Dare You

  He breathed, relief spreading across his face. “I was hoping you’d say that.” He tugged my waist and I fell into his lap, facing him, my legs wrapping around his middle. Dad’s recliner creaked with the added weight, but I ignored it. The truth was Dad would so rather find out I’d made out with Jones in his recliner today than find out where I’d been last night.

  I bent and kissed him, feeling the violet rush through me, roller coaster fast, my fingers lost in his hair, my body pressed up against his. His hands crawled up the back of my shirt, his skin warm against mine. He kissed me forever, and then worked his way up my neck and jawline to my ear.

  “Can I have you for the whole day?” he whispered.

  Yes. Yes, I wanted to be with him for the whole day. I wanted to stay lost in his kisses, in his skin. But there was Rigo to find. And, more pressing, there was someone named Ruby to find.

  “Let’s just worry about right now,” I said, and kissed him again.

  He stood, sweeping me off my feet and into his arms. “I’ll take what I can get,” he said, and carried me up to my room.

  Later, the shades drawn and my room dusky, I slipped into a nap, the feeling of Jones’s knuckle tracing my bicep the only thing keeping me in the present. He stayed quiet for a long time. And then, so softly I could have been convinced that I had only imagined it, he whispered, “Why can’t you just love me, Nikki?”

  I fell into a nightmarish sleep where Mom, bloody, was begging me to help her, where Dad was a ghost that haunted me at night, and where the hand in the dark that I reached for—the one stroking my bicep—was brown and calloused and glowing bright yellow.

  21

  IT WAS EVENING before Jones finally left, summoned by his mom, who needed him to come home and fill out college paperwork. Our lives had never seemed further apart—Jones worrying about financial aid and sports physicals while I was worried about staying out of prison and not getting killed by a runaway van in a dead wealthy person’s parking lot.

  That van . . .

  Dom . . . Dom . . . Dom . . . I wasn’t sure about the Distribution part. But I was certain about the scarlet-avocado-maroon. I was sure about Dom. I just couldn’t figure out where it fit.

  With Jones gone, I needed a new distraction.

  For old times’ sake, I pulled open my window and grabbed a cigarette, but I was too restless to enjoy the smoke. Funny to think that just a few months ago, the only thing on my mind while sitting in my window had been a stupid chem quiz. But now I sat in my window thinking life-and-death thoughts. Thinking secrets and lies and how my entire world seemed to be made of them. But, God, it had always been made of them; I just hadn’t known it until now.

  I thought about those photos of Mom. Of her baby bump and the bus station—Salinas, Modesto, Bakersfield—bubble blue, muted gray, spongy tawny—and Dad saying she went on a long business trip. Several months long. I tried to remember that time spent without her and came up blank. It was as if that portion of my life didn’t even exist. That could only mean one thing—that I had to have been really young when it happened, because I had spent the last ten years of my life carefully cataloguing every single memory I had of my mom. Baking Christmas cookies, her hand guiding mine with the sprinkle jar. Swimming at the beach, the way her hair got ropy and sand-caked and how I liked to sit behind her and run my fingers through the ropes to break them up. Ordinary days spent watching TV, our sock feet tangled up together on the couch. Those things had all happened after her business trip—I was sure of it. Which meant that baby bump was about my age. It could have been Peyton. It almost had to be.

  There was only one way to find out. Find Brandi Courteur. Whether I wanted to or not.

  I gazed at my desk drawer, the one with the black binder inside. My stomach knotted at the thought of holding Peyton’s letter again.

  Yes, I needed to find Brandi Courteur.

  I needed to start by finding a certain gemstone in the Willow Wood.

  THE WILLOW WOOD apartments were made up of several blocks of depressing brick buildings on a stark street near Skid Row. It was hard to imagine Peyton having anything to do with an area like this one—yet more evidence that I truly didn’t have a clue who Peyton really was—and for a moment I wondered if I’d gotten the clue wrong. If it was even a clue at all.

  It was, Nikki. Trust your synesthesia.

  Uh, yeah. A lot easier said than done.

  I found parking and headed out with pretty much no plan. A part of me had thought I would never find the place, or that I would get there and Ruby would be obvious, standing on a corner with a flashing neon sign around her neck. Instead, I stood next to my car and peered at what seemed like an impossible number of generic-looking apartments. How would I ever find someone here?

  Well, one thing was clear. I would never find anything if I didn’t start looking. I picked a building and found some teenagers sitting out on a stoop.

  “You guys know anyone named Ruby?” I asked. They stared at me, wordless. “Someone who might live in this building?” More stares. “You ever see a girl named Peyton? Blonde? Pretty?” One of them lit up a cigarette, but still no one talked. “Thanks for the information,” I muttered, moving on to the next building. And the next. And the next. Nobody knew anyone named Ruby. Nobody knew Peyton. Nobody knew anything.

  After a couple hours of dead ends, I got in my car and drove around to the other side of the complex. It was getting dark now—and I started to feel uneasy as I traipsed through another courtyard, asking a couple of boys playing basketball, a woman pushing a baby in a stroller, and two men sitting on a bench sharing a bottle. Nobody knew anything; or at least nobody was talking if they did.

  I was just about to give up, nervous about the dark. I couldn’t deny that knowing that Luna was out of jail and existing in this same dark put me on edge. The last thing I wanted was to be caught out here, fighting off that bag of crazy in this unfamiliar place filled with uncooperative people.

  One more try, I told myself, as I entered a crumbling brick building and climbed the steps. Nobody was outside anymore, so I would just have to start knocking on doors. If I got nothing, I would come back tomorrow and try again.

  The first door opened a crack, and one eyeball appeared in the space. A female eyeball wearing tons of makeup and fake lashes so long they almost poked through the door frame.

  “Hello?” I asked when she said nothing. I could see a splash of blue above the eye—blue hair, maybe? I cleared my throat. “I’m looking for someone? Her name’s Ruby?”

  Still not a word from the girl, but the door edged a little farther open, and I was surprised to see that she looked about my age. She was wearing a tight black corset and a short pink skirt, showing tons of leg and boob. She pointed toward the stairs with one black-painted fingernail.

  “Upstairs?” I asked, and the eye moved up and down; a nod. “Thank you so much.”

  Finally, I had something. Ruby was an actual person. In an apartment complex called Willow Wood. Somehow, our synesthesia had worked. My heart leaped as I took the stairs two at a time, trying to ignore the smells of fried grease and pot smoke. Trying not to think about Luna hiding in the shadows, maybe under the stairs, waiting for me when I got back.

  There were two doors at the top of the stairs. One had a tattered welcome mat out front that said Next Time Bring a Warrant. I knocked.

  At first there was nothing, and my heart sank. I pondered whether I should sit on the steps and wait for her to come back, or maybe even break in—the lock didn’t look that difficult, and I had learned a thing or two about breaking and entering over the past few months. But what would I really expect to find here? Would Ruby be displaying anything that might incriminate the Hollises? Would Luna be behind this door? Would Brandi?

  But just as I was about to turn away and give up until tomorrow, the door squeaked open. Unlike the door downstairs, this one opened fully, and right away I knew I had the right place.

  “Hi,” said the woman on
the other side. She was huge. Tall, muscular, huge breasts, curvy hips. Her red hair was so tall it looked like it might scrape the ceiling. Actually, red couldn’t even begin to describe the color of her hair. It was so red I expected it to hum. “Can I help you?” she asked. “You lost?”

  Hearing her voice, which was soft and inviting, knocked me out of my stupor. “Yeah, are you—” I said, but it came out in a whisper, so I tried again. “Are you Ruby?”

  She smiled, her fire-red lipstick smeared across her front teeth. “You’re not lost. And you are?”

  “I’m Nikki Kill,” I said. “I’m looking for somebody. I was hoping you could help me.”

  Just like that, her smile fell.

  “Oh my God,” she said, her voice dropping about seven octaves. “It can’t be. I think I know why you’re here.”

  22

  RUBY’S APARTMENT WAS as big and outrageous as she was—filled with half-pornographic knickknacks and full-on pornographic posters. Everything was red, red, red, which was kind of good, because the overwhelming color helped keep my own colors at bay. Or maybe that was a bad thing. I sort of needed them to help me see when I needed to be ready to run. Or fight. Or did I really? How much of my instincts was color-coded and how much was real?

  Either way, I hoped it didn’t come down to running or fighting.

  Ruby puttered through the living room, pulling dirty laundry and magazines off the couch and dropping them in a laundry basket that was parked in the hallway. “Come in, sit down. Sorry it’s such a mess. I don’t have a lot of visitors. And the ones I get aren’t really interested in watching TV, if you know what I mean.” She glanced at me worriedly, shielding her mouth with her hand. “Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t talk like that around you. You’re a nice girl. Carrie would be unimpressed by my language. Come in, sit down. It’s okay, I don’t bite. Can I get you a drink? A nonalcoholic one, of course?”

  My mind was spinning, but everything had screeched to a halt. She’d said Carrie would be unimpressed by her language. Surely she didn’t mean . . .

  “No, thanks,” I said, trying to keep up with her one-sided conversation. I sat on the couch. A shoe poked me in the backside and I pulled it out and dropped it on the floor. “I’m sorry, did you just say Carrie?”

  Ruby stopped fussing and stood awkwardly in front of me. “Well, yes. Isn’t that why you’re here? To talk about your mother?”

  Forget the red. The floodgates were now open. Confusion, surprise, fear. Puffs of mint with jagged edges, surrounded by golden starbursts, all of it splatting on a field of gray and black so strong I hadn’t seen it since Peyton died. I had a hard time catching my breath. My mother. How on earth did Ruby know my mother?

  Ruby rushed to my side, sat on the couch next to me. She laid her hands over mine. They felt calloused and rough, which helped bring me back into the present. “Oh, my! I’ve upset you,” she said. “What is it, honey? What can I do? Do you need a hospital? A real drink?”

  I felt myself shaking my head. No, I didn’t need a hospital. I didn’t need a real drink. I needed answers. But I was afraid of those answers. I wasn’t expecting them here.

  She leaned in closer. “You’re not here about your mother?” Confusion rippled her forehead. “Why are you here, then?”

  “Brandi,” I said. Hearing my own voice helped bring reality back. “I’m looking for Brandi.”

  Ruby sat back and smoothed her skirt. “I don’t know anyone named Brandi, honey, I’m sorry,” she said.

  “But you know Peyton?”

  She looked blank.

  “Rainbow?” I asked. “Maybe you knew her as Rainbow?” Recognition settled over her face, and Ruby got up and brushed ashes off a coffee table into her cupped hand, then dropped them on the floor. “She’s the one who led me to you. She wanted me to talk to you.” Ruby moved to a stack of newspapers, which she fastidiously straightened. “Look, I’m in real trouble. They think I killed Peyton, but someone—I think Luna Fairchild—is framing me. And Peyton left me a bunch of clues, and I can figure them out most of the time, but I never have any idea how they all fit together. You’ve got to help me.”

  Ruby stopped tidying and touched my wrist. “Listen, honey. It’s terrible what happened to Rainbow, but I’m afraid I don’t have anything to offer you. The business has been shut down. I’ve been scrambling for work like a back-alley whore. I like my life. And I can’t screw it up.”

  I felt weak with disappointment. All this work for nothing. I’d found the person who was supposed to help me, and she wouldn’t do it. I got up and started for the door. “Okay,” I said. “Can you at least tell me how you knew my mother?”

  Ruby wrung her hands together and came to me. She guided me back to the couch. For a few minutes we just sat there, as I watched her try to work up the courage to talk. “Oh, what the hell,” she said finally. “I owe her this much at least.” She took a breath. “Carrie was an angel on earth. She really was. Didn’t deserve the life she was dealt.”

  “How did you know her?” I repeated, while at the same time feeling myself go cold. I wasn’t sure I was up for the answers to any of my questions about my mother. The more I knew, the more confusing my life got. The more confusing my family got. The more alone I felt.

  Ruby’s face scrunched up in a sympathetic look. “Honey, we worked together way back before you were born.”

  “At—”

  Ruby nodded, cutting me off before I could even so much as say the glittery lilac words. “Only for a short while,” she said hurriedly. “I was new, and she showed me the ropes. I got up and running, and next thing I knew she met a mystery man and was gone.”

  “Bill Hollis,” I said bitterly. “Not much of a mystery.” So it was true. On some level, I hadn’t wanted to admit it, even to myself. But I couldn’t ignore what the facts were telling me. As much as I hated the very idea of my mom having anything to do with Bill Hollis, she did. And it was all starting to fall into place now. Horribly, horribly into place.

  I supposed I had suspected it ever since I discovered that Peyton was my sister. But now it was more than suspicion; it was true.

  Slick, inky outrage. My mom had been an escort for Hollywood Dreams. She met Bill Hollis. Got pregnant. Disappeared. What I didn’t know was how. Or why. How was it possible that the soft, beautiful woman who raised me was working as an escort? And what led her there? Why did she do it? There was no possible way she was wooed by Bill Hollis. Was I just that wrong about her? Were my sketchy memories of her so off? Maybe she was swept away by his power. Or his money. Or, for all I knew, his drugs. Maybe she thought getting in with Bill Hollis meant she could get in with Hollywood itself—become the famous director she’d always wanted to be. Maybe she didn’t know what she was getting into, and by the time she figured it out, it was too late to get out.

  Maybe it was all totally out of her control. I had to believe that. I had to. Because believing she was in it just because she wanted to would be so unlike the woman I remembered, it would be like losing her all over again.

  And my dad.

  My dad was in the photo with the flyers on the tables. So he must have known about Hollywood Dreams. Did that mean he knew what his wife was doing with her time? Did he know about Peyton all along?

  If so, everything he’d said to me while Peyton was in the hospital—and since!—was a lie.

  More lies and more lies. Like they would never end.

  I imagined them piled on top of me, an avalanche of gray.

  My hands clenched into fists.

  “I never met her guy,” Ruby said. “But, no, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t him. I think I heard that Carrie married her mystery man. We all thought it was pretty romantic, her meeting someone who got her out of the business. Just like in the movies.”

  I blinked. Dad? Mom had left Hollywood Dreams for Dad? Did that mean maybe he didn’t know about it after all? Or did it mean she met him there?

  Ruby continued. “I heard that she came back to th
e business for a short while, but before we could reunite, she headed off to someplace I’d never heard of. Oil Well . . . Oil Slick . . .” She waved her hand dismissively. “Oil something. North of here.” She thought for a second, then shook her head. “It’ll come to me. Anyway, after that, we just sort of lost touch. I heard she had gotten into movie production, and I was still . . .” She placed her hand on my knee. It felt oddly comforting. “I always knew she was too good for this job, anyway. I was happy for her.”

  “How did you know me, though?” I asked. “If you lost touch before I was born.”

  Ruby shrugged. “I only found out about you when she . . . well, when she passed.”

  “She was murdered,” I said coldly. And the list of possible suspects wasn’t getting any shorter. The more I learned about her, the longer and more complicated the list seemed to get.

  Ruby nodded. “Yes, that. I came to the funeral. Hid in the back.” She chuckled. “I just remember feeling so sorry for you, up there crying your little heart out.” She looked at me warmly. “You haven’t changed much. And you look so much like her.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. A memory I’d been happy to forget. Or maybe had been too willing to forget. Sitting in that front pew, seeing the profile of my mother’s face—but she was not my mother anymore. She looked like a stranger. She was covered head to toe in crimson. I thought I would break in half with grief.

  Ruby patted my knee, mercifully dragging me out of that room and back into this one. “I was afraid that someday you might find out about her working for . . . the service . . .”

  “Hollywood Dreams,” I supplied. “You can say the name. It’s not like if you say it three times in a dark room, Bill Hollis will appear with a machete.”

  Ruby winced, then plowed on. “I was worried that someday you might find out what she did for a living all those years ago and might come around looking for answers. I was right. But I was wrong about the answers you were looking for, apparently.”