Ruby Unscripted (9 page)

In some renditions, we sit beneath the covered area of the Turtle Bay Café and drink coffee or cocoa or hot tea, depending on what I'm in the mood for when I'm imagining. We lean close and talk about books, movies, and philosophy while warming our hands around our cups. Or we talk through our eyes, with silent mouths, as our fingers touch each other's.

Maybe we run across the bridge instead of strolling, and I slip a little, a graceful slip, not my usual awkward stumble. He catches me and holds me close, breathing in the smell of my hair, and the smell of him fills my senses, and the scent that is him is also now me. For we're best friends times a thousand. Boyfriend/girlfriend times a million. Two lost halves, finally a whole.

Then, despite my variety of imaginings up to this moment, then we reach the moment. The final moment that is always the same.

One beautiful, perfect, solitary moment.

Here it is.

There in the soft light of the night, beneath cables like a giant's harp string, our faces and hair wet with the rain, he stops and folds me in close against his chest.

And we kiss.

We kiss one of those rarest of kisses. A
Princess Bride
kiss, a Klimt painting kiss, a
Notebook
kiss—yeah, that one even has rain like mine.

This kiss isn't like anything I've seen or experienced before or ever could with anyone else.

That is the bridge guy.

NICK:
What have you been doing? You're gone a few days and then desen us? We need to talk, you and me.

ME:
I suppose we do. I slept all Saturday, It's crazy how much I slept Then I had to clean my room and my phone is being weird, and now I'm getting ready for church. I just got online and everyone is suddenly talking to me.

NICK:
Etcuses excuses.

A bunch of other messages are popping up as I type. This is the first I've been on my laptop in my room since we arrived. My e-mail and MySpace are filled with messages. I'm still loved, which is nice to know when I wake in a strange room in a strange town and it takes several minutes to even know where I am—which happened twice last night.

“It's time for church!” Mom calls up the stairs.

I say good-bye to everyone with a promise to talk on the phone with Nick later, then close my laptop and trudge downstairs.

Church? Moving, work, my counselor's appointment, sleeping all day yesterday, and this tiredness from moving and working have kept me from responding to most everything my friends have sent. I want to stay home in my pajamas, get a cup of coffee, and catch up with everyone. But Mom is unrelenting.

Austin teases me about the frown on my face as we get in the car, but I don't even care.

For the longest time, my feet were in Cottonwood but my head was somewhere else. Now my feet are here in Marin—at the moment they are resting on the floorboard of the car and are being driven to church—but my head is very much in Cottonwood.

We're going to “try out” different churches. Mom and Austin already went to one when they were down here a few weeks ago. They said it was a “maybe,” so we'll visit there soon.

We pull into a parking lot by a warehouse-looking place with no landscaping outside, but lots of cars and people streaming in. It's the exact opposite of the church my parents attended when I was little and they were still married, with its hundred-year- old bell tower and white clapboard siding. Even the people walking in don't look like the usual churchgoers. No dresses and old ladies in nylons and pumps, not a suit jacket or tie in sight. These people look ready for a rock concert or an outdoor art fair.

“Leave your phone in the car,” Mom says, and Austin gives me a smile.

“But—”

“For one hour every week, you can leave your phone.”

“I have to leave my phone for more than one hour a week.” I say this as I set my phone on the seat, where it looks sad and small next to the seat belt. “I don't have my phone while I work, when I sleep, or when I shower. And once in a while I go out without it.”

“Wow,” Mac says. “That's an accomplishment.”

Mom and Austin laugh, which makes Mac smile like that kid from
Where the Wild Things Are
. I give him one of my looks.

This church is marketed toward the young, hip crowd. Mom and Austin keep glancing at each other, and I hear Mom whisper, “I think we're too old to be here.”

It's pretty cool though. The worship music has a strong beat. There're guitarists, a keyboardist, and a drummer, and long lights dangle from the ceiling. The place sort of reminds me of a large, open Starbucks, and then I hear the hissing sound of milk steaming and spot the espresso section.

Mom closes her eyes during the worship songs. Mac sings louder than I think he should, so finally I nudge him with my elbow, forgetting that it's in direct line with his head.

“Ouch!” he yells just as the melody pauses, bringing down raised arms and causing heads to turn our way like a wave of dominoes falling.

I want to sink and hide in the couch we're standing in front of. Mom doesn't notice, but Austin gives a little smile—my stepdad never gets annoyed at either of us, which is pretty nice considering stepdad stories—and the other faces quickly turn around and back toward the sky to the invisible God they all seek to worship.

Strangely, He—God, that is—feels very invisible to me. And I realize it's been a long time since I've thought of Him otherwise. Once He was as existent as the weather, a cool breeze on my face, or even as concrete in my life as . . . my cell phone. But of course more than that. He was God to me. Now it's like maybe I made all that up.

It sort of scares me to think this way. But I can't help but wonder as my heart rests still and empty within my chest if all these people are making God up for themselves as they raise their hands and weep and sing with such peace on their faces.

God, where did You go? Or are You even there?

The pastor speaks from a small platform in the center of the couches and chairs. He talks about “gratitude in the midst of . . .” He explains that “in the midst of” could be any circumstance, trial, temptation, or challenge.

He talks a lot about gratitude, and I draw little pictures on my program that make Mac smile, then we play tic-tac-toe and MASH.

When we get to the car, I find Kate has sent me a 911 text:

KATE:
You MUST all me. ASAP!

ME:
Why?

KATE:
Nick news.

ME:
I'll call when I gel home.

But strangely, I don't really care to call or know the big secret. A week ago I would've been dying to find out, but now the anxiety and excitement are gone. I can guess what it'll be about—Nick wishes he could take me to prom, Nikki found out and now she doesn't want to go with him, Kate and my friends will want me to go with Nick, Nikki will be mad at me, my friends mad at her . . . the usual drama.

As we eat tacos at a little restaurant that is my new favorite Mexican restaurant of all time—this decided as soon as I taste the best salsa ever and view an interior so authentic that I expect to walk outside and find ourselves in MAYheeco—Austin asks, “So what did you think of the church?”

“It was cool, I guess.” Something about being at church, even with my scary questions about God, gave me a surprising peace that I've brought along to the Mexican restaurant.

“I'm not sure if
cool
is good or bad,” Austin says with a laugh.

Austin isn't as outgoing as my dad, who could make friends with a lamppost. But he's genuine, trustworthy, and . . . steady. That's something I didn't realize was important until our fractured family didn't have it. Mom can be cluttered with too many thoughts, too many things to do, and too many worries. She cooks, cleans, and organizes when she's worried about us—which has been all the time lately. When she's relaxed, Mom is a fun mom who also offers great advice. Austin says he was pretty boring without Mom, so I guess they even each other out.

We're still a pretty fractured family, I realize, thinking of Carson, who still hasn't even called me. But at least we don't have to worry about Mom the way we did for a while. Carson would come in my room at night, upset that she wouldn't get out of bed or eat much, that she looked dazed and confused and was missing her article deadlines and not paying the bills.

“I guess there's a lot to be grateful for,” I say, but I keep thinking how Carson isn't with us—and he'd so love the super burrito they have here—and how Dad is far away and living his life, and how I don't have any friends and am starting at a school like Little Orphan Annie going to a New York prep academy. But I make Mom and Austin smile by saying, “I'm grateful for this taco, even in the midst of . . .”

I should have cared about what Kate wanted to tell me.

Sometimes I don't believe her 911 texts.

But the Nick news was more urgent than I expected.

When I called her hours later, she said, “You are too late again! Answer your phone and get with it, sister!”

So Nikki found out that Nick planned to take me to the prom. Nikki is mad at me, my friends are mad at her, but she will not let Nick out of his promise to go with her. Nick asked Kate to ask me if I for sure would go to the prom with him if he dumped Nikki. He tried calling me several times—suddenly he's bold enough not only to admit to liking me, but to expect me to attend the prom with him before he's even asked me directly. I usually find self-confidence attractive, but this weight of something, like a giant backpack strapped to my back, steals away any excitement or attraction.

My social life is being tugged to and fro by the forces of people hundreds of miles away.

I'm tired. As in, so tired.

And so Nikki called Nick, and without a direct answer from me, he had to reconfirm that he would indeed attend the prom with her. I'm out again, though I didn't really know I was in.

I care about this—I really do like Nick a lot—but it's all somewhere deep down inside of me, so deep that my head keeps reminding my heart that it cares, it really cares. And tomorrow is my first day at the new school.

chapter nine

“Hey, New Girl,” someone calls behind me.

I've been at Marin High half a day, and I know without a doubt that I hate it here.

It's a huge school. I needed the map they gave me in my student packet, especially since Lucinda didn't meet me outside the campus office like she said. I definitely won't be voting for her for anything, ever.

This guy started following me soon after lunch. Lunch, which was a disaster consisting of me wandering around and hoping no one noticed the lost new girl—and then, of course, this guy did.

“Hey, slow down,” he says, coming up beside me. He's a jock. Football jersey, buzzed haircut, baseball cap, cool jock shoes. He's like a thousand times jock; it oozes from his pores.

“What makes you think I'm new?” There are hundreds of students, so I can't understand how I'm so easy to identify.

“You're carrying a map and actually looking at it.” He smiles a jock half smile. I really like it when Nick smiles that way, but not this cocky guy.

“Oh.” I keep walking.

“Come on, wait a minute, New Girl.”

Without turning or pausing, I duck into the girls' bathroom. The clean walls inside the stall offer nothing to read, which at this moment is a little disappointing. Guess I'll be bored the rest of the day, since I'm not leaving this stall. Ever.

Something's wrong with my cell phone. The battery was dead by second period. This phone is ancient—I've had it for over a year.

Leaning against the door, I look at my schoolbooks. In less than five minutes, I'm bored. I'm really going to need a new phone. I stare at its sad dead screen, willing it to come to life. Then I formulate reasons to miss school the rest of the week. Or year.

Mom, I feel sick.

The kids are mean to me.

I think I have cancer.