Jessie Humphries - Killing Ruby Rose

So him missing class had nothing to do with me or my antisocial behavior.

Except, somehow I knew that wasn’t true. He was genuinely worried about the guy behind all of this. And maybe even concerned about me. I could only hope he’d keep everything to himself. I didn’t want him to get involved with the messiness of my life. He didn’t deserve the whispers in the halls, the name-calling and speculation by the press, and he certainly didn’t deserve to be tangled up in a police investigation.

“Psst, Ruby,” Taylor whispered from her seat next to me. “Check this out.” She hit me with a rolled-up newspaper.

I took it from her unwillingly, if only to stop her from bludgeoning me with it, and leveled my eyes on her. I unrolled the paper and clenched my jaw in preparation for the real blow. The headline read “Ruby Rose: Withering from the Roots.”

Below the column header was a picture of me passed out on the cafeteria floor. And there was Liam with his bronzed triceps, holding me like a baby. I went from annoyed to humiliated to infuriated in a matter of seconds. My life was no longer my own, and now I was a joke, too. Taylor and her cheer cohort were snickering like a couple of playground bullies. And I never cared much for bullies.

Something snapped.

“You think this is funny?” I yelled at the suddenly snicker-less browbeaters.

“You think it’s OK to make fun of me right in front of my face?” I stood now, and the screech from my desk chair might as well have been a whistle telling everyone to look my way. I didn’t normally pick fights, but I knew how to win them.

“Ruby, is something the matter?” Mr. Holsum asked. He wouldn’t get here soon enough to stop me from heel-kicking Taylor’s front teeth out with my lovely Hermes sandals.

“We weren’t making fun of you,” Taylor said, so pathetically scared, so implausibly sincere. “I promise.”

“Oh yeah,” I said with a sneer I didn’t particularly like in myself. “What were you laughing at, then?”

“It’s Liam Slater we were smiling about,” her nameless friend piped up, scooting her chair away just in case I decided to strike. “He’s obviously so smitten with you. It’s just interesting is all.”

“What are you talking about?” I demanded.

“He’s the only guy who’s ever turned Taylor down,” said Nameless Girl through her trembling, lip-glossed mouth as Taylor shot her a look of disgust. “We thought he was gay or something.”

I looked at the newspaper scrunched in my fist. I didn’t see “smitten.” I didn’t see “interesting.” I saw privacy being deleted from my list of rights.

“Please, girls, that’s enough.” Mr. Holsum’s voice sounded thin, just like his floppy comb-over. “Please, take your seats.”

I looked at the declawed kittens in front of me and felt like a fool. They were petrified of me. Everyone was staring. They were all waiting for my next dramatic move.

“Never mind,” I said, straightening my posture, then sitting back down. Even if Taylor was trying to humiliate or test me, it didn’t matter. It wouldn’t be the first or last time, and, as usual, I couldn’t do anything about it. Other than ignore her.

I forced myself into a mindless coma for the next few hours. On autopilot, I planned to just get through the day and keep my head down until I could get my hands on some of the seriously strong Belgian chocolate stashed in the pantry at home. I focused on medicating myself with caffeine and getting to Dr. T’s office.

Until I remembered how she’d closed up on me last time, presumably for sharing too much information. Maybe I’d finally done it and destroyed my sanctuary—just like I’d destroyed everything else.

“I hear you almost got into a fight today,” Dr. T said calmly.

“Word travels fast.” I stared out my favorite square window at the surf whitewashing the sand. Relieved as I was that my sanctuary appeared to be intact, I didn’t feel like going so far as making eye contact. “Or is it that psychic thing again, and you felt the incident?”

“Your principal called me,” she said, pulling her chair closer. “ And your mom.”

“All eyes on the withering Rose, eh?”

She released a small puff of air. “I’m a little worried. You’re exhibiting an abnormal amount of acting out right now,” Dr. T said carefully, with an abnormal amount of pausing. “Which is not altogether surprising considering the trauma you’ve experienced, but is nonetheless concerning.”

Ugh. I hated when she went all intellectual on me.

“Nothing happened. It was a misunderstanding, not acting out,” I argued, like maybe saying it out loud would make it true.

“You mean you didn’t take some kind of karate stance in front of two girls today?”

“Karate stance?” I asked. Had I done that?

“Listen,” she said with The Tone. Against my will, I relaxed. “I know you already know this, but violence is never the answer.”

I finally looked her in the eye for the first time today. “I know that. Do you think I’m out of control or something?”

“I think you always have a choice,” she said. “We always have a choice.”

I didn’t understand where she was going with this. “Are you saying I had a choice in shooting LeMarq? That I shouldn’t have done it? That I was out of control and made the wrong choice—”

“No, no, no,” she hushed me. “In that situation you made the right choice. I’ve told you over and over again that what you did was justified. I’m talking about other choices, those that will certainly come in the future.”

It felt like she was alluding to something important. She had an uncanny ability to know things she shouldn’t.

“What did my mom tell you?” I asked.

“That you received another message, and that you made the right choice again,” she assured me. “You were right to report the text. You were right to trust the police.”

“See, that’s where I don’t agree,” I argued. “It couldn’t have been right, because the girl is dead. Because of me.” I knew I shouldn’t have trusted ex-lover Martinez. Not only was he vindictive, but completely incompetent. He hadn’t even bothered to call and tell me who the girl was. I had to find it out through my own (less than totally legal) lunchtime research at the library. I held my head in my hands, unable to support it anymore.

Her name was Sarah Jennings. Fifteen years old. Wasn’t even reported missing, because her single mom was working a twenty-four-hour shift as a nurse last night. Only a freshman in high school, she’d never wear a prom dress, a graduation robe, a wedding gown. The terror she must have felt, the pain her mother must feel, the darkness of it all threatened to consume me as I allowed myself to—

“Ruby.” Dr. T’s voice felt awkwardly near. “Come back.”

She wasn’t just near. She was sitting next to me on the couch with one arm around me. “God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose,” she said quietly.

“Huh?” I’d lost my bearings. Dr. T had never put her arm around me before. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s Emerson,” she said, pulling away to shine her headlight eyes on me. “God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please—you can never have both.”

I wasn’t drinking her Very Cherry Kool-Aid. And I definitely wasn’t getting the message she was trying to send. Like the physical contact had created a spam filter and her message was just going to the junk file.

Normally, I liked to think of myself as a highly intelligent person, and not just because of the test scores. I wasn’t one of those book-smart-only kids who could barely interact socially or drive without pissing off the entire State of California. Most of the time I could read people, situations, scenarios—and act accordingly. In fact, after I founded the Constitution Society, some people started calling me the “young Jane Rose,” saying things like, “Maybe you’ll be the District Attorney one day, just like your mom.” Or, “I bet you make your mom so proud.” Of course that was all before Dad died and I resigned from…everything.