by Joy Elbel
I would fight to get her back, for the right to protect her for the rest of her life. And when she was mine completely, I never looked back. I didn’t care that she was dealing with some heavy—and quite frankly, insane—issues. Her love was a gift and I was willing to do anything to prove myself worthy of it. Even if that included risking my own life to save hers—and I had a sinking feeling that I was about to do just that. I had only one regret—that I hadn’t actually told her I loved her yet.
But why hadn’t I? I definitely loved her and it seemed like she loved me, too. How many times did I almost say it and then chickened out? Saying those words frightened me. What if she didn’t feel the same way? What if she said it back but didn’t really mean it? But what if she died before I had a chance to tell her how I felt? Why were boys always expected to say things like this first? If she’d said it to me, I would have had no problem reciprocating. But she didn’t and now I had to get to her before it was too late. The closer I got to the mansion, the more I believed she was in real danger.
The second the gate to Rosewood was visible, I knew I was right. Something was terribly wrong. The gate was open when I left and I’d never actually seen it closed since her family moved in but it was closed now. I brought the car to a screeching halt and jumped out into the storm. As I stood there at the gate, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The first line of oak trees nearest the drive was completely uprooted and thrown across the path. They were still standing when I left, and the storm was nowhere near strong enough to do that now. I wouldn’t be able to drive in—I would have to run.
“Rachel, I have to go help her! I need you to get help—any kind of help you can find! Call Andy, call Rita and if you can’t get through, you’ll have to drive into town to get them.” Two tugs on the gate accomplished nothing so I grabbed onto the wrought iron bars and pulled myself up to the top.
Rachel went into panic mode. “Maybe you should wait until help arrives? Look at this place! It may already be too late for her!”
I couldn’t think about that. “But what if it’s not? I have to go in after her!”
Rachel wiped the rain from her face. “Okay, I’ll be there to help you as soon as I can. Love you, little brother.”
“Love you too, big sister.” I turned my back on her before she started to cry. And I ran. I ran faster than I ever ran before.
I hurdled each giant fallen oak as I darted down the road like an Olympian. Where would I even start looking for her? The house was massive and by the looks of the destruction, I guessed she wasn’t still in the basement. My pulse raced until I could practically feel the blood as it rocketed through my veins.
As the mansion drew nearer, I could see that the space once occupied by the stained glass window was now a wide, empty, and gaping hole. She couldn’t be dead, she just couldn’t be! She was my life, the very air that I breathed. Without her I would be nothing, no one. All I ever wanted out of life would die with her.
The flap of large, feathered wings beat above me and I watched as the crow swooped down onto the side of the fountain. Panting uncontrollably, I ran to where it sat. The roses were dead and blackened, the water froze mid-spray. I had a feeling she was in the water and when I peered down into the pool I saw her.
Her hair floated angelically around her face, rippling in the small waves. Her eyes were open and a sweet smiled embraced her lips. She was gone. I wanted to throw myself into the water to die right there with her. But it wasn’t possible to drown myself in three feet of water. I had to go on living in spite of the pain. It was what Ruby would want. My life would never be the same after knowing her, touching her, loving her. Hollowness filled my chest as the tears came. There was only one thing left for me to do—reclaim her body so I could hold her one last time.
39. Something Remembered
One minute I was lying at the bottom of the pool, and the next I was awake in another place. Or at least my spirit was. I could see myself there, motionless, but at the same time I wasn’t there at all. So this was what it felt like to die. There were no angels plucking away on heavenly harps, no pearly gates. I waited for the mandatory review of my life. That had to be coming up soon, right? I figured my actions in life weren’t too bad. I was kind to animals and I never broke any laws or anything. Except for the sinfully unclean thoughts I had when I looked at Zach, I was squeaky clean.
But the review never came. Instead, I was struck with a feeling of complete and utter clarity. Suddenly, I remembered everything I ever forgot. I knew the correct answers to every test question I ever missed. I recalled the exact location of everything I ever misplaced. It was fascinating to me and just as I was starting to enjoy myself, then came the hard part.
I thought about my relationship with Shelly. I disliked her the moment she entered my life. Dad and I had such a great relationship before she came and ruined it. I didn’t have a mother for most of my life—I certainly didn’t need one now. Shelly was pushy and obnoxious and wanted to butt into every part of my life. She tried to offer advice on everything from boys to clothes to school. I didn’t need her help. She didn’t really care anyway—she was only pretending to give a damn to make my dad happy. What reason would she have to care about someone else’s teenage daughter? So I didn’t care about her either—she was so fake anyway. She only started to be cool this past summer when she knew I was almost an adult and I would be leaving soon.
Then the truth was clear. She loved me and I treated her like yesterday’s garbage. I could see that now and knowing it made my heart ache. Shelly couldn’t have children of her own. I was the closest thing she would ever have to a daughter. Every time I thought she was being nosy, she was actually acting out of concern for my wellbeing. It wasn’t Shelly that changed this summer, it was me. As wretched as this summer was, it made me a better person. I wanted to be better because I knew how special Zach was and that he deserved to be with the best Ruby that I could be. And so did I.
Then I thought about my dad, about how things changed between us after Lee’s death. I blamed my dad in a way for what happened that night. If he’d only given his permission for me to go to the concert that night, maybe we wouldn’t have been on the bridge when it collapsed. I had to wait until my dad was at work before I could sneak out. We left much later than Lee wanted to. If I hadn’t had to sneak out, we would have been safely in Harrisburg when Destiny Bridge sunk into the Susquehanna River. And Lee wouldn’t have died.
Then I remembered something shocking. This wasn’t the first time I’d died. I died in the hospital on the day of the crash. I remembered it like it just happened. I remembered my last conversation with Lee. Not the one in the car just before I blacked out, but the one we had afterwards. In the emergency room at Trinity Hospital. After we were both dead.
I looked from one gurney to the next. My body on one, Lee’s on the other. Yet he stood beside me, holding my hand.
“Has it happened yet?” he asked. “Have you had your moment of clarity?
At first I didn’t know what he was talking about and then, there it was. Truth flooded into me with a crushing blow.
“Not easy to take is it? There are some things I wish I didn’t remember.”
“So…is this it? Are we dead?” I didn’t feel dead. At least not completely. Not that I even had the first clue what dead was supposed to feel like.
“Well, yes and no. It’s definitely too late for me, but you…you have a choice.”
“Then I choose to stay with you. I love you, Lee. I always have and I always will.” I was only sixteen but I knew there could never be anyone for me but him.
He smiled. “Not so fast, Ru. There are two things you need to know first.”
Great. Just like in the movies. He would produce a profound monologue and I would instantly change my mind. Blah, blah, blah. Whatever. Nothing he could say would make any difference.
“First, I need you to listen to what your father’s about to say.”
I didn’t even notice he was in the
room until Lee pointed to a man in the corner with his back to us. Another doctor was standing with him, pleading with him not to blame himself. Blame himself for what?
“I killed him! I killed my daughter’s boyfriend! And now she’s about to die too!” He had his face hidden in his hands, but I could still see that he was crying.
I’d never seen my dad cry, at least not that I could recall. I was sure he must have cried when my mom died, but I wasn’t old enough at the time to remember. Now here he stood shedding tears for my boyfriend, the one he never liked. How could he possibly think he killed Lee?
“Jason,” the other doctor begged, “You can’t blame yourself! You did the right thing! That boy had no chance of survival. He’d been brain dead for at least thirty minutes before you even laid eyes on him. Helping Ruby instead was the smart choice—the only choice! There isn’t one doctor in this hospital who would say otherwise.”
“But I never liked him, and if Ruby survives, she’ll never believe that I didn’t do it on purpose! When she finds out that I was the doctor who assessed his condition.…”
The other doctor cut him off. “Then see that she never finds out. It’s bad enough that you blame yourself, you don’t need her to make you feel any guiltier.”
“Dad never approved of our relationship, Lee, but he never would have hurt you like that.”
“I know. It’s not me that I’m worried about. If you die, your dad will be destroyed.”
I didn’t want that, but I also didn’t want to leave Lee. He was the love of my life. “What’s the second thing I need to know?”
“I know one thing about your future that I can share with you. Assuming you choose to live, that is.” He gave me the sweetest smile ever. Death really did look good on him.
“You know I hate surprises! Tell me now!” I’d always been impatient and even near death couldn’t take that away from me.
“Okay. I know that I wasn’t the love of your life.”
“Of course you were! You still are!” How could he say something like that?
“No. You haven’t met him yet. We weren’t meant to be together. Not forever anyway. This is my time to die but it isn’t yours. Your true love is out there somewhere and his life will never feel right if he doesn’t meet you.”
He really knew how to make me feel bad. I loved Lee but I was curious. “Okay, when do I meet him? What does he look like?” I had to know who he was when I found him, right?
He shook his head at me. “I don’t have all the answers. He could have blonde hair and blue eyes or he could look more like me. All I know is that meeting him will come as a great shock to you. And his life will never be complete without knowing you. So if you choose to die now, you’ll be destroying three people, not just one.”
I pondered his words and took one last look at my dad. “I’ve made my choice. What do I have to do to survive?”
“Fight Ru, just fight.”
40. Fate
With a jolt, I was back in the fountain. I wasn’t going to give up. I was going to fight with every last ounce of strength in my body. I needed to apologize to Shelly for every callous remark, every snotty glance I’d given her since the day we met. I needed to tell my Dad that I knew what happened in the hospital the day Lee died. But most importantly, I needed to tell Zach that we were meant to be together—that no ghost could ever keep us apart.
I blinked as I looked up through the water. It was different than it was before. There was someone beside the fountain—a dark figure staring down at me. The figure climbed inside the water and wrapped its arms around me. There was only one person those arms could belong to. Zach. He was there to help me fight.
I watched as he struggled against the powerful force that pinned me to the bottom of the pool. He wrapped himself so tightly around me that we were face to face under the water and I stared into his beautiful eyes. He was smiling! How could he smile at a time like this? But his smile was even more beautiful than ever so I smiled back. Something changed since Zach entered the fountain. The bitter chill in the water was rapidly retreating and I felt the same wall of protection I’d felt since Levi started protecting me. And then a thunderbolt of energy leapt through the pool.
I didn’t know what was happening, but all of a sudden, the pressure broke and I was free. It was like I was sucked to the bottom by an open drain and then someone replaced the plug. As he pulled my head above the surface, I gasped for much needed air as water poured from my mouth. My lungs ached and every inch of my body was pain ridden. But I was alive and that was all that mattered. That’s when I realized that we weren’t alone.
Behind Zach I could see the faint outline of two people, one I knew to be Scarlet and the other I could only assume was Levi. The nightmare wasn’t over. I wasn’t safe and at this point, neither was Zach. I wanted to tell him to run, to save himself. As I looked into his eyes, I knew that would never happen. He would never leave me. He was prepared to die with me if that’s what it took for us to be together.
As I tried to catch my breath, my heart began to pound faster. But it wasn’t from fear. As he held me there in the fountain, I knew this was it. This was our moment. If we didn’t kiss now, we may never get the chance. We were soaking wet and rainwater poured down his imperfect nose. I should have been cold but I wasn’t. I was on fire.
With one arm wrapped tightly around my waist and one clutching the back of my neck, he lowered his face to mine until we were almost touching. So many emotions swam through his eyes, but when he closed them I knew which one was the strongest. My eyelids fluttered shut just as his lips touched mine.
His lips, his tongue were like velvet against mine. He kissed me slowly at first, savoring every second of what we waited so long to taste. We were kissing in the fountain, just like in my dream. Sort of. The roses were dead and the water was ice cold but the kiss was the same. Time stopped just for us. We kissed like it was the first time, the last time and every time in between—and there was a good chance it was all of those things. If this was how I was going to die—for real this time—I could live with that, so to speak.
I cracked an eyelid expecting to see Scarlet ready to unleash her wrath. Instead what I saw was a ghostly couple kissing behind us. She finally got what she could never have in life. The electricity I felt in the pool came from them, from their chemistry when they touched for the first time in over a hundred years. I was happy for them, but not nearly as happy as I was for Zach and me. I pressed closer to him and kissed him even harder. His lips responded to my urgency with some of their own. He bent down and picked me up, never letting his lips leave mine. He carried me out of the fountain and gently laid me on the ground.
“Zach!” Every ounce of love I had for him poured out in that one small word. Just like it had in the kiss I had thought would be my last.
“Ruby!” he replied, “I love you!” The words he was never quite able to say now poured effortlessly out of his mouth.
“Oh Zach, I love you, too!” The words I stopped myself from saying so many times felt so much sweeter than I ever imagined.
He saved my life—and definitely for real this time. Without him, without his willingness to give his own life in the process, I would have drowned. Without his love, I would be dead.
“You never cease to amaze me,” he said as he clung to me.
“Me? You’re the hero, Zach! There’s nothing amazing about me!” Did something happen while I was in that shadowy region between life and death that I was unaware of? I mean, seriously, did he sustain some sort of head trauma when I wasn’t looking?
He gave me a shy smile and tilted his eyes downward. “Yes there is, Ruby. Everything. Everything about you is amazing. Starting with that kiss. Thank you.”
“Thank me? I’m the one who should be thanking you! And that was the kind of kiss you save for someone special, for someone who deserves it.” Only one boy ever truly earned my heart and it was Zach. “Your love for me is the reason I’m still alive!”
“Maybe,” he paused as he glanced at the now serene fountain and then back to me, “But I’m not sure even I deserve a kiss like that.”
I had only one response for those words. Placing my hand on the back of his neck, I pulled him toward me and began to kiss him again. He didn’t just deserve that first kiss—he deserved every kiss from now until forever. And we would have stayed there like that forever if the sound of frantic voices hadn’t interrupted us.
Rachel got to us first. “Guys what are you doing? You can’t do that! You shouldn’t be doing that!” She stopped to catch her breath. “You both must be really good kissers because seriously, you both look drunk right now!”
“He is!”
“She is!”
Our enthusiastic and simultaneous replies erased the worried look from Rachel’s face. “Oh, but what happened here?” she asked as her eyes darted from the uprooted oaks to the shattered stained glass and back to us again.
“It’s over! It’s really over!” I shouted as I flung myself against Zach’s chest pushing him to the ground. I leaned on top of him, planting my lips squarely on his. I never wanted to stop kissing him. Ever.
“Really guys—stop! Our parents are here. They heard about the tornados and rushed home. And…well…” she hesitated, “They kinda know everything that’s happened this summer.”
We froze in mid kiss. “What?!” Zach and I were finally able to be together—the last thing I needed was for them to think I was crazy and ship me off to some psych ward.
“Sorry, Ruby, but I kinda had to. If it’s any consolation.…” She never finished her sentence. Our parents, Andy, Rita, and some people I didn’t recognize descended upon us in one large throng. I jerked myself off of Zach and ran to meet my dad. Now that my secret was out, it was time to expose his secret as well.
