Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock (general ebook reader .TXT) 📗

there next to the chicken fried steak on her blue plastic lunch tray, no questions asked.

In four years she hadn’t thought twice about it, until now.

Now she wondered why singing about condiments had made such an impression on her anyway.

Pepper, pepper, pepper, salt. Really?

Sitting next to Jake now in his stupid little car, tiny dead animals making a thump-thump-thumping sound under the tires, Ruby realized that the only thing that stood out about that day now was her blue lunch tray and the way the gravy had jiggled when she walked, like greasy gray Jell-O congealing on her plate.

Maybe Mr. Spatchcock had been right: it was nothing special. She had just wanted it so badly.

Recently, every once in a while, Ruby had gotten a whiff of something foreign coming from Jake when he was close to her. Something like oiled leather, something sweet and flowery, the tiniest hint of a smell that she’d actually liked. She had thought he was using some new soap; she had thought he was making some kind of effort; she had thought he loved her. God, she was a first-class idiot.

She hadn’t been able to place that flowery scent. And even though she still had no idea what it was called, she was certain where it had come from.

He had been telling her they were over, but never with words. Instead, he’d used a shrug, or a look, or that mysterious smell, and she had ignored all of it. He had been lying to her for months, and now all he could do was laugh.

She switched on the radio in time to hear the latest update from Coyote Jones, the local weather guy.

“Fire danger is at its peak, folks. No campfires. No burn barrels. I wouldn’t even venture to barbecue a steak in this weather. And if you’re feeling particularly in love, take a nice long skinny dip in the river. Do not even think about rolling in the hay.”

Normally, Ruby thought Coyote Jones was hilarious, but not today.

“You bastard,” she said, slapping Jake so hard across the side of his face that he swerved into the opposite lane.

“Holy shit, Ruby, what the hell?”

“I will never forgive you.”

The VW careened around the corner, flew onto its side, and rolled over the bank a few times. It was like she was watching a movie of her life in slow motion. What had she just done? The world was spinning, and she heard herself screaming for her mom, who she hadn’t seen in months. She’d told herself she didn’t miss her mom and her sister, but that was a lie too. Maybe the truth was that Jake didn’t feel like being the only solid thing in her life, as Ruby’s family fell apart around her.

FLIP: she saw her sister Poppy’s wide terrified eyes. FLIP: she heard her mother yelling at her father. FLIP: Poppy’s best friend went missing. FLIP: her parents split up. FLIP: her mother moved to Alaska with her little sister. Every rotation of the car conjured another terrible thing that had happened.

Her head banged against the dashboard; stars swirled in her brain. The car landed on the creek bank, rocking like a turtle flailing around on its back.

Ruby had said she was staying with her father so he wouldn’t be alone. Hadn’t she really chosen staying with Jake—the lying son of a bitch—over leaving with her mom and sister? The last thing she saw before the car finally stopped spinning and the world went deathly silent was Martha Hollister’s knee-high leather boots as she walked into Pigeon Creek High School like she owned it.

Then the faces of the people Ruby loved hovered around her like ghosts, mixed with the smell of diesel and burnt rubber. She must be dead. What a relief, dying before anyone could find out what had happened.

She and Jake would be the famous high school sweethearts, memorialized forever in a deadly car crash. Because everyone dies famous in a small town, don’t they?

From the window she saw fuel leaking out of the VW, dark and oily and flowing down to the riverbank. Ruby wiggled her fingers and toes. She didn’t feel dead.

Jake was hanging upside down next to her, both of them secured just by their seat belts. She reached over and touched his arm, surprised at how calm she was. He opened his eyes. She let out her breath.

The blood in her ears had nothing to do with love this time, just gravity. She thought of her mom and Poppy and how much she missed them. Her mother had wanted to start over somewhere else, and for the first time Ruby understood how that felt. Her father wouldn’t mind letting her go, especially if it meant getting away from Jake. She had heard that Alaska had more coastline than any other state. She would finally see a real live crashing ocean.

Martha Hollister could have Jake’s eyes; she could drown in them, for all Ruby cared.

They helped each other out slowly, silently, checking for broken bones. She had a lump on her forehead; he had a cut on his cheek.

Jake sat down next to her on a rock and they stared at the overturned car. He wasn’t laughing now.

“You could have killed us,” he said.

“How, Jake? You already did.”

SEA-SHAKEN HOUSES

Martha Hollister wasn’t really from California at all.

But saying so wasn’t a total lie, because the place where she grew up sat on the edge of the Pacific Ocean—just like California—and Martha’s brain was bendy enough to make that work.

When she was younger, Martha and her best friend, Jane, had loved growing up in this place they called Sea Shaken. It was a spot on the stretch of beach along the coast of Washington and British Columbia that was too beautiful to even be named on a map, so they had named it themselves. Everything there was sea shaken: the houses, their badass mothers, and especially the smell of the salty air.

For Jane and Martha, it