Spirits of Spring (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 4) (29 page)

“A little birdie? Who might that have been?” I replied,
aiming
the question at both Clay
and
his
grandmother.
I
needed to know who told her and I needed to know now. While
anyone in town could have revealed my not-so-secret secret to
her, there were very
few people who knew
about my
connection to Clay.
Sure, Lucas “met” him in the tunnel that
night but I highly doubt he paid enough attention to remember
his name. No one at school had directly mentioned Clay in their
taunts which led me to believe that other forces were at work
here.
Someone else was
the source of her
knowledge.
Someone who potentially posed an even greater threat to me
than anyone else in town.

Clay shook his head, still obviously dumbfounded by
her accusation. Mrs. Roseman furrowed her brow and sighed
heavily. Neither were the responses I was hoping for.

“I can’t remember who it was. Someone saw you the
last time you were in here and told me something about you.
I
don’t remember everything they said, but I do recall them
saying that you are friends with Clay.”

Her use of the present instead of the past tense in
referring
to my
friendship with Clay
made me
even
more
anxious. “Who was it? Think
hard
. I need to know who you
talked to.” I could hear the desperation in my voice. Which one
of my friends had betrayed me now? The list of suspects was
short. Was there no one in this world that I could truly trust?

“Oh honey, I have no idea. It must have been someone
who came in to order flowers right after you did but that was
days ago. They were right, weren’t they? You
do
know my
Clayton. How’s he doing?
Does he know exactly how he died?
Is he at peace now?”

“I don’t know him!” I shouted as I ran for the door. “I
don’t know him.”

While this incident was the only thing Clay cared to
discuss, it was the last thing I wanted to even think about.
Which one of my friends had betrayed me now?
And what
would they have to gain by doing it?

Shelly, Zach, Rachel, and Rita were the only ones who
knew about Clay specifically and in great detail. Zach wasn’t
insecure enough about our relationship to expose this secret in
an attempt to rid me of Clay a little faster, was he?
Or could
Rachel be misguidedly trying to help her brother by doing the
same? Would Rita go to such extremes to try to force me to be
comfortable with my connection to the paranormal?
She also
could have done it out of spite during the time that I was
ignoring her. I couldn’t think of any possible motive when it
came to Shelly so I assumed that if it was her, it had to have
been an accidental slip of the tongue.
Regardless of how it
happened, it happened. Now I had the added burden of trying
to figure out which of them slung an entire cutlery set into my
back.

I decided to ask each one of them and analyze their
responses. I knew them all well enough to be able to tell when
they were lying.
At least I thought I knew them all well.
I
would start with the least likely suspect—Shelly—and move
upward on the list from there.

When I calmed down enough to explain to Clay why his
grandmother’s comment rattled me so much, he finally got it.
He didn’t protest when I asked for privacy during my
conversation with Shelly and I thanked him for understanding.
When I broached the subject with her, she had no idea what I
was talking about. According to Shelly, she’d never even met
Mrs. Roseman let alone spilled any of my supernatural beans.

With absolutely no reason to think that she wasn’t
telling me the truth, I walked away disheartened.
Shelly was
the only one on my list of suspects whom I thought may have
done it accidentally.
If it
had
been Shelly’s fault, that would
have been the easiest pill for me to swallow. But now, I knew
that someone else did it and did it on purpose.
I mentally
reviewed the remaining names on my list and decided who to
ask next.

Even though it would be close to closing time by the
time I got to Something Wick-ed, I decided to head over there
tonight to get it out of the way. On the drive there, I tried to
decide how I would respond if I found out that it was her.
While I definitely wasn’t going to be happy with her, I already
knew that Rita was one bridge that I was better off not burning.
She’d been a big help to me on so many occasions—I would
have to let this one little indiscretion slide.

A half hour later, I walked out of the candle shop feeling
worse than I did after my conversation with Shelly. It wasn’t
Rita, either. That left only Zach and Rachel—neither of whom I
was looking forward to questioning.
I could only take so much
emotional turmoil in one day and I surpassed that limit hours
ago so I chose to wait until morning to talk to them. Rachel, of
course, was the next interrogation in line.

With his new vehicle now at his disposal, Zach was
super
excited
to pick
me up for school that
morning.
I,
however, was not. It would have been so much easier for me to
wait until after my talk with Rachel before spending any time
with Zach. He noticed my odd mood the very instant that I took
my place in the passenger seat.
I used sleep deprivation to
explain why I wasn’t very talkative and he didn’t ask any more
questions. It was, in fact, the truth—at least part of it anyway.
How could I be expected to sleep with this kind of black cloud
hanging over my head?

Feeling the need to get it over with as soon as possible, I
practically pounced on Rachel as she got out of Daisy.
The
stupid eyelashes on her car were even more annoying to me
while I was in this kind of mood. I couldn’t even look at her
unbearably
happy
car without wanting
to gouge my
own
eyeballs out. Skipping the formality, I got straight to the point
and asked if she was the one who ratted me out.
What I got
was a straight and what felt like an honest answer. No. That
left Zach as my only possible betrayer.

Now what? I hoped all along that it would never get to
this point. I really thought that I would discover the truth long
before I got to him. There was no way that I was going to ask
him about it at school. I would wait until Friday while we were
on our way to Ohio before dropping this bomb. At least that
way, I would know that we were alone—minus Clay, of course.
And
that I would have him cornered with no chance of escape
for several hours while I pummeled him with questions and
accusations. That thought kind of put a smile on my face. What
can I say—I was starting to hit an epic level of PMS irritability.

I continued to use lack of sleep among other excuses for
the next couple of days to explain why I wasn’t myself. While it
wasn’t the original source of my foulness, by the time Thursday
arrived the track meet was the main source of it. I was scared
to death that I was going to make a fool of myself. I shouldn’t
have worried about that.
Unfortunately, I forgot that even
though we were working together on the same team, Misty was
still my number one enemy. That black cloud hanging over me
had transformed into a squall line of menacing cumulonimbus.

The
torture
started
as
we
boarded
the
bus
for
Graysburg. I was one of the last ones to get on because Zach
insisted on kissing me about a thousand times for good luck.
Even though I was still mad at him, I wasn’t mad enough to
refuse a single one of his kisses. This, of course, was probably
what precipitated at least the first attack.

As I pushed my way clumsily toward the back of the bus
to claim the seat Rachel apparently worked very hard to save
for me, Misty piped up with a nasty comment.
“Hey everybody! Make way for the Virgin Scary!”

This set the entire bus into a fit of hysterical laughter.
Everyone but me and Rachel, of course. While I had to admit
that I was shocked that she’d come up with such a clever
moniker for me, it made my face feel like an angry inferno. I
was both embarrassed and furious at the same time.

Hastily, I sat down without a word and shoved my gym
bag under my seat. Misty was sitting a few rows in front of me
and I mentally tried to glare holes right into her cranium. If I
were ever going
to have powers beyond what I already
possessed, I prayed for them to surface now. When her head
didn’t explode into a spray of blood and what little brain matter
she possessed, I sank back against the seat and sighed. It was
like she wanted me to fall apart so that I would be responsible
for us losing the race later. Why couldn’t I ever get the upper
hand when it came to her?

The hour long bus ride helped cure my anger but it was
replaced, mile by mile, with anxiety. I was all but throwing up
by the time we arrived. When I rose from my seat, my legs felt
like they were going to buckle. As I steadied myself on the back
of my seat, sarcastic snickers erupted from the girl who had
been sitting behind me.
She had perfect blonde hair and a
perfectly out of proportion bra size. She was a Misty Mini Me, a
perfect recruit for the Dark Lord’s army.

My first reaction was to try to scare her the way I did
that freshman in the hallway. I wiggled my fingers at her and in
the most menacing tone I could muster, I declared, “Hocus
pocus!”

I knew how stupid I sounded long before she started
laughing at me. What was I thinking? I just made myself look
dumber
than ever which was
a feat in
and
of
itself.
My
situation was bad enough as it was—why did I have to keep
doing things to make it worse?
I needed to learn how and
when to keep my stupid mouth shut.

“Come on, Red Lightning,” Rachel said as she nudged
me with her elbow. “Just put that rage to work for us out on the
track, okay?”

I did nothing more than nod my head for fear that
another idiotic phrase might pop out if I dared to open my
mouth.
My senior year could be described as tragic at best.
Silently, I reminded myself that it was almost over and that my
time of being forced to live in Charlotte’s Grove was, too.

When we got to the locker room, my anger dissipated
and morphed into a near panic attack instead.
This was it. My
big moment. This was even more epic than my turn on stage at
the Bantam. If I messed up, people from two different towns
were going to be there to watch me do it. I was going to need
Clay’s support the minute I walked out of that locker room.

I slung my bag onto the bench beside Rachel’s and dug
inside for my track shirt. This was the first real team sport I’d
ever been involved in and, nerves aside, I was excited to put on
my uniform. It was my chance to fit in, my chance to belong to
something like everyone else.
It was my opportunity to feel
normal and less like the freak that I actually was. It felt like I
was a monster dressing up as a person for Halloween. It felt
like—

It felt like I’d been sucker punched in the gut is what it
felt like.
When I pulled my shirt out of the bag, I noticed
immediately that something was dreadfully wrong.
While it
looked very similar to the one that I’d placed in my bag earlier
that day, it was definitely not the same one. I’d been set up. By
Misty. Again.

The raven that should have adorned the front of my
shirt was replaced with a red ghost.
Above that—in BOLD
lettering, no less—was the phrase “I see dead people”. When I
held it up to get a closer look, I heard Rachel gasp. That’s how I
knew there was a surprise on the back side, too.

As I flipped it around to see what was on the back,
Rachel gasped again when she saw what the front side looked
like. I was torn between rage and tears when I saw the rest of
it. In the spot where my last name should have been, I found
something else. “Virgin Scary” stretched across the shoulders
in the same lettering as that hideous phrase on the front.

“You can’t wear that!” Rachel cried as I threw it over my
head and stuffed my arms into the sleeves.

“You wanna bet?” I said defiantly, smoothing it down
over my chest. In one swift, bold move, I had decided to wear
my weirdness on my sleeve—almost literally.

I noticed that the locker room suddenly became quiet.
They didn’t expect this from me. They expected me to buckle,
they expected me to run off crying in search of Coach Hunter.
Well, I wasn’t sorry to disappoint them. Not this time, anyway.
I didn’t always feel this brave and determined—I needed to
embrace it while I had the chance.

Instead of me being the one to panic, this time it was
Rachel. “COACH HUNTER!” she bellowed, her words echoing
back to us in that all too silent locker room. She continued to
shout until Coach Hunter got to where we stood.

“Rachel, what’s wrong?” she asked with a worried look
on her face.

 

Rachel merely pointed at me and said, “That.”

With the way her eyes popped out when she saw the
front of my shirt, I can only imagine the expression on her face
when Rachel showed her the back of it. Visibly flustered, she
took me by the arm and led me to a quiet spot in the corner.

“In all of my years as a teacher, I have never seen
anything like this. I’ve heard the rumors, Ruby. I don’t need
you to explain that part of this—at least not right now. What I
do
need you to explain is why you’re wearing that shirt! It’s
inappropriate and I need you to take it off. I won’t let you take
the field while you’re wearing that.”