Ruby Red - Xavier Thorpe [on hold]

Chapter Seven

Tyler walked over to Ruby, "So you're Wednesday's sister?"

"Can we not talk about her?" She moved away from him to clean up a table that had a couple of plates on it, he had a bad vibe, and she didn't like it.

He followed after her, "What? You don't want to talk about your twin sister? I know you're different, clearly," He said looking her up and down, "but is it so awful to talk about her?"

"Listen, I don't give a crap about what a normie has to say about me or my sister, but you have no right to look at me like that and act as if you know better than me because you don't. You've known her for a week and a half, at most, I've had to deal with her, every single day for almost sixteen years. You don't know anything, you creep."

She was ready to leave, she grabbed her bag, and changed in the bathroom. She put the uniform in the back room and left. It was almost time for the community lunch anyways.

When she got to the town square, she passed a table that had desserts on it, one of them being pie, and she realized that Wednesday had screwed up her moment with Xavier so badly that they didn't even have pie. That made her forget about her anger with the kid at the Weathervane and reminded her how upset she was with Wednesday. She found Kent at a table already and sat across from her.

"Hey Kent, how was the forest clean up?"

"Dark, muddy, gross. It started raining, so they let us leave early, but that meant we had to set up for lunch. The rain wasn't bad though. Water." He shrugged. "What about you," he wiggled his eyebrows at Ruby, "how was the Weathervane with Xavier?"

"Well, it was going great before a certain dark cloud happened."

"Ah, the evil twin, literally." The two laughed before he continued, "You know, for what it's worth, to us, she's the other twin, not you."

That made her smile softly, it really meant a lot. She had gone through life as The Other Twin and now that was Wednesday, at least when it came to her friends. She wasn't in the shadow of her sister anymore, she was a blooming flower, away from the stormcloud that blocked out the sun and stunted her growth.

"You have no idea how much that means to me, thank you."

A few minutes later, the friends who were at Pilgrim World reunited with them, and Bianca was the first to ask, "Where's Xavier? I thought you two were together at the Weathervane."

"Well You-Know-Who showed up, and was apparently going to look for something in the forest, and about ten minutes after she left, he followed after her."

Ajax sat down while she was speaking, "She's not Voldemort, Rubes, she's worse."

The bunch burst into laughter, Bianca continued the joke, "I don't think I've ever seen her blink."

When Xavier came and sat with them, the jokes stopped, and it went a bit silent. He looked around at the group, confused, they were cracking up when he arrived and his presence ended that.

Divina broke the silence, "How was the Weathervane with our lil' ole Gem?"

"It was great, I got to stand there and take orders, someone was stuck running around cleaning and waitressing," he chuckled and reached around Yoko, who sat between him and Ruby, to pat Ruby on the back.

She blushed and looked down at the table, "Yeah, I feel like my legs might break before we even get back to school. Ugh! And the stairs back to my room! I'm gonna die!" She put the back of her hand to her forehead and pretend fainted on Yoko's shoulder. This brought the group back to their laughing.

Lunch came and went, and so did Wednesday's show of lighting the Crackstone statue on fire. The Nevermore kids returned to the buses, and got in, waiting for the drivers to get back.

Everyone was talking about Wednesday destroying the statue when the students returned to Nevermore. It made Ruby's head hurt, so she told the group she would be going back to her room to lay down.

Hours passed and she still couldn't shake the annoyance towards her sister, so she moved from her bed to her desk to draw. Eventually she got tired of that, so she flipped back to Xavier's drawing. She sat there for so long that she hadn't realized that she missed dinner. Divina showed up with Bianca carrying a plate of food.

"Hey, you missed dinner so we brought you some food." Ruby smiled, got up and sat with them in her lounge area. Bianca walked over to look at the new drawings hanging above the desk and dresser. She saw the drawing in the still open sketchbook.

"He drew this?"

"What?" Ruby looked up from the plate of food to see Bianca at the desk, "oh, yeah, I'm not sure if he meant for me to see it, I ran out of room in my book, and forgot my extras at home so he told me I could have his, and that was in it."

Bianca was surprised, he must really like her if he drew her. Why did he keep doing whatever he was doing with Wednesday then?

"Wow, it's beautiful," Divina said when Bianca brought it over to them.

"I don't know what to think about it. This," Ruby lifted the book, "points to him having feelings for me, he doesn't have any other portraits, which as an artist, drawing a person when you never do, means something, but with the way he acts around me just keeps confusing me, I can't tell if he likes me, or not. Especially when it comes to my sister. I just don't know."

"I think he likes you, actually, we all think so."

"Yeah, you guys just connect, in a way he and I never did," Bianca agreed with Divina.

Ruby's face went pink, "Well, I think he just needs to sort out his feelings before anything could potentially happen. I don't want to tell him how I feel and have him turn around and like Wednesday, you know?"

They eventually moved onto a different topic. Disney movies.

The boys and Yoko stood outside the room as they listened to the three girls yell at each other about the movies.

Bianca was standing her ground, "Little Mermaid is the best!! You can't change my mind!"

Next was Ruby, "Well, of course you think that! Watergirl! But you're wrong, the best one is Brave, Merida is a fucking queen!"

"Um! Hello! What about Tangled?" Divina yelled.

"No, it's one hundred percent, the Little Mermaid!"

The two girls turned to Bianca, "No!" and argued with each other.

The friends outside looked at each other, nodded, and walked to Ajax's room, they did not want to go in there.