3
RUBY
I laugh when she flips me off, because me? I’m the asshole? She’s the one darting between rows of parked cars like a squirrel on speed. If anybody is wrong here, it’s her. Definitely. So what if I did try to scam a car wash out of it? The girl slapped her hands on my baby. She’s lucky I didn’t cut them off.
I pull into a parking space, far enough away that I don’t think she can see me, but where I can still sorta see her and her very angry big brown eyes. There was a second there, when the sun hit just right, that they almost looked amber. Not that I’m really interested in her or her kinda amber, mostly brown eyes. More mildly curious. It’s a pretty small school, and I’ve known most of these kids since I was little. It’s not often we get new kids, especially not this late in the year—there’s got to be a story there.
A tap on my side window pulls my attention, and I turn to see Everly—literally the only person on earth cleared to touch my car besides me—giving me a funny look. I pop my door open and she steps back, running her fingers through her twists. One of the boys from the lacrosse team whistles as he walks by with his teammates, flashing her a grin and tacking on a “Looking good, ladies” to round things out.
Everly clucks her tongue. “Wish I could say the same for you, Marcus.”
Marcus grabs his heart dramatically, walking backward as the rest of the team falls into a chorus of “ooooh” and “ouch.”
Everly gets that a lot. I mean, when you’re Harrington Falls’s answer to Amandla Stenberg, it’d be hard not to, but still. I’ll take “Looking good, ladies” any day over what people say to me when she’s not around. I guess that’s what you get when pretty much everybody considers you a trashy time bomb. Like it’s only a matter of time before I start spitting out kids and ruining lives or something.
I push my seat forward, shoving a pair of heels, my tap shoes, and some garment bags out of the way to grab my backpack. “You know he’s into you.”
“I do.” She smiles.
“But?”
“But nothing. He hasn’t asked me out, and I’m not about to ask him.”
“Wow,” I say as we start to walk toward the building entrance. “Way to set back women’s rights about ten billion years. If you like him, you should go for it.”
“Says the girl who sneaks around with Tyler Portman every time he texts her for a hookup.”
“Hey.” I hold up a finger. “There’s nothing wrong with owning your sexuality. I text him as often as he texts me. And it’s a mutual understanding. No pining, no feelings—”
“The boy likes you.”
“He does not!”
“That hickey on your neck says otherwise.”
I snap my hand up to cover it. “I put makeup on it!”
“Yeah, well, not enough.” She laughs. “Credit to Tyler, though—it’s amazing you can even see it with all that spray tan you got on.”
“That was my mom’s doing,” I say, holding out my arms and frowning when I notice a small streak.
“Yeah, well, tell your mom if she makes your white ass go full Kardashian, I’m gonna stop shooting you on principle until you turn back to the shade of skin god gave you.”
I huff; I don’t even remember what shade that is anymore. My skin and nails and hair have been tanned and painted and bleached since I was a little girl. Sometimes—all the time?—I wish I could peel it all off, just to see who I am underneath.
“You think I’m playing?” Everly smirks. “Maybe your mom will leave you alone if she has to start paying for those Instagram pics.”
Everly is obsessed with photography, and it shows in her work. She’s fantastic. She’s been doing my headshots for the last couple of years and providing content for the Instagram account my mom manages for me. Mom thinks it will lead to modeling gigs or something, but all it’s led to so far is creepy dudes in my DMs.
But forget posed pictures and promoted posts. Everly is the queen of candids. She’s always got her Nikon around her neck, shooting when we least expect it. Her entire senior art project is based on the idea that candids can show you who a person really is, without their guard up.
I wouldn’t know; my guard is never down.
I pull my hair out of its messy bun and fluff it around my shoulders, covering my neck as best as I can. “Better?”
She flicks her eyes over to where Tyler has joined Marcus and the rest of the lacrosse team. “I guess that depends on who you’re asking.”
“Oh my god, Everly. A hickey is a sign of an overzealous night, not a lasting declaration of love!”
“Uh-huh, well, what about when you combine it with his whole Please don’t leave me, Ruby, why can’t you stay the night?” She claps her hands together like she’s begging.
“Never happening.” I give her a shove, but I’m laughing.
“Uh-oh.” She gasps.
“What?” I look around, trying to figure out what just freaked her out, but the only thing remotely out of the ordinary I see is the new girl pouting alone on a bench.
“Oh, nothing. Just your daddy issues showing.”
“Screw you,” I say, but I don’t really mean it. If there’s one person on this earth that can and does call me on all my bullshit on the regular, it’s Everly. “It’s not daddy issues. It’s I don’t want to be tied down to a dumb boy in high school and end up like my mom issues.”
Everly opens her mouth to say something else, but I can’t hear it over the sound of the bell signaling that we all better drag ourselves inside before we get marked as absent.
“Saved by the bell,” Everly says as we catch up to Marcus and the rest of the guys. He slings his arm around her and whispers something in her ear that makes her giggle.
Tyler stands on the other side of him, watching. He hangs back from the crowd a little, slowing to match my pace. He’s a catch by most standards—six foot one, all lean lacrosse muscle, with floppy hair and a kind face that lights up when he smiles.
I’d run, honestly—anything to avoid this awkward morning-after dance . . . except he’s in my first period.
“You left again,” he says when the others are out of earshot.
“I leave every time.” I still don’t understand why he’s so surprised by that. “And you left a mark,” I add, shifting my hair just enough for him to see. I don’t miss the hint of a smirk on his face before he pulls his features back into place. “Did you do it on purpose?” I ask, loud enough that Everly turns her head to look at me.
“Relax, it was nothing. I just got a little overexcited.”
“Well, if you could not get a little overexcited on my body, that would be great.”
He leans in. “Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of our whole arrangement, then?”
I shove him away with my shoulder. “Just don’t do it again. Okay?”
“It was an accident, Ruby,” he says, his tone becoming less playful. “You’re not gonna make me feel like an asshole because you came over to get some and I delivered.”
“Jesus, Tyler. Don’t be a dick.”
“I’m not the one being a dick.”
“What does that mean?” I drop my bag onto my desk. And, okay, I guess this is going to be the theme for the day. First I’m the asshole, and now, apparently, I’m also the dick. Perfect.
“You know exactly what I mean,” he says, and crosses the room to his seat.
Except I don’t. I really don’t.
Unless he means the leaving thing, which, no.
I glance out the window, a headache already forming behind my eyes. I watch the new girl get off the bench and walk over to a shitty Honda Civic—gray, with little spots of rust on the bumper. I catch a glimpse of the driver as he leans over to pass her a book bag. Definitely not her dad—way too young—but the way he ruffles her hair when she takes the bag means not a boyfriend either. A teeny-tiny piece of me relaxes at that realization. I try not to think too hard about what that means.
I search my backpack for a pencil, anything to tear my eyes off the girl outside, grateful when my phone vibrates in my pocket. I pull it out to find about a dozen texts from Mom, reminding me that I have tap class tonight at six thirty, and to wear the good shoes, and to smile, and to be sure to postdate the check a week, and . . . and . . . and . . . There are always more instructions. Mom likes to say, “The only thing better than being a pageant queen is being a pageant queen’s mama,” except I find that really hard to believe.
But there are some things you can’t say out loud: like how her dream isn’t my dream anymore, hasn’t been for a while, no matter how hard I try to force it. Like how I wish that postdated check were for bills and groceries and not tap lessons I hate and spray tans that won’t do anybody any good. Like how I’ve been faking my smile for so long, I’m scared I don’t know what the real one feels like anymore.