Who's the fool now

 

Who was anyone fooling?

Well, Rafe wasn't fooling anyone. With the looks of things, they didn't even know he was gone. It was Spring Break anyway.

Of course, he'd whimpered around a good week or two all by his lonesome. Even quit at the coffee shop because he knew how Chili felt about him and he didn't want to have to look at Maddie, either.

 It was beginning to hit him hard that he didn't have any real friends. Not even at school. Oh yeah, they might say hey in passing but really he felt like an outsider.

And then Ruby's TEXT awoke him one night well over a week ago.

"What is this?" He'd squinted back when he saw it on his phone. Of course, it was midnight and he was on the cushion from the lawn chair he'd put in the laundry room. Right away he wanted to know how she got his phone number.

"It was in KC's phone," she punched back.

Still, this made no sense. "What do you want?" He couldn't help but be mad. He was in a mad state these days. His scooter didn't work. Dad and Cade were playing the quiet game with him and of course, his mom was off on a business trip. He was beginning to realize who the real breadwinner was and that meant being away from home, evidently.

"I took it," she texted.

"Are you texting from his old phone?" He called her then. He didn't feel like messing around with texting at this hour. He kept his voice low.

"No, I just..looked through it." She told him. It was then she confessed she knew all about Harley and KC. "HE LOVES HER." She sounded distraught.

"Oh, God, are you sure?" He didn't know why he said it. Rafe only knew of Ruby from KC on occasion. But KC wasn't a guy who said much about anything. Of course, neither did Rafe. They might as well have been lone wolves who were supposedly friends from the band they had last year.

She was crying, sniffing back tears. He thought she was going to have a spasm of some kind.

"Maybe we should just text."

"NO." She wailed. "I..found all their text. He doesn't even know me."

"I'm sure he does." Rafe didn't mean to be unkind. "Does he know, you have the phone?"

"No. I threw it in the  desert." She told him KC got a new phone, but he couldn't get his old contacts and everything like he had. He'd been miserable as of late. "And I know why," Ruby told him. "He can't be in contact with Harley."

Rafe was stumped. "What do you want me to do about it?"

"Come see me," she'd said.

"Are you serious?"

"I  have your picture, I know what you look like," she cleared her throat. "KC told me something bad happened with you and Maddie."

Rafe found himself laughing. He couldn't imagine KC telling her anything about Maddie.

"You know, about KC and Maddie?" It was an old history (Maddie's first kiss), but it didn't help much about KC and his nonromantic demeanor. 

"Maddie!" It was like he'd lit a cannonball.

"Look, I can't-" Rafe didn't know how he could help.

"I'll pay your airfare," Ruby told him KC was coming home. 

"What?" Was this his lucky day? 

"Are you afraid?"

"NO." He squinted hard. 

"Well, then, why not?" She had a theory about things that Rafe could hardly comprehend. Something about revenge. And that's when Rafe left.