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348 pages, Hardcover
First published June 14, 2011
He looked down and wiped more sawdust on his pants. Then he looked up into my eyes.
”Do you make her breakfast in the morning?” I asked.
“Some mornings.”
“And iced coffee the way she likes it?”
“Yeah, sure. Sometimes.”
“Do you answer the phone when it rings so she doesn’t have to? Do you make her popcorn on Wednesdays? Do you do her laundry and hang out her dresses to dry?”
“At least there’s that,” Ruby said. “As for you, Chlo, we’ll talk later, after drives you home. Your curfew is midnight. I’ve never believed in curfews for myself-like I would’ve listened if our mother gave me one.” She laughed, sharply, and I held the phone away from my ear as she did. “But,” she went on, and I pulled the phone back, “I’ve decided I now believe in curfews for you. Midnight.” And at that she cut the line.
And then
”Look at the time, Chlo.”
I glanced at my cell phone to see that the display read 12:02.
“It’s midnight,” I told her.
“No,” she said, “it’s after midnight. It’s twelve-oh-two.”
She changed the subject. “Chloe, you should have told me boys were going to be there. You never said anything about any boys being there.”
“But I didn’t know.” I was utterly confused at how she was acting-like she was tallying up all the things I’d done wrong, and I’d only gone out without her this one night, and it had been her idea to send me. Was she being a parent now? What would she do next, ground me?
”The talk, the one we didn’t have last night. There are things you can and can’t do, and we need to talk about them.” She counted on her fingers, repeating all the things she’d already told me. The phone, I shouldn’t answer it. I shouldn’t leave town, I shouldn’t eat raisins in front of her (this was new, but I should know that raisins sickened her, and who’s to say they don’t grow back into grapes once they’re swallowed?), I shouldn’t go out to the reservoir, she didn’t want me smoking even if she sometimes did, no drugs and no drinking, obviously, and she didn’t think to highly of Owen and if I wanted to like a boy I should make an effort to find another.
I shook my head; she was being silly now.
“I want you to cut this out today,” she said. “That nobody with the bad hair… You don’t like him anymore.”
“I don’t?”
“You don’t. I won’t let you.”
She was acting like she could forbid me from having an emotion. She could shove a hand down my throat and wiggle her fingers as far as they’d go, plucking out stuff she didn’t want in there, like she did when we got up the courage to clean out last season’s mouldy takeout containers from the fridge. She’d do it fast, and didn’t even hold her nose.
“Good,” she said.
“She smelled of deep, dark things and untold secrets and all of what she was keeping from me.”
“In reality I was a pencil drawing of a photocopy of a Polaroid of my sister—you could see the resemblance in a certain light if you were seeking it out because I told you first if you were being nice.”
“I could see her smile. I wished I hadn’t because it was the kind of smile she never gave to me. It was a smile for a boy who wanted to know her and never would. A smile for a girl who wanted to be like her and never could be. A smile for a perfect stranger.”
The water spread out all around me, familiar and warm. As I swam I didn’t keep my eyes open; I knew the way. And then I felt it, all at once, how as I darted forward the water turned cold, seeming at least ten degrees cooler than before, and I knew I’d gotten close to where Ruby always said we’d find the center of Olive. Its heart, she used to say, was in the middle of the reservoir, at its deepest, bottommost point.