"Why is there a bonfire on a week night?" Ruth groaned, falling into the pile of clothes Terry had collected from her closet. She rolled into a comfortable little ball and refused to move away from the comfort of fresh vanilla, even if Terry was giving her the biggest glare she could muster.

Her brown arms crossed tightly over her chest, her hip jutted out like she meant business. Her fingers angrily make a 'shooing' motion, trying and failing to get the stubborn girl to move. A dark whip of fire stirred in her gaze and she frustratingly nudged her cousin with the tip of her boot.

"We're on a time crunch, Ruth. We don't have time for this," she growled. "Your ass is going."

"My ass is actually comfortable staying right here, thank you very much."

"Nope. She already agreed that she wants a couple smores to celebrate the start of Fall."

Ruth snorted. "What are you, an ass whisperer?"

Terry's stern expression smothered over in amusement, a small smile of amusement tugging at the corners of her lips. "Maybe. Now get up and let me pick out an outfit for you."

The grumble from Ruth's lips was ignored as she rolled off of the pile. When Terry and Jana first presented the bonfire idea, having been told to come by Eddie and Johnny, she refused. She protested for hours, claiming how unfair it was to have it on a school night, but somehow, they finally got her to concede. NYU was starting to be a damn weapon.

Terry forced Ruth into a new pair of ripped, black skinny jeans, and an olive off-the-shoulder bodysuit. She tried to hide her frown at the bodysuit, but it made Terry happy, so she left it on. She did, however, stick to her usual very little to no make-up routine, much to her cousin's annoyance, and shoved her curls over her shoulder. There was no way those messy tendrils were going to get in a scrunchy.

Jana's purr of approval was all she needed to boost her confidence in such a skintight outfit. Though it was just a bonfire among a few different friends, they all still wanted to look presentable. Especially Terry, who kept biting the corner of her lip at the mention of Johnny. Ruth smiled teasingly at her every time, but never said a word about it after leaving the apartment.

Ruth smelt the bonfire before she saw it after they parked in a random lot near the woods. The night was warm with the occasional breeze running over goosebumps ridden arms. It wasn't chilly yet, but Fall was just around the corner, hence the bonfire. The bonfire was meant to be a gathering among friends, an intertwining of different cultures and tribes as they come together as one. An ancestors dream.

Oh, and smores.

Couldn't forget the smores.

The hazy, illuminating glow shimmered in sunset colors. Licks of yellow and oranges flickered behind shadows of hunched over bodies gathered around it. Though it was supposed to be a small group, Ruth easily counted over twenty people, and her glare towards her cousins was swift and just.

"Five people?" she growled.

Jana smiled with a shrug, and Terry ignored them, her gaze stuck on Johnny the closer they got. Everyone there was already sitting on a log from what Ruth could tell, which meant one thing.

They were late.

Johnny's dancing eyes caught the three of them walking closer, a smirk drooping across his evocative, pretty lips. "Well, well, well. Look who's late."

"Can't be that surprised. You know we run on Indian Time," Jana joked as the chuckling group turned to look at them.

Ruth's met most of them at some point in time, but not enough times to be able to put a name to a face. The few she remembered exchanged smiles with her as her gaze made it's way around the fire, though most of everyone's attention was stuck on the two cousins they got to grow up around.

"What's up, Ruth?" Johnny greeted, his eyes kind.

"Threatening cousins, out late on a school night, and wondering what the hell I'm doing here. The usual," she teased, shrugging.

"What a baddass," he winked.

"I try," she joked, half-heartedly.

He chuckled. His attention fell onto Terry, who forced herself next to him while Jana and Ruth sat beside each other on another log, and began talking to her. Jana spoke to the person on the other side of her like long lost best friends, while Ruth's gaze trailed over the rest of the group that she didn't have a chance to look at. Rubbing her lips together thoughtfully, her gaze skimmed over each person, noting the differences in hair color, hair length, skin tone, and attitudes. Not one person at the bonfire looked the same, and diversity of them all was beautiful.

The familiar heat of someone's gaze bored into the side of her face while she was taking everyone in.

Curious, she looked across the fire, her eyes moving freely over the few people by Johnny's side with apparent interest. It didn't take long for her gaze to collide with a familiar pair of liquid brown eyes and she froze up, not at all expecting them to be there.

Raffo's pretty eyes were on her long before she noticed, despite the girl settled on the ground between his long legs. She was twisted around against him and talked animatedly, trying and failing to gather his emotionless attention, and Ruth forced herself to look away anyway. Disappointment settled deep within her pinching stomach as she tried her best to appear unaffected by Mirana and Raffo's close proximity, but it was a lot easier said than done.

By why shouldn't she feel hurt? Did he not just serenade her with a guitar a few days before? Was Mirana and Raffo's friendship a lot closer than he had let on? Or did he just make every girl feel special?

She felt the heat of Raffo's vacant stare leave her face when he finally realized she was ignoring him. Good.

"Hey," the girl beside her greeted, pulling her out of her thoughts.

Ruth looked over at the beautiful girl with almond shaped brown eyes and waist length chestnut hair with curiosity. Though her greeting was kind, there was something unsettling about the way her eyes scrutinized Ruth's face a little too closely. "Um—hey."

"Never seen you around before."

"I'm uh, Jana and Terry's cousin. I haven't been here for too long," Ruth admitted.

The girl blinked, her fake lashes long as they brushed along the top of her cheek. "Cousins? You native too?"

"Yeah I am. I'm Choctaw and Black, actually."

"Blackfoot?" her eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

Ruth's cheeks filled with warmth. "No. I mean I'm Native and Black."

Something flickered behind the girl's expression. She grew colder, her eyes hardened and stony as they narrowed down at her distastefully. "Oh. You're one of them."

What the hell?

"What's that supposed to mean?" Ruth bit back hotly, struggling to keep her voice low as to not draw attention to their conversation. She had to clench her fingers in her lap to keep from reacting openly.

Noticing that her words got under Ruth's skin, the girl smirked widely. "It means you're a fucking half-breed claiming a culture that you don't belong claiming. Fucking mutt."

Jana bristled beside a recoiling Ruth, having caught onto the conversation. Swallowing back the rage clogging in the back of her throat, Ruth pressed her hand into Jana's, silently telling her not to say anything and cause a scene. She could already feel the tension rolling from her cousin's shoulders, and she knew if she didn't get up and walk away, she was going to draw attention to herself.

And at the moment, that was the last thing she wanted to do. She was embarrassed enough as it was. She had no desire to add anything else to it.

So Ruth ignored the girl, despite the hurt clenching her chest and swarming her body, and stood up from the log. Needing a moment to herself, she walked away from the triumph of evil, smoreless, with her arms wrapped tightly around her body. Feeling stupid for coming in the first place, she knew she had no one to blame but herself as she walked into the trees, staying close enough to prevent worry. First, it was coming to the damn bonfire on a school night. Then, it was seeing Mirana all cuddled up to Raffo who didn't push her away, and now a girl questioning her Afro-Indigenous background. Could the night get any damn worse?

What could be worse than being called a half-breed?

A fucking mutt.

And she had the nerve to tell her she didn't belong claiming to be Choctaw because she wasn't a full-blooded Indigenous woman. She spoke to her like blood quantum mattered, and as much as Ruth hated to admit it, maybe it did. Her family told her all her life that it didn't . . . but if a random girl she hardly knew was acting like it mattered, then it's possible that it could.

She didn't know the answers to any of it. And, perhaps, she never would.

Either way, she couldn't go back just yet. She still needed time to sort through the pain unfurling beneath the coolness of her skin.

"Hey," a deep voice called out, and Ruth nearly jumped out of her skin and released an unattractive squeal.

The person who talked laughed loudly, the tone thick and husky in the silence of the night. "Sorry, Ruth. Guess I've made it a bad habit."

"Break it," Ruth groaned, rubbing her chest. "What are you doing here, Johnny?"

Johnny smiled and stuffed his hands into the front of his pocket. "Just wanted to make sure you were good. The woods aren't the safest place to be at night and Raffo was on my ass about making sure you weren't alone."

"Raffo?"

"Yeah. He would have came himself but Mirana needed his help keeping the fire going," he shrugged nonchalantly.

Ruth sucked in a surprised breath at the news, confused by the thought of Raffo being worried enough about her to tell his best friend to find her. He didn't seem like he'd care; especially while he's all wrapped up in Mirana and couldn't even offer a simple hello. She didn't greet him either, but that was beside the point.

The thought of Mirana leaning against Raffo rubbed her the wrong way again, and the urge to wander off came back.

"I'm not ready to go back," she admitted.

Johnny's gaze was empathetic. "Willow say something to you?"

Ruth felt dumb, but she still asked, "Is that the girl I was sitting next to?"

He nodded in response, leaning his back casually against one of the many trees surrounding them. The faint laughter from the bonfire was almost eerie in the dark of night, but she didn't feel afraid. Not when she wondered if it was smart to open up to a boy she hardly knew. But he looked friendly enough and Terry really seemed to like him, so perhaps she could trust him after all.

"I don't know . . . it shouldn't have even bothered me," Ruth breathed, biting her lip. She leaned against a tree across from him and sighed under her breath. "I know who I am. Hell, I love who I am."

"As you should." Johnny tilted his head curiously. "What shouldn't have bothered you?"

Though she shouldn't have to be the one embarrassed when that Willow girl was the one with the problem, it still didn't stop her cheeks from growing warm and her eyes from falling to the space between them. She hated feeling so ashamed when people were awful to her about things she couldn't change. Her cultures, her looks, her skin color, her stubborn weight that refused to leave her breasts and her butt.

And if it wasn't for the brotherly concern emanating from Johnny's concerned body, she would have kept what Willow said to herself. Sure, it would have ate away at her- hell it still might. But for now, she can talk about it with someone who wasn't her family.

"She called me a half-breed," she finally muttered, her chest clenching from the oncoming ache. She hated the quiver of hurt that encompassed the words. "Then she pretty much said I wasn't native enough to claim my heritage."

Johnny scoffed under his breath, anger lacing through his rough words. "That's fucking bullshit. You don't actually believe that shit do you?"

Ruth half-heartedly shrugged her shoulders, wincing. "I don't know. I know it's how some people feel about us. About . . . people like me."

"Ruth," he sighed softly. She looked up at him then, catching the pity in his eye. "No one should have to feel like that. Willow's just as much of a "mutt" as anyone else and she's the only one bitchy enough to say something. No many people here are from just one tribe, which technically makes none of us 'full-bloods' of anything."

A small smile touched her lips. "True."

"Not to mention blood quantum is some bullshit the white man made up," Johnny added, smiling kindly at her. "We just are. There's no quantum of anything."

"That's what I usually say, but what do I know?" she teased.

"A whole lot more than Willow, I'll tell you that."

They both shared a quiet laugh, the tension from Ruth's shoulders easing the longer she was in Johnny's company. She could see why Terry liked the pretty boy so much. Though he still indulged in bad habits, he was definitely one of the good ones.

"I'm serious though, Ruth. Don't let anyone make you feel like that. Your as native as the rest of us," he said. "If anyone gives you a hard time about it, all you gotta do is let me know and I got the rest."

Ruth laughed again, her heart a lot warmer than it was five minutes ago. "Thanks, Johnny."

He nodded his head, shrugging his shoulders as if to silently say 'anytime'.

"We should get back and make a smore before those bitches eat all the marshmallows," Johnny mentioned. "You can sit by me, if you want. Willow's a bummer to sit next to anyway. You in?"

It didn't take long for Ruth to think up an answer. She grinned widely at him. "I'm in."

Johnny stayed true to his word for the rest of the night. He made some room for her to sit next to him and Terry on their log, and included her in all of their conversations, making her laugh until tears brimmed her eyes. She never looked at Willow, though she could feel her smug eyes on her periodically, and tried her best not to look at Raffo or Mirana.

It was a lot more helpful when everyone started bringing up stories if their ancestors, and she could focus on them and what they were saying. The smore Johnny was roasted and gooey, the perfect combination to soothe the last of her worries away as she drowned in stories of chiefs, survivors, stickball players, singers, dancers, and those who paved the way for their kin. Everyone was respectful and silent, eagerly leaning forward with chocolate smeared over their lips as they drank in each tale, caught in awe of these unknown experiences.

It was a beautiful way to end what was once a painful night.

*****