Just outside the door a girl thrusts her chin at me. “Check out Ruby Wright,” she says.
Another girl claps me on the back. “Your hair rocks. I wish I had the balls to do that.”
“Um. Thanks.”
I scan the crowd, looking for George, when I catch Patrick’s stare from across the throng. He elbows his way toward me, wearing a purple-and-gold football jersey, and I get the feeling that I’ve become the end zone he’s determined to reach. Cut left, roll right. There’s no way to dodge him. “Ruby,” he says, reaching across three people to grab my arm. Touchdown!
“Hey, big brother,” I say. More like Big Brother, because he seems to be everywhere, watching my every move.
“Here. I found this on the Internet last night.”
He hands me a piece of paper. It’s an article entitled “Long-Forgotten Head Injuries Linked to Mental Oddities and Illnesses.”
I roll my eyes.
“Seriously!” Patrick says. “Remember that time you fell out of that tree and cracked your head and broke your collarbone?”
“Yeah?” No. I climbed a lot of trees, but I never fell. I guess the Ruby in this universe didn’t have the same luck.
“Old head injuries can cause weird things to happen in the brain. Your personality and memory can be affected. Depression, stuff like that. There’s one lady who started talking with a Swedish accent twenty years after she fractured her skull.”
Patrick’s overbearing worry is annoying to the tenth power, but it’s oddly endearing at the same time. No one’s ever treated me like this before. “Why do you care so much?” I ask.
“Are you kidding?” He pulls me into a headlock and gives me a gentle noogie. “Remind me to buy you some Rogaine.”
I wrap my arms around his waist and press my head to his chest. For a moment, I feel a rush of love. But then my heart suddenly turns cold when I think of the injustices I’ve endured. Robbed of both a brother and a mother in Universe One. Why did the roads have to fork in those directions? It’s too much tragedy for one person. It’s not fair. No way I’m going back to that place.
Just then a burly guy wearing a football jersey punches Patrick’s arm. “Dude,” he says, casting me an up-and-down look. “Got a minute?” A girl in a cheerleading uniform trails behind him. She stares longingly at Patrick. I wonder if she practices that look in the mirror.
I try to hand the Internet article back to Patrick, but he pushes it toward me. “Read it,” he says. “Please.” Then he walks off with Mr. Muscles and Ms. Vixen.
Good-bye, Patrick. I watch him until he’s absorbed by the crowd.
When I turn back toward the parking lot, I’m worried that I’ve missed George, but there he is. He must have been waiting patiently for me to finish my conversation with Patrick.
“You okay?” he asks. “You’re heading the wrong direction, you know. The school’s that way.”
“I—uh,” I fumble. “I forgot something in my mom’s car.”
“That guy you were hugging …” He frowns, and I can see where he’s going with his train of thought.
“Patrick’s my brother,” I say, liking the way those words sound. Patrick Wright is my brother, Sally Wright is my mother. Is, not was.
“That’s what I thought. I wasn’t sure.”
His aquamarine eyes are hypnotic, and the lines start to blur. I could be George’s girlfriend here. I step away from him, shaking the thought. “I wish I could stay, George. I really gotta get going.”
“Hang on.” For a moment I think he’s going to kiss me, but instead he slides off his backpack and unzips it. He reaches in and pulls out a box.
“For you,” he says.
“A gift?” I open the box and inside there’s a white LEGO space shuttle. It’s exactly right, the way I remember it as a child. “Even the rocket boosters are perfect!”
George nods proudly. “But wait!” he says in an infomercial voice. “There’s more!” He hands me a sheet of paper. It’s grid paper, and he’s neatly drawn assembly instructions in ten numbered steps. “If anyone ever takes it apart again and makes it into a fugly house, you can fix it.”
“Do me a favor, okay?” I tell him, our faces close.
“What is it?”
I take a deep breath, not sure how to explain. “Later today, soon, I think—I really hope—the old Ruby is going to be back. I’m not sure where she is at this moment, but I’m wishing and expecting that she’s okay, and she’ll be home when I leave.”
George narrows his eyes at me, half smiling, probably not sure if I’m joking.
“I’m dead serious,” I say. “She’s not going to remember our Chinese lunch yesterday. She’s not going to know we kissed.”
“Ruby—” He inches backward.
“Just promise me you’ll ask her out,” I say. “Because I think there’s a reason you’re both here, in this town, taking French together. I think you’re, well, I think you’re—I mean we’re—meant to be.”
“You’re making no sense.”
“I know it sounds insane. I don’t really believe in fate, but there’s this undeniable and uncanny correlation between at least two coexisting planes—”
George holds up his hand to stop me from talking. “You sound completely bonkers, Ruby. Daffy, lunatic.”
I nod. “Demented, I know.” Unreal. We’re replaying the conversation we had last week at the café, on the leather couch, when he took out his iPhone and hit the thesaurus app. Only then we were talking about my dad, not me.
Before George speaks, I can already hear the words in my head. “Cracked, brainsick, non compos mentis,” he says.
“Please!”
He looks alarmed. “I was just trying to lighten the mood.”
I look up at the sky and its converging rain clouds. If only I could make this work somehow. Take George by the hand, walk into the fresh air, and just keep going. Through downtown Ó Direáin, past the library and the park. Away. Away from all this tangled-up confusion. I can see us walking through fields of wildflowers. Add a rainbow.
“Ruby?” George touches my arm and jolts me back.
“You’re amazing,” I say to him, cradling the LEGO spacecraft. “Thank you for this.”
The bell rings, and we’re the only two left standing outside. George doesn’t seem to mind that I’m making him late.
“Could you do me a favor?” From my backpack, I pull a piece of paper and a pen. I quickly scribble a note, fold it in half and write “For Sally Wright” on the outside of it. “Could you give this to the secretary in the office?”
“Sure.” Another bell rings and George inches toward the door. “See you in class,” he says.
I give him a quick kiss on the cheek and turn away, pretending to head toward Mom’s car.
“Unbalanced, unhinged, nutso!” he calls out after me. Then I hear him laugh with that teasing tone in his voice. And I know I haven’t ruined it for George and Ruby in this parallel world with my perplexing behavior. He still likes her/me.
Besides, it’s hard not to notice the thread. Call it what you want, there seems to be something bigger at work, and I’m beginning to believe that no matter where I look, we’ll be together.
The universes are aligned in our favor.
Chapter Twelve
I’m going back to the tree, but not quite yet.
At the edge of the parking lot is a bike rack. A black Trek isn’t locked onto the rack, so now it’s mine. I push my glasses back up my nose, straighten my backpack, and attempt to pedal with mostly one leg.
When I get to the brick house on Corrán Tuathail Avenue minutes later, Kandy is watching television, feet up on the ottoman, drinking a diet soda. “Welcome home,” she says like she sincerely doesn’t mean it. Her pink lip gloss glistens in the flicker of the TV. Some reality show about rich housewives in LA. Lots of boob jobs.