I Let Her Ruin Herself novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Post

Savannah's tearful post says Ruby stood by and filmed. The school turns on Ruby, and in the stairwell Savannah tells her flatly: you were supposed to come.

The post went up at 6:12 the next morning, and by breakfast it had three hundred thousand views.

My mother found it before I did.

She was still in her scrubs from the night shift, standing at the kitchen counter with her phone in both hands.

"Ruby," she said. "Come here."

Savannah had filmed herself on her bedroom floor in a gray sweatshirt, with her wrist wrapped in a bandage.

Her eyes were red, and her voice shook in all the right places.

"Yesterday a man I thought I could trust dragged me toward the woods," she said into the camera. "I screamed for help, and my best friend stood at the gate and filmed me."

She stopped and pressed her lips together.

"She didn't come. She just watched."

Under the video there were forty thousand comments.

"Who does that?"

"Name her."

"Girl, you deserve so much better."

My mother put the phone face down on the counter.

"Did you?"

"I called 911 before they ever touched her," I said. "I stayed where I was because they had a knife."

"Then say that."

"The police have my video. It shows everything."

"Then show everyone."

I looked at the phone lying on the counter.

In my first life I had never once answered Savannah in public.

I had waited for the truth to come out by itself, and it never did.

"Not yet," I said. "If I post it today, she gets to call it edited."

"What does that mean?"

"It means I'm not going to argue with her in the comments, Mom."

She studied my face for a long moment.

"You're different this morning," she said.

"I slept badly."

That was true in a way I couldn't explain to her.

The video was on my phone, and I had watched it twice at midnight.

It showed everything.

I had already sent a copy to my own email, in case my phone went missing.

Dale's shout was in there too, but the wind and the siren buried half of it.

You could hear Ruby and you could hear first.

You couldn't hear the rest unless you knew what it said.

At school, the hallway went quiet when I walked in.

Two girls from my lunch table turned their backs.

A boy I had known since third grade held up his phone and pretended to film me.

Someone had written WATCHER across my locker in blue marker.

I stood in front of it for a moment.

Then I opened the door, put my bag inside, and shut it.

"Ruby." A girl from my English class stopped next to me with her arms wrapped around her books. "I'm sorry, but how could you just stand there?"

"I called the police."

"She was screaming."

"I know. I was there."

"Savannah's your best friend."

"She was," I said.

The girl blinked at me and walked away.

At nine, the front office called Savannah's name over the speaker.

She came down the main hall in her pink coat, with her bandaged wrist held against her chest.

People stepped aside for her.

Somebody started clapping, and then a lot of people were.

Savannah ducked her head and let them.

She had been practicing that exact look since we were six.

She passed me without turning her head.

Her counselor met her at the stairwell door and walked her up to the second floor.

I had a free period.

I took the back stairs because I didn't want to cross the hall again.

The stairwell was empty, gray and cold, with one buzzing light.

I was on the landing between the first and second floors when the door above me opened.

Savannah came down alone.

Her counselor wasn't with her.

She stopped three steps above me with one hand on the rail.

For a second, the girl in the hallway was gone.

Her face had nothing in it.

She wasn't crying.

She wasn't scared.

It was the face she'd had in the parking garage, when she stood over me.

I had never seen it before that night, and now I had seen it twice.

"You were supposed to come," she said.

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