the team did too.”
I sit up, feigning shock. “Now you’re going to tell me you have a wife and two children.”
“I’m serious.”
“Seriously?” I gape.
Ezra makes something like an oh-my-god-are-you-really-my-girlfriend? face. “You know, you’re not making this easy.” He flexes his fingers between mine, locking and unlocking each one rhythmically. “Angel trusts himself. I respect that.”
“You say that like you don’t trust yourself.”
He pulls a hand across his face, leaving it over his mouth as if stopping himself from disagreeing. “I’ve never had faith in much beyond my reflection. I partly hate Angel for being what I’m not.”
“You’re so much more than your reflection, Ezra.”
Ezra looks up at the woody knots in my ceiling, absently working his jaw. “Yeah, but Angel would never purposely hurt you.”
“Neither would you.”
“I’d rather die. But, at some point, I will.”
Ezra hooks a finger under my chin. His expression is sad but resolute, and just thinking he may be right, turns my stomach. “Then love me until then and let me be the judge when it happens.”
“I do love you, Ruby,” he says quietly. “That’s how I know it’s going to happen.”
Sixteen
The Storm That Blew My Heart Away
I fix Ezra’s avowal to my heart like a patch, ignoring the gloomier parts of his declaration. For a couple of days, those three words, “I love you,” bridge the space in my chest that over the last year grew into a chasm. And because of it, on my birthday, I manage a whole morning of happy. But by late afternoon, as I wait for Ezra to come over for my Birthday-slash-Halloween dinner, I’m back to feeling sulky.
For one thing, the house is too tidy. Liddy spent the morning cleaning, and it’s so immaculate now I want to throw up. For another, it smells too perfect, like cinnamon and roasting turkey. The worst thing, though, is that in two more hours Torrance, Angel, and Ezra will all be under one roof together.
Pacing the living room, I mess up a pile of magazines, and the boots lining the hallway wall, and the painting of Apache Canyon I painted that Liddy insisted we hang in the kitchen. I pull a log from the perfect stack beside the kiva fireplace, watching the rest roll into a flat pile. Shuffling and mumbling under my breath, I drive myself crazy until Liddy finally pokes her head into the living room and yells at me.
Disembodied by the wall, she shouts, “What the hell are you doing?”
“Rearranging.”
“Ruby!” she yells. “Get out of my hair for a while.”
“Fine,” I sniff. “You’ve been like Martha Stewart on crack all day. I’m going for a hike.”
“Just be back by five-thirty,” she warns. “And I mean five-thirty, understand?”
Liddy doesn’t have to persuade me. I grab my headphones and a jacket and head straight for the path behind the house, planning to head toward Apache Canyon.
As I hike, the stark contrast between my music and the quiet forest bothers me. Even with my headphones blaring, the eerie stillness is like a heavy wool blanket weighing me down. All around me, the earth gives off static that clings to my skin, as if the land itself suddenly discharged all its energy. It’s unnerving, especially today.
On the plateau, my senses go haywire. The air smells sharp, like burning pine, and the earth pulls at my limbs like a magnet. Spooked, I sprint the last half mile, wondering as I run how I ended up near the clearing instead of Apache Canyon. By the time I reach the ruin, my heart is thumping like a drum line. Lightning flashes in the distance in time with the thunderclou
ds heading north toward La Luna. My head prickles. It feels as if every molecule in the clearing is supercharged, and as I step toward the center of the ruin, my body is suddenly, inexplicably weightless.
My eyelids flutter and the forest shatters in a white-hot flash that erases everything on the mountain. For a few terrifying moments, I’m caught in-between under what feels like the heavy weight of inertia, completely blindsided. Then the surge fades and a radiant sheath of violet-blue night sky lights the forest. Soft blue hues brush the ruin, casting parallel shadows over the rocky ground. Cricket songs fill the air, and the trees rustle crisply, caught in a wind current.
Disoriented, I suck in pockets of air. The forest smells scorched, and when I look up, my eyes fall on a sapphire orb above the earth in an arc with four others, dipping beneath the horizon. I’m still on the mountain, but it isn’t my mountain. It’s more like my mountain the way Dali may have painted it after a night of heavy boozing.
When my eyes finally adjust, they land on my mother. She stands like a statue near a ruin wall, wearing the same yellow dress we buried her in.
Ruby. Her butterscotch voice echoes inside my head. You shouldn’t be here.
Overhead, an enormous magenta comet shoots across the sky, expelling hundreds of green sparks into the atmosphere. They leave behind tiny fleeting rips in the night, like peepholes to other universes.
“Where am I?”
So many names …
“Am I … in Heaven?”
Her soundless laugh tickles my cheeks. No, love.
“Did I faint again?” I touch the back of my scalp, searching for a lump.
No.
“Am I dead?” I squawk.
You’re alive, Ruby.
The air crackles as her body flickers, igniting a tiny shower of sparkles. I jump back and stare at her wide-eyed. “You’re not real.”
She points to her chest. I’m still in your heart.
Around me, the sky blazes a bright orange, swathing the pines in a sea of fire. For a moment, I can’t see. Then she’s there again, only this time as more of a light. Her body rises slightly off the ground, fading then pulsing to life. Everything around me, including me, suddenly levitates off the ground. My head spins, and I desperately reach out for her.
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