Days, weeks, months passed. Come Christmas, Whit still hadn't been found. The boy had just vanished off the face of the earth, apparently, and no search of the area could bring up evidence of how or why. Temperatures were in the forties and fifties, and yet Ruby stayed indoors most of the time. She didn't know what to do without her brother. They'd not been inseparable, that was sure, and in fact Whit had annoyed her most of the time to the point where she'd tried to ditch him more often than not. But he was still her brother, the only person who'd been steadfast and by her side most of her life. He'd cared about her without any reservation, and she'd just taken him for granted.

Mama was more a mess than Ruby would've predicted. For as much as the woman hadn't cared about her son when he was around, she certainly mourned his absence, or at least used it as an excuse to self-medicate more than she'd already been doing. The only reason Ruby even considered leaving the house from time to time was because she wanted to escape her mother, whose drinking and drugging had intensified to the point where she didn't know her own daughter half the time. Ruby wasn't entirely sure where Mama got her supply, but she thought it wasn't likely the Hernandez sisters, because they all didn't get along with one another (for reasons unknown to the girl). She would've guessed Donny Asher, who'd always been somehow able to procure illicit substances, but he was dead, now. There were certainly other questionable people in the neighborhood, but most of them kept to themselves.

What was it about that stuff—drugs and alcohol—that made her mother so insane? Ruby had tried a sip of something here or there, never felt much about it, but maybe she hadn't had enough. And she'd never done drugs besides a little weed, when one of the Kirk boys had convinced her to try some. All she'd done was cough a lot, and they'd laughed, and she'd gone on her way.

Those Kirk boys. "Damn 'em to hell!" Ruby found herself muttering aloud. No matter what they told the police, she was positive they knew something about Whit. She just felt it in her bones. And she'd wanted to tell those Kirks what she knew, that she'd turn them in for that conversation she'd overheard them having with Donny, but something had held her back. Not fear, but something else, something more linked to Damien. Telling them what she knew might somehow get back to Damien, and she didn't want him to get hurt. As much as he'd frustrated her, she didn't want him mixed up with the Kirks or the police because of her loose lips.

She hadn't even seen Damien since Whit had disappeared. She'd stopped going to see him on Sundays; she didn't exactly know why. Ruby thought maybe she was in love with Damien. Maybe. Love sounded like the word for what she felt, but she was only fourteen, and there were a lot of feelings in her at all times, so she couldn't be sure. But the notion of being around Damien, being in his overwhelming presence while he continued to mostly ignore her and then on top of that sit and stew over her brother? Well, it all just seemed like it'd be too much for her. Besides, she figured Damien wouldn't miss her much anyway. He never seemed to notice her most times.

Voices wafted from down the hall. Mama's voice and . . . a man's voice. Ruby thought for a moment her father had come back, but the higher pitch of this man told her otherwise. Daddy had visited only once in the time since Whit's disappearance, and he'd expressed little concern for the son he'd lost before heading back out on the road. Ruby had never known what exactly it was her father did out there. Her mother had always called him a traveling businessman, but whatever business he traveled for was a topic never discussed.

"You sure you can't just wait?"

That was the man's hoarse voice, like he was trying to whisper. Ruby was in her and her brother's bedroom, a mess of old junk and clothes and cheap broken furniture and bedding, so she crept to her door to listen. Mama never had people over.

"Zane, baby, I can't wait. Goddamn don't make me wait!" That was Mama, pleading. Ruby's gut sank.

"I don't feel comfortable here is all."

"Then get that woman of yours out of that trailer!"

"I told you already, she's puking her guts out. Ain't no one gonna let her come into work like that. Shit luck, too; I need the money."

Ruby ever so quietly peeked through the two-inch crack of her door. The hallway was dim, but she could make out the man that always fought with his woman—must be named Zane—up against the wall, her Mama standing in front of him all worked up, kind of dragging him along.

"Your kid home? No, no Annabelle. It don't feel right. We'll do it tomorrow."

"I can't wait til then! I—I need it now, is all. I'll show you. I'll be so good to you."

To Ruby's mixed horror and agitation, she watched as her mother got on her knees in front of this man, whose protests grew more feeble as Mama unbuckled and pulled down his pants, proceeding to move her head around his crotch like a God-forsaken bobble head (thank the lord for the poor lighting) while he started to murmur shameful things.

Ruby flipped away from the door, stood with her back to the wall, looking into the safety of her room. But she could still hear them—

It was repulsive. Her Mama! Well, now she knew where the woman got her drugs. But damn them to hell, there was no way she was going to sit and listen to all that! Ruby pulled on her tennis shoes and tugged a sweatshirt over her head. The one window in the room was a round one, some pathetic attempt at charm which instead made a mockery of their living quarters (when they'd been little and unable to sleep, she and Whit had sometimes pretended they were on a boat, that the window was a porthole looking out on the ocean), and though the pane was awkwardly shaped, Ruby had figured out how to open it a long time ago and had no trouble pushing it out, slithering through. The drop to the ground was only a few feet, and though the temperature was somewhere in the low fifties and the girl wished she'd pulled some sweats over her athletic shorts, there was no way she was going to venture back inside.

What was there even to do? Christmas was in two days, so she was on winter holiday, but it wasn't as if she was going to get any presents. Not with Mama all wrapped up in herself as she was. Ruby hadn't been raised to expect much at Christmas and birthdays anyway; gifts came only if Daddy was home, and even then it'd be a deflated soccer ball or some half-filledcoloring books—never much to get too worked up about. The one year they'd been given used bikes had been euphoric.

Kicking at a bit of scrub, Ruby felt her stomach tighten as rage moved through her. How could Whit have left her alone with their mess of a mother? How could those asshole Kirks get away with whatever they'd had to do with it? What was she supposed to do, now?

The five o'clock setting sunlight glinted red off something beneath the back stoop and caught Ruby's eye. She turned in wonder only to recall that months earlier, she and her brother had stashed that bottle of Everclear beneath the steps. They hadn't known what to do with Jace's "gift" at the time, and by now she'd completely forgotten about it. Well, what better moment to try to get drunk than now?

Crouching, she crawled beneath the porch and retrieved the massive bottle. Some wild critter must've shifted things about, because Ruby was fairly sure she'd piled some trash and foliage around it. Mama would've skinned them alive if she'd found them with a bottle of alcohol (before taking it for herself), not to mention Daddy. Well, for all intents and purposes, neither parent was really around, so the girl crossed the yard, somehow managed to hop the chain link fence, and headed toward her bike, all the while holding on to the neck of the bottle.

She'd thought maybe she'd ride somewhere off into the hills, not where she usually met Damien but somewhere else, just to go sit and try some of the stuff. Grown people drank all the time—why couldn't she? She was practically grown. But as she bent to unchain her bike from the fence, she was startled by a figure appearing out of nowhere.

"Leave your bike. Come on with me."

It was Damien. How he'd known she'd be there at that moment was beyond her; had he been waiting? As buoyantly startled as she was, Ruby couldn't help her defiance. "Hell makes you think I wanna go anywhere with you?" She kept at the lock on her bike.

Damien walked around her, leaned against the fence and crossed his arms. He was dressed in his characteristic fifty shades of dark, his long straight hair in a sheet down his back. "You're going to drink that all yourself?" He nodded toward the bottle on the ground.

Ruby straightened. "And what if I do? You're not my dad."

"It'll kill you to drink all that."

"So? Since when do you care about me?"

He didn't quite answer her, just sort of looked at her for a moment with his infuriating calm.

Ruby flared with heat. "Oh fuck you, Damien Jensen." Water filled her eyes; her throat dried out. "I got nobody now you hear me? My brother's gone. He's probably dead, my Mama's in there sucking on some ugly man who is certainly not my Daddy, and I'm tired of you and your pretending to be so much better than me. So just leave me alone, all right? What would you even care if I died?" She couldn't help herself, then. The tears just burst out.

Damien did something he'd never done before, though Ruby was so worked up she hardly paid attention to the magnitude of it. He put his arms around her, hugged her, and then picked up the Everclear and, one of his hands in hers, pulled her along toward his motorbike, which was parked around the side of her house. It wasn't the fanciest vehicle; in fact, it was a veritable piece of shit. But to Ruby it felt like a sparkly white flying horse when he seated her behind him and took off down Old Portal Road. He buzzed past the gas station, past a few random homes, toward the outskirts of Lone Rock, where he pulled in at last at the motel on the edge of town. Ruby had only about seven minutes to marvel at the fact that her arms were around Damien's stomach, that she could feel his body beneath the fabric of his shirt, that her breasts were pressed against his back and her intimate area was so near his backside. His silky helmet-less hair whipped around her, and Ruby tried to take him all in, pull his closeness inside of her, let this miracle reverberate throughout her core, but before she knew it, the ride was over and he was stopping the bike. He propped it, stepped down, and helped her off, twisting out the keys and sinking them into his jeans pocket. Then he stepped around Ruby and opened a storage container attached to the back, from which he withdrew the bottle of alcohol. She hadn't even seen him put it back there.

Only when Damien approached a motel room door did Ruby at last speak again. Her tears were gone, but her chest pulsed wildly. "Wh-what are you doing?"

Damien didn't answer. He fiddled at the door and pushed it open, went inside and gestured for her to follow.

Not really knowing what else to do, Ruby did as he wanted. The world had turned upside down, she was sure. Hadn't she always wanted to be with Damien, not just talking out in the wilderness but, like, really alone, together? With him paying her real attention? And she had it right now, what she'd asked for, but she didn't know why, and the oddness of his attention put her on edge.

He turned on the lights. Ruby saw a predictably unimpressive motel room, though in comparison to her own home, it was as clean and orderly as some maid-and-butler mansion: a sitting area, one double bed, and a door in the back that surely led to a bathroom. Everything was a dull maroon, and the one piece of art on the wall was of a terrifyingly sad harlequin holding a red balloon.

"Why are we here?" she tried again, stepping into the room enough that he could close the door behind her. She noticed he locked it.

"Sit down," he ordered. Ruby did, and he sat the bottle of Everclear on the table and opened it. "Go on, then." He sat on the sofa across from her. "Drink."

Ruby swallowed. "But you said I shouldn't."

"Not up in those hills by yourself. That's a shit idea. If you want to get hammered, at least do it where I can keep an eye on you."

"You could've kept an eye on me in the hills."

"Gets cold at night."

"You can pay for this room?"

Damien didn't answer her, didn't even shrug or smirk or indicate in any way he'd heard her. "Go on." He leaned back.

Ruby couldn't help but feel as if this were some sort of a test, and yet she knew Damien, didn't she? He wasn't like one of the Kirks or that bitchy seventeen-year-old who lived with her Grandma by the Flanerys, that girl who was definitely mentally slow but still knew every way to be nasty to all the people around her. Damien wouldn't lie to her; Ruby felt certain of that. She . . . she loved him, she thought. He wouldn't hurt her.

So Ruby picked up the bottle with two hands and did what she'd seen everyone else do with bottles of beer: put it to her lips, tipped, and gulped. Had anyone lit a match in front of her, the burst of spluttering and coughing that followed her drink would've surely set the place on fire.

Through her streaming eyes, her burning throat, she saw Damien laughing and shaking his head at her.

"You asshole!" she furiously managed to croak. "You motherfucker! That wasn't alcohol; it was gasoline!"

"Might as well be," Damien quietly replied, unperturbed by her name-calling.

"God damn you, Damien Jensen. You did all this just to make fun of me, is that it? Poor Ruby all crying over her baby brother and you come to make fun of me? I hate you!" She slammed the bottle onto the table, sending up a miniature geyser of clear liquid, and stood up. "I fucking hate you!"

Damien got up in front of her, towered a good head above, took hold of her shoulders and shook the hell out of her. "Stop it, you stupid girl. I got a Christmas present for you, all right?"

Ruby's throat was still on fire (as were her lungs because she'd inhaled a good bit of what she'd tried to imbibe). "What is it?" she sniffled.

Damien took her face in his long hands, tipped it up toward him as he bent down, and kissed her long and hard.

The girl's body slackened. She hardly knew where she was, didn't even close her eyes and sort of fell into him, against him, but he was done before she even had a chance to work her way into it.

"There," he said, plopping his lanky form back onto the sofa. "Now go dump that shit out."

Still waiting for the feathers in her brain to settle, Ruby blinked at him. "Y-you want me to waste all of it?"

"Don't ask questions. Just do it."

Of course she wouldn't ask questions. Not after he'd just kissed her. He'd kissed her! Oh God, he'd actually done it! How long had she been waiting? She'd do whatever he asked. Anything in the world. She'd probably skin a cat, stab a dog—dammit, even shoot a person in that moment. She floated on clouds into the bathroom, dumped the Everclear down the sink, then tossed the bottle into the trash can with a clatter. When she looked back up at the mirror, she gasped loud enough that Damien called to her.

"Nothing!" she cried in return, because it really hadn't been anything. It couldn't have been. There was no way Ruby had actually split-second glimpsed, in place of her reflection, a small, slender, raven-haired Asian woman. No way.

It had to be the Everclear.