This chapter might be a bit shorter than the others, thanks for all the views I've been getting so far!
Ruby's POV
Our car pulls up to the driveway of her house, or maybe mansion would be the correct term. Hell, it could even be called a castle. It's one of the biggest most beautiful houses I've ever seen in my life. My fingers twiddle anxiously in my lap.
"Hey, what are you nervous about?" My mother asks. I let out a sigh.
"Her. She's so quiet and weird, and she does her work quick too. I have no idea how we're going to last an entire hour without it being awkward." My mother's hand touches my shoulder.
"Oh, sweetie, you'll be fine, maybe if you get together more often you could actually get to know her better!"
"Get to know her better? I don't think that's something I'd be interested in doing." I say hesitantly.
"If you say so."
I slide the car door open and my mother does the same.
"Oh, are you coming in too?" I question
"Just for a few seconds at most, I just want to be able to meet her mother is all." My mom replies. I nod my head in response and we make our way up to the door. I press the small doorbell by the side, a few moments later I hear voices behind the door, loud voices at that. The lady's voice on the other side is almost like a stage whisper, it's meant to be quiet so that we can't hear, but it's not working to well.
"Are you fucking serious? You could have at least told me before hand. I look horrific." And other shouts were all I could make out. My mother and I look at each other with wide concerned eyes. My hand heads for the doorbell again right as the door flings open in front of me. I'm met with Sapphire's presence, along with someone I assume to be her mother, and may I say, this lady looks like a goddess. She has the same middle-toned skin as Sapphire, and her dark wavy hair cascades down her back. She wears some of the highest heels I've ever seen, making her about 5'10. A lot taller than my mom, who only stands at 5'1. My mother then offers her hand out as introduction.
"Hello, I'm Scarlett, I'm Ruby's mom."
"So nice to meet you." She replies. " I'm Nicolina, Sapphire's mother." She has a large, almost fake seeming smile spread across her face. Sapphires hand extends towards my mothers.
"Nice to meet you."
"Oh! Nice to meet you too." I decide that it will be best to shake Nicolina's hand also. There's a moment of silence that my mother then comes to interrupt.
"So! Our girls are hanging out! I'm sure Ruby will benefit greatly from having a good school frie-" I lightly elbow my mother's side and she pauses for a moment.
"So do you want to exchange contact information in case the girls want to make plans in the future?"
"Oh, yes sure." Nicolina responds. They hand each other their phones and put the numbers in.
"Well, I guess I'll um, be going! Bye girls! Have fun." Sapphire's head turns towards mine, of course mom had to do that. She's just too friendly whenever it comes to situations like this.
I'm still standing outside of the doorway, Nicolina glances down at Sapphire.
"Oh, please do come in." Nicolina says.
"You have your laptop right?" Sapphire asked.
"Yep, have it in my bag."
"Good, I'll bring you to my room."
Her room was about double the size of mine, she had a princess style bed with gold railings, but other than that her room was very minimalistic. She sat on the carpet in front of her bed and gestured for me to come next to her. I plopped myself on the ground and dug my laptop out my bag. It appeared as if she already had a stack of notes on what she needed to do. I hand over the laptop and she gets to work. We sit there quietly for a few minutes, but every few seconds or so I catch her messing with her bangs or moving the screen around so that she can view it better. I bet she hardly can see with all of that hair in her face. My curiosity gets the best of me.
"Um, sorry if this is a strange question but: Why do you, you know... keep your hair like that? You can move it if it's annoying you. I don't mind." She hesitates for a few moments.
"Why do you never put in any effort in our group project."
Okay, fine. Just avoid my question with another question. That's cool. Not a bitchy thing to do at all. I sit quietly for a few minutes and think. It must suck to be her right now, she had to drag me all the way over here just because I'm too stupid to pay attention in class and get my work done. Maybe she is right, maybe I should involve myself more, what's the point of getting good grades if you don't earn them? Just because she's trying to be the head of the group, doesn't mean I should let her.
"So... what are you working on?"
"Filling in the columns on the amount of protons, neutrons, and electrons are in each atom of the element."
"Oh... so, what does that mean?" She seems surprised that I don't know what she's talking about and gestures for me to move closer, she begins to speak about things I've never heard of. We're about ten minutes into conversation about atoms and elements, and I'm confused on how one person can have this much knowledge on a subject.
"I'm surprised you didn't learn this last year, it's really just more of a review project." She states
"My school last year, wasn't the best." I said with a nervous giggle.
"I see." She explains more, and small things that I didn't understand before begin to make bits of since, I'm so wrapped up in her speech when suddenly, a phone starts ringing. She quickly pulls away from me, it wasn't even until then that I realized that our bodies had been touching.
"Sorry, I need to take this really quick."
"Oh yeah, of course."
I know I shouldn't, but I try to snoop in on her conversation, but I can only hear her responses to whoever is on the other end.
"Hello, how are you doing?"
"What do you need?"
She begins to speak in a whisper.
"What do you mean you and your girlfriend can't pay rent?"
"How am I supposed to get money for you?"
"Nicolina isn't just going to give it to me."
"Okay Sasha, I'll just... see what I can do."
She pulls the phone away from her and hangs up.
"I'm so sorry about that." She says.
"Oh no don't worry about it! What was going on? Is everything okay?"
"Yes, it was just my sister calling about money as usual."
"Oh... does she live here?"
"No she lives in an apartment with her girlfriend a few miles away."
"How old is she?"
"Twenty-three."
"Then why is she asking you about money?"
Sapphire pauses, as if she was deciding if it was appropriate to be telling the story at this time.
"My mother kicked Sasha out of the house when she had just turned seventeen. She found out she was, you know, gay."
"Oh." Of course, with this fancy ass house, I should have known they were against that.
"But anyways, Sam and I are the only ones in the family willing to talk to her, and Sam is only a year and a half older than I am, but he doesn't have his stuff together. So Sasha always tries to get money from me."
"Wait, how many siblings do you have?"
"There's five of us, three girls and two boys."
"Woah." Silence takes over again.
"So, are you beginning to understand the classwork at all with my explanation?" She says.
"Kind of? Much better than before at least."
She pauses again.
"Come back next Thursday. I'll start teaching you. Free of charge." That was the last thing I expected to hear today. I thought we would just meet this one time then never talk again, although it might be better to do that, I know having Sapphire help me would improve my grades drastically, and today wasn't too horrible. I guess I'll give it a shot.
"Oh, sure! Thank you."
"No problem." The hour seemed to pass a lot quicker than I thought it would. She hands my laptop back to me, I shove it on my bag and we make our way down the stairs.
When I get to the front door I wave goodbye, but Sapphire doesn't return the gesture before closing the door. I hop into the front seat of the car.
"So how'd it go!?" Mom asks.
"Not as bad as I originally thought, she invited me to start coming on Thursdays for free tutoring sessions."
"Did you say yes?"
"Yeah."
"Well as long as it's okay with Mrs. Nicolina I don't see a problem with it. Hey, maybe this will even bring up your grades a little!"
"Maybe." The rest of the car ride takes place in silence. We pull up to the front door of our house. I jump out the car and step inside. I make my way into my room. Slamming my bag down onto the ground in the process. For some reason, as soon as I sit down my first instinct is to call Amethyst. I don't know why that is, but I roll with it anyways. I get comfortable, and in a few seconds she answers.
"Hey Ruby! How's it going dude?"
"Good, how about you?"
"It's nice, I'm doing good. You have a reason to call? Or do you just wanna chat?"
"Well, something kind of strange happened, but I figured you'd like to hear about it."
"Sure man."
"So you remember talking about Sapphire right?"
"Yep"
"I just got back from her house."
"Woah, why were you over there?"
"Well she accidentally left her laptop at school and we're working in a group project so I'd figured I would just bring her mine, but I ended up staying there for an hour and it really wasn't that bad? She taught me a lot of things and I ended up getting some info on her personal life. She invited me back for next Thursday."
"Did you say yes?"
"Yeah, not because I really want to see her again or anything, but the extra help could really improve my grades."
"That makes since."
"Yeah... it's just so weird! This is the same girl I've shit-talked since the first day and we might end up getting to know each other?"
"Yeah dude, it'll be weird but interesting! Maybe she'll end up being less shitty than we think she is. Only time will tell. And, you know if you ever see behind that hair of hers, call me immediately mkay?"
"Okay." I hesitate for a second, trying to think of something to keep the conversation going, but I have nothing.
"Well I guess I don't have anything else so, thanks for listening to me, bye."
"Bye, see you tomorrow at school, we can talk about this in more detail at lunch, does that sound cool?"
"Sure."
