Ruby Fox (![]() ![]() @ 2018-06-01 10:12:00 |
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Entry tags: | #october 2017, ruby |
Who: Ruby and Jason
When: Thursday, October 26th, mid-day
Where: School, Study Hall
Status: Complete
While Ruby knew life had to go on, it still felt weird going to school when Amelia was still missing. She felt like she should be out searching, even when there was nowhere left to search. It went like this every time someone went missing, but this was the first time in years that she’d known the person. Not only did she know Amelia, she’d had dinner with her just the week before. She was close to her family. It felt like she should do more, even when she couldn’t. So she was at school, mostly due to her father’s insistence, because skipping Monday was enough. She couldn’t skip the whole week.
That didn’t mean she was getting her work done. It seemed harder to focus, even on the things that she liked. AP English was usually one of her better courses, but she’d read the same paragraph in Hamlet four times and still didn’t know what she’d read. Ruby dropped the book on the table and stared up at the ceiling as she sighed in frustration. She needed a break, something to get her mind on something else, anything else. Hamlet wasn’t helping at all.
Getting high with Jules the night before had been a weird turn for a Wednesday night and left Jason feeling--not distracted, exactly, but slightly off center on Thursday. He had made it through his classes to study hall, but instead of finding a place to sit by himself and do his work like he typically did, he looked to see who else was around. His gaze caught on Ruby, who looked like she had already abandoned trying to do homework, so he walked toward her. They weren’t best friends or anything, but he liked her and they usually got along.
Jason glanced at the book in front of her. AP English was one of his least favorite subjects, since too much of it was interpretative in a way he found frustrating, even if he could build decent arguments. “You look about as into Hamlet as I feel,” he said in lieu of another greeting, dropping into a nearby seat. “Though don’t let me interrupt you if you’re secretly in the zone.”
Ruby’s head popped up as Jason spoke and she huffed a little laugh. Normally she loved English, but it was one of the harder subjects to get through when she couldn’t focus. It took actual thought and her mind was too preoccupied to make it worth it. “I’m just distracted. Not into it right now. I need to be, but… there’s a part of me that keeps thinking I should just watch the movie and be done with it.” It would certainly be easier than reading it.
Jason quirked an eyebrow. "What's got you dis--" he started to ask. His brain didn't work in a way where he immediately put social connections together, but partway through the question he remembered Ruby was friends with Jasper, so that one was pretty easy. "Oh. Right. Would talking about what's on your mind help any?" he asked, bluntly but not unsympathetically. He never really knew how to offer support without being straightforward about it. “If not, we can do… whatever else.”
Ruby could see the moment where it clicked, when he thought more about what was going on in her life than what was right in front of him. She wasn’t close to Jason, but they were friendly enough that he knew who she hung out with. That probably gave him enough to connect the dots. “I dunno. Maybe?” She said, lips turning up a bit. “It’s pretty depressing though. So maybe… Maybe talk about something else.”
Jason regarded Ruby thoughtfully as she answered. He nodded acknowledgment to the part to her decision; if she ended up wanting to talk about it, the offer was there. Coming up with something else on the spot, he went with the first thing that came to mind that would probably be surprising enough to maybe be distracting. “I got high with Jules last night. She seems to think that I don’t have enough fun, which isn’t really a surprise given her definition of fun.” He and Ruby might only be kind of friendly, but his general annoyance with the whole popular crowd wasn’t any kind of secret.
“Seriously?” Ruby asked, brows raising in amusement. “I’d’ve loved to see you high.” That was wildly unexpected. It was true that she hadn’t been close to Jules in years, and that she and Jason weren’t close either, but she felt like she knew them both well enough to say that they did not have the best relationship. Or they hadn’t, but maybe that was changing. Jules was changing, or so it seemed. She’d made an effort with Ruby, though she’d have to see if there was actual follow through. “So, what’s so different about her fun and your fun?” she asked with a little grin. “You mean to tell me you’re not going to Victoria’s party?”
Jason huffed a laugh. “I don’t think it’s that entertaining. Mostly I’ve found it makes it easier to relax, the like, three times it’s happened now.” It wasn’t really anything he went out of his way for, but as with most things, if he didn’t hate it immediately he was usually somewhat open to it. Getting high with Jules though was definitely weird for him, given how prone they were to arguing, but their parents had been fighting and it was always easier to put things aside then. “Well, hers centers a lot on dating, which I haven’t really done a ton of. She apparently thinks I need a girlfriend,” he said with some amusement, though he couldn’t stop from rolling his eyes at the party question. “You know me. I love a Victoria Chapman party.” Not that he went to them. Of Jules’ friends, Victoria was definitely on the list that he tended to get along with the least.
“You make it sound like therapy rather than fun,” Ruby told him with a little shake of her head. Sure, getting high could help if she was seriously stressed, but Ruby preferred it more for recreation. She found herself shaking her head as Jason continued, disagreeing with Jules on that point. “If you don’t want a girlfriend, you don’t need a girlfriend. Dating someone doesn’t fix anything. But you also shouldn’t let being single stop you from getting out,” she said, then laughed. “Hey, she’s not my favorite person either, but it’ll probably be the best Halloween party in town. I think everyone’s probably counting on the party being big enough that they can go and not deal with her personally. You should go.”
There was a lot that had built up in Jason’s head over the years in terms of putting pressure on himself to get out of Point Pleasant and with the end goal rapidly approaching, he didn’t want to lose track of that. So in a way, relaxing in general was just kind of recreational. Maybe he was too tightly wound, but he didn’t really know how else to be. “I don’t know if it was about fixing anything, just something about… connecting with people, I guess. It was a weird topic for us to end up on, since it’s not the kind of thing we’d usually talk about.” He shrugged a little. “I feel like the main hurdle to getting out more is lack of things to do around here,” he said drily, grinning a little at Ruby. “I’ve got a pretty good streak of avoiding them going. You’re planning to go, I’m assuming?”
Ruby knew connecting with people was important, even if she wasn’t dating anyone. She didn’t know what she’d do without her friends. She wondered where Jason stood on that, who he was close to, if anyone. It definitely wasn’t Jules. “It might be a little weird, but it doesn’t seem bad,” she suggested, then laughed a little. “There’s plenty of things to do around here. Or, at least, about the same amount as anywhere else.” No, they didn’t have any clubs, but they weren’t old enough to go to them anyways. Same with a variety of bars. They had football games and high school parties and dances— Pretty much what any high school kids had, at least as far as she could tell from TV. “I am,” she nodded in reference to the party. “I thought it’d be fun. Jules is actually gonna help me with my costume.” Which was definitely something new. She was still feeling a little weird about it, like there was a punchline she couldn’t see coming, but if Jules was willing to try, then so would she.
Jason had trouble letting himself rely on other people in any capacity, which sometimes left him with a limited capacity for connecting with them. He had a few people he considered friends, or at least people he willingly spent time with. It wasn’t the sort of thing he gave a ton of thought to ordinarily. “No, it wasn’t bad,” he agreed. “Jules can just be surprising sometimes.” Not always in a good way, but also not always in a bad way. “What’s your favorite thing to do around here?” he asked, since it never felt like there was a lot, though maybe he didn’t care for the whole high school experience in general. He couldn’t wait to put it behind him anyway. He raised an eyebrow at the mention of Jules. He knew the general gist that Ruby and his sister were friends at some point until they suddenly weren’t. “You and Jules are hanging out again?”
“Yeah… yeah, she can be,” Ruby said with a little nod. That Jules was seriously dating Jasper definitely surprised her. She totally got them fooling around, because why not, but dating took a lot more work. “Depends. Mostly just hang out with friends. Have fun, goof off. Maybe party a little. Go to the movies. I love dancing, but I feel like I have to wait for a real party or a dance to do that. And I know it’s not a typical thing, but I still love working on cars and going for a ride on my bike.” She knew the last was more her thing, but he’d asked. It would’ve been nice to go ride with someone, but she knew that was a lost cause. “It’s a new thing we’re trying, since she’s started dating Jasper. I’m still not sure how I feel about it, but I feel like I should try if she is, you know?”
That Jules could catch him off-guard was something that Jason sometimes found annoying, but also engendered respect. He clashed with his sister in a lot of ways and there were ways she was predictable, but that came more from prolonged exposure than anything else. Listening as Ruby listed off her activities, Jason regarded her thoughtfully. He wasn’t great at goofing off, if he thought about it, at least not in more than limited chunks of time, as it tended to stress him out if he felt like he was behind on schoolwork or whatever else. “Yeah, dancing seems like the kind of thing it’d be hard to do here outside of specific times. How’d you end up getting into working on cars and your whole bike thing?” He continued to give her a look that was somewhere between questioning and bemused, but he did his best to shrug off the confusion. “I guess that makes sense. I remember you guys used to be on better terms before, but then stopped? But if things are getting better now, that’s cool.”
For Ruby, occasionally goofing off didn’t mean that she didn’t get her school work done. It was the opposite, in fact. She was an advocate of ‘work hard, play hard’ and felt like she deserved a break whenever she could actually take one. The rest of the time was school or work, both of which would help her get out of Point Pleasant when she graduated. “My dad owns a garage,” she said with a grin. “Point Pleasant Automotive. I kinda grew up around cars. It was something my dad and I could do together and it developed into a hobby and then a bit of a passion. He’s not crazy about me riding, but I wear a helmet and he knows I’m safe.” As safe as she could be. She knew that sometimes it was the other people on the road that she needed to watch out for. “Better’s a relative term,” she grinned. “If we’re not clawing each other’s eyes out, it’s an improvement, right?”
Jason tended to only be able to operate in one mode at a time and that was usually keyed up toward the eventual end goal of getting away from Point Pleasant for college with as little reliance on his father or stepmother as possible. Mostly he felt on track for this and had been for most of high school, so it would be dumb to falter now. Jules probably did have a point in that he should have more fun, but he didn’t care to admit that. “That’s cool. I didn’t realize your dad owned that,” Jason said. It was the sort of thing he didn’t put together on his own. “All I’ve managed to figure out about cars is changing oil from a YouTube video.” Which was pretty basic as car care went, he was pretty sure, but it was a practical skill to have. And one he’d never have gotten from his own father. “So anything more complicated than that is pretty impressive.” He cracked a grin in return. “And yeah, interactions that don’t draw blood definitely seems like progress. What’s your costume going to be?”
“That’s more than most people know,” Ruby smiled at Jason. “But you should learn to change a tire, if you don’t already know. Nobody needs to change oil on the fly, but people get flats all the time.” She knew that guys didn’t like being told what they should or shouldn’t know, especially when it came to cars, but this seemed like a good piece of advice to impart and hopefully not something he’d take offense to. “I’m going as Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas. Jules said she’d help me dye my hair and paint myself blue,” she grinned. “I might get to help pour fake blood on her, if she ends up going to the party. Fingers crossed.”
“That’s a good point, so I’ll remember to look it up,” Jason said, since it was and he hadn’t really thought about it since as it happened to not come up for him yet. He could definitely be touchy about certain topics, particularly when he knew a lot about them and had firmly set opinions, but cars were not one of them for him and it was practical advice, since likely wherever he ended up moving after high school, he’d still need to drive. Jason huffed a laugh. “That’s at least one of the more Halloween appropriate prom queens Jules could choose. Hopefully you’ll get to do the fake blood pouring,” he said with a grin. Him not going to a party was one thing; he had trouble imagining Jules would skip one her friend was throwing. “Sally’s a good choice, if I’m remembering correctly. I never actually watched that movie.”
“You’ve never seen The Nightmare Before Christmas?” Ruby asked, surprised. “Did you, like, not have a childhood? How did you miss this one? It’s on every Halloween. Or Christmas. I’m always a little confused about when I should watch it, but I figure anytime between October and December works.” Part of her felt like it was more appropriate as a Halloween movie, but it was about Jack dressing up as Santa, so that was definitely Christmas, but it shouldn’t be watched next to the Grinch or things like that. “So no costumes for you. No party. Are you doing anything to celebrate?”
“Not… all of it? I’ve seen parts of it here and there,” Jason said, shrugging. His childhood had kind of sucked, if he thought about it, but it wasn’t the sort of thing he dwelled on, much less liked to talk about. He shrugged. “We’ve never really done a lot at holidays.” ‘We’ being his dad and him, at least. Jules went to parties and maybe did stuff with her mom that was their girl time or whatever. Their parents always gave him a bunch of presents he didn’t want at Christmas, but it wasn’t like they watched movies together or anything. So seasonal movies never caught any kind of appeal to Jason. “So, celebrating hasn’t ever seemed very important. I’ll probably sleep and enjoy not being hungover,” he said, smiling ruefully. “Are you just doing the party, or going to do something on actual Halloween night?”
Ruby kind of felt like he needed to be dragged out and shown a good time, but at the same time it didn’t sound like he was interested in that at all. Not even in watching a good scary movie on Halloween. So why bother if all he wanted to do was sleep? “I’ll probably put on my costume and hand out candy on Halloween night. We have a lot of kids in the area and it’s fun to see them at the door. Then maybe chill and watch whatever horror movie ‘s on TV,” she smiled. There were some she stayed away from, feeling like they were a little too real for living in Point Pleasant, but some were good, scary fun.
Jason probably did need to be dragged out and spend more time with people, but he was stubbornly not admitting that Jules had a point about that. Besides, he had spent enough time convincing himself he preferred to be by himself that he didn’t really know what to do about it. Sometimes it really was true, but other times he wasn’t sure how to approach people outside of specific events. “Yeah, since it’s a Tuesday it seems easier to go with something quieter. Maybe if Nightmare Before Christmas is on I’ll try to watch it,” he said.
“I’d tell you to live a little and spice it up, but it’s a good movie, so you should watch it,” Ruby smiled. “If you do, you’ll have to tell me what you think of it.” He’d probably just see it as a silly kids movie, but if not then it would be fun to discuss. When the bell suddenly rang, Ruby looked down at her book, not at all put out about not having read it. She hadn’t been able to focus anyways and talking to Jason had been a nice distraction. “One step closer to Friday,” she smiled.
“I will,” Jason said, since stating his opinion on something was rarely a problem for him. He was willing to give it a shot; even if he ended up disliking it, at least he would know, and movies were an easy enough investment unlike some other things. As the bell rang, he realized he hadn’t bothered to pull out any of his own work, but he could always go to the library tomorrow to work on his essay. He smiled back at her, hoping that talking had at least gotten her mind off of other things, no matter how temporarily. “Yep. You’ll have to tell me how the party goes next week,” he said. He’d see Jules before then, probably, but talking to Ruby had been enjoyable.