Except Dr. T’s eyes weren’t lit up anymore. Shouldn’t she be relieved at the breakthrough? I’d finally opened up. Granted, I’d done so with a real doozy, but she had to be used to my personality by now.
“Excuse me? Stalking?” She tried to sound calm, but her shock reverberated between us.
“I was tailing him. Doing surveillance,” I said like it was a reasonable thing to do. “The guy was literally getting away with murder over and over again, and I wanted to catch him doing something so he would finally be put away. I had no intention of killing him. I swear.” I held up my hands like that would convince her.
“So the night you confronted him, you were not following him?” she asked, suspicion snaking up between us.
“I was going to, but then I got the text that I thought was from Liam.” I reached for my phone to prove it to her. Thank heavens the forensic team had let me have my phone back; otherwise, even I could have doubted this all really happened. “See, here’s the text—”
“I believe you.” She waved away the phone. “I just have to think about this. It should have been shared with me a long time ago.”
“I couldn’t,” I argued. “You would’ve convinced me to stop following them.”
“Excuse me? Them?” She angled her head at me as if she hadn’t heard right.
“Yeah, I was sort of…following five different guys.” I braced myself as she took her time absorbing my words. “You told me to find an outlet.”
“Ruby,” she said with a shake of her head, clearly indicating to me that my argument wouldn’t work. “And you promise you’re not doing this anymore?”
“Of course not. Please, Dr. T, you can’t tell anyone. It would change everything. It would look like I planned to go there and murder him, and that would establish mens rea—the definition of criminal intent.” I imagined the headline “Teen Sociopath Planned Killing All Along.” And then there would be a trial. And sentencing. And those horribly loose-fitting orange jumpsuits with matching rubber shoes that not even Hollywood royalty can pull off—
“Don’t worry,” she said. “You can trust me, you know that.” I believed her.
I waited to feel better now that I’d gotten it off my chest—but I didn’t feel better. I rolled my shoulders and neck to see if that would help. Maybe medication was the answer.
“You have a bright future, and no one can take that away from you.” She looked at me like she wanted to stamp the words across my soul. “No one.”
“What about my mom’s political opponents?” I could play devil’s advocate all day. In fact, I was good at seeing the half-empty side of things. My Ruby Rose–colored glasses were actually quite dark. “Last week, Bill Brandon went on CNN, spouting off about poor gun laws in California. He wants legislators to pass retroactive legislation making it a felony to even own a handgun in California. I’ll be a felon. Good-bye, Stanford.” I waved adieu to my bright future with the grace of a well-trained beauty queen.
Dr. T got up and stalked toward her desk. “That’s not going to happen. They’re all just sensationalizing the incident for their own benefit. And that schmuck Brandon is crossing the line by involving you in his campaign against your mother. He knows his retroactive comments are ridiculous, but they give him more media traction. That’s all it is. It would never pass.”
“Schmuck. Is that a clinical term, doctor?” I asked, smiling for the first time today. I liked it when I wasn’t the only one in the room with unrestrained resentment.
“I’ve used worse.” She reached into her desk drawer and pulled out a white envelope before returning to her Throne of Discernment. “I was going to wait to give this to you, but it feels like now’s the time.”
“Is that my one Get Out of Jail Free card I’ve been asking my mom for?”
“It’s a letter.” She stroked its smooth face like it was a velveteen rabbit, and placed it next to me. It had no stamp or return address, just my name in bubbly elementary school lettering. “If you feel comfortable, I’d like you to read it aloud.”
I had a good idea of what it was. And I wasn’t sure I did feel comfortable.
I reached for it slowly, like it could jump away. I broke the envelope’s seal and pulled out a piece of paper. A picture fell into my lap.
It was me. My blonde hair, my pale-gray eyes.
No, it wasn’t me. It looked like my fifth-grade picture, but with a bandage on my neck.
It was the girl. The one I’d held at the warehouse. The one who’d clung to me as I tried to save her life. I’d been wondering how she was doing for weeks now.
A row of goose bumps raised across my neck.
“A therapist I know gave me the envelope to deliver to you,” said Dr. T. “Can you read the note?”
I took another good look at the picture before unfolding the accompanying paper.
Dear Ruby,
Thank you for saving my life. No matter what anyone says, you will always be my hero. I’ll never forget you.
Love,
Riley Bentley
My eyes found Mother Teresa’s—hers had welled up with tears, while mine were profoundly dry from shock.
“Don’t you think it’s strange that she looks so much like me?” I said, holding up the picture of the girl. Riley.
“What?” It was Dr. T’s turn to be surprised. She wiped her eyes to better study the small wallet-sized photo. “Well, yes, she does look a lot like you—but that’s surely just a coincidence.”
“I don’t believe in coincidences. My dad always said that they’re just clues.” The emptiness echoed within me as I remembered his words.
“Well, what kind of clue would you suppose the similarity between you is?” she asked, clearly curious enough to indulge me.
I thought about it for a few seconds, though I didn’t really need that long. I had been thinking about it for eight hours a night for over a month now.
“I think whoever lured me there was sending me a message.” There, I said it. Talk about breakthroughs. Two secrets revealed in one session. This had to be my record. And saying it out loud only clarified it in my mind. Whoever was behind this planted a girl who looked just like me, to make sure I saw the connection. To make sure I protected her. To make sure I pulled the trigger.
That’s who LeMarq was talking to on the phone—the one he thanked for the “delivery.” There was a man behind the curtain, pulling the strings. A mastermind. But I couldn’t fathom who or why.
“Maybe one of the other criminals I’d been following discovered me and was trying to get me killed or arrested,” I said, thinking out loud. “Maybe someone who had a grudge against my mom.”
“Ruby,” Dr. T said, “why don’t we break a bit early today. I don’t want you to go crazy overthinking this.”
I looked back to her, expecting a symbolic cookie for my hard work in “opening up.” Instead, she’d said the C-word and started putting papers in her briefcase.
I was about to ask what I’d said wrong when she stood and spoke first. “I’ll see you on Friday.” My mouth dropped open in shock—she’d never ended a session early. And she’d never reacted so brusquely.
Before I could voice my confusion, she promptly turned tail and exited the room.
Leaving me wondering what had just happened.
CHAPTER 4
Art, schmart. I didn’t get it. And certainly not much of this stuff created for the Huntington Beach High School Art Fair.
I walked around the muggy, fried-food-scented cafeteria, just like the rest of the sheep, staring and baahhing at the individual pieces. I found myself lingering in front of a violent explosion of black, purple, and red paint on white canvas. I think it was supposed to be abstract, but it was probably just some emo kid’s attempt to throw something together for a grade. To me, it looked like one of those inkblot tests psychologists used to determine a person’s emotional well-being. Good thing Dr. T didn’t use this kind of thing on me.