Spirits of Spring (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 4) (21 page)

She was without a doubt the weirdest waitress I’d ever
encountered.
What was her problem?
No, never mind—I
didn’t
want
to know. I was here to enjoy a nice meal with my
family, friends, and the most perfect boyfriend a girl could ask
for.
Nodding my head in agreement, I followed her to the
backroom with nothing more than a mumbled, “whatever”.

My dad was the next person to arrive. “Hey there,
Ruby,” he said awkwardly as he sat down beside me.

“Hey,” was all I said in return. He was acting just as
oddly as
the waitress
had.
Or maybe it was
just my
imagination. Yes, that had to be it. I was absolutely starving
and I’d been known to get a little loopy when I hadn’t eaten for
a while.

One by one, each chair was filled except for the one
right beside me—that one was reserved for Zach. When Shelly
walked in and made a beeline for that coveted spot, I stopped
her.

“Sorry, Shelly—I’m saving that one for Zach. The one
beside my dad is still open, though.”

Shelly
sat
Ruby—” Shelly
approached.
down
next to me anyway. “About that,
stopped
mid-sentence
as
the
waitress

“Now that you’re all here, are you ready to order your
drinks now?” It was a fairly simple question—one that she
probably
asked a lot of
people—but for some reason she
pronounced each syllable slowly and with the precision of a
Shakespearian actor.

“But we’re
not
all here! We’re still waiting for Zach. He
usually isn’t late. I hope he isn’t having car trouble or anything.
Maybe I better check to see if he’s texted me.” As I reached
under my chair for my bag, Shelly placed her hand gently on my
arm.

“He didn’t text you, Ruby. You know that. I know how
terrible it was for you—losing Lee and moving to Charlotte’s
Grove and all.
None of us realized just how fragile you were.
We thought that you would come out of this yourself sooner or
later. We never should have let this go on for so long—that was
our mistake. But we are here today to correct that.”

“I’m
not
fragile—not anymore!” I shouted as I slapped
her hand away and went for my bag again. “All of that changed
when I met Zach.”

Everyone at the table began to speak at once so that I
couldn’t even make out a single word any of them was saying. I
rummaged through my bag until I found my phone. Once it was
in my hand, I opened up my messages screen to see if Zach had
contacted me recently. Nothing. Not only had he not texted me
yet this morning, I couldn’t even find the ones he sent from the
night
before.
My
stupid
phone
must
have
erased
the
conversation somehow.

I went into my list of contacts to bring up his number so
that I could call him to see where he was. I scrolled all the way
to the bottom
of the
alphabetical list but came
up empty
handed. The last name on the list was Shelly’s. Where was
Zach? My phone couldn’t have erased his entire contact profile
by accident, could it?

My dad rose from the table and called for an end to the
verbal cacophony. The room instantly fell into an eerie silence
until he shattered it with the most terrifying words I’d ever
heard anyone utter.

“There is no Zach, Ruby. He never existed. You created
him in your mind because you were lonely and afraid to face
life without Lee. You couldn’t handle the idea of losing another
boyfriend, so you found one that could never leave you.”

My mind began to swirl in a maelstrom of anger and
confusion.
Why would my dad say something so mean, so
hurtful? He told me that he didn’t think that I was crazy—why
did he lie to me?

“You’re wrong!” I screamed, “You’re totally wrong!
Zach is real!” I looked across the table into Rachel’s eyes. She
dropped her gaze as soon as we made eye contact. “Tell him,
Rachel! Tell him he’s wrong! Tell him about your brother!”

“Ruby,” she whispered but said nothing more.

I
worked
my
way
around
the
table,
desperately
pleading with each of them. “Tell him about your best friend,
Boone!
Andy—tell him about all of the good things that Zach
does at the shelter!” Each plea went unanswered. By the time I
got to Zach’s parents, I was sobbing uncontrollably and could
barely get the words past my lips. “Tell him about your son!” I
begged.

Not a single one of them had the courage to look me in
the eyes as I addressed them.
What they were telling me
couldn’t be possible—could it? Could I be so crazy that I didn’t
even know that there was something this terribly wrong with
me?
I began to babble incoherently about all of the things that
Zach and I had done together, all of the conversations we’d
shared. I closed my eyes in an attempt to block out the harsh
truth they all just handed me.
As weird as it may sound, I
would have rather been told that he was dead than to be told
that he only ever existed inside my own sick mind. I pulled my
knees up to my chest and began to rock back and forth in my
chair. I was happy before they told me the truth—why couldn’t
that have been enough for them?

“I have your drinks—is everyone ready to—“

I opened my eyes and saw that one look at my psychotic
meltdown
caused the waitress
to stop dead in her tracks.
When she caught me staring at her, she mumbled something
about giving us a few more minutes and hurriedly handed us
our drinks. She saved my drink for last.

“Here,” she said, thrusting the glass toward me. She
was in such a hurry to get away from me that she let go of it
before it was firmly in my grip. The glass tumbled toward the
floor, dumping ice cold water down the length of my arm.

“Ruby! Wake up!” a voice shouted into my ear.

It was the oddest awakening I’d ever experienced. My
eyes were open and I could see that I was physically inside my
own bedroom but my brain was still telling me that I was in the
diner. Somehow, I seemed to be in two places at once. I could
feel the icy cold of the water but I knew that I wasn’t wet.
Never before had I felt so completely insane.

“Ruby! Wake up!” the voice called again, louder than
before. This time I recognized who was speaking to me—it was
Clay.

Slowly, the scene in the diner began to fade away. The
coldness on my arm wasn’t caused by the glass of water the
waitress spilled on me—it was the frigid cold touch of my ghost
friend trying to comfort me.

“I’m awake,” I muttered as soon as I felt that I truly was.
“I just had the worst nightmare ever, Clay. I dreamed that Zach
never existed, that I imagined every single moment he and I
have spent together. It was a terrible feeling. I felt so—so—
lost
without him. It
was
just a dream, wasn’t it?”

“Of course it was, Ruby,” Clay replied soberly. “Of
course it was.”

Clay
removed his
hand
from
my
arm
at the mere
mention of Zach.
His feelings for me were deepening more
with each passing day. I couldn’t allow him to go on like this.
Regardless of what everyone else thought about me, I needed
to dig around in Clay’s past and try to help him move on. But
for now, I needed him with me.
I would never fall asleep
without knowing that I wasn’t alone.

“Clay, I don’t want to talk about my dream—I don’t
want to talk about anything right now. I need to get some sleep
and I don’t want to be alone. Will you stay here with me until
morning?”

“Of course I will, Scout’s Honor.”

I’m not sure how I managed to do it, but I fell right back
asleep within minutes and didn’t wake up again until the alarm
went off.
Clay was lying in the bed beside me with his eyes
closed.
Once again I had sought comfort in the last place I
should have looked.
I said nothing but I knew that
something
was going to have to be said very soon.

14. Cloudy with a Chance of Street
Brawls

I left for school early enough to be able to catch Zach
and Rachel before they left their house. Though I was certain at
this point that the dream was nothing more than that, I wasn’t
going to feel completely at ease until I saw his face. The tension
in my shoulders relaxed the very moment that he got into my
car. Before following Rachel out of the driveway, I motioned
for her to come to my window.

“You’re my best friend, right?” I tried not to sound on
edge but that was far beyond my range of acting skills.

Rachel immediately got a concerned look on her face.
“Of course I am, why do you even have to ask me that question?
What’s going on, Ruby?”

“If I were crazy—and I’m talking
totally
cray-cray, you’d
tell me, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes,” she replied slowly. “Again—what’s going on?
Please tell me there isn’t another dead body on the church
steps that you need me to go help you find!”

“No, it’s nothing like that—Scout’s Honor.” I wanted to
tell her details about the dream but something told me not to,
especially not while Zach was sitting right beside me. “I just
had a really realistic dream last night. It still has me feeling a
little weird, I guess. But I’m fine—for real.”

“Okay, as long as everything is alright then. See you at
school.”

 

After Rachel walked away, Zach inquired about
my
strange—even by
my
standards—conversation with his sister.

Without going into any details, I merely told him that I
had a dream that I was certifiably insane and that everyone I
knew played along with my delusions for an extended period of
time.

“Oh.” He sat in thought for a moment before adding, “So
why haven’t you asked
me
if I would tell you if I thought you
were crazy then?”

“Well that’s a simple question, silly!” I replied, pulling
out the perfect lie faster than a cowboy could pull out his six
shooter, “I already
know
that you would tell me the truth!”
With a kiss on the cheek for good measure, Zach was convinced
that I was telling
him
the truth.
For now, I needed to keep the
details of the nightmare to myself.

Now that I was involved in an after school activity, my
time of being a social outcast was even longer than I was used
to. My only streak of good luck was that Lucas had been MIA
since the day he ghost busted me. I wanted to know where he’d
gone to but not badly enough to actually inquire about it. As far
as I was concerned, he was dead to me anyway and that was
one grave I never wanted to visit.

Track sucked worse than class did because I actually
had to have close contact with my number one tormentor.
While my relay skills were nowhere near as bad as the day
before, I still had a lot to work on—the main thing being how to
be in such close proximity of the she-devil without letting my
emotions run wild. The only thing that kept me out of trouble
was Clay.

He ran every race with me, cheering me on or pushing
me to go faster—whichever I needed most at the moment.
While Rachel was the best living friend I’d ever had, Clay
definitely
took that title if you took away breathing
as
a
requirement for friendship.
Every day that I spent with him
was going to make it that much harder to say goodbye to him
when the time came. I had to hurry up and find out why he
couldn’t move on.

After track was over, I texted Shelly to let her know that
I would be staying in town a little later than usual so that I
could get an idea of what kind of flowers I wanted for prom.
She was so happy to hear what she thought was excitement for
that infernal dance, that she didn’t question it. She really
should have known me well enough to realize that there was no
way I would be checking out corsages a month and a half ahead
of time—even if I really
did
want to go to that stupid dance. I
procrastinate, therefore
I am—if
everyone
had a personal
motto, that would be mine.

“Are you ready to go see your grandma now, Clay?” I
asked once we were alone together in my car.

His face brightened and he flashed me that trademark
grin of his. “More than you know, Ruby! I thought I would
never see her again. And I wouldn’t have if it weren’t for you.
Thanks. I’m not used to people doing nice things for me—
Grandma and Sophie were really the only people I ever thought
truly cared about me.”

Now
that
was sad. While I didn’t have a terribly long
list of people who I felt cared about me, at least that list
included more than two people. My mother wasn’t around, of
course, but at least my dad made the final cut. Maybe Clay was
wrong about his mom, the same way I was wrong about my dad
there for a while.

“What about your mom? You don’t think that
somewhere underneath all of her dysfunction that she had a
very special place for you in her heart?”

“Maybe,” he said without any emotion, “but it was kind
of hard to tell when she was barely ever sober. She was totally
hammered at my funeral, by the way. Did I ever tell you that
story?”

Just when it seemed like his life couldn’t be any more
tragic than it already was, he came out with a comment like
that one. I didn’t really want to hear the story because I was
most certainly going to need anti-depressants by the end of it.
He was a good person whose life sent him down the wrong
path—it was now my job to point him in the direction of the
right
one. So for his sake, I shook my head no and listened as
he recounted the day of his funeral.