Spirits of Spring (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 4) (11 page)

“Interior design? OMG—yes! That’s the perfect job for
you!” I replied without hesitation. “So do you have other jobs
lined up once you and Shelly are finished with Rosewood?”

Rachel fervently shook her head no. “I applied to the
Tallahassee Institute of
Interior Design
last night.
Their
semesters run on a different schedule than regular colleges do
so if I’m accepted, I will start in October.”

“That’s awesome!” I blurted out instantly then I realized
how truly
un
-awesome it really was. “Tallahassee, Florida?”
Maybe I was panicking for no reason.
Maybe there was a
Tallahassee, Ohio that I’d never heard of before. Yes, there had
to be one just down the road from Pendleton.

“Yep—Florida.
Boone finally decided what school he
wanted to play for so I just picked one nearby and applied.
Obviously, I hope I get accepted but even if I don’t, I’m still
moving down there with him.
I can always just try another
school if this one doesn’t work out. There are tons of places
down there for me to choose from—I figure at least one of them
will recognize my brilliance sooner or later.”

That’s when it hit me. Graduation was right around
the corner. While I was super excited to move on with Zach, it
never quite sunk in to me that everyone else wouldn’t be
moving on with us. I’d been concentrating so hard on what I
would soon be gaining that I failed to realize how much more I
would be losing. Rachel was the best friend I’d ever had and in
a few short months, she was going to be over a thousand miles
away from me. I thought about all of the times that she was
right where I needed her to be in a matter of minutes. It was
never going to be like that again. Wow. Who was I going to call
the next time I needed a ride to the church to find a dead body
before sunrise on a
Sunday
morning?
Okay,
so I
would
probably never need another ride
exactly
like that one but you
get the point. I still had Zach, of course, but Rachel was the best
sidekick
ever
—there was no way I would be able to replace her
nor did I really want to try to.

I tried not to sound as bummed out as I felt but I was
going to miss her fiercely. “That’s great, Rachel. I hope things
work out exactly the way you want them to in Florida. I really
mean that.” But even as I said it, I could feel the tears welling
up in my eyes. “But I’m really going to miss you.”

Her cheerfulness drained and was replaced by a slight
pout. “Aw, Ruby! Don’t get me started! I’m going to miss you,
too. You’ll always be my bff, though—you know that.
We
haven’t known each other long but I’ve had more fun with you
than I’ve ever had with anyone else.”

Now I
really
wanted to cry. “We have to spend as much
time together as possible before you leave for Florida. When
exactly are you leaving?”

“The first week of August. We’ll have two whole
months over the summer to get into as much girl trouble as we
can handle. Plus, track starts next week so we’ll be hanging out
together almost every night after school for the rest of the year.
Don’t worry—by the time I leave, you’ll be on Rachel overload
and you’ll be glad to see me go.”

Well, we both knew
that
was a lie.
But all we could do
for now was pretend that it was the truth and change the
subject.
What better
subject than
Zach?
Where was
he
anyway? He told me that he was riding to school with Rachel
but he was nowhere to be found. “Where’s Zach? You did
know that you were giving him a ride this morning, right?” A
stupid question perhaps considering that they lived in the same
house and fought over the same bathroom every morning but
sometimes Rachel got distracted easily. She was a “shiny
object” kind of girl. It was super easy to picture her driving
away from their house and fiddling with her CD player while
Zach ran behind screaming her name at the top of his lungs.
The bell was about to ring and there was still no sign of him. I
checked my phone quickly to see if he’d sent me an SOS text
that I didn’t notice. Nope. Nothing. He had to be around
somewhere, but where?

“Don’t fret, my pet! Romeo is safe and sound in the
principal’s office,” Rachel proclaimed just as Mr. Raspatello
closed the door and began calling role.

“The principal’s office?” I didn’t even realize how
loudly I’d shouted it until Mr. Raspatello stopped talking in
mid-sentence and shot me the stink eye causing everyone in
the room to turn and stare at me. Once the room went back to
normal, I repeated that phrase in a whisper. “The principal’s
office? Who did he beat up this time and why aren’t you upset
about it?” Of course the second those words were out of my
mouth, I knew
exactly
whose face Zach would most want to
grind into the
pavement.
Lucas.
My
heart sunk past my
stomach and all the way down to my new pair of red canvas
wedges.

“Don’t panic, Ruby! Zach isn’t in any kind of trouble this
time. He’s actually trying to raise some money for the shelter
and he wanted to see if Principal Lascher would let him hold a
dog show here at the school.”

“A dog show? What a brilliant idea! I have
the
smartest
boyfriend in the world!” Not only was he not getting into fights
now, he was channeling his energy into something positive. If
the incident between me and Lucas had happened even just a
few months earlier, he would have totally blown a gasket and
been in jail for sure right now. Zach had matured so much in
such a short period of time. My heart shot its way up to my
chest and nestled back in where it belonged.

“I know, right? If I applied myself, I could be just as
smart as he is. I’m totally going to buckle down and do my best
once I get to Tallahassee or whatever college I end up going to.
Mom and Dad are
so
proud of me—I think they thought that
being with Boone was the only thing I was interested in doing
for the rest of my life. It’s helping to take
some
of the heat off of
Zach, too.
OMG, he and our dad really got into it again last
night, though. I
hate
it when they fight!”

“I know—me, too.” I sat there at my desk in silence for
a moment as I remembered the awful yelling I heard coming
from their house before I drove away last night. What would it
take for his dad to see that Zach really was making the right
decisions
for
himself?
Maybe
Zach
would
never
be
a
millionaire like he could have been if he hadn’t given up on
football, but veterinarians made good money.
And
he would be
doing something he loved for the rest of his life.
Why did
money
always
seem
to
bring
out the
worst
in
people?
Suddenly, I had a brilliant idea. I couldn’t make Zach’s dad
change his
mind
about
the football issue
but
there
was
something I could do to help out the situation. The second I got
home from school, I would run the idea past Shelly and see if
she agreed with me. Before I could share my idea with Rachel,
Mr. Raspatello tossed a hall pass onto my desk.

“Here, Ruby. Brooke Morgan is going to meet you in the
library this morning so the two of you can get started on setting
up the Black Raven Society. I know that you’ve busy with all of
your strange extracurricular activities but you’ve dragged your
feet for too long. I need the two of you to have a good plan
worked out before class today so that you can share them with
everyone else. Good luck.”

And cue the giant eye roll.
I really was excited about
the Black Raven Society—it was
the
perfect way
to honor
Garnet’s memory. What I
wasn’t
excited about was spending
time with Brooke.
The more I thought about it, teaming up
with Petra, the foreign exchange student, didn’t seem like such
a terrible idea. At least Petra wasn’t super competitive and
didn’t cry when I won the creative writing contest. But it was
too late to switch partners now, so I begrudgingly slid out of my
seat and set out to meet Brooke.

Unlike my
daily
trips
to the school library
back in
Trinity, I hadn’t spent any time in the library here since my
days of tracking down Garnet’s identity months earlier. As
soon as I walked in the door, I remembered why. Ms.
Wrong
.
There she sat at the counter, lips pursed tightly together in a
disapproving manner. She gave me a sideways glance, her eyes
like light sabers cutting through me. How dare she look at
me
like that!
She
was the one whose petty jealousy caused her best
friend to commit suicide.
She
was the one who disposed of
Garnet’s suicide note so that no one would know the role she
played in it.
The only thing I did was expose the truth—
something she
should
have done herself years ago.
If she was
going
to hate me for that, she
simply
had no
conscience
whatsoever. She was nothing but a homely old sociopath as far
as I was concerned.

Brooke was seated at the table by the window—the
same one I always sat at when I used to come here alone. When
she looked up and saw me approaching, she began to smile and
wave me over to where she sat. Maybe this wasn’t going to be
so bad after all. I mean, for real, I’d survived
way
worse
encounters than this, right?
Still, even through her smile I
could feel slight vibes of jealousy or something just as negative.
I just wasn’t good with new people, especially after they’d
already left a not so positive first impression on me.
If only
Rachel could be here to back me up on this.
Wait a second.
Rachel couldn’t be here but I knew someone else who
could
.
Clay
came to my
rescue when
Lucas
paid me
a visit at
Something Wick-ed and I was going to put our connection to
work for me again.
I concentrated hard and whispered his
name under my breath just as I reached Brooke’s table.

As I took my seat across from her, Clay promptly took a
seat beside me.
Without even
thinking
about it, I looked
straight at him and said, “Thank you.”

“Oh no, thank
you
for picking me to work on this project
with you. I’m super excited that you chose me to be one of the
Founding Ravens. Do you like that phrase—Founding Ravens?
I thought it sounded pretty cool.”

Clay laughed as I instinctively rolled my eyes.
Again.
This was a bad habit I was going to have to find a way to break.
Someday I was going to roll my eyes at the wrong person and
get clocked in the face. But I couldn’t help it. It’s not like I had
control of it. I was just kind of at that point where immaturity
really irritated me.

“Yeah, that sounds good,” I replied, consciously keeping
my
eyes
in check.
Giggles
erupted from
beside me and
I
couldn’t help but smile. Having Clay around was like having an
imaginary friend who wasn’t completely imaginary. Everyone
is someone else’s secret—Clay was mine. So many times he’d
made uncomfortable and even dangerous situations easier for
me to bear. He may have been a drug dealer while he was alive,
but I just didn’t get the vibe that he had done anything more
terrible than that. I was going to have to pump him for more
information tonight. There had to be more to the story than
what I already knew. There just had to be.

“So,” Brooke continued in a super chatty yet slightly
fake voice, “Since I will be the president of the club next year, I
already came up with tons of ideas. I came up with them weeks
ago but Mr. Raspatello told me that I had to get
your
approval
first.”

Cue another eye roll. And more giggling from Clay. At
least I wasn’t looking straight at her when I did it. Why did I
find her so irritating? And was that a hint of sarcasm attached
to the word “your”?
Or was I just overanalyzing this whole
thing? I should be grateful that she took the time to work on
what was essentially my project in the first place. I needed to
just suck it up. I wasn’t going to be here next year anyway, so I
really
should
just let her take control of the whole thing in the
hopes that it would be better for the Black Raven Society in the
end. But I was having a serious issue with that. Why? Because
I was suddenly realizing that I had control issues I’d never
known I had. I’d learned so much about myself since moving to
Charlotte’s Grove and unfortunately, not all of it was good.

As I looked over her notes, she kept pointing out and
over explaining things like I was a two year old. While none of
her fundraising ideas were bad, they weren’t very original
either. Car wash. How many million times had
that
been done?
Sell candy bars.
Yeah, there were at least two clubs selling
candy bars at school at any given time. The entire graduating
class was going to be diabetic before the ten year reunion.
Bake sale. I always found those to be a little iffy. Not that I was
a snob or a germaphobe, but I liked to know who baked those
cookies before I decided to eat them. Flashes of the chocolate
chip that for two seconds I thought was dog poop danced into
my head. Yikes! And how long would it have taken for Zach to
want to kiss me again if I’d accidentally consumed Mrs. Tuttle’s
dog Mandy’s excrement?