Confederates Don't Wear Couture (14 page)

“I don't know. It feels wrong. It's kind of creepy out here,” I said, shivering.

“Oh, come on.” His forefingers were poised to tear into the package, resting delicately on the crinkly edge. “Stop being such a baby. What're you afraid of, a—”

“GHOST!” I shrieked.

“GHOST!” Dev shrieked in an even higher octave than I did. “Holy shit, ghost!”

“Oh my God,” I whispered. Not so far off in the woods, making her way toward the Confederate camp, there was a woman in a long white dress, with dark hair falling in her face. Upon hearing our shrieks, she stopped and turned to face us. It was the single most frightening thing I'd ever seen. I didn't actually pee myself, but for the first time, I understood how someone could be so scared that they would.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” Dev whimpered. “She came out of the TV like in
The Ring
and into our battlefield!”

“There's no TV here!” I was starting to get hysterical.

“Whatever, she's the one from
The Grudge
—who cares!”

“What do we do, what do we do, what do we do!” Okay, I was definitely hysterical. “We're so far out from the camp!” It was nearly pitch-black, there were trees everywhere, and there was nothing between us and safety but the undead.

“In Georgia, no one can hear you scream!” Dev moaned.

“That's space!”

“Whatever, it might as well be space—there's no one here!”

The ghost took a step toward us.

“Oh my God.” I grabbed Dev's arm. “Dev, what do we do? We have to get back to camp.”

“You think I don't know that?” He grabbed my arm. We were both clutching each other so tightly, we'd probably cut off our circulation. I sure couldn't feel my arm anymore. “But she's kind of in our path.”

“We can't run deeper into the woods,” I said firmly. “We'll only get more lost. That was the mistake they made in
The Blair Witch Project.
”

“OMG, don't even THINK
The Blair Witch Project
—this can
not
go down like that.” His nails dug into my forearm.

“Think we can outrun her?” I asked. “If we just made a beeline for camp?”

“It's a ghost—can't they, like, go anywhere? Like really fast and through walls and shit?”

“I don't know. I can't think of anything else!” I said desperately.

She took another step.

“Oh my God, do you think she's hungry?” Dev said. “Like, will she drink our blood?”

“It's a ghost, not a vampire!”

“How can you tell?! It's a pale and creepy creature in the woods!”

“I think we have to make a run for it.” I set my jaw determinedly. “Maybe a distraction, first? Or something. And then we'll go on the count of three.”

“Okay, okay,” he said nervously. “Let's do it.”

She took another step.

“Screw it, we're going now!” Dev screamed. “Throw the Reese's, throw the Reese's!”

“You have it!” I reminded him.

“Right! Don't eat me! Eat this!” Dev grabbed my arm and pulled me back toward the camp, chucking the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups at the ghost's face as we sprinted past her. We ran as if our lives depended on it, hurtling through the woods at a speed that would have qualified us for the track team. In a fraction of the time it had taken us to get out there, we collapsed, panting, in the glow of the Confederate campfires. I looked back, wheezing in my corset. The ghost hadn't followed us.

At this point, it was after All-Quiet, so there was nothing we could do until the morning. Dev left Captain Cauldwell a strongly worded letter, which led us, after a night of little to no sleep, straight back to a meeting early the next morning at the schoolhouse. Once again, Captain Cauldwell asked the perpetrator to “'fess up,” but no one came forward.

“I want an armed guard!” Dev demanded after ten minutes of indeterminate mumblings and ramblings from the men. “Do any of these guns actually shoot?”

“No, that would be a huge safety hazard,” Captain Cauldwell said.

“I don't think you can shoot a ghost. It would go right through them,” one of the Boy Scouts offered helpfully.

“There's no ghost. There's no such thing. It wasn't a real ghost,” Captain Cauldwell said calmly.

“Was too!” Dev shot back somewhat hysterically.

“Are y'all
sure
you didn't just see a lost reenactor and spook yourselves in the dark?” Captain Cauldwell asked skeptically.

“I wish I could say that,” I answered, sighing heavily. “And I know this whole story sounds ridiculous, but I really don't think so. It didn't look like a person. It looked like a ghost. And it looked exactly like Jackson described it.”

The men muttered. I mean, I knew Captain Cauldwell was right, and ghosts weren't real. Except that this thing . . . whatever it was . . . had certainly looked real. And it looked really, really creepy.

Dev raised his hand. “I still want a bodyguard!”

“If I can be Libby's bodyguard, I'll watch him, too,” Cody offered.

“I neither want nor need a bodyguard,” I said testily.

“Of course you don't,” Dev sniffed. “Clearly, this ghost only has it in for handsome young men. Which is why Corporal Anderson and I have been so egregiously targeted.”

“Then I guess she'll be after me next.” Cody nodded, resigning himself to his fate. “My days are numbered.”

“When I said young, I didn't mean ‘still watching
The Wiggles
' young,” Dev said snarkily.

“I don't watch the damn
Wiggles
!” Cody yelled.

“Riiiiight,” Dev replied sarcastically.

“Order!” Captain Cauldwell banged his fist on the lectern.

“I don't!” Cody muttered mulishly.

“Suuuure you don't,” Dev said under his breath.

“I said order!” The room got quiet. “Listen, I can't do anythin' about this right now; we've got a cavalry battle to get to.”

“But my
life
is in danger—”

“We're all in danger. Kilpatrick's Raid, son. Can't do anythin' about anythin' else now.” Captain Cauldwell held up his hand for silence. “We'll deal with this later. Men, fall out.”

Obediently, the men filed out of the schoolhouse, Beau shaking his head as he passed. Dev folded his arms, frowned, and grumpily slouched in his seat, refusing to move. We were alone in the schoolhouse.

“Well, that did nothing,” he complained.

“Well, what do you expect him to do?” I said helplessly. “I mean, I don't know what he
can
do. How would you get rid of it?”

“I want it to go away. I expect him to make it go away. And I wasn't kidding about that armed guard.”

“Excuse me.” A mother with a fanny pack, holding a small child and trailing two others behind her, stood in the door. “Is this the ‘Drop the Hanky' Children's Circle?”

“Um, does this
look
like the ‘Drop the Hanky' Children's Circle?” Dev snapped.

“Dev!” I admonished him. “Here, let me help you.” I picked up a schedule that someone had left on the floor from yesterday. “Yes, you're right—it's in this room, right after Kilpatrick's Raid. Same time as the Ladies' Tea in the Activity Barn.”

“Ladies' Tea?” Dev perked up. “You think they'll have coffee?”

“Only one way to find out.”

We spent the next hour watching Kilpatrick's Raid, which was marginally more interesting than a normal battle, as it involved more horses. Dev, near delusional from lack of sleep, started yelling, “Save a horse, ride a cowboy!” until the woman standing behind us bopped him on the head with her parasol.

Not surprisingly, Dev and I were first in line for the Ladies' Tea. He marched straight up to the plaid-clad, pagoda-sleeved matronly woman standing at the door of the Activity Barn.

“Pardon me, ma'am.” Dev smiled winningly. “You wouldn't happen to have coffee in there, would you?”

“It's a
tea,
” she said icily. “For
ladies.
”

“Humph.”

I shrugged. Dev gave up and went back to Sutlers' Row. I joined the ladies for an hour of tea, almond sponge cake, knitting patterns, poetry readings, and a lengthy debate on the attractiveness of a beard. Dev may have gotten the better end of the bargain.

The next day was pretty much like the day before, only the Union corps broke through Hardee's thinning line and crushed the rest of the Confederate soldiers. Eventually, it was all over, and all of the corpses, Beau included, picked themselves up. As they were re-forming their ranks to head back to camp, Beau waved, broke line, and jogged over to meet us.

“How's it going?” Beau asked.

“Tired. Traumatized.” Dev sighed. “But really, what's to be expected in my situation?”

“We've gotta do somethin' about this,” Beau said, his jaw set.

“About what?” I asked.

“This ghost thing. It's gone too far. We've gotta figure out who's doin' it and stop 'em.”

“Thank you!” Dev said. “Finally, someone is concerned for my safety and taking action!”

“Exactly,” Beau agreed. “We're gonna take action. And we've gotta catch it. Er, her. It. Whatever.”

“Wait, ‘we'?” Dev stopped abruptly. “What is this ‘we'? I didn't mean ‘we' at all. I meant you.”

“You ready?” Beau turned to me.

“For what?” I asked nervously. I mean, sure I wanted this whole ghost thing to go away. But I wasn't really sure I wanted to be running around in the woods trying to catch it.

“For the Military Ball tonight,” he said with a grin, changing the subject. “Time to break out those dance moves we've been workin' on all week! We'll get down to the bottom of this ghost thing after the party.”

“Oh, I don't know,” I said anxiously. “I'm so not ready; my waltzing is atrocious.”

“It's not atrocious,” he said kindly. “It's just not good.”

“Thanks.”

“Uh, no, wait.” He blushed. “I didn't mean—”

“Are you familiar with the phrase ‘honest to a fault'?” I teased him. “That was the fault.”

“Anderson!” someone yelled. “Let's go, let's go!”

“Sorry!” Beau yelled, as he jogged away. “I really didn't mean it like that!”

“Sure you didn't!” I yelled back.

“I'm not catching anything,” Dev said flatly as we walked back to our tent. “The two of you can take your Daphne-and-Fred-style sexual tension and solve whatever you want, but leave me out of this freaky
Scooby-Doo
nightmare.”

“There's no sexual tension! Argh!” I smacked my forehead. “How many times do I have to say it? There's
nothing
there! It's all in your head!”

“Hmmm.” He fixed me with a look. “So you wouldn't mind if I just put you in a sack dress for the ball tonight? I don't really want to have to press any of the nicer gowns.”

“What, no!” I protested. “I have to look good. I—Wait a minute.” Dev was smiling with satisfaction. “Um, no, this has nothing to do with that. I want to look good because it's a dance, and that's what you do. You look nice. And I want to wear a pretty dress. It has nothing to do with anyone else. It's all about me.” Dev choked on a laugh. “Wait, no, that's not what I meant either.”

“Ah, Libby.” Dev slung an arm around my shoulder and kissed my cheek. “I'm finally starting to rub off on you.”

Of course Dev didn't put me in a sack dress. It was a stunning off-the-shoulder gown of warm cream, with a cherry-red belt, cherry-red bows on the sleeves, and little blue-and-red cloth swallows pinning back the voluminous folds of the overskirt to reveal an underskirt dotted with a pattern of tiny printed swallows. I pulled on my white gloves as Dev tied a red sash on his Zouave uniform. The Zouaves were French infantrymen in North Africa who favored cropped open-fronted jackets, baggy trousers similar to harem pants, sashes, and bold colors. Units on both sides of the Civil War adopted their names and style of dress. And since this was a Military Ball—meaning anyone with a dress uniform would be in one—Dev felt that included him, too.

“Who doesn't love a crop top?” Dev posed and extended his arm. “Let's do this.”

On our way over to the Activity Barn, I felt an unfamiliar vibrating in my corset. My cell phone! It had been so long since I had used it, I had forgotten it was in there.

“Go!” I shoved Dev in toward the ball. “I'll be there in a minute. Just go!”

“Um, okay.” He looked sort of confused but went into the Activity Barn without me.

Quickly, I darted behind a tree. I felt around the swallows parading on the front of my bodice and pulled out my phone.

“Garrett!” I whispered. “How are you?”

“Good, good, how are you?” He sounded happier than I'd heard him the last time we spoke. Certainly the happiest he'd been all summer.

“Oh, I'm fine. You sound good. I'm glad.”

“I can hardly hear you.”

“Sorry,” I whispered, slightly louder. “I'm not really supposed to be on a phone . . .”

“Have you seen the
Tuscaloosa News
?!” he asked excitedly.

“What?” Talk about the last thing I expected him to ask. “Um, yeah, I have. Why?”

“Libby! You out here?” It was Beau, calling for me. Shoot. I could not let him catch me with a cell phone. I would lose all my hard-core reenactor cred.

“Garrett, I'm so sorry—I have to go,” I said hurriedly.

“But, wait, Libby, I'm trying to tell you. I'm—”

“Sorry!” Guiltily, I snapped the phone shut and shoved it down the front of my dress.

“There you are!” Beau stood before me, straight-backed and tall, resplendent in his uniform. “May I have this dance?”