Ruby Unscripted (21 page)

Dad is so predictable. There's no doubt that he was talking big before hearing my voice, telling Carson and Tiffany how he'd ground me for the next year or something to that effect. Now he's good old loving Dad.

“Maybe I'll come up next weekend,” I say. And suddenly I miss him terribly. I want to see him now. Part of me is a little hurt that he isn't angry with me for all of this, or for moving away. Doesn't he need me the way he needs Carson?

“Carson wants to talk to you.”

“Great,” I say with a sigh.

“What were you thinking?” my brother says in his grouchy, parental Carson voice. He's often harder on me than Dad is.

“What do you care?” I shoot back, which actually makes him stop talking.

“Okay, that was cold.” I sigh again. “I had a terrible night, I'm grounded, and I don't need a lecture from you. As if you don't go to parties once in a while. You just never had anything like this happen.”

“You have a point.”

I hear a slight chuckle, but then the second line beeps and I miss what he says. “Hang on, someone is calling.”

“Is this Ruby?”

Oh great, it's Grandma Hazel. I want to tell her I'll call her back but decide to get this over at once.

When I tell Carson who's on the other line, he laughs again and gives a long whistle. “Okay, I'll leave you alone. You'll be punished enough after that phone call.”

Grandma Hazel and I get through the preliminary small talk, and then she jumps in deep.

“I hear that you've made friends with a homosexual. And also that you were drinking?”

I'm going to kill Mom for telling Dad about the party, and Carson for telling Dad about Frankie, and Dad for telling his mother about them both. Why does everything have to spread all over this family?

“Yes, Grandma.”

“So those things are true?”

She sounds truly horrified, and I worry about her age and adding Grandma-killer to my list of wrongs. But what else can I say but the truth?

“Grandma, my friend is a very nice person, even though, yes, he is a homosexual.” I want to laugh at the way we're pronouncing
homo-sex-u-al
.

“Oh, sweetie. I remember when you were so close to the Lord. I remember seeing you praise God as just a little girl. Don't lose your faith down in that big, vile city of San Francisco.”

“I'm not losing my faith, Grandma. And you know, there's something vile everywhere in the world.”

“Oh, but you can't surround yourself with the world and not think you'll not be affected. And the whole hippie, druggie, homosexual thing began down in that city. I've been so worried about all of you down there.”

“Okay, Grandma.”

There's no sense in trying to convince her. My first day of being grounded started off not so badly, but now as I sit through a half hour of lecturing, I'm ready to kill someone.

On Sunday I'm stir-crazy and happy to go to church. But what I keep wondering is if Jason will tell Blair that he kissed me—if a kiss is what you call it. His lips connected to mine, though technically, I didn't want them to.

In the church we're trying out today—this one more traditional and boring—I'm reminded of my recent questions about God and what I believe. Grandma Hazel thinks I'm losing my faith. Blair thinks I'm like Billy Graham in female form. And I don't know what I am.

At school the next day, I successfully avoid Blair even through the lunch hour. Frankie finds me hiding in the library reading a book about filmmaking and bursts out laughing when he sees me. He thinks the whole party and my restrictions are something that should be depicted in a Norman Rockwell painting, if Norman were still alive to paint the all-American Ruby of the twenty-first century.

“It's so deliciously you!” he says, throwing his hands in the air and laughing so loudly that the librarian threatens him with a bright red face of anger. “Oh, and by the way, you'd better keep avoiding Blair.”

“I'm not avoiding her. I had to go by the office to change my International Cooking class to Film so I can get out early for some of our shoots, and then I remembered a book I wanted to find . . . Wait, how did you know I'm avoiding Blair?”

“ 'Cause I know you kissed Jason.”

“I didn't kiss him! He kissed me.”

“I know that too, but I wanted to see your reaction.”

“He only did it to get a reaction out of Blair—at last that's what I think.”

Frankie sits on the edge of the table. “Yeah, girlfriend, that guy may be incredibly hot, but he doesn't have a lot of assets upstairs, if you know what I mean.” He suddenly jumps up. “Oh, there's Blair.”

I startle and fling the filmmaking book off the table as I look around. The room is empty. Frankie laughs.

“Evil—you are seriously evil, Frankie Klarken.”

He gives a long Count Dracula
mwahwahwah
laugh.

The librarian storms over and picks up the book from the floor, glaring at me as if I dropped her baby. “Both of you, out of here. Now!”

The house phone rings late in the night, and I grab the one by my bed. Caller ID shows Kate's cell number.

“Hey, were you sleeping?” she asks as I settle back into the warmth of my bed.

After school I fell asleep, so now I've been awake, reading about film and writing in my journal while listening to music. It's strangely nice and lonely being grounded from communication.

“Sort of, but not really.” I listen for a moment in case the ring woke Mom up. “But I'm not supposed to talk 'cause of . . . you know why.”

“Yeah, I know.”

The sound of her voice makes me think she's been crying.

“But I really need to talk to you.”

“What's wrong?”

“I'm just going to say it so we don't draw this out.”

“Okay.”

“James and I had sex.”

I sit straight up in my bed. “You're kidding, right?”
Please let
this be a terrible joke.

She doesn't respond for a long moment.

“Why?” I say loudly, falling back hard against the headboard.

“
Why?
That's not what I expected. More like
What? How?
When?
But not
Why?
”

“I thought you were waiting for the right person. Until you were older, until you were in love.”

“I did.” There's a defensive tone in her voice now.

“You did want to wait, or James is the right person?”

“I don't know.”

My mind can't even make sense of this. I stare out toward the balcony where soft light comes through in gentle streams. This can't be true.

“Ruby?”

And the fearful tone in her voice sends away all the questions and angry feelings. This is Kate's life-changing moment, one of those momentous passages like graduation, when we got our periods, marriage, first love, first sex . . . My best friend has had sex.

She's only fifteen years old, and then I realize how that sounds like an old judgmental woman. I don't want to be judgmental. And it's not like we don't know a lot of people even younger than fifteen having sex. It didn't bother me when it was them.

Kate has had sex!

“I'm not ready for this,” I whisper without meaning to. A sadness washes over me.

“I know you aren't.”

“Sorry, I didn't mean to make this about me.”

“Don't worry about it. It's not really a big deal.”

“And yet it's one of the biggest deals of your life.”

“People make too much of it.”

And for that, I feel even sadder. Kate's not going to tell me her true feelings right now anyway. It's like the time she stole a pack of gum because some kids dared her to do it. When she told me, I was worried the police would arrive at any second, while she acted like she hadn't done anything wrong. Hours later she started crying when I won hopscotch three times in a row and started walking down the road. I asked where she was going and she yelled, “I'm taking the gum back.”

We went together. I wanted to sneak the gum onto the rack, but Kate walked straight up to the cashier and plopped the pack onto the counter. She still had tears in her eyes.

The clerk nodded and said, “Thank you.”

Kate nodded back and walked out of the store with me standing there gaping.

Kate.

But this wasn't a pack of gum . . . and she couldn't take it back.

“How did it happen? Are you okay?” I try sounding interested, not angry. Why am I angry?

“Yeah, I'm okay. You know I've been seeing him for a while now.”

Why didn't I talk to her more about him when she was here? Why didn't I see this coming? Why didn't she tell me, ask me if she should do this? What kind of best friend am I?

“You've been dating less than a month!”

“He's going to Shasta College and transferring to a state university next year. He and a longtime friend have an apartment—just like we want to do in a few years. Meegan's sort of dating his roommate, so we've been over there a lot.”

“Meegan,” I say, rubbing my forehead and walking to the balcony doors.

Meegan and I don't like each other. That Kate is hanging out with her disturbs me. Meegan started smoking pot with her older sister in seventh grade. Now she's graduated to sophisticated drugs. But Kate and Meegan's families have been close since they were toddlers.

“James's uncle brought Jet Skis, and I rode with him all day. He was totally into me, showing me how to drive. We explored all over Shasta Lake, just the two of us. He . . .”

I feel tired suddenly, and I don't want to hear more of this story.

“What did Meegan say?”

“She said welcome to being an adult.”

“She would say that.” Then I pause. “I'm sorry. Do you feel like an adult?”

“No way. I feel exactly the same.”

But I can't imagine such a thing not affecting her, or anyone really. But then, what experience do I have? Kissing is as far as I've traveled down that road.

“What are you going to do now?”

“Do? I'm not going to
do
anything. I'm in love with James.”

Kate won't analyze all of this like I will. She'll probably wonder at her emotions, be surprised by them, and then we'll talk more about it. For now, she has told me. That's what she needed to do, and now she's done it. Suddenly my love for her floods over me, and I wish I could give her a long hug.

“Listen. Let's talk more tomorrow then. I'll ask special permission from Mom.”

“Sounds good.”

“Just . . .” I want to say,
Don't have sex again. Be careful! Are
you using protection? Don't be dumb. Why don't you dump that jerk?
Stay away from Meegan.
But of course I don't. “Just know that I love you.”

I can hear her smile.

“Thanks. That's what I needed to hear. I love you too.”

There's no way I can sleep after that conversation. I can't fully process all the sudden changes in our lives.

The open balcony doors send in a stream of cold air and moonlight. I pull a sweatshirt over my head and step onto the cold tile. The railing already has a slight dampness of morning dew, though it's many more hours before dawn.

The garden is filled with light and darkness, and I wish as I so often do for the skill to paint such a scene in the way I want. My paintings are nothing close to what I want them to be. Kate would laugh at that, probably bring up my pottery wheel disaster.

But with film, it's as if the puzzle pieces come together. So here I am discovering new things about myself, finding direction, even while making mistakes and being completely confused about other things. My relationship with my family is all different. I'm not sure where God fits in my life. I have friendships that maybe God wouldn't want, and yet I really love Frankie especially and even London.

Some things are completely messed up. Other things are finally found.