Lock and Key (novel)
After her drug and alcohol addicted mother abandons her, child services forces 17-year-old Ruby Cooper to move in with her sister, Cora, who had left for college when Ruby was young. Ruby is upset about this arrangement and continues to wear the key to her old home on a chain around her neck. After learning she will be transferring to a new high school, Ruby attempts to run away but is found out. Nate Cross, Jamie and Cora's next-door neighbor, covers for her. Over the span of the story, Ruby slowly becomes closer to Nate.
Ruby Romaine
Ruby's makeup career began when a motion picture came to her hometown called "Pirate of the Plains" starring actor Errol Flynn. Flynn took a liking to underage Romaine and slept with her. Ruby, threatening to make a scandal out of the affair, was offered a job doing makeup which kicked started her fifty-year career. She is the oldest working Hollywood Makeup Union member. "I've been working here fifty years, hell, I'm almost out of rouge!" Ruby choose to make her makeup the old-fashioned way: in a blender. She has over 720 film and television shows to her credit.