Purity (2 page)

When someone you love dies, it feels like the ground is crumbling away, falling into oblivion. The only thing you can do is grab onto all the things closest to you and hold on tight. I grabbed onto the Promises, to Jonas, to God.

The first two were there. The last one I could never find.

“Wait, while you have the list out,” Ruby says from the backseat as she runs her fingers through her wet hair, “I saw this show about a rocket thing that makes you weightless for, like, thirty seconds. So it’s like being in space, only without having to actually go to school and become an astronaut and all that. How badass is that? How many people do you know who get to be weightless?”

I nod. “That’s a good one. Add it,” I say, handing the paper back to Jonas. Ruby usually comes up with the best list suggestions—she started being homeschooled in ninth grade and spends most of her “study” time watching the Discovery Channel.

“I’ll just write down ‘be weightless’ and put the whole
rocket thing on the digital copy.” He scribbles in a vacant patch of the paper when we get to a red light. “I need to laminate this or something, or start a new one.”

“No way,” I argue. “That one’s special. It’s got… character.”

“It’s got chocolate syrup stains on it,” Jonas reminds me, making a face. We both know what I mean, though—it’s been six years and over four hundred items, one hundred three of which are now crossed out. You don’t just start fresh when something has that sort of history, even if there are a few stains.

I twist my hair up in a bun and pull on a shirt over my bathing suit as we head to Flying Biscuit, the restaurant where Ruby works. It’s the sort of place with tacky tablecloths and a mostly tattooed staff where every menu item has a clever name. I liked it even before Ruby worked here. It’s, like, this little mecca of weird in the middle of a pretty-straitlaced town.

Jonas and I sit down in our usual booth, and Ruby, even though she isn’t working, ducks into the kitchen to get us drinks.

“What’s the next list item?” Jonas says, spinning his silverware on the table.

I shrug. “I want to get three or four done this summer, though.”

He looks up at me and raises his eyebrows. “That’s ambitious.”

“You don’t think I can do it?”

“I think you can do it. I’m just wondering what I’ll end up doing because of it. I’m still not on board with the skydiving one,” he says, but he’s grinning. Ruby returns with drinks—she’s filled her Coke with maraschino cherries and grenadine.

“Why’s it so crowded here?” Jonas asks, glancing around—the place is never exactly packed, but more tables than normal are filled.

“Sunday,” Ruby says with a shrug. “Lunch church crowd.”

“Ah, of course,” Jonas says, nodding. He’s half Jewish, half atheist—I have no idea how that works, exactly, but it seems to. Ruby stopped going to church ages ago, and I finally bowed out a few years back, when I realized I wasn’t getting anything but nauseated listening to a pastor talk about God’s plan. It’s not exactly heartwarming to hear that the guy you’re supposed to be worshipping planned all along for your mom to die.

I look around at the families who had likely come from church—adorable family units with two parents and a few kids, all with hair ribbons and tights. I wonder whether they’d break as easily as our family did if you removed the mother from the picture.

“Shelby?” Ruby says.

“Mm?”

“You’re staring at that kid. It’s freaky. Almost as freaky as that tie he’s wearing. What kind of parent loops a noose around their kid’s neck and calls it fashionable?” Ruby says disdainfully.

“That’s why Jonas doesn’t wear ties,” I say, turning back to them. “He’s afraid he’ll accidentally hang himself.”

“That’s so not true,” Jonas argues. “I’m not afraid
I’ll
hang myself. I’m afraid it’ll get caught in a door or a motor or a car wheel.”

I snicker and Ruby raises her eyebrows.

“What?” Jonas asks, his voice rising. “It happens! It happened to Isadora Duncan!”

“Who?” I ask.

“She was this famous dancer in the twenties. She was wearing a big, long scarf, and it got caught in her car tires. And her neck broke. I don’t want my obituary to read ‘death by tie,’ thanks. Don’t laugh at me, Ruby,” Jonas says.

“Oh, no, I’m not laughing at you for the tie thing anymore. Now I’m laughing at you for knowing about twenties dance stars.”

“It’s history!”

“It’s precious.”

“Shelby?” Jonas asks, waiting for me to choose a side.

“I…” I grin, looking from one to the other. “I have to side with Jonas on this one. It’s history. Important, safety-themed history.”

“Ha,” Jonas says, tilting his chin at Ruby mockingly.

“Yeah, yeah, she just sides with you because she’s known you longer. You have seniority,” Ruby says, laughing.

Not much longer, but longer. I didn’t meet Ruby until after Mom died, whereas I met Jonas in kindergarten. Sometimes it feels like Jonas knows everything about where I’ve
come from but Ruby knows everything about where I’m going. I suspect, between the two of them, they know me better than I do.

“I can eat four today, I think,” Ruby says as a giant plate of biscuits is delivered.

“Five,” Jonas says, raising his eyebrows. They look at me.

“Four. Maybe. I suck at this,” I answer.

“You’ve just got to learn to keep chewing even after you’ve had so many they don’t taste good. It’s all about commitment,” Jonas says, looking at Ruby as if they’re about to drag race each other.

“Ready, set,
go
.”

*   *   *   *

Ruby won the biscuit contest—she ate six. She almost always wins, but that doesn’t stop Jonas from competing. And I was right; as delicious as Flying Biscuit’s biscuits are, I just can’t force them down after the third one. After we wallowed in overfull agony for a while, we head back to my house. My hair is mostly dry and signs of the lake trip are few and far between, thankfully. It’s not that I don’t want Dad to know I went to the lake; it’s that Dad’s knowing what I do occasionally leads to questions, which occasionally lead to statements like “Don’t do that again,” which I can’t brush off because of Promise One:
Love and listen to my father.
Promise One means no disobeying, which means my life is a thousand times easier when I just keep Dad in the dark.

“Who’s that?” Ruby asks as we pull up to my house. There’s a tan car in the driveway.

“I don’t know,” I say, shrugging. “Probably a committee person. Come in with me. I don’t want to get stuck in the small-talk loop.”

“Committee people” are the only people who visit my house. My dad doesn’t really have friends, exactly—he has fellow board members. Volunteers. Since Mom died, he’s been on just about every panel and committee and board that the community has to offer. He says he does it because all the volunteering that people did after Mom died helped him—and he’s right, there’s something innately therapeutic about an endless stream of casseroles. But I think he really does it because he wants to be out of the house. The more time he gives to the community, the less time he has to think about the family that broke in his hands.

Jonas parks the car and we walk to the house, crushing the dandelions that occupy more space on our lawn than actual grass. I push the front door open. My dad is sitting at the dining room table, which is covered in thick stacks of pink-and-gold paper. In the chair beside him is a man I vaguely recognize—one of the pastors from a nearby church.

“Shelby!” the pastor says. I just smile because I don’t remember his name. “We were wondering when you’d get back. We’d love to get your thoughts on the Princess Ball while we’re still in the planning stages. The church is the lead sponsor this year. We’re really excited about it.”

Ah, the Princess Ball. A father-daughter dance and a
Ridgebrook tradition—well, sort of. It used to be huge, but now only a fraction of the girls at school go, always the summer before senior year. I figured I’d skip it, since attending a ball with Dad seems like a contender for a Top Ten Awkward Moments list. Apparently, Dad’s awkward radar isn’t as accurate as mine.

“Here,” Dad says, handing me a pink-and-gold pamphlet. It clashes with the faded wallpaper in our dining room. On the cover is a young girl looking lovingly up at a graying model of a man, the kind who’s on shaving-cream commercials.

“Your dad has offered to coordinate all the events, and the decorating committee is already throwing around ideas,” the pastor says, smiling. The way he says the word
events
makes it seem like it could be either a carnival or a beheading. I rub the glossy paper between my fingers for a moment.

“Um… okay…” I answer cautiously—obviously, I’m going to try to get out of going. I don’t want to get Dad’s hopes up by appearing excited. Ruby and Jonas shift behind me.

Dad opens his mouth, but words don’t come as easily as they did for the pastor. He hesitates. “Great. Great. It’ll be fun.” He pauses for a long time. “Where were you this morning?”
Damn.
He almost never asks where I’ve been.

“We were just swimming,” Jonas says, stepping in quickly. If
he
tells Dad, then if Dad says “Don’t do that again,” it means it’s directed at Jonas, not me. Unless he makes it “Don’t do that again, Shelby.” Yeah, that’s a loophole, but
Jonas and I decided long ago that when it comes to the Promises, loopholes are nothing to shy away from.

“Oh. Fun,” Dad says, sounding a bit confused. He turns back to the pastor. “Well, we’ll touch base again in a few weeks?”

“Sounds great, Doug. See you then. Bye, Shelby!”

“Bye… um… sir.” Jonas says you can never go wrong calling adults “ma’am” or “sir.” Ruby says you can never go wrong calling someone “baby.” I think, in this case, Jonas is right.

The pastor leaves, so I make a break for my bedroom, Ruby and Jonas behind me. We shut the door. Ruby and I slump onto the bed while Jonas takes my desk chair after delicately tipping a pile of clothes off it.

“Are you going to the Princess Ball?” I ask Ruby.

She laughs and raises her eyebrows at me. “Seriously? Me? One, I don’t wear pantyhose, and I’m pretty sure Princess Ball security checks that at the door. And secondly, can you imagine my dad at that thing? I don’t think he even owns a suit. I don’t think he even owns a button-down shirt, come to think of it.”

“Let me see it,” Jonas says, reaching out for the pamphlet. I hand it over.

“Who
does
go to it now, anyway?” Ruby asks.

“I think the church’s youth group. Some people from school still go, too. I don’t really know,” I say, pausing. “My mom went.”

“Really?” Ruby says.

“Yeah. Somewhere we’ve got a picture of her at it in a dress with puffy sleeves. It’s pretty eighties-tastic.”

“You’re all supposed to wear white. Or, at least, it’s
advised
,” Jonas says, pointing to the pamphlet. “Though looks like the puffy sleeves are optional.” He folds down one side and continues to read the back. Ruby stretches for my hairbrush and runs it through her hair.

“You make vows at this thing?” Jonas says.

“Vows? No, nothing that serious. I think you’re supposed to, like… learn to be close or to respect each other or to only fight on Tuesday nights or something. Not really sure how a ball teaches you that, but—”

“No, Shel—you take
vows
. It says so on the back,” Jonas says, looking serious.

I rise and go to my desk, sitting on the edge while Jonas holds the pamphlet out for me to see. On the back, right above the logos of all the Princess Ball sponsors—the church’s the largest and centered—are three sentences in a swirly font that’s hard to read.

After a night of dinner and dancing,
the Princess Ball concludes with a ceremony:

Fathers will vow to be strong, responsible men of integrity
and to play a central role in their daughters’ lives.

Daughters will vow to look to their fathers for guidance
and to live whole, pure lives.

Okay, no big deal—looking to your father for guidance, that’s pretty similar to Promise One anyway. But living a pure life? What does that mean? I snatch the pamphlet away from Jonas and flip it over, looking for some sort of code or glossary. Nothing.

And it’s the complete lack of explanation that makes me realize exactly what
pure
means.

“Sex. That’s what they mean, right? I promise Dad I won’t have sex,” I say flatly.

“Looks like it. I guess if the church is the lead sponsor, they can throw some antisex stuff into the ball.”

“So what do I do?” I ask, my voice rising. “I can’t
vow
something to Dad. I’ll have to keep it or I break Promise One.”

“Just talk him out of it soon—tonight, before he can get too excited about it. That’s all you can do, unless you… I mean, you could take the vow….” Jonas says.

“I don’t want to vow
anything
that has to do with my lady parts,” I answer quickly. The idea makes me shiver, which sends Ruby into a giggling fit. I look at the happy father-daughter couple on the cover. Dad and I could never be like that anyhow.