Who: Ruthie and open!
When: Shortly after 9 AM
Where: Main street, not far from the school
Ruthie hadn't slept. She'd been at home waiting for the kid to call that he was ready to be picked up, and it had never come. She had comforted herself with this by justifying it a few different ways. Maybe he had finally made friends. Maybe they were going to hang out some more. Maybe, maybe, maybe. But she'd been worried. Eventually she'd gotten the call from the police to come down, she'd sent Brenda a message, and she'd gone to the school. She had very calmly listened to the officer's explanation that sounded like a very fancy and official way of saying 'dude, we are so fucking lost.' Then she had sat down at the curb and waited.
Her first coherent thought had been something along the lines of
'Jesus Christ, we had that kid for five minutes and we lost him already.' And then her brain had gone blissfully blank. She sat and waited. A few times in the night she spoke with family members, updating them as to what was going on, and there were a lot of talks and texts with Brenda. She didn't move until the next morning and the police told her everyone had to go across the street. She had done that. And when the drills came up, she got up, and began walking down the street. Earth wasn't complaining to her, much... the weird thing was that Earth seemed to understand they needed to hurt Her to exhaust all options... but Earth also knew that it was pointless. She had told Ruthie. They weren't going to get in that way.
She couldn't listen to it. She just fucking couldn't. So Ruthie started walking away from the crowds, with every intention of going back once they stopped drilling into her fucking element.