Go ad-free for $0.99 →
“Ruthie.”
My throat closed right up.
Then I Saw the Chair
There was something sitting on the chair beside his bed.
And the second I saw what it was, I stopped breathing.
But I’ll get to that.
How It Started, at Seventeen
Jeffrey and I became best friends the fall we were juniors at Kennett High, in a town in southern Pennsylvania where nothing ever happened and everybody knew everybody’s business.
Not boyfriend and girlfriend. Just Jeffrey and Ruth.
He dated other girls. Tina Marchetti for most of junior year. A girl named Dawn after that.
I went out with other boys. I went to prom with a boy named Douglas Reeve, and Jeffrey ended up driving me there because Douglas’s Buick wouldn’t start, which everybody in that gym thought was the funniest thing they’d ever seen.
What Everybody Thought
They all thought we were ridiculous.
Every single person who knew us believed we’d eventually figure out we belonged together, and they said so constantly, and we laughed about it.
