Push Me, Pull Me Read online

  Push Me, Pull Me

  Written by Vanessa Garden

  Push Me, Pull Me

  Copyright © 2015 by Vanessa Garden

  All rights reserved.

  First Print Edition: August 2015

  Limitless Publishing, LLC

  Kailua, HI 96734

  www.limitlesspublishing.com

  Formatting: Limitless Publishing

  ISBN-13: 978-1-68058-258-1

  ISBN-10: 1-68058-258-5

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication

  To those who are gone, but not forgotten.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  I was at work, reading on the job—some crazy memoir about a British chef’s travels through Egypt—when the store phone rang, its shrill call heralding the most life changing moment of my existence.

  From my vantage point at the top of the ladder, I raised my eyes from the pages and glanced over several rows of bookshelves and a cluster of half-filled café tables to see my boss, Graham, answer it.

  I watched him for a moment and wondered what was being said on the other line that had him shaking his head and mouthing, “Oh, no,” and then, “Oh God, no,” while he clutched at the counter with his free hand for support. But when he spotted me he frowned and slapped on his business face, the one he used when dealing with disgruntled customers or couriers who’d failed to deliver an entire order, and turned the other way. Maybe the latest batch of books he’d ordered had been delayed again.

  A dull thump to my right caught my attention and I glanced at the poetry aisle to see a guy around my age retrieve the hefty hardcover he’d dropped. Sensing my gaze, the stranger looked up, his cheeks tinting ever so slightly beneath his olive skin.

  He was most likely a tourist. Travellers passed through Donny Vale all the time, either to munch on our famously crisp Pink Lady apples or to fuel up. And sometimes they stopped to buy a book and a coffee at the Tea ‘n’ Tale.

  “Hey,” he said, his blue eyes flashing with curiosity.

  I gripped the ladder and stupidly looked around, as though another person could be nearby, standing on a ladder and leaning against the highest bookshelf like I was.

  “Hi,” I said finally, heat prickling my cheeks when I noticed how attractive the guy was. “You need any help?”

  Sporting a fauxhawk and dressed in jet-black jeans, a black t-shirt, and black desert boots—none of which were faded, but brand new looking—he could easily have passed for a newly recruited goth. But something about his face, maybe the brightness of his eyes, made me assume otherwise. He wasn’t gloomy, he was interesting, and, the more that I stared, beautiful, in that artist’s-wet-dream kind of way.

  By now I knew that I’d been staring at him for a little longer than would pass for normal, but I couldn’t drag my eyes away.

  He shook his head. “No, I’m good. Thanks.”

  I exhaled, thinking that would be the end of our little interaction. That I’d get back to my book and stop being the weird googly eyed girl, but then he had to go and smile. A cute, shy kind of smile that dimpled his left cheek and made my heart stutter.

  It was then I noticed the scar, a brutal silvery line that ran down the left side of his perfectly sculpted face and disappeared beneath his shirt collar. I winced, wondering who or what had done that to him.

  He cleared his throat and our eyes locked, his eyebrows lifting in silent question. He probably got stared at everywhere he went because of that scar, and now I was just another gawking idiot to add to his list of gawking idiots.

  The faint flush of heat in my cheeks earlier was now an inferno.

  “Ruby, you need to go home, right now.”

  I jumped and nearly lost my footing. Don’t Tell the Queen I’m in Egypt Eating Lamb Testicles met its grizzly demise against the worn, swamp-green carpeted floor, splayed out so that its pages folded in at all the wrong angles.

  Graham tapped the aluminium ladder with the cordless phone, making a clunk-clunk sound that vibrated through my red boots and up my legs. I’d forgotten all about the phone call. With his grey eyebrows making a furry V, he seemed upset, so upset that he completely ignored the damaged book—he normally threw a fit when he found a single dog-eared page. Something was seriously wrong.

  He wiped the sheen of sweat from his brow with a trembling hand and shook his head while staring at nothing in particular, as though he was momentarily at a loss for words.

  A brief, unsettling chill tickled the back of my neck.

  “Come down, Ruby, you need to leave right now,” said Graham, his face a strange, washed out colour, like the walls. “That was your dad.”

  Fluttery wings of dread stroked my insides, but I did my best to ignore them. There were a number of possibilities as to why I was being sent home and they didn’t all have to be bad. Maybe Mum and Dad were going out and wanted me to babysit Jay. No. Who was I kidding? They never went anywhere together anymore. It couldn’t be that. For them to call me at work—on the café telephone and not my mobile—meant it was something serious.

  Panic swirled the contents of my belly, the apple and rhubarb muffin I’d had for lunch and the flat-white with two sugars making me feel ill all of a sudden.

  Maybe Dad had found out about Mum and Derek. Maybe she’d finally mustered up the courage to tell him, or maybe Dad had walked in on them while they were f—

  “Ruby, this isn’t a joke,” said Graham, as though he went around pulling pranks all the time.

  I swallowed thickly and dug into the back pocket of my jeans and checked my phone. No missed calls, just a single message from Martin. Automatically my thumb jabbed my phone, opening my best friend’s text which was sent only minutes ago. It was weirdly blank. Okay. So between the phone call at work and the blank message, I was now completely freaked out.

  “Ruby,” pleaded Graham.

  “I’ve still got an hour,” I said, hoping to avoid going anywhere near home. I didn’t want to know. I was afraid. Afraid of what bad thing awaited me there.

  Graham inhaled deeply.

  “You have to leave immediately, Ruby, your dad insisted.”

  My legs trembled beneath wobbly knees so I clung tightly to the rungs as I made my way down the ladder. I sucked in a deep breath and shook my head, trying to clear it. I needed to get a grip, literally and figuratively. Dad wanting me home didn’t have to be about bad news. It could be the opposite. It could be something wonderful. Maybe he’d finally won a major prize from one of those puzzle magazines he bought every Wednesday.

  For some reason I tossed a glance at the beautiful guy with the scar. He was staring right at me, wait, with sympathy in his eyes? I could have been going to Hawaii on an all-expenses-paid
trip for all he knew. I gave him a good glaring.

  “What did he say?” I asked Graham when I finally reached the ground.

  The little bell at the door tinkled, announcing a new customer.

  Graham sighed instead of answering my question and patted me on the back in a there, there kind of way, as though I should be pitied, and it jangled all kinds of alarm bells inside my head. I took a step back, my heart banging against my chest.

  “Is it Jay?”

  “Let’s get you home, you’ll find out as soon as you’re there,” he said in a morose tone, his wrinkled lips now a thin line.

  “Is Jay hurt?” I asked, my voice prickling with hysteria. “’Cause if he is I want to know now.”

  Rob, a full-timer, started frothing up milk for the new customer.

  “It’s not Jay. Your little brother is fine. But that’s all I can tell you. Your dad asked me to bring you home. He’ll explain when you get there.”

  I threw a quick glance at the poetry aisle but the beautiful guy was gone, replaced instead by old Mrs. Patfield.

  Mrs. Patfield was a six-foot tall elderly lady who went around town muttering about angels and spirits and crystal/rainbow/indigo babies all the time. She used to give ‘readings’ to the locals whenever they needed spiritual guidance. But for some reason, one day many years ago, she closed her doors to the public and hadn’t given a reading since.

  “Ruby, we need to leave now,” Graham said in a much firmer voice.

  Though we were between bookshelves, the nearest table of customers, the Red Men—a group of senior citizens who went around town in red hats and capes just because they could—set their espressos down and leaned forward in their chairs, their eyes trained on me and Graham through the gaps in the shelves. The table full of ladies behind them, the self-titled Book Babes, started shuffling their chairs and prams so that they could peer through the gaps between the Red Men.

  “Wait, Ruby,” said Mrs. Patfield in a voice as gravelly and as deep as a man’s.

  Surprised that she knew my name, I turned to face the old woman. She had the strangest, palest set of eyes that prickled the hairs on the back of my neck when she focused her gaze on me.

  “Can I help you?” I asked, despite Graham’s protests.

  Mrs. Patfield stared me in the face and said nothing.

  Graham cleared his throat, but the old woman wouldn’t take her eyes off me, let alone blink. It was unsettling and got even more unnerving when her eyes misted up and tears started zigzagging down her cheeks.

  A cold cloak of gloominess settled on my shoulders, making me shiver.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, my words coming out whisper thin. Graham tugged at my arm and eyed Mrs. Patfield warily.

  “Now is not the time,” he said to the old lady, as though she went around bawling at random teens every day.

  The woman started to shake her head from side to side as more tears trickled down the cracks and folds of her weathered skin. From the pocket of the long, black duffle-coat she wore, her long bony fingers withdrew a folded tissue. She pressed it to her damp, pale cheeks.

  My body remained frozen beneath her unflinching gaze.

  But then she said something that had me weaving through tables and chairs, akubra hats flying, and rushing out the door.

  Chapter 2

  Mum was gone by the time Graham got me home. There was no note of explanation like in the movies, no “I love you,” no tender farewell, just pools of blood that had seeped through the pale apricot sheets to stain the double mattress of my parents’ bed, leaving behind a metallic smell that would linger throughout the house for years to come. Apparently she’d done it right after I’d left for school in the morning.

  Dad was in the living room with our neighbour, Mrs. Simich, also a widow. I was there too, in front of the heater, my feet glued in place, too scared to move in case somebody mistook my movement as an invitation for a hug. Together, my father and neighbour sat on the green velour couch, two people who had shared no more than a handful of pleasantries and gardening tips over the past twenty years now holding on like they were each other’s spine.

  In a strange way I envied them, their ability to release what was inside. Though my throat ached and my heart felt as heavy as a rock, no tears came.

  It had been three hours since I’d found out and I was certain that there was something deeply wrong with me. Normal people cried when somebody they loved died. I’d cried for days when Nana Milton had died, so I knew I had it in me.

  My lips trembled as a cold thought washed over me, so cold it diminished the heater’s warmth.

  Maybe I didn’t love her…

  I shook my head and chewed on my only remaining bit of nail on my left pinkie. No, the shock was making me crazy. I loved Mum more than anything. I loved her like a pathetic little idolising puppy. The sun rose and set over the world that was my mother. Well, at least it used too, before she’d started seeing Derek.

  The rock in my chest grew heavier as I watched my dad suck in deep, heaving breaths, his eyes wide as the reality of Mum being gone crashed down on him all over again. The same thing kept happening to me. My thoughts would go off on a tangent—I’d start thinking about the book I’d been reading at work, or the interesting guy with the blue eyes and that scar running down the side of his face, or what I was going to do tomorrow—and then that familiar icy sensation would slowly trickle down from the base of my skull and down my spine before spreading along my ribs and encasing my heart. Then I’d remember. Each time more horrible than the moment I’d found out. It felt like the world was ending. Like the walls, the ceiling, and the sky were all falling to pieces and raining down on me while I stood there, alone.

  When Mrs. Patfield said she was sorry about my mother, I sensed right away that Mum was dead, felt it in my bones. I just hadn’t expected that she’d be the one to have taken her own life. I’d assumed a car accident—she was a shocking driver, always distracted by her phone or the music she was listening to.

  I shut my eyes, wishing I could blink the past three hours away, the entire day, and go back to this morning. I should have wagged school and stayed home—kept watch. Maybe Mum and I could have had one of those girls’ days out, like the mothers and daughters on television did, with shopping and laughter and lunch. I’d always wanted to do something like that with Mum.

  “Come here, Ruby,” Dad beckoned between sniffs. He broke away from Mrs. Simich who was now clearing her throat and patting her face dry. She didn’t deserve this, to be the one who had found Mum. Apparently she’d popped over to investigate Jay’s unanswered cries. I wondered if Mum had considered, while planning her departure from this world, the person who would find her. What if Jay had climbed out of his cot and toddled into the room? What if I had come home from school early instead of going straight to work?

  White hot anger sent a rush of blood burning through my veins, shocking me. And then, as quick as the anger came it dissipated and was replaced with burning shame, which felt ten times worse than the anger. How could I be angry at Mum only hours after she’d left us?

  “Rubes, love, come away from the heater or your boots will melt,” said Dad, his normally bright green eyes bloodshot and glassy.

  But I couldn’t move. No matter how many times I rubbed my arms or how close I stood to the bright orange elements, nothing seemed to warm the icy numbness my body couldn’t shake. Mum left us. She chose to leave us without a goodbye. She hadn’t cared to give us a chance to make her happier, to make her want to stay. She just left.

  “Jay’s still asleep,” he said, as though I’d asked. “Mrs. Simich managed to get him down after the ambulance and police left.” Dad wrapped both hands around a full mug of greyish coffee that had been sitting on the coffee table for over an hour. Curls of steam no longer rose from the cup, but he cradled it like it was giving him warmth.

  Mrs. Simich twisted at the gold wedding band on her finger, her head bent in thought. Her husband, Visko, had pas
sed away only six months ago.

  “Where’s…Mum? I mean…her body,” I rasped. These were the first words I’d spoken since coming home and they felt odd. Like I was an actress reciting lines for a role I hadn’t prepared for, for a movie I didn’t want to star in and never wanted to watch.

  Dad released a soft, shuddering sigh and pressed his thumb and forefinger into the corners of his eyes. I winced. I’d never seen my big, strong dad broken like this before.

  Mrs. Simich fixed her wet brown eyes on me, looking like she wanted to say something comforting, making my throat tighten to the point of asphyxiation, but instead she raked a thin, tanned hand through her brown, grey-streaked hair and stood up before turning to Dad.

  “I’ll leave you two alone. Bring little Jay over anytime. I’d love to mind him.”

  Before leaving she gently squeezed my arm, a gesture that served only to further constrict my throat. I nodded my silent thank you and stared at the twin elements of the heater until the front of my eyes burned more than the backs of them.

  “She’s at the hospital,” Dad said after Mrs. Simich closed the front door behind her.

  I glanced up. Orange blobs of light appeared wherever I looked.

  “Will we go and um…see her?”

  Dad shook his head. “Unless you want to?”

  “No,” I said quickly, too quickly. Mum’s beautiful face, lifeless and grey, was too horrible to contemplate. Better to remember her willowy beauty, her soft, wavy blonde hair, the rare smiles she blessed us with on the few times she felt happy enough to express it.

  Dad frowned.

  “You’re not thinking about the fight you two had, are you?”

  I shook my head. No. I hadn’t been. But now I was. Now I was seeing the way Mum had looked at me yesterday, how her sorrow-filled eyes had silently pleaded forgiveness while I’d tried to soothe a hysterical Jay who had been left alone at home in his cot while she’d spent the afternoon next door at our neighbour Derek’s house, listening to him play his latest song on the guitar.