Free You Only Get Letters from Jail by Jodi Angel Page B

clicking the button on a stopwatch so he could beat his best time.
    â€œHe was in Vietnam?” I said.
    â€œThat’s where he got his name. He says he was like a ghost.” Ruby set the flashlight in her lap. “He is still like a ghost, I think,” she said. “Sometimes I wake up at night and he’s standing in my room, against the wall by the door, and I never heard him. Even when he walks up to the bed, I don’t hear him, and I even try to hold my breath, but there’s nothing.”
    I tried to picture Casper’s dark shape in my bedroom, and I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up a little. “Can I ask you something?” I said. “Where’s your mother?”
    Ruby was quiet for a minute. Through the window I could see thin clouds cross the moon. “She left,” Ruby said. “About six months ago.”
    â€œWhere’d she go?”
    â€œShe never told me.”
    â€œReally?” I said. “Don’t you miss her?”
    â€œA lot,” she said. “But if I need to, I think I can find her. She once told me that if something bad happens, I shouldwalk down the road toward town and find the bus.” Ruby paused and in the half darkness I could see her tuck her hair behind her ear. “She showed me a picture of the bus, the one with the grey dog on the side. And she told me I should catch the grey dog and ride until I got to the first town that starts with an L.” She looked straight at my face without blinking.
    â€œWait a second,” I said. “So you take a bus and get off at a town that starts with the letter L , and you think you’re going to find her? I mean, you don’t know which bus or which direction to go. That’s impossible.”
    I felt Ruby’s hand on my jeans, just above my knee. She leaned in close to me so that I could smell her breath, buttery with dinner’s potatoes. “The point is to leave, Sonny. First I leave here as fast as I can, and then I can be free to start looking.”
    â€œSo why did your mother leave you in the first place?” The hand felt warm on my leg.
    â€œBecause maybe something bad happened, and she had to go.”
    I thought about that for a second, but her hand was distracting me. “Did something happen with her and your dad?” My own father had left years ago to be with a dark-haired woman he’d met on a layover in Vegas.
    â€œCasper is my stepdad,” she said. “My real dad died when I was a baby.”
    We were both quiet for a while. I listened to the wind outside as it tried to force its way in. “Can I ask you something?” she said. “Have you ever done it?”
    I laughed suddenly and choked on my own spit so that I couldn’t answer until the coughing stopped. “No,” I said. “I’ve never done it.”
    â€œCasper thinks that I’ve done it,” she said. “I haven’t, but he doesn’t believe me. He’s always looking at me funny, you know, watching me. And I get in trouble for everything. I can’t help it. I’m worse than Boone, but he won’t ever come back anyway.”
    â€œYour brother? I thought he was coming out here to fix my car? That’s what Casper told us.”
    â€œBoone won’t speak to Casper. He hates him.”
    â€œThen how is somebody going to fix my car? Your dad . . . Casper, whatever, he said he can’t fix it, but Boone can, and he was calling him all night and he said that Boone would probably be here in the morning.” I realized my voice had risen to a whine and I forced myself to stop talking.
    â€œIt’s not true,” Ruby said. “Boone won’t ever come back. Casper says that Boone is weak and that’s why my mom always favored him. Casper says that maybe Boone is queer, you know, and that’s why he ran off.” I could hear the sound of metal rubbing metal outside in the wind.