Two Rubies

Teachers held the doors. Neighbors carried signs and marched. Parents screams vulgarities. One mother swore to poison her. Students lined the concrete path that led to the double-doors that opened into our classrooms. Some jeered. Others threw things. A few spat. One taunted her with a baby doll in a coffin. All of them shouted.

The marshals walked alongside her, the whole world watching.

I did what I had to do. I offered to carry her books. I sat beside her during class. I shared my PB&J. I smiled, feebly, with few words exchanged between us.

They found me during recess. Only broke one bone. And bloodied my lip. Despite their best efforts to try to lynch me for being a traitor to some cause I never could see.

And so it went. Teachers, neighbors, parents, and students, all of them acting like the world was ending.

I hoped it was. Ending. So that something better could take root. Some kind of life that respected all forms of humanity. But what did I know? I was a child.

Her name was Ruby. Mine was too. Seemed to me she and I had been mined from the same quarry. The same chisel had cut her outside bits to pieces, just like mine. Both of us were girls. Both of us were tall for our age and slim. Both of us were smart in some subjects, and not so much in others. Seemed to me, we had a lot in common. And I was excited to learn about all the things that made us different.

We became the two Rubies. I was with her anytime the marshals weren't. I did what I had to do. I treated her the way I wanted to be treated.

She was my friend.

I could see it, from the first. I was just Ruby. But my friend? She was a diamond in the rough.

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Author's Note: For Belle's The Conviction (an unofficial challenge)