The Notorious R(uth) B(arakat) G(rimaldi)

Chapter 3: Trolling

"Elliott Banks," Ruthie carefully typed into her laptop.

She was lying on her bed, waiting to be called for dinner. They ate late in her house, but they ate together, as a family. It was just one more way the Barakat-Grimaldis were different from most families she knew. Both her parents were from families who ate their evening meals late in the day, and Ruthie had never known any other way.

She got some results about an English dirt bike rider.

Could it be the same guy? It was hard to tell, because he was wearing a helmet in the pictures she could see.

The guy was English.

His full name was Elliott Banks Browne, though.

There were lots of photographs of him, and he was much older than the hot, angry guy who was in her classes.

Too bad.

Ruthie had been peripherally aware of Elliott's eyes on her throughout the ninety minute block period that made up her drama class. She'd also gotten the chance to hear him speak for the first time that day, and had nearly swooned, along with most of the females in the room.

Actually, never mind female; Ruthie was fairly certain that there were more than a few boys doing a little swooning as well. Elliott Banks' voice was surprisingly deep, given how thin he was.

Ruthie knew from her nine month stint as Brett Carmichael's girlfriend that guys liked to be thought of as big and buff, and that part of this image was having a big and buff voice. In Warren, for some odd reason, having a slight (and fake) Western twang to said voice was part of this image as well, though California was far, far away from Cowboy Country.

Elliott Banks was therefore an odd mixture for this neck of the woods. He was tall, like a guy should be, and toned, like a guy should be, but he didn't roll his shoulders or swagger. His voice was deep, like a guy's should be, but he had a beautiful, posh accent. Ruthie could see Brett and some of the other guys rolling their eyes when it was Elliott's turn to give a one sentence instruction about himself to Ms. Piper, since she was new to the school.

"Hullo, I'm Elliott Banks, and I'm here for the year from London," he'd said in a neutral voice while looking only at Ms. Piper.

"Fag," Ruthie saw Brett mouth to Shane and Troy, a couple of the other boys in the class.

They grinned back as they nodded.

Ruthie shook her head and snorted as she remembered them.

Next she tried spelling his first name with one "t," but again, no results.

How was this possible? How could there be a high school guy in this day and age who had no online presence at all?

Ruthie huffed out a breath of irritation and tried every possible iteration of his first and last name she could think of, but came up empty-handed over and over.

She finally sat up and had to admit herself stymied, just as Pop's car pulled into the garage, and Dad called her to dinner.

🥘🍷🥘🍷🥘🍷🥘

"So, how was school?"

Ruthie made sure her voice and face were the right degree of relaxed and bored. She figured she'd drop the news about Brett and Amelia in a couple of weeks, and make it sound like the old news it was.

"Oh, it was fine," she said with a shrug. "No surprises." She took a sip of her wine, another custom in their house that her friends found enviable and incredible. Ruthie didn't really understand why, though; how fun did they think it would be to drink with their parents? And it served exactly the purpose her dads thought it did, in that it removed the mystique from alcohol, and she'd never particularly had the urge to drink.