We Could Have Seen Castles

Rue scrutinized the peeling black polish on her bitten-too-short nails. Why did she always do that? She chewed and chewed until her mouth tasted like acetone and spoiled fruit and her fingers burned and bled. Her mother would remind her it wasn’t ladylike to bite her nails, and it certainly wasn’t sanitary, and what boy would be interested in asking a girl to prom who treated her fingers like corn on the cob?

Rue tucked her hands between her thighs under her school desk. Mrs. Donahue jotted down thought-provoking questions about Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream on the whiteboard. Thought-provoking seemed like a stretch in Rue’s opinion. She was biased, of course. She didn’t care much for Shakespeare or Mrs. Donahue, who had an uncanny knack for calling on Rue to answer questions she didn’t have answers to at the most inopportune times.

Like when she’d bitten off a hangnail and was bleeding into the hemline of her T-shirt, wrapped around her weeping thumb.

Rue hated English class to be sure, but there was one part about it that she didn’t hate.

One fair-skinned, green-eyed, freckled-nose reason.

Grace Everette Nile.

Or as most of Grace’s friends called her, Gen.

Rue had never taken to calling Grace by her initials because she’d never seemed like a Gen to her. She was too poised, sophisticated, and elegant to be called Gen. Her parents were travel agents and Grace had seen nearly half the world. Her wisdom showed in her bright green eyes; eyes that had seen so much more than Rue’s plain brown ones. Two summers ago Grace came home from the United Kingdom gushing about the castles in Scotland and Ireland. She told Rue that standing in the ruins of chambers of old lords and ladies had made her feel like she was someone.

Rue wanted to find that feeling so she and Grace decided to save money to travel together after graduation.

But the world had shifted since then. Travel and the chance to chase the high of being someone other than Ruby Garrow was no longer on the table. Masks were commonplace. So were mass graves in first world cities.

The bell rang.

Students sprang up from their desks, tucked books under their arms, and dashed madly to the door while Mrs. Donahue scolded them. She always claimed class wasn’t dismissed until she said so, and the class always ignored her. Maybe it was because they didn’t like how shrill her voice was (kids often joked the school bell was actually a recording of Mrs. Donahue screaming) or maybe it was because they liked to remind her that she wasn’t the boss of them.

Rue got to her feet just as someone grazed long slender fingers over her shoulder. Rue smelled strawberries and cream body spray before she caught Grace’s green gaze. Even though Grace wore a plain black mask Rue knew she was smiling as the other girl placed a black leather moleskin notebook on her desk. Rue looked down to the book and back up, but Grace had already swept out the door into the hall to make it to next period.

Rue felt gratitude to the mask that hid her ear to ear grin as she scooped up the book, tucked it into the front pocket of her gray sweatshirt, and hurried past a scowling Mrs. Donahue.

She stopped at her locker and hid the book from prying eyes as she flipped through pages.

There, in Grace’s neat printing, was a new note:

I’m sorry things have been so hard at home, Ruby. I wish there was something I could do to make it all better. Look on the bright side, your folks can’t send you to camp in the middle of a global pandemic. Can they?

Skip last period today and meet me at our spot. Let me take you to my salon to get your nails done. I’d like to see you try to gnaw off a set of acrylics. Don’t worry, you can keep the black polish. I promise.

PS. All I could think about while Mrs. D was going on and on about iambic pentameter was what you had on under that gray hoodie of yours. Xoxo.

Rue’s mask was good for more than hiding just smiles. It hid burning red cheeks, too.

*

Sophie, the nail tech trying to salvage Rue’s ruined nails, clicked her tongue with disapproval.

Grace sat at the nail station beside Rue and giggled behind her mask as her esthetician removed her old glittery pink polish. “Don’t worry, Rue. Sophie is a miracle worker. She’ll fix those bad boys right up.” While the techs worked Grace nudged Ruby’s ankle with the toe of her ballet flat. “I read your last note in the book. You said your folks won some money at a fundraiser? How much did they win?”

“Twenty grand,” Rue said.

“Holy shit! Twenty grand? That’s wild! They must be stoked. Are they stoked?”

Rue shrugged.

Grace sighed. “They’re still not really talking to you?”

Rue shook her head and watched as Sophie pressed long plastic ends to the tips of her nails. Why did girls do this? How was she supposed to pick anything up with these claws? How would she hold a pen?

“They’ll come around,” Grace said matter of factly. “Eventually they’ll realize there are so many worse things their daughter could be than just gay.”

Rue dared not look up at Sophie. Grace’s last word hung over Rue’s head like a heavy storm cloud.

Grace sighed dreamily. “We could see so much of the world with twenty thousand dollars. So much more than just castles in Ireland.”

“What else would you like to see?” Rue asked.

Grace smiled behind her mask. “All of it, Rue. All of it.”

Rue smiled back. How could she not? Her mother would have given anything for her to smile at a boy like this, but boys had never been all that charming, and they only ever looked at her like she was in their way, and she couldn’t think of a single one she’d ever crossed paths with who she’d spared a second thought.

She spared every thought for Grace, though.

“How do you think they’ll spend it?” Grace asked as she held up a hand and admired the gel overlay forming over her nails. She liked to tell Rue she felt like herself again every time she got a new set. “Let me guess, your dad will trade his truck in again?”

“Maybe,” Rue said. “Or maybe they’ll finally stop with their threats and make good on their promise to send me to that camp.”

Grace went quiet.

“I’m kidding,” Rue said. Only she wasn’t. Not really. A brochure for ‘that camp’ currently sat on the kitchen table at home, taunting her.

“It’s not funny, Rue.”

“Sorry.”

“They can’t send you to one of those fucking places.” Grace never swore, so the curse caught Rue by surprise. “It’s child abuse. It’s reckless. It’s uneducated and it’s cruel and everyone living in the modern world knows for a fact they don’t work. They cause depression and dozens of other things that a person should never have to cope with, especially if they were subjected to it by the people who are supposed to love them unconditionally. No. They can not send you to one of those places.”

“And if they do?”

Grace’s mouth worked behind her mask but no words came out.

Rue sighed. “If they do I won’t see it coming. They’ll come get me in the middle of the night and I’ll never see you again and-”

“Stop it.”

“We should talk about what we’ll do if that happens.”

“I won’t.” Grace pulled her hand away from her tech, turned on her swivel chair, and drew herself so close to Rue that her knees touched Rue’s thigh. “Take their money.”

“What?” Rue asked.

“The twenty grand. They don’t need it. Take it and run with me. I know how to travel safely. I have places we can go. My parents… they would understand if I told them what would happen if we didn’t run. They would-”

“No. Pandemic, remember?”

“Rue, please. Do it for me.”

“No, Grace.” Her words came out sharper than she intended, and Grace pushed away. “I’m not like you. I can’t just up and leave. And what, you think we could keep that fairy tale going? We’d run out of money. We’d get caught. And I’d be shipped back here and knowing my parents they’d send me to jail for theft instead of camp to pray the fucking gay out of me.” One by one Rue began breaking the freshly glued-on tips off her nails. “We can’t fix this by slapping a pretty pink hue on everything, Grace. Not everyone is as lucky as you or as pretty as you or has as many friends as you.”

Grace got to her feet. “What did you want me to say, then?”

“I wanted you to tell me you would wait for me!” Everyone in the salon stared at the two young women, but Rue was pulled too thin to care about the prying eyes and judgemental curl of lips. “I wanted you to wait for me,” she half sobbed, half pleaded. “I wanted you to tell me that if they sent me away it would be temporary, and when I made it out the other side you’d still be here and it wouldn’t have all been for nothing. I needed something real, Grace. Not a fantasy.”

“Really? If you wanted something real then why the hell do you like me, Rue? I’m not real. Look at me.” She pointed to her nails, to her eyeliner, to the sewn in hair extensions. “You’ve always thought you were better than me.”

“That’s not true.”

How did this get so out of hand?

“I have a lot of friends because I’m nice to people, Rue. Because I want good things for them, just like I want good things for you.”

“I didn’t mean-”

“You won’t be the only one hurting if you’re gone.”

Rue looked at her feet. “I know.”

Grace glared hotly at her before spying the little black book in the front pouch of Rue’s backpack. She bent down, grabbed the book, and slapped it hard into Rue’ chest. “Here. If you’re so willing to leave, take this with you.”

“They’ll take it away from me. You keep it.”

Grace’s green eyes welled with tears. “We could have seen castles, Rue. Castles.”

Rue stood with her arms hanging slack at her sides and Grace stormed out of the salon with nails that were half finished.

Rue’s blood rushed in her ears and seemed to speak to her.

You ruin every beautiful thing you touch, Ruby.

Maybe camp would fix that part of her: the dark part. The part that bit and chewed and spat blood. The part that Grace could never love if she ever laid eyes on it in all its glory. The part that had nothing to do with whether Rue was gay or straight or something in between.

Maybe she could come back and be the person Grace deserved.

“You still have to pay for those,” Sophie said.

Rue handed over a crumpled ten dollar bill from her pocket as guilt ate away at the sane corners of her mind. She left the salon and bumped into a boy roughly her age out on the sidewalk. He apologized, tucked his hands in his pockets, and walked away. She considered calling out to him. What if she went to coffee with him? What if she pretended, just for an hour, that she thought he was cute? What if she let him pay for her latte?

Would it be enough?

Would it ever be enough?

She pulled her mask down on her walk home, brought her right thumb to her teeth, and bit down until copper pricked her tongue.