by Joy Elbel
“I don’t really need any help with this project, so—” How could I tell her to leave me alone without having Dad jump down my throat for it later? “If I change my mind, I’ll let you know.” There. That should have been polite enough yet obvious enough.
And it was. Shelly nodded her head and left, closing the door behind her. Now, where was I? Oh right, were wedges heels or sandals? My red wedges. Maybe I was a bit odd, but I could always associate each article of clothing and pair of shoes to some particular moment in my life when I was wearing them. Those shoes were the ones I was wearing the day I made a decision about how to use some of the money I got from almost being killed by a serial killer. I was wearing those shoes the day I decided to buy Zach a new car to replace the one he wrecked because of me.
The day he and I went to pick out a new vehicle, he did everything in his power to try to sway me into buying a car instead of an SUV. But of course I was being a total dominatrix that day and wouldn’t budge an inch. What would have happened if I’d given in to his suggestion instead of forcing him to see things my way? Maybe if he’d gotten a car instead, he wouldn’t have been able to get to Silver Lake as fast as he did. Maybe he wouldn’t have gotten shot. Clay still would have softened the blow for me—I would have survived the impact. And I wouldn’t have been selfish enough to stay unconscious and make him worry about me. That’s what would have happened.
For every pair of shoes I sorted, I remembered Zach in some way. The flats I wore on our first date. The heels I wore to the shelter fundraiser. Even the flip flops I was wearing the day we met somehow never found their way back into Shelly’s closet. Seeing everything that reminded me of him reminded me of where he was and what was wrong with him. And whose fault it was. I grabbed my phone and slumped down beside the pile of shoes, heartbroken.
My phone was so silent without his texts. He wasn’t the only person I texted with but he was the one I communicated with the most by far. As a matter of fact, I rarely checked my phone for messages when I knew that he wouldn’t be the one sending them. Except for now. Now, I sat there willing him to wake up and text me even though I knew it wasn’t going to happen. I thought about all of the times we fought and didn’t talk to each other for weeks on end. Those times were terrible but paled in comparison to what I was facing now. And I couldn’t seem to stop looking at the ring on my finger and how close I came to losing him after the whole Lucas thing.
I began to scroll through the messages that I had saved. With every “mwah” that I read came a smile but also another tear. When was he going to wake up? As I was looking through his past texts, my phone rang. My heart skipped a beat until I saw that it was a call from Rachel then another tiny piece of it withered and died.
I kept the conversation brief by telling her that I was driving. Was I on my way over to the hospital now? No, I wasn’t but I didn’t want to talk about it right now. With a rushed goodbye, I ended the call and returned back to my messages. Or at least I tried to.
I’d gotten incoming calls while reading a text before without any problems but something weird happened. My entire conversation with Zach was erased from my phone. Unwilling to believe that every last word from him was wiped out, I turned my phone off and then back on again. The messages were still missing. My contacts were all still there but all saved conversations were gone—Zach’s and Rachel’s both. My phone fell from my hands and into Veshoe-vius in an instinctive display of disbelief.
Why now? I’d never had a single problem with that phone before—why did it have to malfunction now when it was my one link to Zach? I crawled into the pile of clothes on my bed as though it were a cocoon. My heart hurt worse than it ever had before. His last written words to me were lost forever to a technological glitch. I cried until I fell asleep.
When I woke up a few hours later tangled in various bits of my wardrobe, I didn’t feel any better. In fact, I think I actually felt worse. But I dragged myself up anyway and proceeded to pretend that everything was okay. I made it through shoe sorting without any more breakdowns then moved to my clothes. That’s when things really started to get rough.
The sweater I was wearing the night he took me ice skating. The shirt I was wearing the night I tried to seduce him in the backseat of his Neon. The costume I wore to the Halloween masquerade ball that he came very close to taking off of me that night. As I went to hang it back up in the closet, I felt something hard inside the pocket. I dug my hand inside and knew exactly what it was without having to look at.
The stone. The pink stone I found in the oak grove last summer—the day he first uttered those prophetic words to me.
“I would take a bullet for you.” He said that same thing to me on Halloween night. I saw that stone again that night and placed it into my pocket because it reminded me of him. Now, it was making me think of something else I’d forgotten about.
Ghost Stone, the short story I wrote that won me accolades on many different levels. It looked exactly the way I pictured the ghost stone to look—the stone that had the power to bring the dead back to life. Excitement ran through me like never before? Could it be? Was it possible that a stone like that actually existed and was resting in my palm at this very second?
My brain started to swim as I considered the likelihood that I was correct. Was it mere coincidence that I found an exact replica of a fictional object that I’d created or was there deeper meaning in all of this? When I wrote that story, could I have been writing my own future somehow? Sure it was a farfetched theory but in the past year I’d come to accept that the impossible really was possible.
I turned the shiny pink stone around in my hands, trying to see if I felt any kind of energy emanating from it. I felt nothing but stone—cold hard stone. If that story were real, this hunk of pretty quartz would have the power to bring the dead back to life. But Zach wasn’t dead. Yet. But in that story, the dead came back as something foul, nothing like they were in life. So even if this was the ghost stone, I wouldn’t want to use it on Zach. Would I? I stared at the rock contemplating whether or not it had magical powers and whether or not I would use them if it did.
No. My final answer was no—I wouldn’t. I would never want to see him as a lifeless, walking corpse. I also had another answer to an as yet unasked question. Was I starting to lose my mind from grieving someone who wasn’t even dead yet? Yes, a resounding yes. Still, I made the decision to get rid of the stone—just in case it wasn’t pure insanity talking. I slipped it into my purse until I had a chance to dispose of it.
By this time, it was mid-afternoon and I knew that I was well overdue for a pop-in from Dad or Shelly. I jumped anyway at the sound of soft rapping at the door. This time it was my dad.
“Hey, I’m heading over to the hospital in about an hour. The neurosurgeon I told you about, Dr. Jennings, is with Zach now. I’m hoping he has some answers for me today. Are you coming with me?”
“No,” I replied as casually as anyone with an irreparably broken heart could, “I have a lot of stuff I need to get done today.” I motioned to the still loaded bed. “Spring cleaning.”
“Ruby, I’m sorry that I had to ask you to leave last night but I didn’t mean to make you think that you should never go back at all. Get dressed and come with me. I’m sure Zach would appreciate it.”
“No, I’m too busy right now. Maybe tomorrow.” I snatched up a handful of hangers and marched to the closet. While I hung them up on the bar, I started to cry.
“We’ll have to talk about this when I get home,” he replied awkwardly. “I’ll let you know what Dr. Jennings has to say.”
I wouldn’t turn around to face him. I nodded my head and said, “If you want.” Dad stood there for a minute before leaving but as soon as he was gone, I sat back down on my bed and cried. Again.
What I needed was to get out of the house for a little while. I also needed therapy—retail therapy. There were a few things I actually needed and I figured that one new spring outfit—shoes included—wouldn’t be
considered going overboard. And maybe a new bag to go with it. The only problem was that I didn’t have my car—Rachel did. And I had hers. Sort of. I couldn’t face her long enough to get my keys back so I asked Shelly if I could borrow her car for an hour or two.
“You finally decided to go see Zach!” she practically shouted when I made my request. “That’s great. Would you like me to go with you?”
No, I definitely would not. I also did not wish to hear the lecture that would surely follow if I told her where I was really going. “No, I want to go by myself.”
“Okay, if you’re sure,” she said as she handed me her keychain. “Positive,” I replied as I bounded out the door without looking back. Positive that I didn’t need a witness to the crime I was about to commit against my bank account. In hindsight, I realized there was a serious need for a retail version of a Breathalyzer. Depressed girls shouldn’t be allowed to shop without supervision.
The warm sunshine and the sound of birds tweeting in the trees made me long for the days of endless rain. The only sun I wanted to see was the one in Zach’s eyes when he smiled at me. The only happy voice I wanted to hear was his. I thought about the last fortunes we got in our cookies at Chow Ming. How prophetic they were. This was strike one against my already depressed mood. The next strike was something I never would have expected.
I decided to get the essentials first so that I wouldn’t forget to pick them up. First on the list was a new bottle of Midnight Kiss. I walked up to where the display normally sat and found some new perfume in its place. After circling the perfume counter a few times, the lady at the register asked me if I needed help finding something.
“Yes,” I said, finally admitting defeat, “I’m looking for Midnight Kiss. Where did it get moved to?” “I’m sorry, but it’s been discontinued. We’re carrying something new that smells just like it, though. Hold out your wrist.”
I did as she commanded and allowed her to spray a healthy dose of something called First Crush onto my waiting arm. Once it was fully dry, I took a whiff and almost gagged. Either I had a unique body chemistry that made it smell like vomit or she was simply trying to sell me something that smelled like vomit.
“No thanks,” I said and walked away even more miserable than I was to start with. No more Midnight Kiss. That perfume reminded me so much of Zach but just like his texts, it was gone now, too. It felt like he was being erased from everywhere but my memory. I was now living that horrible nightmare I’d had where he never existed. shoot me and put me out of my misery! humane thing to do.
Somebody please
It would be the Mercy, unfortunately, wasn’t among the cards life dealt to me. But my bankcard was. Five stores, two hours, and a thousand dollars later, I was filling the backseat of Shelly’s car with shopping bags and wondering how I was going to sneak it all into the house without her seeing me. I took the long way home to give myself time to concoct a plan, entirely forgetting that I would end up driving right past Mistyque. Even our favorite restaurant was gone now.
I gave up worrying about hiding evidence of my shopping spree and went straight home. How was I going to survive this without totally losing my mind? Or was it already too late for that? Clothes, shoes, and bags weren’t going to make me feel better. The only thing that would make me feel better was Zach.
36. Tu Me Manque
“Shelly, don’t yell at me!” I begged as I walked into the mansion with my Kardashian-sized haul in tow. “I need to talk to you!” I dropped my bags and ran to her in tears. “Please tell me how to get Zach off of my mind before I don’t have a mind left!”
I could tell that she was resisting the urge to ask me how much money I’d just spent but she didn’t. Instead, she told me to take my stuff to my room and that she would be up in a minute to talk to me. Dragging those bags up two flights of stairs was serious business. They had to weigh more than I did. The fact that I had no urge to unpack them meant that retail therapy wasn’t the type of therapy I needed.
My next choice would have been chocolate and Shelly read my mind. She entered my bedroom with two mugs of hot chocolate and handed me one of them. She took a quick peek into one of my bags and said “Nice shoes” upon sight of the gold strappy sandals on top. She sat down on the bed beside me and asked me what was wrong.
“What specifically is bothering you, Ruby?” she clarified after receiving my now signature eye roll. And so, I unleashed it all—every last bit of it. Once every dark thought was verbalized, I realized how stupid it was of me to think that he was doing any of this to spite me out of anger. Now I felt even more helpless.
“I know you’re scared, Ruby, but you need to go see him. Especially if you’re right about where you think he is. If the choice between life and death is truly in his hands, you need to remind him of all the things worth living for. He’s stayed strong for you on so many occasions. Now it’s your turn to do the same thing for him. Life is like a pendulum. Sometimes it swings away from you and you have to find a way to deal with it. But for every time it swings away, it will eventually find its way back to you again.”
She was right. There was no time to waste—I’d wasted too many precious moments already. “Take me to the hospital, please! Now!” I said, already halfway out the door. “I want to be there if he wakes up.” Correction. “I want to be there when he wakes up.”
I spent every possible moment at his bedside for the next few days but his condition didn’t change. Dr. Jennings ran multiple tests and remained baffled as to why Zach wasn’t waking up. He forwarded his test results to a team of neurologists in Los Angeles who were going to analyze them and provide a second, second opinion. I offered no comments on the subject but I knew that it was a waste of their time.
With each passing day, it got harder and harder for me to stay hopeful. And even tougher still was the effort it took to continue living. Not physically, of course, but emotionally. Life itself felt futile. It felt as though I were stabbing at the rain, unable to pierce a single drop no matter how many times I slashed that knife into the air. I had to return to work, to school—and carry on as though nothing was wrong. Work wasn’t terrible but the thought of returning to the snake pit frightened me and for good reason. They already hated me there just because I was different. How much worse was it going to be now that everyone knew that Zach got shot because of me?
My only saving grace was the fact that Rachel returned to school on Monday, too. It made me feel slightly less alone, less ostracized to walk back in there with her. I thought maybe it would work in my favor if they saw that even Zach’s own twin sister didn’t blame me for what happened. I was wrong.
In fact, it actually made them ostracize her, too. No one spoke to either of us as we glided down the hall together in silence, heads turned. Voices whispered. There was an air of malice like none I’d encountered before. As I opened my locker door, a voice rang clearly above the hushed accusations.
“I used to think you were kind of cool, Rachel. Until you started hanging out with the Dark Mistress of Death over here. She’s practically a murderer! Zach’s your brother, how can you still stand to look at her after what she did to him?”
Misty Landrum. None of her taunts, evil tricks, or insidious plots against me held a candle to what just came out of her mouth. I didn’t willingly put Zach’s life in danger nor would I ever. I was done playing nice, done being her punching bag. I turned around, fists clenched, with every intention of giving her an idea of what being a punching bag felt like— literally. But before I could lock in on my target and unleash my fury on her smarmy, little face, Rachel delivered the first blow.
“Well, Misty, maybe it’s because you don’t know what really happened out there at Silver Lake! Ruby actually saved Zach’s life. He would have died on the spot if it weren’t for her. Everything you think is weird about her is in all reality, wonderful. She’s the only reason Zach is still alive.”
Of course, Misty wasn’t so easily defeated. She was about to toss out an
other insult when Jordyn, second in command of Misty’s evil empire, cut her off sharply.
“What do mean by that? How did Ruby save him?” Jordyn asked civilly. “My aunt works at the hospital. She said she heard rumors that something strange happened to Zach after he got shot but she thought it sounded too weird to be true.”
Before I had a chance to stop her, Rachel blurted it all out to a now eagerly listening crowd. “Ruby and Zach have a special kind of bond. When she touched him, his heart started beating again. She’s magical, I swear!”
Mental face palm. I knew she meant well but Rachel’s comment just pounded the last supernatural nail into my coffin. Thanks to her, I was probably going to be burned at the stake before day’s end. If I even made it that far. Metal shop’s project for the day was going to be transforming my own locker into an Iron Maiden that I could be shoved into for quick disposal.
But of all the strange things I’d seen in the past year, I was about to witness something infinitely stranger. The villagers lowered their torches and began to ask questions. Intelligent questions. Thoughtful questions. Positive questions. In the midst of the chaos, Misty’s red-faced, slithering exit went unnoticed by everyone but me.
Still wary of their sudden interest in me, I let Rachel do all of the talking while I watched in awe. Even though I knew the tables would turn against me again eventually, I was going to enjoy it while it lasted at least. But I had every intention of being on high alert during track practice—Misty would have all day to plot her revenge against me.
Mr. Raspatello took the liberty of arranging another meeting for me with Brooke Morgan during activity period. I was dreading it, of course, but there was no way for me to get out of it. I’d had a good excuse for not participating in the bake sale but I knew I had to start contributing in some way. My senior year was winding down quickly and we hadn’t even raised a third of the money needed to pay for the broken window. I shuffled off to the library full of dread.
