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Like most things about you, your escape plan is stolen.
Nobody likes a cuckoo, sure, but if you had to pick, you'd rather be a cuckoo than a reed warbler. It's not about being liked. It's about survival. (Your bird knowledge is stolen, too, from a young man with watery eyes and too-thin hands, who did not deserve the things you did to him.)
Ruby doesn't deserve this, either. They never do.
Still, it's not like she's going to need her exit plan, you reason, as you pack your room up and prepare to leave. The harm is done. It might as well be yours. So you clear your stash out. Take your jacket, and your shoes, and someone else's hat. A few miles down the road, a change of clothes, a shiny accent, and a bright new name, and all this guilt will belong to Klaasje, and Klaasje won't be you.
But she's not all bad. You can't quite bear for her to have been all bad. So you leave a little something for your detective friends to follow up on in the room. No. Not for them. Not really. It's for Lely, and it's for Klaasje too. They both died here, and it was love that did them in.
Something like that, anyway. You decide, abruptly, that the new you will not need that Oranjese Lit degree. It makes you morbid, and you're done with morbid. Morbid is old, and you must be born anew.
You steal Garte's lunchtime sandwich from his shitty little backpack in the foyer, and hit the road out the backdoor, nice and quiet before the shit has even hit the fan. Ruby has spare keys in a locker at the Whirling, and a spare truck stashed in a fenced-off access route up off toward the highway. A little cash, road snacks, some bolt cutters to help her clear the fences so she can get out of town without the need to skip the jam. It's good, actually. If she wasn't trapped out on the coast it might even have worked.
The spare truck's ugly, but it's reasonably stocked. She's left behind some proper lowbrow reading (light novels, mostly, with pin-up covers and words like strange and salt and different in the titles). Radio parts, a toolkit, a handful of her less local maps. You're so absorbed in studying the latter that you jump half out your skin when she leans in through the window of the driver-side door.
"You're not gonna drive in those fucking heels, K. Move over. I'll take it from here."
Your ass is in the passenger seat before your head has even figured out what's going on. You don't say anything - what is there to say? How is she here? What happened? You're fucked, most likely, but you've got a card or two still left to play. So you take the hat off - you look better with your hair down. Bat your lashes. Pray it helps.
She rolls her eyes as she swings the door open and leans in. "You know this shit is gonna stall, right? You roll it," she whistles through her teeth, appraising, "I dunno, I give it thirty meters, and the engine conks right out."
You blink. "You didn't mention that your getaway truck was broken when we were talking plans."
"Yeah, well," she says, "it's called contingency. A little roadblock in case some asshole," she glares pointedly at you, "steals my keys. Because I know what's wrong, and I can fix that shit in, oh- two minutes, tops. Can you?"
You shake your head. "Me? Fix an engine? No. There's usually a man about to do that sort of thing." Of course there is. You're pretty and you're blonde. Men will fix your truck. Men will fix someone else's truck, and lift you into it. That's the world. It's not your fault it's built like that. Pretty and blonde. Focus, and project it. If she wants you, this can all still be ok.
She rolls her eyes, and performs a mocking little bow. "Well, princess, let me help you out. I'm the man who's here to fix your truck." She rolls her eyes again. "My truck. God, you've got some fucking nerve."
"Alright, I- yeah, I do," you say, as she hops back out and lifts the hood, tinkering with some unseen engine part beyond your field of view. "But I have money, too. I've got a couple hundred in a lockbox, a little out of town." You bite your lip. "I know this looks-"
"Looks?!"
Alright. Fair point. "Come on. We're women of the world. I figured- I didn't think you'd need it. And I had to- you get it, right? I had to leave, right now." You sigh, a thousand years of weary, gorgeous sorrow. "I was so scared, Ruby. I figured you wouldn't mind if I just-"
"Cute. Yeah. You figured I'd be dead. Love that." Her tone is far too light. You don't like it. Light like this is the tone someone might get before they wheel the whole truck off a bridge - you, her, all of it. It's light like someone who really doesn't care, and that scares you more than anger ever would.
"Oh, come on," you purr, unbuttoning your jacket as you lean over the dashboard. Catch the light. Catch her eye. "You'd be arrested. And the Moralintern isn't after you. I'm sure that Liz would have you out of there before you even-"
"You're fucking dense sometimes," she says. "Put your tits away, or I'm really going to shoot myself."
You're not often on the back foot like she has you on the back foot now. So you just say, "What?" and you don't even try to make it come out breathy, or to bat your eyes.
You hear a loud clang of metal before she slams the hood shut, scrambling back into the cab. "Button up, I mean it. The heating's broken, and this is…" She gestures, loosely, at the angles of your body, leaning artlessly into the dashboard like a child who's failing to impress a crush. "This is embarrassing. I've seen your shit. I'm good." She taps her fingers on the steering levers as the engine stutters into life. "Tell me where the money is, though. We're gonna need it. I had like eight reál, and I think I left it in my tent."
***
She isn't kidding about the money. She has maybe two reál, in centim, loose in the drink holders and rolling around the floor of the truck - but that's about it.
You take pity and split Garte's sandwich with her in a layby just outside city limits. "Hell of an escape plot, handsome. You didn't think to bring any cash?"
She rifles through the glove compartment for a half-crushed bag of chips. Shrugs. "Didn't have it on me. Figured I had a cheaper exit plan on deck."
In the glove compartment, her front-loader gleams. She eyes it for a moment before she slams the compartment shut and proffers the bag toward you. "Not my day, I guess. Lucky us. You want a chip?"
***
Nights in the truck are cold, and long, and lonely. You manage it, shivering and curled over your own body like a dog, for the first few days, but tonight - god, tonight it sinks you like a fucking rock.
You shouldn't mix your shit. You know this. But here you are. And there she is, icy, blanket pulled up round her ears. You can't see her, in the dark, but you hear her breathing and you need- you need- you need-
From the prehistoric depths of the frozen ocean on the wrong side of the truck, you pull together the shattered remnants of your voice. Nice and level. Keep it normal. "Hey."
Ruby yawns. "Mmm?"
"You want to share a bedroll?"
She scoffs. It's dark, but you can hear the frown in her voice. It's not even nasty. She's just tired of it. "You can lay off this shit, you know. I'm not gonna fuck you."
"No, I-" you press the heels of your hands into your eyes until the room bursts into wheeling, unsteady colour. Green-blue blur. Unreal.
"What?"
The fear, that's what. With its roots in you so deep you'll never dig them out. "Feels weird."
Her breath, far away and heavy like radio static. "Fucking hell. I can hear your teeth going from here. What did you- never mind." She knows, anyway. She'd watched you clear half your stash off her dashboard earlier in the day without comment, but you'd sensed the disapproval, rolling off her in waves. Not really about the drugs themselves - she's not a hypocrite - but about the mixture, about the timing, about the reckless grin and the way you were clearly half doing it just to see how she'd respond. Well, here she is. Responding. You feel sick. "You need some water?"
Water? No. You'll drown. "I just… at least just touch my hand, or something. Please?"
It's real lonely, for a long moment, dangling your feet off the edge of an admission of weakness. Then Ruby lifts her blanket up with a sigh. "Get over here."
You scurry into the warmth and she slings the arm down over you with a grunt. "Pull your shit together. You need to get a handle on what you're taking. I'm not making this a habit."
You tuck into her neck and allow yourself the luxury of a good shiver. They always like that - poor sad trembling girl. Somebody to care for. Somebody to hurt. A bit of both, maybe. The last sort are your favourite, for what your favour's worth. The crook of her neck smells like motor oil, and sweat, and warmth. A cat that's claimed the one good sunspot in the room, and you, younger, pressing your face into the ginger fur and laughing… was that you? Would you like it to have been? You can make anything real, if you say it pretty enough. If you believe it while the words are in your mouth. Idly, you press your palm into Ruby's waist, graze your lips along her neck, shift in, and-
A big, gruff hand shoves up between your bodies and catches you by the chin. "I'm not going to fuck you, K. I mean it."
You grin, bashful, trying to glance through your lashes while your heart still beats off-tempo in your throat. You feel sticky again. Dizzy. "I'm good, I promise. You can-"
"Okay," she says, and in the half-dark you can see her eyes, and her too-close, too-steady face, "Yeah, great. I can. But I won't. Alright?" Not, you note, with a sick-sweet sense of satisfaction, 'I don't want to' - because unlike you she's not much of a liar. That's good. If she wants you, she won't send you back to the far side of the truck, where the colours are all wrong and your skin keeps crawling. It's fucked up over there.
You actually mumble the last part of that thought out loud and Ruby sighs. "Yeah, I know. Good thing you're over here then, huh?"
You nod and burrow in against her. Warm cat. Motor oil. Sweat. Okay.
After a moment, Ruby shifts, and you hear the click of a switch, a dial turning as the radio flickers on. Very quiet. A talk-show station. She puts her arm back round you and says nothing, and you think about all the times you got really fucked on your own in your room at the Whirling. The way you'd come fumbling down the stairs with your jaw grinding and your eyes wide, because the people talking helped you put your brain back together, just a bit.
It coalesces, slowly, now. Motor oil. Warm cat. Sweat. Elysium radio, the sounds of the world. The ocean, deep blue and vast, held back by the steady sea-wall of an arm, a hip, the distant thrum of heartbeats. It's alright. It's alright for now.
***
The next morning you wake up alone in her bedroll, but before you can sink back into blue-tinged premonitions of dread, you feel her boot nudge the side of your leg through the blanket.
"Got bacon rolls," she grunts, holding out a warm, foil-wrapped parcel.
You nod your thanks as you claw your way into the foil, chipped nail polish against the scratchy aluminium glow in the morning light. "Nice."
"Hmm." She normally talks with her mouth full, but this time you watch her chew and swallow before she speaks. "You know, for someone who takes a lot of drugs, you're really fucking shit at it."
You wipe your mouth with the back of your hand and grin. Okay. 'Drugged up and trembling' didn't cut it. Maybe 'chilled out truck girl' will. "I've got it," you say, yawning without bothering to cover your mouth. "Just mixed some shit up last night. Won't happen again."
It's true. You project it into the early-morning stillness of the truck. You're cool. You're in control. The drugs are nothing, anyway. Your smile is lopsided, and fond, and only meant for her. Next stop down the road you might give in and actually let her dye your hair with shitty box dye in a chipped gas station sink. You drink beer and you sit with your legs spread wide and you fuck women easier than you've ever fucked with men. It's all true. It's real. This version of you is the centre, and all the others were a joke, a mask, a cover-up, and only she has ever seen the true-
"Okay," she says, handing you the rest of her coffee as she clambers off out of the truck. "Whatever. God. I fucking hate it when you do this shit."
Ice water, down your spine. "What shit?"
She rolls her eyes. "I'm taking a slash. You should piss too if you're gonna do it. It's a while 'til the next stop."
***
You don't piss, out of some weird mix of humiliation and stubbornness and annoyance, and so you're barely two hours down the motorway before you start shifting in your seat. "When's the next-"
"Hours," she says, gruffly. "I fucking warned you, didn't I?"
You sigh. "Sorry. Yeah."
She pulls off at the next intersection and drives the lorry up against the hard shoulder, almost rolling into a windswept clutch of bushes.
When you hop back into the cab she says, "You know I'm not doing this shit because I want to fuck you, right? Or because I'm your friend?"
The second stings worse than the first, but you're used to it. You screw people over enough, some days you wind up having to look at the way their faces crumple when you do. Never gets easy, but it sure does wind up getting dull. Like needles do. You shrug, listless. "I get it."
She swings out into the road without checking her mirrors. "You don't. Whatever. I don't expect you to-" a glance at you, sidelong. Still not looking at the road. "I'm doing it because you need help, and I'm a person who can help you. It's not about you at all. I'd have picked up anyone, pretty much. Because that's how-" and now she's looking at the road, with her burning, heavy eyes, "Because that's fucking how people should be, alright? I don't care. People should fucking help each other, when they can, and not fuck each other over at the first opportunity over some stupid fucking- fuck."
You can hurt somebody so bad, when they're like that. When they really care. You have. You did. You singular and you the world. You, personally, and you all the thousand other knives she's found in her back her whole life through because down to the soles of her mismatched boots she actually fucking gives a shit about people.
And she saved you, anyway. Again. You need her to want something in return for that so bad it's going to kill you.
"Shit, whatever," she says, her grip loosening slightly on the steering levers as she merges back onto the motorway. "Look, I'm glad, all the same, alright?"
"Glad what?"
"I mean I'm glad it's you. Not exactly the roadtrip I imagined, but…"
You can't quite believe that's true. "Oh, come on. Really?"
She pats your thigh, once - firm but hesitant. The way men touch each other, almost. "Sure," she says, clipping the end off like she doesn't trust herself not to say something more.
You press your fingers to your thigh where her hand briefly rested, and you just… huh. It's strange. Half your life is being touched, and you're still not sure you've ever been touched quite like that before.
"Can you, uh, check the map?" says Ruby, and you flip it open, suddenly glad to have something to be doing with your hands - even if you both know you aren't turning off this motorway for another twenty miles, at least, and there's no way you need a map for that.
***
Spring comes in slow-fast and agonising, just like it always does.
You sit with your legs swinging over the edge of the tailgate while she works on the heater. Bits of pipe and bolts spread out through the back of the truck, the cab, spilling out onto the tarmac in a windswept view-spot, halfway to nowhere in one direction and halfway to nowhere else the other way. Notebooks. Loose paper. Pens. At one point she has three separate radios on, and only two of them are even tuned to the same damn station.
While she works the stars come out, and by the time she joins you they're full and bright, with no haze of city lights to blur them out.
You don't know your constellations well. Not here on Caillou, anyway. They're different in Oranje. You can make them up, of course, but you feel a sudden, listless pang at the thought. The sky remains mysterious to you. No way to trail your hand across this map and be told, oh, this atrocity was here, and that's the place I killed six men, and there we split their heads and pulled their teeth out, and…
Still. There must be other girls, on other stars, like you. You wonder if they're lonely. You wonder if they're looking back.
"I used to have this girlfriend," says Ruby, lighting up a cigarette, "who had freckles."
"Hmm?"
"Uh-huh. Everywhere."
You grin. "Oh? Really?"
She passes you the cigarette. Grins back. "Yeah, I checked." She gestures up. "Always makes me think."
"Wow," you deadpan. "So romantic. You should write that down."
She laughs, and you pass back the cigarette. Back and forth. Back and forth. Her, watching the stars. You, watching her. You can never quite work out what it is you want to understand, with Ruby. But she does this thing, like now, where she gets sad sometimes. All behind the eyes. Somewhere you can't quite follow her.
"What happened?" you ask, and she startles like she's forgotten you were there: "What happened with the girlfriend?"
"Oh, she uh…" she turns aside, reaching down into her cooler for a beer, "She got this job at a repeater station. Three year contract. Not that long."
"Ah."
"Yeah. She made it two." Ruby pops the beer lid with her keys. "I think she did. I dunno. She jumped, or some shit. That's what I heard. Body went back to the family, obviously, and they didn't know-" she shrugs. "Whatever. Kinda sucked."
"I-"
"I still call her, now and then," she says, with a big, weird, slapped-on grin, "And she still answers, sometimes. So. That's fun."
You look up. "Shit. I'm sorry."
"Yeah," she says, eyes full of stars. "I guess I'm sorry too."
You share the bedroll again that night, even though the weather's mild and - with the heater fixed - the truck is pretty warm. But you don't mention it, and she won't bring it up. And the two of you must be the sorriest idiots on the whole damn isola for that.
***
You take the ferry to Ozonne. You can put a truck on a ferry, did you know that? Well, you can. And you can also meet some stupid, pretty, smiling woman in a bar on a ferry, and you can fuck her in your truck.
Well, you can do that if you're Ruby. If you're you, you can sit outside the truck and stew.
On the plus side, if you're you - well, you're you. So once you're done with stewing, you can make it to the much, much nicer bar on the ferry, and do blow that's almost actually magenta, and pick up a guy who takes you to a suite, and not a fucking truck.
And this will feel like winning, up until you're stuck with her the morning after, and she keeps grinning, and you have to deal with that.
It's at this point you realise you might have a problem.
***
You're a full isola over before you realise what the problem might actually be.
Because it's been months, you know? Driving, here and there. She picks up odd jobs, and you mostly just look pretty - but sometimes you help out. A bit of translation work. Holding car parts. Taking notes. And, when you get the time, you go places. Places you like - with hard drinks, and bright lights, and with pretty men. Places she likes - with gritty beer, and sticky tables, and with pretty girls. And, at both these sorts of places, by and large, you end up holed up in a corner, giggling with her.
And you haven't pulled your cuckoo shit in ages, so what fucking gives?
In a dive bar in some nameless, shapeless town, you lean in to her neck and ask her, "You know you could have ditched me, miles ago?"
She leans right back. "Yeah? Why, you got somewhere you wanna be?"
"Oh, I don't know," you say, "Ubi Sunt? Or Vesper, maybe. Hear it's nice."
"This time of year? Yeah. I hear it's something else. Sure. You wanna go? I'll drop you off."
"I'm good," you say, half-slurring, and you watch her grin. "I kinda like it here with you."
And then a half hour later you're on your knees against the wall of the dive bar bathroom with some nameless, shapeless guy, because you don't know how to fucking act. That's why. Because you're stupid, and you don't know how to- fuck, god, whatever. It's two guys, maybe. You don't know. You're high.
And when you slink back to the truck she lets you share her bedroll, all the same.
***
Summer comes in gentle, unlike spring. It comes in soft, and treats you kindly. How terrible. How strange.
On the brow of a hill, far from Vesper and Ubi and Revachol and Oranje and and the past, you split a wonky lemon ice-cream - the very last from the bottom of the freezer at the rest stop, dented and malformed by the passing ages of the earth - and you watch the sun set.
She crumples the wrapper into the pocket of her oil-stained dungarees. When you turn to look at her, mouth still sweet with artificial lemon, she's already looking at you, and you think- just for a moment, you think-
You lean in to kiss her, but she tilts her head at the last moment, so you catch her cheek instead. Only the very corner of your lip brushes hers and you feel yourself flush with stupidity and embarrassment, some long-dead childish thing that claws up your throat and chokes you when you try to mumble out a humiliated apology.
"Sorry," you manage, nails digging into the sun-scorched grass in some vain attempt to pin yourself to the earth, to halt the spiral that you feel storming up within your chest. "I thought-"
"No," she says, her voice surprisingly shy, "no, uh, you're good, it's- here," her hand is slightly sticky against your jaw. "Hold still?"
You catch your breath. Chest aching. When did you last feel like this?
She holds you still so you can't turn and catch her mouth - but she kisses you, all the same. Kisses your cheek. Just the once. Light and full of air. Gentle with you not because she thinks you'll break, but because she's soft with everything, when she gets the chance. She likes you. Sees you. Wants to be kind to you for no purpose and with no prospect of reward.
"Oh, but you're not gonna fuck me, huh?" you drawl, as though you have it all in hand. As though your heart doesn't thunder when she tangles lemon-frozen fingers into yours.
She's a little red by the time you dare to look at her. "It's a maybe," she says, with a firmness so brittle you know it's going to shatter the second you so much as look at it the wrong way.
It's funny. Back in Revachol there are bullets flying in the street and bombers overhead and good, dead people, all around. And here you are, with the world at your feet and the sun at your brow and an unearned, lovely hand in yours. People so rarely deserve the things that happen to them. That cuts both ways. But you'll take it. You trace her callused knuckles with your fingers, and you smile. You will. You'll take it, all the same.