Ruby — Character Guide

Name

• Canonical: Ruby
• Aliases: Little Red (in-text reference)
• Fairy-tale source: Little Red Riding Hood

Role in the story

Week Two's testimony. The sardonic one. Devoured by a wolf at twelve, cut out alive by a woodsman; the rescue made tabloid headlines and the rescue did not actually save her. Now an adult, she comes to group wearing the wolf as a heavy grey-fur coat with the head still attached and the hood hanging down her back.

Personality / energy

Sharp humor as armor. Loud in the room, lonely on the train. Substance-abuse undertones throughout per multiple reviews. The first to deflect with a one-liner; the last to admit how much the swallowing-and-rescue actually cost her.

Physical description

Twenties to early thirties. Pale skin against the dark of the coat. Like the rest of the cast the book leaves face-level detail unspecified, so the visual treatment leans on silhouette plus the wolf-coat shape. As a twelve-year-old in flashback she is rendered as a small figure in a saturated red hooded cloak — directly mapped to the figure on the book's cover.

Outfit / clothing notes

• Adult signature: a heavy grey wolf-fur coat with the head still attached at the collar, hood / wolf-head down her back. Wears it in every session. Dark jeans and a black t-shirt visible at the open lapel.
• Childhood-flashback: a saturated red hooded cloak over a plain pale dress, basket in hand. The cloak is the same red used for Bernice's collar accent and for Ashlee's gown — the book's sacred red.

Visual motifs

• Heavy grey wolf-fur coat with head attached.
• Saturated red hood (in flashback).
• Basket with bread and a wine bottle (in flashback) → an empty bottle on a subway floor (in present).
• Pinprick white eyes in the wolf shape — recurring throughout the book.

Magic / power signature

None. Her power in the room is sarcasm; her power in the past was surviving.

Chapter appearances

• Week 2: protagonist of the testimony
• Week 1, 3, 4, 5, Epilogue: in the basement circle / at the kitchen table

Source references

Hachette jacket copy ("devoured by a wolf, now wears him as a coat"); Forever Lost in Literature review; BMCC Reads review (substance-abuse subtext).

Confidence

Medium — the coat-as-the-wolf and the red-cloak childhood are explicitly in the jacket copy and reviews; the subway-with-empty-bottle present-day staging is reasonable inference flagged in the chapter file.