Beautiful Lies

of stairs, through the restaurant kitchen, out into the courtyard. We walked through the crowd of barking dogs, who jumped at us in greeting. Zelda bent down and, with a heave, swung open a pair of metal doors in the ground that led to the basement. I followed her down the stairs, ducking my head to keep it from banging on the low ceiling. She led me through dark rows of shelving that held bottles of olive oil and cans of crushed tomatoes, huge containers of spices, paper plates and napkins, crates of garlic. The aromas of these things mixed with the musty smell of the underground space, and the effect was not unpleasant.

At the far corner of the room, she unbolted another metal door. It led into pitch darkness. Zelda disappeared through the door and I followed her, feeling my way along the wall. We were in some kind of a tunnel. It was damp and cold and the air was so moldy there, my sinuses started to swell.

“This tunnel lets out on Eleventh Street,” Zelda’s voice sounded through the dark. “I don’t know why it’s here, but it runs along the back of the Black Forest Pastry Shop. There’s a door that leads into their basement, too.” Just as she said that my hands touched what felt like a metal doorway. The whole situation had taken on another layer of nonreality to me and I felt laughter rising in my throat, a punchy, hysterical laughter that I knew, if released, would immediately turn to sobbing. I quashed it and kept moving. After another few minutes, I heard Zelda unhinge some bolts and then a door opened onto Eleventh Street, the crisp, fresh air feeling good on my skin. The night sky seemed as bright as day compared to the pitch-dark tunnel. I walked past Zelda and turned to her from the street.

“Thanks, Zelda.” She looked at me and seemed to consider saying something but then clamped her mouth shut.

“Be careful,” she responded. Her mouth tried a smile but it didn’t take. Something unidentifiable glittered in her eyes. She closed the door with a heavy clang.

twenty-three

Was he smirking? It was hard to tell in the darkened room, which smelled faintly of beer and garbage. Ace hadn’t been happy to see me when I showed up at his door.

“What are you doing here?” he’d asked through the same crack I’d spoken to Ruby through a couple of days ago. I’d just stood there, not knowing how to answer, not having an answer, anyway. Where else could I have gone? Not to my parents, certainly. It was only a matter of time before the police got in touch with them, if they hadn’t already. Not to Alexander Harriman. He was scary, and there was something about him I didn’t trust (and hadn’t even before he ratted me out to my parents). Part of me had the urge to go to Zack but I quashed it. It was selfish to go running to him when I was in trouble, especially after everything that had passed between us over the last few days. Finally, after an uncomfortable thirty seconds of silence, Ace had opened the door. I’d followed him inside. It was as filthy and awful as you would imagine it to be. Ruby lay akimbo on a tattered old chair with a faded floral pattern and its stuffing coming out. I’d have thought she was dead if I’d seen her on the street. The tiniest line of drool traveled from the corner of her mouth down her chin.

“Is she all right?” I asked.

“As right as she could be,” he answered coldly. “Now tell me what’s going on.”

I had butterflies in my stomach and my throat was dry.

“Why are you always such an asshole?” I asked him. “Do you think I’d come here if I didn’t need to?” I started to cry then. Not that same sobbing I experienced after Christian Luna died, but close. I sat on the bed and he sat beside me, let me have it out with his hand on my back. When I was calmer, wiping tears and snot on a deli napkin he happened to find on a nearby pile of junk, he said, “Just tell me what’s going on, Ridley. I’ll do what I can for you.” Which isn’t much, he didn’t say, but was the implied ending to his sentence. I told him everything that had happened since we last saw each other.

“Ben and Grace must be wigging out,” he said with a light laugh. “Perfect little Ridley on the run from the law. They’re probably having a conference with Zack and Esme right now about what to do about it.”

There was so much bitterness in his voice, it would have hurt less if he’d slapped me. I could see it now, the jealousy, the resentment. I’d never really seen it uncloaked like that before. I thought about what my father had said, and what Jake had implied, that maybe Ace had something to do with this. I saw my brother for a second the way everyone else in my life seemed to see him: low, untrustworthy, someone willing to hurt me. It made me so sad. How can I tell you? So, so sad.

“I saw you,” I said. “Waiting outside my building a little while ago. What were you doing there?”

He shrugged, leaned back on his elbows. Looked at the wall behind me.

When I first moved to New York and started seeing my brother, I used to have this fantasy about him, that he was secretly watching out for me, shadowing me, in case I ever got into any trouble. I had these elaborate daydreams about my being mugged in some alley somewhere and my brother leaping out from behind garbage cans to save me. He’d take me back to my dorm room and take care of me until I felt better. Then he’d go back to his life and I could go on with mine, secure in the knowledge that he’d always have my back, always be watching out for me. In another daydream, we’d go home to our parents and there would be this tearful reunion and everyone would live happily ever after. Pretty sad, I know. But little girls are raised on fairy tales. Is it any wonder we all crave the happy endings to the dark things in our lives? No one ever tells you that sad things stay sad, some people die angry and unforgiven, and some things are lost and never found.

“Are you going to answer me?” I asked.

“I was waiting for you. I needed money. But your goon came down after me. I bolted.”

“My goon?”

“Your new boyfriend or whatever. You better watch out for that guy. I bet he’s not who you think he is.”

He looked at me, smug and unkind. I wanted to slap his stupid face.

“What do you know about him? What do you know about anything?”

He shrugged again, didn’t answer me.

“You didn’t always hate me, did you?” I asked him. “I remember you loving me when we were kids.”

The smirk (yes, he was smirking) fell from his face and he looked at me with surprise. “I don’t hate you, Rid. I’ve never hated you.”

I held his eyes until he looked away.

“There’s so much you don’t understand,” he said, shaking his head slowly.

“I think I do understand,” I said. A terrible anger was simmering in my chest. “It’s about Max, right?”

He looked at me, startled. “What do you think you know, Ridley?”

“About the money he left us.”

He released a breath and rolled his eyes. “You mean left you.”

“To you, too, if you’d pull yourself together, Ace.” I didn’t like the way that sounded, as if it was so easy, but I guess a part of me believed that Ace had chosen this life. Maybe the drugs had their claws in him now. But if it’s a choice to start using, then it’s a choice to stop. The road is long and hard, riven with obstacles both internal and external, but the first step is a choice, isn’t it? He had the resources. The help was waiting for him.

“Who told you that? Dad?” he said, rising.

“What difference does it make? It’s true, isn’t it?”

“Per usual, you have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re just living in your own little world. Ridley World, where everything is black and white, right and wrong. It’s all about choices, right? Making the right choices?”

Did you think you were the only one who had been subjected to my lecture on choices? As you can see, Ace totally missed the point. I got up and moved toward the door. I was shaking from anger and sadness, my stomach was in full revolt. I’d come for help and for some solace, but I could see he had neither to offer and might have even withheld it, if he did. I wanted to get away from him. I wanted to run to him and throw my arms around him, hold him as tightly as I could. I hated him. I loved him.

“Life’s not that simple, Ridley.”

I didn’t know how to answer him; I didn’t trust my voice. And before I could stop them, the tears started to fall again. I’d never said life was simple. I’ve never believed that.

“Go turn yourself in, Ridley. Call Mom and Dad. It’ll all turn out all right for you. It always does.”