The Lunacy Fringe

Over the next few weeks, I started to get really bored with having nothing to do all the time. So I began putting a photo album together for Crystal. I found a bunch of old copies of pictures and things from my childhood that my dad said I could have. I thought it might be nice to give her something from the time she missed out on. So she could at least have some connection to my past.

Quinn called every once in a while, even though my dad pretty much kept me up to date on what they were doing. Felix only called again twice, a few days after the first phone call. I was happy to hear from him even though he couldn’t stay on long and seemed even more distant than the first time. He called again a week later, to my complete surprise, but it seemed even worse than before. So I wasn’t surprised when I heard nothing for weeks.

Quinn brought up Felix once while telling me about a new song they were working on.

“Felix didn’t tell you?” he asked genuinely.

“No,” I replied.

“You haven’t talked to him?”

“Not for a few weeks.” He sighed.

“I’ll call you later.” He hung up before ever getting around to telling me about the song.

When he called again, he ignored all my questions. But I wasn’t stupid enough to miss how he’d purposely left Felix out of conversations from then on. I didn’t know what was said, but it was clear Quinn wasn’t going to make Felix change his mind.

And that was the first time I ever cried over him. I was angry about that because I’d never really cried over a boy before. I mean, there had definitely been a few times where I got my feelings hurt or there was a breakup. But I’d never ugly cried before Felix, and I’d die before I ever let him know how badly his snub wounded me.

During the middle of summer, Billie decided to take me out for another girl’s day. Since the first one had been such a success. But she didn’t want to invite Crystal. Mainly because it was kind of awkward for her to hang out with her boyfriend’s mom when he wasn’t around. I didn’t argue. Except that Crystal was really good at fronting a lot of the money for stuff, so we would have less this time around. My dad did give me enough to get my hair done at her cousin’s salon, though. She’d brought me in the hopes that I’d touch up the red. But I ended up dying it all back to brown.

I did like the red, and I’d grown used to it. I felt like red represented me more than brown. But I couldn’t bring myself to ask for it. Maybe it was summertime blues. Maybe it was Felix snubbing me and having most of my friends so far away. Whatever it was, I thought brown was much more practical since I wouldn’t have to pay to have it touched up again.

Billie said it was disturbing. She said it reflected the sad state of my psyche or whatever. I wasn’t sure what that meant.

When I finally got around to finishing Crystal’s photo album, I brought it to her house to show it off. She was surprised to find me at the door again.

“I have a present for you,” I explained, lugging the big album in.

“Come on in.” We headed into the living room, and I handed the book over. I even wrapped it. “Thank you so much, sweetie. You didn’t have to get me anything.”

“I kind of felt like I should.” She was smiling when she opened it, but once she got past the paper, she stared for a good thirty seconds before speaking.

“Oh my God, Ruby,” she said, flipping through the pages. There were pictures of me from before we left California and after. School pictures, my first time on a bike, when I got a dog for Christmas one year, piano practice, and when I had braces. My dad liked to take a lot of pictures, and he was good at making multiple copies. I was pretty sure it had to do with him missing out on Quinn’s life. But he sure as hell didn’t want to forget mine.

“I thought you might like to see what you missed out on,” I said. She looked up and smiled, but her eyes were glassy.

“This is wonderful.” She ran her fingers over a particularly embarrassing sixth-grade class photo. “Oh, look at you.” I couldn’t see her through the veil of brown curls, but I could tell she was crying. She turned a few more pages and got to my high school pictures. When I first dyed my hair red, some photos we’d taken on the trip from Detroit, I even included prom pictures with Felix. The very last shot was a strip of pictures we’d taken in a booth on our Girl’s Day. There were still a lot of blank pages left after that.

“Do you like it?” I asked.

“Of course, honey. I love it.” She pulled me into a hug and sniffed against my shoulder. “I’ve been thinking about doing something like this for your dad for Quinn.”

“I think he’d really like that.”

“Maybe we can work on it together?”

“I’d love nothing more than looking at embarrassing pictures of Quinn.”

I ended up staying the entire week just so we could work on the album. We dug out all Quinn’s pictures and would sit in her bedroom laughing at him and comparing his to mine. Our lives had coincided startlingly close. But I couldn’t help feeling we were going to start moving in different directions.