Crumbling

Chapter One

Ruby was sitting in the back of the classroom; she often dozed and found herself flustered when teachers paid attention to her. This morning was especially flustering to her. She was exhausted and the teacher had turned out the lights in order to show possibly the most boring PowerPoint on meiosis ever created. Ruby would normally fall asleep during things like this, but the teacher mercilessly threatened to lower the grades of any students caught unconscious in the midst of this enlightening presentation.

Suddenly, the enthralling diagrams of prophase were interrupted by the stream of light coming from the slowly opening classroom door.

A girl walked in and swiftly closed the door behind herself. In the low light, ruby couldn't quite make out much more than this girl's tall, slim, feminine figure. The teacher, Mr. Crane, walked over to the girl. Hushedly, the girl told him something, he pointed to Ruby. She felt something strange as this girl's eyes met hers in the darkness, it took a lot of effort for ruby to look away as she walked towards her.

"Ruby East?"

"Yes, um, what's your name?"

The girl giggled at Ruby's blatant awkwardness. She set a small slip of paper on ruby's desk, "My name is Kelly, and this is from the guidance office, good luck."

Ruby felt a moment of panic, but retained her composure, "Well thanks, see you."

"It's no problem." Kelley walked out with a swish of her dark and wildly curly hair.

Ruby read the slip, it said to report to her guidance counselor's office in the last ten minutes of class. She looked at the clock and, with dismay, discovered that she would have to wait a half hour until she could leave the classroom.

The next thirty minutes were mainly spent looking at the ever-so-slow clock behind her, but occasionally she'd drift into daydreams. She found herself thinking about Kelly, she even started to draw her on the side of her notes. Ruby was a poet and she thought that Kelly would be an ideal person to write about. Under the slender and curly doodle, she started to write, but couldn't seem to make any sensible lines. Eventually she gave up and worked more on the doodle.

The time finally came to go to the guidance office. She stood, collected her books and bag, then left the room.

The school Ruby attended was a small and unique school. The student body consisted of about 600 students from ninth to twelfth grade. To enter the school, students had to take an entrance test, not necessarily a challenging one, but one that certainly filtered out the less-motivated students.

Because the school had so few students, it was very low funded. The guidance office was in a normal classroom, except all the chairs and desks were stacked against walls, and there was a large desk, the counselor's, in the center of the classroom, like an island.

Ruby walked into the counselor's office and sat in front of her. Her counselor's name was Mrs. Jean, a woman who insisted she just be called Abby. She was in her late twenties, usually she was sweet, but occasionally she could be very blunt.

"Ruby, you know that we have very high expectations at this school."

"Yes."

"Do you think you're fulfilling them?"

"I'm not really.... well I'm not sure," Ruby stuttered.

"Obviously you need to try to do better, you've been tardy five times this semester and you're barely hanging on in AP chemistry."

"I know, I'm gonna-"

"No, you don't know, if you knew, you wouldn't be at risk of being removed from our school in the first place. Give me one good reason why I shouldn't tell the principal to remove you from the school right now."

Ruby felt her cheeks burning and her heart racing. She loved her school and all her friends there, she couldn't bare to ever leave.

"I'm going to do better, I'm in the process of creating a better organization system and a new schedule so I can get better sleep and not have as many problems waking in the morning."

Abby gave a half smile, "that's a good enough reason, you should start going to your next class now."

"Thank you very much, have a good day, Abby."

"You too, Ruby."

Ruby stepped out into the crowded hallway, she pushed down her emotions from the confrontation with Abby. She was headed for her last period class, World Literature.

World Literature was always a relief at the end of the day. The teacher, Ms. Lorraine, was loved by all the students and other teachers. Ruby felt most comfortable in that room.

Ms. Lorraine would always praise Ruby for her poems and essays. While Ruby did have a tendency to shy away from extra attention, she did crave some kind of recognition. Ms. Lorraine once read one of Ruby's original poems to the class and talked about how impressed she was by it.

When Ruby walked into the class, she was greeted by three very good friends, Flynn, Bambi, and Jacob. Flynn, a quirky, outgoing, and absurdly tall guy started telling Ruby about the debate he was just having with Bambi. Bambi was maniacally and warm-heartedly laughing at Flynn's exaggerations, she was an extremely sweet, eccentric, and lovable person that Ruby had befriended freshman year.

"Bambi is trying to convince me that yellow M&M's are the best tasting, but she fails to see that blue has the most distinct flavor."

"Well I totally agree with Bambi," Ruby said, keeping a serious face.

Jacob laughed and told them they were discounting texture. Jacob was a very kind and bold guy. He was a serious Christian and Ruby had always looked up to him, though she disagreed with him on certain things.

Ms Lorraine went to the front of the classroom and instructed everyone to sit down. Ruby took her seat next to Jacob's and they listened to Ms Lorraine talk about The Odyssee. After some note taking and doodling, class ended, and it was time to go home.

Ruby walked with her friends to the parking lot, each of her friends drove off, but she decided to stay on campus a little longer. She had seen Kelly sitting alone on a bench and wanted to make sure she was ok and had a ride coming.