Ruby Unscripted

by Cindy Martinusen-Coloma

  “Ruby!” he calls again. He’s getting sicker, and it’s kind of freaking me out. London and Anthony are nowhere to be seen.

  At least a half hour passes before Brett is finally able to get up. I halfway carry him to a lounge chair. Blair walks up in her bikini with a drink in her hand.

  “Need some help?”

  “No, I think he’ll be okay. Have you seen London?”

  “I think she’s busy right now,” Blair says with a slight smile.

  “Okay,” I say, wondering what I do until she’s not busy.

  “This is for you,” Blair says, holding the drink out to me.

  “No thanks.”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “I’m the designated driver,” I lie, adding to the others I’ve been telling lately.

  “Drink it.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re at a party, so have a drink.”

  The male model from the hot tub comes over. “Who’s this?”

  “This is Ruby,” Blair says dramatically. “Ruby, this is Jason.”

  “I didn’t know Blair had any girlfriends.”

  Blair gives him a smirk. “Ruby and I were about to have a drink together. Why don’t you get yourself one, and one for me? This is hers.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m not drinking with you,” I say as the guy leaves. “What’s the big deal if I drink or don’t?”

  “That’s what I was wondering,” Blair says.

  The guy comes right back with two glasses, and he and Blair sit down. She motions for me to sit as well.

  I remain standing, but the drink is set on the table in front of me.

  “You should tell Jason about yourself, Ruby.”

  I glance around. No help in sight. Brett is passed out on the chair. London is still missing in action.

  “Let’s have a toast to Ruby,” Blair says and raises her glass.

  “To Ruby,” Jason says, reaching to clink my glass with his. “Come on, girl.” His voice is silky smooth.

  And so I pick up the glass and drink it. It stings down my throat and feels hot in my stomach.

  Blair has a strange expression on her face—something of evil triumph, but with something else behind it. “Let’s get another round.”

  And I feel the defeat all through me. If I’d chosen to have a drink myself, that would be one thing. But to be forced into it, to cave in to Blair and see the look of satisfaction on her face is more than I can take.

  “I’m leaving. Thanks for the drink,” I say as casually as possible.

  But inside the house, I can’t find my purse and jacket. Someone tells me that they were all moved into a bedroom, and so I go searching down the hall.

  “Can I get you another drink?” someone says, coming up behind me.

  It’s Jason, still in his wet shorts with no shirt. I can’t even look at him, he makes me so nervous.

  “No, I’m fine.” I look around him to see if Blair is following. “I’m just looking for my purse and then I’m leaving.”

  “I’ll help you. Probably in one of the bedrooms.” He walks by me, giving me a coy look as he passes close. He opens the first door just a crack and motions me over. “Look at this.”

  “What?” I ask and look inside. It’s dark, so I can’t see anything at first. Jason comes up behind me, his body only inches from mine, and then I see the couple on the bed. I push back quickly and away from him, which makes him laugh.

  “That was quite a sight,” he says with a wide grin. “Maybe we’d better knock next time. Or maybe not.”

  He comes closer, walking with even and steady steps, staring into my eyes. “You intrigue me, Ruby.”

  “Why?” I say, taking a few steps back.

  “I don’t know. There’s something about you. Your wide-eyed innocence, or is it naiveté? I’m not sure, but it’s so attractive. You aren’t jaded or fake.”

  He’s close now, and I feel like one of those mice caught by the mesmerizing gaze of a cobra. My feet won’t move, my voice won’t work. Finally I say, “Where’s Blair?”

  “She sent me to check on you. She hates you, you know.”

  “That’s pretty clear.”

  “She hates everyone. Even me.” Jason laughs at that.

  My heels touch the wall. I didn’t realize I’d been slowly backing up.

  “I can give you a ride home.”

  “It’s okay. I’d better find my purse.” I turn to move past him, but he takes hold of my arms.

  “You’re such an adorable girl,” he says, and then kisses me.

  I pull away with the taste of his soft lips and a hint of sweet alcohol on my lips. God, help me.

  And then I’m out the front door with Jason calling behind me. I run down the driveway, and when I reach the street, I start walking and walking. My feet ache not long after I get beyond the line of cars. The road slants downward, and my heels are slippery on the damp road, but still I walk. It’s not for a long time that I realize my purse, cell phone, and jacket are still at the house. There’s no going back now.

  The residential neighborhood drops down into a commercial area of shops and restaurants, but they’re all closed. Then, like going around a corner, the night turns colder. The sky shows nothing but darkness. The fog must be blotting out the stars.

  A few cars pass, one slowing and making my heart beat so fast that I can hardly hear anything. I want to take off my shoes and run, but the car accelerates and drives away. If only I would hear London’s voice calling from the car, and I wouldn’t be alone. I can’t believe she left me there on my own.

  Finally I see a phone booth by the dull glow of a far-off streetlight. It makes me walk faster despite the pain in my feet. But when I get there, there’s only a dangling wire. Fear and loneliness sweep over me. Should I try finding my way back? Should I hide somewhere till morning?

  Shivers course through me as I walk again. I can’t get the shivering to stop. Then I see an all-night gas station, lights blazing ahead of me like the beacon of a lighthouse for a lost ship.

  This pay phone works, but it takes a few minutes to figure out how to call collect. Then I pray Mom answers the phone.

  She has her fake awake voice. “Ruby?”

  I know she hates late-night calls.

  “Ruby, where are you? Why are you calling collect?”

  “I’m at a pay phone.”

  “A pay phone where?” The faux calm has left her voice.

  “I don’t know for sure. There’s a gas station here. I’m outside of it.”

  I hear Austin’s mumbled questions in the background.

  “You’re supposed to be staying the night at London’s. Are you near her house? Where is she?”

  “She’s not here.” I don’t even want to explain this.

  A creepy guy walks into the gas station, staring at me all the way in.

  “Mom, just come get me.”

  “We need to figure out where you are. Is there a phone number there?”

  “Why?”

  “Austin says we can call from the cell phone and keep you on the line while we drive to find you.”

  “There’s no number. I can ask inside the gas station.”

  “No, just wait. Do you see a street sign?”

  “Yeah. First and Corte Madera. And the gas station is called the Pit Stop.”

  “Okay, just stay right there. Maybe you should go inside. Austin will use his GPS to find you and we’ll be right there.”

  “Okay.”

  It’s probably only fifteen minutes, but it feels like an hour before I see their headlights approach. I get in the backseat almost before they stop the car.

  “Can we talk about this tomorrow?” I say before Mom can dive into her interrogation.

  “Are you okay?” she asks in a worried tone.

  “Yeah.” I slide off my shoes and feel immediate pain and relief.

  “Have you been drinking?”

  I want to explain but instead just say, “Yeah,
sort of.”

  Silence. Which can actually be worse than an immediate response. An eruption may be brewing.

  “Mom, can you ground me or yell at me in the morning? I just want to go home.”

  She starts to respond, but Austin puts a hand on her arm. She’s silent a moment, then says, “Okay.”

  Closing my eyes, I want to sleep right here as the heater slowly touches the cold that has settled deep in my bones.

  We get home and I go straight to my room after thanking Mom and Austin for picking me up. A few minutes later I hear the bathwater running, and Mom peeks into my room.

  “That’s for you if you want it.”

  I realize that I’m still shivering. “Yeah, thanks, Mom.”

  “We’ll need to talk about this.”

  “I know.”

  “But for tonight, I’m just glad you’re safe and at home.”

  I nod. I don’t even know what to say.

  chapter eighteen

  I stay in bed till late morning. Mom brings her three-page letter into my room along with breakfast and my jacket and purse, which London dropped by. I was hiding under the covers when she arrived, not ready to face the day, not ready to tell one of my new friends how angry I am at her.

  Mom must have spent hours typing up her letter that lists and explains my punishment. I act like it’s harsh with my dejected look, but it’s way less than I expected.

  The letter says that because I called and left the party, because I was honest about drinking, and because it was a terrible experience for me, my punishment isn’t very severe.

  But because I lied, or sort of lied by implication—which is still a lie, Mom says—I must have some consequences.

  For one week:

  —No cell phone

  —No Internet except for school use

  —No friends over

  —Limited telephone

  —Can go to film group

  —Can go to church youth group outings

  —Must go to school and attend family events

  “Wait a minute.” As I awaken more, it suddenly sinks in. “A whole week without my cell phone or going online? How will I call you from school and work?”

  “I know when to pick you up after school. And the coffeehouse has a phone.”

  At that moment my phone beeps.

  “Go ahead and check your messages, then tell your friends you won’t be available.”

  “But . . .” And I think of my friends in Cottonwood, and oh, oh, what if Kaden finally e-mails?

  She must see the panic on my face. “You can check your messages once a day to see if there’s some kind of an emergency. But that’s it.”

  “But . . .” And I fall back onto my pillow with my plate still balanced in my hands. “Okay.”

  Mom leaves, and the quiet of the room surrounds me.

  I skim through the messages on my phone. Kate telling about her date, friends in Cottonwood saying hi. I don’t really read them. Then London asking where I am, if I’m okay, followed by a long list of apologies and the promise to make up for her desertion by treating me to a full day at the spa (and I know I’ll end up forgiving her in a few days). There’s even a text from Brett: Help me!

  I don’t read further, just toss the phone onto the blanket beside me. It’s not a bad quiet in my room; it’s sort of peaceful. After I eat the breakfast Mom brought up, I take another long bath and decide to work on my room. I hang up all the clothes I pulled out when looking for something to wear last night. In the afternoon it warms up outside. I open the balcony doors, then retrieve my easel from the garage and set it up on the balcony. This week would be a good time to paint, since I can’t do much else anyway.

  The picture of Beatrice—maybe Aunt Betty—in the corner of my mirror catches my attention often throughout the day. And I wonder about the stories of my aunt’s life that are long before my years.

  I hear Mom coming up the stairs. “No, she isn’t moving in with you because of this. I just thought you should know so you can talk to her. She’s making friends and doing well.”

  There’s a knock on my door, and Mom hands me the phone. “It’s your dad,” she says. “I need to talk to him again when you’re done.”

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “So I hear you had a scary experience.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Your mom said you went to a little party last night. And you tried walking home?”

  “Yes.”

  “You need to come up and stay with me for a while,” he says, and I can’t help but smile.

  Dad is so predictable. There’s no doubt that he was talking big before hearing my voice, telling Carson and Tiffany how he’d ground me for the next year or something to that effect. Now he’s good old loving Dad.

  “Maybe I’ll come up next weekend,” I say. And suddenly I miss him terribly. I want to see him now. Part of me is a little hurt that he isn’t angry with me for all of this, or for moving away. Doesn’t he need me the way he needs Carson?

  “Carson wants to talk to you.”

  “Great,” I say with a sigh.

  “What were you thinking?” my brother says in his grouchy, parental Carson voice. He’s often harder on me than Dad is.

  “What do you care?” I shoot back, which actually makes him stop talking.

  “Okay, that was cold.” I sigh again. “I had a terrible night, I’m grounded, and I don’t need a lecture from you. As if you don’t go to parties once in a while. You just never had anything like this happen.”

  “You have a point.”

  I hear a slight chuckle, but then the second line beeps and I miss what he says. “Hang on, someone is calling.”

  “Is this Ruby?”

  Oh great, it’s Grandma Hazel. I want to tell her I’ll call her back but decide to get this over at once.

  When I tell Carson who’s on the other line, he laughs again and gives a long whistle. “Okay, I’ll leave you alone. You’ll be punished enough after that phone call.”

  Grandma Hazel and I get through the preliminary small talk, and then she jumps in deep.

  “I hear that you’ve made friends with a homosexual. And also that you were drinking?”

  I’m going to kill Mom for telling Dad about the party, and Carson for telling Dad about Frankie, and Dad for telling his mother about them both. Why does everything have to spread all over this family?

  “Yes, Grandma.”

  “So those things are true?”

  She sounds truly horrified, and I worry about her age and adding Grandma-killer to my list of wrongs. But what else can I say but the truth?

  “Grandma, my friend is a very nice person, even though, yes, he is a homosexual.” I want to laugh at the way we’re pronouncing homo-sex-u-al.

  “Oh, sweetie. I remember when you were so close to the Lord. I remember seeing you praise God as just a little girl. Don’t lose your faith down in that big, vile city of San Francisco.”

  “I’m not losing my faith, Grandma. And you know, there’s something vile everywhere in the world.”

  “Oh, but you can’t surround yourself with the world and not think you’ll not be affected. And the whole hippie, druggie, homosexual thing began down in that city. I’ve been so worried about all of you down there.”

  “Okay, Grandma.”

  There’s no sense in trying to convince her. My first day of being grounded started off not so badly, but now as I sit through a half hour of lecturing, I’m ready to kill someone.

  On Sunday I’m stir-crazy and happy to go to church. But what I keep wondering is if Jason will tell Blair that he kissed me—if a kiss is what you call it. His lips connected to mine, though technically, I didn’t want them to.

  In the church we’re trying out today—this one more traditional and boring—I’m reminded of my recent questions about God and what I believe. Grandma Hazel thinks I’m losing my faith. Blair thinks I’m like Billy Graham in female form. And I don’t know what I am.

  At schoo
l the next day, I successfully avoid Blair even through the lunch hour. Frankie finds me hiding in the library reading a book about filmmaking and bursts out laughing when he sees me. He thinks the whole party and my restrictions are something that should be depicted in a Norman Rockwell painting, if Norman were still alive to paint the all-American Ruby of the twenty-first century.

  “It’s so deliciously you!” he says, throwing his hands in the air and laughing so loudly that the librarian threatens him with a bright red face of anger. “Oh, and by the way, you’d better keep avoiding Blair.”

  “I’m not avoiding her. I had to go by the office to change my International Cooking class to Film so I can get out early for some of our shoots, and then I remembered a book I wanted to find . . . Wait, how did you know I’m avoiding Blair?”

  “ ’Cause I know you kissed Jason.”

  “I didn’t kiss him! He kissed me.”

  “I know that too, but I wanted to see your reaction.”

  “He only did it to get a reaction out of Blair—at last that’s what I think.”

  Frankie sits on the edge of the table. “Yeah, girlfriend, that guy may be incredibly hot, but he doesn’t have a lot of assets upstairs, if you know what I mean.” He suddenly jumps up. “Oh, there’s Blair.”

  I startle and fling the filmmaking book off the table as I look around. The room is empty. Frankie laughs.

  “Evil—you are seriously evil, Frankie Klarken.”

  He gives a long Count Dracula mwahwahwah laugh.

  The librarian storms over and picks up the book from the floor, glaring at me as if I dropped her baby. “Both of you, out of here. Now!”

  The house phone rings late in the night, and I grab the one by my bed. Caller ID shows Kate’s cell number.

  “Hey, were you sleeping?” she asks as I settle back into the warmth of my bed.

  After school I fell asleep, so now I’ve been awake, reading about film and writing in my journal while listening to music. It’s strangely nice and lonely being grounded from communication.

  “Sort of, but not really.” I listen for a moment in case the ring woke Mom up. “But I’m not supposed to talk ’cause of . . . you know why.”

  “Yeah, I know.”