"Oooh."
I shifted in the bed, frowning at the foreign sensation of extra weight against my body. Was my comforter always that heavy?
"Ruby and Skyler sittin' in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G."
Holly's voice sparked me awake instantly. Her presence in my room, however, wasn't as alarming as Skyler's.
I didn't even remember falling asleep. Apparently neither did Skyler. His chest rose slowly, calmly, and his arm was slung lazily over my hips. Heat inflamed my entire body. My breath caught in my throat. I couldn't move.
"First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage!"
Skyler stirred at Holly's loud, obnoxious cajoling. His eyes flickered open, gray oceans daring me to dive in and drown. Nothing was said for a moment, and then his eyes widened and he bolted back like I'd burned him.
"Holy shit!" he exclaimed, sitting up from where he'd tumbled to the floor. "Holy . . ."
Holly laughed. "Oh, Ruby! I could have never been so bold!"
"Shut up," I hissed, and turned to Skyler. "What are you doing here? Why didn't you go home?"
A blush crawled over his cheeks. It was alarmingly adorable. "I . . I don't . . ."
"You should leave. Now. Right now."
I didn't have to tell him twice. He was already scrambling off the floor, not even bothering to fix his disheveled hair before ducking through the still-open window. His gaze lingered on me, at my swollen eyelids and the injured hand I tucked in the blankets, away from Holly's pervasive sight. He didn't move, and the weirdest thing happened.
I almost asked him to stay.
But that would have been crazy. He wasn't my boyfriend. We were barely even friends. In any case, it was astronomically inappropriate for him to have slept over.
"I'm fine," I muttered. Unconvincing, but it was the best he would get. Skyler turned away and vanished from sight. The bed felt cold and empty.
"I didn't know Skyler was your boyfriend."
Her voice jarred me. I still wasn't used to hearing it around, and the mixed feelings it bubbled up inside me made me nauseous. I flopped back down and turned on my side, toward the window and away from her, and spotted a leather bracelet tucked under the pillow. Skyler's. I wrapped my fingers around it. "He's not."
"Could've fooled me."
"He's not."
"But I like it, you know? I always thought you guys would make a cute couple."
"Holly," I snapped. She shut up, and though I wished she'd leave, her presence remained behind me. Hovering. Stalling. Wasting space.
I slipped the bracelet onto my wrist.
The bed dipped as she sat down. "I wish you'd talk to me."
I said nothing.
"Ruby, come on. We used to be so close. We were best friends."
At that I wasn't sure what she expected me to say. Did she think all the nostalgia, all the memories, all the good times would inundate me with the undeniable urge to drag her back into my life?
"Ruby."
If so, she was delusional.
"Rubes, come on－" her hand landed on my calf.
"No." I bolted up, pinning her with an exhausted glare. "You don't get to do that, Holly. Why the hell are you still here?"
Hurt laced her eyes. "Because this is my home, and you're my sister."
Tears stung my eyes, but I'd be damned if I let them fall. I jerked the blankets off and stormed out of bed, down the hall. It was quiet; Mom and Dad must have headed out somewhere. Probably to talk with the lawyer, or avoid me, or both. They should have taken my sister with them.
Holly trailed me down the stairs and into the living room. Everything was wrong. Everything was wrong and my heart was racing and my stomach was upset and I wanted Skyler to be there and really just anybody but Holly.
"Ruby!"
My skin crawled. I balled my fists and turned to face her in the middle of our living room. "What? What do you want? What could you possible have to say to me?"
She squared her shoulders, all short hair and piercings and unfamiliarity. And then she said－she actually did－she said, "I won't apologize for leaving."
Honest to God, I almost threw Mom's good china dish at her head. "What?"
"It was a once in a lifetime opportunity that I don't regret. I hate what happened, and I'm sorry it happened to you, but I couldn't change it then and I can't change it now. So, no. I won't apologize."
My ears rang. I could have thrown up.
The words were injurious, adding salt to a wound already carved deep. "You weren't around," I croaked.
"What?"
"You weren't around!" I kicked the end table. The good china plate wobbled. The remote teetered and hit the floor.
"I was," she fired back. "I was around. I was around when the police knocked at our door. I was around when they told us you might not make it. I was around when Mom started having those panic attacks again, the bad ones she hasn't had since we were little. I was around you but you weren't. You weren't."
I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. Holly was all riled up, now. She'd always been tinier than me, slimmer, more petite, taking after our mom. Even four years younger I had about a six inches over her and thirty more pounds. Her stature didn't scare me.
Her words always have.
She stormed passed me and grabbed the remote, flicking to the closest news channel. My muscles tensed.
"Look," she said, and we looked. I waited for Priscilla's face to pop up, but through the entire news cycle to commercials, it never did. Holly huffed. "See? She's not there. Shit happens everyday, Ruby. Some guy just got arrested for murder. A toddler drowned in the lake. A family was separated by CPS. The brother of the convenience store clerk down the road shot himself. What the hell do you want? You want me to coddle you? You want me to tell you it's all going to be fine?"
The first tear arced down my cheeks. "Holly－"
"People die," she said. "Life is crappy, but we move on. We don't use it as an excuse to ruin our family and become an attention whore."
The instant the words left her mouth, I saw the regret settled in. But the damage was done. Because the downside of words was you couldn't take them back once they were out in the open, swirling in space, attacking you like bullets. They couldn't be rescinded. They couldn't be forgotten.They stuck to you like gorilla glue. Like pins. Like a second skin.
Her hands flew to her mouth, as if she could shove all the words back in.
She couldn't.
So she stepped forward, hands reaching for me, and I backtracked.
"Ruby, I . . . I'm so sorry. I didn't meant that."
"Of course you did."
Her eyes widened, mouth hanging open.
I sniffed, eyes drifting to the TV where, ironically, they were playing the earlier interview with Priscilla Gaffey. It was no longer breaking news, but still relevant. Always fucking relevant. "Oh, look."
Holly clenched her hair in her hands. "Ruby, please. I didn't mean it. I swear."
"It's okay." I walked over to the television and manually shut it off. Catching sight of my bandaged hand somehow made everything more real. High definition, cosmically amplified. And then there was the exhaustion. God, was I exhausted.
"Ruby－"
I looked at her, calm to the point of shattering. "I woke up, and you weren't there," I said, voice soft. "They had to teach me how to walk again. My memory is a crapshoot. Sometimes I forget things. Stupid things, but it still flips me out. I'll probably never work up the nerve to drive again. Mom and Dad hate me because they don't understand me anymore. People at school hate me. People who have seen the news and don't even know me hate me." I bit my lip, tasted blood, but she needed to hear this. "Jenna's family has disowned me. I'm in a freaking summer camp for the socially inept because I'm so damaged. Mom had to put locks on the medicine cabinets when I came home from the hospital, because I had suicidal tendencies. I come home and I read or I sleep because I don't remember how to do anything else. And every minute of every day, I wished you were here."
Now there were tears in Holly's eyes. "Ruby . . ."
"So it's okay," I said, brushing past her. "You couldn't have known. You weren't here."
I locked myself in my room and buried beneath the covers. My breath ricocheted back in my face from the closed confines, hot and ragged. In that moment, maybe to take my mind off things, I slipped a hand out to grab my phone off my nightstand and dialed Skyler's number.
He picked up on the second ring.
"Yo."
My eyes closed. I wanted to wrap myself around his voice. "Did you make it home okay?"
"Yeah, Mom had no idea."
"Really?"
"Nope, she whooped my ass. House arrest for the foreseeable future."
A smile twitched at my lips. Tears pooled on the pillow, sticking the fabric to my cheek. "I'm sorry."
"Not your fault." He paused for a moment. "Hey, Ruby?"
"What?"
"Why are you crying?"
My heart hitched. "I'm not."
"Yeah you are. What happened?"
"Nothing." Everything. "I'm reading an emotional book. Pride and Prejudice really gets to me."
"Uh-huh." Skyler cleared his throat, and I imagined him slung along the length of his couch, or propped in his bed picking at a guitar, or watching baseball with his dad. "Should I come over?"
I shouldn't have wanted him to, because it was kind of ridiculous. He wasn't my babysitter. He wasn't my caretaker. He wasn't responsible for this ticking time bomb. "No, I . . . I just wanted to make sure you got home. I'll see you in group."
I hung up before he could say anything else. Holly knocked on my door, asking me to open it, to let her in.
I clamped my hands over my ears and I shut her out.