The Darkest Minds (34 page)

So instead, I walked over to my Mom’s side of the bed and kissed her good night. Her cheek was slick with rosemary-scented cream, cool and smooth to the touch. The instant I pressed my lips there, I jumped back, a flash of white burning inside my eyelids. For one strange second, the image of my own face had leaped to the front of a long series of jumbled thoughts, then disappeared, like a photo drifting into dark water. Her blanket must have shocked me—the jolt traveled all the way up to my brain, flashing it white for a second.

She must not have felt it, because she didn’t wake up. Neither did Dad, even when the same strange thing happened.

As I made my way back upstairs, the tightness in my chest vanished, lifting away with the comforter as I kicked it to the floor. The head-splitting pain released its grip on my brain, leaving me feeling like my tank had run empty. I had to close my eyes to block out the sight of my room swaying in the darkness.

And then it was morning. My alarm went off at seven exactly, switching over to the radio, just as Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” was starting. I remember sitting straight up in bed, more surprised than anything. I touched my face, my chest. The room seemed unnaturally bright for so early in the morning, despite the curtains being closed, and within only a few minutes, the headache had crept back in, claws out.

I rolled out of bed and onto the floor, my stomach turning with me. I waited until the dark spots had stopped floating in my eyes, and tried to swallow to ease my dry throat. I knew this feeling—I knew what the clenching in my guts meant.
Sick.
I was sick on my birthday.

I stumbled out of bed, changing into my Batman pj’s on the way to the door. Mom would be even angrier at me if she knew I had slept in my nice button-down shirt; it was wrinkled and drenched in sweat, despite the cold clinging to my bedroom window. Maybe she’d feel bad about the night before and let me stay home to show how sorry she was.

I wasn’t even halfway down the stairs when I saw the wreckage in the living room. From the landing, it looked like a pack of animals had gotten in and had a field day throwing around pillows, overturning an armchair, and smashing every single glass candleholder that had been on the now-cracked coffee table. Every picture on the fireplace mantel was facedown on the ground, as were the line of school portraits my mom had placed on the table behind the couch. And then there were the books. Dozens of them. Mom must have emptied out every book in the library in her anger. They littered the ground like rainbow candy.

But as scary as that room was, I didn’t feel like throwing up until I reached the last step and smelled bacon, not pancakes.

We didn’t have many traditions as a family, but chocolate pancakes on birthdays was one of them, and the one we were least likely to forget. For the past three years they’d forgotten to leave out milk and cookies for Santa, somehow forgotten their pact that we would go camping every Fourth of July weekend, and even, on occasion, forgot to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. But forgetting the birthday pancakes?

Or maybe she was just mad enough at me not to make them. Maybe she hated me after what I had said last night.

Mom had her back to me when I walked into the kitchen and shielded my eyes from the sunlight streaming through the window above the sink. Her dark hair was pulled back into a low, messy bun, resting against the collar of her red robe. I had a matching one; dad had bought them for Christmas the month before. “Ruby red for my Ruby,” he had said.

She was humming under her breath, one hand flipping the bacon on the stove, the other holding a folded newspaper. Whatever song was stuck in her head was upbeat, chipper, and, for a moment, I really did think the stars had aligned for me. She was over last night. She was going to let me stay home. After months of being angry and upset over the tiniest things, she was finally happy again.

“Mom?” Then again, louder. “Mom?”

She turned around so quickly, she knocked the pan off the stove and nearly dropped the gray paper into the open flame there. I saw her reach back and slap her hand against the knobs, twisting a dial until the smell of gas disappeared.

“I don’t feel good. Can I stay home today?”

No response, not even a blink. Her jaw was working, grinding, but it took me walking over to the table and sitting down for her to find her voice. “How—how did you get in here?”

“I have a bad headache and my stomach hurts,” I told her, putting my elbows up on the table. I knew she hated when I whined, but I didn’t think she hated it enough to come over and grab me by the arm again.

“I asked you how you got in here, young lady. What’s your name?” Her voice sounded strange. “Where do you live?”

Her grip on my skin only tightened the longer I waited to answer. It had to have been a joke, right? Was she sick, too? Sometimes cold medicine did funny things to her.

Funny
things, though. Not scary things.

“Can you tell me your name?” she repeated.

“Ouch!” I yelped, trying to pull my arm away. “Mom, what’s wrong?”

She yanked me up from the table, forcing me onto my feet. “Where are your parents? How did you get in this house?”

Something tightened in my chest to the point of snapping.

“Mom, Mommy, why—”

“Stop it,” she hissed, “stop calling me that!”

“What are you—?” I think I must have tried to say something else, but she dragged me over to the door that led out into the garage. My feet slid against the wood, skin burning. “Wh-what’s wrong with you?” I cried. I tried twisting out of her grasp, but she wouldn’t even look at me. Not until we were at the door to the garage and she pushed my back up against it.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way. I know you’re confused, but I promise that I’m not your mother. I don’t know how you got into this house, and, frankly, I’m not sure I want to know—”

“I live here!” I told her. “I live here! I’m
Ruby
!”

When she looked at me again, I saw none of the things that made Mom my mother. The lines that formed around her eyes when she smiled were smoothed out, and her jaw was clenched around whatever she wanted to say next. When she looked at me, she didn’t see
me
. I wasn’t invisible, but I wasn’t Ruby.

“Mom.” I started to cry. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be bad. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry! Please, I promise I’ll be good—I’ll go to school today and won’t be sick, and I’ll pick up my room. I’m sorry. Please remember.
Please!
”

She put one hand on my shoulder and the other on the door handle. “My husband is a police officer. He’ll be able to help you get home. Wait in here—and don’t touch anything.”

The door opened and I was pushed into a wall of freezing January air. I stumbled down onto the dirty, oil-stained concrete, just managing to catch myself before I slammed into the side of her car. I heard the door shut behind me, and the lock click into place; heard her call Dad’s name as clearly as I heard the birds in the bushes outside the dark garage.

She hadn’t even turned on the light for me.

I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, ignoring the bite of the frosty air on my bare skin. I launched myself in the direction of the door, fumbling around until I found it. I tried shaking the handle, jiggling it, still thinking, hoping, praying that this was some big birthday surprise, and that by the time I got back inside, there would be a plate of pancakes at the table and Dad would bring in the presents, and we could—we could—we could pretend like the night before had never happened, even with the evidence in the next room over.

The door was locked.

“I’m sorry!” I was screaming. Pounding my fists against it. “
Mommy, I’m sorry!
Please!”

Dad appeared a moment later, his stocky shape outlined by the light from inside of the house. I saw Mom’s bright-red face over his shoulder; he turned to wave her off and then reached over to flip on the overhead lights.

“Dad!” I said, throwing my arms around his waist. He let me keep them there, but all I got in return was a light pat on the back.

“You’re safe,” he told me, in his usual soft, rumbling voice.

“Dad—there’s something wrong with her,” I was babbling. The tears were burning my cheeks. “I didn’t mean to be bad! You have to fix her, okay? She’s…she’s…”

“I know, I believe you.”

At that, he carefully peeled my arms off his uniform and guided me down, so we were sitting on the step, facing Mom’s maroon sedan. He was fumbling in his pockets for something, listening to me as I told him everything that had happened since I walked into the kitchen. He pulled out a small pad of paper from his pocket.

“Daddy,” I tried again, but he cut me off, putting down an arm between us. I understood—
no touching
. I had seen him do something like this before, on Take Your Child to Work Day at the station. The way he spoke, the way he wouldn’t let me touch him—I had watched him treat another kid this way, only that one had a black eye and a broken nose. That kid had been a stranger.

Any hope I had felt bubbling up inside me burst into a thousand tiny pieces.

“Did your parents tell you that you’d been bad?” he asked when he could get a word in. “Did you leave your house because you were afraid they would hurt you?”

I pushed myself up off the ground.
This is my house!
I wanted to scream.
You are my parents!
My throat felt like it had closed up on itself.

“You can talk to me,” he said, very gently. “I won’t let anyone hurt you. I just need your name, and then we can go down to the station and make some calls—”

I don’t know what part of what he was saying finally broke me, but before I could stop myself I had launched my fists against him, hitting him over and over, like that would drive some sense back into him. “I am your
kid
!” I screamed. “I’m
Ruby
!”

“You’ve got to calm down, Ruby,” he told me, catching my wrists. “It’ll be okay. I’ll call ahead to the station, and then we’ll go.”

“No!” I shrieked. “No!”

He pulled me off him again and stood, making his way to the door. My nails caught the back of his hand, and I heard him grunt in pain. He didn’t turn back around as he shut the door.

I stood alone in the garage, less than ten feet away from my blue bike. From the tent that we had used to camp in dozens of times, from the sled I’d almost broken my arm on. All around the garage and house were pieces of me, but Mom and Dad—they couldn’t put them together. They didn’t see the completed puzzle standing in front of them.

But eventually they must have seen the pictures of me in the living room, or gone up to my mess of the room.

“—that’s not my child!” I could hear my mom yelling through the walls. She was talking to Grams, she had to be. Grams would set her straight. “I have no child! She’s not mine—I already called them, don’t—
stop it!
I’m
not crazy!
”

I had to hide. I couldn’t let him take me to the police station, but I also couldn’t dial 911 to get them help. Maybe if I waited it out, they’d get better on their own? I dashed toward the storage tubs on the other side of the garage, squeezing past the front of Mom’s car. One, maybe two steps more, and I would have jumped inside the closest tub and buried myself under a pile of blankets. The garage door rolled open first.

Not all the way—just enough that I could see the snow on the driveway, and grass, and the bottom half of a dark uniform. I squinted, holding a hand up to the blinding blanket of white light that seemed to settle over my vision. My head started pounding, a thousand times worse than before.

The man in the dark uniform knelt down in the snow, his eyes hidden by sunglasses. I hadn’t seen him before, but I certainly hadn’t met all the police officers at my dad’s station. This one looked older.
Harder,
I remembered thinking.

He waved me forward again, saying, “We’re here to help you. Please come outside.”

I took a tentative step, then another.
This man is a police officer,
I told myself.
Mom and Dad are sick, and they need help.
His navy uniform looked darker the closer I got, like it was drenched straight through with rain. “My parents…”

The officer didn’t let me finish. “Come out here, honey. You’re safe now.”

It wasn’t until my bare toes brushed up against the snow, and the man had wrapped my long hair around his fist and yanked me through the opening, that I even realized his uniform was black.

When I finally came to in the gray light, I knew by the curve of the rear seat and the smell of fake lemon detergent that I was back in Betty.

The van wasn’t on and running, and the road wasn’t passing underneath me, but the keys had been left in the ignition and the radio was on. Bob Dylan whispered the opening verse of “Forever Young” through the speakers.

The song cut off abruptly, replaced by the DJ’s flustered voice.

“—sorry about that.”
The man let out a nervous, breathy laugh.
“I don’t know why the system brought that one up. It’s on the no-play list. Uh…back to…the music. This one’s a request from Bill out in Suffolk. Here’s ‘We Gotta Get Out of This Place’ by the Animals.”

I opened one eye and tried to sit up, with zero success. The throbbing in my head was so brutal, I had to clench my teeth to keep from getting sick all over myself. A good five minutes must have passed before I felt strong enough to reach up and touch the pain’s epicenter on my right temple. My fingers brushed against the jagged, raised surface of my skin, feeling each coarse stitch holding it together.

Chubs.

I pulled my right arm in front of me. It flopped around, useless and asleep, until the blood began to fill it again. Then it was fire and needles. But the pain was good. It roused the rest of me from its stubborn sleep.

It didn’t let me forget.

I should go, I thought. Now, before they get back. The thought of seeing any of their faces made my chest feel like it was going to explode.