Ruby crossed her arms over her chest, and for a second, I thought I’d succeeded in getting her to leave me alone.
“What’s Emma doing this summer?” she asked, and I squeezed my knees tighter.
“She went to camp,” I said, and tugged at the plastic tips of my shoelaces. “Real camp, not like this.”
Ruby made a weird noise, and I looked up at her from underneath my bangs. “Cool, guess she can make all new friends there.”
My feet thumped to the floor. “Emma never has trouble making friends.”
Ruby looked up at the ceiling, her fingers curled around the edge of the bench. “No, keeping them is Em’s problem.”
“What happened with you two?” The words were out of my mouth so fast that I didn’t have time to really think about them, or how I hadn’t wanted to talk about Emma with Ruby.
But Ruby looked over at me, surprised. “She didn’t tell you?”
“I didn’t ask.”
One corner of Ruby’s mouth kicked up, and she started fiddling with her hair again. “Let me guess: You were just relieved I was gone.”
That was too close to the truth, so I didn’t say anything.
Ruby sighed and then, in a whisper, said, “She thought I liked Garrett, too.”
I felt a flush start creeping up my neck. “What?” I asked, my eyes shooting toward the rearview mirror, where I could see Garrett slumped in the back of the van.
Ruby swatted at my arm. “Omigosh, don’t look,” she hissed.
But I couldn’t not look. Emma had never mentioned a boy to me. Not once. I mean, sure, we talked about cute boys, but they were all guys in bands or on TV. Not real boys. How could Emma like a real boy and not tell me?
Ruby was watching me with this weird expression, her nose wrinkled. “You . . . didn’t know that?”
Emma had liked a boy. Emma had had a crush, maybe still had a crush, and it was big enough that she’d ditched Ruby over it.
And I hadn’t known.
Tipping her head back again, Ruby went on, “Anyway, that was it for me and Em. I thought maybe after my grammy died, she’d come around again, but . . .” She trailed off, and I chewed my lower lip.
“I’m really sorry about your grandmother,” I told her, and for a second, Ruby went sort of quiet and still, and I saw something really sad flash across her face.
Then the van pulled up to the rec center, and she shrugged whatever it had been off, unbuckling her seat belt. “Anyway,” she said, “guess you and me have more in common than hearing a creepy music box.”
“What?” I asked her, gathering up my things.
“Emma,” she said.
I was about to remind her that Emma was still my sister even if she wasn’t Ruby’s friend anymore, but then Ruby added, “She shut us both out, didn’t she?”
CHAPTER 8
RUBY
“These gym mats smell like armpits,” I announced, and Olivia shot me a look from under her brows. We were sitting on the same edge of the mat with our Responsibility Journals, waiting until it was time to go home. This was the other part of our Camp Chrysalis Experience—working at Live Oak House in the morning, writing in these dumb things about how we could be better people in the afternoon. Olivia was scribbling away in hers while all I’d written was, well, These gym mats smell like armpits.
“They do,” I told her, trying to find a comfy way to sit. Susanna was on the other side of the mat, and she looked over her shoulder, nodding at me.
“Totally armpits,” she agreed, wrinkling her nose. “It’s gross.”
“This whole place is gross,” I said. “Rec center? More like get rekt center.”
Susanna snorted at that, which was a nice change from Olivia’s dirty looks. I reminded myself not to get carried away and keep making jokes, something I always had trouble with, but I still added, “That’s what I should put in my Responsibility Journal—‘I am not responsible for the smell of the rec center.’”
“‘I’m not responsible for throwing up if they keep giving us that nasty juice,’” Susanna added, scooting closer, and I grinned at her.
“‘I’m not responsible for how Lee does his hair.’”
We both looked across the gym at Lee, who was sitting on one of the bleachers, his spiky blond hair sticking up over his forehead, and Susanna laughed.
“Who is responsible for how he does his hair?” she asked. “Because we should talk to that person. That person should be at Camp Chrysalis.”
I scribbled that down in my journal, and Olivia looked up from her notebook, a crease between her brows. “You know Mrs. Freely is gonna read these, right? You’ll get in trouble.”
I hadn’t known that, but I sat up anyway, spreading my arms wide. “What kind of trouble?” I asked. “Sent to a dorky camp, made to count the creepy things inside it? That’s already happened, so I really don’t know how this could get much worse.”
Olivia opened her mouth to answer, but I cut her off before she could. “I am making my own fun,” I told her, “and maybe if you did the same thing, you’d have a better summer.”
“We’re not here to have fun,” Olivia argued, her voice sharper than I’d heard from her before—Olivia Willingham was definitely not a fan of mine, but she’d never really snapped at me or anything. I always thought of her as Quieter Emma, to be honest. But now her cheeks were red and her eyes were bright, and even though she was mad, I thought this was probably the more interesting Olivia.
I kind of wanted to see what Mad Olivia Willingham was like.
“They don’t want us to have fun,” I shot back, aware that some of the other kids were looking over now. “That doesn’t mean we can’t have it. Loosen up.”
For a second, I thought Olivia might respond. She looked like she really wanted to, her free hand clenching at her side, but in the end, she just shook her head and went back to her journal. “This is stupid,” she muttered, “and we’re supposed to be writing, not arguing.”
“We were arguing over what we were writing,” I reminded her, but she didn’t even look up.
I realized then that one of the other boys I hadn’t recognized—Dalton, I knew now—had moved closer to our mat, probably to see what was going on with us. He wasn’t as tall as Garrett, and his hair wasn’t red so much as orange. There was a smattering of freckles across his cheeks and nose, and his T-shirt looked about three sizes too big. The hot pink seriously clashed with his hair. I was about to tell him that and suggest he make a complaint when he dodged forward and snatched Olivia’s journal out of her hands.
“Hey!” she cried, scrambling to her feet, but Dalton was already moving away, grinning wide. His front teeth were crooked, and there was something green caught between them, which was gross since I knew we had not had anything green to eat today.
“‘I need to be more responsible for myself,’” Dalton read out in a high-pitched voice. “‘I need to realize that not everyone cares about the same things that I do, and that I am not responsible for Emma.’”
I looked over at Olivia, waiting for her to launch herself at Dalton and tear the journal out of his hands, but she was just . . . standing there. Like she’d been frozen. Her face had been pink before, but it was white now, and she was blinking like she might cry. But her hands were clutched into fists again, so why didn’t she use them? We were already Bad Kids, after all. Might as well throw down.
Dalton was also expecting her to come after him, I think, because he looked over at her and his smile suddenly faltered. In that second, I pushed forward and snatched the journal out of his hands.
“Don’t be a jerk,” I told him, tilting my head to look up at him. Everyone was taller than me these days. It was deeply annoying.
“You’re the one who was fighting with her,” he fired back, but I could tell he didn’t really mean it. His voice cracked on the last word, an
d I glared up at him even harder.
“We weren’t fighting, we were talking, and I’ve known her forever. You haven’t, so you don’t get to pick on her. Now go back over there with the other dude from Greene County”—I let scorn drip from my voice even though for all I knew, Greene County was made of mansions and gold streets—“and leave us alone.”
Dalton still had a little fight left in him, I guess, because he looked down at me, his blue eyes narrowing slightly. “And if I don’t?”
“I’ll take a picture of you in that shirt and put it on the internet,” I said, and apparently that was the right threat, because he made a snorting sound with a “Whatever,” but ambled back to his spot on the other mats. Olivia had picked up her journal from where I’d tossed it and was dusting off the cover even though, from what I could see, it was fine.
“Boys,” I said to her with a shrug, and she nodded, still not looking at me.
“Thanks,” she mumbled, and I waved it away.
“No big. I mean, I don’t like you or anything, but I like bullies even less, so . . .”
I let that trail off, watching Olivia. She lifted her head and looked at me, tilting her head a little like she was trying to figure out what to think.
Honestly, I didn’t know what to think myself. Defending Olivia Willingham was a weird thing for me, but like I said, I hate bullies, and Olivia may be kind of stuck-up and a major stickler for rules, but she’s not mean.
In the end, she sat down with her journal again, turning her back to me and Susanna. I sat down, too, and spent the rest of the time actually writing in my journal, and not stupid stuff, either. I actually wrote, I need to be responsible with my words, and weirdly enough, I think I meant it.
CHAPTER 9
OLIVIA
Walking into my house, I was hit by air-conditioning, so cold I nearly shivered. Still, it felt good after being hot for so much of the day, and I followed Mom down the hallway, toward the kitchen. We’d talked a little bit about my day on the ride home, but I hadn’t wanted to get into a lot of what had happened, either at the house or the rec center later, and I was glad she wasn’t asking any more questions. I just wanted to get something to drink, maybe grab a snack, and go huddle up in my room for a while.
But as soon as I got into the kitchen, my phone started making the blooping sound that meant someone was trying to get me on Hangouts.
And the only person that could be was Em.
Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I leaned against the island in the middle of the kitchen, crossing one ankle behind the other and answering my sister’s call.
Her face filled the screen. My face.
“Oh, gosh, you’re home!” she said, smiling at me, and I made myself smile back.
She was sitting somewhere, probably in her cabin since I could make out a bunk bed behind her, and she had the phone close to her face.
“Yup, we’re done at three every day,” I told her, and out of the corner, I saw Mom duck her head in real quick. I thought she might call out to Emma, but maybe she wanted us to have some alone time, because she flashed me a quick smile and disappeared again.
“Was it fun?”
I looked at Emma and tried to figure out if she was making fun of me or if she felt guilty or what. It was the weirdest thing, not being able to work out how she felt. I used to think that because we were twins, not only did we share a face, but we must share a brain too. There had been times when I could look at Em and know exactly what she was thinking. But she’d gone from being the other half of me to some new, whole person who felt like a secret.
Who liked boys and didn’t tell me about it.
“Not really, but it wasn’t bad,” I lied, holding my phone with one hand and opening the fridge with the other. I pulled out a pitcher of sweet tea. “Ruby Kaye is there.”
Em wrinkled her nose. “I haven’t talked to her in forever.”
“Yeah, she told me that,” I said, pouring myself a glass of tea, and on the screen, Emma frowned.
“You talked to her?” she said. “I thought you didn’t like her.”
“I don’t,” I said quickly, and it was true, I didn’t. Even if she had been nice about the journal thing. Well, not nice really, but . . . protective.
Which was weird.
“She told me you guys fought over a boy,” I said, trying to sound casual, like finding out about this Garrett guy hadn’t been a shock.
Emma shook her head. “It wasn’t about a boy, it was just . . . you know, Ruby being Ruby.” She shrugged. “I got tired of her. Always being so—”
“Ruby,” I finished for her, and she nodded.
“Exactly.”
I didn’t point out that as far as I could tell, Ruby Kaye was the same as she’d always been, and that Emma had liked her a lot before that. And I didn’t tell her what Ruby said, about Emma suddenly shutting both of us out. Because it wasn’t true, not really. So Emma was trying new things, and had done one really stupid thing. She had learned her lesson, probably, and, I reminded myself again, it’s not like she had asked me to take the fall for her.
So why did I still feel so awful about it?
I carried the phone back toward my room. “Anyway, it was an okay day, I guess,” I told her. “Not my favorite way to spend the summer, but it’s not like I had anything else going on.”
On the screen, Emma leaned in closer, dropping her voice. “Are you by yourself?” she asked, and I walked into my room and closed the door behind me with my foot.
“Now I am.”
Emma tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, the phone wobbling in her hand. “I really feel bad. I’m going to make this up to you, Livvy, I promise.”
We had never argued about what had happened that day. I hadn’t known how to feel about any of it, Emma taking the lipstick, me saying I’d done it, Emma letting me take the blame. It all felt confusing, a million different feelings tangled up into one big knot of ugliness that I hadn’t wanted to unravel.
And I still didn’t really want to. “It’s okay,” I told her, even though we both knew it wasn’t.
“It was so stupid,” Emma went on, “and I don’t even know why I did it. I guess I just wanted to see if I could?” She shook her head. “But, I mean, hey, you’re getting to do something this summer after all, I guess!”
It wasn’t all that different from what I’d been thinking, but I still didn’t like hearing Emma say it. “Yeah,” I finally said. “And the house is kind of neat.”
When there wasn’t a spooky music box playing that only me and Ruby could hear, I added in my head, and Emma beamed at me. “Awesome!” she said, and I could hear more than enthusiasm in her voice. She was relieved. If I made it seem like Camp Chrysalis was fun, she wouldn’t have to feel so guilty.
Did I want her to feel guilty?
I didn’t know. So I just said, “Anyway, I really need to take a shower now. It was so hot today.”
Em nodded. “Gotcha. I’m about to have to leave for canoeing anyway.”
“Super,” I said weakly, and if Emma noticed anything weird in my expression, she ignored it.
“Talk to you tomorrow, okay, Livvy?”
“Yeah. Have fun.”
She waggled her fingers at me, then the screen went blank, and I stood there, holding my phone in one hand and my tea in the other before tossing the phone onto my bed.
When Em and I had gotten our own bedrooms last year, I’d wanted a big bed. We’d always had bunk beds or two twin beds in our old room, so getting something big felt like a way of making my new room feel different. Like mine. Mom found this pretty queen-sized bed with tall white bedposts and a headboard that rose up in a curving arc. For a week or so, it had been against the wall across from my window, but then I’d asked Dad to help me move it against a corner, making a space between the headboard and the walls.
&nbs
p; That’s where I headed then, kicking off my shoes, climbing onto the bed, and clambering over the headboard to drop into that little nook formed between the bed and the corner.
I’d made it a pretty comfy space with extra pillows, some blankets, and a stack of books, plus the stuffed animals that I was too embarrassed to have out in my room but wasn’t quite ready to get rid of yet.
Mom called it my “cave,” Dad said it was like “a tree house minus the tree,” and Emma had said it was “weird.”
That hadn’t stopped her from wanting to sit back there with me, though, and we’d spent lots of afternoons crammed in, eating cookies and talking. But I was glad not to have to share that day, and I snuggled down onto the pillows, pulling out a paperback, the cover wrinkled from the time I accidentally set it down next to the pool and it got wet.
I sat back there for a long time, reading and feeling myself unknot. Between the creepiness at the house and then everything with my journal back at the rec center, I felt like I’d been twisted into a pretzel. But thinking about Dalton and my journal reminded me of how Ruby Kaye had gotten my journal back for me.
Laying the book on my chest, I looked up at the ceiling and thought about that. Had Ruby meant it when she said she was the only one who got to pick on me? Maybe it was a town loyalty thing. In any case, it had been . . . nice. Surprising, definitely.
Then I thought about the ballroom again, the shadow in the mirror, and frowned.
I could really do without any more surprises this summer.
CHAPTER 10
RUBY
“There are working bathrooms here, right?”
We were all standing in the front hall of Live Oak House that Wednesday morning, notebooks at the ready, Mrs. Freely wearing another Camp Chrysalis T-shirt, this one in bright blue. Still had that creepy smiling head on it, though, and her own smile as she looked over at me seemed a little forced.