Spirits of Spring (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 4)

by Joy Elbel

  Rachel continued to try to make small talk with him as though he may magically answer her at any moment. I sat there silent. I knew what was wrong—I knew that his soul wasn’t exactly where it needed to be. If I told Rachel my theory, she would panic. I needed a moment alone with him to convince him to come back to us. Once he understood where he was, he would rush back into his body and wake up. I knew he would.

  After about ten minutes, I asked Rachel if I could have a moment alone with him. She was hesitant to leave him at first, but consented when I swore that I would only take a minute. I asked her to close the door on her way out and she did so without asking any questions.

  Once he and I were alone, I felt a tremendous sense of relief. Zach would be awake any second now. Dad would be able to call that specialist in Philadelphia and tell him that he was no longer needed. I carefully eased onto the bed beside him, held him close, and whispered into his ear.

  “I know where you are, Zach. I’ve been there, too. But it’s time to come back now. You can’t stay there forever. This isn’t your time to go. If it was, you wouldn’t have made it this far. Please listen to me. Please come back now.”

  I expected instantaneous results. I expected to feel his hand squeeze mine. I expected to hear him quietly say my name, to whisper that he loved me. Instead, the Holocaust continued to whirr around me. Instead, there was another hard shake on the snow globe. Zach continued to lie there unresponsive and oblivious to my presence.

  One more time, I begged him to return. I reminded him that his future wasn’t there—it was here with me. Nothing. I couldn’t understand it. Why wouldn’t he wake up? Was he further away than I thought he was?

  “Zach,” I said much louder this time, “you need to wake up now.” Which each failed attempt, I repeated that phrase louder and more urgently until I must have sounded like the lady in the wheelchair. The door swung open, Dad rushed in, and forcibly removed me from the bed.

  “Ruby!” he said sternly, “you need to leave right now. Screaming at him isn’t going to solve the problem! You need to go home and collect yourself. Shelly’s still downstairs waiting for you.”

  “Home?” I shouted defiantly, “You don’t really expect me to go home now do you? He’s going to wake up at any second and I intend on being right here at his side when he does.”

  “No, he isn’t, Ruby. Didn’t you listen to a single word I said earlier? You’re going home and that’s an order. Don’t make me call security and have them drag you out of here. Zach needs rest and minimal disturbances more than anything else. If you love him, you’ll leave now without causing any more of a scene than you already have. Go home, collect your thoughts, and try to get some sleep.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My own father was kicking me out of the hospital while my boyfriend lay dying from a bullet he took to save me. WTF? Why couldn’t he see that what Zach really needed wasn’t a neurosurgeon—it was me. He was going to wake up for me—wake up because of me. I couldn’t leave now. But I had no other choice.

  Dad escorted me to the elevator and I punched the ground floor button with such force that my knuckle began to bleed. When the doors opened, I stepped inside and slumped against the sleek metal wall without acknowledging his promise to call me if there was any change in Zach’s condition. A phone call wasn’t what I wanted—what I wanted was to be there when it happened.

  Shelly tried to talk to me on the ride home but I refused. She agreed with Dad that home was the best place for me to be so as far as I was concerned, there was nothing I wanted to say to her. As usual, she kept talking anyway as though I were an active participant in her conversation. As she parked the car, she said that she would make me some hot chocolate to soothe me while I collected my thoughts. I blew a gasket.

  “Why does everyone keep saying that I need to collect my thoughts? Thoughts aren’t going to help Zach at all, are they? No, they aren’t.”

  “Ruby, the only thing you can do to help Zach right now is to stay calm and pull yourself together. I know you must feel very helpless but you’re going to have to find a way to deal with your feelings besides getting angry. Anger isn’t going to help Zach, either—is it?”

  Conversation I never wanted to have in the first place now officially over. I stormed into the house and straight up to the attic. I felt so alone. No one really understood what was going on in my head—not even me. Zach wasn’t responding and I was starting to doubt my theory as to why. And Clay was gone, too. What happened to him? Why did he have to abandon me now, too?

  “Clay,” I said aloud without expecting a response, “You have the worst timing of any ghost I’ve ever known.”

  “I don’t know. I thought my timing was damn near perfect.”

  “Clay! Where have you been? I thought you were gone forever!” The attic no longer felt as empty as I did inside. “You can’t get rid of me that easy, Hot Pants! I’ve been back since they brought Jeremy into the hospital. I was only trying to give you a little privacy. And to see if you even noticed that I was gone.”

  “You shitass!” I exclaimed and threw a pillow at him— well, through him. “I noticed it instantly! I thought you finally moved on without me. Like Zach’s trying to do.”

  “Ruby, you need to get that thought out of your head. You don’t know what he’s going through. Never assume.” “But I’m not really assuming here, Clay. I’ve been where he is. I know where he is. And I know why he isn’t coming back.” I barely got those last few words out before unleashing a wail and enough tears to fill Silver Lake.

  “Ruby, don’t cry. You don’t know for certain. Death isn’t the same for everyone. I’d be willing to bet that near death isn’t, either.”

  He allowed me to cry without any more interruptions until I couldn’t squeeze another single drop out. When I was finished drying my eyes, he spoke once more. “I remembered everything that happened the night I died. Do you want to hear about it now or some other time?”

  “Now. I need to take my mind off of Zach until I’m allowed back in to see him tomorrow—once I collect my thoughts.” I accompanied that statement with an eye roll so potent that I was sure that even if he couldn’t see it, that my dad had to have felt it.

  As I leaned back on the futon to listen to Clay’s story, I could already feel sleep preparing to overtake me. "Hold that thought a second,” I said as I bounded to the mini fridge for a can of carbonated caffeine. If Zach woke up—when Zach woke up—in the middle of the night, I didn’t want to risk sleeping through the call.

  “Okay,” I said as I sat down and took my first sip. “I’m ready now. I’m anxious to hear why your best friend killed you.”

  Clay launched excitedly into his account of everything that happened the night he died and of how remembering somehow broke the bond between him and me. While most of my big questions were answered, there were still a few loose ends lingering. My mind was too preoccupied with thoughts of Zach to put much emphasis on getting the answers tonight. One question, however, was too massive for me to ignore.

  “If you remembered everything, why are you still here, Clay? Why haven’t you moved on?”

  “It’s because I need to see Sophie and the baby. I died for them, Ruby. They’re the reason I’m still here.” Of course that opened up a myriad of questions in my head that had nothing to do with Clay. What would happen if Zach died? Would he stay earthbound to be with me? Or would he move on without looking back? What if he turned into something terrible like Allison did? If I had to face Zach in the form of a wraith, I wouldn’t have the strength to fight him. If dying for me gave him that much anger toward me, I wouldn’t want to continue living anyway.

  “Well, I can see that your mind is light years away from me and my problems,” Clay said as he stood up. “I’ll check up on you later.”

  “Okay,” I said, too engrossed in my own thoughts to comprehend what he’d said to me. Until I was alone again, that is. Being alone, I was quickly realizing, was the worst thing for m
e.

  Once I was by myself, my thoughts began to scatter worse than ever. Why wouldn’t Zach wake up? I wanted to barge into his hospital room and shake him until he opened his eyes and looked at me. What else could I possibly do? Despite what Dad said, there wasn’t anything wrong with him—he was simply choosing to lie there unresponsive. Why would he do this to me after everything we’d been through together? It was definitely my fault that he got shot—there wasn’t any other way to look at it. Even if he hated me for what I was putting him through, I would rather he just wake up and tell me that. I wanted to scream at him and at the heavens themselves. But most of all, I wanted to scream at myself. I was the cause of this. He wouldn’t be in that hospital bed if it weren’t for me.

  I couldn’t blame him for hating me. I would hate me, too. As bad as it would hurt, I wanted to hear him shout “I hate you, Ruby!” at the top of his lungs. Shouting would mean that on some level he still cared. Silence meant indifference. Was this my punishment for causing his pain? His deliberate absence hurt me as bad as that bullet hurt him—maybe even worse. At least he was being given medication to dull it. There wasn’t a magic pill that could erase guilt and heartbreak. Did he want me to go away, disappear from his life forever? If I walked away and stayed away maybe he would eventually wake up and carry on without me.

  At that moment, I resolved to keep my distance. He didn’t want to see me anyway. If he did, he would have woken up when I asked him to. I gave up trying to stay awake—there wasn’t any point in it. Zach was perfectly fine and only doing this to punish me. All he needed was enough time to work through his anger. Yes, anger was all it was. He would be fine by morning. I let the exhaustion carry me to sleep, knowing in my heart that things would be different when I woke up.

  My heart lied to me.

  34. Dork Side of the Moon

  “Tell me about Ruby, Squirt.” A simple question that had no simple answer. Where could I possibly begin? She was so complicated. I understood her, yet I didn’t. I trusted her, yet I was afraid to share the darkest parts of me with her. I wanted to be with her, yet the universe seemed determined to keep us apart. I loved her, yet….

  No, there was no yet about it—I loved her without question. But love wasn’t supposed to be this hard, was it? We weren’t a normal teenage couple—far from it. Ruby always blamed that on her problems but it wasn’t just her. As more time went on, I was starting to realize that I was just as much of a hot mess as she was.

  I told Grandpa about how Ruby and I met—about how I had no intentions of falling in love with her or anyone else. It just kind of happened. And once it did, there was no stopping it. I told him about who she was and the strange gift she was now burdened with. I told him about the good times but also about the terribly dark ones, too.

  “So if you love her, why are you so afraid of her?” “Afraid? I never said that I was afraid of her. I’ll admit it was pretty intense at first but I’ve actually gotten used to the whole ghost thing.”

  “That wasn’t what I meant, Squirt. Why are you so afraid to tell her everything you’re feeling inside?” “Because I’m afraid of what will happen when she sees the real me—the incredibly broken parts that no one else knows are there. It wasn’t hard for me to reveal those first few layers but the deeper I dig into myself, the more I’m afraid of how she will react. But that isn’t all that’s bothering me, Grandpa.” I felt my leg begin to bounce up and down like it always did when I was nervous. “It bothers me that there will always be a part of her that I will never completely understand—a part of her that will always tie her to the past in some way. She’s like the moon—no matter how hard I look, there will always be a part of her that’s hidden from me.”

  “Everyone has a past. No matter what relationship you are in, there will always be something that you don’t know about the person you are with. That’s just how it goes. You can’t let her past—or yours—stand in the way of your happiness.”

  “I know but—” I stopped there because I didn’t know what else to say. What he said was the truth but that didn’t make it any easier for me to accept it.

  He paused long enough to pack his pipe and light it. He blew a perfect smoke ring into the air and asked me the toughest question yet. “What do you like most about her? Don’t analyze it or try to come up with the best answer. Give me the first thing that entered your mind when I said that.”

  The first thing. The first thing seemed stupid to me but I said it anyway. “I love it when I can feel her smile while I’m kissing her.” I felt like such a dork saying it but it was true. “She’s a romantic kisser most of the time—all serious and perfect. But near the end, I can always feel it. I can feel her smiling and it makes me smile, too.”

  “And have you ever felt that before? Do you think you would ever feel that with anyone else?”

  That was the easiest question yet. “Absolutely not. That’s something that is so distinctly Ruby.”

  “There’s your answer. If she’s that special to you, don’t hold anything back.” One more smoke circle floated toward the roof of the barn and I watched until it dissipated completely. “But what happens to me when I lose her?” I blurted out. “What happens when she dies or gets tired of me and leaves? What if I disappoint her and she leaves me for somebody else? Then what?”

  “Then you’ll go on without her. But you can’t let your fear of what might happen ruin what is.” Logically, I knew that he was right. But everything that happened the night he died changed me. I was sensitive enough to start with but now—now—that sensitivity was more like fear. I wanted to be more like my old self. I wanted to have fun again. I wanted to play the drums again. I wanted to stop punishing myself for what happened. I’d almost reached that point when Dad brought it all up again.

  “It’s all so much more complicated than that, Grandpa! Dad keeps bringing up the past and it only magnifies my insecurities. What if he’s right? What if I gave up football but end up failing out of pre-vet my first year? Then what? I’ll end up working some dead end job and have to listen to his “I told you so’s” for the rest of my life.”

  Grandpa sighed heavily and popped a peppermint into his mouth. “I made mistakes with your old man—you aren’t the only one with regrets in this family. Football was his dream—the same way being a veterinarian is yours. But where I failed with him was in not encouraging him to have a backup plan. I didn’t punish him for bad grades or force him to do his homework. I was too busy watching him be happy—too busy watching him find his own place in this world. By the time he got injured, it was too late.”

  It was so strange to hear my grandfather admit to making such a huge mistake—to hear that I wasn’t the only one with regrets. Maybe life really was this complicated for everyone else but just like me, no one had the nerve to actually show it.

  “So what you need to do is think of something else that you would want to do for the rest of your life just in case this whole veterinarian thing doesn’t work out for you. And that isn’t limited to failing school, either. Who knows, maybe you’ll change your mind for some other reason.”

  I let his words sink in. What else would I want to do with my life? By giving up football in favor of school, I’d actually done the opposite of what Dad did. Dad was right—if I’d stuck with it, I could have at least played through college on athletic scholarships and not have to worry about so many student loans later. But it was too late to go back now— football season was long over and I was about to graduate. My only other love was music and that wasn’t a good backup plan, either. So the solution to my problem actually created another problem. Now what?

  “So, Squirt, is there anything else you want to talk about? You can’t stay here like this forever, you know. You’re going to have to make a decision soon—the biggest one of your life.”

  Without hesitation, I replied, “Yes, I want to talk about death.” Before I chose which side of the fence I wanted to fall over, I had to know what it was like to die. If it
was easier than living, my choice was already made.

  35. The Ghost of You

  I woke up the next morning feeling hollow inside. There were no phone calls from Dad regarding Zach’s condition. Whoever said that “no news is good news” was an idiot who deserved a swift kick in the pants. No news was terrible news—the worst news ever. I wasn’t going to school no matter what Dad or Shelly said. But I also wasn’t going to the hospital to see Zach, either.

  Instead, I decided to hole up in the attic as far away from the outside world as I could possibly get. There were plenty of things I could spend the day doing that would get my mind off of things. My closet was begging for a change of season upgrade so that’s where I started. I grabbed armload after armload of clothes and dumped them on my bed. I scooped up every pair of shoes I owned and plopped them into a gigantic pile in the corner of my bedroom. At the point where I should have been leaving for school, there was a knock at the door.

  “Ruby, your Dad just got home from the hospital. He’s been up for over twenty four hours and crashed the second his head hit the pillow. He said to tell you that Zach’s vitals are still the same as they were last night but that if you promise to behave, I can take you over to see him now.” Shelly glanced furtively around my room, from my bed to the shoe volcano that was ready to blow and back again.

  “No thanks,” I said as I began rooting through Mount Veshoe-vius, sorting boots from flats from sandals. “I’m kind of in the middle of something right now.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked, staring at me as though I were crazy or something. “I know how worried you must be about him.”

  “Nope, I’m not worried at all. Zach’s just mad at me. If I stay away from him, he’ll be just fine. You know how he gets when he’s mad—really mad. He’ll talk to me when he’s ready to talk.”

  “O-kay,” Shelly replied, drawing out the word as though she were struggling for something else to say. She stood quietly by the door for a minute and watched me while I pondered out loud whether my red wedges qualified as being heels or sandals. Her scrutinizing gaze was irritating me so finally, I spoke up.