The Holy Accused

Ruth spent 2 days in the hospital with a broken arm and a black eye but her dad wanted her back at school as soon as possible so he wouldnt let them give her any stitches for her other scars. He told the doctors she was a strong girl and they would heal on their own. The scars and bruises from falling onto the ground did heal eventually but they made her whole experience hurt alot more than if she were to have had stitches.The hospital made her start to miss school with all the people around her since no visitors were allowed in her room. Her father paid an extra thousands of dollars for a speedy operation so they didnt have time to let people in or have any breaks. Ruth was surrounded by doctors 24-7 for those 2 days. She began to despise them for the lack of edible food they gave her.

The day she came out of the hospital Ruth was sent to school with a cast and make-up on her eye to lighten up the dark color. But even after hours of her mother making up her face, it was still incredibly obvious. Dragging along her cast, she rode the bus to school like every day and everyone acted as if they didnt notice anything different.

"Nice to see you again Ruth" said the science teacher, Mr.Henry. Ruth gave a weak smile and sat down in her seat. Then she got out her science notebook to take notes until he called out, "take everything off your desk except for a pencil," and dropped a stack of papers on a desk in the front row as they passed the papers back. Mr Henry sat back down at his desk and looked at his computer.

Ruth raised her hand up and begged for the teacher's attention but he wouldn't look her way so she just talked over the silence classroom and asked "Mr. Henry, may I be excused from the test since, well i didnt know we had..."

"We have a test every Friday, you know that as well as anybody. Its not my fault you broke your arm but you could have studied for the test during your free time. It just wouldnt be fair to the class if i let you wiggle out of taking this test," the teacher said to her across the room, uncaringly. Now that was a ruthless being if ever anyone deserved to be called so.

A copy of the test was laid in front of Ruth and she got out a pencil to humor him. She saw jumbled up letters and numbers that were supposed to make chemical equations and so much science jibberish she couldnt imagine where to start. Not that it would help, but she wrote her name at the top of the paper then began to read the test questions as best she could and try to make some sense of them but nothing came to her. In defeat, she layed her head down on the desk and closed her eyes.

Pain swelled up in her body and she probably started groaning in class but she didnt care. Every ache was a reminder of how mad Jesse was at her, and she knew it was all her fault for not making a move. If she had just thrown a punch or something maybe he wouldnt have gotten so angry. If she had fought back she could have easily knocked him out much less harshly but she was too chicken, just like her father had called her on the way to the hospital.

Mr.Henry shook Ruth on the shoulder and told her to wake up. They were collecting the tests to turn in. Ruth looked at the empty paper underneath her arms, covered in drool and tears. Ruth turned it in on the top of the stack of papers and Mr.Henry made a clear effort not to touch it.

Then the bell rang and the whole class swarmed out of the room and went to their next class through the crowded hallway. Ruth cautiously moved past people to get to her next class, which was English.

Her english teacher was nicer than usual and gave her all her missing work from the last two days as soon as she walked in the door. "How did that happen?" she asked about Ruth's arm, curiously.

"Oh it was just a fight" Ruth said, not realizing the effect of what she just said. Mrs. Hull looked at her disapprovingly and continued asking questions.

"You know nothing good comes of a fight, what was it about?" she asked curiously.

"Nothing," I said completely honestly. She told her to go to her seat by looking back down at her work and ignoring her from then on. In English class they read the book Odyssey and did comprehension questions at the end of class. Ruth really got into it since there was nothing pertaining to the days before and she was in the dark on nothing. By the end of class she was sad she had to leave and especially since she had to go to gym class.

As soon as Ruth walked into the locker room she noticed eveyone wearing football gear. Ruth got her's out of her locker and put it on over her cast so that her broken arm was hidden beneath the jersey. She came out of the locker room and joined the other girls in stretching then followed them to the field like last time but now she wasn't going to be quarterback so she went along, jogging in front of the rest of the class.

When they got on the field the coach looked at her and said "Ruth, quarterback." Everybody looked at him like he was crazy, especially Ruth. All the girls complained that she was the reason they never won any games.

"Coach, I have a broken arm!" Ruth shouted, begging him since he refused to listen to anybody else's complaints.

"Its just you'r left arm and you throw with your right so no problem," he said as if he trusted her, when he probably just enjoyed watching her fail at football.

Then she saw two people coming up onto the field from out of the school, wearing the arena uniform, one of them carrying a bouqette of flowers and one of them with a hand full of helium balloons with writing on them. As they got closer Ruth identified them as Rivers and Jesse. The coach went over to talk to them and came back to where he was standing with Rivers and Jesse following him, then they sat down on the bleachers and cheered Ruth's name.

"Ruth!!! Your father and uncle said they would watch the game if it was alright with you" he shouted loud enough for her to hear him. She laughed hard at first them gave them a thumbs up sign with her good arm. Rivers and Jesse cheered louder.

"How did you do that to your arm?" asked Tom before the game started.

"Football injury" Ruth joked but Tom looked at her like she was serious.

"Hut" the girl next to Ruth shouted and before she knew it the football was in Ruths hands and she was searching for a way to go.

"Straight Ruth!!! Go straight to the other teams goal, run!!!" Rivers screamed from the stands.

"Dont let them get the ball!!! Keep the ball, take it to the goal line and make a touchdown, throw it to the ground like your jealous its beating you in a fight!!!" Jesse shouted causing Ruth to laugh uncontrollably as she made it to the touchdown line and threw the ball to the ground.

Ruth ran over to Jesse with the ball after the play and he gave her the flowers, "These are for your poor football, it was really hard to see him go down like that," he said, somehow connecting his apollogy with the football game.

"Are you kidding? This football is good as new, since it knows I'm not mad at it anymore, right??" She asked, hoping he would tell her he isnt still mad at her like he was during the fight.

"Why would you be mad at a football?" Rivers asked like they were dumb, not understanding the inside anologies. Ruth smiled and went back to the football game as the quarterback but there wasnt much more to the game. All of the girls spent the game time staring at Jesse and wondering how he was related to Ruth, while the boys tried their hardest simply to catch up with Ruth on the field. She never threw the ball to anybody since she was pretty much the only girl interested in the game but the boys still never got one point. Then at the end of the game, Hanna told the class the last one back to the gym had to give Ruth a good job pat on the back so the class was gone before she could say a word to anybody.

"Look at those kids run!" Rivers mentioned.

"Wheres the fire?" Jesse asked sarcastically.

"That would be me" Ruth told him.

"Let me know if you need me to straighten anybody out for you" Jesse told Ruth, cracking his knuckles toughly.

"I'd rather you left their arms intact instead of killing my chances of the coach ever choosing somebody else as quarterback" she said.

"I think you made an awesome quarterback, best I've seen from any highschool class" said Rivers.

"Somehow I doubt you've ever seen a highschool class play football, other than your own class back in the 80s" she said to Rivers.

"True, speaking of that, you better be getting to your next class, I suppose" Rivers told her, hanging his head.

"Do you think we could come?" Jesse asked about her next class.

"My next class is art, there are a bunch of parents that have come to observe that class, I'm sure you can come." Ruth went back to the locker and changed back into her school uniform then went with Jesse and Rivers to her art class. They took a seat in the back of the class along with one of the other student's mom and quietly listened to the teacher tell the class what to do. They were supposed to paint a portrait of their partner, who in Ruth's case, was Jerry.

After talking, the teacher went to the back of the class to talk to the parents. She showed Rivers and Jesse all of Ruth's artwork and told her how she'd been doing in class. "I noticed she's been less than eager to participate in art class," she said to them as if they were Ruth's parents. "Even though she chose this elective, she barely puts forth any effort with her assignments. For example if you'll look at her portrait now from over there she isnt trying to realistically draw Jerry, she's painting a mouse on her paper. So Iv'e been wondering, are there any problems at your home? Anything that might be affecting her schoolwork, like her arm for example."

"Oh her arm was from a fight," Jesse said, almost proudly for her. The teacher looked at him questioningly.

"That we grounded her for already, umm, she got in big trouble for that," Rivers recovered.

"So you two are... well...umm...her dads?" she said really slowly and cautiously after hearing that both Rivers and Jesse grounded her.

"uh huh" Jesse said forgetting that he was playing the uncle, Rivers stabbed him in the gut with his elbow. "Oh, No. I mean no, no, no, no, no, Im her uncle, Rivers is her father. I just came along to apologies, I mean support her for her broken arm. She's going through alot of pain so i just came to bring her flowers and uhh balloons." They held up the flowers and balloons in case she hadn't noticed them yet.

Ruth waved them over to see her painting and they came to her desk to look at picture in her notebook. She drew Jerry's face perfectly inside the face of a standing white mouse with whiskers, a tail and pointy ears. They both applauded the portrait and watched as she showed it to Jerry who didnt even laugh. "Why am I a mouse?" he asked not even understanding the refernce to Tom and Jerry she made.

"Heres your portrait" he said, turning around the picture that was supposed to be Ruth. Jerry wasnt a very good artist in the first place but his painting didnt even resemble a human. He obviously started out by drawing a perfectly round circle then added oval eyes like on spongebob and a triangle nose and buck toothed smile. Than he used a violet marker to color in her red hair which was a third of the circle colored in on the straight line above her eyes.

Rivers and Jesse laughed behind Ruth and she just looked at his picture compared to hers. Atleast they both put forth about the same effort for the project. She laughed along with them and even Jerry couldnt help but laugh.

"Why does my hair look like its glued to my head?" she asked him, still laughing.

"I dont know, its not my fault your hair is weird" he said looking at her real hair. It wasnt her fault either, when someone in the games pulled her hair to win a match, her father chopped it off with a knife so it was only an inch long. It had grown out a little to form bangs over her forehead when the wind wasnt blowing them back but atleast her hair wasnt attached to her head like in the picture

The other mom from the back of the room came to see what they were laughing about." Let me see you'r picture, hon" she said. He turned it up for her to look at and she made the slightest face then hid it with a proud one. "Its perfect" she said looking at it and up at Ruth. Rivers laughed but Jesse just looked at her angrily. "I wonder if i could ask her for a copy of this" she said taking the picture up to the teacher.

"Now that she mentions it, I would love to have a picture from Ruth to put on my refridgerator" Jesse joked and took the picture up to the front to talk to the teacher.

"This is all probably boring to you, isnt it?" Ruth asked Rivers.

"Nah, we had nothing else to do and Jesse felt terrible about the fight. Its just so weird seeing other kids the same age as you, your friends are all so small compared to you," he said. Jerry heard him talking and stared at him strangely until Rivers jumped toward him a bit to scare him into going back to drawing in his notepad.

"Actually I wouldnt call anyone youve met here my 'friends" Ruth whispered to him.

"I certainly dont blame you" he said watching Jesse argue with the lady that he deseved to use the copying machine first. Jesse punched the lady in the face and the whole class looked up at him.

"She started it" he said pointing to the mom who's nose was bleeding because of him.

"Well thats gonna be the last time uncle Jesse visits your school" Rivers said.