Little Red Gem

by D L Richardson

  Little Red Gem

  D L Richardson

  Copyright 2013 Deborah Louise Richardson

  Published by D L Richardson

  www.dlrichardson.com

  Smashwords Edition

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Digital ISBN: 9781301976485

  Print ISBN- 13: 9781492939924

  Print ISBN-10: 1492939927

  First electronic publication: October 2013

  First print publication: October 2013

  ~Table of Contents~

  ~Acclaim for D L Richardson~

  ~Look for these titles by D L Richardson~

  ~Dedication~

  ~Chapter One~

  ~Chapter Two~

  ~Chapter Three~

  ~Chapter Four~

  ~Chapter Five~

  ~Chapter Six~

  ~Chapter Seven~

  ~Chapter Eight~

  ~Chapter Nine~

  ~Chapter Ten~

  ~Chapter Eleven~

  ~Chapter Twelve~

  ~About the songs in this book~

  ~About the Author~

  ~Discover more about D L Richardson~

  ~Acclaim for D L Richardson~

  Praise for Feedback

  “My favorite aspect of Richardson’s writing is how unapologetic she is. Her descriptions and details of each teen’s situation, their disease and what it’s doing to their bodies, is, at times, raw and makes it that much easier to sympathize with each of them...” —Bookloversity Reviews

  “You find yourself while reading this book saying ‘Wow…that could really happen.’ I would definitely recommend this book for anyone who likes a touch of paranormal to their realism or a touch of realism to their paranormal.” —The Book Maven

  “You should read the book. It really IS good!” —Blooding Book Reviews

  Praise for The Bird with the Broken Wing

  “…this book is so exceptional and heartwarming and mixed-up that my thoughts were just flying around in my head and none of them were landing in cohesive sentences…” —Sapphyria’s Book Review

  “This was a great read, nothing like I have read before. I loved the storyline and how it kept you guessing, and the ending was perfect.” —Book Devotee Reviews

  ~ Look for these titles from D L Richardson ~

  The Bird with the Broken Wing

  Feedback

  Fear of Falling

  Little Red Gem

  Curious (3 novels in 1)

  Poison in the Pond

  ~ Dedication ~

  To every girl and woman who has felt her heart soar, felt her heart break, fallen down and gotten back up, punched through walls, or felt the need to do whatever it takes to protect what is hers. Stay strong, stay true, and don’t let anyone get you down.

  Chapter One

  A week earlier

  Rock-A-Lilly’s was the name of the rehearsal studio in my home town of Providence. Located inside a small warehouse district on the southeast side, I spent more Saturdays afternoons there than my mom cared for, hanging out while Leo Culver worked to save up for his dream – to record a demo CD with his band, Volt. I would laze around on the sagging, brown corduroy couch, paperback in hand, while heavy metal music attempted to throb its way through the walls.

  Some girls might not consider this a romantic way to spend a Saturday afternoon with their boyfriend, yet I held an equal passion for music. It was no big deal for me to watch Leo sitting behind the counter under the tutelage of Jimi Hendrix or Aerosmith or whatever aging band’s poster happened to take the owner’s fancy at the time, while he replaced broken guitar strings. Sometimes, Leo would become so buried beneath a tangle of leads and cables that I’d wonder how he ever managed to put up the Christmas tree lights at home. I’d stifle a laugh and he’d look up in time to catch me ogling him. A shy smile would accompany the brief hiatus he took from doing whatever he was doing, and then he’d blow me a kiss.

  This simple gesture should have been enough of a hint that he loved me, yet when I found myself sitting in the restroom of a service station with a home pregnancy test in my hands, doubt circled around me like a silvery shadow. Or maybe I was just hallucinating from spending too long breathing in the fumes coming off the fuel tanks outside.

  The gentle knock on the door startled me.

  “You still in there, Ruby?”

  How long had I been sitting here staring at the blue box in my hands? Long enough to have taken the test and gotten the results ten times over I suspect, yet the thought of discovering whether or not I was pregnant while sitting on the wobbly toilet seat at a highway gas station had kind of sapped the valor out of the quest.

  “I’ll be out in a sec,” I told Leo.

  “Okay. I’ll wait in the car.”

  Sniffing back a few stray tears, I shoved the unopened box deep into my handbag and retrieved the small parcel of photos I kept on hand for those excruciating minutes when Leo and I were apart. Sorting through the photos one by one did the trick of cheering me up. Not a lot, but enough that by the time I got out and saw Leo talking on his cell phone my mood didn’t instantly plunge back into one of despair; it hovered somewhere between apathy and denial.

  I slid in to the passenger seat, protectively clutching my handbag to my chest. Leo waved a half-eaten hotdog in my direction.

  “Urgh. No thanks.”

  Instead, I took a mint from the newly opened roll on the dash. Leo gunned the engine and drove out of the service station. He was still on the phone.

  “Don’t talk and drive at the same time,” I garbled.

  The usual intensity of my nagging was missing. It felt as if I’d left all my energy back there in the restroom. Leo ignored me anyway and drove off the curb, bouncing my side of the car into the air.

  “Go ahead and book it,” he said into the phone, driving with his elbow so he could force the rest of the hotdog down his throat. “And tell Thomas his dad is a legend,” he added in a hot-dog-down-the-throat distorted way that only dentists were able to understand.

  There was a pause while the caller said something that made Leo laugh, though thankfully he’d swallowed his food by this stage so he couldn’t choke.

  “Yeah, I reckon he’ll want a song named after him, too. Thanks for the update. I’ll call ya later.”

  As Leo turned to face me he tossed the phone into my lap and wore a grin that I jealously wished was intended for me.

  “That was Simon,” he said. “Thomas’s dad is loaning us the money to record our demo CD. Plus he’s loaning us his cabin next weekend to write a few more songs. We’ll need around ten more, I reckon.”

  “Doesn’t his dad own that creepy place in the middle of the woods?”

  Leo laughed. “What’s wrong with Capers Cabin? It’s the ideal location to write. No phone service, which means it’ll be just me, Simon, and Thomas for a whole weekend with no distractions.”

  “Oh.”

  Leo picked up on my disquiet. “Babe, you know I’d love you to be there. The highlight of my day is when you’re by my side. You’re my muse, and I know with you there I’d create the most beautiful songs.”

  “You don’t like love songs.”

  “Not every beautiful song is a love song. Anyway, as much as I’d love you there, you’d also be the biggest distraction. Even now, I can barely keep my
thoughts on driving.”

  As if to prove his point he ran a hand up my thigh. The car veered off the road and unidentified items stashed under the seats tinkled – probably Coke bottles, Leo was addicted to the stuff. The passenger side tires hit the breakdown lane and spat gravel up the doors. I pushed Leo’s hand off my thigh and reached for the wheel at the same moment that he pulled the car back into the lane.

  “Not funny, Leo.” My voice came out flat. Maybe I wanted him to notice my lifeless mood so he’d badger me into telling him what was on my mind.

  “So, did you get what you were after?” he asked.

  To lure Leo into driving to Prospect – I only had my learners permit – I’d made up a story about their pharmacy being the only place where I could buy certain stage makeup products. I sang in an all-girl band so he’d bought my story. Back at the gas station I’d also decided to create a second cover story in case I needed to return to Prospect, like to secretly visit a doctor who didn’t know me or my mom.

  “They’ve run out,” I said, which was a lie. “But they’re gonna order some more in.”

  Leo drove and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel to songs in his head while I stared out the window. So deep within our thoughts were we that our silence could have marked us as strangers on a train.

  I must have fallen asleep because I woke when I heard the tires screeching. The car did a sharp left and kept spinning. One second the view was of traffic rushing toward us. The next it was of the woods. Then traffic. Then woods.

  I screamed and grabbed onto the dash while Leo pulled the car off the road and out of harm’s way. The car ended up down an embankment. Thankfully it was only a gentle incline into thick shrubs because beyond the shrubs lay the woods; tall, dark, and foreboding even without the recent near-death experience to add to the atmosphere.

  Back up on the highway, cars slowed down, but didn’t stop. It stung that we could have died and no other drivers cared enough to check if we were all right.

  Getting out of the car, I felt sick racing up my esophagus, so I ran down the incline and spent the next few minutes with my head in the bushes puking up the residual crumbs of mint-favored candy. Stupid how a girl could be in the middle of nature and still look for a tissue to wipe her face with. I found nothing to sanitize my face, but my search did reveal a wooden cross staked into the ground. It was painted white, about two feet tall, and had dozens of dates carved into it. Tied around the cross were a handful of gold-colored roses, silk or plastic from the look of them. Beneath the flowers, and stapled to the cross was a laminated newspaper clipping.

  Leo appeared at my side just as I’d finished reading the clipping.

  “What does it say?” he asked.

  “A woman died in a car accident in this exact spot. Her boyfriend erected the cross as a symbol of his undying love.”

  “Maybe her car hit an oily patch on the road, too,” Leo said.

  He popped a mint in his mouth and held out his hand. Was he offering me his hand or a mint? I never could tell lately what was on Leo’s mind. I wished I could read his mind. I also wished he could read mine.

  “You all right?” Leo said. “You look a little shaken.”

  I stared at him and thought to myself: No, I am not all right.

  Two weeks ago I’d skipped my period. Since then I hadn’t been able to look at anything the same way. A burger was no longer a tasty lunch; it was an animal that had once lived. A black bear was no longer a pest who broke into trash cans; it was a product of a species that placed material objects above that species’ home. All of my innocent and inept teenage philosophies about life and death and everything in between had come barging toward me demanding I set down some new rules. The top of the list of discussion points was: When did a boyfriend stop being a boyfriend?

  I hadn’t yet decided on the answer but the top two contenders were: 1) when he became a father; and 2) when he found out his girlfriend was pregnant and became an ex-boyfriend.

  Why did the first adult decision of my life have to also be the biggest? And why, despite the two smiling faces captured in the photos stashed deep in my bag, did it feel as if this decision was mine alone to make?

  Overwhelmed, I burst into tears. Leo slipped his arms around me and hugged me tightly to his chest.

  “Hey, it’s okay. We weren’t in any kind of danger. Those cars were way off. But babe, if it makes you feel any better, I promise not to drive and talk on the phone at the same time. You know I’ll do whatever it takes to make you happy.”

  As Leo led me back to the car I let myself believe that our souls and hearts were like grafted plants or symbiotic life forces, too deeply entwined to let anyone or anything threaten to destroy us. But something already had.

  Chapter Two

  “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,

  That saved a wretch like me.

  I once was lost, but now am found,

  Was blind but now I see...”

  A solitary tear trickled down Mrs. Upton’s wrinkled cheek. Her bony fingers were wrapped around a floral handkerchief, yet in the all the months we’d been singing to the small group of elderly ladies at Heavenlea Home, she’d never once used the handkerchief to dry her eyes. I admired the strength it took for her to set her memories unashamedly free.

  The smile on her lips broke occasionally to mouth the bits of the song she remembered. Mrs. Upton’s hearing was so bad, she told everyone, that she needed to sit in the front row. A staff member had told me once that Mrs. Upton was of the view that sitting closer to us would bring her closer to her late husband.

  Natalie, Shanessa, and I loved performing Amazing Grace for her because it gave our all-girl band a free venue to practice in, just not over and over like she always wanted.

  “How long do we have to keep coming here?” Natalie had asked a few minutes ago.

  Natalie had pulled her hair out of her ponytail and shook it free the minute she’d switched off the car’s engine. Then, she’d rummaged inside her handbag and given her lips a liberal dose of Hibiscus Red. She had trouble settling on a look sometimes and today was no different.

  “You got something against singing to little old ladies?” I’d asked, holding my hand out to borrow the lipstick only to be handed her hair tie instead.

  “Really, Ruby,” Natalie had said with a derisive look. “Hibiscus Red with your hair?”

  I’d smiled playfully. “Why not? Red hair and red lips go perfectly well together. You are so behind the times.”

  It didn’t matter what look Natalie settled on, I’d given up competing with her sense of style long ago, which explained why I’d dressed in a polka dot dress with capped sleeve like the ones Walt Disney had designed for Snow White. And as if to confirm that I had absolutely no fashion sense, I’d also worn red leggings and flat-heeled mid-knee-high boots.

  “Don’t be so mean, Natalie. It’s the highlight of their week,” Shanessa had said. She’d swiped at the lipstick and stuffed it inside her pocket: the surest way of getting Natalie to settle on a color.

  “It’s good practice,” I’d reminded them. “Besides, every great act has to start somewhere.”

  Natalie had been aghast. “Ruby, if you think Violet Dreamy Youth singing Amazing Grace over and over to a group of old women is gonna be on our bio, you’re crazier than I give you credit for.”

  We three had laughed goodheartedly because this conversation was nothing new. We’d all rather have been rehearsing at Rock-A-Lilly’s or on a stage somewhere, preferably Madison Square Garden, but at least I’d thought performing for a small group of old ladies who had no family left was a sweet thing to do.

  Now, the small group of old ladies who had no family left waited expectantly for us to start the second verse:

  “Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,

  And grace my fears relieved.

  How precious did that grace appear,

  The hour I first believed…”

  I caught Mrs. Upton’s ey
e and she nodded, as if she and I shared a secret from the past. Both my parent’s parents were dead, so in a way she could have been the closest thing I’d get to a grandmother. I smiled back and sang even louder. After Amazing Grace we sang a selection of their favorites, amongst them Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, I Just Called To Say I Love You, and I Got You Babe.

  Mrs. Upton usually liked to delay our departure by acquainting us with the grand adventures of Mr. Upton. Today, she abstained from talking about her late husband and singled me out instead.

  “Are you all right, Ruby? You seem distracted. And a little off color.”

  “Don’t mind Ruby, Mrs. Upton,” said Natalie with a playful laugh. “She’s pining over her boyfriend. He’s gone away for a boy’s weekend. There’s no cell service and no girls allowed.”

  Shanessa dragged Natalie out into the foyer for whatever reason, and because I felt a thread of connection still hovering between us, I sought Mrs. Upton out.

  “Mrs. Upton, can I ask you a question?”

  Her face brightened as she waved me into the empty seat. In front of her sat a tea pot and cup, decorated with an almost identical floral pattern to her handkerchief. “What did you want to ask me?”

  I bit my lower lip. “It’s personal.”

  She winked. “The good questions usually are.”

  I sat down and waited until she’d poured tea into her delicate cup, suddenly having second thoughts. She put the pot on the table and stared expectantly at me. I’d thought talking to a stranger might be easier. It wasn’t.

  “You always talk about Mr. Upton, but you never talk about children.”

  I detected a harsh edge to her voice when she answered. “That’s because I don’t have any.”