Little Red Gem

by D L Richardson

  “You joining us today, Miss Adams?” Miss Mathers the P.E. teacher asked.

  When I was alive and known as Ruby I’d had Miss Mathers for P.E. She’d barely said two words to me. Yet she spoke to Audrey. I wasn’t dense. I’d never met a P.E. teacher who wasted a breath on any kid who stank. The P.E. teacher talking to Audrey meant one thing – Audrey excelled at sports.

  Another wave of terror gripped me. Excluding today’s poltergeist possession session, I was sure I controlled this body’s limbs. And I had the motor neuron equivalence of a marionette. I really didn’t have to lie about my illness anymore. I dreaded jumping over those hurdles.

  “Do I have to?” I cried.

  Miss Mathers bent down to clap me on the back. “You’ve done this plenty of times. Go and get changed while we set up. We can’t start without our star athlete.”

  On my way to the change rooms I ran into Hannah. I grabbed her hand and wouldn’t let go. “Please tell Miss Mathers I’ve got a contagious disease.”

  Hannah laughed but she let me drag her with me to the change rooms. At least she’d forgiven me for embarrassing her in class.

  “Explains the weird behavior,” she said with a roll of her eyes.

  “What weird behavior?”

  “Hello. You practically threw your text books on the floor.”

  I bit my lip. “I have been a klutz today.”

  “Not only today. The whole week. You haven’t been yourself. You’ve been secretive. Happy, even. I can only guess this is another symptom of your obsession with Leo.”

  I laughed to lighten the mood. “What do you mean I haven’t been myself?”

  We’d reached the change rooms and together we hunted down a clean spot on the benches. I slung my bag onto the bench and took out plain colored T-shirts and leggings. What would look better to break a leg in, I wondered? Blue or green?

  Hannah stood in front of the mirror, carefully studying her face. “You’ve avoided me every day this week. I get you’re in love, but you know we share everything, and you haven’t told me a single thing about you and Leo. You didn’t come around to my house after school to study yesterday or the day before, and you know we do that every afternoon.”

  I pulled a blue T-shirt over my head. “Are you mad at me?”

  “I’m not mad. I’m jealous. You’re keeping secrets. I don’t like you keeping things from me. We’re best friends, aren’t we?”

  “If you say so,” I muttered.

  I tied the laces on my runners and walked over to where Hannah stood in front of the mirror. We stood side by side and I noted how weird it was to be searching for my face, yet the only trace visible to me was my eyes. Did Hannah see my dark-brown eyes or Audrey’s paler brown eyes?

  Hannah’s gaze searched the mirror until it locked onto me. When she turned away, my heart dropped to my toes. If neither of us could spot Ruby Parker lurking beneath, what hope had Leo?

  Hannah grabbed my hands. “Jeez, Audrey, you’re shaking.”

  “Told you I had a contagious disease.”

  We left the change rooms and I detected a worried gleam in her eye.

  “Could be anthrax, malaria, measles, the Plague,” I joked.

  “You don’t have any of those diseases. Do you?”

  “A tick, maybe. I have been walking in the woods.”

  “When were you in the woods?”

  Hannah glowered at me and I stayed silent while we regrouped with the rest of the class. My hands continued to shake and I knew my nervousness stemmed from being on a field where I had no right to be. I hated athletics. The music room, full of guitars, pianos, trombones, and violins was where I preferred to shine.

  We returned to the group and everyone watched me with a suspenseful look on their faces. I’d never considered Audrey the athletic type. Could she do back flips? My stomach did a few yet I knew the two types of flips weren’t remotely like each other. One was a display of guts. The other was a gutsy display.

  Not even my odd sense of humor could appease the butterflies when Miss Mathers sang out, “Show us how it’s done, Audrey.”

  Most of the class – there were always one or two girls who couldn’t summon cheer for anyone except themselves – cheered me on. Instead of being encouraged, bile rushed up into my mouth. I swore I was going to throw up. Sweat broke out on my brow. I shook harder now. But I also couldn’t back out. There were things you did to make your insides stronger, such as jumping over hurdles you had no business jumping over. And then there were certain things you did to make your insides squishy, such as chickening out.

  I rolled my neck and shoulders and strode purposefully up to where the hurdles were laid out on the track. I did a quick count. Ten little barriers stood between me and the finish line. One or fifty, there wasn’t really any difference. I stank at sports.

  Just get on with it, I told myself.

  My feet listened to this internal command and took off. At the first hurdle I lifted my leg out in front of me. I was surprised when I flew inches above the hurdle. A few steps and I lifted the other leg. More surprise. I was actually getting lift-off. This wasn’t so bad.

  At the third hurdle, an invisible wrecking ball slammed into me and I was tossed through the air like a rag doll. The ground rushed up to meet me. Hello ground. Please be soft like a pillow.

  It wasn’t. It was like cement. Landing on my wrists, a loud crack rang out and I screamed. Intense pain tore along my left arm like fire, which caused the earlier concern I’d had over appearing weak disappear. I screamed like an injured animal, cradling my wrist protectively. In an instant the entire class surrounded me.

  Miss Mathers pushed her way through the crowd. “Show me.”

  Nothing could persuade me to move my arm. Even imagining moving my arm hurt like crazy. I’d rather have sat there, nursing my wounds, scolding myself for knowing something like this would happen, and mentally engraving into the insides of my skull the words NEVER DO THIS AGAIN than move my arm.

  Miss Mathers finally coaxed the hand covering my wrist aside, yet when she touched me, the blood drained from my body.

  “I think it’s broken,” she said. She told Hannah to get the first aid kit from her office. To me she said, “Breathe deeply. Remain calm. I’ll apply first aid and we’ll get you to hospital. Okay.”

  I’d given up listening. Death hadn’t been this painful and I’d broken a lot more than a wrist.

  Hannah appeared and Miss Mathers wasted no time in lifting my arm and supporting it with one hand while she gently pushed a splint under my wrist with the other. Next, amidst howls of agony from me, and whispers of “cry baby” from a few of the snootier girls, she expertly twisted a sheet of cotton into a sling.

  “Support your arm while I wrap this around you,” she instructed. “I’m going to place my arms around your waist and lift you up. You ready?”

  “Please don’t move me,” I whispered.

  She smiled sympathetically while I clenched my jaw tight so she could lift me up. Together we hobbled to the school building. When we walked into the administration building Mrs. Runo, the school administrator, rushed out from behind her desk.

  “Call an ambulance, Madison,” Miss Mathers ordered.

  “I don’t need an ambulance for a broken wrist.” I sniffed back tears.

  “School policy.” Mrs. Runo reached for the phone. “If a student can’t walk him or herself off school grounds, we call an ambulance.”

  “Duh. It’s my wrist. Last I checked I don’t walk on my hands.”

  I lifted my hand up to prove the pain was no longer noticeable, but mostly to silence the persistent whispers of “cry baby”. Instead, an acid-like burning sensation threatened to peel my flesh off, a million times worse than when I’d nicked my legs shaving with a blunt razor.

  The blood speedily dropped away from my brain and I started hyperventilating.

  “Shit. Sorry. Ow, shit, it hurts.”

  Mrs. Runo glowered at me over the rim of her glas
ses. “I’ll ignore that remark. At least now you know why we call the ambulance.”

  Everyone stared at me and the scrutiny sent a horrible message to my brain. I couldn’t go to hospital. What if the x-ray scanners revealed two life forms inside one body?

  Hannah pushed through the crowd. “Audrey. I’ve called your mom. She’s on her way to the hospital to meet you.”

  “Thanks,” I sighed. I really want my mom, but Teri would do.

  “What happened?” the paramedic asked when he arrived.

  “She tripped on the hurdle,” explained Miss Mathers.

  “She’d been a klutz all day,” added Hannah, a worried look on her face that perhaps my claims of an infectious disease weren’t so farfetched.

  ***

  Teri must have flown on a witch’s broomsticks to beat the ambulance to the hospital. Her eyes were wide in fright and shiny with tears, and the second she saw me she rushed toward me, almost knocking aside the two paramedics who’d escorted me on the ride.

  “What happened?”

  “Malevolent spirit,” I joked.

  Teri didn’t laugh. If anything, she was so stiff and pale I was worried she’d faint. She may have needed the attention of the paramedics more than me.

  “She tripped on the hurdle,” the paramedic explained. “The teacher said your daughter landed on her wrists. The doctor will x-ray both wrists to see the extent of the damage.”

  At least I was whisked straight in and not made to wait for hours and hours in agonizing pain. Nothing in my life had prepared me for enduring hours and hours of pain; not even Biology class.

  Moments later the x-ray confirmed my left wrist was broken.

  “A clean break,” the doctor said, as if a clean snap somehow lessened the severity. “She can take Advil,” he told Teri. With a kind smile he popped two tablets into my good wrist and offered me a paper cup filled with cold water. “This type of injury doesn’t require anything stronger. She won’t be able to use her wrist for six weeks. Too bad it’s not her right one.” He turned to wink at me. “You may have gotten out of homework.”

  Left hand. Right hand. Whatever. Made no difference because it took two hands to play the piano.

  It was official. Even in death my life sucked. Last night, when I hadn’t been able to put the image of the key chain out of my mind, I’d spent a few hours scribbling lyrics to a song I’d decided would be the one I’d sing at the Reach For The Stars audition. Now I wouldn’t be able to enter, not unless I could convince Natalie and Shanessa to accompany me, which was going to be difficult since they often wrangled for the limelight and I barely got a word in sometimes. If I had trouble convincing them to take turns, Audrey didn’t stand a chance, but I had no choice except to try because the auditions were part of my plan to get Leo to notice the real me.

  The doctor left and I spied William hovering in the background. He noticed me noticing him and strode over wearing a big smile. Thankfully Teri and the doctor were facing the reception desk, although the doctor didn’t concern me.

  “Hide,” I hissed. “The woman at the counter is a spirit detector.”

  William dutifully slipped in behind the curtain, which he wrapped around his head, and then he poked his head through a small opening and pouted. “My dear Ruby, I am so sorry for what that nasty spirit did to you.”

  While Teri was at the counter filling in the hospital forms, William did everything he could to make me laugh, but my current mood wasn’t open for comic relief.

  “Why didn’t you stop the poltergeist from attacking me?” I whispered.

  “They are uncontrollable. Does it hurt?”

  I held up my newly mummified arm. “Of course it hurts. But worse than a broken wrist, you’ve given me your curse.”

  William gave up playing with the curtain and tossed it aside. I flashed him my angriest look to warn him to stay hidden out of Teri’s view. At least he took the hint; he stayed out of Teri’s line of sight.

  “What makes you so sure you are cursed?”

  “Auditions are in two days. I’ve finally come up with an awesome plan that will get Leo to see it’s really me inside this body, except I need both hands to perform. My life is ruined because you didn’t stop the poltergeist from attacking me.”

  Teri paused in filling out the hospital forms and turned to face me. “What’s up, honey?”

  “Nothing. Testing out my arm.”

  I slowly and painfully moved my newly plastered arm through the air and she nodded absently; already her attention was back on filling out forms.

  William moved in front of a machine and it beeped. He moved to the left and it whooped. He moved back and forth, sending the machine into a crazy fit of beeps and whoops. I drained batteries and he sent machines haywire. The negative drain our unearthly presence had on the living world was a warning that we didn’t belong. But I wasn’t about to quit my mission before I quit this world.

  William gave up annoying the machine and moved closer to the window. “Anne has asked when you are returning to the cabin. She misses you. Oh, and, in case you had forgotten, Audrey is still trapped in the hollow.”

  “I hadn’t forgotten. I’m simply focusing on the important stuff at the moment.”

  William raised an eyebrow and looked down his slender nose at me. “Like how the love spell is working and how Leo is falling for you?”

  “Oh, sure, you can spy on me while I cast a love spell but not while a poltergeist is attacking me?”

  “You are obviously in no mood for a condescending ghost so I shall bid you adieu.”

  Teri appeared just as William disappeared. On the drive home, I was stuck mulling over how I was going to accomplish the task of performing a love song with only one hand. The piece I’d considering playing had the potential to work on an electric piano – at the flick of a switch the piano could be converted into a mini string ensemble – making the sound no less hauntingly beautiful, yet the pout of my lips exposed to me how much I didn’t want it to sound like a piano, I wanted it to be a piano.

  “You okay,” Teri asked, snapping me out of my daydream. “Aside from the broken wrist, you seem preoccupied. I didn’t mention anything last night, but you’ve been quiet for two nights in a row. I’ve got to suspect something’s up.”

  “It’s been a tough week.”

  She took her eyes off the road for a second. “You want to talk about it?”

  “No. Thanks for asking, but I gotta sort some stuff out.”

  After a few more minutes of silence, Teri said, “Does this have something to do with the love spell?”

  “Not sure.”

  William had hit a nerve speaking about the love spell working. I, too, was convinced Leo was falling for me. Yet this insight, instead of thrilling me, opened up one more bed of denial that I now had to lay in. I’d chosen to ignore that I was in Audrey’s body which meant the love of my life was in love with someone else. What stronger proof was there that he didn’t love me as much as I’d thought? Had I returned from the grave for nothing?

  ***

  The pain was unbearable. I couldn’t sleep because no matter what position I lay in, my entire arm throbbed as if rats gnawed through the bone. The digital clock read 10:30 p.m. Drats. No more Advil until the morning. Surely they didn’t have teenage patients with broken wrists in mind when they’d set the daily maximum allowance for over the counter pain killers.

  I reached for the phone and dragged it as close as I could without pulling it out of the power socket. It was an effort to move my fingers across the screen to send a text.

  SORRY ABOUT NO SHOW. HAD DRAMA IN PE.

  I hit SEND and waited a whole minute for the reply.

  WHO IS THIS.

  I pretended to bang my head against the headboard. I should have realized this was Audrey’s number, not mine. No way would Natalie have recognized it.

  AUDREY.

  OH YEH HEARD ABOUT DRAMA. HOW IS WRIST?

  BROKEN.

  OUCH. QUES
TION. CAN U SING.

  I hadn’t really expected this conversation to go any further than one text and one reply, but now I was glad I’d texted. We were obviously thinking about the same thing. Reach For The Stars auditions.

  WHY.

  NEED 3 FOR AUDITIONS ON SUNDAY.

  Either Natalie or Shanessa had written a song for the auditions without me, or they were performing one of Violet Dreamy Youth’s songs that required three vocals. I didn’t care which song they’d chosen, I was determined we’d be performing the song that whirled around in my head.

  I texted back: WHEN DO WE REHEARSE.

  GRRR HALF HOUR BEFORE AUDITION. ONLY TIME COULD GET STUDIO.

  Was she serious? We’d need at least a week to be brilliant, a few days to be great, and a day to be good. Half an hour was nowhere near enough time to reach the hearts of a thousand people. Lucky for me I only had to reach one.

  ***

  The following morning was Saturday. Usually the highlight of my weekend, those special moments were ruined the moment I’d died, but a broken wrist laid waste to any backup plans. So I was lazing on top of the bedcovers reading a book when Teri popped into my room.

  “Leo has dropped in to say hi,” she said.

  I sat up and tossed the book away in the same movement. “Tell him he can come in.”

  Teri glowered at me the way a teacher about to sentence you to a month of exams glowered. “He can talk to you in the living room.”

  Dashing out of my room, I found Leo sitting on the arm of the couch with a bunch of flowers in his hand. I did a mad dash to take them from him.

  “Leo, they’re beautiful.”

  He remained on the couch and I leaned in close, managing at the last second to remind myself that his lips were not mine to kiss.

  “I can only stay for a second,” Leo said. “I’m working at Rock-A-Lilly’s today.”

  “Oh, last time we’d talked about music, you’d practically given up.” I blushed to speculate what, or who, had changed his mind.