I Let Her Ruin Herself novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Table

Laney sits with Ruby at lunch, and Wyatt confirms he saw Savannah look back before she screamed. A letter arrives from the county jail: Dale wants to see her.

"Come where?" I asked.

Savannah's face moved.

It went soft and wet and frightened in one breath.

Above us, a door opened and a counselor's shoes tapped on the landing.

"I just need some time, Ruby," Savannah said loudly. "Please don't follow me around."

She went down past me with her bandaged wrist held to her chest.

I stood on the landing and listened to her heels all the way to the bottom.

At lunch I carried my tray across the cafeteria with the whole room watching.

The table where I used to sit had filled up and closed ranks.

I stopped at the end of the next table, where nobody was sitting, and sat down alone.

Somebody laughed.

A tray hit the table across from me.

"Move your backpack," Laney Wyman said. "I'm sitting here."

She had her red curls clipped on top of her head and a diner apron stuffed into her bag for her shift later.

We had shared a lab table all year and had spoken maybe forty words.

"You don't have to," I said.

"I know I don't have to. I'm choosing to, like an adult." She unwrapped a sandwich. "Also, I've watched Savannah's video a dozen times and something is bothering me."

"A dozen?"

"I'm busy." She leaned in. "Her bandage is on her left wrist. In your video, Dale grabs her right one."

I put my fork down.

"You saw my video?"

"Everyone saw your video. Somebody's cousin works at the station and can't keep anything in." She shrugged. "It's not public, but it's around. Ruby, you didn't do anything wrong in it. You called before anybody was touched. I think that's the whole reason people hate you. You looked like you knew."

"I didn't know."

"Sure," Laney said, and bit her sandwich. "Anyway, left wrist. I'm just saying."

"Nobody cares which wrist."

"Nobody cares today," she said. "I'm patient."

It was the first thing anyone had said to me in two days that made me want to laugh.

I told her I wouldn't be posting the video or answering Savannah in the comments, and Laney stared at me.

"That's the dumbest plan I've ever heard."

"She wants me in the comments. She wants me angry and typing."

"Why?"

"Because then it's two girls fighting," I said. "Right now it's one girl crying."

Laney chewed for a while.

"Okay," she said. "That's the second dumbest plan I've ever heard. I'm in."

After school I walked home by the greenway because it was the long way and nobody I knew used it.

The gate had a new latch.

Wyatt was sitting on his toolbox beside it, drinking from a thermos, and he got up when he saw me.

"I wondered if you'd come by," he said.

"This is my way home."

"I'd have changed my way home." He held out a second cup. "It's hot chocolate. I didn't know what you drink."

"Nobody has made me anything on purpose in two days."

"It's from a packet," he said. "Don't get excited."

I took the cup.

It was too sweet and I drank all of it.

"The officer took my statement yesterday," he said. "He asked what I saw."

"What did you tell him?"

"That you called before anybody was grabbed. That you told me not to run in, and I ran in anyway, which was dumb." He turned the thermos lid in his fingers. "And I told him your friend looked back at you three times on the trail, and again before she screamed."

My throat tightened.

"You saw that."

"I stood right next to you." His gray eyes stayed on mine. "She wasn't looking for help. She was checking where you were."

Nobody had said it out loud before.

I had spent a whole life thinking I'd imagined it.

"The officer wrote it down," Wyatt said. "I thought you should know somebody did."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me. You called it in. I only had a wrench."

"You ran at four boys with a wrench."

"Yes," he said. "I'd like that kept off the record."

I laughed, and it came out cracked and strange.

He looked pleased and tried not to show it.

"How did you know?" he asked more quietly. "Before the boys even came out."

"I didn't," I said. "I just didn't like four men with a bar."

He nodded slowly and didn't push.

"I'm Wyatt."

"I read your jacket."

"Right."

I told him my name, and walked home with the empty cup in my hand.

Our porch light was on.

My mother stood in the doorway, holding a thin white envelope.

"This came by hand while you were at school," she said. "From the county jail."

I turned it over.

There was no name on the back, only a stamped number.

Inside was a sheet of lined paper, written in square pencil capitals.

"I NEED TO SEE YOU. PLEASE. DALE."

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