by Elbel, Joy
“When you love someone wholeheartedly, Ruby, their past is meaningless to you. Nothing they’ve done or experienced will matter whatsoever. But I think that may be a lesson you learn over time. What happened to her that night at the Grand Canyon is interesting and of course, I do want to hear the answer to that riddle if you ever find it. But if never find out, then I just don’t. It will never change who she was to me or how I felt about her. Whatever happened, happened.”
Was I more naturally curious than everyone else in my life or was more time and life experience really the answer? Ugh. I expected a lively response from him in regards to what I’d found out. I expected resistance; I expected a thirst for more knowledge about the woman he married rather than the ‘meh’ that I received. Downtrodden, I sent one last plea for help from Clay that went unanswered.
At that point, I knew that it was time for sleep. I popped a melatonin tablet and crawled into bed. I lay there restlessly for a minute or two before getting back up for one last thing. The moonstones that Salma gave me were still in the front compartment of my carry on where I put them after I was done showing them to Rachel.
I took each half into my palms and clasped them tightly. Since I was unable to actually give Zach his half of the stone, I designated one half as his, the other half mine. His stone rested within my left hand and mine in my right. Feeling slightly more peaceful and connected to him, I lay back and fell almost immediately to sleep.
When I awoke in the morning, my fists were still clenched shut around them and I possessed no remembrance of any dreams. As I opened up my fingers, I was astounded by what I found. The two perfectly matched stones were now no longer a perfect match. I’d just entered the next phase of pure, unadulterated weirdness. Universe, two; Ruby, zero.
10. Spark of Hope
When I opened my eyes, I saw something hovering in the air above my bed. It was a circular-shaped blob—a dark smoky gray on one side yet a fiery electric blue on the other. While the gray area stayed still the blue spot danced like lightning. I’d never seen a ghost quite like it. Although curiously fascinated by whatever it was, I wanted it to go away.
“Get out of here! Go haunt her instead. She lives for this kind of stuff—not me.”
I turned my head to the side to get that thing out of my sight and that’s when I realized that it wasn’t a ghost I was looking at. In fact, there wasn’t anything in the room at all. The strange glowing orb was inside my very own brain. No matter which direction I looked, it was there. Closing my eyes didn’t even make it disappear.
So I really was going crazy. Maybe if I admitted it, succumbed to it, there was something they could do to help me. Frantically, I began pounding on the locked door and screaming for help.
“Help me! Help me get rid of the crazy!”
Shortly after my psychotic outburst began; a nurse, two security guards and Dr. Landon himself were at my door attempting to calm me down.
“Take a deep breath, Zach, and then tell me what’s going on,” Dr. Landon said calmly.
I sat back down on the edge of the bed and tried to relax. But it was hard to gain control of myself with that orb bobbing up and down in the corner of my eye. Nervously, my leg started bouncing up and down in a perfectly synchronized rhythm. I counted to ten and then exhaled.
“I’m seeing things. Things that I shouldn’t be seeing. Things that aren’t actually there.”
“What kind of things are you seeing, Zach?”
In detail, I described the peculiar image I was seeing then waited for him to tell me what mental illness I suffered from. But the next question he asked had nothing to do with psychosis whatsoever.
“What’s your history with headaches? Do you get them often? How severe are they?”
Headaches were something I rarely ever experienced until returning home after from my trip. Since then, though, I’d had a whole slew of them. I recounted the frequency and severity as best as I could to him.
“What you’re describing to me, Zach, is a migraine aura. There’s no definitive way to predict when the pain will hit but it will hit sooner or later. I’m going to give you something now for the pain but it may be too late to relieve it. Meanwhile, I’m getting you in for an MRI. I know you’ve had several of them already but I want to make sure we haven’t missed something.”
A migraine headache? That was it? That was all that was wrong with me? It was probably the first time in medical history that a patient was excited to hear that they were having a migraine. Even as I took the pill and listened to all of the horrible symptoms I might possibly have to endure over the next few hours, I was ecstatic. Migraines were normal and happened to normal people. Maybe I wasn’t crazy after all.
Roughly thirty minutes later while I was in the MRI, the pain hit. It rolled in angry waves across my forehead and made even the sight of the slightest ray of light unbearable to look at. It was excruciating. When the MRI was over, they had to wheel me back to my room because when I opened my eyes, it felt like ten thousand needles were stabbing into them at the same time.
As I slumped back down into my bed, the rhythmic pounding inside my head increased. I lay there listening to it for who knows how long until I finally realized what it was. My headache was pounding to the exact rhythm of the drum beats from my dream. Getting rid of Clay didn’t get rid of her the way I’d hoped it would. I refused to even think her name anymore for fear that she would reappear.
But it was going to take far more than that to stop the torture she seemed to enjoy inflicting upon me. Far more. She was close by. I could feel it. And she was more determined than ever to destroy what tiny shreds of sanity I had left inside of me.
11. Doing the Backstroke
Staring down at those stones I was almost convinced that I was still asleep. I had to blink twice and pinch myself to be sure I was actually awake. What I held in my hands seemed impossible. It had to be another sign.
“Shelly! Shelly!” I called out repeatedly as I rushed downstairs to find her. By the time I got to the kitchen, I was out of breath. “Look at these!” I said between panting breaths. “It’s another sign!”
I proudly plopped the stones down in front of her on the kitchen table. Curiously she picked them up and inspected them but showed no sign of the excitement I was expecting to see.
“What are they? And where did you find them?”
The rainbow moonstones given to me by Salma had changed so drastically in color overnight that Shelly didn’t even recognize them. The once pure white stones were now two entirely different colors.
“Those are the protection stones I brought back from Sedona. That one right there,” I said pointing to the milky gray rock on the left, “is the stone I designated as being Zach’s half. I held in it my hand as I fell asleep last night. When I woke up, it was in the exact same place but looked completely different.”
“So this one was yours then, I assume?” she replied, picking up the half that was now a deep shade of electric blue.
“Yep. I don’t know what it means but I’m about to find out.”
Once again, I pulled out my laptop and began searching for information on moonstones changing color. I sifted through site after site but kept finding the same dumb information that I already knew—that the stones were iridescent by nature. Duh. I didn’t have to be made of eyes to see that what happened to my stones had nothing to do with natural iridescence. I was about to give up the search when I found what I was looking for.
“Here it is, Shelly! And it’s good news! According to this website, Zach should be back to his normal self now! I’m not going back to Liberty today—not without him at least.”
Shelly should have been jumping for joy with me but instead she glared at me with brooding skepticism. “I know how much you want that to be true, Ruby, but don’t you think you’re counting your chickens before they’ve hatched? What exactly does that website say?”
“No, I know exactly how many chickens I have—one, one chicken. One ch
icken I absolutely refuse to leave Charlotte’s Grove without. There it is in black and white—read it for yourself.”
I slid my computer across the table to her and pointed to the important paragraph that explained everything. There was no way she could argue with my conclusions after reading what I’d just read. I couldn’t help but sit there with a smug look on my face. I was right and she was going to have to admit that. Wrong again, Ruby. Even after making her read it a second time, Shelly still thought that it was wishful thinking on my part.
“This website is referring to people using crystals in some sort of healing ritual which you did not do and I’m not sure I really believe in anyway. While I will admit that what happened to your stones is incredibly odd, I don’t think it means what you think it does. And I’ll prove it to you. Your dad may not be able to get in to see Zach, but he should at least be able to find out if there was a significant change in his behavior. And even if there was, you know they aren’t going to just release him that quickly—I’m sure they would want to observe him for a few days or weeks to be sure.”
Two minutes later, it was Shelly who had the smug expression as she handed the phone over to me. “Here, I’m going to let you hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.”
Disappointedly, I listened to the words I didn’t want to hear. Zach’s mental state hadn’t improved in any measurable sort of way. I still believed that the stones were a sign—I just didn’t know what they were a sign of. But against my better judgment, I was soon on my way back to Liberty with more unanswered questions than I had when I left. Why couldn’t I ever seem to make progress?
I made Shelly stop at Poe’s Corner before taking me home so that I could talk to Addie. She’d said that she was interested in crystals so I thought that maybe she would be able to shed some light on what had happened to my moonstones. The coffee shop was busy but she took a minute to look at them anyway.
“Well if that ain’t the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen, I don’t know what is. And I’m tellin’ ya girl, I’ve seen a lot of weird things in my time on this earth. I don’t have the foggiest idea what happened to them. All I know is, that sure don’t look normal to me.”
Not normal. If they ever made a movie based on my life story, I’m sure that would be the title of it. “Not Normal: The Ruby Matthews Story”, coming soon to a theater near you. Ugh. Salma was probably the only person I knew that could tell me what made my moonstones alter so drastically overnight and I had no long distance way to contact her. Signs were useless to me if I was unable to interpret them.
Once back at Liberty Towers, Shelly unpacked my stuff for me and hung out for a while before heading home herself. Even before she was gone, I felt lonely. After she walked out the door, though, I felt really alone. I texted Rachel to let her know what was going on then sat down at the kitchen table to decompress and try to think things through.
What I needed most was to talk to Clay. What could Zach have possibly said to him to make him this mad at me? I called his name several times but he never appeared. I knew that I was supposed to be still but time was of the essence here. If Zach continued to get worse, was it even going to be possible to save him once I did have all the answers? Assuming I ever got the answers at all, that is.
With nothing else left for me to do, I opened up my laptop and stared blankly at the screen for a few minutes. I thought that finishing my first book would have made me happier than it did. But how could I be happy when Zach was so insanely miserable? The answer was I couldn’t. With no other way to pass the time, I began pecking out the first few words of my next book—one I never originally intended to write. Writing was all I had left to keep me sane.
After what felt like maybe an hour, my rear end began to go numb in that hard wooden chair. That’s when I decided to take a break. As I was saving my document to the hard drive, I noticed the time and thought that the settings on my laptop had drastically changed just like my moonstones had. There was no way I’d been writing for that long.
Yet the time on the microwave confirmed it—I’d been hunched over my computer for nearly four hours. Since Addie had worked several double shifts while I was in Arizona, I’d begrudgingly told her I would take her early shift in the morning. Don’t get me wrong—I was beyond grateful for how far she’d gone out of her way to help me. But I still had jet lag and hated mornings even on a good day. It was barely past nine but I knew that if there was any hope of me getting out of bed on time in the morning, I needed to go to bed now.
I completed my nightly beauty ritual in record time then gave Coco and Foxy a special treat to make up for being away from them for so long. Writing had helped me take my mind off of everything that was weighing me down and induced a natural state of sleepiness in me for once. Convinced that I didn’t need anything to help me drift off, I skipped the melatonin and went straight to bed.
But at 10:34, I was awakened unexpectedly by someone calling my name. At the very same time, my phone signaled me to an incoming email. It was a moment of pure synchronicity. It felt like things were falling into place again finally.
However, I forgot one thing at the time. In order for things to fall in to place, sometimes they had to fall out of place again for a while. When the sun poked its head above the horizon, I was still awake and caught in a worse state of limbo than I was before.
12. Burning for You
Lying there practically crippled from my migraine, I wanted nothing more than to be alone. There was nothing more anyone could do to take away the pain—at this point, all I could do was ride it out. So when I felt someone bathed in cinnamon sit down on the bed behind me, I wanted to scream. She was the last person I wanted to see—now or ever.
I did everything I could to pretend that I was asleep hoping that she would show compassion and leave me alone. Who was I trying to kid? That bitch had zero compassion for me. She enjoyed making me suffer. And that’s exactly what she was doing to me now.
She’d never allowed me to touch her before—nor had she touched me. Until tonight. At first, her touch was light—a mere grazing of her fingertips against my temple. And I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. If I hadn’t been in so much pain, I would have rolled over and pulled her towards me. But slowly with each stroke, I began to notice a burning sensation in the very spot she was caressing.
It was only slightly uncomfortable at first yet gradually became unbearable. I wanted her to stop but in some ways I didn’t. I loved her. I hated her. I wanted her. I wanted her to leave me alone for the rest of eternity. I wanted to get away from her. I wanted her to never leave my side. But what I wanted most was for the pain and confusion to end.
My head felt like it was being shot with lightning bolts over and over again. Not only my body but my soul itself was being fried as though I were in the electric chair. I kept silent until my skull felt like it was going to crack wide open. Then I howled and screamed like a man being butchered alive. That’s when she leaned in close to my ear and issued an ominous warning.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” she purred in a saccharine-sweet tone. “The only place where we can be together is in your dreams. You said you would meet me there but you lied. You need to make good on your word—unless you like pain, that is.”
This time she drove her finger into the base of my skull where it met with my spine. Instead of the bolts ramming into my brain alone, now they were shooting through every nerve in my body. It was so intense that I could practically feel every synapse crackle and burst as the electricity passed through. Just before I passed out, I made a decision. Death couldn’t be any worse than what I was experiencing right now. If dying was the only way to end the suffering, death was exactly what I needed to find.
13. Wishing for a Whitewash
I wasn’t sure which one I wanted to respond to first—the dinging of my phone which undoubtedly bore an email from Roxanne or the voice of Clay speaking to me softly in the dead of night.
“Clay! Where have you
been? Never mind. Don’t answer that yet. I have a new email that I need to read first. But don’t you even think about leaving in the meantime.”
Excitedly, I opened my inbox to find that I was right. The new email was from Roxanne and “more info” was written into the subject line. It was definitely starting to feel more like a “go forth” than a “be still” kind of night.
But once I read it through to the end, I realized that all I had now was another loose end. She’d found another box of mementos shortly after I left Arizona and discovered another albeit small piece to my puzzle. That piece came in the form of a name. Josette’s forgotten surname to be exact. Josette Delacroix.
While this news seemed great on the surface, the next line of her email was enough to sink my battleship. Roxanne had already tried to track Josette down yet had found no trace of her. Josette Delacroix had seemingly vanished. And a little piece of my hope disappeared along with this news.
Anxious to re-lift my spirits, I apologized to Clay for being abrupt with him earlier and encouraged him to tell me what happened the night he went to see Zach at the hospital.
“Yeah, about that—I’m sorry I overreacted to what he said to me. I should have known that you wouldn’t have lied to me like that. But he knew which buttons to push with me—the ones that would hurt me the most. I needed some time to sort out the truth.”
“What exactly did he say I lied to you about? I never lied to you about anything—scout’s honor.”
Clay leaned back in my desk chair and propped his dusty work boots on the foot of my bed. He’s lucky he was a ghost and those shoes were coated in ghost dust. Otherwise, someone would have to start planning his funeral. Again. I paid good money for that comforter. Not to mention the fact that weird people hung out in the building’s laundry room—I didn’t go down there unless I absolutely had to.