by Joy Elbel
“Ru—“ I cut him off abruptly. “Don’t call me that. My name is Ruby. You should be ashamed of yourself—using the memories I had of your dead brother to get close to me. You only pretended to be my friend so you could make a few bucks. You tried to ruin my life! You’re sick and twisted and you and Misty deserve each other.”
“Sick and twisted? You’ve got to be kidding me! You’re the queen of sick and twisted! I needed that money. My mother is dying—that money was going to help pay for her treatments. I wasn’t trying to ruin your life—I was trying to save hers. I’m not like you—once my mother is dead, I’ll never get to see her again. I knew that I would be in a whole lot of trouble if things went wrong but if it helped save my mom, it was worth it. The whole thing was Misty’s idea. I was just glad to see that the stuff she gave me to put into Rachel’s drink only made her sick for one day.”
Rachel’s illness was planned, too?! They were far more evil than I ever would have guessed. Lucas took one step forward and I instinctively grabbed the closest thing to a weapon that I could find. A pen. That’s all I could come up with. But it was a very sturdy pen and if need be, I would go straight for his throat with it. I pointed it at him menacingly, all the while knowing that he was probably going to laugh at me but I didn’t care. I was not going to play the helpless victim.
“You did try to ruin my life—in so many different ways. Your girlfriend was murdered because of you and you haven’t even shown the slightest bit of emotion about it. You sent my dad that text knowing full well that he would find you in the house and throw you out. I was being stalked by a killer and you intentionally isolated me from the people who were trying to protect me. Correction—the person who was trying to help me. Zach was the only one who really cared about me. You didn’t care whether I lived or died as long as you got your precious money!”
“I didn’t send that text—Misty did,” he replied defensively. Then the rest of my comments must have sunk in. Lucas cocked one eyebrow and glared at me. “How did you find out about Portia? And she was my ex-girlfriend, by the way.”
He didn’t know! He had no idea that Zach had talked to his mother and found out all of his dirty little secrets. Finally, I had the upper hand. Now I had the answers he wanted and I wasn’t going to give them up. He deserved to wonder, to rack his brain and still never figure out how I knew.
“How I know is none of your business. What friendship we had is over now. I don’t want anything from you and you shouldn’t expect anything from me.” With a flourish, I aimed my pen at the door and firmly announced, “It’s time for you to leave.”
Lucas obeyed instantly but just before he walked out the door, he turned and with a sardonic smile, said, “Oh you do want something from me—something I was willing to give you. But not now.”
As soon as the door closed behind him, I ran to lock it. If he thought his empty threats were going to scare me, he had another thing coming. There wasn’t anything he could do to me now that I saw him for who he truly was. I was proud of myself for handling the situation alone. Oops—I mean almost alone.
“What was that all about?” Clay asked. “I thought you guys were friends?”
“Yeah, so did I. If you can hang out for a bit while I count the register, I’ll tell you what happened.” Immediately, Clay began to laugh as though the awkwardness from last night was the furthest thing from his mind. He once told me that time passed differently now that he was dead—maybe in his head, that conversation took place longer ago than it actually had. There was so much I could learn about death from him as I helped him cross over. But the first question in my mind was regarding a more earthly matter.
“Why are you laughing?” I asked as I opened the door to the office. What was so amusing about watching me count money? Boys never make sense. Ever.
“I’m laughing because you asked me if I could hang out for a while. What other plans did you think I might have? You forgot that I was dead again, didn’t you?”
Okay, so boys make sense sometimes. “Yes, I did. But now that you reminded me, I’d like to resume our conversation about your death sometime soon. I don’t want to see you float around down here for the rest of eternity when there’s a better place for you to be.”
“Not right now, okay? I want to hear what happened between you and Lucas that was so bad that you wielded that pen like it was a samurai sword. What were you planning to do—write him to death?”
“Very funny, Clay, but I can’t sit around here being the butt of your jokes all night—I’m meeting Zach in a bit.”
“I like Zach, by the way. I think you guys make a good couple—since I can’t have you myself, that is.” I could tell by his tone of voice that he was no longer joking. He totally had a crush on me! Seriously, what was it about this town? Back in Trinity, Lee was the only boy who even noticed that I was alive. But the second I moved to Charlotte’s Grove, I turned into some sort of boy magnet. Honestly, I was glad that Zach was the first boy I met here— who knows who I might be with now if I hadn’t met him in the diner that day. With a polite smile, I let Clay’s comment go without addressing it and filled him in on why Lucas was no longer my friend. As much as I liked Clay—as a friend—I couldn’t let him get any more attached to me. Or me to him. I would have to say goodbye to him forever, soon—there was no reason to make it any harder than it already had to be.
When I got to the shelter, I found Foxy eating from a dish on the floor at Zach’s feet. I was incredibly astounded by her rapid recovery and she owed it all to Zach. Without his constant care and attention, she may not even still be alive. I was so proud of him and he should have been proud of himself, too. Instead, he sat glumly in his chair without even a hint of excitement showing.
“Zach! Foxy’s doing great, why do you seem so sad?” I put my arms around him and gave him a kiss on the cheek. If there was a way to cheer him up, I would certainly find it.
“I’m really happy that she’s getting better but I argued with my dad again today. It’s all I can seem to think about.” I was hoping he would be in a good mood so that I could share my current problems with him but for once, he looked like he needed me to listen to his problems first. I plopped down onto the air mattress and said, “This thing with your dad goes way beyond the accident, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does. He’s still mad at me for walking away from a football career. Every time I screw up in any way, he brings it up. We argued about it back when I got suspended from school but it wasn’t this bad. I just wish he could forget about it once and for all. I made the right decision—I know that I did.”
Parents don’t make sense half the time, either. “Here’s what I don’t get—he got hurt pretty bad playing football, didn’t he? You would think it would be the last thing he would want you to be doing.”
Zach shook his head no. “He didn’t get hurt on the field. Somebody attacked him with a baseball bat—smashed both of his kneecaps. Football had nothing to do with it. He thinks our lives would be so much better if he’d never gotten hurt. He still thinks about all of the money he could have made in the NFL. He just can’t seem to understand why I would walk away from that kind of opportunity. Actually, he just doesn’t understand me.”
“Parents rarely do.” With those three words, I said a mouthful. It’s like the minute they had kids, they forgot what it was like to be one.
“Ain’t that the truth,” Zach said as he lay down on the mattress with me and coaxed Foxy over to join us. “Let’s talk about something else. How did things go with Clay last night?”
I rested my head against his shoulder and Foxy curled up between us. This new aspect of our relationship was nice. Once we removed the idea of sex from the equation, it felt like we were getting to know each other better as people. Unlike before, I wanted to share every part of my day with him without leaving a single thing out. Okay, so I wasn’t exactly excited to tell him about my conversation with Lucas but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to tell him about it.
Zach certainly wasn’t going to be happy when he heard that his sister’s sudden illness on opening night was caused by Lucas and Misty. But first, I needed to get some answers from him about Clay.
“Not good, not good at all. He wants to stay earthbound because he’s afraid that he’s going to go to Hell if he moves on.” I didn’t actually see him, but I felt a cool breeze then, seconds later, all of the dogs began wildly barking in the kennels. I could tell that Zach knew Clay was there but he barely even flinched and definitely didn’t mention it. It was too bad that Zach couldn’t see ghosts, too—he would make a damn good ghost hunter at this point.
“Oh,” he asked cautiously, “why is that?” “He was a drug dealer and he thinks he may have even committed suicide. He can’t remember a single thing that he did on the day he died and he doesn’t want to. My easy ghost removal mission isn’t going to be as easy as it seemed.”
Zach sighed heavily and snuggled closer to me. “I was afraid this might happen. There are a few things I should tell you about Clay’s death. I would have told you a long time ago, but you didn’t want to talk about him. Once you guys became friends and you decided to help him, I hoped that he would have the answers no one else did. Looks like I was wrong.”
“Okay,” I replied, but I was anything but okay. Freeing Clay from whatever held him here was supposed to be easy. It was supposed to be something nice I was doing for a friend. He didn’t seem to mind being here and if we hadn’t formed that stupid bond, I would have let the whole thing rest. But—story of my life—it was too late for that. He simply had to change his mind about moving on. It was Clay’s turn to do something nice for a friend—that friend being me, of course. I couldn’t live the rest of my life with him attached to my hip, now could I? Could I? No, I couldn’t.
“Clay was considered a missing person for two weeks before his body was found. The last person who would admit to seeing him alive was his mother. She said he left the house sometime that Friday night but he never came home. Apparently, this wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for Clay so she didn’t even start to worry about him until several days later. The cops found his Mustang at the lake and by the looks of it, they automatically assumed that foul play was involved. They searched the woods by helicopter first and eventually brought out the cadaver dogs. When the dogs came up empty handed, they started dragging the lake. Silver Lake is incredibly deep in some areas so it took them awhile but obviously, they did find Clay’s body. It was kind of hard for them to determine an exact time of death, but they said he probably died within twenty-four hours of the last time he was seen.”
How strange. Was it more than just coincidence that Clay himself had no information about those last twenty-four hours of his life? Of course it was. I had to go and stumble into yet another freakin’ mystery surrounding the death of yet another freakin’ ghost. Granted, Clay wasn’t a danger to me in the same way that Scarlet, Garnet, and Allison were but he lived a dangerous lifestyle. Who knows what I might uncover on my quest to send him into the great beyond. Maybe I had a vivid imagination, but a Mexican drug cartel was the first thing that popped into my mind. Sure, they rarely operated this far north of the border, but I had a reason for being so paranoid. Talking to Allison was only supposed to clear Drake’s name but it ended with me being kidnapped by a serial killer. No, I wasn’t going to scratch “Mexican drug cartel” off of my list just yet. Better safe than sorry, right?
“I’m confused—they ruled his death an accident, didn’t they? What did you mean when you said ‘by the looks of it, they assumed there was foul play’?”
“Well, that’s just one more piece of the mystery surrounding his death. When they found his car, it was smashed all to hell. Every window was broken out and it looked like somebody had taken a baseball bat to it. His grandmother insisted that Clay never would have done that kind of damage to it himself. But since there weren’t any suspects and no evidence found at the scene, the police ruled his death as accidental.”
“Really? I mean, come on—even Inspector Gadget could see that things just don’t add up there! If only Clay could remember what happened. If only Clay wanted to remember what happened.”
“I know, Ruby,” Zach said as he kissed me on the cheek. “Aside from Foxy’s recovery, nothing this weekend turned out the way it was supposed to. I don’t really want to go but I have to. Can you give me a ride home now?”
“Of course I can. I hope the situation with your dad gets better.”
“I hope your situation with Clay gets better.” Zach got Foxy settled into her cage while I pondered the depths of the new mess I’d gotten myself into. We left the shelter a very dreary couple but at least we had each other to lean on at times like this. I felt bad for Zach when I dropped him off at his house because I knew just how badly he didn’t want to be there. As I backed out of their drive, I heard arguing coming from the Mason house—something I’d never heard once from that family. March was definitely coming in like a lion. Things could only get better from here.
8. Eye Am on a Roll Now
When I walked into school Monday morning, my performance at the Bantam on Friday night was the furthest thing from my mind. And that was exactly where I wanted and expected it to stay. Once I stepped through the front doors though, it was like I was in that parallel universe again. You know the one where I am popular and people want to talk to me. The one where Misty disappears in the light of my sheer awesomeness. No joke, just as she was in mid-flirt with some bulky football player, he turned to me and said, “Nice work there, Starlet.” She literally recoiled from her attack and slithered away down the hall. Priceless. So many people I’d never talked to—teachers I didn’t even know—were all suddenly complimenting me on my acting skills. I was famous—well, sort of—and it was the most amazing feeling ever. One night on stage and I turned the red carpet into the Ruby red carpet. Un-freakin’-believable.
It wasn’t until I saw Rachel in home room that I realized I had stolen the spotlight that should have belonged to her. I certainly never meant for that to happen but nevertheless, I felt awful. If Lucas hadn’t spiked her energy drink before show time, none of this would have happened. How in the world could I have been stupid enough to trust him? Sure, most of what he did was at Misty’s bidding but that was no excuse. Rachel may never get an apology from Lucas, but she was going to get one from me.
“Hey, Rach,” I said as I slid into my seat. “I’m really sorry about what happened Friday night. I never should have taken your place on stage. If I’d known that Lucas got you sick on purpose, I definitely wouldn’t have.”
Rachel gave me a puzzled look as she tossed her hair back into a ponytail. “Why are you apologizing to me? You didn’t do anything wrong. And you definitely weren’t the cause of my horrendous performances both Saturday and Sunday night. As much fun as I had in rehearsal, I was nowhere even near prepared for the crippling stage fright that set in once I had a real audience. As a matter of fact, you did me a huge favor. There’s no way I would have been able to force myself to do that three nights in a row—two was emotionally damaging enough.”
“What? But you’ve always wanted to be an actress? I’m confused.” Incredibly confused. “Wanted—past tense. The second I got on stage I froze. I can’t even tell you how many lines I messed up or forgot completely. It was terrible. I seriously didn’t want to do it again on Sunday but my mom convinced me that it would be easier the second time around. Well, mothers aren’t always right—I found that out the hard way. It was so awful that I cried between scenes. Nope, Hollywood is no longer my dream but at least I do have something to fall back on—something I totally love and know that I’m good at.”
Now it was my turn to give her a puzzled look. “Really? What are you good at besides acting?”
“Umm, don’t sound so surprised there sister—I do have other talents you know.” “Like what?” I wasn’t trying to be mean but acting was the only thing she ever talked about wanting to do after graduation.
Well, that and being able to make out with Boone on a more regular basis. How was she going to turn that into an occupation? Never mind—I really didn’t want to know how.
“I’m going to pretend that your response didn’t offend me—again—and remind you of what a spectacular job I’m doing at redecorating that mansion you live in.” “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.
