Ruby by Ann Hood

Author:Ann Hood [Hood, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-6686-9
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-12-18T16:41:00+00:00

chapter six

Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Will You Be Mine?

AT THE KITCHEN TABLE, Ruby and Ben huddled together on one chair, Ruby half on Ben’s lap and half off, clinging awkwardly to the edge of the chair. They were the type of teenagers who gave each other hickeys, French-kissed at their lockers, made out until their chins and mouths grew red and raw; Olivia saw this about them right away. Even now, dressed but tousled, they nuzzled and petted one another, stroked and rubbed enough to embarrass Olivia. Rather than look at them—and they sat right in her line of vision, right across the table from her—she looked at a place on the wall beyond them where one strip of wallpaper met another, making the faded teapot pattern look fractured.

“See?” Ruby was saying. “He’s real. You thought I made him up, didn’t you?”

“Well,” Olivia said, “he certainly is real.”

Ben had pulled his long hair into a ponytail held in place with a piece of rawhide. He had a beautiful face, good strong cheekbones and a fine jaw, the kind of eyes that reflect the color of the sky or the sea. He was, Olivia knew, a boy a young girl would fall in love with too easily.

He grinned at Olivia, the slow, lazy grin of a charmer. A charmer who’s stoned, Olivia added, because the strong smell of pot clung to him, filled the air around him. Olivia thought of Pig-Pen from the Snoopy comic strip, who traveled in a cloud of dirt.

Ruby looked at Olivia, suddenly all wide-eyed. “You’re not mad, are you?” she said. “That Ben’s here?”

Olivia thought that indeed she was mad, as in crazy. Mad because her life was this unpredictable, uncontrollable thing.

“Because I never said I wouldn’t see Ben. I mean,” Ruby said, “I love him.”

When she said this, her eyes actually teared. Only teenaged girls loved that way; Olivia remembered it, remembered sitting at her bedroom window waiting for the boy up the street to drive by in his white VW bug. Just a glimpse of him could make her dizzy. She used to stay in her room and play Crosby, Stills & Nash records until her mother begged her to turn them off. She remembered all of it and she still thought Ruby could turn on those tears without any problem. A real actress, this kid. A real winner.

“You lied about going to the movies. He smoked pot in my house. And you had sex in my bed. That’s what I’m angry about,” Olivia said.

Each point forced her voice a bit louder, until she was practically shouting. The kid was such a liar. How could she ever have believed anything Ruby told her?

Ruby grinned at her, a big goofy grin, as if she had access to some secret that Olivia couldn’t begin to understand. And she was right, in a strange way. Here she was with her ponytailed boyfriend, in love.

“Maybe you should just go,” Olivia said, her voice low again, defeated.

“Don’t make her go,” Ben said.

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