My own sweet liberator.
My babiest brother-brat beloved. Only one year old.
When my mom told me she was pregnant with him, know what I thought? I thought that because of the secret-y way she said it—when there was just me and her in the kitchen—and in spite of the fact that she and my dad had been divorced for centuries and despite the fact that my dad had had Dan with Kara, and they’d split up too, and he was now dating “floozies”—that’s what I heard my mom tell my Auntie Kate—when she said she was going to have a baby, I thought she meant that she was having a baby with my dad.
DUH.
When I realized she meant Simon, I went up to my room and cried my eyes out.
BUT!
If I had understood what a wonderful thing Henry would be in my life, I would have jumped for joy. Because Henry, dear Henry, set me free. It’s true; even before he was born, Simon and my mom got so obsessed with him that they got less and less obsessed with me. I was given my OWN set of keys to the house (although, luckily, we still kept the Ruby Emergency Key) and best and most fantastic of all: MY OWN CELL PHONE.
So: the Henry Rule. It was a total, complete, and utter no-no any day—possible global-disaster days included—to make any sort of noise that might wake him; that was the Henry Rule—for which, up until that moment, I was fully, totally, completely, and utterly signed up because once Henry got going…he could bawl for England. Yes, my babiest brother-brat beloved was a bawling beast.
I would have just texted Lee immediately, but—MY CELL! I DIDN’T HAVE MY CELL! IT WAS IN ZAK’S BARN WITH THE REST OF MY STUFF!—so I pounded at the den door. I screamed and shouted all sorts of terrible things, and all of them at Simon. I couldn’t believe it—what I had just been through and now this. Then I started throwing things around a bit. Yup.
There was plenty of stuff to choose from, because that room was basically a dumping ground for all the stuff that wouldn’t fit in the rest of the house. There was a computer in there, surrounded by junk, which was where I was supposed to do my homework—but there was usually so much junk dumped around the place, I used that as an excuse to borrow Simon’s laptop and work in my room, i.e., surf the Net, IM, and not work at all.
I didn’t rage randomly. I picked out Simon’s stuff. I threw whatever I could lay my hands on…and then, I started breaking things. His laptop wasn’t there, or I probably would have smashed it. I snapped some of his stupid CDs, dropped this hideous pottery vase thing he said he’d made when he was in school.
Simon, doing art—can you imagine?!
All the while, he stood outside the door, going, “Ruby, calm down. Ruby, calm down.”
I suppose my mom must have gone upstairs; I could hear Henry crying.
I told you I would tell you everything, except the swearing. But it’s hard telling this part. I’m not proud of how I acted. I am the opposite of proud. In my defense, all I can say is that it was all too much. Do you see? One minute my life had been the best it had ever been, kissing Caspar McCloud, the next minute it was…
Ka-boom. I snapped the stupid walking-stick thing Simon took on country rambles. It was hard work snapping it, but I was ultimately doing him a favor because it made him look like an old man and a nerd. Then I saw his binoculars. His new binoculars. His nerdish pride and joy. Simon liked to watch birds, you see. Can you imagine anything more deeply boring?
“Ruby, calm down. Please, calm down.”
I tried to snap them, to bust them in half. The walking stick thing had been hard, but these were impossible. And then I thought of it: I’d throw them out the window. I yanked back the curtain. And then I stopped.
One little rainstorm. Only a shower.
“Simon,” I called. “It’s raining.”
“It’s OK, Ru. It’s OK.”
“Please let me out!”
“Ruby, you have to listen to me. Please, calm down and listen.”
“I’ll listen! I’ll calm down! Please, Simon, let me out.”
I heard my mom’s voice then, Henry fretting. “Ruby, we can’t.”
I pressed myself against the door, and I listened to them. All the while I watched the rain falling. I did get it, right away, when they explained it to me. I had been outside, hadn’t I? For Henry’s sake, for my mom’s, they couldn’t take any chances.
Then I talked, and they listened. Every word I said—about what had happened at Zak’s, about Barnaby saying it might be contagious, about Caspar, about Zak’s mom, about the cars going to the hospital—all of it seemed to prove that right, that I should stay in that room until we knew.
“I don’t have it,” I said. “I know I don’t.”
My chin, my lips, my mouth, my nose throbbed. That’s kissing. That’s just kissing.
“It happens really quickly. It does. I’ve seen it.”
My stomach churned. That’s gin and cider. That’s just gin and cider. And fear.
“Yes,” said Simon. “I believe you…but we can’t take any chances. Do you understand?”
Yes, but—I thought.
“Do you understand, Ruby?” asked my mom.
“Yes, but—”
“So please…just until tomorrow morning?” said my mom.
“It’ll have to be longer than that,” Simon muttered at her—I heard him.
“Just for tonight,” said my mom.
I could hear Henry gurgling.
“OK,” I said.
I got up then and closed the curtains.
“Mom?” I called.
“Yes, Ruby?”
She was still there; I knew she’d still be there.
“I’m thirsty,” I said.
I heard them, not what they said, but the murmurings of a discussion. It wasn’t an argument. I could imagine it: what to give me, how to give it to me, perhaps, also whether I could be trusted not to freak and break out the second they opened the door.
“Ruby?” said my mom. “I’ll get you something. I’ll be back in a minute.”
• • •
And I thought about how it was then—that, really, we had been double lucky. That I’d had Barnaby drag me out of the hot tub, and my mom and Simon… They’d gone to the neighbors’ barbecue as planned and taken the babiest brother-brat with them—not in some hideous child-abuse way, keeping him up all night, but because he had kept them up all night the night before, teething, and had slept all afternoon and was full of energy, and just when my mom dared to pick up a glass of wine, Henry decided it was time to start keeping them up for another night. So she took Screechster Boy back home. She put the radio on. She rocked my baby brother to sleep, trying to listen to Gardeners’ Question Time.
She was so dog tired, she said, she didn’t even bother wondering why it was on.
Simon would have stayed out, but apparently one of the neighbors had said something nasty (“an inflammatory remark”) about the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. It was probably a joke, but Simon, after being warned by my mom after the last time he’d flipped out at someone for making fun of bird-watching, had downed his drink and stormed home—seconds before the rain began.
I might be exaggerating a little, but that’s basically what happened.
A short while later, there was a knock at the door.
“Ma?” I said.
“It’s me,” said Simon. “Ruby, I’m going to open the door. I’ve got some things for you. I want you to stand back, away from the door. Will you do that?”
“Yes,” I said.
He opened the door. His face looked closer to normal—not shaky, not angry either, not even when he saw the mess in the room. He threw my duvet in, then—one, two, three—cushions from the sofa.
“Sorry,” he said. “The air bed’s in the shed.”
My pillow came next. Then my bathrobe, my snuggliest pajamas, and my winter fluffy fake-fur slippe
rs.
“Your mom doesn’t want you to get cold,” he said.
Then he threw a bucket in, on top of the pile.
“What’s that for?” I asked.
“Guess,” he said, slinging in a roll of toilet paper. “And—”
He tossed in my mom’s toiletry bag, but carefully, so it landed on the duvet. There was a new toothbrush sticking out of it; mine was in the barn at Zak’s…WITH MY CELL. DID I MENTION THAT ALREADY? I DID NOT HAVE MY CELL PHONE!
He slid a tray into the room. Tea and toast. With peanut butter. I thought we’d run out of it.
Finally, he reached round the corner and put two big glasses of water down on the floor. I suppose he thought I’d been drinking.
“I guess you have to lock the door now,” I said.
“Ruby…” said Simon.
I thought about Caspar lying in the back of the car. I thought about Henry.
“It’s OK,” I said. “Lock it.”
“Night, Ru,” he said. He shut the door and locked it.
I probably would have just cried my eyes out then or something. But—
“Ru?”
It was my mom.
She sat on the other side of the door while I ate my toast. I leaned against the door, and I felt as if I could feel her on the other side, sitting and leaning against it too. I felt as if I could feel the warmth of her through the wood. I rattled on, asking her stuff: about whether my dad had called (he hadn’t; I already knew no one could call anyone, didn’t I?), about whether she thought everyone would be OK… And the more people I thought to ask about—family, friends, friends of family, families of friends—the worse it got, like how it is when you are little and they teach you to pray and to ask God to bless everyone, and you get really worried about remembering everyone, thinking if you don’t, something bad will happen to them, and it’ll be your fault.
“Shhh! It’s OK, Ruby…shhh,” she said when I started up again about Nana and Gramps. “Now, do you need anything else?” she asked.
“Sing to me,” I said.
I wanted the lullaby song she did every night when I was little.
She sighed—so loud I could hear it through the door.
“Mom, please…” I tried.
“Ru-by, it’s bedtime,” she said.
Please don’t leave me. That’s what I thought. “OK,” I said.
“Night night, darling.”
That’s what my mom said.
I made a bed nest like Dan does, switched out the light, and crawled into it. Under normal—normal?!—circumstances, I would have texted Lee then. No, I would have forgotten how many minutes I had left and called her. I could picture her, with the others, sitting around the big old table in Zak’s kitchen. I wondered how Caspar was, whether Sarah had gotten them both to the hospital.
He’d be OK. Fatal. He’d be OK. Fatal. He’d be OK.
I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I got up and turned the computer on.
The Internet was down, just like Zak had said, but maybe Simon had disconnected me. That was possible. That was very possible.
Nothing to do but go back to bed.
Normally, at night, it was dead quiet. Not like at my dad’s, where there was noise 24/7. Tonight, Dartbridge sounded like London. You could hear sirens, alarms, car horns. Also, sometimes, shouting. Sometimes shouting…sometimes screams.
And another sound: so quiet, so soft. The rain. It’s only a shower.
• • •
I didn’t realize I’d fallen asleep until I woke up because someone was banging at the front door. I was up and trying to get out of the room…until I realized I couldn’t. Simon must have been asleep too, because it took him a while to get there. The hall light came on, but he didn’t open the front door.
“Hello?!” he called.
“Help me! Help me! Help me!”
I pulled back the curtain a little. Our neighbor, Mrs. Fitch, was standing in the rain. In her nightie, not even a bathrobe on top.
I heard my mom thump down the stairs. I let the curtain drop.
“Simon?” whispered my mom.
“Simon? Rebecca?! ” cried Mrs. Fitch. “Help!”
I heard Simon, plain as day, which it nearly was—the light had gone gray, the way it does when dawn is coming through the rain. “We can’t,” he said quietly to my mom.
“Please!” cried Mrs. Fitch, almost as though she’d heard him.
“We can’t help,” shouted Simon. “Go to the hospital.”
“It’s my husband! I can’t move him!”
“We can’t help,” said Simon.
“It’s the baby,” cried my mom. “We’ve got to think about Henry.”
“Please!” screamed Mrs. Fitch.
“Come away,” I heard Simon whisper to my mom.
The hall light went off. I heard Henry starting to fuss upstairs. I heard my mom go to him, already saying, “Shh! Shh, shh, shh, shh,” in her lovely lullaby voice as she rushed up the stairs.
“Ruby?” whispered Simon. “Are you OK?”
I didn’t answer. I wanted him to think I was asleep.
“Please!” screamed Mrs. Fitch. She banged at the door.
I didn’t hear Simon go back into the living room, but he must have; the TV got turned up.
“Now urging people not to panic—” I heard.
He must have shut the door then; I couldn’t make out what they were saying anymore, just the scary, bossy sound of it going on and on about how bad everything was. But at least it did sound more like normal TV, different voices chipping in, and not the same thing over and over.
“Help me! Please! ” screamed Mrs. Fitch.
I stood in the dark. It went quiet. I could hear the rain, still, but not Mrs. Fitch. I peeped through the curtains. She was standing in the front yard. She was clawing at her face, at her head. I couldn’t look away, somehow. Something white landed on the grass next to her; I saw it was a box, a small white medicine box of tablets, the instructions, loose, fluttering down after it. My mom must have flung it out. I saw Mrs. Fitch pick it up. She looked up at the window—not the one I was peeking out of but the upstairs one—Mom and Simon’s room. She looked up, and in the gray light, I saw the ghostly red running on her face, the skin torn away already where she couldn’t help but scratch.
I let the curtain drop and buried myself in my bed. I tried not to listen to it all: the murmur of the scary, bossy voices on TV; the sirens—not so many now—and the car horns, also not so many. Mrs. Fitch, groaning again. Why didn’t she just go away? The pitter-patter of the rain. Such a quiet sound you shouldn’t have been able to hear it, but once your ears caught it, they couldn’t seem to let it go. Then Henry started bawling, throwing a massive tantrum—and that was a good thing. It drowned out every other sound, and it was a noise I knew how to deal with; I wrapped a pillow round my head to muffle the brother-brat out and fell asleep.
CHAPTER FIVE
When the next morning began, it began like a lot of mornings have begun since then. For a moment, I thought everything was fine. For a moment, I’d forgotten.
And then I remembered.
I woke up thinking about Caspar. I’d been dreaming about him, but not how I’d seen him last, lying in the back of Zak’s mom’s car. I dreamed we were playing a gig together. It was brilliant. We were brilliant.
I’ve got to tell you now that even if the entire world hadn’t totally ka-boomed, this could only ever have been a dream. That guitar lesson I didn’t want to go to? It wasn’t just because it was raining—it was because I was terrible. I’d only started doing it because I thought it would impress Caspar. OK, and I thought I’d turn out to be terrific at it, but I wasn’t. I was terrible.
And, by the way, I was terrible at singing too, but I sang all the time (in my room or with Lee), hoping that if
I practiced enough, I’d suddenly, miraculously, become fabulous at that too.
Dreams—good ones—are beautiful things.
(And sometimes they come true. I should know: I kissed Caspar McCloud.)
Anyway, for a couple of moments before I opened my eyes, I was in heaven. And then I woke up in hell.
I stretched and felt floorboards under my legs where my bed should have been. The cushions had slipped around. I dunno how Dan manages it; he’s like a hamster or something, building his little nests. I’d had the worst night’s sleep ever, tossing and turning—and even before I attempted to get up, I kind of knew I felt like crap, and then I remembered why I felt like crap.
Caspar. Oh my : Caspar.
I reached up and felt my chin—yeurch! Seemed like overnight it had turned into a kind of giant scab. I felt my nose; that didn’t feel scabby, but I’d need a mirror to be sure. If I didn’t look like too much of a horror, I’d take the train to Exeter and look for Caspar at the hospital—or get Simon to take me. I had some wicked foundation to deal with the face situation… No, I didn’t. That was in the barn with—MY CELL! I HAD TO GET MY CELL PHONE. Get my cell phone—which would mean seeing my friends too, which was great—get my foundation. Go see Caspar. Get a shower first—no, check the Net, then shower. Figure out my outfit, do temporary emergency makeup with items from the reserve makeup supply. Possibly have to do emergency mascara borrow from mother; definitely emergency perfume borrow (aka, “steal”; she had a bottle of this really nice stuff I wasn’t supposed to use, and the last time I’d borrowed a little, she’d gone mental—even for my mom—when she’d sniffed and figured out I’d used it). Ask, then borrow, or just borrow? Just borrow. It was an emergency.
MY CELL: priority mission. Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. That and I was thirsty—but the glasses of water were gone—and I was bursting, so I had to pee on top of last night’s pee in the bucket, and when I’d finished peeing, I checked the computer; it was still on from last night, and everything was still down. It still showed the time though. I tried to remember when I had come in, wondering how much longer I might be forced to stay in that room if Simon got his way. It made my sore head muddle.
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