Finding Ruby Starling Read online

  Have a good trip, Mom! Miss you already!

  xo

  Ruth

  Hi Sweetie,

  What on earth is going on? Can you call me? I’m stuck at the airport in Boston waiting for a rental car. They want to give me a van. Can you imagine? I’ll look like a soccer mom! Ugh. Worst. I’ve explained that you don’t play soccer because you aren’t that kind of a kid AND I’m traveling alone AND lecturing at Harvard, but they don’t seem to care. Some people are completely unimpressed by science. Or maybe I need a better hairstyle.

  Call me! I’ll keep the phone on. You are worrying me!

  Lots of love,

  Mommy

  P.S. Unplug the Xbox! Your dad has a serious problem with that game.

  Love you, too! Glad you remembered water. Phew, this heat is something else. Hope it doesn’t trigger one of your headaches. The news this morning when I was driving in said that temps would top 110! And people think global warming isn’t a thing. Fools. Those people are going to be the first to perish when we heat the earth up so much, life can’t be sustained. Actually, I guess in that scenario, attitude won’t count. (But it usually does!)

  Anyway, remember what we have learned so far from The Great Buddhism Project: Life is suffering. I know that sounds depressing, but I’m sure that when we are finished working our way through this calendar, you will understand that it’s not a bad thing. I find that it just makes sense. For now, check out this quote: “When you realize how perfect everything is, you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky.” Ah, that’s one of my favorites, for sure.

  I have to go back up to the hospital for rounds after I’m done with this level. Wait for me before you eat, then we can watch TV together and have an entirely unhealthy feast. (Corn dogs?) Don’t tell Mom. And please don’t tell her that I played this game for three straight hours. Or else.

  Dad

  I’ve just come from Chloe’s. She and Soph have made up a whole thing where you’ve been kidnapped by a stalker and taken somewhere awful, like Salford or worse, and we have to take the train up and rescue you, like amazeog superheroes. (Oh, we aren’t to say ‘fab’ anymore. It’s now AMAZEOG, OK?) I told them they were being ridic, because you are much too sensible to be kidnapped — well, obviously — so you won’t need rescuing. You may be the youngest of us, but you’re by far the cleverest, and if anyone is going to rescue anyone, it will be you rescuing us, I should think.

  Did you e the stalker and tell him off? I was reading a true crime book of Dad’s last night where the story was almost exactly the same. Except it wasn’t a strange email sent from someone claiming to be a twin, it was an actual letter. And it took place in the 1970s in Hampshire. Still, it was really upsetting.

  I’m scared for you. You need to protect yourself, Ruby! Be the offence, not the defence, like we learned from Creepy Coach Cratchett. She’s right! Field hockey rules do apply to life a lot. I never believed her until just now.

  I’m replying to the e now! I had one of those panic attacks again. I didn’t want to tell Mum, but I wanted her to come home, so I told her I had a headache. ’Course, she can’t come home. I was just being silly. I know she’s really busy sculpting me so that I can sit reading a book in front of the library forever and ever. I wish she’d let me pick the book. I love Harry Potter! I just don’t know that I’ll want to read it for all of eternity, like I will be once she’s done.

  It’s probably karma that now I do have quite a bad migraine. Or maybe I’ve got psychic powers and I knew I was going to get one! You’d think I could use powers like that to get Nate to love me back properly or even just to win the Lotto or something.

  Am not sure what to say to ‘Ruth’, not really, so am just going to start typing and see what happens. Fi, I’ve been thinking, what if it’s real? I mean, I know it’s not. ’Course it’s not. But what if it — she — is? What if I do have a twin?

  Oh, Roobs, I’m sorry. It is upsetting, but don’t get worked up. The panicky things are just because of all the stress of your nan dying. The Mole used to get those when he was a kid, and he had a therapist who made him tap his legs and chant, ‘I tap the power within me to make the panic attack stop’! It was awfully embarrassing. (For me, I mean. He seemed to like it.) Anyway, I think you’re still not OK yet after everything. You just have to give yourself a bit of time. I forget sometimes that you’re only 12. You’re so mature, like me.

  That e is not real. It’s just some mad old yobbo who is trying to frighten you. You’re doing the right thing. Write me back when you hear anything. If you do. Which you won’t, because your note will scare him off. Those types are always frightened off by people who are tough and fight back, that’s what my dad says. Be really firm in your note. Oh, Dad also says you should take a self-defence class. They’re offering it at Mick’s on Tuesdays at 7. Ask your mum. The Mole is going, as though he’ll ever need to defend himself from anyone, as he never leaves the cave in the basement that he calls a bedroom, and if he does, the stench of his feet will keep all bad guys at bay.

  ‘Ruth’:

  You are mad. Bonkers.

  Get stuffed.

  And don’t write to me again, please. Your note was very upsetting.

  Yours truly,

  Ruby Starling

  PS — You are very good at Photoshop. A little TOO good, don’t you think?

  There, now I’ve written to her/him (see attached). Is not clever or anything, but I wanted it to be short, like a slap. I feel like I should tell someone, but I’m not going to, because if Mum got wind of it, she’d be away with the fairies. She’s already got enough on with that library project. It’s a brilliant statue, isn’t it? I don’t know how she can sculpt people who look so real. When you see her art, it’s hard to imagine she’s the same person who can’t boil up some carrots without setting the stove on fire and melting the pot.

  I just … I do sometimes wish she’d sculpt people who weren’t me. Or that she wasn’t so good at it. She’s better at figuring out pretend versions of me than she is at figuring out the real me! Not that there is anything to figure out, but what if there were? Worse, everyone is going to know it’s meant to be me — that statue, that is. And Hawkster and his mates will graffiti something rude on it, and Mum will be crushed. Why are boys such wazzocks?

  That Spotty Chip Shop Boy is the worst of the lot. You mustn’t ever mention my name and his together again. (Not that we actually know his name.) Nan would have said that you’re just inviting fate to come and have a cuppa, saying things like that. And my fate is NOT the Spotty Chip Shop Boy. I am in love with Nate from STOP and no one else. Not ever. Don’t roll your eyes. It’s real love, girls. Truly. Nate’s freckles and upright hair are so … phwoar. Regular boys are so dull and always look like they have food in their teeth and smelly breath. And they don’t understand fashion, not like me and Nate do. I can hardly wait to be 18. Then Nate and I will meet for real, and you’ll all stop having a laugh whenever I mention his name.

  Good job, you! I knew you’d handle it brilliantly, and you did. Shouldn’t think you’d hear from him again, the creep.

  It’s not that I don’t believe that Nate could love you, it’s more that he looks like a piglet. Why should you love him? He could store marbles in those huge nostrils! Besides, I saw some pics of him on the Internet with that prat, Sig McCallum. Nate’s looking insufferable with his smirk and square jaw. He’ll soon be robbing newsagents or having tantrums on Twitter. Everyone thinks so. Why can’t you fall in love with someone nicer, like Bill Ex? Drummers are much more swoony and don’t have the massive ego problems of lead singers. Even Dad says that Ringo was the nicest Beatle.

  And don’t fool yourself, Nate has people to tell him what to wear! In real life, he probably dresses like a chav in too-small T-shirts and tracksuit bottoms. I think you should start your own fashion empire when you’re done with school and never mind Nate, who will be washed up by then. I’ll be your assistant and we’ll both be impossibly glam
and admired the world over! Or at least in northern England and maybe the more fashionable parts of Wales.

  Your mum’s sculpture is brill. You’re lucky your mum is so cool and weird and different. My parents are so boring. Living here with them is like living inside an actual yawn, all grey and mingy. That’s why I read so much. You don’t have to, because you’ve always got so much on!

  Dad says to tell you if anyone wrecks your mum’s latest, he will take care of it. I’m not sure what that means but he says to tell you anyway.

  We were just having a bit of fun about the spotty boy. We knoooooow your heart belongs to Nate. Nate the Great! True love! Etcetera and so on!

  Glad you got rid of the creepster! What a weirdo. ‘Get stuffed’ was the best bit. Well, was really the only bit, if you think about it. Was quite a short note. But good! We’re applauding! Standing up and everything!

  Are you going to Hawkster’s do on Friday night? He’s sometimes not half bad, even though he’s mostly awful. His lovely eyes are all dark and mysterious and piratey. And he’s so completely funny! Sometimes his jokes just leave us inside out, howling with laughter.

  Oh, Ru-Ru, we need to borrow some clobber. Something glam that makes us look taller and more posh, like fashion models, yeah? Soph says that she bets the party ends up with all of us just watching football or worse, talking, but she hasn’t got a clue, most of the time. I keep trying to tell her, it could be worse. We could be staying home watching telly and waiting for our lives to begin. At least a party is SOMETHING, even if it’s dreadful.

  SOPH, I was just teasing, not for real. You know I think you’re brill!

  Anyway, Ru, just in case it’s a real bash, we need to be prepared to look amazeog. So it’s OK then, the sparkly tops? You’re a star! Thanks!

  You can wear some of my things but GIVE THEM BACK PROPERLY CLEAN! I know that secretly you’re both trying to impress the Spotty Chip Shop Boy by looking modelly and glam. Probably he will fall forever in lurve with you because of your fab style, and you will each one day have 18 of his spotty babies and call them all ‘Chip’ and I will send them posh gifts from Paris where Nate and I have our summer flat.

  No, I am NOT going to Hawkster’s. Never! He’s the worst of all of them at our school. If there was a Biggest Wazzock trophy, he’d win it. And he’s plug ugly, to boot.

  PS — I don’t think ‘amazeog’ is an actual word.

  Dear Ruby Starling,

  I am not a stalker! I am Ruth Elizabeth Quayle, age 122/3. I was born on October 30 at Lenox Hill Hospital in NYC. Sounds familiar, amirite? (But if I’m wrong, tell me now! I just know that I’m not. I’m not, am I?)

  I don’t believe in coincidences. My parents always say that a coincidence is just science proving again that things work the way they are supposed to, predictably. We are twins. It’s science!

  As Buddha would say, “Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” (My dad has decided that I need to learn more about Buddhism, so has bought us a Page-A-Day Buddhist calendar as a “jumping-off point.” We are not all the way through it yet, obviously, as it is not December, but I already feel better. Highly recommend! I haven’t quite got the hang of meditating yet, though. It’s much too boring and still.)

  Oh, Ruby Starling, can’t you see that this — us being twins — is the truest true thing?

  The weird thing is that when I got your note, I did feel like a bad guy for a few minutes. What am I doing, stalking this poor girl in England? I thought. Who am I becoming? A madman?

  Then I remembered that I’m not stalking you and I’m not a bad guy or even a guy at all. I AM RUTH ELIZABETH QUAYLE, AGE 122/3. I don’t even have Photoshop! And you are my twin. You MUST be. Just LOOK at the pics.

  Then I started to think about being twins. A lot. And what it means. And Ruby Starling, I have to admit, that it was basically like a crashing and unexpected tidal wave of feelings that I collapsed under. For a few minutes, I had to lie down on the floor beside my bed. I was just totes overwhelmed! The feelings were like water pulling me under!

  Then I kind of scooched over until I was actually UNDER my bed. You probably think that’s super crazy, but sometimes I feel like there is just too much space around me and I need to get somewhere small and safe. Do you know what I mean? Anyway, that’s how I felt. It was extremely dusty under there and I started to sneeze quite a lot and somehow I hit my head on the under-the-bed-support-metal-thingy. Luckily, it didn’t bleed. I don’t clot very well, but that’s a whole other story I’ll tell you later. (“Clot” is a terrible word, don’t you think? It makes me think of disgusting clumps of sour milk.)

  Eventually I came out from under the bed and started Googling. I Google everything. Always. There is lots of amazeballs info out there about all the things! Everything! Anything! I’ve now intensely studied the Wikipedia entry for twins (and you should too). Because if we are (and we obvi are!) identical twins, for real, then for a little while WE WERE ACTUALLY THE SAME PERSON. Does that totes give you chills? My arms are popping with goose bumps, just like the time Jedgar made me go into a haunted house all alone, but with a camera taped to my head. (We were making a fake documentary called Ghost House. Do you believe in ghosts? Because I definitely do now that I have seen one, for reals. I mean, I didn’t actually SEE one, but I sensed that she was there! Which is practically the same thing!)

  If we are twins — and we HAVE TO BE — then we have basically all the same cells! Identical DNA and whatnot! WE ARE ACTUALLY CLONES! It’s just that if they started calling identical twins “clones,” then people would think they were being whipped up in test tubes, so I suppose that’s why they stick with “twins.”

  I am trying to put all the pieces together of HOW and WHY and WHAT THE WHAT of our twinning. And I just want to know everything right away. I feel like my heart is going to erupt out of my chest and go tearing off down the street on my skateboard. The trouble is that Mom is the one I usually ask all my unusual questions, but she is in BOSTON. I could call her or Skype her or FaceTime her, but then she’d sense how freaked out I am, and SHE would then probably freak out and come home. Her work is totes the most important thing to her, ever, so I’d feel terrible that I messed it up. She’s RIGHT NOW delivering lectures at Harvard University about cloning the lufengosaurus, which we call the Luffster. She’s worked really hard for this. The lufengosaurus was (and will be again, if Mom gets her way!) a huge, grass-eating dinosaur the size of a cement mixer. We have a life-size replica of a fossil of a baby one in the dining room. She takes up the entire space where a table and any other regular furniture would normally be, so she lives in exquisite — but tragically lonely! — luxury. We call her Luffetta and she is completely adorbs.

  Anyway, some archaeologists found a bunch of lufengosaurus cells in a fossilized dinosaur egg in China. Mom believes she (well, her team) can make a new dinosaur out of it — just like that, she can clone one. It sounds completely impossible and slightly crazy to even THINK about. It’s totes Jurassic Park! Hollywood! But Mom says it’s just science, which is all logical, perfectly shaped ideas clicking together to make one big idea that changes everything. (For some people, it clicks, that is. However! I am not one of those people. It is super hard having parents who are brilliant and excellent science types, when you have to study for a billion extra hours to just get a B in middle-school science class.)

  Anyway, here’s what I just realized: If Mom and her team ever do get to clone the Luffster, then he or she will be basically a delayed twin with another lufengosaurus who died before he or she was even born. Twins who share the same genes! Like us! Weird, amirite? She may even be Luffetta’s twin! Poor tragic Luffetta.

  BUT I CAN’T ASK MOM ABOUT ANY OF THIS BECAUSE SHE WON’T BE BACK FOR THREE DAYS! And what will I even say? How will I tell her that I’ve found you? What will she say? Or think? OR DO?

  Oh Ruby. This is too much. Hang on. BRB!

  Ruth

  OK, I am back (not that you coul
d tell that I was gone!)

  I just couldn’t stand it. So I did it. I asked my dad about you, Ruby Starling.

  “Dad,” I said formally, while also recording the conversation on my iPod in case I had to refer back to it later (which I am doing). “How is it that I have come to have a twin that I was not aware of?”

  “What?” he said. “What on earth are you talking about, Rooty? Want some bumps on a log?” (He was munching on some celery sticks with peanut butter and raisins on top.) (He sometimes calls me Rooty, which is basically the worst, but I let it go because he’s my dad and he says that all nicknames mean “I love you.” Which, if you think about it, is better than “Ruth,” which means “a feeling of pity, distress, or grief.”) He looked genuinely perplexed, which means he either DOESN’T know about you, or is a terrific actor! Either way, instead of embracing me and confessing the whole sordid and mysterious truth — whatever it is — he said, “That’s … ridiculous! I mean, probably.”

  !

  I know, right?

  “Probably”?

  Then he looked at your pictures on the laptop that I thrust toward him and squinted and then blinked a whole bunch of times in a row like there was an eyelash in his eye. Then he sighed and said that he would know if I had a twin because it was illegal to separate twins during adoptions and had been since, oh, he didn’t know, maybe since way back in the 1970s. Maybe. Or at least he thinks he saw that in a movie once, or maybe it was a documentary or a talk show. Or it might have just been something he read in a book.