H2O (5 page)

One little rainstorm. “Only a shower.” That's the kind of thing my mom said all the time because it rains a lot in Devon. Where I used to live, in London, where my dad still lived, it hardly ever seemed to rain, and even if it did it hardly mattered because you could always hop on a bus or a subway that would take you exactly wherever you wanted to go without getting a drop of rain on you. In Devon, you had to walk places—or kill yourself biking up hills. If I moaned that I didn't want to go and do something or that I wanted a ride because it was raining, that's what my mom would say: “It's only a shower!” It meant, “Get on with it.” Simon, on the other hand, could never leave it at that.

Example
No. 1

Simon: If you were going to a music festival, you wouldn't be bothered by a little rain, would you?

Me: Well, as I'm not allowed to go to festivals, I wouldn't know.

Example
No. 2

Simon: So, Ruby, how come you don't mind spending hours in the shower, but you're bothered by a little rain?

Me: I have to spend hours in the shower because the shower is useless.

(This is me taking a dig at Simon because he refused to get a new shower.)

You get the idea.

Then there were the historical ones, which were his absolute favorites; he had millions of them.

Example
No. 3

Simon: Supposing Sir Edmund Hillary had looked outside his tent and said, “You know what? It's raining. I don't think I'll bother conquering Everest after all.”

Me: It doesn't rain on Everest—and anyway Sherpa Tenzing got there first.

(I didn't really know whether that was true, about the rain—it just seemed it should be…but the Sherpa Tenzing part? Ronnie had told me that. Some things he said were true.)

Example
No. 4

Simon: Imagine if Winston Churchill had said, “You know what, it's a little rainy in Europe. Let's just let Hitler get on with it.”

Me: Actually, this country is part of Europe, and, anyway, I'm not going to war, am I? It's only a stupid guitar lesson.

Simon: Which you asked to go to and which we're paying for.

Etc.

That one ended up with me grounded for the rest of the week—
after
I'd been forced to go to the guitar lesson (in the rain).

I just want to tell you one more.

Example
No. 5

Simon: Imagine if the Americans and the Chinese and the Russians had said, “Oh no! It's raining! Let's not launch the missile that's going to blow up the asteroid and save the planet until it's nice and sunny.”

Me: Great! Then we'd all be dead and I wouldn't have to live with you!

I really did say that. My mom heard me, and she was really upset. She told me, for the zillionth time, that Simon did have feelings. I didn't believe her. I hated him. I thought I meant it, what I said, but I didn't
mean
it
mean it; it was just how I felt at the time.

Since then, there have been times I've felt that way and I have meant it. Not the part about Simon, but about how it might have been better if the Earth had been blown to smithereens. At least it would have been quick. Less suffering.

• • •

That night, locked in the den, I thought I was suffering. I didn't ask what was happening or why. I went nuts. I really went crazy. The Henry Rule went right out of my head.

Oh. Oh no.

I do not want to have to do this. I need to tell you who Henry was.

My own sweet liberator.

My babiest brother-brat beloved. Only one year old.

When my mom told me she was pregnant with him, know what I thought? I thought that because of the secret-y way she said it—when there was just me and her in the kitchen—and in spite of the fact that she and my dad had been divorced for centuries and despite the fact that my dad had had Dan with Kara, and they'd split up too, and he was now dating “floozies”—that's what I heard my mom tell my Auntie Kate—when she said she was going to have a baby, I thought she meant that she was having a baby with my dad.

DUH.

When I realized she meant Simon, I went up to my room and cried my eyes out.

BUT!

If I had understood what a wonderful thing Henry would be in my life, I would have jumped for joy. Because Henry, dear Henry, set me free. It's true; even before he was born, Simon and my mom got so obsessed with him that they got less and less obsessed with me. I was given my OWN set of keys to the house (although, luckily, we still kept the Ruby Emergency Key) and best and most fantastic of all: MY OWN CELL PHONE.

So:
the
Henry
Rule
. It was a total, complete, and utter no-no any day—possible global-disaster days included—to make any sort of noise that might wake him; that was the Henry Rule—for which, up until that moment, I was fully, totally, completely, and utterly signed up because once Henry got going…he could bawl for England. Yes, my babiest brother-brat beloved was a bawling beast.

I would have just texted Lee immediately, but—MY CELL! I DIDN'T HAVE MY CELL! IT WAS IN ZAK'S BARN WITH THE REST OF MY STUFF!—so I pounded at the den door. I screamed and shouted all sorts of terrible things, and all of them at Simon. I couldn't believe it—what I had just been through and now this. Then I started throwing things around a bit. Yup.

There was plenty of stuff to choose from, because that room was basically a dumping ground for all the stuff that wouldn't fit in the rest of the house. There was a computer in there, surrounded by junk, which was where I was supposed to do my homework—but there was usually so much junk dumped around the place, I used that as an excuse to borrow Simon's laptop and work in my room, i.e., surf the Net, IM, and not work at all.

I didn't rage randomly. I picked out Simon's stuff. I threw whatever I could lay my hands on…and then, I started breaking things. His laptop wasn't there, or I probably would have smashed it. I snapped some of his stupid CDs, dropped this hideous pottery vase thing he said he'd made when he was in school.

Simon, doing art—can you imagine?!

All the while, he stood outside the door, going, “Ruby, calm down. Ruby, calm down.”

I suppose my mom must have gone upstairs; I could hear Henry crying.

I told you I would tell you everything, except the swearing. But it's hard telling this part. I'm not proud of how I acted. I am the opposite of proud. In my defense, all I can say is that it was all too much. Do you see? One minute my life had been the best it had ever been, kissing Caspar McCloud, the next minute it was…

Ka-boom. I snapped the stupid walking-stick thing Simon took on country rambles. It was hard work snapping it, but I was ultimately doing him a favor because it made him look like an old man and a nerd. Then I saw his binoculars. His new binoculars. His nerdish pride and joy. Simon liked to watch birds, you see. Can you imagine anything more deeply boring?

“Ruby, calm down. Please, calm down.”

I tried to snap them, to bust them in half. The walking stick thing had been hard, but these were impossible. And then I thought of it: I'd throw them out the window. I yanked back the curtain. And then I stopped.

One little rainstorm. Only a shower.

“Simon,” I called. “It's raining.”

“It's OK, Ru. It's OK.”

“Please let me out!”

“Ruby, you have to listen to me. Please, calm down and listen.”

“I'll listen! I'll calm down! Please, Simon, let me out.”

I heard my mom's voice then, Henry fretting. “Ruby, we can't.”

I pressed myself against the door, and I listened to them. All the while I watched the rain falling. I did get it, right away, when they explained it to me. I had been outside, hadn't I? For Henry's sake, for my mom's, they couldn't take any chances.

Then I talked, and they listened. Every word I said—about what had happened at Zak's, about Barnaby saying it might be contagious, about Caspar, about Zak's mom, about the cars going to the hospital—all of it seemed to prove that right, that I should stay in that room until we knew.

“I don't have it,” I said. “I know I don't.”

My chin, my lips, my mouth, my nose throbbed.
That's kissing. That's just
kissing
.

“It happens really quickly. It does. I've seen it.”

My stomach churned.
That's gin and cider. That's just gin and cider. And
fear.

“Yes,” said Simon. “I believe you…but we can't take any chances. Do you understand?”

Yes, but
—I thought.

“Do you understand, Ruby?” asked my mom.

“Yes, but—”

“So please…just until tomorrow morning?” said my mom.

“It'll have to be longer than that,” Simon muttered at her—I heard him.

“Just for tonight,” said my mom.

I could hear Henry gurgling.

“OK,” I said.

I got up then and closed the curtains.

“Mom?” I called.

“Yes, Ruby?”

She was still there; I knew she'd still be there.

“I'm thirsty,” I said.

I heard them, not what they said, but the murmurings of a discussion. It wasn't an argument. I could imagine it: what to give me, how to give it to me, perhaps, also whether I could be trusted not to freak and break out the second they opened the door.

“Ruby?” said my mom. “I'll get you something. I'll be back in a minute.”

• • •

And I thought about how it was then—that, really, we had been double lucky. That I'd had Barnaby drag me out of the hot tub, and my mom and Simon… They'd gone to the neighbors' barbecue as planned and taken the babiest brother-brat with them—not in some hideous child-abuse way, keeping him up all night, but because he had kept them up all night the night before, teething, and had slept all afternoon and was full of energy, and just when my mom dared to pick up a glass of wine, Henry decided it was time to start keeping them up for another night. So she took Screechster Boy back home. She put the radio on. She rocked my baby brother to sleep, trying to listen to
Gardeners' Question
Time
.

She was so dog tired, she said, she didn't even bother wondering why it was on.

Simon would have stayed out, but apparently one of the neighbors had said something nasty (“an inflammatory remark”) about the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. It was probably a joke, but Simon, after being warned by my mom after the last time he'd flipped out at someone for making fun of bird
-
watching, had downed his drink and stormed home—seconds before the rain began.

I might be exaggerating a little, but that's basically what happened.

A short while later, there was a knock at the door.

“Ma?” I said.

“It's me,” said Simon. “Ruby, I'm going to open the door. I've got some things for you. I want you to stand back, away from the door. Will you do that?”

“Yes,” I said.

He opened the door. His face looked closer to normal—not shaky, not angry either, not even when he saw the mess in the room. He threw my duvet in, then—one, two, three—cushions from the sofa.

“Sorry,” he said. “The air bed's in the shed.”

My pillow came next. Then my bathrobe, my snuggliest pajamas, and my winter fluffy fake-fur slippers.

“Your mom doesn't want you to get cold,” he said.

Then he threw a bucket in, on top of the pile.

“What's
that
for?” I asked.

“Guess,” he said, slinging in a roll of toilet paper. “And—”

He tossed in my mom's toiletry bag, but carefully, so it landed on the duvet. There was a new toothbrush sticking out of it; mine was in the barn at Zak's…WITH MY CELL. DID I MENTION THAT ALREADY? I DID NOT HAVE MY CELL PHONE!

He slid a tray into the room. Tea and toast. With peanut butter. I thought we'd run out of it.

Finally, he reached round the corner and put two big glasses of water down on the floor. I suppose he thought I'd been drinking.

“I guess you have to lock the door now,” I said.

“Ruby…” said Simon.

I thought about Caspar lying in the back of the car. I thought about Henry.

“It's OK,” I said. “Lock it.”

“Night, Ru,” he said. He shut the door and locked it.

I probably would have just cried my eyes out then or something. But—

“Ru?”

It was my mom.

She sat on the other side of the door while I ate my toast. I leaned against the door, and I felt as if I could feel her on the other side, sitting and leaning against it too. I felt as if I could feel the warmth of her through the wood. I rattled on, asking her stuff: about whether my dad had called (he hadn't; I already knew no one could call anyone, didn't I?), about whether she thought everyone would be OK… And the more people I thought to ask about—family, friends, friends of family, families of friends—the worse it got, like how it is when you are little and they teach you to pray and to ask God to bless everyone, and you get really worried about remembering everyone, thinking if you don't, something bad will happen to them, and it'll be your fault.

“Shhh! It's OK, Ruby…shhh,” she said when I started up again about Nana and Gramps. “Now, do you need anything else?” she asked.

“Sing to me,” I said.

I wanted the lullaby song she did every night when I was little.

She sighed—so loud I could hear it through the door.

“Mom, please…” I tried.

“Ru-by, it's bedtime,” she said.

Please
don't leave me.
That's what I thought. “OK,” I said.