by Piper Lennox
“Beautiful.” I blink at him. “Heaps of animal skulls? Really?”
“Yeah.” Gingerly, he picks up a small one, some kind of bird, and holds it up in front of his face. Then he hefts a bigger one off a lower shelf, as though weighing the two.
“Sparrow, coyote,” he says, huddling close so I have to look at them. “No matter how meek or tiny, or large or powerful an animal was…they’re all just as fragile underneath. Made of the same stuff. These intricate, amazing frameworks that did incredible things in life, but now have to be held together with wire and glue.”
Theo flips the skulls over and angles them towards me. Reluctantly, I peek inside. I don’t see much of the wire or glue in question, but enough to know he’s right. If we were to drop either skull hard enough, bird or coyote, beast or beauty…they’d both break, just the same.
“But I get it,” he smiles self-deprecatingly, placing the skulls back where they belong. “I’m in the minority, finding these things beautiful instead of….”
“Creepy as hell?”
“There’s nothing like that for you?” He tilts his head. “Something you find, like, absolutely incredible, that no one else fully gets?”
I start to shake my head, then stop. My hand goes to my earlobe, even though I’m not wearing my mom’s earrings today.
“Pearls, I guess.” I shrug. “But it’s not really the same. People don’t find them creepy; they just don’t like them as much as I do.”
“What do you like about them?”
My mind takes its time finding the words. I know exactly why I like pearls so much. I’ve just never told anyone who understood, and I already know Theo will. I’m not so sure I want the first person who gets it to be him.
“The way they form.”
Theo nods. “Irritation.”
“Exactly. It’s so much better than that overhyped ‘pressure forms diamonds’ mindset, because that’s so…passive. Pressure can also crush and kill. You shouldn’t sit there and accept all the bad shit, hoping it’ll magically transform into something better.” I try to stop talking. I don’t want to share this with him.
But that stare he’s giving me, those bright green eyes showing me he’s actually listening….
“But everyone gets irritated and scraped up,” I go on, once again touching the earrings I’m not wearing. “Some things in life, they’re inevitable. So I say, defend yourself.”
He smiles again. “Turn it into pearls.”
I nod. For some reason, I feel out of breath, as though I just spilled a full-on speech.
My eyes roam the empty sockets again. I try to remember which one Paige picked up first, that night. Which of these grinning faces hid Theo’s cruel, dark trick.
The coyote, probably, or the cow. Their size is ideal for webcam camouflage.
Maybe my mind just likes the symbolism. An unassuming, smiling coyote next to an innocent, fat cow.
When he touches my arm, I jerk away so hard I hit the shelf. Two skulls topple. I don’t stop to check which ones.
“Whoa, you okay?” He starts to right them, but abandons his mission when he sees me flee to the hallway. “Ruby, what—”
“I can’t be in there.” I push my hair from my face and breathe deep. It doesn’t help.
All I keep picturing are laughing skulls and popping flashes. All I hear is the thump of long-dead music and echoing laughter, trapped in the walls around us.
“I didn’t think.... I mean, the ones downstairs didn’t seem to bother you, so I just—”
I step away when he tries to touch me again. I can’t fucking stand it. I can’t stand him.
I despise the girl I still am, deep down, who inexplicably started to forget what he did to her that night. All it took was a date or two and some hormones in a pool, and I reverted back to the idiot I was before.
“I should go.” The shush of my feet on the staircase reminds me of the shelves rattling. All those skulls, rocking back and forth. I feel sick.
“Ruby, hold on.” He’s halfway down the flight when I reach the landing. I worry he’ll leap over the railing just to cut me off, but I realize that’s more of a Callum move: instill fear first, beg forgiveness later. Theo doesn’t seem into power plays like those.
And God knows he never begs forgiveness.
At the front door, I realize I’m shoeless, coatless, and keyless. The worst possible combination for a quick escape.
Panting, Theo appears beside me while I’m digging through the closet in search of my left shoe. I threw them in here without any thought, assuming this closet would be just like the others in his house: half-empty and well-lit, with automatic bulbs gracing the interior.
I was wrong. This closet is all too normal—a walk-in junk drawer, darker than a cave.
“Ruby,” he says, “I had no idea the skulls would be, like, a thing with you. Like I said, since the ones in the living room didn’t….”
I tune him out. It’s not the skulls, I mentally scream at him. It’s not the bedroom.
It’s not the perfect white canvas on which you splattered my entire fucking life.
It’s the fact that, given the chance…I think he could very well fool me twice.
My shoe is caught in the corner of an open box. I grab it and pull hard, ready to get the fuck out of this house. I want out of this entire plan. Theo deserves my revenge, but I’m not sure I deserve all the risks that come with delivering it.
The shoe catches, and the box topples.
A spray of paper lands at my bare feet. On top of the small avalanche is a card.
“Shit.” I swallow and apologize out of instinct, even though I’m not sorry, and start to gather the pile back into its box.
“I’ve got it.” Theo crouches beside me, shoulder bumping mine. “Just slow down, Ruby. Talk to me.”
He taps the edges of the stack into alignment. They’re blank music sheets.
And the card, now in my hands, is a birthday card.
Unthinking, I open it. It’s for Theo, from his dad.
“I’ve got it,” he says again, much softer now. He takes it from me quickly, piling it all into the box before shoving it back. As he stands, he holds his hand out for me. I ignore it.
“He wrote ‘Happy 23rd’ on it.” I pull the box back and reread the label in the faint light of the chandelier behind us. It was mailed overnight.
I look up. “Is today your birthday?”
Theo’s the one who gets silent, now. The one who looks like he’s going to run, because running is always the easier choice.
I do take his hand, no longer offered to me but now hanging by his side, and instead of letting him pull me up...I pull him down.
“No one’s celebrating with you?”
He shrugs, wetting his lips. “My cousins and I played video games when they got off work. They invited me to the city for some drinks, but I said no.”
“Why?” I look at my shoes in the whirlwind wreckage before me. “Not...because of me, I hope?”
“No, no. I mean, I was looking forward to seeing you again, obviously—but I would’ve just rescheduled if I wanted to go.” Cautiously, he smiles and scratches his head. “Or invited you to go with me, most likely. But I didn’t want you thinking I was rushing anything.”
“Think we’re past that point,” I mutter, shoving my feet into my shoes, “seeing as how you went down on me in your swimming pool.”
It might be the change of scenery—this messy, absurdly normal closet instead of the scene of the crime—but I feel my blood pressure level out. The flight response tearing up my veins has stagnated, leaving me in some weird in-between place where I keep gathering my stuff to leave, but never actually do.
He smiles again. “Good point.”
“So your dad mailed his gift, instead of showing up and bringing it in person. Is that why you didn’t go to the city? You were waiting on him, until this package showed up in his place?”
“Yeah. Basically.” Theo sits against one
side of the doorjamb while I take the other, the tips of his bare feet touching my shoes. “Which feels pretty stupid now. I knew he wouldn’t.” He nods at the present. “And I’ll bet you anything he didn’t get me that, or mail it, or even choose the card.”
“Who did? Your mom?”
In the half-darkness, his eyes hesitate before meeting mine. “She’s not around anymore.”
“Oh…God. I’m sorry.” I really mean it. Granted, my father’s not dead, but I’m well-versed on the whole missing-parent thing. No matter how it happens, it fucking sucks.
Theo brushes this off, suggesting the wound is old. “Anyway, I guarantee it was my dad’s receptionist. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Did he mention it when he called you?”
Theo glances at me again, then looks away.
“Shit.” I tip my head back against the doorway. “He didn’t even call, did he?”
“Twenty-three is too old to need cake and presents on your birthday,” he mutters with a laugh. “Too old to actually care about your birthday much at all, let alone expect other people to remember. Don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t think that. And you shouldn’t either.” I walk myself up the doorjamb and help him to his feet. “Everyone should have someone to celebrate with on their birthday.”
“I got phone calls and stuff. And it’s not so much that Dad forgot my birthday—just that he forgot the date in general. It happens.”
“Yeah, well. It shouldn’t.” I brush the dust off my jeans and punch my sleeves into my coat, then grab a black jacket from a hanger and throw it to him. “Let’s go.”
He eyes me with totally fair suspicion. “Two seconds ago you were storming out of my house with no explanation whatsoever. Now you’re forcing me on some mystery birthday trip?”
“Don’t question it.” That’s what I plan on doing, since I can’t make sense of my own light switch moment either.
Yeah, getting out of that godforsaken bedroom helped—but I think it was mostly that gift, all those empty sheets comprising such an empty gesture, that calmed me down. I stopped feeling like the spineless little kid I used to be...and suddenly remembered I’m adult Ruby, now. The one who stopped taking crap from people a long time ago.
And half-assed attempts from absent fathers? Call it a pet peeve. I refuse to let that be the high point of anyone’s birthday, even Theo’s.
“I’ll drive,” he says, as we step onto the porch.
I hold up my key fob and beep my car’s locks. “Nope. I’m driving.” Halfway to the driver’s side, I stop and stare back at his house.
“Something wrong?” he asks.
“Lock your front door,” I tell him, swinging my way into the car.
He opens the passenger side and leans down to look at me. “I never lock it.”
“I know. And it drives me insane.” I gun the engine and point to his door again. “Humor me.”
Theo’s smile draws up to one side, almost a laugh. He flips through his key ring for a while, studying each one in the light: key after key for houses he never calls home, and thus never feels the need to protect.
I get it, kind of. Rich or poor, I think everyone’s lived in a place like that. You’d almost welcome a fire, just for a solid excuse to start your life over.
Still, I relax when he steps back from the door and rattles the handle, proving to me that it’s shut up tight.
“What about that?” I ask, pointing to the security panel.
“All for show,” he confesses. “Our main security system hasn’t worked in years. I don’t even remember the code, anyway.” He jingles his keys in my face before pocketing them and buckling up. “But, you got what you wanted. That house is impenetrable. Happy?”
“Not yet,” I tell him, purposely spinning my tires on his father’s expensive stone driveway as we leave. “But I will be, once we celebrate your birthday properly.”
14
“Okay, you were right. This is the best pie I’ve ever eaten in my life.”
Ruby points her fork at me. “Including your grandmothers’ world-famous, top-secret recipes, right?”
“Neither of my grandmas baked much,” I tell her, sucking some cinnamon crust out of my molars, “so, yes. Definitely.” I thank the waitress when she refills our coffees (decaf; Ruby’s insistence), then watch her start into another slice. I don’t want to admit that the sugar is messing with a cavity at the back of my mouth, so I pick at my second one.
Truthfully, I think I’m just dragging this out. It’s fun. I’m not ready to go home and wait out the rest of my birthday alone.
“You come here a lot, I’m guessing?” I ask, when another regular enters the pie shop, camps at the counter, and waves to Ruby with a smile. That’s the fourth one in twenty minutes.
“Every week.” She waves back. “Less often in the summer, though. Work got too crazy. I was exhausted by the time I clocked out, most days.”
“Speaking of”—I shove my cavity-aggravator away and pull my coffee closer, leaning down until she looks at me—“why cleaning houses? I’ve been meaning to ask.”
Ruby’s gaze drifts from mine down to the booth’s inoperable mini-jukebox, then through the large glass window beside us. We can’t see much. It’s so bright in here, all we really catch are our reflections.
“Good money,” she answers, finally, “and always in demand. And I genuinely like cleaning, believe it or not.”
“Are you, like, super Type-A?”
“You’d think, wouldn’t you?” She scrapes up some apple filling and lets it melt across her tongue, looking thoughtful. I can’t wait to kiss her later, all that cinnamon and sugar caught on her lips.
“I’m actually pretty go-with-the-flow,” she continues softly. She pulls the fork from her mouth in slow-motion. The tines leave quick, subtle imprints that make my heart race. “It’s not the sense of perfection or control I like about cleaning. It’s just...calming, I guess? I like resetting things. Shit gets messy, so you fix it. It’s satisfying.”
“Can’t say I agree.”
“Liar.” She smiles, then hides it with the mug.
“Okay,” I relent, “it’s nice having things clean, after the fact. That’s satisfying. But actually doing it? I don’t know. It doesn’t give me that sense of accomplishment you’re describing.”
“What does?”
I feel my forehead crease. My mind’s a complete blank. I wish I could blame it on being put on the spot, but that’s not it.
“You don’t know,” she says, holding her coffee in both hands under her chin. I watch the steam roll past her eyes.
“Probably a symptom of Bored Housewife Syndrome.”
“Bored Rich Housewife Syndrome. It’s a hallmark trait.”
“What’s your deal with rich people, huh?” I steal the edges of her crust and slide her my plate of, by this point, pretty much nothing but filling. “I get it, we’re not the best group to work for, sometimes—”
“Most times.”
“—but I get the feeling it runs a lot deeper than that.”
She finishes her coffee, then shakes her head when I offer her mine. I watch her shiver lower in the booth and pull her sleeves over her fingers.
“I’m just saying, wealth contributes to the syndrome. A lot. When you have everything and more, what do you work towards? They don’t just go out and get any old job or hobby.”
“You’re saying rich people can’t clean houses or wait tables?”
“I’m saying they’ve got no need to do those things, so they never would. Because no one would, if they didn’t have to. But when there’s a need you have to meet, you do whatever it takes to get there. You take paths you wouldn’t otherwise take. And you might realize, along the way, that you actually enjoy it.”
“That didn’t work for my dad.” I flick an apple off the table into a napkin. “He loved zoology. Then he had different needs to meet—or wants, depending on how you look at it—and it changed the entir
e trajectory of his life.” I pause. “Of all our lives.”
Ruby studies me closely, picking at split ends in her hair without looking at them. “That’s because your dad gave up what gave him a sense of purpose. And that’s really all I’m saying, here: being rich, to the point where every last need is met, will leave you miserable if you forget about the things money can’t buy you. Like family, and friends...feeling like what you do matters. Even if it only matters to you.”
I sit back in the booth and consider this while Ruby flags down the waitress for our check. She doesn’t let me pay.
When we’re back outside, shivering as she digs for her keys, I say, “Piano.”
“Huh?”
I scoop up her keys when she drops them, steering her to the passenger side instead; she looks sleepy, whereas my energy’s still at daytime levels. “You asked what gives me that sense of accomplishment,” I explain, once we’re inside. “I think that’s playing piano. And writing music.”
“You compose, too?”
“Used to.” I start the ignition, flexing the numbness out of my fingers against the wheel. “But then one day I woke up, and I realized everything’s been done before. No matter what I created, there was something just like it already out there.”
Ruby’s quiet a minute, then snorts. “That’s such a stupid mindset.”
I laugh too, as a reflex. “Excuse me?”
“Who cares if it’s been done before? So has everything.” She points through the windshield, at the neon sign reading “Fresh Pies, Baked Daily” in the diner window.
“Like, okay: how many diners and pie shops exist on this planet, do you think? Millions? But new ones keep opening, every single day.” She drops her hand. “You shouldn’t create something in the hopes of being the first to do it. You create it with the goal of being the best.”
“I don’t think pies and music are all that comparable, first of all.” As I back out of the space, putting my arm behind her seat as I twist, I purposely graze her neck. “And second, you’re proving my point. Not only has everything been done before, but there’s always someone doing it better.”
“You don’t have to be the best to the whole world, you know. Just to one person.”
