Spirits of Spring (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 4) (20 page)

I thought that my day was over so I grabbed my hoodie
and started to head for the locker room.
Coach Hunter had
other plans for me.

“Not so fast, Ruby! I saved the best for last—the relay. I
need my four fastest girls on this one if we have any chance of
winning it. Rachel, Jordyn, Misty—I’m talking to you, too.”

Of course. I had all the luck of a black cat born under a
ladder on Friday the thirteenth. There was no way that I could
display any sort of team spirit with that succubus in the lineup.
Despite weak protests that I didn’t want to do the relay, Coach
Hunter gave me “that look” and pointed back toward the track.
Begrudgingly, I did as she wanted me to do.

“Rachel, Jordyn, Misty, and Ruby—in
that
order,
please—take your places. I want to get an idea of your times so
pretend that we are at an actual meet and give it your all.”

It didn’t hit me at first but once the race started, I
realized that Misty was going to be the one handing off the
baton to me.
I half expected her to switch it out with a lit stick
of dynamite before shoving it into my waiting hand.
As I
watched Rachel pass off to Jordyn, I started to get anxious.
I
was merely seconds away from coming face to face with my
mortal enemy. Unfortunately, sweaty palms were a side effect
of my anxiety.

As
Misty
started
to make her
approach,
everyone
started yelling for me to break into a run. I’d never been part of
a relay team before so I stood there dumbly for a moment
before I figured out what to do. Then, as Misty roughly shoved
the baton at me, I fumbled and it slipped out of my hand.
Unsure of what to do, I did nothing.

“What? Did a poltergeist knock it out of your hand,
dumbass? Pick the effing thing up and run, freak!” Misty spat
out angrily at me.

I was so mad that I could practically feel flames burning
up the sides of my face. My usual instinct was to run away from
my problems and this was the one time that it was the correct
thing to do. However, anger obviously messed with what little
coordination I
did
have. As I turned to run, I stumbled over my
own feet and almost did a complete face plant. I caught myself
with both hands, road rash seared across my palms and tears
stinging in my eyes. That was it. I was done. Rachel and Coach
Hunter
were
both
going
to
have
to
deal
with
the
disappointment—this was both my first and
last
day of track.

“You run like a girl!”

Never before had an insult brought a smile to my face.
But that taunt didn’t come from Misty or anyone else in her
serpentine brood—it came from Clay.

13. Dancing with Myself

It took everything I had not to scream his name right
there in front Misty. Just when I thought that I would never see
him again, he showed up right when I needed him the most. In
a weird way, he was kind of like the ghost version of Zach.
Neither of them was
always
by my side, but they somehow
seemed to end up there at exactly the right moments—like this
one.
If
I ever needed my own
cheering section, this
was
certainly the right time for it.

“Stop standing there like you’ve just seen a ghost—
run!” He barely got the words out of his mouth before breaking
out in laughter. My bad mood shot out of me at the same speed
as my feet as I flung myself into a full throttle run.

“Is that the best you can do? Misty ran
twice
as fast as
that!” Clay shouted to spur me on. And it worked, too. My new
goal in life was to not let that slithering little sidewinder in tiny
shorts beat me at
anything
ever again. I kicked it up another
notch and lunged for the finish line.

“Wow. Excellent job, girls!” Coach Hunter said as she
jotted our time down on her clipboard. “Ruby—you clearly
need to work on your hand off. Everyone else—you need to dig
deep and find the kind of motivation Ruby has. I don’t know
what it was that got you moving so fast there at the end, but
whatever it was, don’t lose it.”

“I don’t intend to, Coach,” I replied with a smile. Clay
was one of the best friends I’d ever had—I would be very
careful not to hurt his feelings ever again.

When Coach Hunter dismissed us all back to the locker
room, I hung back so that I could have a quick word with Clay. I
was happy to have him back but nowhere near happy enough
to allow him into the locker room with me so I asked him to
wait by my car for me. He must have been pretty happy to have
me back in his life, too, because he instantly did what I asked
him to do without any kind of sarcastic rebuttal. Score another
point for the dominatrix!

After changing, I sent Rachel a quick text to let her
know that Clay was back.
There were far too many curious
ears for me to risk saying a single freakish word out loud. I did
another epic sprint to the parking lot to meet him.
He was
about to hear some serious apologizing. Or not.

“Even though you couldn’t see me, I could hear every
word you said to Shelly that day. I followed you home so that I
could find out what caused you to say the things you said to me.
I’ve been around far more than you realize—I just wasn’t ready
to face you yet. Apology accepted. Now, can we never bring up
the subject again?”

He ran his hand back through his hair several times
during that short monologue. This meant only one thing—he
was nervous. He had to know that I thought that he was in love
with me—it was the only possible cause for his anxiety. The
fact that he didn’t want to address the subject meant something
entirely different—it meant that I was right.
What was I going
to do? For the moment anyway, I was going to put that thought
out of my mind. We had some
serious
catching up to do.

Once home, I quickly filled Shelly in on the day’s events
while filling a plate with her latest culinary masterpiece—
rosemary
chicken
with
garlic
roasted potatoes
and
green
beans.
Someday I definitely needed to send Diane Mason a
thank you card for saving me from the scorched Spaghettios of
my past.

As I scooted for the staircase, Shelly tried to stop me.
“Hey, your dad isn’t going to be home for a few hours—I was
hoping that you would have dinner with me and then watch
tonight’s episode of Cinnamon Jones. There are only five more
until the finale and this week is where it really starts getting
good.”

“Sorry, but I need to catch up on things with Clay—he’s
already waiting for me upstairs.
DVR it for me though—I need
to catch up on the last few episodes first anyway.
Maybe we
can watch them all Sunday night after we get back from our
shopping trip.”

Shelly nodded but I could see that she
was clearly
hoping for a different answer from me. To smooth things over
a bit, I took a bite of the chicken and told her that it was the
best that I had ever tasted.

“Thanks, it took me all afternoon to make! Have fun
with Clay and I am going to hold you to that Sunday night DVRfest. I want to spend as much quality time with you as possible
before you leave for college.”

While she wasn’t exactly crying, her eyes were far from
being dry. Now was
not
the time for this! Now was the time for
me to talk to Clay about other things.
I shoved a heaping
forkful of potatoes into my mouth so that I could politely nod
before running away.
Why did everyone around me seem so
emotionally charged lately?

Between bites, I filled Clay in on my history with Misty
and
her sheer desperation to break Zach and me up.
He
listened closely without interruption until I got to the part
about the shower video.

“You wouldn’t happen to have a copy of that around,
would you? You know, just so I could see for myself how evil
Misty really is.” He tried to deliver that line without laughing
but failed miserably.

“Oh no, I’m not falling for
that
old trick!
You may be
dead but you’re still just as hopped up on testosterone as you
were when you were alive, aren’t you?”

“Who? Me? Nope. Not at all. Scout’s Honor,” he replied
with a devilish grin.
I never noticed it before but he had a
really nice
smile—almost as nice as Zach’s. Clay was
an
attractive, funny, and—dare I say it—sweet boy. It was too bad
that his relationship with Sophie didn’t work out. If it had, he
may still be alive right now.
I hoped that somewhere in her
heart, she knew what she gave up and regretted it.

Happy to see him acting more like himself, I blurted out
the worst thing I possibly could have. “There’s the Clay
Roseman that I know and love!” Remembering that he had a
crush on me a millisecond too late, I took it back with a hasty,
“Well, you know what I mean”.

His smile instantly faded.
He lowered his gaze and ran
his hand back through his dirty blond locks. “Yeah, don’t worry
about it. I know exactly what you meant. Let’s talk about
something else now—like the fact that you still have to help me
find out who killed me.”

“
What?
Haven’t you heard a word of what I’ve been
saying to you for the past hour? My secret’s been exposed. I’m
the town freak. I’m only a half a step away from being burned
at the stake. I—“

“You don’t have to worry about any witch hunters
coming after you with flaming torches or anything. If no one
ever set fire to old lady Douglas, I highly doubt they’ll do it to
you. She really
is
a witch!”

I assumed that he was joking but he had that “Scout’s
honor” look on his face. He
actually
believed in witches. I was
about to point out the sheer lunacy of that belief until I realized
something—I was going to be explaining said lunacy to a ghost.
It was the proverbial “pot calling the kettle” scenario to a tee
and not a point worth arguing.

“Witch hunts aside; I simply don’t want to attract any
more attention to myself than is absolutely necessary. Maybe if
I ignore ghosts, they will start leaving me alone. I’m not
referring to you, of course.”

“Of course not.”
Clay sat there in silence,
absentmindedly plucking at the loose threads in his jeans.
I
could tell that he was intently thinking about something but I
had no idea of what it could be. Whatever it was, he snapped
out of it and acted like nothing was wrong. “You still have to
take me to see my grandma, though.”

“Absolutely!
We can stop at Roseman’s Floral
Emporium on the way home from school tomorrow. I need to
take a look at flowers anyway, you know, for prom. My going in
there won’t even be remotely suspicious—she won’t have any
idea that I have her dead grandson in tow.”

“Yeah, the fewer people who know about me, the better,
right?”

His tone of voice was sadly sarcastic but I decided not
to call him on it. I simply nodded and left it at that. He could be
offended all he wanted to but in the end, it was my choice and
there was nothing he could do about it. It wasn’t that I was
keeping him hidden because I was embarrassed by him—it was
because I was embarrassed by
me
. I was nowhere near ready
to fly my freak flag freely around town—and I never would be.

“Right,” I replied cheerily then immediately changed the
subject. “If you want to stay here again tonight, you can. I’m
going to call Zach real quick and then get ready for bed. Shall I
turn the TV on for you again?”

“No, that’s okay. I’m not in the mood for television
tonight. I have a few things on my mind—tonight feels like a
Silver Lake kind of night. Maybe tomorrow instead.”

“Oh, okay.” Now it was
my
turn to be disappointed. I
missed him while he was gone—it was nice having him around
again but I understood completely.
We said our goodnights
and Clay disappeared.

Zach was happy to hear from me as Rachel had only
briefly filled him in on what happened at track practice.
My
goal was to get through what little time remained in my senior
year with the least amount of drama possible. The only way I
was going to achieve that was with Zach’s and Rachel’s help.
They were truly the only friends I had left in that school. What
would I ever do without either one of them?

After talking for a while about our weekend plans, my
eventful day began to catch up with me. When I found myself
starting to nod off as he explained how great Foxy was doing, I
knew that it was time to get some sleep. I barely got out an “I
love you, goodnight” before I drifted completely into dream
land. Unfortunately, my version of dream land was anything
but dreamy.

It was nothing like my usual nightmares but that was
kind of what made it even more frightening.
This one was
scary because it felt
real
. No ghosts, no blood, no weird goings
on—I was just supposed to meet everyone at the diner for
breakfast. I was the first one to arrive so I asked the waitress if
we could combine a few tables so that we could all sit together.
When she asked me how many were going to be in my party, I
named them each out loud as I counted them on my fingers.

“Dad, Shelly, Garret, Diane, Andy, Rita, Rachel, Boone,
me, and Zach—don’t forget Zach.” When I mentioned Zach’s
name, she gave me an odd look.

“Party of nine then?” she replied abruptly.
“No, I counted ten—you must have forgotten Zach. You
can’t forget him!”

“If you insist,” she said mysteriously. “Party of ten it is.
Follow me to the backroom.
I think you
will be more
comfortable back there. Don’t you?”