Phantoms of Fall (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 2) (23 page)

“Oh, could you also write Ruby a prescription for birth
control.
You can never be too careful with a seventeen year
old daughter.”

“How true! Jason called over to remind me in case you
forgot.” She scribbled something on her prescription pad and
handed it directly to me. “We’ll start you out with this and see
how it works. If you have any problems, just call me.”

I stared at the piece of paper dumbly. It was nothing
but chicken scratch—how in the world could anyone look at it
and decipher anything intelligible? It didn’t really matter
anyway—I wasn’t going to need it. Smiling at the doctor, I
folded it, stuffed it into my pocket, and walked away.

In the car, Shelly announced that we would be heading
home after one quick stop. After everything I’d been through
this morning, she thought it wouldn’t hurt to wait one more
day to go to the hospital for the tests.

“All we need to do is stop off at the pharmacy so we
can get your prescription and then we can head home—I
promise.”

What? Wasn’t she listening when I told her that Zach
and I were done, through, over, no longer together? Perhaps
she needed me to get out my thesaurus so I could make the
picture even clearer.

“I don’t need it, Shelly. For real. We can go straight
home now.” She stopped the car in the pharmacy parking lot
anyway, but I remained buckled into my seat.

“No, Ruby. You and Zach fought before and got back
together—I want to make sure you’re ready for it when it
happens.
I was
your age once.
I
know how emotional
reuniting can be. Are you really going to sit there and tell me
that if you guys made up tonight and he wanted to have sex
that you’d say no?”

My lips parted in protest and then I changed my mind.
I could never get back together with Zach but Shelly would
never understand why. “Fine. We’ll get the stupid pills and
I’ll take the stupid pills. But it’s a stupid waste of our stupid
time.”

Shelly laughed. “Now, that’s better! Come on in with
me—it won’t take long.”

I dragged my soulless body out of the car. It’s not like
I had anything better to do—today or any day for the rest of
my life, for that matter. At least not without Zach, anyway.
We waited on the bench while the pharmacist waved his
magic wand over the prescription to make it readable. Ten
minutes later, I had birth control I didn’t need burning a hole
through my bag. It was kind of like buying an umbrella after
you moved to the desert—completely and utterly useless.

No one tried to contact me all day.
Nothing from
Rachel, nothing from Zach.
It stung, but it was for the best. I
would still have to see them in school, of course, but a clean
break was what I needed. Clean break. Zach’s broken arm
was all I could see when I closed my eyes. I never wanted to
see him in pain—let alone pain that I caused. Garnet. I would
have to use this week off from school to research her death.
How could she
do this
to me—to him—and
why?
She
committed suicide so the only person she
should
have been
mad at was herself. Unless...what if she didn’t take her own
life, what if someone took it for her? If that was the case, her
killer could still be alive and living in Charlotte’s Grove. I had
a horrible feeling that things were about to get even more
dangerous than they already were.

20. Questions That Can’t Be Answered,
Answers That Shouldn’t Be Questioned

Garnet Hartley.
I typed her name into the box and
clicked on the search button.
What came up were lots of
websites that sold jewelry and several women named Garnet
with different last names. She died over twenty years ago so I
knew it was a long shot, but it didn’t stop me from being
disappointed when I didn’t find anything relevant. I was
hoping to avoid it, but time in the library archives seemed like
the only option.
The library was closed by now so it went
straight to the top of my list of things to do tomorrow. So that
made two things on my to-do list—tests at the hospital and
digging through newspapers. Tomorrow was going to be
sooo
much fun.

When Dad found out about the video Misty had taken
of me, he nearly went through the roof.
After everything else
that happened, that video wasn’t nearly as important to me as
it should have been. I couldn’t sit there and listen to him go
on about it, so I took a plate of food upstairs with me so I
could eat dinner alone.
I use the term “eat” loosely—very
loosely.
After twenty minutes of pushing my chicken and
mashed potatoes around and around on the plate, I dumped
them into the garbage. My stomach was already sensitive to
begin with—and now without Zach, I could find no pleasure
in the world. All jokes about Shelly’s cooking aside,
everything tasted like cardboard.

Have you ever felt such profound sadness that you
were beyond crying?
I never knew it was a possibility—until
now. Tears couldn’t do justice to the gaping void that was
once my soul.
Without Zach, my world ceased to exist.
I
floated
through
the
hours,
the
minutes,
the
seconds,
enshrouded in a black cloud of despair. Everything that made
me who I was was gone now—because everything that made
me who I was, lived inside of him. Curling up into a tight ball
on my bed, I let the darkness envelop me.

I lay there for hours steeped in misery, watching as
the sun went down and the room crept into darkness.
Not
asleep but something other than awake, I sealed myself inside
a tomb of my own thoughts.
Memories of each moment I
spent with him taunted me. Such happiness! How could it be
broken
down
into
nothing
so easily,
reduced to ash
and
carried off
in
the
autumn
breeze
until
it
was
no longer
recognizable? Until
I
was unrecognizable even to myself. A
knock on the door was the only thing that reminded me that
there was a world outside of my own. A world that somehow
carried on like nothing was wrong.

“Ruby, can I come in?” Shelly’s voice came to me
muffled from the hallway.

“Yeah,” I replied. The word stuck in my throat the first
time so I was forced to repeat it. “Yeah,” I called again, this
time finding enough volume to be heard.

I unfurled from my self-made cocoon and reached for
the light as Shelly walked in. She took a seat beside me on the
bed and rubbed my back with her hand.

“Diane just stopped by. She wanted you to know how
Zach’s doing.”

I wanted Shelly to tell me that Zach was here, that he
couldn’t bear the physical pain of our separation any longer
and came to repair our broken romance.
But apparently a
visit
from
his
mother
was
the
best I was
going
to get.
Emotionless, I waited for Shelly to tell me what she said.

“Zach’s arm is broken and his neck is sprained. He’ll
be in a neck brace for a few weeks, a cast for six. He was in a
lot of pain, but they gave him something to help him rest. As
far as the fight goes, Ryan has a broken nose and a broken jaw
and Zach is suspended from school until further notice. The
school board meets in two weeks and they will determine
whether or not he is kicked out of school permanently.”

Shelly’s words hit me like a swift kick in the gut. If
Zach got kicked out of school, how would he get into a good
college—or
any
college for that matter? He worked so hard
toward his dream to be a veterinarian.
Thinking that he
might lose that—
that
made me want to cry. It was weird that
I could produce tears for what he lost but not for what I did.
His future was far more important to me than my own.

I nodded my head to acknowledge that I heard her,
but that was all I could manage.
The thought of my once
invincible Norse god lying alone and broken in his bed made
me sick inside.
If I could only go to him and explain what
happened. If I could just hold him until his pain melted away.
But I couldn’t. If I didn’t distance myself from him, things
would only get worse for both of us. Garnet could take her
anger out
on me
all
she wanted
to—but
Zach,
Zach
she
couldn’t have. I would protect him even if I had to die in the
process.

Shelly simply watched me with a hopeless look on her
face. She could deal with my tears but my unresponsiveness
seemed to confound her. She probably expected me to ask if
he wanted to see me or if he asked about me in any way and
when I didn’t she said it anyway.

“Zach would like to know who pushed him down the
stairs—he told his mother that you saw who it was.”

Of all the questions he could want me to answer, he
picked the one that I never could. He probably thought it was
Ryan or one of his friends—I’m sure that a ghost was the last
suspect on his list. I had to deny any knowledge of who sent
him flying down that staircase. He knew I had the answer—I
was staring straight at her when she unleashed her fury. Our
entire relationship came down to one last lie. The last lie I
would ever tell him. The lie that would forever keep him safe.

Shaking my head firmly from side to side, I said, “I
don’t know. I didn’t see anything.” This last lie felt feeble and
transparent. Kind of like me.

Shelly’s sixth sense kicked in. “Are you sure about
that?
He was adamant that you would be able to provide the
answer.” She gave me that look. The one that said “I know
you’re lying but I haven’t figured out why but sooner or later I
will”.

Try harder this time. Try harder to convince her. I
willed myself to appear more confident in the delivery of the
lie. “Positive. It all happened so fast and we were arguing at
the time. One minute he was on the top step and the next he
was plunging down the stairs toward me. I didn’t see anyone
else.”

“Operation Convince Shelly I Wasn’t Hiding Anything”
seemed to be successful. She gave me a weak smile and stood
up.

“Okay…are you sure you don’t want to go see him?
He’s probably asleep right now, but I don’t think Diane would
mind. I could go with you if you want….”

It took an enormous amount of self-control for me to
say no but I managed to do it.

“It’s over between us. I hope he feels better soon but I
don’t want to see him.” It wasn’t a total lie.
I finished the
sentence in my head to echo the full truth. I don’t want to see
him get hurt because of me ever again—I love him too much
for that.

Shelly
looked totally confused but
walked
away
without another word and left me alone to drown in my own
misery again.
Misery was something I was getting pretty
good at. I’d almost perfected it to an art form. But like any
good artist knows, practice makes perfect. Every day of the
rest of my life would be a lie in that I would have to keep
pretending that I didn’t love him. It was time to start that
journey. I turned out the lights and withdrew from the world
again. Day one of life without Zach was drawing to a close.
Day one of the rest of my life.

It was late when I finally fell asleep but early when I
awoke.
The first rays of morning light filtered through the
curtains casting a rosy hue across the room. I enjoyed that
light every other morning, but today it might as well have
been shades of gray. All five of my senses seemed dulled like I
was only half alive. Too bad that sixth sense of mine was still
sharply
focused.
Garnet Hartley was
waiting
for me—
hopefully not literally—at the library and I was eager to meet
her. While chasing Scarlet was far from a treat, at least she
kept
her ghostly
paws off
of Zach.
After what she
did
yesterday, my beef with Garnet turned personal.
She had no
right to hurt him and I was determined to banish her swiftly.
I didn’t care where I would be sending her, I just knew that
she needed to be sent away and I wanted to be the one to do
it.

I rolled out of bed and into the shower.
Even the
warmth of the water that was usually so soothing couldn’t
break through my icy wall of gloom. Would it get better in
time?
Would I find joy in anything ever again?
When Lee
died, I was sad for months but I never quite reached the
bottom of the pit. Now, not only was I at the bottom of the pit,
I was digging furiously to make it deeper. My lowest of lows
had to be proportionate to the celestial highs I reached while I
was with him. For me, there was a lot more digging to do.

Shelly stopped me as I trudged toward the front door
to remind me to be home by one o’clock so she could take me
to the hospital for my tests. But that wasn’t the only reason
she stopped me.

“Ruby, I know you’re still upset about your fight with
Zach yesterday, but I’m worried about you. I’ve seen you sad
before, but there’s something in your eyes that’s different this
time. Or actually, it’s like there isn’t anything in there at all.
Maybe if you went to see him….”

Quickly, I cut her off. “I don’t want to see him. Period.
End of story.” I grabbed my keys from the stand near the
door. “I’m heading to the library.” I slammed the door behind
me to deny her the opportunity to reply.

When I got to the library, I forced a smile and said
hello to the librarian Mrs. Tuttle.
Her reply?
A cranky,
mumbled “Hello,” followed by “Where’s Zach?” as she peered
over her bifocals to look for him.

Zach was the fire, the spark that gave me life. A spark
I would never have again and something seemed to remind
me of that everywhere I went. I wasn’t about to reveal the
sordid details to the Crypt Keeper behind the desk, so I told
her he
was
at school and
walked
toward the
periodical
section. She mumbled something to the effect that I should be
there too, but I pretended that I didn’t hear her. I wasn’t in
the mood for attitude.