The Holy Accused

Ruth woke up with a gasp, realizing it was hard to breath and her lungs were completely drained of any oxygen. Her heart was beating like the feet of a thousand tap dancing spiders and no matter how hard she tried to calm down, they refused to stop.
Before her feet even touched the floor the world became a dancing kaleidoscope, with the beat of her heart plus her headache and dizzy eyes. It was confusing and chaotic but it made the world seem less intimidating because she was paying more attention to her confusion than anything else. In fact she could hardly see anything the way it was. If circumstances were any different, it would have made getting out of bed a lot more difficult for her.
Ally sat on a countertop in the kitchen watching bacon cook with a spatula in hand when Ruth walked in. As the start to her perfect day, she tripped on air in the middle of the doorway. She let out a high pitched noise as she fell forward and landed on her elbows on the hardwood floor.
“Are you okay?” Ally asked through a chuckle until she got a chance to get a good look at her face, “You look terrible, what’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” Ruth mumbled as she looked at the bruises on her elbows in disappointment. She got up and sat in front of the counter that Ally was sitting on top of and waited for her food.
“Did something happen at school?” Ally asked as she occupied herself with flipping bacon
“I don’t know,” Ruth answered, staring at the counter in her own little world and not paying much attention to the question.
“How do you not know if something did or didn’t happen at school?”
“I don’t know, it could be something or it could be nothing. I have no idea if I’m supposed to be worried about this or not. I don’t know what’s going to happen and its freaking me out like crazy. To answer your question though it wasn’t really at school where it happened, just with school kids…”
“Did they see you fight?” Ally shot at Ruth with wide eyes and more concern and interest than she’d ever shown before.
“Don’t say it out loud like that! You make it sound like I’m the boogey monster and they caught me scaring children or something.”
“No, you scare scary adults who fight like ninjas; imagine how scared these school kids could be.”
“You should be one to talk; you’ve never come to one match of mine!”
“With good reason, anyway, do you want me to take you to school today?” Ally offered as she filled a plate with bacon and eggs and put them in front of Ruth.
“No, I think I should ride the bus,” Ruth answered. She wanted a head start to whatever was going to happen at school the moment she walked in. Maybe the bus was would give her an idea of what the rest of her day would be like.
Ruth walked out for the bus early and pretended to be texting on her mom’s phone. It was technically her phone but she rarely thought of it like that considering this was the first time she used it since she got it as a present on Christmas. Her mom gave it to her to keep in touch, since they rarely saw each other because of her mom’s work. Every once in a while she would get a call late at night because her mom was waiting somewhere or had extra time to chat with Ruth. They talked about all the new things her mom and dad were doing with the arena and sometimes she would ask Ruth what she thought the guests liked or disliked. For some reason her mom assumed that Ruth was friends with all the kids in the audience and knew better what they thought, even though none of them were her age. At the moment, the phone made a nice disguise to make her look occupied and not waiting dreadfully for the bus to pull up.
Then something happened on her phone and it lit up and made a low ringing noise for a second. Ruth couldn’t have been more surprised or confused than if her dad had appeared in a flying spaceship and crashed in front of her.
Ruth turned her phone on with the large button on the side, one of the few things she knew how to do, and noticed the pretty straightforward picture of an envelope saying that she got a text. Her heart beat faster but more excitedly than scared. She touched the option on the screen than said she wanted to view the text and it opened in front of her.
“Hey, are you still coming today?” the text read. The number was unfamiliar and didn’t have an I.D like the rest of her contacts, which included her mom, dad and the fighters at the arena. She figured the number was from the same state though since it had the same area code as her home phone.
“Who is this?” she texted back, very slowly. They replied almost immediately.
“Who is this?”
“I think you have the wrong number,” Ruth typed as she decided that if they weren’t in her contacts then there is nobody who could have possibly gotten her number and wanted to text her.
“Haha, funny,” came back a second later. For whatever reason they still couldn’t figure out that the number they were texting wasn’t on their contacts and probably was unfamiliar to their phone too. She didn’t know what to say. Maybe they were just texting a random number to prank her and were laughing right now at how naïve she was. Playing along would be the funny thing to do.
“Lol,” she texted back.
“So yes or no?” they asked, referring to the question they asked when they first texted.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have no clue what you’re talking about,” she typed. Before she even knew it was on the street, the bus pulled up in front of her. She pressed send and put the phone in the back pocket of her backpack.
Going to school felt like a mistake as soon as her foot hit the first step of the bus. Jessica was sitting in the first booth in the bus, staring at Ruth with wide eyes.
“Tell me what you know,” Ruth demanded, sitting in the booth across from her.
“That your uncle is a fighter at the arena. Not to be awkward but he’s also very handsome. How old is he?” she asked, smiling excitedly.
“He’s 21, younger than most others, but don’t you think it’s scary?” Ruth answered.
“Of course, I was terrified. I could barely speak around him; I was just standing there, staring at him while he talked. I couldn’t even hear anything he was saying; it was like in the movies where I could hear everything but his voice. But you’re probably used to him, being your uncle and all.”
“Well, yeah,” she said. That wasn’t that Ruth had been expecting.
“Do you go all the time?” she asked. Ruth took a while to think about what she should tell her. She couldn’t give anybody tickets and she wasn’t about to invite Jessica to start going every day or even ever again. She stared at the floor as she thought about it and took way too long to respond. “I think I’d like to start going more but I can’t afford it and it’s so violent.” Gladly, Jessica forgot about her earlier question and didn’t wait for a response.
“Yeah,” was all Ruth said when it seemed like Jessica wouldn’t talk without a response. Jessica looked at her with a thoughtful look and started asking questions.
“Are you and your uncle close?”
“I guess.”
“So you see him quite a lot then?”
“You could say that, although he has a tight schedule.”
“Oh, of course. I bet he has to practice all the time,” she said. Ruth got out of a lot of practice with school but her dad pushed her more when she did practice because of that. When she was homeschooled practice was her entire life.
“Yeah, quite a lot.”
“When does he have time off?” she asked.
“I don’t know, why?” Ruth asked.
“I was just thinking that maybe we’d see him sometime.”
“My uncle?” Ruth questioned. Jessica was acting weird.
“Never mind, forget I mentioned that. I think that you and I are going to be close friends from now on though.”
“So just because my uncle is a fighter you want to be close friends?” The bus door opened at the end of her sentence and a chill ran down Ruth’s spine.
“No, that’s not why Ruth…” she said and Ruth interrupted her.
“Really? Be honest with me. I’ve never had friends from school before so I’m not taking any half truths. If you want to be close to my uncle, then whatever, but you don’t have to put up with me to do it.”
Jessica bursting out laughing, very loudly as if Ruth had told a funny joke. “Seriously?” Jessica asked.
“What?”
“I’m just laughing because like, you’re the most decent person I know and to think that you don’t have any friends and these other people have plenty of them. You’re the one who’ll have to put up with me if you’ll let me be your friend though, added that I also think your uncle is attractive.”
Ruth smiled and her kaleidoscope world turned normal and calm for the time. More people got up onto the bus and one of them sat down next to Jessica and immediately started talking really fast to her with her back turned to Ruth. The bus moved but seemed different from when it was just her and Jessica. People were talking and moving around and Ruth was being ignored again. It made her tired and her head started to hurt again from the noise. When they got to the school parking lot, Ruth was the first off and ran into the school building in a sprint.