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it was no longer in the cornfield.
    Ruth began writing poetry. If her mother or her more approachable teachers did not want to hear the darker reality she had
     experienced, she would cloak this reality in poetry.
    How I wished Ruth could have gone to my family and talked to them. In all likelihood, no one but my sister would have even
     known her name. Ruth was the girl who got chosen next to last in gym. She was the girl who, when a volleyball sailed in her
     direction, cowered where she stood while the ball hit the gymnasium floor beside her, and her teammates and the gym teacher
     tried hard not to groan.
    As my mother sat in the straight-backed chair in our hallway, watching my father run in and out on his various errands of
     responsibility—he would now be hyperaware of the movements and the whereabouts of his young son, of his wife, and of his remaining
     daughter—Ruth took our accidental meeting in the school parking lot and went underground.
    She went through old yearbooks and found my class photos, as well as any activities photos like Chem Club, and cut them out
     with her mother’s swan-shaped embroidery scissors. Even as her obsession grew I remained wary of her, until that last week
     before Christmas when she saw something in the hallway of our school.
    It was my friend Clarissa and Brian Nelson. I’d dubbed Brian “the scarecrow” because even though he had incredible shoulders
     that all the girls mooned over, his face reminded me of a burlap sack stuffed with straw. He wore a floppy leather hippie hat
     and smoked hand-rolled cigarettes in the student smoking lounge. According to my mother, Clarissa’s penchant for baby blue
     eye shadow was an early warning sign, but I’d always liked her for just this reason. She did things I wasn’t allowed to do:
     she lightened her long hair, she wore platform shoes, she smoked cigarettes after school.
    Ruth came upon the two of them, but they didn’t see her. She had a pile of huge books she had borrowed from Mrs. Kaplan, the
     social science teacher. They were all early feminist texts, and she held them with their spines resting against her stomach
     so that no one could see what they were. Her father, a building contractor, had made her a gift of two super-strong elastic
     book bands. Ruth had placed two of them around the volumes she planned to read over vacation.
    Clarissa and Brian were giggling. His hand was inside her shirt. As he inched it up, her giggling increased, but she thwarted
     his advances each time by twisting or moving an inch or two away. Ruth stood apart from this, as she did most things. She
     would have passed it in her usual manner, head down / eyes averted, but everyone knew Clarissa had been my friend. So she
     watched.
    “Come on, honey,” Brian said, “just a little mound of love. Just one.”
    I noticed Ruth’s lip curl in disgust. Mine was curling up in heaven.
    “Brian, I can’t. Not here.”
    “How ’bout out in the cornfield?” he whispered.
    Clarissa giggled nervously but nuzzled the space between his neck and shoulder. For now, she would deny him.
    After that, Clarissa’s locker was burgled.
    Gone were her scrapbook, random photos stuck to the inside of her locker, and Brian’s stash of marijuana, which he had hidden
     there without Clarissa’s knowledge.
    Ruth, who had never been high, spent that night emptying out the tobacco from her mother’s long brown More 100s and stuffing
     them with pot. She sat in the toolshed with a flashlight, looking at photos of me and smoking more grass than even the potheads
     at school could suck down.
    Mrs. Connors, standing at the kitchen window doing dishes, caught a whiff of the scent coming from the toolshed.
    “I think Ruth is making friends at school,” she said to her husband, who sat over his copy of the
Evening Bulletin
with a cup of coffee. At the end of his workday he was too tired even to speculate.
    “Good,” he said.
    “Maybe there’s hope for her