Who: Ruby and Clint When: evening, Saturday, June 30 Where: the carnival Status: Complete
Maybe it was super dumb of him to want to go back to the carnival where he’d cheated on his girlfriend only a day and a half later, like returning to the scene of the crime, but Clint felt a strong pull to go back there. Not for anything relating to Jules, but just to be in the atmosphere and ride some of the rides again and enjoy himself. That probably should’ve been impossible considering how guilty he’d felt for most of the day, but he felt positive that once they were inside the gates, everything would feel better. And Ruby would feel good too, which was what she deserved.
Clint knew somewhere that he should just tell her right away and rip off the bandaid like he’d thought about the night before. Maybe not all the specifics -- he had no desire to make trouble for Jules or get in the middle of some cat fight -- but to let Ruby know he’d fucked up and they should probably end things sooner than they’d planned. He knew that was the right thing to do, but ... damn if he didn’t want to see her and have fun with her one more time, if he could. Clint didn’t know yet if he would be overwhelmed with guilt and confess and ruin their night, but he supposed they would find out.
He pulled up to the Fox house a little before seven, intending to see if Ruby wanted to grab some Moxie’s beforehand or if they were just having corn dogs and cotton candy for dinner. A nervous flutter in his stomach, Clint texted Ruby to let her know he was there.
Ruby had been hearing about the carnival all week and was excited to finally get the chance to go. Everyone that came into the diner seemed to have something to say about it, and though some of the stories should have spooked her, Ruby was not easily deterred. Weren’t all carnivals supposed to be a little bit creepy? They’d been used as the setting for horror movies and scary stories for years. It was probably more in people’s heads than actuality, but she was eager to find out for herself. When Clint texted that he’d arrived, she grabbed her purse and told her dad she’d be back late before hurrying down the sidewalk to hop in his car. “Hey babe,” she smiled, leaning over to kiss him after pulling the door shut. “Let’s go.”
She looked as lovely as ever, and guilt stabbed at Clint’s heart. He kept it pushed down deep, smiling back and giving Ruby a smooch before she got settled in. It wasn’t like they were madly in love and planned to stay together forever, he told himself for the millionth time since Jules had left his house. There was really no reason Ruby ever had to know about it. It had just been a one-off thing, probably impulsive and stupid, but why upset her with it? They were going to break up before the end of summer anyway ... but then all of his thoughts started to swing in the other direction. It was really annoying having a conscience sometimes. “Hey gorgeous,” Clint greeted, a bit relieved that his voice sounded normal. “How’s your day been?”
“It’s okay. Work was work, but I didn’t spill anything and no one hit on me, so I’ll call it a good day,” Ruby said. She aspired to more than just working at Moxie’s and the tips would be better at a fancy restaurant or a bar, but it paid okay and they’d always been flexible with her hours. Having Friday nights free had always been a request of hers, even if she’d probably make more working that night. “My dad’s been whining about how quiet the house will be once I leave. I think he needs a dog. It can go with him to the garage and everything. He said he’d consider it if I train it, so I dunno. I don’t know anything about training dogs.”
“Train it?” Clint echoed with a soft scoff. “I mean, don’t get him a puppy anyway, they’re a ton of work, but like, a grown up dog should be housebroken and all that already.” It seemed like a weird responsibility to put on Ruby when she wasn’t even intending the dog to be hers. Maybe Mr. Fox needed to pick out his own dog. Clint got a quick flash in his imagination of the man siccing a huge pitbull on Clint for cheating on his daughter -- ridiculous and cartoonish, but it still twisted his stomach even tighter. “But uh, my brother knows a lot about training dogs, being a vet and all, so ... and I bet he’ll start getting word of animals around town that need adopting. I can let you know, if you want.”
“No, he can’t handle a puppy,” Ruby said with a little laugh. “I just think he needs someone around. He just doesn’t want me to leave…” The dog was her idea, not his, which was why he was trying to stick her with the responsibility. Except that she wanted it for him. Because she knew how empty the house would feel with her gone. If she even left. It was still so up in the air. Ruby knew she’d be better to stay a year home and take classes online, but she didn’t want to live at home forever. “Let me know about the dogs, just in case. Maybe I’ll decide I need one for myself,” she smiled. “Do you see him much? Now that he’s home?”
Clint could let her know about dogs only if they were still on speaking terms, so that was another mark in the Don’t Tell Her column in his head. They both knew this relationship was finite, and they’d been making some nice plans for the back half of summer, did he really want to ruin all those for Ruby? Fuck up her senior summer for her? Ugh, this sucked. Clint wanted to smack himself upside the head. “Marsh? Nah, not a lot,” he answered with a faint chuckle. “He comes home for dinner when my mom nags him enough, but he’s been pretty busy getting his practice set up.” He paused and glanced over at her. “So where are you going? Last time we talked about it, I thought you were staying home to do a year remote. Change of plans?”
“No, I dunno, I’m all over the place,” Ruby sighed. “I’m pretty sure I’m staying in Point Pleasant at this point and doing a year remote, but I don’t know if I want to stay at home, you know? It might be nice to get an apartment, but then that’s another cost. I’d at least want to find someone to split it with. I know I’d save more money at home, but… ugh, it’s just a lot. I’m probably not going any farther than a couple blocks away, if I go at all. We’ll see. There’s no real deadline.” She’d been feeling rather fickle about it all, none of it clicking into place the way she wanted it to. Ruby expected the right answer to feel right and nothing really did, so she kept trying different ones, hoping it would feel better.
He nodded vaguely as she spoke, definitely able to relate to the desire to move out of the house and be independent. That was part of college he was really looking forward to, especially since he would be away from home. It would be like a fresh start, a real introduction to adulthood. “Yeah, it would be cool if you could find a roommate and share an apartment,” Clint agreed, glancing over at her. Or he could set her free early like he ought to do and maybe she would find a boyfriend she wanted to move in with before the summer was over, and be way happier without him. That was probably just guilty wishful thinking though. “You’ve still got some time to plan, don’t worry about it. Even if you move out like, mid-semester, it’ll still be cool.”
“Yeah, there’s no real timeline,” Ruby said. “I guess I just need to wait and see how things play out. I’ve got a few friends sticking around.” Some of them were staying home, while others were taking this opportunity to make things more serious with their boyfriends. Ruby adored Clint, but a part of her was glad that she wasn’t having to deal with that kind of step in their relationship yet. Living with him might’ve been fantastic, or it could have been a train wreck. She supposed she’d never know. There were a few people hanging out there that wanted out of their houses, but didn’t have someone to live with, but their situations were far more precarious—Jasper, for instance, might suddenly decide to get back with Jules and she didn’t want to be stuck with half a rent when he bailed on her. “Have you heard anything yet about dorm assignments? Or who you’ll be living with?”
There was no real timeline to life itself, but Clint was glad not to be facing those Super Adult Decisions like moving in with a girlfriend too. He was very obviously not ready to be serious with someone, as evidenced by his behavior the other night and how he didn’t really regret it, beyond how it might hurt Ruby’s feelings. But fuck, he was only eighteen, and he honestly thought the people who claimed to be ready to get married to their high school sweethearts or whatever were pretty fucking crazy. They were all still kids, and he wanted more out of life than this tiny crazy town could offer him. “Naw, we’re supposed to get that welcome information shit sometime in July,” he answered, glancing over. “I decided on Dartmouth, though. So I won’t be like ... other side of the country far away. Just, y’know, hours. And I’m gonna try to join a fraternity as soon as I can, so hopefully the awkward roommate thing won’t last too long.”
Just hours away, and yet Ruby knew it didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to come home every weekend and she didn’t expect him to. He would be doing the college thing, the fraternity thing, and there wouldn’t be room in his life for her. It would be a lot easier to swallow if she had something exciting lined up for her as well, but she’d accepted that wasn’t going to happen this year. Maybe eventually, but not yet. She still smiled though, determined to be excited for him. She wasn’t going to bring today down if she could help it. “That’s exciting,” she said. “I can totally see you as a frat boy. You’ve got that preppy thing going for you. Just don’t let it go to your head. And try not to party every night or you’ll be back here sooner than you’d like.”
Clint knew it was pretty predictable -- well-off athletic young white man joining a frat, no surprise there -- but he’d been on teams and Scouts from an early age, surrounded by brotherhood since he was born, more or less. There’d been his actual brother Marsh, and by the time he left home Clint had built his own solid circle of other guys to lean on. He knew he wouldn’t feel at home anywhere unless he had that in his life, and that’s what fraternities were all about. It also meant that he would be exposed to a rich social life that yes, he wanted to be single for. Was that so bad? Maybe not, but cheating on Ruby definitely was, he couldn’t quite justify himself out of that guilt. So his decision had to be either rip the bandaid off now and be honest, or try to bury it and hope she didn’t find out some other way before they parted at the end of the summer. Clint chuckled, trying to keep all of that off of his face for now. “I’ll do my best,” he said. “Just maybe like, most nights.” He shot her a little grin before he slowed down the car to pull into the carnival parking area. “Damn, that’s huge,” Clint murmured, glancing at the Ferris wheel.
Ruby understood the desire to go off to college single. She adored Clint, probably loved him, but had no interest in keeping up with a long distance relationship for a minimum of four years. People changed in that time, no matter how hard you tried not to, especially at their age. They both deserved to start this new stage of their life without strings attached, at least if they were going to be nowhere near each other. That didn’t make it easy. Ruby knew he was going to miss him every day, that it would be a struggle not to call or text him every time she saw something that made her laugh or think of him. He would be having fun with his new friends and new girls, in a new place, with a bright future ahead of him. He deserved it, but she tried not to think too much about it. Luckily, they had distractions, like a giant fucking Ferris wheel. “How did they even get that in here?” she asked with a little laugh. “It, like, popped up overnight. There’s no way they put it all together, piece by piece.” Yet, there it stood. Somehow, someone had managed it. “We have to ride it.”
“Yeah I’ve always thought stuff that big was pretty much like ... it gets built and then stays there,” Clint chuckled. Not that he knew much of anything, he’d only visited the types of places that had big attractions like that. “But hell yeah, we’ll do it. Live dangerously and ride on the possibly-slapped-together bigass wheel.” He grinned at Ruby and took her hand in his. It felt easier to pretend that nothing was wrong or different with so many bright happy distractions ahead of them. Clint walked her to the ticket booths and paid for both of them, and soon enough they were surrounded by noise and people and colored lights and carnival music that had the faintest bit of wobble to it. “So what do you think? Wheel first? Or save that for the climax of the evening?” he asked. “I kinda wanna do the Round Up again.”
“Ooo, what’s the Round Up?” Ruby asked. “I didn’t realize you’d already been.” Had he mentioned it and it just slipped her mind? She supposed it wasn’t that big of a surprise. He’d had all week to do whatever he wanted and he’d probably come up with some of the guys to have fun and goof off. She could tell from working at Moxie’s that a lot of people had come out multiple times, and if he wanted to ride the Round Up again, it must be good. “Let’s do the Round Up first. Get all the spinny rides out of the way so we can eat afterwards. Then we can do the Ferris wheel.” She didn’t know if she wanted it to be the last thing they did, but it made sense to do the rides that might fuck them up first.
“Pft, how’d you know it was spinny if you didn’t know what it was?” Clint teased her with a little grin. She’d probably heard about a lot of the rides second-hand while she was working. “But yeah it’s this big thing that spins around so fast that you’re like, plastered to the wall. It’s fun. I actually came last night with like, Rogers and Brad and a few other people.” The back of Clint’s neck prickled uncomfortably as he purposefully didn’t mention Jules. It had been a good sized group, there had been other girls there too, so why would he bother to say her name? He just hoped he sounded casual enough. They were all friends of his that Ruby didn’t care for much and hopefully would never talk to ... and he at least had an excuse ready if she did hear about them leaving early together. Clint knew the right thing to do would just be to tell her, but ugh, it felt so impossible and it would just ruin this whole evening and he wanted to play more at the carnival, right? Right. Confessions could wait. Clint walked with Ruby toward the Round Up, ready to get some adrenaline going and forget about everything else.
“Half the rides here spin you,” Ruby laughed, lightly hitting Clint in the arm with the back of her hand. She’d heard about a lot of the rides, but not always by name. The Scrambler was another one and just the name made her stomach hurt, even if she’d yet to identify it. The Round Up didn’t sound all that bad based on Clint’s description and that fact that he could vouch for it helped. If Clint and the guys could handle it, she certainly could. Ruby wasn’t one to be one-upped by a bunch of jocks. “That sounds fun, and maybe not as likely to make me puke. I’ll give it a go,” she grinned. Puking would put a damper on the night, even if it was just the result of a ride. It was not the vibe she was looking for in the least.
Puking was definitely a bummer, but as a guy who’d been through many party nights where he puked and then felt better and partied on, Clint didn’t see it as a dealbreaker. There was always mouthwash ... though it was less convenient at a carnival than it was at a house party, he supposed. In any case, he hoped both of their stomachs would stay strong. “I have faith in you, you’re a tough girl,” Clint told her with a crooked grin. Ruby was tough, and the thought gave him the impulse to confess again. She would be okay. She might kick his ass for it, but she would be okay. Clint did his best to shove it all aside again. He really needed to get his head straight before he talked to her about anything, right? Right. So distraction it was, and it was hard to feel shitty at a carnival. It was suddenly their turn in line, and he climbed onto the ride with Ruby and got settled in their spot.
“Glad to have your vote of confidence,” Ruby grinned as they climbed onto the ride. Her heart began to race in anticipation as she strapped in next to him, and she took his hand as the ride began to spin. It started slow, but got rapidly faster, and Ruby laughed as the faces around her began to blur at the speed. The floor dropped out from under them, but they stayed pinned against the wall, the force of the ride leaving them hanging as they spun. It was dizzying, exhilarating, and then suddenly terrifying. There, across the ride from her, holding on as if his life depended on it, was Jules’s father. The ride spun so fast that she could barely focus, but she was sure it was him, head turned at an awkward angle, blood still smeared along his collar. She knew it would be all down his back as well, painting the wall behind him, evidence of his death. His eyes snapped open, his face twisted with hatred as he glared right at her, and Ruby screamed in shock, her hand clenching around Clint’s. He couldn’t possibly be there. He was dead and she’d been the one to kill him.
Clint had been on this ride a couple of times now -- the second one egged on by his friends before the whole Tunnel of Love thing -- and he knew what to expect, so he felt nothing but glee as they began to spin and the floor dropped away. It was such a fun, almost helpless feeling, pinned to the panel behind him just from the force and speed and all that physics he didn’t understand. He laughed and squeezed his eyes shut just before Ruby screamed. Clint wasn’t looking at her face, so he assumed it was the fun kind of scream and he squeezed her hand back.
Ruby tried to keep her eyes on the man, afraid of what he was going to do once the ride stopped, but as it began to slow down, she lost him. Everyone blurred together, making it hard to focus, and one second he was there, the next he was gone. She was shaking by the time the ride stopped, desperate to get the harness off of her in case she needed to run, but the man was nowhere in sight. Ruby’s eyes searched the crowd even as she was freed from the ride. She moved out into the walkway, turning this way and that, but he was gone.
It wasn’t until they were exiting that Clint really noticed the look on Ruby’s face. He frowned a bit and took her hand to pull her to the side once they were out of the flow of traffic. “Hey, you okay?” he asked, concern in his eyes. Sure, maybe the ride had been kind of scary for someone who was sensitive to that sort of thing, but it was over now and he didn’t think Ruby actually was that sensitive. She’d certainly been enthusiastic when she’d hopped on board with him. Clint had no idea what else might have gone wrong, but she definitely looked rattled.
Ruby had almost forgotten about Clint until he took her hand and pulled her aside, and then it was too late to completely mask her emotions. “I saw—“ she started, then caught herself, eyes wild as she looked back towards the ride. Was there a blood stain on the wall? Was there any evidence he’d even been there at all? Her eyes darted back to Clint’s. She couldn’t even tell him. He didn’t know about Jules’s father, about what she’d done. “I thought I saw a ghost,” she murmured, still looking around wearily as they moved away from the ride. Another batch of kids wanted a go and they were holding things up. “You didn’t see anything? No—no blood?”
“A ghost?” Clint echoed, his frown deepening as he stared at her. “Blood? What? No, I didn’t see anything like that, just ... people on the ride.” He looked back over his shoulder like he might spot something now, but they were too far away to see into the spinning contraption. He didn’t see any disturbance or hear any raised voices as new people got onto the ride that would indicate someone had found a bloody mess. Everything seemed normal. Clint returned his gaze to Ruby. “What did you see exactly?” He wasn’t sure how she could’ve seen anything very clearly on a ride like that, much less identified it as a ghost ... but shit was weird sometimes, and he’d already had one strange experience in this carnival.
It seemed impossible that no one else had noticed Jules’s father. He was clearly bleeding out. The people next to him should have been screaming their heads off. It made Ruby question what she’d seen, though the image of him felt burned into her brain. She was sure he’d been there, taunting her. Ghost really wasn’t the right word, as it conjured the idea of something transparent and other worldly, but it was the first word to come to her. Even now, she hesitated to tell him exactly what she’d seen. “I saw…a dead man. Jules’s step-father,” she said, running her hands through her hair as she tried to recall the story Jules had gone with. “He died in the fog.” It was a good story, especially now, looking back. Enough people had died then that no one would question it, not even the police.
Clint felt really weird at the mention of Jules’s name, and for a second his brain panicked and didn’t register anything else or the context of what Ruby was actually saying. He very nearly started blurting out apologies, but then his good sense caught up and remembered what they were really talking about. He gave a confused frown and glanced around again. He knew what Jules’s step-dad had looked like, living so close to the Coopers, and he’d kind of forgotten about the guy disappearing. “Are you sure he’s dead?” he asked Ruby, sounding more baffled than accusing. “I thought he just went missing, could that have been him? ... Ohshit Ruby, did you see his body or something?” Clint’s voice dropped lower and softer and he leaned in a bit closer, looking concerned. Maybe there was more to this story.
Was Ruby sure Jules’s stepfather was dead? Yes. They’d been absolutely sure until he disappeared off the back porch, but she couldn’t imagine he was alive. Those things had been in the fog, the creatures that had attacked and killed all kinds of people. Those that survived had become like Jasper and been trapped in some horrible parallel universe. And she was certain Jasper would have told her if he’d been alive in there. But Clint didn’t know any of that, her feelings for him not extending to that level of trust, and she couldn’t possibly tell him now. “He went missing in the fog, didn’t he?” she asked, as if that should answer his question. She couldn’t admit to seeing his body, but what she saw tonight would have been confirmation even if she hadn’t been there. “He wasn’t—He looked—dead and alive. Covered in blood, but I fucking swear he grinned at me. He was riding the fucking ride, Clint!”
Maybe it was stupid to ever consider that someone who’d gone missing could still be alive around here, but Clint was still naive to some degree. Outside of being trapped in that awful fog and some stuff that had happened to people he knew, the darkest sides of Point Pleasant hadn’t really touched his life. “Okay, okay, I believe you,” he said to Ruby, lifting his hands in a little surrender as he glanced around again. “Shit, that’s -- I didn’t see anything like that. So maybe it was some kinda ghost. That’s fucked up.” Clint didn’t know how to explain it or fix it, and he felt kind of bad for that as he studied Ruby’s face with a furrowed brow. “You wanna go home?” That was about all he could offer to do, he was pretty sure.
His question forced Ruby to recheck the situation and rein herself in. No one else had seen what she’d seen and if she didn’t shut up about it, it was going to look suspicious, or crazy at the very least. There was no blood on the ride, and no one else was screaming about a body. If he’d been there at all, he was gone now. It was a hard pill to swallow, but Ruby knew she had to pull herself together, especially if she didn’t want their date to end when they’d barely just arrived. “No,” she said, taking a deep breath and giving a little shake of her head. “I’m okay. Just—Just spooked.” These things happened in Point Pleasant. As much as she wished she was used to it, she didn’t think she’d ever be. “Let’s go do something else. I need a distraction.”
Clint watched her gather herself, a selfish part of him hoping that she did want to go home, so he could be relieved of the pressure of keeping this big bad secret. He definitely couldn’t confess to her now, at least not tonight, he told himself. She was already having a crappy night, he shouldn’t make it worse, right? “Okay,” he murmured with a nod. Before they went anywhere else, he pulled Ruby into a hug. Clint kept it brief in case she didn’t want to feel crowded, but he wanted to offer at least some comfort. He then took her hand so they could put some distance between themselves and the spooky shit. “What do you want to do next?” he asked. “Your pick.”
Ruby hugged Clint back, glad for the support, then took a deep breath as she looked around the carnival. The experience had drained her more than she liked and it was going to take some work to ramp up her enthusiasm again. They probably should go home, but Ruby wasn’t willing to quit that easily. “Umm…Let’s get some cotton candy and try the Funhouse,” she suggested. “I might need a bit before I try another ride.” And if she saw another dead person on the next one, she’d be out of there, no matter what Clint saw or the lack of evidence afterwards. One scare she could handle in a night, but two was too many to possibly recover from. She just had to hope the night got better from here on out.
Things felt a little more back on track once they got some fluffy sugar in them, and then Funhouse ended up being actually pretty fun. It gave Clint some nostalgia, climbing swinging rope ladders and going across monkey bars and crashing into a giant ball pit. How did the carnival even ship all this around the country? It was pretty amazing. Ruby seemed to relax and start enjoying herself again, and Clint stole a few kisses here and there when she was in reach. Maybe tonight was salvageable. The whole time, guilt nagged at the back of his mind, but the volume on it seemed low when he was having fun with her. He was smiling as they emerged from the Funhouse, and put his arm around Ruby’s shoulders as he glanced around. “Hey, wanna get your palm read?” he asked lightly as he spotted the psychic tent.
Ruby was eager to put the scare behind her and found it much easier to do with an enjoyable distraction. The Funhouse was actually fun and challenging in a way she hadn’t expected. When was the last time she even did the monkey bars? By the time they emerged, laughing arm in arm, Ruby knew the night was salvageable. She just had to keep her focus on Clint. A palm reading sounded entertaining at the very least and she nodded, game for giving it a try. “Sure,” she said. “Maybe they’ll have some advice on what to do about my future.” While Ruby believed psychics, she’d never met a real one and had a hard time believing they’d work for the carnival. Whatever they learned was bound to be laughable, which was more her goal at the moment than any sort of enlightenment.
Clint was not expecting anything real or serious either as he led them to the tent. The folding sandwich board outside of the entrance declared it to belong to Madam Zena, which made him chuckle. It was all so obviously fake, he had no doubts that it would just be entertaining as they walked into the musty-canvas-smelling tent. The middle-aged woman sitting at the table in front of them looked up and smiled faintly. Her table was draped with a black cloth and had a couple of candles and a deck of tarot cards sitting on it, next to her folded bejeweled fingers.
“Welcome,” she said to them. Madam Zena gestured to the two folding chairs in front of her. “Please, sit. I am Madam Zena, Oracle of the Ancients. Allow me to answer your questions about the present, the past, the future ...” She made a hand gesture over her table, the bangles on her wrist jingling faintly.
Ruby grinned as they stepped into the tent and took in their surroundings. It looked just as she might have pictured it, a psychic’s den from a movie set. There was even incense burning somewhere, an earthy scent that reminded her of the forest. Her hand slipped from Clint’s as she took a seat in the offered chair, glancing at him before looking back at Madam Zena. “I’d like to stay away from the past, thanks,” she said, her mind automatically ticking back to the incident with Jules’s step-father. While she knew the woman couldn’t see any of that, she didn’t want to risk it. “The future seems… I dunno. Unclear,” she laughed lightly, glancing at Clint again. “What about the present? Tell me something I don’t know.”
Clint settled into the other folding chair and stretched his legs out, looking around with a bemused smile on his face. He knew there were people out there with real psychic powers, but he didn’t think any of them actually traveled around with carnivals and did this sort of shit for a living. He got a murmur of nerves in his gut when Ruby opted to hear about the present, but Clint wasn’t too worried. He was sure the ‘madam’ would just make something up that was impossible to disprove.
Madam Zena glanced between the young couple, then picked up her tarot cards. She turned them over to display them with a flourish for a moment, then set the deck face down in front of Ruby. “Shuffle these, please, miss,” she instructed. “And put into them your desire to reveal hidden truths.”
Revealing “hidden truths” would have made Ruby nervous if it wasn’t her fortune being told. All of the things that scared her were already known to her and it was keeping them from the rest of the world that mattered. And even with her limited knowledge of tarot, she knew they weren’t going to spell out “you killed Edward Leahy.” The messages were never that clear, usually vague enough that they could mean almost anything. Ruby tried to focus on the unknown as she shuffled the cards, while her own secrets knocked around in the back of her mind. Everything felt so unclear today, but she didn’t think she could mess this up. “How’s that?” she asked, setting the deck back down on the table.
The older woman just smiled and slid the cards closer to herself. There was no right or wrong way to shuffle, the point was just to get the energy of the reading subject into them. She hummed a bit as she began to slowly draw one card at a time from the top of the deck and laid them out into a ten card spread on the table. Zena made an interested noise as she placed the final card and looked at all of them together. Tarot was always a big-picture medium, each card influencing the others, and while she didn’t strictly need it for insight, it always helped focus her power. “I see secrets ... both ones you hold and ones held from you,” Zena said, looking pointedly between the two teenagers. So many of them underestimated her, thought she was a fraud. She always loved to prove them wrong. “Are you sure the light of truth is what you desire?” she asked Ruby.
Mention of secrets, both hers and ones kept from her, gave Ruby pause. Was that what she’d asked for? It felt a little like her words had been twisted when her original intention had just been for insight of some sort. Secrets sounded far more nefarious, which they would be if her own was on the table. Ruby scanned the cards, trying to tell if any of them came even close to revealing what she kept hidden, but they were too ambiguous—the cups and stars and swords and wands held no meaning to her. Some looked morbid for the sake of being morbid. Her gaze locked on The Moon, her fingers reaching out to touch it before she pulled them away. They were just cards. So long as none of them depicted her holding a baseball bat, she should be safe. And if someone was keeping secrets from her, she’d like to know, even if she suspected this was all bullshit. Ruby cast a glance at Clint, then looked back at Madam Zena. “No, but… I’ll hear it anyways.”
Clint felt a flutter of nerves in his stomach as he glanced between the spread on the table and Ruby’s face. Part of him wanted to just grab her hand and run out of there, but he knew how ridiculous that would look and it would definitely arouse suspicion. If this Zena woman was just going to babble about vague notions, he didn’t want to overreact. He couldn’t deny that he felt kind of creeped out already though, and he slipped his hands into his jeans pockets as he stayed silent to listen.
The doubt in the girl’s voice delighted Zena deep inside. The cards and her own powers had revealed everything to her already with just a few glances, and she was more than happy to pull the wool from her eyes. Keeping that same faint smile on her face, Zena gestured here and there at the tarot spread as she spoke. “I see betrayal here in many directions, lies spoken this very evening ... you know more about the man you thought you saw tonight, much more,” she said, her dark eyes ticking up to Ruby’s face. She looked mildly at Clint for a heartbeat and then went on. “The one who also knows this truth knows another ... infidelity, on our very grounds.” She clucked her tongue regretfully as the boy shifted uncomfortably in his seat and frowned.
Ruby clenched her hands to keep them from trembling as the blood drained from her face, her wide eyes betraying the truth of Madam Zena’s words. There was no way she could know about Edward Leahy, but she’d been too specific for her to mean anyone else. It was a struggle not to demand answers, but anything she asked would raise more questions and when the dust all settled Ruby knew no one would care how the woman knew, only that Ruby was guilty. She was so caught up in the first part of Zena’s reading that the later part didn’t register until Zena clicked her tongue. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she snapped, her attention turning to Clint. Now that she knew the Madam spoke the truth, she couldn’t ignore the implications of her reading.
This was all happening so fast, Clint was still struggling to believe it wasn’t all total horseshit. The part about Ruby knowing more about the dead guy was weird, but it was hard to focus on that when the old psychic bitch was blatantly ratting him out with dumb fancy words. Clint could feel Ruby’s eyes on him like a physical touch and his stomach twisted into knots. Fuck. Fuck fuck FUCK. “Pfft, like I know? She’s just bullshitting you,” he protested, but it came out much weaker than intended. Clint glanced at her sideways and saw that she wasn’t buying any of it, so he glared at the psychic woman. “I’m not fucking paying you for this, I hope you know,” he grumbled.
If there was one skill Ruby had honed over the years it was her bullshit meter. Only one of the people in the room was lying to her and when Clint glanced her way she knew without a shadow of a doubt it was him. It was in the way his eyes slid over to her, in his weak defense, turning it back on Zena, unaware of how she’d solidified Ruby’s belief in her skills by turning over the one secret Ruby sought to hide. That he was more angry than offended hit the nail on the coffin. “Why? Because you’re pissed she called you out?” Ruby seethed. “What happened, Clint? Couldn’t wait til August? What the fuck?” She jumped to her feet, digging into her bag for money to pay the woman because she doubted Clint would, even though he had the cash. She stopped seconds later, eyes on fire as she glared at him. “Wait, here? Who were you here with?”
This was possibly the worst way for this to happen, and Clint greatly regretted suggesting that they have a little harmless fun with a fake psychic. Zena was obviously real and obviously a heinous bitch, and Clint shot daggers at her with his eyes. The couldn’t wait til August question stung, because goddammit, he should have been able to. He just didn’t think that Ruby was going to believe or accept his story about the Tunnel of Love kicking things off ... and even if she did, he took Jules home to finish it off. Clint couldn’t really deny that. “Listen, let’s ... let’s talk about this outside, okay?” he said to Ruby, standing up himself, his expression pained. She looked ready to murder him. Fuck, he should’ve told her before they even got here, what a mess.
Madam Zena watched it all unfold with the tiniest of smiles on her face. In all her years of doing this, she always had the most fun throwing a wrench into the lives of straight white men. So many of them were such entitled assholes with terrible secrets, and even though this one was young? He deserved to get caught. Maybe it would be a good lesson for him. Zena just waited patiently to see if the girl would put any cash down on her table before she stormed out to rip her dumb boyfriend a new one. She silently wished her well -- she could obviously do better.
“What? You don’t want to stay and see if she calls you out again? If you don’t give me answers, I know where to go,” Ruby snapped, finally finding some money and slamming it down on the table. She didn’t honestly want to talk to Zena again, was furious that she’d used her darkest secret to prove what she could do, but she wanted it clear she was done with his bullshit. With the reading paid for, she moved in on Clint, backing him out of the tent and into the crowd before rounding on him again. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” she asked, giving him a little shove. “This town is fucking small. I bet I know her. And if you fucked her here, someone saw. Is that how you wanted me to find out? If you were that bored with me, you should have just ended it! You had every chance!”
Clint fell back a step at the shove, holding his hands up in surrender, his expression still pinched and sheepish. “I wasn’t -- no, Ruby -- listen,” he tried to cut in a few times, but not very loudly. He glanced around them at all the people milling past, pretty sure that he wasn’t going to be able to save himself from this public humiliation. He just hoped nobody he really knew was around. “I wasn’t -- I’m not bored of you, that’s not it at all,” Clint said once he could get a word in. “And I didn’t fuck her here, that’s bullshit, it just ... it just started here. In that fucking Tunnel of Love thing? It’s haunted or there’s like, gas in there or some shit, because I didn’t intend to do anything, but it was just like ... I dunno. Overwhelming.” He was not doing well with explaining, and Clint huffed and ran a hand through his hair. “Ruby, I’m really sorry. I really fucked up. It was super shitty of me and I was gonna tell you tonight, I just -- ... kept pussying out. I wanted us to have one more good night.”
“You had the brainpower to go somewhere else, but not stick your dick in someone?” Ruby said, her voice raising. She didn’t care if she was making a scene. He’d made his bed and he could lay in it. “Do you hear yourself? The ride made you do it? And it lingered, what? All the way back to your car? That is fucking bullshit and you know it! Why the fuck were you riding the Tunnel of Love with someone else in the first place?!” She was hitting the point where nothing he could say would make it better and all she wanted was for him to feel shame equal to her level of hurt. “Who was it?” she hissed, all up in his face again, her voice low and dangerous. “Whose pussy were you so desperate to have that you jumped on it first chance you got?” A part of her wanted to seek the bitch out and strangle her, just for putting her hands on what should’ve been hers, but she knew she wouldn’t. It was tempting, but she’d never take it that far.
Clint knew there was no making any of this sound better, because it had been a shitty thing to do, and he was very well aware that he’d chosen to do it. He and Jules could have parted company after the Tunnel and left things alone, but the lust had not only lasted the walk to his car, it had lasted on the drive home and up into his bedroom. Not that he wanted to tell Ruby that, especially not when she was burning holes in his head with her glare. Clint had never seen her this angry, and he couldn’t blame her at all. He knew any apology he offered wouldn’t matter, that this was a breakup now, sooner and much worse than he’d intended. He couldn’t quite meet that fiery gaze as she stared him down, but he at least didn’t step back, eyes focused on Ruby’s chin. “Does it matter?” he muttered, reluctant to throw Jules under the bus. They’d been semi-friends for a long time, longer than he’d been friendly with Ruby, and he didn’t want to get in the middle of their girl drama. Ruby could probably find it out if she asked around enough, but Clint didn’t want to be the one to rat her out.
Ruby didn’t know why she asked, other than to give herself another avenue for her anger. Some bitch out there disrespected her and she deserved a portion of Ruby’s fury. But if Clint wanted to protect her? Fine. “I hope she was worth it,” she snarled, wanting so bad to hit him that she couldn’t stop herself from doing something. She grabbed the beer out of the hand of a passerby and poured it over Clint’s head, not near satisfied, but feeling a slight bit better. “Pay the man for your mess,” she said, then threw the cup at Clint before turning on her heel and walking away from him. Her hands were shaking, her body vibrating with a level of rage she didn’t think she was capable of feeling towards Clint. He’d seemed like such a good guy, but this was proof that they were all the same.
He ducked a little to try and avoid it, but not nearly far enough, and Clint got doused with the beer of a very confused-looking guy. He grumbled a little curse and wiped his face off, the defensive impulse to physically lash out at Ruby flashing through him. It was just an instinct, and he didn’t try to stop her storming off, watching her back for a beat with a pained expression. Well, he’d really blown that up, hadn’t he? Fuck. Not that he thought Ruby would’ve been any happier hearing it from him, but she’d still deserved that honesty, and his stalling had made it all worse. With a heavy sigh, Clint turned to apologize vaguely to the beer-less man, reaching for his wallet. So much for one last good night.