I forced the memory out of her mind, imagining nothing but air where Black Betty had been in the parking lot. I traced the line of memories back to the boys at Walmart, to the secret they had revealed about East River. The images slipped away in smears of light, like raindrops racing down a car window.
“Now, you’re . . . you won’t remember any of this, or any of us.”
“I won’t remember any of this . . .” she parroted, as though the thought had just occurred to her.
I let go of her neck, but my pain didn’t go away. Her eyes regained some of their focus. The pain didn’t go away. She turned sharply on her heel and started to make her way toward the deserted highway.
The pain didn’t go away.
No, it got worse. A trickle of sweat began at my temple and worked its way down the length of my spine. I was drenched. My hair clung to my face. My shirt was a second skin. I dropped into a crouch. If I was going to faint, it was better to stay close to the ground.
God, I don’t want to faint. Don’t faint. Do. Not. Faint. . . .
I heard Liam say something. His foot came into my line of sight, and I leaned away.
“Don’t—” I began. Don’t touch me. Not right now.
And it was strange, because the last thing I saw before I closed my eyes wasn’t the old asphalt, it wasn’t the sky, or even my reflection in Betty’s panels. It was a glimmering memory of my own. Of a few days before, when Liam had been in the driver’s seat, singing along to Derek and the Dominos’ “Layla” at the top of his lungs, so off-key that it had even Chubs laughing. Zu had been sitting right behind him, moving in time with the music, her entire body rocking out to the wailing electric guitar. And it had been so easy then, to laugh and pretend, even if just for a second, that we would be okay. That I belonged with them.
Because they hadn’t known—none of them had known, and now that they did, it was over. It was all over now, and I would never have that back.
I wished that I had gone for the panic button. I wished that Cate could come and take me away from them, back to the only people who would ever embrace me for the monster I was.
NINETEEN
WHEN I WAS ABOUT TO TURN TEN YEARS OLD, THE MOST SIGNIFICANT THING ABOUT THAT NUMBER WAS THAT IT WAS DOUBLE-DIGITS. It didn’t really feel much like a birthday, anyway. At dinner, I sat bookended by my parents at the table, moving peas around my plate, trying to ignore the fact that neither of them were speaking—to each other, or to me. Mom’s eyes were rimmed with red and glassy because of the argument they’d had a half hour before; she was still valiantly trying to gather up kids for a surprise birthday party for me, but Dad forced her to call and cancel. Said it wasn’t the kind of year to be celebrating, and, as the last kid alive on my block, it would be cruel of us to hang the birthday banner and tie up the usual cluster of balloons outside. I heard the whole thing from the top of the stairs.
I didn’t really care about the birthday either way. It wasn’t like I had anyone left I really wanted to invite. What was more important to me was the fact that, at ten, I was suddenly old—or rather, would be old soon. I’d start to look like the girls in the magazines, be forced to wear dresses and high heels and makeup—go to high school.
“In ten years from tomorrow, I’ll be twenty.” I don’t know why I said it out loud. It was just this profound realization, and it had to be shared.
The silence that followed was actually painful. Mom sat straight up and pressed her napkin to her mouth. For a moment I thought she might stand up and leave, but Dad’s hand came down to rest on top of hers, settling her like an anchor.
Dad finished chewing on his barbecued chicken before giving me a smile that quivered at the edges. He leaned down a ways so our identical green eyes met. “That’s right, Little Bee. And how old will you be ten years after that?”
“Thirty,” I said. “And you’ll be . . . fifty-two!”
He chuckled. “That’s right! Halfway to the—”
Grave, my mind whispered. Halfway to the grave. Dad realized his mistake before the word fully left his mouth, but it didn’t matter. All three of us knew what he meant.
Grave.
I knew what death was. I knew what happened after you died. At school, they brought in special visitors to talk to the kids that came back. The one assigned to our room, Miss Finch, gave her presentation two weeks before Christmas, wearing a bright pink turtleneck and glasses that covered half of her face. She wrote everything out on the whiteboard, in thick, capital letters. DEATH IS NOT SLEEPING. IT HAPPENS TO EVERYONE. IT COULD HAPPEN AT ANY TIME. YOU DO NOT COME BACK.
When people die, she explained, they stop breathing. They do not have to eat, they no longer speak, and they cannot think or miss us like we miss them. They do not, ever, ever wake up. She kept giving us more examples, like we were too stupid or little to understand—like the six of us left hadn’t sat there and watched Grace’s lights go out. Dead cats cannot purr, and dead dogs cannot play. Dead flowers—Miss Finch pointed to the bundle of dried flowers on my teacher’s desk—do not grow or bloom anymore. Hours of this. Hours of being asked, Do you understand? But for all of her answers, she never got around to the one question I had wanted to ask.
“What does it feel like?”
Dad looked up sharply. “What does what feel like?”
I looked down at my plate. “To die. Do you feel it? I know that it’s not the same for everyone, and that you stop breathing and your heart stops beating, but what does that feel like?”
“Ruby!” I could hear the horror in Mom’s voice.
“It’s okay if it hurts,” I said, “but are you still in your body after things stop working? Do you know that you’ve died?”
“Ruby!”
Dad’s bushy eyebrows drew together as his shoulders slumped. “Well . . .”
“Don’t you dare,” Mom said, using her free hand to try to pry his big one off her other trembling fingers. “Jacob, don’t you dare—”
I kept my hands clenched together under the table, trying not to stare at Mom’s face as it paled from a deep red to a stark white.
“No one . . .” Dad began. “No one knows, sweetheart. I can’t give you an answer. Everyone finds out when it’s their time. I guess it probably depends—”
“Stop it!” Mom said, slapping her other hand down on the table. Our plates jumped in time with her palm. “Ruby, go to your room!”
“Calm down,” Dad told her in a stern voice. “This is important to talk about.”
“It is not! It absolutely is not! How dare you? First you cancel the party, and when I told you—” She strained against his grip. I watched, my lips parting, as she picked up her water glass and threw it at his head. In ducking, he lifted his hand from the table, just enough for her to wrench away and stand. Her chair clattered to the ground a second after the glass shattered against the wall behind Dad’s head.
I screamed—I didn’t mean to, but it slipped out. Mom came around to my side of the table and grabbed me by the elbow, hauling me up, nearly taking the tablecloth with me.
“Cut it out,” I heard Dad say. “Stop! We have to talk to her about it! The doctors said we needed to prepare her!”