Ruby in the Rough

by Emily Shore

  “Let’s go,” I urge him. “We really should get back.”

  He nods, assenting, and we depart from the house and break into a steady trot into the warehouse district, following the path etched in our heads like a brand until we reach home.

  It’s a graveyard for trains. The perfect place for our headquarters. We’ve mapped out every boxcar, every caboose, every engine. We know which ones have doors and which ones have false walls leftover from their smuggling days. The tracks continue for miles in every direction, and the boxcars are like fallen dominoes. A literal labyrinth of trains. And our home for the past two years.

  Dead leaves, damp from the recent rains, congregate between each train, squelching under our feet. Out here, we can safely light a fire thanks to all the high rises ― each one a mask to disguise the train yard. We’re nestled near the forest. Just a dozen or so streets through the warehouse district nudging the old canals. If anyone ever discovers our hiding place, we know the warehouse district better than anyone else. The forest would be the worst place to run to since it’s the first place anyone would search. Plus, looks are deceptive. On each side of the forest are more buildings, which create the very outskirts of the Ghetto including its southernmost bridge monitored by soldiers. At least it’s doubtful anyone will find us here. It’s an abandoned yard surrounded by more abandoned buildings ― a graveyard in a ghost town.

  Summers are easier for us. There are more hunting options and natural food to find like eggs and berries. However, we must be more careful. Summers also mean longer days and expanded searches from the sweepers. It’s a big city, but sooner or later, they will run out of sections to search. By that time, I’m hoping I’ll have convinced Ink to leave or at the very least fulfilled my life debt to him.

  Somewhere out there are mountains bulging over the sea. The ones of my childhood were far different. If it wasn’t flatlands, there were so many trees, I couldn’t see the rocks. All the leaves just acted like moss, murky brown blights on the gray stone and no trace of the ocean whatsoever.

  To this day, I can remember my father telling me about the ocean. How we would someday leave the farm and go looking for it. He was the dreamer. My mother was the more practical one. I guess I’m a healthy blend of both.

  Ink starts the process of making a fire.

  “Who are you like more?” I wonder aloud.

  He pauses, tilting his head toward mine. “Excuse me?”

  “Your mother or father?”

  Ink looks down and resumes his work, neatly assembling a bundle of twigs into a teepee formation. “My mom. Same white-blonde hair.” He taps the side of his head once.

  “I meant who do you act like more?”

  “My sister,” he says without hesitation.

  I open my mouth, but no words come out. It’s the first time he’s ever mentioned a sister. Up till now, Ink’s past has been like his name. Maybe we’ve been together long enough now or maybe it’s just the first time I’ve showed any true interest. After all, when you don’t have any family of your own out there, what’s the point in hearing about someone else’s?

  “Or at least I want to,” he adds.

  Ink doesn’t speak for a few moments, and I know not to press him. When he clamps his mouth shut, not even one of the trains around us could drag a word from those lips. Above our heads, clouds spread like frayed flannel. In between the snapped threads, I can make out a patch of black sky ― a pinpoint or two of starlight. Something about it is comforting. No matter how wrecked the world is down here, the sky is still there ― sun and moon and stars and all.

  Ink blows out a breath, but I don’t even get a chance to see the white puff before the fire sucks it up. “She’s older than me.”

  I wait.

  Moments ooze by, turning into minutes like all the words inside his throat are sludge he must slowly push out.

  “We lived in a camp. Tents all pitched close to one another.”

  “Like gypsies.”

  Ink nods, twists his head slowly to the side. “But not as close. No blood ties or secret handshakes.”

  I wait again for him.

  Ash clots the air all around us, tiny embers fluttering like fireflies.

  Giving the fire one more poke to feed the flames, Ink leans back, elbows making small quarries in his thighs while his fingers form a loose fist to give his jaw a nook to settle. Secrets and memories clog up his eyes, and for the first time, they seem heavy and dark.

  “My mother was sold to my father as a breeder,” he starts again. “But because she could only have two, my father beat her every night. I still remember her screams. They were always the same. Never got softer. Once, he tried to teach me how to hit. Said it was the only way I would become a man. When I refused, I got a beating, too.”

  I want to stretch out my hand. Touch his knuckles or touch his shoulder, but my legs are stuck to the ground; my back has fused with the bark of the log I’m against.

  “I didn’t mind the beatings. Or the cutting. It took the attention off my mother. Nights were hardest. But days...”

  A ghost smile turns the corners of his mouth. Not enough to wrinkle his cheeks. Just a hint of hope.

  “My sister would take me exploring. She was stronger than me.” Ink picks up a nearby twig and wags it at me. “Kind of like you. Climbing trees, diving headfirst into the river, the first to laugh, the last to cry, and she spent every morning dressing my wounds.”

  Ink stays quiet for several minutes. I still don’t move. He moves too much, stoking the fire, creating little piles of leaves and twigs for more tinder, drawing lines in the dirt like they can become whole roads that will carry him far away from the memories he doesn’t want surfaced.

  “Mom finally had enough of the beatings. One morning, she just never woke up. But my father wasn’t about to give up his “lessons”.”

  Ink lowers his head to his knees, kneads his knuckles into the ground, tunneling into damp mud, worms, and roots as tiny as threads.

  I hug myself and heave a sigh. “He started on your sister instead.”

  Ink is shedding his outer skin. Clawing off scrap after scrap, each one as thick as a dragon scale.

  “I’ll never forget that night. I was only eleven. And he broke both my ribs when I wouldn’t lift a finger to her. Just remember blood. And the way his knuckles looked again and again. It was the first time I ever heard my sister cry. Not even when my mom took all the beatings.”

  I can almost imagine his sister. Did she look like him? Same timid locks the color of mountain caps. Maybe her eyes were green or brown. Did she talk like him? That same steadiness to her voice like she wanted to be certain of every word like I need to be certain of every foothold when I climb. How did it end?

  “She begged me to hit her so it would stop. Just one strike. He promised he’d stop if I did it just once.”

  Ink grates his fingers into his hair, locks them onto a point on his skull, and starts to groan. It’s caught halfway between a snarl and a howl. Like an injured wolf fighting for its life but crying for help all the same.

  He doesn’t lift his face at all. “I struck her on her jaw. She fell. A night of firsts. She’d never stumbled before that. I hit my own sister. I made that choice.”

  “To stop the pain.”

  Then, Ink does growl at me, eyes turning to ice on a midwinter night. “I made the choice. I was too weak. The next morning, she was gone. She left with no goodbyes. And I don’t blame her.”

  “Ink―”

  He seethes at me. “Don’t try to console me or excuse what happened, Ruby. It could have been you that night.”

  I rise up to my knees and shuffle over to him. “I wasn’t planning on giving you any sympathy.”

  He leans back, brows drawing low, dubious. “What’s in that head, Ruby?”

  “You’re stuck in that night. You keep reliving it over and over again. And if you think wallowing in self-pity and punishing yourself is going to help, it’s not.”

&nbs
p; “Ru―”

  “My turn, shut up.” I rise up so my shadow slaughters his body. “I’m not as good with words as you, so let me get this out.” I inhale and begin again, “I get it now. You’re looking for her. You want to make amends. But it’s never going to fill that empty hole in that heart of yours.” I lean forward and poke his chest. “You can ask her forgiveness, you can ask God forgiveness, but if you’ve been doing this to yourself for years, you’re never going to forgive yourself. You’re buried up to your neck in guilt.”

  “Says the girl who’s always running.”

  I splay my hands to the sides, palms out and tip one foot behind the other in a semi-bow. “Hey, I’m a yellow-bellied coward! See? It feels so good to admit it. You should try it.”

  Ink tilts his head and chuckles. “I’m a pathetic, blue-deviled whiner.”

  “Not a bad start,” I commend him and hunch down on the log right next to him.

  “You never cease to amaze me, Ruby in the rough. You climb clock towers, steal from the Hotel, know the streets better than anyone, curse like a drunken sweeper, and yet you are...”

  “Not a fighter, I know.” I remove my cap and spin it around on one fist. “Flight wins over fight any day.”

  “Even if it’s flight up the side of a building.”

  Ink’s laugh is a spark, similar to the fiery embers flickering like fireflies all around us. Every so often, one will land on my cheek, kissing a freckle or two.

  “Right about now, your freckles are as red as your hair,” comments Ink, reaching out to tap my right cheek. “Looks like Mars threw up on your face.”

  I break out into a snort. “Well, at least I don’t have fairy hair.”

  “Knobby knees.” He thwacks my leg with his twig.

  “Unibrow,” I hurl back at him, adopting the old banter we’ve had from day one.

  “Hippie hair.”

  “Wart face.”

  “Hey!” protests Ink. “That was over a year ago, and you know it.” He flicks the stick, targeting my arm.

  “All is fair in love and war.”

  Neither of us responds to that. All too often we seem to dangle on the boundary between one or the other. Our system works too well for us to complicate it with fragile notions such as love. We complement each other. Friendship or blood brother and sister is the best method of survival while in the city. Maybe if we ever get to the cliffs together...if Ink finds his sister first of course. I know she will still be his priority one.

  Ink takes his shirt in one hand and pulls it off in a fell swoop, then gestures to his tattoo. The black decoration on his skin is a random infinity. No beginning and no ending, traveling along his shoulder, coiling around his arm, sweeping across his chest, crawling upon his back and connecting all together again.

  “Look closer, Ruby,” he coaxes me, and I lean in a little. Just as I do, Ink seizes my hand and presses my fingers to the ink on his chest. They go deeper than the tattoo…to something much blacker beneath the surface.

  I get it now.

  “This,” I note, tracing a finger along the length of ink and raised scars, “is where he cut you.” That’s why his ink is so random.

  After one brief nod, Ink reaches for his shirt, and I scoot away a little to give him some space. Except he doesn’t seem to want it since he reaches for my hand as soon as he’s finished.

  “Thank you.”

  I look up. “For what?”

  “For not pushing.” When I give him a disbelieving stare, he finishes, “and then pushing when I needed it.”

  I’m about to tip my cap and say “you’re welcome” when the sound of a twig snapping alerts us both. The hairs on the back of my neck become primed porcupine needles. Instinct causes both of us to reach for our knives, but if it’s sweepers, we’ll be hard-pressed to put up a fight against their guns. Gang members wield cruder weapons like clubs and metal pipes ― anything the city offers them.

  Upon entering the firelight, anyone can see she’s weaponless from the tight leather skirt skimming her mid-thighs and tights torn like they met some mutated breed of fabric-eating termites. Her sweater dangles off one shoulder like a willow branch. Not from the hotel I automatically conclude but also not an orphan, which makes me wary. Her gait alone assures me she hasn’t spent too many solitary nights. She’s had training.

  Unlike me, Ink immediately relaxes, sheathing his knife.

  Men!

  “Excuse me.” She shuffles her leather-clad feet back and forth as if she’s unsure, but the way she’s fiddling with her hair confirms the act for me even though it’s obviously not for me.

  “I’m sorry for interrupting your conversation, but can I share your fire?”

  Ink slides down the log, putting a gap between the two of us. Despite the fire shedding its crackling ash all around us, the air seems twenty degrees colder just from that space. Even worse when she squeezes her trim body in between us, inching much closer to Ink than to me. Of course, he’s lapping it up, but I have to cut him some slack. In Ink’s case, it’s that gold heart and not just the man bits.

  “So do you expect us to believe you were just wandering around an abandoned train yard and saw our smoke?” I accuse her when she places her palms near the fire.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Ink’s grimace, but I pay him no mind. Seriously? This girl’s skin is like lace and frosting. At least I have an excuse for my pale skin: I’m a ginger. No dirt under her nails either. Upon noticing my gaze, she tugs the sleeves of her sweater down but not before I see the black and blue bruises there. Only one question left: gang girl or breeder?

  “Actually, I followed you.” She flicks her head back and forth between the two of us.

  “Followed?” Ink perks up, eyes shooting toward her faster than a bird’s.

  “When you came into the house. I was hiding in the back closet. I didn’t know who you were, if you were friendly or not.”

  I open my mouth but then slam it shut. Better not to reveal too much about ourselves like the fact that I’d normally notice if someone was following us or how she managed to trail us so well with how quickly I get us through the streets. Then again, her legs are nice and long so she probably wouldn’t have too much trouble keeping up. Peering down, I narrow my eyes on the slits in her tights. There are cuts there. No wider than a string’s length. Cigarette and cigar burns like bottle cap prints. Gang girl is my guess. She doesn’t even have gloves, and it’s the middle of winter. However, judging by the plumpness in her cheeks, I can tell she’s not used to fending for herself.

  When she warms her hands by the fire and licks her lips, eyeing the rice we’ve just cooked, my suspicions are confirmed.

  Naturally, Ink offers. “Are you hungry?” He grips the handle of the pot and extends one of our crude wooden spoons to her.

  “Thank you,” she accepts without delay. Another sign that she isn’t from the streets. Anyone on the streets knows the code. I scratch your back, and you scratch mine. Nothing is ever free. However, I try to ease off and lean back because I know she’s paid her own price, and in more ways, it’s higher than anything I’ve ever paid. At least my body is my own. Besides, my real contempt is due to how Ink looks at her more than anything. Because when you’re living on the streets, you don’t have time to tend to your appearance much less time to look in the mirror.

  A hearty dose of pity also mixes into his attraction, however, and I can also rest in the satisfaction that he’s never regarded me with pity. Not even when he helped me fight off the pack of coyotes the first time we met two years ago. In all fairness, they shouldn’t have picked a fight with me. I trapped that fox all on my own. And my favorite story is the one of the Mother Hen. You work or you don’t eat.

  In between bites, she sweeps aside a few locks of her hair, which is fresh stardust.

  While I huddle further into my solitary wool coat, Ink is the one who makes conversation.

  “What’s your name?” He wonders, watching her eat.

>   She swallows a mouthful of rice, flicking away a grain from her cheek and responds, “I’m called Chastity.”

  Ironic is my first thought, but then my better half slaps the devil on my shoulder, reminding myself of how she phrased it: I’m called. Not even her name belongs to her. Unlike me who was gifted her name at birth and unlike Ink who left behind his old name and gave himself a brand new one. We both hold that, but Chastity can’t say the same.

  “Where are you from?” Ink follows up with another question.

  “North. Beyond the big falls. But I left.”

  She turns her head, but just before she does, I think I almost see the demons reflected there. Not just a trick of the firelight. Everyone has their own demon stories now. Everyone has names that haunt them. I don’t even dare whisper mine now. All I remember is the way Mal used to look at me in the days following the burial of our parents and the selling of our farm ― like I was more meat fodder than the sister he milked cows with or built mud pies alongside. The night he came into my room when he thought I was asleep and tried to measure me was the last straw, when I knew I had to run. Just like I told Ink: flight always wins over fight. But it doesn’t mean our demons leave us. They still haunt our steps, holding onto our shadows for cover.

  “Where do you come from?” Chastity asks both of us, but her eyes linger on me.

  For whatever reason, it’s more unsettling that she’s paying attention to me now instead of Ink. Why is she interested? Ink is understandable. He’s the type who loves to learn everything about everyone. Something tells me that Chastity is just the opposite. Basic needs are more her concern.

  “Nowhere special.” I don’t offer anything.

  Chastity nods, doesn’t seem likely to probe anymore, but she still doesn’t look away. “Well...your hair is very special.”

  I finger one of my ends before coiling all the braids into a bun and tucking them under my cap.

  “You don’t see that color anymore. It’s unheard of.”

  Straightening, Ink winks at me, and I’m comforted that he’s going to direct the attention back to him. “Ruby’s very special herself.”