I Let Her Ruin Herself novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Gate
Ruby wakes at eighteen on the morning of the attack, calls 911 instead of running in, and watches Savannah scream while looking straight at her. Dale is arrested shouting that Ruby was supposed to come first, and Savannah texts her from ten feet away: why didn't you come?
At 7:04 on January 9, I stood at the greenway gate and called 911 on four boys who hadn't done anything yet.
Two hours earlier, I had woken up with both hands around my own throat.
The last thing I remembered was a parking garage, a knife, and Savannah standing over me.
I had said her name, because I thought she had come to help.
I was thirty years old and bleeding on concrete, and she was the person I had protected my whole life.
Then I was eighteen, in my childhood bed, with a smooth neck and a phone that said January 9.
I knew what today was.
Today I ran into the woods for Savannah, and it cost me my right knee and any chance of children.
Dale Ruskin got ten years for it.
Savannah cried in the hospital waiting room, and I thought the tears were for me.
They weren't.
My phone had a text from her, sent at 11:48 the night before.
"Walk me in tomorrow? Dale keeps texting me. You're the only one I trust."
In my first life I had written back, "Always."
This time I stared at it until the screen went dark.
At 6:40 she knocked on our kitchen door in her pink coat.
She was holding two paper cups.
"Hot chocolate," she said. "Because you hate coffee and I love you."
It was warm in my hands, and I drank it.
That's how good she was.
We walked down Birch Lane together while she talked about a video she wanted to film, and she checked her phone twice.
At the greenway gate, a man stood on a stepladder with a screwdriver, replacing the latch.
His green jacket said Parks District, and under it, Wyatt.
He had short dark hair, and the hand holding the screwdriver had a pale scar across the knuckles.
"Morning," he said. "Don't take the woods path today."
"Why not?" I asked.
"Four guys went up it before six. One had a metal bar down his pant leg." He got down off the ladder. "They don't look like they're going to school."
Savannah laughed and tugged my sleeve.
"They're probably just boys from school, Ruby. They hang out there. Come on, we'll be late."
Her voice was light and sure.
I looked at her hand on my sleeve.
She had told me she was scared of Dale, and Dale was one of the boys who hung out there.
"I'm calling the police," I said.
"Over some guys standing around?" Savannah's smile stayed exactly where it was. "You'll make a scene."
I dialed anyway.
"911, what's your emergency?"
"I'm at the greenway gate by Maple Glen High School," I said. "There are four men on the woods path with a metal bar and maybe a knife. I think they're waiting for someone."
"Stay where you are, ma'am. Officers are on the way."
Savannah let go of my sleeve.
"Fine," she said. "I'm not standing around in the cold. I'll go slow and you catch up."
She went through the gate alone.
I raised my phone and started recording.
Wyatt stepped up beside me and said nothing.
Savannah walked down the paved trail with her hands in her pockets.
She looked back at me three times.
At the bend, the boys came out of the trees.
Dale was in front, in a black work jacket, with his hand already out.
He grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward the woods.
Savannah screamed.
She didn't look at the boys.
She looked straight down the trail at me.
In my first life, I thought she was begging me to come.
This time I saw her face while she screamed.
She was watching to see if I was moving.
My right knee remembered the metal bar before I did.
Every part of me wanted to run.
So I stayed where I was.
"That's a girl screaming," Wyatt said quietly.
"They have a knife," I said. "Don't."
He looked at me for one second.
Then he grabbed the pipe wrench from his toolbox and ran down the trail yelling, "Police are right behind me! Police are coming!"
Two of the boys bolted before he got there.
The third dropped the bar and went after them.
Dale stood alone at the bend holding Savannah's wrist, looking from Wyatt to the gate.
Then he looked at me.
"Where is she?" he shouted. "Why isn't she coming?"
A patrol car turned in off the school road, lights going.
An officer wrestled Dale to the ground, and a folding knife skidded across the pavement.
Dale twisted his head toward Savannah.
"You said Ruby would come first!" he screamed. "You said she'd be right behind you!"
Savannah put both hands over her mouth.
"I don't know what he's talking about," she told the officer. "He's been stalking me for weeks."
She was crying now.
I stood at the gate with my phone still recording, my knee whole and my hands steady.
Then it buzzed in my palm.
The text was from Savannah.
She was standing ten feet away in front of the officer, wiping her eyes with one hand and typing with the other.
"Why didn't you come?"
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