This Lie Will Kill You

by Chelsea Pitcher

  Of course, all screams died in her throat.

  Of course, she recognized who was standing in that doorway, and a cold chill unfurled inside her when she realized she’d wanted him to be a stranger. That would’ve been less frightening. Anything would’ve been less frightening than the sight of her father glaring down at her, a porcelain doll clutched in his hands.

  Ruby sat up at that. That, more than anything, allowed her to slip into necessary denial, to tell herself this was all a dream. She had no porcelain babies anymore. All her dolls had been torched in a bonfire, and there was no way that she’d lost track of this red-haired, pale-skinned beauty, because it was the first one she’d ever been given.

  The first one he’d ever given to her.

  Then he stepped forward, the shadows slipping away from the doll, and Ruby understood. She thought she did. “You saved her,” she murmured, speaking to him in the soft, coaxing voice she used when he was teetering on the edge. One wrong move, and her father would lurch toward her, and this time, he wouldn’t be able to pull himself back.

  She knew it.

  And so, she spoke softly, ever so casually guiding her legs out of the blankets. Blankets could tangle up and trip you in an instant. Something so stupid would not be her downfall. And luckily for her, his blurry vision was making him slow to react, and slow to notice her movements.

  His voice sounded blurry too, when he said, “I dug her out of the ashes. Your first baby. God, you loved her so much.” For a minute, he curled in on himself, and she thought he might be crying. He’d done it before. If anything, crying signified the end of a fight, and Ruby hoped he was gripped by sadness now, rather than fury. But when he looked up, she saw the truth in his mangled expression, his lips twisted into a sneer.

  “You broke my heart that day. I gave this to you, and you—” He broke off abruptly, the thought ending the way a road veers suddenly into a dead end. His movements were just as jerky. As soon as the word “you” left his mouth, he flung the doll in her direction. She didn’t think he was actually trying to hit her, but she ducked to avoid the collision all the same. The doll slammed against her headboard, and that porcelain skull cracked.

  Then he was lumbering forward. Maybe the doorway couldn’t hold him up. Or maybe he meant to mimic the doll and hurl himself against her, his body too solid to crack. That was what she thought, before the worst of it happened—that nothing could hurt him. He was unbreakable, the exact opposite of porcelain, and he was also beyond reasoning with.

  She needed to get out of there.

  Ruby twisted to the side, her feet almost meeting the carpet, when he caught hold of her arm. That was okay, she thought, because grips could be twisted out of, and at least he hadn’t taken hold of her leg. This was a game Ruby played, not often, but on occasion, when reality got too ugly for her mind to process.

  At least he isn’t pressing his weight against you, she would tell herself. At least he isn’t choking you for very long. At least you can still breathe.

  Except . . . she couldn’t. This time, the game wasn’t working, or maybe the universe was inverting itself to make the worst possible thing come true. Because he had staggered across the room, and he had loomed over the bed—really, it was like gravity had been suspended for a moment, and he was hovering over her at an impossible angle, and then . . .

  Slam.

  Then pain, as his arm gripped hers, yanking her back to the bed. Then pressure, as he leaned over her, taking her face in his hands. Sometimes it was the only way to get her to look at him, she told herself, but that was just another game she played. A lie, a subtle twisting of the truth, to put the blame on her. Ruby was no fool, and she’d never believed she deserved to be hurled into a wall. But if it all came about because of something she’d done, all she had to do was eliminate that behavior, and he’d never hurt her again.

  Now the lies were tumbling over her, and she was suffocating beneath them. She was suffocating beneath him, too. His body was a weight against hers. His voice was a viper in her ear, hissing, “How could you do that to me? How could you call them?”

  “I didn’t! Daddy, I swear.”

  “You’re lying,” he told her, his hands slipping down to her throat. Spots loomed behind her eyes, but he didn’t let go. As he whispered the words, “You know what happens to liars,” she felt herself blink out of consciousness, so quickly.

  Blink. Here. Blink. Gone.

  When the room came back into focus, she was gasping, but he must’ve thought she was just scared of him. He didn’t realize what was happening. Didn’t realize he was choking the life from her, and there was no way to convince him of it.

  “I thought I was going to die,” Ruby confessed, sitting outside the Cherry Street Mansion, with Shane’s fingers in hers. Porcelain fingers, like the porcelain doll her father had saved from the ashes. That doll had been kissed by the flames, and her red hair was blackened in places. Her skin was blackened too.

  But this doll was safe. Ruby had saved him, the way she hadn’t been able to save Shane. The way she hadn’t been able to save her father. “I thought he was going to kill me by accident,” she told Juniper, who was watching her from the side. Watching her fingers stumble over Shane’s. Watching and worrying, and having no fucking idea how bad things had gotten inside of Ruby’s head. How bad they’d been since the night her father wrapped his hands around her neck and forgot about things like lungs and breath.

  “I thought he was going to stay there, hands gripping my throat, until my body went still and I breathed my last breath. Then he would jump up, surprised, because he hadn’t meant to kill me. And I realized, as my elbow knocked into that hideous, burned doll, that I could do the same thing. Bash it over his head, and act surprised when he didn’t get up. And then . . .”

  “You blacked out again?”

  Of course Juniper would think that, because that was what people always said in movies. Sorry, Officer, I don’t remember a thing, they’d say, rocking back and forth like a child in a cradle. The world went black, and when I opened my eyes, I had blood on my hands.

  But Ruby had been awake for all of it. She remembered the weight of the doll in her hand, and how she’d used all of her strength to slam it into him. She’d expected its skull to shatter on impact. But it hadn’t. His skull, on the other hand, had made a whooshing sound, like something had caved in, and then he’d gone still.

  He’d gone still, and she’d thought to herself, You got what you wanted. You beat him at his own game. You should be proud.

  But she wasn’t. Her hands were shaking and her guts were clenching and she was heaving sobs before she knew what had happened. As quickly as she’d been congratulating herself, she told herself stories about him waking up. He couldn’t be dead. She couldn’t even have done that, couldn’t have stilled the life from a man twice her size, a man who’d never let her forget he was stronger than her. “You were supposed to be stronger,” she said. She tried to, but strange sounds were coming out of her mouth, strangled sobs and hiccups accompanied by a trembling so deep, she thought she must be freezing to death.

  She waited for the numbing frost.

  But the frost didn’t come, and her father didn’t rise. Eventually, she bent down to feel for a pulse. That should’ve terrified her more than anything, because villains always came back to life to startle the hero. She would lean down, and he would leap up, his hands wrapping around her throat. But the funny thing was, Ruby wasn’t terrified. Much like Shane, hoping his mother would wake up and scold him for tearing the bottom of her dress, Ruby hoped her father would spring to life, because then he wouldn’t be dead.

  She wouldn’t have killed him.

  Still, more silence, and after she’d felt for a pulse, she thought of calling Juniper. She thought of calling Parker. But she didn’t even reach for her phone. Calling Juniper would only implicate her friend in the murder, and Parker would never look at her the same way. So, between the hiccups and the sobs, Ruby decided to
do it all herself. The removal of the body. The burial in the woods. Pushing him over the windowsill took some work, but her first-story window was draped in shadow, and no one saw her dragging him to the car.

  “I put a plastic bag over his head, to keep the car from getting bloody,” Ruby explained, watching Juniper in the darkness. “I made him disappear, along with the doll. I wanted to make the car disappear too, but I wasn’t clever enough to figure out how.”

  “You’re clever,” Juniper murmured. It seemed, at the moment, all she could manage. Carefully, she extracted her hand from Ruby’s, but she was still looking into those cool blue eyes, the last eyes Parker had seen before he’d run into the house. “You could’ve called me. I would’ve helped.”

  “And you would’ve been ruined, like I am ruined,” Ruby said. “I am gone, Juniper. Emptied. For a while, I thought Shane could fill me up, but he drifted away instead. And he took what was left of me.”

  “You went through something traumatic. Twice. And having to bury your own father, my God. Anyone would’ve cracked—”

  “Cracked, like porcelain. Funny you should say that.” Ruby pushed off the ground and strolled toward the patio. The revolver was sitting out in the open, but Ruby walked right past it, to the place where Brianna’s mask had landed. Picked it up. Held it in front of her face. “Beautiful or terrifying? Come on, Junebug, you can tell me the truth. Who wore it best?”

  “That isn’t funny. You aren’t Doll Face.”

  “You sure about that? It’s certainly fitting. You’d have to be made of porcelain, to do what I have done. To see what I have seen. Walking in those woods, two different times, with two different bodies. Well, Shane wasn’t with me, and I was too far away to pull him from the car. But I thought of climbing through the window, wrapping my arms around him one last time. Our souls could’ve escaped, together.”

  Juniper stepped forward, her mouth open and her eyes wide. “Ruby. You saw—”

  “Too much, and not enough. I arrived too late. Parker’s text reached me too late. I remember sitting on the edge of my bed, perched there, like a bird afraid of flying. Afraid of falling and crashing on the rocks. I knew Shane hadn’t made that video. I knew it. But there was just enough doubt to keep me frozen for a moment. He’d brought the rope into my room, and the hair in the video looked like his. I used to think Parker was big, dumb, and beautiful, but only two of those things were true. Well, one, if you’re speaking with a certain innuendo.”

  Ruby’s lips curled, and then she shook herself, because Parker didn’t exist anymore. He wasn’t large or small. He’d reduced Shane Ferrick to a pile of ashes, and then he’d met the same terrible fate. Now Ruby had a choice to make.

  There was a gun at her feet and a mask in her hand.

  “Let’s play a game,” she said, tapping the gun with her foot. Lowering the mask. “I can tell you the thing you don’t really want to know or I can shuffle off this mortal coil without saying anything. You’ll have plausible deniability. Brianna will go down as the villain, and you’ll be the hero. As for Parker, well, let’s leave it up to the audience to decide.”

  “This isn’t a movie. This is real. And he’s . . .” Juniper looked up, to the flames devouring the second floor of the mansion. “He’s dead.”

  “Very likely, yes.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “Technically, the fire did. Technically, Brianna lit the candle, and the three of you took off.” Ruby shrugged, smiling at her gloved hands. “Who knows what happened after that?”

  “I have a theory. After all, you are the Disappearing Act,” Juniper said, oddly logical in that moment. But maybe, in times of immense distress, people’s truest selves came out. Juniper had always been a student of the universe, logical and scientific.

  Ruby was going to miss that about her.

  Sweeping forward, she plucked an object from the patio stones. “And for my final trick, I’m going to make myself . . . disappear.”

  38.

  UNDERWATER ACROBAT

  Juniper was thirteen years old the first time she saw a revolver. Ruby had smuggled it out of the middle school drama department, and Juniper didn’t know it was a prop. All she knew was that Ruby had wanted to play Clue, and when the culprit turned out to be Miss Scarlet, she’d pulled that revolver out of her purse. “I am caught,” she said in a breathy voice, lifting the barrel to her temple.

  Then, a deafening sound. What Juniper remembered next was kneeling on the ground beside her friend, tears rushing out of her like she’d never be able to stop crying. She’d imagined Ruby’s death a dozen times before. She’d imagined it, and forcibly pushed it away, but to see it . . .

  To feel it . . .

  It had been too much.

  Now, watching Ruby lift the very real gun to her temple, Juniper wished for childhood misunderstandings. “You told me it wasn’t loaded.”

  “I told you what you wanted to hear,” Ruby said, striding backward, until the length of the pool was between them. “I knew you’d believe I was innocent, because you always see me as the victim, no matter what I do. Never the villain.”

  “I know you.” Juniper was calculating the distance between them. If she reached out, her fingertips would only brush the air. If she leapt forward, Ruby’s finger would tighten on the trigger. “You aren’t the villain.”

  “Who am I, then?” Ruby asked coolly.

  “You’re a killer,” Juniper said, and Ruby’s mouth dropped open. “You killed your father because he was going to kill you.”

  “Oh, let’s not sugarcoat things, darling. I kill people, it’s true. But let’s not dress it up in tinsel and wrapping paper, all right?”

  “Was he going to kill you? Was he going to squeeze the life out of you, intentionally or not?”

  Ruby blinked, brow furrowing. “He . . .”

  “What would’ve happened if you hadn’t fought back? Would you still be here tonight?”

  “No.” She didn’t think about it. She must not have, because the word fell from her mouth, as if it had been waiting to free itself.

  Juniper pressed on, taking a single step. “And Parker? You said he texted you the night of Shane’s death. Was he trying to bring you to the scene of the crime? Blame you for it somehow?”

  “He was trying to get me into my car. He texted me from Shane’s phone, hoping we’d meet on that narrow road and go up together in a big, fiery poof.” A quick glance at the inferno. No lips twitching, this time. No laughter.

  “He was trying to kill you,” Juniper said, her guts clenching at the revelation. Really, she should’ve seen it before now. She’d known Parker better than anyone. She’d thought she had, but even she’d expected him to have a line he wouldn’t cross. A point at which he would stop. “Do you think he would’ve stopped? If Shane hadn’t . . . If things had gone differently, do you think he would’ve tried again?”

  “Probably,” Ruby said, tilting her head. Speaking casually of nightmares and death. But after a minute, she added, “But he didn’t have to because—”

  “Shane was gone. And you wouldn’t even look at anyone else.” A beat, as Juniper took her lip between her teeth. “But what if you had?”

  Ruby’s head snapped up. Her mouth was a perfect circle, and the barrel was pressed to her temple at a slant. Her grip was slipping, on the revolver and on reality—at least, the reality she’d painted herself into. She wanted to see herself as the villain because it was easier to deal with what she’d done. But there was another version of the events. A reality that Juniper was speeding toward, quicker than a bullet. “What if you had loved me?”

  “What?”

  “What if people were right? What if I was in love with you, and you decided to give me a chance. Would I still be alive?”

  Ruby swallowed. Juniper could see it, as clear as if the sun was blazing, but of course, the sun had nothing to do with it. The sun wasn’t even up. Still, the world was awash in golden rays, casting shadows across Ruby’s
face. Revealing her in an instant, then hiding her away. It was perfect. It was poetry. It was Ruby Valentine, still wearing a mask, even as the porcelain one dangled from her fingers.

  And Juniper was going to shatter it. She was going to break it into a thousand pieces. “Do you think I’d be dead? How do you think Parker would’ve killed me, specifically?”

  “I . . . I don’t want to do this,” Ruby pushed out in a rush, all air and no fire. She was tired, that much was clear. She tightened her grip on the gun.

  “Please,” Juniper started, but the word caught in her throat. Time was speeding up. Ruby’s eyes were closing, the gun was too far away to knock to the stones, and Juniper couldn’t get to it in time. She was the underwater acrobat, moving too slowly, through liquid. She needed everything to stop, the way it had on the balcony when their fingers had entwined. How had it begun? With love and laughter?

  No. With a photograph.

  Suddenly a room unfolded behind her eyes, a room that had seemed like an impossibility. Like someone had reached into her chest and read the contents of her heart. Only one person in the world could’ve known her like that, known her darkest fears and her deepest desires.

  “It was you.” She stepped closer, but only a little. Too close, and Ruby would panic. Too close, and that would be it. “You decorated my bedroom. You left me the tickets to Cuba. You’re the only one who could’ve done it.”

  “I decorated all of them, except for mine,” Ruby admitted, the inferno framing her in light. She looked as if she was on fire, that red hair blazing. That hair was like blood on a fingertip. Like fresh strawberries, plucked from the vine. She’d dyed it because of him. To embody his nickname for her.