Chapter Text
When Rue was in the fifth grade, she was given her first dissection assignment. She slipped her hand into her mother’s purse when she got home, typed “dissection” into google search, and spent two hours filtering through results until she was gripped by an anxiety attack so fierce, it nearly landed her in the hospital.
Afterwards, curled up between her mom and dad, Gia crawling on the floor beneath them, her mind replayed the videos and images she’d come across. She didn’t want to dissect anything, but she never told her parents. She was just barely passing Science, and, if she failed, she would gonna freak out, and she’d had enough freakouts to last a lifetime.
So she went to school before classes started and sat beneath the jungle gym with Lexi for a grand total of three minutes before she convinced herself that she’d be plagued with freakouts her whole life and that one more wouldn’t hurt. She turned to Lexi, told her about how queasy and uneasy the whole thing made her, and just about froze when Lexi said, eyes still on the sandcastle she’d created, “Why don’t we just let them go?”
Mr. Freely was scolding Nate for tripping James in a race when they snuck away, hoods thrown up over their heads and toes set to tip. They weren’t at all suspicious.
Anyway, the window to his classroom was already open, so they just slipped in, darted across the room, and crouched at the large boxes on the back table. One quick peek confirmed they, indeed, housed the starfishes. One thing lead to another, and they wound up on their bikes, two boxes of starfish in their basket, riding towards the ocean.
For the first time in ever, Rue felt high. And not like the highs that would come later, the ones laced with mania or saturated with chemicals and herbs or whatever the fuck you call em, but actually high. She laughed, quietly, ever afraid of being caught by some nosey adult and disappointing her fish friends, but Lexie heard it anyway and laughed, too. And soon enough, they were both laughing, pedaling harder than they’d ever pedaled.
They dumped the starfish at the beach, shrieking and running away when the cuties scurried away like some sort of aquatic demon from the deepest regions of hell. They wound up getting caught by a man and a lady from neighborhood watch, later escorted back to school and getting banned from all lab activities for the rest of the year.
Rue could tell Lexie, who hated to get in trouble, felt bad, but Rue. Rue just felt...she felt good. Good like at the skating rink, good like winning an oversized teddy bear at the fair. It was a feeling she’d never felt before, not to this intensity, and it would have scared her if it hadn’t been so good.
Because it had been good. Because even when they were being escorted across the playground like a couple of common criminals, she’d felt nothing but pride and contentment.
And when we rode, our hearts full of joy and our baskets full of starfish. She turned to look at Lexie and smiled, not caring that the look Lexie sent back looked more worried than euphoric. I felt like I could touch the sky.
And now, well, now she feels like air, in an eternal state of suspencion, neither high nor low, and she doesn’t quite know what to think of that, but, for the moment, she’s free, and she thinks she likes that.
She likes it a lot.
They walk into the dance, hand in hand, faces swathed in the soft paths of the purple lights highlighting the gymnasium. Shit, she can’t even remember the last time she went to one of these. Much less the last time she wanted to go to one.
But Jules makes her want to do things, so that isn’t exactly surprising.
They dance, they sing, they talk, and it’s all nice, even if Jules spends a painfully familiar amount of time on her phone. She wants to say something, but Anna seems to make her happy, so she guesses it’s okay.
Then she goes and confronts Nate, and, well, she feels less okay, but it’s whatever.
“I hate this town.”
“If I could, I’d burn it to the fuckin’ ground.”
“And salt the earth behind you.”
Is that what this is? After all the shit she’s been through, has she succumbed to immolation and been relieved of her time, her presence, here on this earth?
She knows how that sounds, and she promises she’s not high, she’s just...introspective...contemplating...having doubts. Call it an existential crisis but is a crisis truly a crisis when it’s been running for seventeen years?
Mick and Sherrie, her rehab counselors from stays number one and two, respectively, would probably say ‘yes’; Sherrie used to slip pills in her biscuits that made her go zrrrrp!, and she’s pretty sure Mick faked his psychological, though, so she probably shouldn’t be looking to their ghosts for advice.
Regardless, she feels good with Jules, even if she’s thinking of Anna and Nate and how Tyler started out much like Anna before it all went to shit.
But she’s okay, for the most part. Because sometimes people fall in love with more than one person. And it’s not that she faults Jules for it but moreso that Rue kinda thinks she’s monogamous and that she worries how that’ll affect their relationship. But other than that, it’s like, fucking peaches or however the saying goes. She’s at the winter formal with her best friend, some awesome girls, and her maybe-girlfriend, and she’s three months clean. All things considered, she’s better off than she’s ever been.
Then she says they should bail and Jules fucking goes along with it. Which is just freaky because, in all honesty, Rue says a lot of shit she doesn’t mean, and Jules knows that like what the fuck? But Jules looks so happy at the prospect of leaving (with her, nonetheless) and, shit, if that doesn’t make her feel good, too.
For the moment, it makes her feel good.
In the next, they’re packing bags and tucking tickets into their pockets and standing in the middle of a fucking train station in the middle of the fucking night and for all that Rue hates this shithole of a town, she’s never actually had a plan for leaving. She didn’t even think she’d live long enough to begin to dream of leaving this town, and now she’s standing beneath the terminal, staring up at the train schedule, and trying to remember the last time she took the train because what if there’s, like, a train etiquette or something and she fucks it up? What if she dropped her ticket? What if someone forgets to switch the tracks or whatever and they go slamming into another train in a collision of blood and metal and sparks and just-
“Rue, we’ll figure it out. I promise”, Jules says, head high, smile firm in place.
-and Rue is fucking terrified, of trains, of the future, of Jules , because even if Nate has the ability to fucking obliterate her life, she’s so fucking composed and confident and just the exact opposite of mess , and it terrifies her because how can someone that perfect be with someone this broken?
Ten years , Nate had said. A lot can happen in ten years.
A lot can happen in ten minutes; a lot can happen in ten seconds.
Within ten seconds, she can unscrew a capsule and steal her father’s medication. Within ten seconds, she can crawl out of her window and start biking to Lexie’s house to get her to piss in a bottle. Within ten seconds, she can trip over her bookbag and fall to the floor, the sudden movement leaving her disoriented and nauseous enough to vomit and the drugs in her system potent enough to render her incapable of moving, her only saving grace being the angel of a sister standing outside her bedroom door.
Jules won’t forget her. She’ll remember everything about Rue.
And she’ll regret it.
Rue doesn’t board the train. She just stands there, back at it again with the crossroads. And it’s not that she necessarily wants to leave Jules, but she has a family here, has friends here, has a whole life here. And even if, when compared to others’ hundreds of years later, it won’t be worth mentioning, it’s still her life. The only one she’s got. And for all that she hates it, it’s not like she can be another person, not like she can just assume someone else’s identity.
Rue doesn’t want to leave. She’ll live and die in this town. And in the end, after the meltdowns and the burdens of addiction and the clinginess and the fuckery of it all, she thinks that it's what drives Jules away. Because Jules is, she’s chasing her own highs, highs that take her to new places and new people. She and Rue were never gonna settle down. She was never gonna settle. Too much to see, too much to do. An errant spirit and she won’t rest until she’s finally, finally satisfied.
Rue knows the feeling. And it hurts because she also knows satisfaction is but a fleeting moment of pleasure, extended only in the pursuit of the next high.
She’s gone. Gone with hissing wheels and a muffled announcement over the intercom. Just like that.
It didn’t even take ten seconds.
Five minutes pass. Then fifteen. Then forty. Then two hundred and sixty and the few people that remain at the terminal at this hour have begun to stare. A nice woman in a uniform with half a shaved head approaches her, speaking calmly and gently and asking if something’s happened.
Rue can’t find it in herself to answer.
A voice, a sensible one, speaks to her and says, “If Jules was that willing to leave, she was probably already thinking about it before you asked”. It sounds a lot like Ali’s. And then she realizes she’s sitting on a bench, knees drawn to her chest and a phone pressed against her ear, and, oh, shit, it is Ali. The woman in the uniform is sitting beside her, eating half a meatball sandwich. She offers her the other half, and Rue takes it, ignoring the way barbecue sauce drips down the nice shirt Jules picked out for her.
She murmurs a thanks to the woman, then stands, climbs aboard a bus, and rides around town until the driver tells her his shift is up. Then she just walks around for a bit, all the while, still on the line with Ali. He sounds worried, and he’s telling her to call her sponsor because he’s not a fucking idiot, he knows exactly what Rue’s about to do.
Or rather, already did. There was a guy, an exchange, some sniffing, and it was a allllllllllll very pleasant, very enlightening.
It hits after her third rotation about the neighborhood. There’s a change in Ali’s voice almost immediately, but Rue’s not really paying attention because fuck, has she missed this .
His voice is fading in and out, and Rue’s tripping over her feet, and, already, she’s thinking of meeting with another dealer because there is no way she’s leaving this again.
Ali’s still in her ear, telling her that just because Jules has left doesn’t mean that the part of her that wants to be clean is gone, too.
And that’s just it; it’s not really a consequential type of thing. Jules leaves, so Rue does drugs, right?
No.
No.
There’s no real order to it, no cause and effect, no progression, no seed that sprouts to a full grown ash tree. No. There is choice. A series of choices, one preceding, one succeeding, some closely linked, but all very much, at their very roots, choices. Rue chose to talk to Jules at that party, like she chose to pull Gia away from Idiot Twin #1, like she chose to pick up the phone and call Ali, like she’s choosing, this very minute, to get high.
Those last two, she realizes, are VERY much linked because she still hasn’t hung up the phone, and Ali sounds equal parts furious and worried.
She should introduce him to her mother. She thinks they’d get along swell .
“My-my mom’s looking for a boyfriend”, she says, simultaneously handing the cashier at a Speedway a thirty (
too much
((
where’d you get a thirty from?
)) in exchange for a box of Sugar Babies and zipping and unzipping her jacket. “I could-I could set you up if you want-”
“Rue, would you shut the fuck up and listen to me?” Rue tears open the top of her box, digs her hand in, and tosses the tiny pieces of caramel into her mouth. “
Give me an address
”, Ali’s saying as she leaves the store and continues down the street. “I can’t come pick you up if you don’t help me out.”
Rue snorts. “Well, spoiler alert, Ali.” She lowers her voice to a whisper and giggles. “I already got me a pick-me-up. Wanna know what it is?”
“Rue-”
She buries a hand in her hair and spins in a circle. “It ain’t sugar, I’ll tell you that.”
“Rue!” From his end of the line, she can hear the sound of a horn honking, followed by Ali shouting at someone. Rue just laughs and stumbles down the street, humming the theme song to Little Einsteins as she goes. “Give me an address or I’m gonna call the cops and tell ‘em there’s a kid walking around, coked out of her mind and threatening to kill herself.”
She doesn’t even stutter in her steps. “Mmmm”, she says, narrowly avoiding tripping over a penny. “I wouldn’t kill myself, Ali. You can’t
feel
anything if you’re dead, stupid. And I intend to feel EVERYTHING!”
“I mean it, Rue.” Ali, again, and, shit, he sounds serious. “I will call the cops.”
Rue just scoffs. “You don’t have the balls.”
Quiet, on his end. And then, like he’s never been more exhausted in his entire life, “I have all the balls in the world.”
She tells him her address. She sits down on the curb, and she waits, and she hallucinates a whole ass dance sequence, it’s really trippy (and deadass would definitely win an award if she wasn’t the only one who could see it), and, man, she has really missed this. Gonna be hard keeping this going, though, ‘specially with Fez being such a tightass. God and her mom and Gia…
Gia. Shit. Gia’s probably gonna be pissed. Lexie, too, now that she thinks about it. And her mom but she’s always pissed at her, she and Rue, they’re like a matching set.
They probably thought this was it. That she was gonna stay clean this time.
Although, to be fair, Rue thought it was it this time, too.
Ali pulls up, and Rue smiles, but it’s wobbly. Already, she can feel it, that brief surge of happiness, slipping away. “Ali!”, she shouts as she leans against his car. “What’s up, my dude?”
Ali just stares at her. Sometimes, she thinks she would have liked to have known him when he was still using. But then she’d have one less person to come pick her up after she collapses, so she brushes the thought of side and just stares back at him. Tears fill her eyes; her lower lip trembles. “I have a kidney infection”, she says, and Ali still doesn’t say anything. He just opens the door and crawls out. “Oh.” She brushes the sleeve of her jacket over her eye and lets out an empty laugh. “And Jules left me so...there’s that.” Ali’s eyes soften, and the tears begin to flow freely. “She left. She left me like the chick at the end of the second act of a movie, ‘cept I don’t think there’s gonna be a third act, and I don’t think she’s coming back and fuck my stomach hurts .”
Ali sighs. He steps forward, wraps his arms around her, and just holds her as the weight of the night crashes down upon her. “I know, kid.”
He takes her to NA. It’s too late for a meeting, but they have beds in the back, and, seeing as Rue can’t even stomach seeing her mom and Gia right now, it’s just about the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for her. She tells him so, and Ali just shakes his head, tells her to call her sponsor in the morning, and leaves.
She lies down, and pictures, for a moment, someone doing the same for him. She pictures him with bloodshot eyes, shaky hands, and hiccupy laughs. She doesn’t like it, so she thinks of Lexie, dragging her back to that beach every summer to look for those hideous starfish, and she settles on that. Then she thinks back to the formal, when she sat at that table with her, Jules, Kat, Maddy, and Cassie, and everything was okay. It wasn’t perfect, not by any means, but it was okay , she had been okay, and, for now, that’s all she wants.
She closes her eyes.
And she crashes.