echo me in circles.
All things considered, Ruth considered herself a pretty lucky kid.
Things could be worse.
She could be Grace Chasity.
Perfect, God-honoring Grace and her perfectly placed butterfly hair clips.
A real miserable life as far as Ruth was concerned.
The concept of doing nothing but walking around with a crucifix up your ass (metaphorically, because there was no way Holier-Than-Thou Chasity was engaging in anything like that ) and looking down on everyone seemed like a fate worse than death.
Ruth’s life wasn’t perfect. She knew the girls in the locker room turned their heads and gagged after P.E because of her antiperspirant intolerance, and she knew that her overbite had been considered so chronic due to her intense thumb-sucking as a kid that she was probably the last person on Earth to have to wear headgear.
But, unlike Grace, at least Ruth had friends.
“Ruth! Yare yare daze! Are you even listening to me?” Waving a hand in front of her face, Richie snapped Ruth back to reality, their stack of textbooks now spread out across the back-corner library table that the two of them regularly occupied during lunch.
With a huff, Ruth slumped back in her seat.
“Yeah, I’m listening,” she lied, twirling her pencil around in her hand.
She couldn’t stop thinking about the other night. About Max. About how much the prank had backfired because of how much he had loved it.
Then again, did that mean it had backfired? Or just succeeded in an unexpected way? Since that night, Max and his cronies just walked past her locker without a word. The day after it had all gone down, he had actually waved at Ruth as she shuffled over to her dad’s car at the end of the school day.
Well, maybe ‘wave’ was a stretch. He just looked at her and lazily raised his hand in her general direction. But it was enough of a positive interaction to send Ruth into a spiral of sputtering and blushing and uncomfortable giggling and she stumbled into the passenger seat.
Richie, oblivious to Ruth’s racing mind, gave a smile and continued. “Good. So, as I was saying, Haruhi is obviously nonbinary-coded, or at least queercoded, and the fact members of the fandom ignore that really pisses me off! I mean, from the very first moment we meet her in the mang-”
“- Richie,” Ruth interrupted, “has Max tried to, like, talk to you today?”
Richie blinked, taken aback by the switch in topic, but then furrowed his brows in thought.
“Max Jägerman? N-no, I don’t think so. I haven’t seen him at all today,” he mumbled, looking down at his hands, “Actually, I think he might of used my name yesterday when he borrowed an eraser from me…”
That was weird. Crazy weird. Going this long - coming up on four days now - without being shoved into a locker or tripped over was unheard of. Ruth hadn’t experienced anything like this beyond the few days Max was out of school to get his tonsils out in the seventh grade.
And even then, Max’s friends had done his dirty work for him. But now there was nothing.
With a nod of acknowledgment at Richie, Ruth looked back down at her blank notebook page.
When they had left the Waylon Place that night, everyone had chalked it up as a bust. Max had patted Steph on the back and thanked her for a good time, he’d given the world’s most obvious wink to Grace (who looked seconds away from retching as he did) and then he’d just…gone home.
He had said it was the nicest thing anyone had ever done. What did that mean for the gaggle of nerdy prudes he had tormented for years? Was it just…over?
Because a humiliating prank that was misconstrued as ‘one hell of a party’?
Why had she even thought Grace’s plan would work in the first place?
Richie cleared his throat. “Ruth, you keep zoning out. Is this a medical emergency I should be aware of?”, he questioned.
Sighing, Ruth grabbed one of the English Literature textbooks from the center of the table and flipped to a random page.
“No, it’s just…,” Ruth paused, thinking hard about how she wanted to phrase her next words, “Well, do you think Max Jägerman thinks we’re friends now? After the other night?”
There was a heavy silence between the two.
As Richie’s mouth twitched, ready to speak, his eyeline shot up over Ruth’s shoulder and a voice from behind began.
“Yo, Fleming, this yours?”
Ruth’s eyes widened, twisting around in her seat as fast as she could without risk of whiplash.
Speak of the devil. It was Max.
He looked as vacant behind the eyes as ever, and held a piece of paper in his outstretched hand.
Ruth’s notes from AP Psych. She’d been looking for those everywhere.
Clearly not impressed by the non-response he was getting, Max pushed the paper closer to Ruth’s face with a grunt.
“It says ‘Ruth’ on it and it’s, like, got a bunch of smart shit on it. So, like, I know it’s yours,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact.
With a shaking hand, Ruth gave a hesitant nod and took the paper from him, not knowing what to say or do next.
It appeared that neither did Max, as he just tucked his hands into the pocket of his letterman jacket and chewed on the inside of his cheek before looking over at Richie.
“The fuck’s that?” Max motioned his head in the direction of Richie’s open laptop and its home screen.
When Ruth turned back around, she could see the confusion and borderline fear on her friend’s face. Richie was practically dripping sweat. Damn those overactive sweat glands.
Ruth quickly kicked at Richie’s ankle under the table, prompting him to say something , to which Richie jolted in his seat and blurted out; “Erza, from Fairytail!”
Another pause as Max cocked his head to the side ever so slightly, eyes still on the image of one of the many anime girls Richie was obsessed with.
He scanned over the laptop, then shifted over to Richie and Ruth was almost certain she could see the cogs working overtime in Max’s head to try and think of something to say.
“She’s got big tits,” Max settled on, before turning around and heading back towards the door. Once it swung close, the exhale both Richie and Ruth let out was so loud that the other library patrons turned to them in judgment.
Before either could say anything, the bell signifying the next passing period began.
Ruth tucked her Psych notes in between the pages of her corresponding notebook and gathered her things.
She had no clue how to even begin to unpack all of that.
Ruth had sat next to Reese Everett-Chiplucky in Study Period for the past three months. They weren’t that close, but they had an unspoken respect for each other that meant that when Ruth walked into the classroom to find Grace Chasity of all people in Reese’s usual seat, she couldn’t stop the way her jaw dropped.
“Grace? What are you doing?! Where’s Reese?” Ruth stammered, racing up alongside the other girl, slamming her books down on the adjoining desk.
Grace, who was sitting perfectly straight in her seat, barely gave Ruth a glance.
“I don’t know what you mean, am I not allowed to sit in this seat?”
“Well, considering you’re not in this study period, I’d say no! ” Ruth hissed, spittle flying from behind her headgear. If Grace noticed, she didn’t comment on it.
“It’s hardly my fault the Biology class curriculum promotes Darwinism,” she instead said, her chin tilted up and her eyes cold, “I’m boycotting it.”
There was always a sense of nothingness behind Grace’s eyes. Sometimes Ruth wondered if she felt anything at all besides blind disgust and disdain.
Ruth looked around the room, trying to locate Reese and hopefully repair this situation, but Grace leaned in unnervingly close. Ruth could feel her face turning red.
She’d never had a girl this close to her before. Even if that girl was Grace.
“I'm formally inviting you over on Sunday. You can bring Richard if you’d like,” Grace said with a sterile smile, "I know you two are close."
“Sunday?” Ruth queried, eyebrow raised, “what’s on Sunday?”
With a loud gasp, followed by a shush from the teacher, Grace clung to Ruth’s arm.
Ohmygodohmygodohmygod. Someone was touching her. A girl was touching her.
“Mass, Ruth! It’s never too late to open your heart, soul and eyes up to the Savoir.”
It almost fell on deaf ears, Ruth was barely able to concentrate on anything beyond the tight grip around her bicep, but with a shaky breath, she shrugged Grace’s hand away.
“I mean, I’m Jewish so I think I’ll pass,” she replied, still flustered, to which Grace seemed to have nothing else to say. Which was unlike her.
Pleased that she had been able to shut Grace up, Ruth drew her shoulders back in confidence.
“Also I’m bisexual and Richie is gay, so I don’t know if you’d want us there anyway! We're not close like that.”
Bam! That felt very satisfying! It was hard to get the last word in when Ruth spent any and all confrontation trapped in an anxiety bubble, but she wasn’t exactly threatened by Grace. Not in the way she was by Max.
Or had been.
It was still hard to wrap her head around how she was meant to feel.
“Your perversion is not something to be proud of.” Grace’s voice was low. Almost dangerous. It wiped the grin off of Ruth’s metal-filled mouth.
“If you think that sick, disturbed, choice that you and Richie have made…” her words trailed off, and Ruth prepared herself to dart towards the nearest exit.
But her resolve faded as she noticed…
Was Grace about to cry?
“Homosexuals are going to burn in hell, Ruth,” Grace choked out, attempting to keep some level of decorum, “and when Hellfire falls upon us all, I want to be able to walk into the home of the Lord with my friends.”
Oh .
That’s what this was.
Ruth had been so mentally twisted up about the concept of Max considering her a friend that she hadn’t thought twice about Grace.
Grace wanted to ‘save’ her.
They thought they were friends.
That was…well, it was pretty sad actually.
Nervously fiddling with one of the brackets on her headgear, Ruth waited either for Grace to continue or for something deep and introspective to just tumble out of her own mouth.
But considering how dry it currently was, the latter didn’t seem very plausible.
So neither of them said anything. Ruth just slowly grabbed a pen from her pencil case, and started on her homework.
Grace just stared, tight-lipped and glassy-eyed, at the floor.
Shit. Things would’ve gone a lot better, in Ruth’s humble opinion, if she had never agreed to Grace’s stupid plan in the Waylon House that night.
Max she could deal with.
She wasn’t sure if she could deal with Grace Chasity.
Ruth skipped rehearsals for The Barbecue Monologues.
She knows she isn’t really needed anyways. She’s the only person up in the booth, and the most competent person in the whole show.
Ruth knew the lines. Fucking Godamn Trevor didn’t.
The last minute change in pick-up time does mean, however, that she’ll have to wait a good half an hour for her dad to finish work and get her.
Richie stays back with her.
Sitting cross-legged on the curb near the flagpoles, Ruth happily filled her best friend in on the mere moments that they hadn’t spent together.
The two told each other everything, they had since they had first met in middle school.
“-And then BAM! I walk into study period and Grace Chasity has totally stolen Reese’s seat!” She said with a dramatic flailing of her arms and an air of disbelief.
Richie’s ears seemed to prick up at that, the manga he had been holding no longer of any interest.
“What? Why was Grace trying to sit with you?” Richie queried, his voice softer than Ruth thought it had any reason to be.
Everyone else had gone home, no one else was around.
“That’s the thing, she was inviting you and me to church . To stop us from being pervs, ya’know.” Ruth picked at a weed growing up from between a crack in the cement. The whole part with Grace grabbing her, and Grace looking so fucking hurt wasn’t really important to the whole story. She didn’t need to include that part.
With a hum, Richie pulled his knees up to his chest.
Ruth turned to face him as fast as she could.
She knew very well that he only did that when he had a secret he felt he couldn’t tell anyone.
“Richie? What’s up?”
The idea that something had happened while she wasn’t around made Ruth’s stomach rumble with anxiety. She could see that Richie was in the same boat from the sheen of sweat on his forehead.
“It’s…it’s about Max.”
Ruth could hardly contain her gasp.
“ Jägerman ? What did he do?” Ruth’s heart hammered in her chest. “Damnit, I thought he was gonna be cool with us from now on!”
“No, he was! Is! He…” Richie trailed off, hands clenching and unclenching by his side. He exhaled deep, eyes closed.
“He kissed me, Ruth.”
Ruth’s entire body went cold.
That…that monster .
He had kissed her best friend? Taken advantage of him? When he knew very well that if he was that desperate that she was right there? Not that she even liked him, especially now she knew what kind of-
“And I wanted him to. I kissed him back.”
Oh, now that was…
That was unexpected.
Ruth could barely croak out an audible; “excuse me?”
Turning so they were face-to-face, Richie's shoulders relaxed slightly.
“After lunch, when I was heading to class, I ran into him in the hallway. He looked upset, kinda sick. I thought he was gonna barf,” he began to explain, “Then his friends turned to look at me, and then Max looked, and then they all left besides him and…”
A car horn honked.
Shit, it was her dad.
“Ruthie! C’mon honey, your mom’s making tuna casserole! Don’t wanna miss out!”
“Yeah, Dad, gimme a minute! God!” She shouted back, her voice sounded a little meaner than she had wanted it to. But if he had been interrupted in the middle of the conversation she was having, then he would’ve felt the same.
Richie slung his backpack over his shoulder, much to Ruth’s dismay.
“Wait, Richie!”
“I’ll message you on Discord about it when I get home. But, yeah, I think…I think he’s gonna sit with us at lunch tomorrow.”
And then he left .
Left her standing there with that massive cliffhanger while her dad awkwardly watched.
With a scoff, Ruth stomped her way over to the family Sedan, slamming the passenger seat door and buckling herself in with all the rage of a woman scorned.
Which she was, as far as she was concerned.
As her dad started driving, he attempted to clear the tension with a fatherly; “So, how was your day? How’s Richard going?”
And that was really all she needed to set her off.
“ Richard is a fall-weather friend, Dad! Richard just had his first kiss with a guy who is an actual, literal monster! And he totally wasn’t going to even tell me! He only did because I could tell something was wrong!”
Ruth wasn’t even sure why she was mad. Sure, he had gone and gotten kissed before her, but the dating and romance world was different for gay guys. At least that’s what she’d taken away from porn.
But it was more than that. Kissing Quarterback Max Jägerman? How the hell did that even happen? And now she had to wait for Richie to walk all the way home and write out a message, if he even remembered to!
Richie wasn’t even a nerdy prude anymore!
Just nerdy!
And with Pete making flirty eyes with Stephanie Lauter all day, every day.
Well, it was just Ruth left!
Unfuckable, gross, geeky loser Ruth Fleming.
" Oh , uh, well I don't think any of those things are true, Ruthie. But, as your father I'd also appreciate not having to think about that first part."
Damnit, she'd said that out loud.
Sinking down into the car seat, Ruth tried to imagine a world where Richie was at least semi-popular. Where did that leave her? Would she be forced to sit with the theatre kids at lunch? A fate worse than death.
"Ya'know, when I was your age I was considered somewhat of a 'nerdy prude' myself," her dad began, and Ruth replied with a drawn out groan. She was not in the mood to hear about how everything was gonna get better.
She wasn't interested in the future. Her life now was currently sucking total butt, that was all she cared about.
As the car slowed to a stop at an intersection, the attention of both Fleming's was caught by a chanting that could be heard over the Top 40 pop song on the radio.
"Hey-ho, heck no! Coed dance has got to go!"
Oh great, the last person Ruth wanted to see right now.
"There you go! You're not the only kid in Hatchetfield who gets flack for not having blossomed yet! Grace Chastity could be a great friend to have!"
" Chasity, Dad. Not 'Chastity', geez," she muttered, eyes fixed out the window as she watched the other teen stand, solitaire, outside St. Bartholomew's Church.
Wait, no, she wasn't alone. Her parents were hovering near the door of the church, holding flyers.
"Plus I'd rather die than hang out with her. She's crazy. And she thinks I'm going to hell."
Ruth stared at her, like she was staring at a car crash she couldn’t draw her eyes away from. And to her surprise, Grace looked back.
Through the glass of the car window, Ruth felt her dad’s worth of affirmation blur into the background. She had never really seen Grace before.
Not like this.
She was scared. Ruth had caught her unawares, had peered into her habitat.
Ruth had only ever watched from the outside before.
Observed Grace’s practiced smiles, her graceful steps, her elegant handwriting, her feminine & performed way.
It was kinda gross, how forced everything was, and how she seemed to have convinced even herself that the way she acted matched how she felt inside.
And, despite it all, Ruth feels it all click in her mind in this one moment. Watching Grace Chasity stand alone with a picket sign, her parents watching over her with beaming smiles, even after she had tried so hard to connect with Ruth and Richie.
Every time Grace spats bible verses at her, called her sinful and damned & sick, tried to save her.
That look in her eyes wasn’t hate.
It was jealousy.
Ruth was a freak, a social outcast, a total loser. Sure. But she had no problem being exactly who she was. She'd been out of the closet since freshman year, she'd never felt the need to wear makeup or try and tame her curls. Ruth didn't feel the need to make herself more palatable to others.
And that was all Grace did.
Ruth felt like she couldn’t breath. She thought about Grace’s hands around her arm.
Shit.
She was falling for Grace Chasity.