Spirits of Spring (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 4)

by Joy Elbel

  My mind began to swirl in a maelstrom of anger and confusion. Why would my dad say something so mean, so hurtful? He told me that he didn’t think that I was crazy—why did he lie to me?

  “You’re wrong!” I screamed, “You’re totally wrong! Zach is real!” I looked across the table into Rachel’s eyes. She dropped her gaze as soon as we made eye contact. “Tell him, Rachel! Tell him he’s wrong! Tell him about your brother!”

  “Ruby,” she whispered but said nothing more. I worked my way around the table, desperately pleading with each of them. “Tell him about your best friend, Boone! Andy—tell him about all of the good things that Zach does at the shelter!” Each plea went unanswered. By the time I got to Zach’s parents, I was sobbing uncontrollably and could barely get the words past my lips. “Tell him about your son!” I begged.

  Not a single one of them had the courage to look me in the eyes as I addressed them. What they were telling me couldn’t be possible—could it? Could I be so crazy that I didn’t even know that there was something this terribly wrong with me? I began to babble incoherently about all of the things that Zach and I had done together, all of the conversations we’d shared. I closed my eyes in an attempt to block out the harsh truth they all just handed me. As weird as it may sound, I would have rather been told that he was dead than to be told that he only ever existed inside my own sick mind. I pulled my knees up to my chest and began to rock back and forth in my chair. I was happy before they told me the truth—why couldn’t that have been enough for them?

  “I have your drinks—is everyone ready to—“ I opened my eyes and saw that one look at my psychotic meltdown caused the waitress to stop dead in her tracks. When she caught me staring at her, she mumbled something about giving us a few more minutes and hurriedly handed us our drinks. She saved my drink for last.

  “Here,” she said, thrusting the glass toward me. She was in such a hurry to get away from me that she let go of it before it was firmly in my grip. The glass tumbled toward the floor, dumping ice cold water down the length of my arm.

  “Ruby! Wake up!” a voice shouted into my ear. It was the oddest awakening I’d ever experienced. My eyes were open and I could see that I was physically inside my own bedroom but my brain was still telling me that I was in the diner. Somehow, I seemed to be in two places at once. I could feel the icy cold of the water but I knew that I wasn’t wet. Never before had I felt so completely insane.

  “Ruby! Wake up!” the voice called again, louder than before. This time I recognized who was speaking to me—it was Clay.

  Slowly, the scene in the diner began to fade away. The coldness on my arm wasn’t caused by the glass of water the waitress spilled on me—it was the frigid cold touch of my ghost friend trying to comfort me.

  “I’m awake,” I muttered as soon as I felt that I truly was. “I just had the worst nightmare ever, Clay. I dreamed that Zach never existed, that I imagined every single moment he and I have spent together. It was a terrible feeling. I felt so—so— lost without him. It was just a dream, wasn’t it?”

  “Of course it was, Ruby,” Clay replied soberly. “Of course it was.” Clay removed his hand from my arm at the mere mention of Zach. His feelings for me were deepening more with each passing day. I couldn’t allow him to go on like this. Regardless of what everyone else thought about me, I needed to dig around in Clay’s past and try to help him move on. But for now, I needed him with me. I would never fall asleep without knowing that I wasn’t alone.

  “Clay, I don’t want to talk about my dream—I don’t want to talk about anything right now. I need to get some sleep and I don’t want to be alone. Will you stay here with me until morning?”

  “Of course I will, Scout’s Honor.” I’m not sure how I managed to do it, but I fell right back asleep within minutes and didn’t wake up again until the alarm went off. Clay was lying in the bed beside me with his eyes closed. Once again I had sought comfort in the last place I should have looked. I said nothing but I knew that something was going to have to be said very soon.

  14. Cloudy with a Chance of Street Brawls

  I left for school early enough to be able to catch Zach and Rachel before they left their house. Though I was certain at this point that the dream was nothing more than that, I wasn’t going to feel completely at ease until I saw his face. The tension in my shoulders relaxed the very moment that he got into my car. Before following Rachel out of the driveway, I motioned for her to come to my window.

  “You’re my best friend, right?” I tried not to sound on edge but that was far beyond my range of acting skills. Rachel immediately got a concerned look on her face. “Of course I am, why do you even have to ask me that question? What’s going on, Ruby?”

  “If I were crazy—and I’m talking totally cray-cray, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?” “Yes,” she replied slowly. “Again—what’s going on? Please tell me there isn’t another dead body on the church steps that you need me to go help you find!”

  “No, it’s nothing like that—Scout’s Honor.” I wanted to tell her details about the dream but something told me not to, especially not while Zach was sitting right beside me. “I just had a really realistic dream last night. It still has me feeling a little weird, I guess. But I’m fine—for real.”

  “Okay, as long as everything is alright then. See you at school.”

  After Rachel walked away, Zach inquired about my strange—even by my standards—conversation with his sister. Without going into any details, I merely told him that I had a dream that I was certifiably insane and that everyone I knew played along with my delusions for an extended period of time.

  “Oh.” He sat in thought for a moment before adding, “So why haven’t you asked me if I would tell you if I thought you were crazy then?”

  “Well that’s a simple question, silly!” I replied, pulling out the perfect lie faster than a cowboy could pull out his six shooter, “I already know that you would tell me the truth!” With a kiss on the cheek for good measure, Zach was convinced that I was telling him the truth. For now, I needed to keep the details of the nightmare to myself.

  Now that I was involved in an after school activity, my time of being a social outcast was even longer than I was used to. My only streak of good luck was that Lucas had been MIA since the day he ghost busted me. I wanted to know where he’d gone to but not badly enough to actually inquire about it. As far as I was concerned, he was dead to me anyway and that was one grave I never wanted to visit.

  Track sucked worse than class did because I actually had to have close contact with my number one tormentor. While my relay skills were nowhere near as bad as the day before, I still had a lot to work on—the main thing being how to be in such close proximity of the she-devil without letting my emotions run wild. The only thing that kept me out of trouble was Clay.

  He ran every race with me, cheering me on or pushing me to go faster—whichever I needed most at the moment. While Rachel was the best living friend I’d ever had, Clay definitely took that title if you took away breathing as a requirement for friendship. Every day that I spent with him was going to make it that much harder to say goodbye to him when the time came. I had to hurry up and find out why he couldn’t move on.

  After track was over, I texted Shelly to let her know that I would be staying in town a little later than usual so that I could get an idea of what kind of flowers I wanted for prom. She was so happy to hear what she thought was excitement for that infernal dance, that she didn’t question it. She really should have known me well enough to realize that there was no way I would be checking out corsages a month and a half ahead of time—even if I really did want to go to that stupid dance. I procrastinate, therefore I am—if everyone had a personal motto, that would be mine.

  “Are you ready to go see your grandma now, Clay?” I asked once we were alone together in my car. His face brightened and he flashed me that trademark grin of his. “More than you know, Ruby! I thought I would never see her again. And I w
ouldn’t have if it weren’t for you. Thanks. I’m not used to people doing nice things for me— Grandma and Sophie were really the only people I ever thought truly cared about me.”

  Now that was sad. While I didn’t have a terribly long list of people who I felt cared about me, at least that list included more than two people. My mother wasn’t around, of course, but at least my dad made the final cut. Maybe Clay was wrong about his mom, the same way I was wrong about my dad there for a while.

  “What about your mom? You don’t think that somewhere underneath all of her dysfunction that she had a very special place for you in her heart?”

  “Maybe,” he said without any emotion, “but it was kind of hard to tell when she was barely ever sober. She was totally hammered at my funeral, by the way. Did I ever tell you that story?”

  Just when it seemed like his life couldn’t be any more tragic than it already was, he came out with a comment like that one. I didn’t really want to hear the story because I was most certainly going to need anti-depressants by the end of it. He was a good person whose life sent him down the wrong path—it was now my job to point him in the direction of the right one. So for his sake, I shook my head no and listened as he recounted the day of his funeral.

  “I had barely adjusted to the fact that I was dead at that point. Until I actually saw my body, I didn’t have a damned clue as to what was going on. I don’t know what I expected death to feel like, but this wasn’t it. So as the few friends I had gathered around my casket at Grimes and Loeffler to say their final farewell, my mom came tumbling in the door with a half empty bottle of vodka in her hand. You should have seen the look on Grandma’s face—I’ve never seen her so angry.”

  “Mom’s a loud, obnoxious drama queen even on her best days but that day, she outdid herself. She draped herself over my casket and kept screaming about how life was so unfair to her. That’s the thing with her—it was always about the bad things that happened to her not the bad things she caused herself. She went on and on about how she didn’t make enough tips at her job the week before and couldn’t even pay for her own son’s funeral.”

  “Wait a second. Here’s a question for you—who did pay for your funeral? Was it your grandma? I noticed that you don’t have a headstone but someone had to pay for that casket.”

  “Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong my d—“ Clay stopped himself just before calling me ‘dear’. He began to fidget with the buttons on his shirt, pretending that he was actually engaged in a necessary task. “That’s where you’re wrong, Ruby,” he managed to say once he composed himself.

  I pretended not to notice the pause or the near slip of the term of endearment. “Really? So where is it then? I’ve searched that cemetery countless times and have never come across a stone with your name on it. That fresh grave I was talking to that first day I saw you at Heaven’s Gate—that wasn’t yours?”

  “Hell no! The dirt settled over my grave a long time ago.” “When exactly did you die?” I asked. Something about this conversation made me uneasy. I had the same feeling that I normally got when driving over a bridge. It was nowhere near as bad as the day I freaked out on Lucas in Pittsburgh—that was more because it felt like I was actually with Lee on Destiny Bridge again. No, this was more like a feeling of dread, a feeling of something not being right but not being able to determine exactly what it was.

  “If I died the day I think I did, it was May 29th, 2011.” I let out an involuntary gasp. Now my goose bumps had their own set of goose bumps. That was only three days before the Cold Eternal concert. Three days before the bridge collapse. Three days before Lee died. Three days. Even though I didn’t know Clay then, I struggled to think of where I was and what I was doing that day. I couldn’t recall any specifics but my best guess was that I was probably plotting how to pull off my great escape for the night of the concert. While I was busy coming up with the perfect plan for sneaking out to Harrisburg without my dad finding out, Clay was busy dying. That realization gave me a whole new perspective on life. And on death.

  It wasn’t until I saw the look of confusion on Clay’s face that I realized that I had never told him the full details about my past. Not that what happened to Lee had any bearing whatsoever on Clay’s situation, but I felt obligated to share the story with him. If anyone understood death and loss, he most certainly did.

  “Oh. I see now why you reacted the way you did. It may be a morbid thought, but while my body was floating aimlessly through Silver Lake, yours was doing pretty much the same thing in the Susquehanna. We have more in common than I ever would have guessed we did.”

  This topic was too depressing for me—we had to find something more pleasant to talk about. “So back to the original topic—who paid for your funeral and if that wasn’t your grave, where are you buried? I tell you—I know that cemetery as well if not better than you do. I’ve never seen a headstone with your name on it.” Okay, so I totally sucked at choosing more pleasant conversation but anything was better than what we were talking about. While neither of us could actually recall the time we spent in the water, the mere thought of it upset me.

  “Half dominatrix, half detective—you sure are the most mysterious girl I’ve ever met, Ruby,” he said with a laugh. “I don’t technically have a headstone anymore. It was one of those small, cheap ones that lie flat against the ground. It sunk into the mud at some point, though. I have no idea who paid for either it or the funeral—I heard my grandma ask the funeral director the same question. He told her they were purchased by someone who wished to remain anonymous and that he, in fact, wasn’t even aware of their identity. And my grave is just inside the gates, off to your left, and behind that tall tower thingy.”

  Funerals must be at least fairly expensive. People didn’t normally just go around paying for things like that for strangers—did they? Was it possible that whoever killed Clay actually footed the bill for his burial? Or better yet….

  “Sophie! Sophie must have been the anonymous donor! You said her family was rich, right? Who else do you know who would have had enough extra cash floating around to pay for it? See, I told you she still loved you!”

  Clay turned his head and refused to face me. “And I told you that I don’t want to talk about her. Besides, you’re wrong anyway. Her parents were the ones with the money—not her. They hated me and if it were up to them, they would have just thrown my body back into the lake as fish food. Discussion over.”

  Okay. It was plain to see that I’d touched a raw nerve there. Good thing we were just outside of Roseman’s Floral Emporium because I had no idea what other topic to switch the conversation to. There was too much traffic for me to even consider parallel parking so I pulled around the corner and took a spot in the bank parking lot on the street behind. I would rather walk than cause an eighteen car pile-up due to driver’s anxiety.

  Clay was still too busy sulking to crack any kind of jokes about my choice of parking spots. As long as he cheered up once he saw his grandma, I wouldn’t feel bad for mentioning Sophie. I really needed to try to track her down. After a few minutes of girl talk, I would have her spilling out all of their relationship secrets. The only problem was that it required a trip to Ohio and I didn’t even know what town she lived in. My gut told me that she had nothing to do with his death and that if I tracked her down, I would probably find a heartsick girl who had no idea that her ex-boyfriend was dead. Zach and I would be heading out to get a look at the campus and potential apartments near Pendleton—looking for Sophie was now also on my list of things to do while there.

  “There she is!” Clay exclaimed the very second we stepped inside the door. “There’s my grandma!” A small, sad-looking lady with snow white hair was in the corner of the store watering plants and humming to herself. She looked up as I approached and gave me a halfhearted smile.

  “Hello, dear. How can I help you?” She placed the watering can down on the counter and reached for her glasses. “I’m here to take a look at corsages and bouto
nnieres for prom. I’m going to pick out a dress this weekend and I wanted to get an idea of what my options were flower-wise ahead of time.”

  “Ah, prom! It is that time of year again, isn’t it? The time goes by so fast once you get to be my age. Is this your first prom, honey?” She seemed like a very sweet lady and I understood why Clay missed her so much. With no mother to speak of, his grandmother was the closest thing he had to a maternal figure in his life.

  “Yes, first, last, and only which is why I want to make sure everything about that night is perfect.” What a lie! Of all the lies I’d told, I think that one had to be the biggest. The only reason I was going to prom was because Zach wanted to go. I didn’t want to spend any more time around that school-full of backstabbers than I absolutely had to. If it weren’t for Rachel, I wouldn’t have even joined the track team. Admittedly, I was kind of having fun with it now that I had something to prove to Misty—that I would stick it out no matter how much punishment she wanted to throw my way.

  “You’re a senior? You must have known my little Clayton,” she said with a sigh. “I don’t recognize you, though. But then again, my memory isn’t that great these days. What did you say your name was again, honey?”

  I never even came close to mentioning my name which proved that she was correct about her bad memory. “Ruby Matthews,” I replied politely without pointing out that fact. Then I giggled inside at the fact that she referred to him as her “little Clayton”.

  “Ruby Matthews,” she repeated. “I don’t remember Clayton ever mentioning your name. Were you close friends?” Were we? No, I’d never even passed through Charlotte’s Grove during the time Clay was alive. Are we now? Absolutely, but there was no way that I was going to tell her that.

  I shook my head no. “I moved to town last summer. I didn’t know Clay but I have heard about what happened to him. I’m sorry for your loss.”