Phantoms of Fall (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 2) (13 page)

“I’m sure! But Zach loves you so much—I’m sure
everything will be just fine.”

 

“What about this?” I twirled in the mirror so she
could see the skirt and top I was wearing from every angle.

A big smile swept across her face. “Perfect!! Your butt
looks awesome and
you have just the right amount of
cleavage going on. Zach won’t be able to resist you!”

Just the effect I was going for. I thought the outfit was
perfect too, but having
a second opinion solidified it.
I
changed quickly and handed the rest of the pile to the fitting
room attendant. It was a really weird feeling knowing that I
was about to buy the clothes I was going to lose my virginity
in. Well, not actually
in
, I guess. Weird and exciting all at the
same time.

Our date was still so far away, but I was already
starting to fantasize about it. What was it going to feel like?
Would everyone be able to tell just by looking at us first thing
Monday morning?
OMG!
Would Dad and Shelly know the
minute I got home? As uncomfortable as that would be, it still
wasn’t a deterrent. I wanted to have sex with Zach and
nothing in the world would change that fact.

Curious, I asked Chloe if she had any experience in
that arena. She gave me a really odd response.

“Um…well…uh, it was....” Her face was a blaze of red
and every word was stammered and stuttered out. “I mean,
no. No, I haven’t.”

Who was she trying to convince—me or herself?
She
definitely
had a skeleton
or two in
her closet—I could
practically hear the
brittle,
old bones
clanking around in
there.
I was about to ask her what juicy secrets she was
keeping but stopped myself just in time. Oh my, what if she’d
been molested or something?
How horrible would I be for
poking into that sort of charnel house?
I felt like a freaking
idiot even though I hadn’t said a word and dropped the
subject immediately.

“Hey…do you want to go get something to eat? I don’t
know about you, but I’m starving!” I paid for my new clothes
and waited for her to do the same.
Slowly, her face returned
to its normal shade and she answered my question.

“Definitely! Let’s hit the food court—I could use a
burger and fries. Shopping is hard work!”

The mall was about to close so the food court was
almost empty. In no more than five minutes, I had the juiciest
burger ever right in the palm of my hand. But after only a few
small bites, I tossed it back into the wrapper. It tasted fine but
for some reason I just couldn’t eat any more. The fries looked
okay but all I could taste was the grease. Suddenly, I wasn’t
even remotely hungry anymore.

“I thought you were starving?” Chloe cocked one
eyebrow at me suspiciously. “You’re not on a diet, are you?”

Losing a few pounds wasn’t a bad idea, especially with
my big date coming up but that wasn’t why I wasn’t eating.
My appetite was totally in the toilet since the first day of
school. But even if I
was
dieting on purpose, I knew I couldn’t
tell Chloe that. She wasn’t a skinny girl and I could see that
she was already taking offense to the fact that she thought I
was trying to lose weight.

“Some people eat when they’re stressed—I guess I’m
the exact opposite.”

“Oh. It
has
been a stressful week for you, I guess. I’m
sure you’ll be okay once you get used to the routine.” She
finished her food and we said our goodbyes. My shopping trip
was successful and not just because I made some awesome
purchases. I now had another awesome new friend, too.

When Monday morning came, I was actually excited to
go to school—for three separate reasons. Of course I wanted
to see Zach—that goes without saying.
He was the most
perfect guy ever and being separated from him was actually
painful,
physically
painful, like a weight was pressing down on
my chest. I was also anxious to start trying to identify Creepy
Girl—I mean the ghost. I called her by that name all week and
it would be tough to stop cold turkey. Once I knew her real
name, it would get a whole
lot easier, I suppose.
And
strangely enough, I was dying to get out on that track to
release some of the pent up frustration I bottled up inside of
me. Sports never interested me until now for some reason.

Without one single trace of the ghost, I was able to
spend every moment of homeroom huddled with Zach over
his
math
homework.
Maybe it
sounds
dorky,
but even
quadratic equations were romantic when they were shared
with a Norse god. We were only separated for two days but it
felt like two decades. As always, I could swear that he was
even hotter than he was on Friday—not that I would ever
complain about that sort of thing, of course.

With each class, I kept waiting for the appearance of
my spectral stalker but she never surfaced. I almost didn’t go
to the library during study hall but I changed my mind. Even
if she never reappeared, it probably wouldn’t hurt to identify
her anyway. I mean, she
had
crossed the line between life and
death to communicate with me—it was the least I could do.
Positive that it wouldn’t take long, I strolled leisurely down
the hall confident that I would have an answer before the end
of the period. And I was wrong again.

It was my first trip to the library and boy was I under
whelmed. I loved books and it made me kind of sad to see
that I wasn’t going to find anything I liked there. But personal
reading preferences aside, I knew I would find what I was
looking for today.

There was something about the library that made me
feel comfortable there. I picked a small table beside a window
and plopped my stuff down.
Where would they keep the
yearbooks? I had absolutely no idea so I started to wander
through the stacks.
The room was too warm and coupled
with the hum of the overhead lights, I lapsed into a sort of
trancelike state as I walked down each aisle absentmindedly
running my finger across the dusty spines. The silence was so
all
encompassing
that
piercing
the air startled
reverberated endlessly through the room as I popped my
head around the shelf to find its source.
a
sudden,
bloodcurdling
scream

me out of my
trance.
Its
echo

And I found something odd—no one else in the library
seemed to hear it.
The few students scattered around the
room were still reading intently. The librarian remained at
her desk, fingers still clicking across the keyboard of her
computer.
There was no
way
that scream came from the
hallway—the door was closed and no noise seemed to be
seeping
in
from
around
its
cracks.
There was
only
one
answer—that scream came from my dead friend.

Where was she?
The temperature of the air in the
room went from suffocating to suddenly crisp so I knew she
had to be near.

“Where are you?” I whispered quietly hoping that no
one would hear me—no one
alive
anyway. “Show yourself.” I
walked quietly
through
the aisles, repeating
myself after
every few steps. I didn’t get a response but
I did get
something else.

In the midst of my search for her, my eyes came to
rest on a shelf laden with yearbooks. Bingo—just what I was
looking for. I slipped the first book off the shelf and returned
to my table.

Charlotte’s Grove High School, 1985. The words were
emblazoned in red on the faded black cover of the book.
I
leafed through pages that clearly hadn’t been touched in years
until I found the memorial page. There was only one photo—
a boy who died in a car accident.
It was only the first of
twenty
books I had to go through,
but I felt deeply
disappointed.

I returned the book to its spot and pulled out 1986.
This
one was
designed
in
red with black lettering, the
opposite of the last.
Not finding a memorial page the first
time through, I searched it again and still found nothing.
Congratulations Class of 1986—you all made it out alive. The
next three years weren’t so lucky. I counted four deaths—two
boys and two girls.

Scrutinizing the girls’ photos carefully, I was positive
they weren’t images of my stalker. One was a pretty blonde
who died of leukemia and the other was a larger girl with
dark hair who was the victim of a hit and run. Neither of them
was my scrawny, pathetic friend.
But this town sure had an
unusually high death rate among the under eighteen crowd.

There were only a few minutes left in the period, but I
decided to look through one more volume before the bell
rang. As I raised my arm to replace 1989 and grab 1990, I
caught a flicker of movement on the other side of the shelf.
An eye appeared in the crack, staring straight at me.

I was caught off guard and pitched backward into the
shelves behind me, screaming as my spine slammed roughly
into the edge of one of them.
The eye stared back at me
unblinking in a cold, menacing gaze. It was an odd shade of
green, rimmed in a ghastly tint of purple. It was the creepiest
thing I’d ever seen—and that was saying a lot.
I got my
second scare when the librarian rounded the corner with a no
nonsense look on her face.

“Young lady! Is there a problem over here?” she
hissed in a voice barely above a whisper.

She was almost as scary as the ghost. She was dressed
in an austere palette of brown that faded into the mousy
brown of her hair and skin. Her face was gaunt and almost
skeletal in appearance, her jawbone sharp enough to cut
glass. Ms. Wright, her nametag read. Ms.
Wrong
was more
like it. Nothing about her was even remotely appealing and it
was my best guess that she’d never seen any kind of hot
romantic action in her whole life. Never. Not even close. Not
even on any man’s
worst
day.

“Answer me!” she eyed me accusingly as she wrapped
her khaki sweater tightly to her barely there chest.

I glanced briefly
to the gap on the shelf before
answering her. The eye was gone.
outburst,
I
fought
my
brain

Needing an excuse for my
for
something
plausible.
“No…no…I just thought I saw a mouse.”

“Nonsense!” she replied sharply. “There are no mice
in my library! Return to your seat now.” She pointed to the
table I’d been occupying and I was too afraid not to follow her
command. Thankfully, the bell came to my rescue. I gathered
my stuff and scooted out the door before she could yell at me
some more.

Still shaking from the experience and trying to decide
who was more frightening—the ghost or the librarian—the
sight of Zach in math class was even more welcome than
usual. He couldn’t know that I was upset, so I put a smile on
my face and caressed his shoulder lightly as I sat down.

“Hey, sexy! How’s your day going?” It was something
I normally would have thought but not said.
But since we
were merely days away from losing our virginity together, I
was feeling bold.
I mean, if I was going to let him see me
naked—for real this time—I should at least get comfortable at
flirting with him.

I couldn’t have asked for a better response. “Better,
now that I have your hot little body sitting behind me.”

Any chill I still had from my encounter in the library
was
definitely
gone after that.
I spent the entire class
daydreaming about our upcoming date and was almost sad
when the period ended. Zach and I walked to our lockers and
he lingered for a moment before leaving.

“So I have something really good planned for our next
date….” He leaned against his locker and watched me as I
stacked my books on the shelf in mine.
He gave me a shy
smile and continued. “Do you wanna guess what it is?”

I didn’t have to guess—I knew
exactly
what he had
planned but it was more fun to pretend I didn’t. “Hmm, I have
absolutely no idea. Give me a hint,” I replied playfully.

Zach shook his head. “Afraid I can’t—no hints. You’re
just going to have to trust me when I say it’s going to be a
spectacular night.”

I closed the door to my locker and walked up to him.
Standing dangerously close to him, I locked eyes with him and
replied, “I do trust you—so whatever it is you have planned,
I’m ready for it.” While he was still trying to digest my words,
I blindsided him with a smoldering kiss.

Zach stood speechless as I turned to go. “Heading to
the track now—I’ll see you in the morning.” Now that I knew
we were about to seal the deal, all I wanted to do was flirt
with him. Why? Because it was an incredible amount of fun
and he seemed to be enjoying it just as much as I was.

“I love you, Ruby Matthews!” he called after me.

“And I love you, too, Zach Mason!” When I heard a
loud slam, I looked around to find the source. Misty Landrum
was standing at her locker and heard every word we said. I
couldn’t have timed it more perfectly if I’d tried. Take that,
Misty—he’s
mine
.

My time on the track was therapeutic. It felt like I was
running
toward
something instead of the usual running away.
As I ran, I thought about my date with Zach, my not so small
victory over Misty, and getting rid of my new ghost. It felt like
I had everything under control again and it felt great.
My
future with Zach was no longer in jeopardy. I couldn’t believe
that only days earlier I actually contemplated breaking up
with him. He was the perfect guy for me and there was no
way
I would let him slip through my fingers. I knew that once
we slept together, there would be no turning back for either
of us. And that was exactly the way I wanted it to be.