For Ruby

If you are reading this, then you must want to know what happened. I’ll try to explain, so you can understand.

This is a story which could have gone many ways, but it went this way.

It began at a house. The house was very beautiful. It was large and white and had pillars either side of the front door, more like some monument than a home. There were strings of lights hanging from the trees, moons in a moonless night.

I stood with Isabella at the end of the driveway, which was wide and long and edged with squared off hedges. I’d never been inside a house like that before, but Isabella had invited me to a party with her.

People were going in and out of the front door. The step up to it was made of white stone and shone under the outdoor light.

Isabella looked like someone who belonged here. She did belong, it was her cousin’s house. Maybe I should have begun with Isabella.

We met in our first year of high school. I shared a form class with her but had never spoken to her until the day I walked into the bathroom and found her in there, sniffing and red eyed.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, leaning against the sink and eyeing her. She had the perfect kind of highlights only a hairdresser could do, she wore shoes I wanted but my mother said were too expensive. Her uniform was brand new, no hand down from a neighbour's daughter.

She sniffed again and didn’t answer. Rich bitch, I thought in my head, when I looked at her. I know I am not always a good person. You might think that already, anyway.

“What?” I asked her. “Broke a nail? Socks don’t match?”

She smiled at me then, and it made me feel sorry for her.

“I wish. I got my period.” She tugged at the hem of her skirt self-consciously. I rolled my eyes, pulled a tampon out of my bag and handed it to her.

“I always have some,” I said. I like to be prepared, that’s another thing about me.

She turned it between her fingers, as if I had handed her some foreign item. I stood against the door of the toilet stall and told her what to do. I gave her my cardigan and told her to tie it around her waist.

We were friends after that. I stopped hating her for her perfect clothes and hair, because I had something better. I knew what to do when things went wrong.

But still, looking at her outside this beautiful house where she belonged and I didn’t, I reminded myself I had to teach her how to use a tampon.

And behind me then, my brother revved the engine of his car, and I heard his tires starting to spin on the quiet tree lined street.

Maybe I should have begun the story earlier, before we got to the big house. With a smaller house. A much smaller house, and with no pillars framing the door, but there was a cactus in a pot beside it. I bought that for my mother one birthday. I knew it was the only type of plant she’d keep alive.

I was in the kitchen sitting at the table, watching my brother Marty. He’d promised to drop me and Isabella off at her cousins’ party, and since we wanted to go at eight I’d told him seven. That’s because Marty was always late. Our mother liked to say he was even late for his own birth – fifteen days overdue.

Back at high school, he used to sit outside the front door in the morning, fully dressed, bag on his back, waiting until it was ten minutes past the time he should have left. He’d be late enough to show he didn’t care about the rules, not so late it counted as wagging. He never had the nerve to go all the way. But he’s not really part of the story, I just thought you might want to know something about him.

I was sitting there while Marty was stomping around the kitchen, kicking at cupboards and cursing about our mother and her boyfriend.

“The bastards drank my beers,” he said, opening the fridge for the third time and looking into it. I didn’t know why he kept checking. Not much for those beers to be hidden behind.

He dropped into the chair beside me and ran his hands over his head. Marty was twenty but still skinny like a kid, bony shoulders jutting out against his tee shirt.

“I spent all my money on new tires for the car,” he said. “That’s it, I’m going to the pub to find them and make them pay me back!”

He straightened, slapped a hand down on the table. I’d been just checking my phone and waiting for his anger to spool out, like it always did, but then I realised my evening plans were about to be waylaid by him attempting to tangle with our mother’s boyfriend. She’s not a bad person though, my mother. 

“Okay,” I said, putting my phone down. “I have forty dollars. I’ll pay for a box of bourbon and coke. I only want a couple and you can have the rest.”

He scowled, flexed his hands. I waited for him to agree. He might have taken longer, but Isabella walked in right then, and he forget all about our mother.

“Hey, I got an idea,” he said. “Why don’t you come to the party I’m going to?”

Isabella looked at me, eyebrow raised in question. Thinking his party was going to be something better than what it would be. I’d spent enough time around my brother and his friends to know it would be a bunch of half-grown men drinking cheap booze until it ran out and talking about their cars. It would be considered a good night if someone did a burnout in the driveway.

“Not a chance,” I said, before Isabella could agree. Sometimes she liked my life better than her own. I knew she wouldn’t really want to be me, but she liked to try it on.

Marty dropped us off right on eight, and then he smoked the tires up on the street outside, just like he would have done if it was one of his friends’ houses. I smiled at him and pretended like I wasn’t embarrassed.

“Yeah!” someone yelled from further up the lawn. And then a chorus went around of claps and cheers and my brother drove off to the sound of them, trailing smoke.

Isabella grabbed my arm, laughed. “Your brother's the best,” she said. “Come on, let’s go in.”

I guess, really, this is the beginning. It’s the way all real stories begin, with a girl meeting a boy.

We’d been at the party a while, drinking whatever we got offered. I wasn’t drunk though. A commotion started from the next room, shouts that rose over the beat of music. It sounded like trouble so I walked toward it. I always used to do that; I could never look away.

A dark haired boy had another boy pinned up against the wall, one hand holding him there by the collar and one drawn back. He swung and everyone jostled and hissed and whooped around him.

I had seen fights before, at school and at home and in the street. But this was different, there was no anger in this boy. He was calm, silent, his fist coming down. It seemed like the most brutal thing of all, his calmness.

“Stop it,” I pleaded.

I don’t know how he heard me over the noise, or if he did at all, but he turned. His face was still, almost sad. As if he regretted what he was doing. For a second he held my eyes, then his fist balled up again. I couldn’t watch anymore. I felt sick from what I’d drank.

I found a door which led outside and stepped into a small enclosed courtyard. There was no light and I could only see dimly the lines of a fence, the shapes of outdoor furniture. 

The door swung open again and I turned to see the boy who had done the hitting step outside. He pulled his tee shirt up and wiped his mouth with it. I saw the flash of his pale stomach. He spat at the ground and then he looked at me.

“Hey,” he said. As if he didn’t know I was going to be there.

“Hi,” I said, folding my arms. It was early spring and still cold. Our breath came in puffs of white mist. I didn’t smile at him.

“I want you to know I’m not just some thug, he ripped my friend off. Sold him a car with the rust painted over.”

I hadn’t asked for an explanation, but he gave it. He didn’t hit that other boy just because he felt like it, or out of his own anger, he did it for a friend.

There was a spark, a flare of fire. His face briefly lit and the smell of smoke.

“Do you smoke?”

“Sometimes,” I said, even though I didn’t. He held the cigarette out and I took it. Sucked on the end of it, tasting ash and death, and coughed.

He took it back, brushing my fingers, standing close to me. “Sometimes never?”

He smiled at me. He was good looking. I think his eyes were blue but it was hard to tell.

All the bourbon and beer I’d drank started swirling around in my stomach, mixing with the smoke. I felt like I was going to be sick so I asked him if he knew where there was a bathroom.

“Upstairs,” he said.

The staircase in that beautiful house was like something out of a movie. It curved as it went upward, ringed by a wrought iron banister which was smooth and cold under my hand.

The sound of music downstairs faded away as I went. I heard footsteps coming behind me, heavy and sure.

You probably want to know something about your father, because he's a part of you too. He was a man who knew what he wanted.

If you wonder what your inheritance from him is, maybe it's those times when you know you want something, and think you would do anything to have it. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing, to be that way.

You might think I was scared when I saw those two lines on the pregnancy test, but I wasn’t. I knew what I was going to do.

The people I chose to be your parents told me they’re going to call you Ruby, which is a beautiful name. They’re going to take you away soon, and one day when you're older, if you ever ask about me and want to know what happened, they can give you this.

You might think this is a sad story, that everything that happened to me was bad luck. But you were something good which came from it.

That’s how I’ll think of you, out there in the world; my lucky charm, my blood, my Ruby.