Ruth

Ruth is Clare’s school friend and confidante, a companion whose small actions frame two vulnerable moments in Clare’s adolescence: the Ouija-board revelation of Henry’s name and the uneasy aftermath of a party. She first helps give shape to Clare’s unspoken questions, then offers a quiet hand when the school’s attention turns toward Clare.

Identity and Introduction

Ruth appears among Clare’s classmates during a séance. When the group invites Clare and Ruth to take their places at the board, Clare admits she does not know what to ask, though her thoughts range from her mother’s health and her father’s anger to whether Henry is real. Ruth supplies a question about which boys like Clare, smiling when Clare rejects the suggestion. Her teasing is intimate rather than detached: she notices the romantic possibility Clare will not yet acknowledge.

The Ouija Board and Henry

Clare and Ruth place their fingers lightly on the white plastic planchette, trying not to push it. It begins to move and spells H, then E, N, R, Y. Clare’s classmates notice her blush and demand to know who Henry is; Clare shakes her head as if the answer is as mysterious to her as it is to them. When Ruth later asks who likes her, the board spells Rick, but Clare can feel Ruth pushing it. The contrast leaves Henry’s spelling distinct: this time, the movement is not attributed to Ruth’s pressure.

The board’s answer does not explain who Henry is or how he belongs in Clare’s life. Instead, it gives a name to a question Clare has already been carrying among many others. Ruth’s participation makes the moment shared, but the meaning remains private and unresolved for Clare.

Friendship and Social Pressure

By the time Clare is sixteen, Ruth remains beside her in the school environment. After a party at Ruth’s house, Clare returns to school on Monday to a hallway of staring classmates and a first-period English class that falls silent when she enters. Ruth smiles at Clare with a worried expression and takes her hand beneath the table. The touch lasts only a moment before the teacher arrives and Ruth withdraws it, but it offers direct, discreet reassurance amid the surrounding gossip and awkwardness.

Ruth’s house is also the setting of the party Clare regrets attending. With Ruth’s parents away in San Francisco, Ruth’s older brother Jake has invited his friends; roughly a hundred people are there, and Clare finds the gathering overwhelmingly drunk and weighted toward boys. When a boy mocks her dress with an obscene remark, Clare answers him, but he follows her into the kitchen and continues. She escapes by using Helen as a shield. The scene establishes the social pressure around Ruth’s party while showing Clare’s discomfort within a crowd she cannot easily leave.

Narrative Significance

Ruth’s role is conveyed through modest, concrete acts rather than an extended account of her life: she proposes a question at the séance, joins Clare at the board, and later holds Clare’s hand under a classroom desk. Those moments connect childhood curiosity with adolescent exposure. The first brings Henry’s name into the open without making him comprehensible; the second gives Clare a fleeting ally when her classmates’ silence makes her conspicuous. Ruth thus belongs to the intimate circle around Clare’s coming-of-age, even as the evidence leaves her own circumstances largely outside the frame.