Guy asked, “Did they do something wrong? Or was it you?”
Tobias wasn’t touching that with a ten-foot pole. “It’s complicated.”
“That’s what adults say when they think you’re too stupid to understand,” Guy intoned, and Ruby snorted.
Tobias sighed. “That’s what adults say when they don’t want you to be depressed about how hard life can be sometimes. Or when we don’t want to give you ideas that might get you screwing up your own lives. Or when we’re being stupid jerks and we don’t want to admit it to kids because it’s embarrassing and you’ll bring it up later as evidence for why you shouldn’t have to listen to us.”
They were both looking at him again, this time with matching, satisfying expressions of whoa. He found himself curiously unmotivated to take any of it back, either.
At the ice cream shop, when everyone had gotten their cones, they filed over to the small picnic tables, where their parents and Guy sat separately because Ruby claimed “star’s rights” and commandeered Mirlande and Tobias at another.
“You were amazing,” Mirlande told Ruby. “The caprice sounded perfect.”
She ducked her head, her smile pleased and shy. “It was okay.”
“After the number of hours you put into it, I think you can admit it was better than okay,” Mirlande said.
“It was really hard,” Ruby admitted. She lowered her voice. “I threw my bow once when I was practicing. Don’t tell.”
“Manman would’ve killed you if you needed a new one.” Mirlande gave Ruby an appraising, impressed look. “You would be dead right now. In the earth, child.”
Ruby giggled. “I know. I almost peed my pants when I thought it might be broken. It was fine, though.”
Tobias cleared his throat. “Is it worth it? This part, when everyone’s proud and we’re celebrating? Is it worth wanting to throw your bow?”
“No.” She took a big lick of her ice cream. “Being on stage is, though.”
“Oh. You—you still like performing?”
She nodded.
“It’s not frightening up there in front of all those people?” He could feel Mirlande watching him and tried to keep his face neutral, as if he were asking about the weather or something equally insignificant.
“It’s...” Ruby stared off into the distance. “It’s like being on fire. In a good way.”
“And that’s what makes all the awful parts okay?”
She frowned. “It’s not awful.”
“No, I mean...what do you do when you hate it?”
“What are you talking about? I don’t hate it.”
“I mean when you don’t want to play. I mean the moments when it’s hard and you’re frustrated and you kind of hate it.”
“I never hate it. Even when I’m frustrated, I don’t hate it. I still love it. The hard parts I almost love more, because they’re like a buildup. They make it so that when I do get it right, it feels bigger.”
“But you almost snapped your bow,” Tobias reminded her, a bit embarrassed by how hard it was to keep his voice down. “That’s—I can imagine what that feels like.”
“But I love the hard parts too,” she repeated, her nose wrinkling as if she thought he was being stupid on purpose.
“Because everyone’s proud when you work hard,” he told her. “That’s why.”
“No, because they’re good.”
“Tobias,” Mirlande started, but he shook his head and spoke over her.
“But what makes them good? Like, what do you do to make them feel that way?”
“I don’t know, they just are.” Ruby sighed hugely. “It’s like, why is ice cream good and spinach is nasty? They just are, Tobias.” She licked her ice cream, one eyebrow lifting in a look that reeked of Mirlande, judgmental and worried and about to be way too pushy on his behalf, and it didn’t help that Mirlande was right beside her with the exact same look on her face.
“I’m fine,” he told them, trying to nip it in the bud.
Ruby talked with her mouth full. “Guy says that when people try to tell you that your feelings are wrong it’s because they’re describing how their feelings are. He says he knows it because he’s deep.”
“Well, there’s a reliable source.” Mirlande held out napkins. “Finish your bite before you speak.”
For a split second, Tobias thought he’d gotten away clean, but Mirlande turned to him. “Are you doubting your career path?”
“Guy is fourteen and not remotely deep,” he said. “He is the opposite of deep. He thinks nursery rhymes count as poetry.”
Ruby asked, “What parts don’t you like?”
All of them, he almost said, and nearly bit his tongue off trying to keep the sentence contained. “It’s fine. It’s hard right now, that’s all, but it’ll be fine.”
“Because you’ll get back to the easy parts soon and then you’ll love it again,” she said uncertainly.
I never loved it. “Right.”
Mirlande was eyeing him with insulting sympathy.
“I’m fine,” he insisted.
“Oh, Tobias. You’re such a mess.” Mirlande shook her head and went back to eating her cone, and he tried not to look across the lot at his parents, both successful doctors who’d spent years in a high-pressure field taking care of the sick and the poor, flawless examples of everything he was supposed to be but wasn’t.
Chapter Twelve
Roughly four hours after Tobias ran out on him, Sullivan turned off the documentary about serial killers that he hadn’t been paying attention to anyway, and bit the bullet.
She answered the phone by saying, “Caty’s House of Pain.”
“I fucked up.”
She hesitated. “Is there a body?”
“What? No.”
“Oh. Okay. What’d you do?”
“Do you seriously think I would kill someone?”
There was a pause. “No.”
“Jesus.”
She laughed. “C’mon, I’m joking. When you avoid someone for weeks because you’re a big, ugly coward, you should expect some shit.”
“Fair enough. I’m sorry about that, by the
