Spirits of Spring (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 4) (49 page)

No. My final answer was no—I wouldn’t. I would never
want to see him as a lifeless, walking corpse. I also had another
answer to an as yet unasked question. Was I starting to lose my
mind from grieving someone who wasn’t even dead yet? Yes, a
resounding yes.
Still, I made the decision to get rid of the
stone—just in case it wasn’t pure insanity talking. I slipped it
into my purse until I had a chance to dispose of it.

By this time, it was mid-afternoon and I knew that I was
well overdue for a pop-in from Dad or Shelly. I jumped anyway
at the sound of soft rapping at the door. This time it was my
dad.

“Hey, I’m heading over to the hospital in about an hour.
The neurosurgeon I told you about, Dr. Jennings, is with Zach
now. I’m hoping he has some answers for me today. Are you
coming with me?”

“No,” I replied as casually as anyone with an irreparably
broken heart could, “I have a lot of stuff I need to get done
today.” I motioned to the still loaded bed. “Spring cleaning.”

“Ruby, I’m sorry that I had to ask you to leave last night
but I didn’t mean to make you think that you should never go
back at all. Get dressed and come with me. I’m sure Zach
would appreciate it.”

“No, I’m too busy right now. Maybe tomorrow.”
I
snatched up a handful of hangers and marched to the closet.
While I hung them up on the bar, I started to cry.

“We’ll have to talk about this when I get home,” he
replied awkwardly. “I’ll let you know what Dr. Jennings has to
say.”

I wouldn’t turn around to face him. I nodded my head
and said, “If you want.”
Dad stood there for a minute before
leaving but as soon as he was gone, I sat back down on my bed
and cried. Again.

What I needed was to get out of the house for a little
while. I also needed therapy—retail therapy. There were a few
things I actually needed and I figured that one new spring
outfit—shoes
included—wouldn’t be considered going
overboard.
And maybe a new bag to go with it.
The only
problem was that I didn’t have my car—Rachel did. And I had
hers. Sort of. I couldn’t face her long enough to get my keys
back so I asked Shelly if I could borrow her car for an hour or
two.

“You finally decided to go see Zach!” she practically
shouted when I made my request. “That’s great.
Would you
like me to go with you?”

No, I definitely would not. I also did not wish to hear
the lecture that would surely follow if I told her where I was
really going. “No, I want to go by myself.”

“Positive,” I replied as I bounded out the door without
looking back. Positive that I didn’t need a witness to the crime I
was about to commit against my bank account. In hindsight, I
realized there was a serious need for a retail version of a
Breathalyzer. Depressed girls shouldn’t be allowed to shop
without supervision.

The warm sunshine and the sound of birds tweeting in
the trees made me long for the days of endless rain. The only
sun I wanted to see was the one in Zach’s eyes when he smiled
at me.
The only happy voice I wanted to hear was his.
I
thought about the last fortunes we got in our cookies at Chow
Ming. How prophetic they were. This was strike one against
my already depressed mood. The next strike was something I
never would have expected.

I decided to get the essentials first so that I wouldn’t
forget to pick them up. First on the list was a new bottle of
Midnight Kiss. I walked up to where the display normally sat
and found some new perfume in its place.
After circling the
perfume counter a few times, the lady at the register asked me
if I needed help finding something.

“I’m sorry, but it’s been discontinued. We’re carrying
something new that smells just like it, though.
Hold out your
wrist.”

I did as she commanded and allowed her to spray a
healthy dose of something called First Crush onto my waiting
arm. Once it was fully dry, I took a whiff and almost gagged.
Either I had a unique body chemistry that made it smell like
vomit or she was simply trying to sell me something that
smelled like vomit.

“No thanks,” I said and walked away even more
miserable than I was to start with.
No more Midnight Kiss.
That perfume reminded me so much of Zach but just like his
texts, it was gone now, too. It felt like he was being erased from
everywhere but my memory.
I was now living that horrible
nightmare I’d had where he never existed.
shoot me and put me out of my misery!
humane thing to do.
Somebody please

Mercy, unfortunately, wasn’t among the cards life dealt
to me.
But my bankcard
was
.
Five stores, two hours, and a
thousand dollars later, I was filling the backseat of Shelly’s car
with shopping bags and wondering how I was going to sneak it
all into the house without her seeing me. I took the long way
home to give myself time to concoct a plan, entirely forgetting
that I would end up driving right past Mistyque.
Even our
favorite restaurant was gone now.

I gave up
worrying
about hiding
evidence
of
my
shopping spree and went straight home.
How was I going to
survive this without totally losing my mind?
Or was it already
too late for that?
Clothes, shoes, and bags weren’t going to
make me feel better. The only thing that would make me feel
better was Zach.

“Shelly, don’t yell at me!” I begged as I walked into the
mansion with my Kardashian-sized haul in tow. “I need to talk
to you!” I dropped my bags and ran to her in tears. “Please tell
me how to get Zach off of my mind before I don’t have a mind
left!”

I could tell that she was resisting the urge to ask me
how much money I’d just spent but she didn’t. Instead, she told
me to take my stuff to my room and that she would be up in a
minute to talk to me.
Dragging those bags up two flights of
stairs was serious business. They had to weigh more than I did.
The fact that I had no urge to unpack them meant that retail
therapy wasn’t the type of therapy I needed.

My next choice would have been chocolate and Shelly
read my mind. She entered my bedroom with two mugs of hot
chocolate and handed me one of them. She took a quick peek
into one of my bags and said “Nice shoes” upon sight of the gold
strappy sandals on top. She sat down on the bed beside me and
asked me what was wrong.

And so, I unleashed it all—every last bit of it.
Once
every dark thought was verbalized, I realized how stupid it was
of me to think that he was doing any of this to spite me out of
anger. Now I felt even more helpless.

“I know you’re scared, Ruby, but you need to go see
him. Especially if you’re right about where you think he is. If
the choice between life and death is truly in his hands, you need
to remind him of all the things worth living for. He’s stayed
strong for you on so many occasions. Now it’s your turn to do
the same thing for him.
Life is like a pendulum. Sometimes it
swings away from you and you have to find a way to deal with
it. But for every time it swings away, it will eventually find its
way back to you again.”

She was right. There was no time to waste—I’d wasted
too many precious moments already. “Take me to the hospital,
please! Now!” I said, already halfway out the door. “I want to
be there if he wakes up.” Correction. “I want to be there
when
he wakes up.”

I spent every possible moment at his bedside for the
next few days but his condition didn’t change. Dr. Jennings ran
multiple tests and remained baffled as to why Zach wasn’t
waking
up.
He forwarded his
test results
to
a team
of
neurologists in Los Angeles who were going to analyze them
and provide a second, second opinion. I offered no comments
on the subject but I knew that it was a waste of their time.

With each passing day, it got harder and harder for me
to stay hopeful. And even tougher still was the effort it took to
continue living. Not physically, of course, but emotionally. Life
itself felt futile.
It felt as though I were stabbing at the rain,
unable to pierce a single drop no matter how many times I
slashed that knife into the air.
I had to return to work, to
school—and carry on as though nothing was wrong.
Work
wasn’t terrible but the thought of returning to the snake pit
frightened me and for good reason.
They already hated me
there just because I was different.
How much worse was it
going to be now that everyone knew that Zach got shot because
of me?

My only saving grace was the fact that Rachel returned
to school on Monday, too. It made me feel slightly less alone,
less ostracized to walk back in there with her. I thought maybe
it would work in my favor if they saw that even Zach’s own
twin sister didn’t blame me for what happened. I was wrong.

In fact, it actually made them ostracize
her
, too. No one
spoke to either of us as we glided down the hall together in
silence, heads turned. Voices whispered. There was an air of
malice like none I’d encountered before. As I opened my locker
door, a voice rang clearly above the hushed accusations.

“I used to think you were kind of cool, Rachel. Until you
started hanging out with the Dark Mistress of Death over here.
She’s practically a murderer! Zach’s your brother, how can you
still stand to look at her after what she did to him?”

Misty Landrum.
None of her taunts, evil tricks, or
insidious plots against me held a candle to what just came out
of her mouth. I didn’t willingly put Zach’s life in danger nor
would I ever. I was done playing nice, done being her punching
bag.
I turned around, fists clenched, with every intention of
giving her an idea of what being a punching bag felt like—
literally.
But before I could lock in on my target and unleash
my fury on her smarmy, little face, Rachel delivered the first
blow.

“Well,
Misty
, maybe it’s because you don’t know what
really happened out there at Silver Lake!
Ruby actually s
aved
Zach’s life. He would have died on the spot if it weren’t for her.
Everything
you
think is
weird about her is
in
all reality,
wonderful. She’s the only reason Zach is still alive.”

Of course, Misty wasn’t so easily defeated.
She was
about to toss
out another insult when Jordyn, second in
command of Misty’s evil empire, cut her off sharply.

“What do mean by that?
How did Ruby save him?”
Jordyn asked civilly. “My aunt works at the hospital.
She said
she heard rumors that something strange happened to Zach
after he got shot but she thought it sounded too weird to be
true.”

Before I had a chance to stop her, Rachel blurted it all
out to a now eagerly listening crowd. “Ruby and Zach have a
special kind of bond. When she touched him, his heart started
beating again. She’s magical, I swear!”

Mental face palm. I knew she meant well but Rachel’s
comment just pounded the last supernatural nail into my coffin.
Thanks to her, I was probably going to be burned at the stake
before day’s end. If I even made it
that
far. Metal shop’s
project for the day was going to be transforming my own locker
into an Iron Maiden that I could be shoved into for quick
disposal.

But of all the strange things I’d seen in the past year, I
was
about to witness
something
infinitely stranger.
The
villagers lowered their torches and began to ask questions.
Intelligent
questions.
Thoughtful
questions.
Positive
questions. In the midst of the chaos, Misty’s red-faced,
slithering exit went unnoticed by everyone but me.

Still wary of their sudden interest in me, I let Rachel do
all of the talking while I watched in awe. Even though I knew
the tables would turn against me again eventually, I was going
to enjoy it while it lasted at least. But I had every intention of
being on high alert during track practice—Misty would have all
day to plot her revenge against me.

Mr. Raspatello took the liberty of arranging another
meeting for me with Brooke Morgan during activity period. I
was dreading it, of course, but there was no way for me to get
out of it. I’d had a good excuse for not participating in the bake
sale but I knew I had to start contributing in some way.
My
senior year was winding down quickly and we hadn’t even
raised a third of the money needed to pay for the broken
window. I shuffled off to the library full of dread.

Instead of her usual drama, I found an inquisitive ally.
She barely wanted to talk about the upcoming car wash at all.
My “resurrecting powers” weren’t even
the main
topic
of
interest.

“There isn’t a girl in this school—myself included—who
would have said no to a date with him. Aside from his sister, of
course. And everyone pretty much already knows that his fling
with Chloe was just to make you jealous. Zach was a notorious
flirt but he was never really interested in anyone until he met
you so there must be
something
special about you. So what’s it
like dating Charlotte’s Grove’s most eligible bachelor?”