Perfected (Entangled Teen) (5 page)

Six

E
ven though the morning started out crisp, by the afternoon the day had turned muggy and humid. Ruby and I sat in the conservatory working on her puzzle while the fans buzzed above our heads. She sighed and flicked another abandoned piece into the lid.

“This is too hard,” she whined. “Let’s go swimming. There are plenty of games we can play with two people. We can dive for rocks or do Marco Polo. I’ll let you be Polo if you want. Maybe we can even talk Penn into playing and then we’ll have three.”

I didn’t know what it meant to “be Polo,” but the idea of going in the pool made me clammy with fear. I didn’t want to tell Ruby that I didn’t know how to swim. In the bathtubs at the training center, the most I could do was hold my breath underwater, but that was only for play, and the tubs weren’t anywhere near as deep as the congressman’s swimming pool.

“
Pleeeease
,” Ruby whined again.

“I don’t think that I have any swimwear,” I said, hoping to deter her. “Maybe we could go up to your room instead. I could do your hair again.”

She shook her head. “I’m sure my mom bought a swimsuit” She grabbed my hand and leapt to her feet, pulling me in the direction of my room.

It only took her a minute digging through the drawers to find the swimsuits. She pulled out two and held them up.

“Black or white, you choose,” she said.

I’d never worn a swimsuit before, but both of the ones Ruby held up didn’t look like they were made of much more fabric than my underwear. I couldn’t imagine they would cover enough of me.

“Won’t it show too much skin?” I asked, reaching for the black one. It was small and sheer, like my nightgown, and it seemed like there would hardly be enough fabric to cover one foot, let alone my whole body, but Ruby only laughed, shoving me toward the changing screen in the corner.

“Just put it on already. Meet me out by the pool when you’re done.”

I slipped out of my dress and wiggled into the suit, clasping the strap behind my neck. In the mirror, a spindly girl stared back at me. She was nothing but long legs and soft white skin. But luckily the suit covered me in the most important places. When I smoothed the fabric out, I was relieved to see that the fabric was only see-through along the waist. I wrapped myself in a towel and tiptoed out onto the patio where the congressman’s wife sat underneath the covered patio, drinking something out of a sweating glass.

“You’re going swimming?” she asked.

I clenched the towel a little tighter across my chest. “Ruby said she would like to swim and asked if I’d accompany her,” I told her.

“Let’s see how the suit looks,” she said, motioning for me to lower the towel. “I had a stylist in New York who specializes in clothing for pets order all the clothes, but I never had a chance to see the suits.”

I lowered the towel onto a lounge chair and did a full turn the way Miss Gellner had taught us to do whenever we were asked to show off our clothes, but my stiff arms stayed close to my body.

“You look just like Grace Kelly,” the congressman’s wife crooned. “That suit is beautiful.”

I glanced down at the suit, trying to see what she was seeing, but I didn’t really know what it was supposed to look like.

“The ruching is exquisite,” she went on. “It makes your waist look miniscule, which I suppose it is.”

“She thought it would show too much of her skin,” Ruby said, walking up behind me. “She almost wouldn’t come outside, and it’s not like it’s even a two piece.” She laughed. “It’s practically an old lady suit.”

“It is plenty modest,” the congressman’s wife said, standing to walk around me. She pulled and rearranged bits of fabric so the tiny folds lay smooth against my skin. “Don’t forget to put plenty of sunscreen on her, Ruby,” she said, turning to face her daughter. “The last thing we need is for the pet to end up with a bunch of freckles like you.”

The comment didn’t seem to faze Ruby. She rolled her eyes. “I know.”

“I’m not kidding,” the congressman’s wife said. “She’s a pet—it’s not like we can expect her to do anything herself. It’s your responsibility. Got it? We all need to take better care of her than the last one. And I can assure you, your father will not be pleased if he comes home and finds out that she’s all red. He’s already worried enough about having to be gone all day.”

“I’ve got it, Mom,” Ruby said, rolling her eyes again. “Stop nagging me.”

The congressman’s wife narrowed her eyes and looked at her daughter as if she wanted to say more, but then she reconsidered and strode back to the patio table, grabbing her drink before she went back inside through the kitchen door.

Ruby grabbed my arm. “Come on,” she said, dragging me into the shallow end of the pool. She pulled on some goggles and then dove in with a gigantic splash.

I stood on the first wide step, shivering, not from cold, but from the thought of stepping down into an entire pool full of water. Surprisingly, the water was so warm it practically disappeared on my skin, as if it was the hot summer air that was swirling around me instead of thousands of gallons of water, but the sensation did little to calm me.

“Come
on
!” Ruby yelled again when she popped up. Rivulets of water ran down over her goggles and across her cheeks. She dove back under and wriggled along the bottom of the pool until she finally came splashing up near my legs. “Why are you just standing there?”

She propped her elbows on the cement and leaned back, sitting on the step at my feet, staring up at me. Her hair was still pulled back in the two French braids I’d put in the night before, and the goggles she wore pushed down on her ears, making them poke out comically from the side of her head. The goggles were funny. They made me think of the bulgy eyes of the flies that got inside the kennel during the summertime, but I was too nervous to laugh.

“Aren’t you supposed to play with me?” Ruby asked when I didn’t move any deeper into the water.

I bent down and splashed a bit of water in her direction.

She crossed her arms and glared at me. “That’s not playing. You have to get wet.”

I opened my mouth to tell her I wasn’t really that sort of pet—I’d been trained to sit at the periphery of things looking pretty—when all of a sudden she lunged for me, wrapping her wet little body around my legs. I toppled into the pool and the water swallowed me. I sputtered and gasped, flailing to find my footing. My nose and throat filled with water and I blinked, but I couldn’t see.

I came up, choking and sputtering and took a quick gulp of air before Ruby jumped on top of me again. Laughing, she pulled me under.

The water burned in the back of my throat and I fought to get another gasp of air. Underwater, Ruby’s giggles sounded muffled and far away. I came up and gasped again, but my mouth filled with more water.

I fought to take another breath just as two large hands grabbed me around the waist, pulling me up out of the water.

“What are you trying to do, kill her? Can’t you tell she can’t swim?”

Penn dragged me out and laid me on the side of the pool, brushing back the slick of hair that covered my face. I pressed my cheek into the warm concrete and coughed up large gulps of water.

“Are you okay?” Penn asked, leaning over me. His shirt and shorts were sopping wet, but he didn’t make an effort to mop up the water puddling around him.

I nodded slowly, trying not to look into his eyes. I drew in a few deep breaths. “I’m all right,” I choked out.

In front of me, Ruby poked her head out of the water and grabbed onto the edge of the pool. “I’m sorry, Ella,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me you didn’t know how to swim?”

“Just leave her alone,” Penn said, swatting his little sister away. “She’s not a toy.”

He grabbed my towel from off of the chair and dabbed the water from my face. “Do you want to try sitting up?”

I nodded and pushed myself up, dangling my feet over the edge into the water.

“Thank you,” I whispered, trying to smooth out the mass of wet hair dripping down my back. “I think I’m all right now.”

He hovered next to me a moment longer before he turned to go. “I’m going back inside,” he called to Ruby, who was bobbing in the deep end. “Take better care of her or Dad’s going to kill you.”

“You don’t have to be rude about it,” Ruby called after him.

A breeze swept past me, bringing goose bumps to my skin as I stared at the broad back of Penn’s shoulders as he stepped into the kitchen, trailing water behind him. Even now, with my throat and eyes stinging from the water, I could still picture the look of his bare skin floating in the pool the night before.

Ruby swam past me, zipping by my feet like a fish and I closed my eyes, letting the sun warm my skin. Now that I was sitting on dry land, I was feeling a little bit better. Ruby wasn’t thrilled that I was sitting poolside instead of in the water with her, but after a bit she seemed to forget that things would be more fun if I knew how to swim and made the best of what she had, which, at least, was someone willing to throw rings in the water for her to dive for.

“Throw it really deep this time!” Ruby yelled, treading water at the very end of the pool next to the diving board. “See if you can get it to go on the drain.”

I reached for one of the rings she’d brought to me and tossed it into the water. It slowly sank to the pool floor, not quite landing on the drain. She took a deep gasp of air and dove down. For a second her bottom bobbed up above the water and then she was swimming down, down, down.

She didn’t realize how lucky she was to be able to swim, or read for that matter. She was only ten and already she could do more things than I could do. Maybe I’d have to get her to teach me how to swim. It didn’t have to be
soon
, I thought, with the sting of the water still sharp in my nose and my throat, but sometime.

She popped out of the water and swung the bright blue ring above her head. “I got it on the first try,” she gasped.

The kitchen door swung open and Rosa, the Kimball’s housekeeper, stepped outside carrying the telephone.

“Miss, the telephone’s for you,” she called, waiting patiently while Ruby swam to the edge of the pool and climbed out, reaching for the phone.

“Use the towel first,” Rosa reprimanded. She held the phone out of reach while Ruby hurried to dry off as quickly as possible.

“Who is it?”

Rosa shrugged and handed the phone over.

“Hello,” she chirped into the phone, obviously excited to be getting a phone call.

She sat down on a lounge chair, still dripping even though she held a towel between her knees. Rosa tapped her foot and crossed her arms across her chest impatiently. I wanted to ask Rosa if this was something special, or if she got calls all the time, but Rosa didn’t seem like the type of person I could ask questions of.

She served me all my meals, and earlier in the day she’d come to collect my laundry, but she hadn’t spoken to me besides giving me a brief nod when the congressman introduced us. And even though I couldn’t quite figure out what I could have done to make her dislike me, I got the distinct feeling that she wasn’t happy to have me here. A few times I had caught her staring at me, but as soon as I tried to meet her eyes she would shake her head and frown ever so slightly before she glanced away.

“Oh no.” Ruby paused, frowning, “I don’t think I got invited.” She rubbed at her wet arms. “Yeah, have a good time. I hope you find a ride.” Her voice cracked slightly at the end, but she kept her tears in until she hung up the phone and handed it to Rosa.

“Who was it?” Rosa asked.

She didn’t answer. She shook her head, her face crumpling before she turned and ran into the house.

“Is she all right?” I asked. “Shall I go after her?”

Rosa turned to look at me full in the face for the first time since I’d arrived. Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t know what you could do,” she said. “The girl doesn’t have friends. I don’t think a
pet
can help with that.” She spat the word “pet” as though it was something dirty.

I stopped moving my legs through the warm water and sat still, unsure how to respond. I ached to run after Ruby, but I sat unmoving, staring down into the clear water until Rosa turned around and walked inside.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the way Rosa had said the word “pet,” as if I was something sour, something repellent. It reminded me of the look on Penn’s face when he talked about getting me. He hadn’t thought his father would get
another one
, that’s what he’d said, and the words looked like they left a bad taste in his mouth. At both the kennel and the training center, the word “pet” had always been used with pride. We were special, important, prized—at least that’s what they’d always told us—so why did it seem different here?

Or maybe the thing that upset Rosa and Penn had nothing to do with me.

Seven

W
hen Rosa returned to the house, I sneaked back into my room and got dressed. From there I crept through the conservatory, the congressman’s book-lined study, the empty living room, and finally up the stairs to Ruby’s room.

The door was shut, so I tapped lightly and moved my ear against it, listening for an invitation to come in, but the only sound I could make out was a few muffled sniffs from the other side.

I was about to leave when I remembered the secret knock. I put my ear to the door once more and repeated the series of knocks and taps. Holding my breath, I listened for her to call to me, telling me it was all right to come in, but there was only silence.

Just as I turned to go, the door cracked open.

“It’s good you remembered the knock,” Ruby said. “At first I thought maybe you were Rosa.”

“May I come in?” I asked.

She left the door open without inviting me in and climbed back onto her rumpled bed, where I imagined she must have been lying before she answered the door. She buried her head in her pillow and I stood outside a moment longer, wondering if her open door was an offer to come in. When she didn’t speak, I finally decided to enter.

I pulled the door shut quietly behind me and sat beside her on the bed. Her swimsuit was still wet from the pool and I rested my hand on her cold back, trying to rub a little warmth back into her. When she didn’t speak, I lay down next to her and rested my head beside hers on the pillow.

After a few minutes of the two of us sitting in silence, she finally raised her face from the pillow and turned to face me. Even though her eyes were puffy from crying, they still held a faint mark from her goggles.

“That was Sarah. She needed a ride to Jayne Miller’s party.” She sniffed. “I guess she didn’t know I wasn’t invited.”

“Did you want to go?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I guess. I never really get invited to anything.”

I didn’t know what to say to her. I didn’t know anything about little girl’s parties, so I couldn’t even imagine what she would be missing out on. Maybe Rosa was right. What could a pet do to help?

Ruby wiped her eyes and fingered the end of my hair, which was almost dry from the pool. “I’m sorry I pushed you in the water.”

“I should have told you that I couldn’t swim,” I said.

She sat up. “Yeah, you should have. I thought everybody knew how to swim.”

“Did your last pet swim?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. We got her after the pool guys put the cover on and we had to give her back before they opened it back up.”

She reached over to a frosted glass jar on her bedside table and pulled out a little gold wrapper. “You want one?” she asked, handing it to me.

I held out my hand and she placed the gold wrapper in my palm.

“What is it?”

“A butterscotch,” she said. “My grandma sends them from Boston. There’s a big candy store there that she takes me to when I visit.”

She tugged on the ends of the wrapper and pulled out a small honey-colored butterscotch which she popped into her mouth, smiling. When I didn’t do the same, her smile faded. “Don’t you like them?”

I stared down at the shiny wrapper in my palm. “It’s not one of the foods in my diet.”

Ruby laughed. “Candy isn’t a food in anyone’s diet. That’s why it’s so good.”

I pulled on the ends of the wrapper the way I’d seen her do it and picked up the hard candy.

“Go on,” Ruby said. “Put it in your mouth.”

I placed the butterscotch on my tongue and closed my mouth around it. The candy was tiny, but the flavor was immense inside my mouth, the sweetness filling up my whole head.

She giggled. “It’s good, huh? But you probably shouldn’t tell anyone that I gave it to you. My mom’s always going off about cavities and getting fat and stuff.”

I rubbed the candy gently against the top of my mouth, careful not to suck it too quickly. This was a taste I wanted to keep in my mouth forever, something I wanted to savor and remember while I fell asleep at night.

As my candy slowly melted down to nothing, I eyed the wall of books on the other side of the room, and when the last bit crumbled away, leaving only the memory of sweetness in my mouth, I took a deep breath.

“I can’t read,” I said softly.

“What?” she gasped, pounding the bed with both fists. “You can’t swim or read and you’ve never had candy? How are you supposed to survive? Those are like the most important things.” She hopped off her bed, face flushed, eyes shining. “This is unacceptable!”

The excitement on her face made the tightness in my stomach disappear. She ran to the bookshelf and reached up on her tiptoes, stretching to grab a big red book on the top shelf.

“We’ll start with this,” she said, cradling the book in her arms before she plopped back down on the bed beside me. “This was my favorite book when I was little. It’s got all the Grimm Fairy Tales. But don’t worry—they’re not like little kid fairy tales because they’re full of scary stuff. My mom always used to say that they were too gruesome for girls, but I don’t care.”

She flipped the book open and ran her fingers over the page as if they were something soft.

“I’ve never taught anyone to read before,” she said. “Maybe to start, I could just read out loud to you. That’s what my mom and dad did when I was little. Then we’ll start teaching you your letters.”

I nodded and smiled, too afraid that if I spoke she’d change her mind, or realize that pets weren’t supposed to know how to read.

Ruby flipped through the pages, stopping to show me the ornate drawings every few pages. “Here, we’ll start with this,” she said, smoothing out a page in front of her. “
The Pink
, it’s one of my favorite stories. You’ll love it.”

She leaned up against me, her little body warming my side and I smiled, letting myself relax for the first time all day.

As she started to read, I stared down at the delicate picture of a woman whose fair hair was crowned with jewels and flowers. The woman was beautiful, sound asleep on the banks of a river. She looked so perfect sleeping there, except for the three spots of blood that splattered her gown and the dark figure that crept away into the woods. None of the books that Miss Gellner had read to us had pictures like this.

Ruby ended up reading four stories to me and completely forgot about not being invited to Jayne’s party. When I left her room, images of fire-breathing dogs and talking ravens were still clouding my vision. I’d never heard stories like those before, and even though I knew they were make believe, I could already feel the way they would haunt me, as if they’d found a soft spot to make a new home inside me.

I hurried in the direction of the stairs, hoping I could get back to my room before lunch was served. After what Rosa had said to me earlier, I didn’t want her to find out I’d been upstairs. I didn’t need to give her a real reason to dislike me.

Across the hall, the door to Penn’s room was shut tight, but soft music wafted out from underneath it, drawing me toward the sound. It wasn’t like the music we listened to at the training center. It wasn’t Bach or Mozart, or even one of the lovely operas we used to sing during our Voice lessons.

The voice coming from behind the door was gruff and slightly shaky, and filled my heart with an ache I’d never felt before. The pain in my chest was sudden and completely unexpected, and I leaned up against the doorframe and closed my eyes tight, trying to hold on to the sound even though it hurt me. I couldn’t tell whether it was sadness or joy pushing against the insides of my ribs, threatening to break me open.

I didn’t even realize I was crying until the rattle of the doorknob made me open my eyes. The wetness on my cheeks startled me and I quickly wiped at it, stepping backward, but it was too late. He’d already seen me.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I… I…” I tried to catch my breath, but the music still played in the background. It wasn’t muffled by the door now and I was so distracted by the pulse of the beat, and the sorrow in the man’s voice, that I could hardly think. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I heard your music.”

Penn looked over his shoulder, as if the music was something he could see. “Yeah?”

“I didn’t mean to bother you,” I said, backing away. “I just haven’t ever heard anything like it.”

“You’ve never heard Ray LaMontagne?”

“No, I…” My voice trailed off.

He was staring at me with the same confusing expression I’d seen on his face every time he looked at me. It left me feeling like some strange, repulsive creature. I didn’t know what reason he had to dislike me, but it was clear that he did.

“What, they didn’t have music at the puppy mill?”

I didn’t know what he was talking about, but the tone of his voice was hateful.

“We had music, but it was all classical. Nothing like this. This is so…” I fought for the right word, but I couldn’t decide what to call it. “…so beautiful,” I finally said.

His face softened slightly. “The song’s called ‘Trouble.’ It’s the title track to his first album. If you want to you can—”

Just then, the sound of raised voices drifted up the stairwell, distracting him, and he stepped past me, moving to the landing at the top of the stairs where he could get a better view of the commotion.

Timidly, I stepped up behind him and peered down to the foyer where the congressman’s wife stood next to the open door with her arms folded across her chest. Standing half-in, half-out of the doorway was an older-looking woman with a pinched face and untamed gray hair that stood up on top of her head. Even though their clothes were almost identical, they didn’t seem to belong in the same world.

“I really don’t see how it’s any of your business,” the congressman’s wife was saying.

This was obviously the wrong thing to say because the woman stepped farther into the foyer, pointing a long, skinny finger at her.

“Of course it’s my business. It’s a complete injustice. I thought you’d come to your senses, but apparently I was wrong. To think that you and your husband are bringing this sort of barbarity into our neighborhood a
second time
. It’s unbelievable!”

“Barbarity?” The congressman’s wife kept her voice calm, unlike the near shrieking tones the other woman’s voice was climbing to.

“I’d say barbarity!” the woman yelled. “You’re keeping another human being prisoner. You think you’re so high and mighty that you can
own
another life. Well, I won’t stand for it and I’d bet most of the voters in our district won’t stand for it, either.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said. “What does Patsy have to say about it?”

The woman’s face grew red. “Patsy is a schnauzer. You can’t compare a person to a
dog.
It’s a completely different situation. She’s completely dependent on me. Besides, I treat her like one of the family.”

“I don’t want to argue with you, Rhonda,” she said. “But I think it’s exactly the same situation. We are the owners of a pet that the United States of America has deemed entirely legal in all fifty states. Whether or not you agree with it is beside the point.”

“That’s because people like your corrupt husband have passed legislation to make this sort of sick thing legal.”

“If you’re going to start calling my husband names, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

The woman raised her arm, looking as if she might strike, and I instinctively took a step out from behind Penn, closing my hands around the railing to steady myself. Maybe the movement from upstairs distracted the woman, or maybe she realized how inappropriate it would be to actually hit the congressman’s wife, because she lowered her arm.

Our eyes met.

“Is that her?” the woman asked, her voice suddenly becoming quiet, almost kind.

Penn, who had been standing utterly still during the entire scene, stepped forward, pushing me back from the railing so that his body was between the woman and me.

“I think it’s time for you to be going now,” the congressman’s wife said, guiding her lightly by the elbow to the door.

“No, I only want to see her. You don’t have to hide her from me,” the woman said. She grabbed onto the doorframe and her voice rose again. “You! Girl!” she yelled at me. “Don’t let them trap you here.” Her voice was frantic. “Let go of me, Elise!” she bellowed. “You can’t keep that girl locked up here. She’s just a child. Look at her. I can help her!”

And with that, the congressman’s wife shoved the woman back through the front entrance, slamming the wide wooden door with enough vigor that the picture frames shook against the wall.