Dream Dancer (Ghosts Beyond the Grove Book 2) (14 page)

     Its solid gray hue began to swirl around like smoke inside a sealed container.  As the color shifted and whirled around, I could catch a glimpse of something else at the center of it.  A pulsing light—tiny at first, yet growing steadily larger—shone through the smoke.  It was elliptical-shaped and in varying shades of deep blueish-purple and kind of looked like a fiery eye.

     I was captivated by the beauty of it as it seemed to be fighting against the darkness that was circling around it.  The dull roar inside my head faded into the background as long as I held that stone next to me.  It made no sense to think that a silly stone could be helping me so much but it was the truth.  I curled my fingers around it and fell blissfully to sleep.

25.  I’ll Stand Bayou

     Rachel pleaded with me to go to the hospital for a round of x-rays on my hand but I refused to do it.  Despite having felt like my fingers were being amputated only moments earlier, only a vague stiffness remained.  If I needed medical attention, I would do it after the plane touched down in New Orleans.  I needed to get to Rosewood so I could explain everything to Shelly.  We needed to find a way to get to Louisiana without telling my dad why we were going.

     Before going into the house, I peeked inside the garage to see if he was home.  His car wasn’t there but I didn’t know how much longer it would be until he would be pulling in and wondering why I was there.  I clutched the now lumpier envelope tightly to my chest as I ran inside the mansion.

     “Ruby!  What’s going on?  Why are you here and not in Liberty?  I’ll absolutely go to New Orleans with you but you need to tell me why we’re going there!” she said in a panic.

     “This is why,” I said, dumping the contents of the envelope out onto the side table in the foyer.  Two letters—one still unopened—and the object I found at the Hideout lay in an enigmatic pile in front of her.

     “What
is
all of this, Ruby?  Where did you get it?”

     “Mom.  They all came from Mom.”

     With a look of disbelief on her face, Shelly inspected each of the items carefully.  When she saw the return address on the main envelope, she gathered everything up. 

     “Let’s go talk in my study—just in case your dad comes home early.  I don’t want him to see any of this until I’m sure he’s ready to.  Especially this one,” she said waving the unopened envelope in the air.

     I nodded my head in agreement and followed her down the hallway.  After closing the door to her study, she sat at her desk and I flopped down on the couch, ready to tell my story.  I felt like I was at a psychiatrist’s appointment.  And I think that was exactly what I needed right now—emotional therapy.

     Remembering my promise to not reveal Josette’s identity, I explained it the best way I could without divulging her secret.  “I got those letters from a friend of Mom’s.  I didn’t go looking for her—it just kind of happened.  And that’s when
everything
started to happen.  Roxanne emailed me with Salma’s advice on how to help Zach.  Then Rachel let me know that they had some crazy plan to break him out of the psych ward.  I drove back to Charlotte’s Grove as fast as I could.”

     I gave her every detail I could about those two subjects, and then returned back to the stickiest part of the whole thing—the things Josette said that referred to my father.  And then I let her read the letter my mother wrote to me.

     “Mom knew all along what was going to happen—so why did she do it?”

     “Did she really?  That second letter makes me think otherwise.  Sooner or later, you’re going to have to read that one too, Ruby.”

     I stared at the letter marked “Miranda” and sighed.  Maybe someday I would read what Mom wanted to say to my dead sister but today wasn’t that day.  My brain was already about to explode.

     “So where did this mask come from?  And why do you desperately want to go to New Orleans?”

     The first question was easy to answer.  “I found this buried in the leaves at the rendezvous point.  I found it right when I thought all hope was lost.  The feathers are obvious but it also made me think of Mardi Gras and New Orleans in general.  Addie kept telling me that she thought her grandmother could help me.  I think it’s time to go see if she’s right about that.”

     “You found it buried in the leaves?  Under a foot of snow?  What made you dig there in the first place?”

     “No, I didn’t have to dig—there wasn’t any snow.”  I pondered that revelation for a second before posing my own question.  “Why
wasn’t
there any snow?”

     Every inch of exposed ground was blanketed in white all the way from Liberty to Charlotte’s Grove.  Except for at the Hideout.  There was too much on my mind for me to notice it at the time, but there hadn’t been one single flake at the rendezvous point.  I was
meant
to find that mask.  I was
meant
to go to New Orleans.  I was
meant
to go forth. 
Now
.

     “Don’t bother trying to answer that question—I already know why.  If there had been snow, I never would have found my sign.  And my sign points to New Orleans and a meeting with the voodoo queen herself.  Are you in or are you out?”

     “I’m in of course!  I haven’t been to New Orleans in a long time. Let’s start booking our trip—and thinking of a way to explain this to your father.”

     “That’s the easy part.  All we have to do is say that we wanted to do a mother/daughter vacation kind of thing.  He’ll never question it.  And that won’t even be a total lie, either.  Aside from the whole Zach thing, I think this trip will be fun.  We should have done something like this sooner.”

     “Yes,” Shelly said as she began searching for the next available flight with a huge smile on her face, “we definitely should have.”

     While booking my flight to Tucson only took a matter of a few minutes, I soon learned that it wasn’t always that easy to do.  She found several flights with only one unoccupied seat left and a few more with two open ones but on opposite ends of the plane.  I was about to tell her we should just suck it up and take one of those while it was still available when she found what turned out to be the perfect flight.

     “Here we go—flight 604, nonstop from Pittsburgh to New Orleans.  Leaves early the morning of March 4
th
.  Do you know what day that is?” 

     By the excited tone in her voice, I assumed I was missing something big.  But I was still stuck on two glaring synchronicities in her sentence.  604 was the same flight number as the one Zach took from Chicago to Pittsburgh last summer when this all began.  And March 4
th
?  That was simply another way to say “go forth”.  When Shelly filled in the final detail, I knew for certain that this was the flight we were meant to take.

     “March 4
th
is a Tuesday, Ruby.  Fat Tuesday to be more precise.  We’ll be arriving in New Orleans on the first day of Mardi Gras!”

     The sudden echo of the doorbell throughout the mansion startled us both and we went into simultaneous stealth modes.  There was something about a mystery that made every small detail seem like another potential clue.  We crept to the window and peered around the curtain like secret agents to see who was out there.

     When I saw that it was only Rachel, I was actually slightly disappointed.  I don’t know who I thought was on our doorstep, but I expected it to be someone more exciting—like an out-of-state courier delivering an unmarked package containing another clue to my mystery.  Sigh.  I didn’t really need any more excitement but my imagination was in overdrive.  I needed to conserve my sleuthing skills for New Orleans.  That’s when I was really going to need them.

     Rachel was in tears when I opened the door.  Sobbing profusely, she cried out, “I’m sorry about what happened today, Ruby!  All I wanted to do was help Zach!  But he’s back at the hospital now.  What are we going to do
now
?”

     “We’re going to go to New Orleans, that’s what.”

     “I wish I could go with you but I can’t afford to.  I’ve already spent so much money flying back and forth from Florida to see Zach.  But
please
, do everything you can to help him.  I don’t want to lose him anymore than you do.”

     “Your plane ticket is on me,” Shelly announced.  “You love mysteries as much as I do and you have every right to help us solve this one.”

     We spent the next hour booking our flight and finding a decent hotel as close to the heart of the city as possible.  The three of us made a pact not to tell anyone except for Addie the real reason why we were going to New Orleans.  As far as anyone else was concerned, it was a girls-only getaway purely for the fun of it.  I called Addie to make all of the necessary arrangements for my trip. 

     Any other boss would have undoubtedly fired my delinquent ass by now.  But not Addie.  In fact, she was more excited about my trip than
I
was.

     “It’s about time you took my advice!  I’ll let Granny know you’re comin’.  I haven’t told her all the details of your situation but she knows that somethin’ weird is goin’ on with you.  She’ll set things right for ya, Ruby—mark my words.”

     I decided to only spend one night in Charlotte’s Grove instead of two.  There was packing to be done back in Liberty.  As expected, Dad was excited to hear about our getaway but bummed that he wasn’t invited.  If he only knew the real reason for our trip, he would change his mind in a hurry.  Especially if he caught wind of the side trip I was hoping to make if I had enough time.

     Zach came first, of course, but Gabby gave me a piece of another puzzle that I eventually wanted to put together too.  And this was my perfect opportunity to do it.  But the thought of it was nerve wracking to say the least.  I made myself a cup of tea to soothe my mind.  When I got to the bottom, I swirled the leaves in my cup then tipped it over out of sheer habit.  What I found in there told me that I was on the right track.  If there was any possible way to save Zach, New Orleans was where it was going to happen.

     I fell asleep that night with that tea cup beside me on the nightstand.  There was something about seeing what was inside it that gave me a sense of inner peace like none I’d ever experienced before.  And it ushered me into a calming dream.

     It was the one about Zach and me in the movie theater again.  Every other time, I sat there frustrated at not being able to see or hear what Zach was experiencing.  But not this time.  I enjoyed it for what it was—time spent seeing Zach happy.  And that made
me
happy.  As the end credits zipped by on the screen, Zach rose from his seat and offered me his hand but I refused it.

     “Aren’t you coming with me?” he asked, though he seemed to already know my answer.

     “You go on ahead.  I’ll catch up to you.”

     And that’s exactly what I did.  Eventually.

26.  Dying Ember

     I didn’t want to eat.  I didn’t want to sleep.  All I wanted to do was stare at that stone.  It made no sense but I felt like that stone was the only thing keeping me alive.  But did I
want
to still be alive?  Some days, yes; some days, no.  Some days I blamed her for everything that went wrong in my life.  Other days, I missed her terribly and would have done anything I could to see her again.

     After my failed attempt at freedom, they cracked down hard on me.  I was virtually in psychiatric solitary confinement.  They wouldn’t let me outdoors without guards by my side.  I was never going to see her again.  Maybe it was for the best.  I didn’t really want her to see me like this anyway. 

     So I spent my time locked inside my own head, gazing into the center of that stone for hours on end.  I imagined a whole new world was growing inside there—a world where I was normal again.  But what exactly
was
normal anyway?  Normal was only an illusion.  Normal for one person could be utter chaos for the next.  Normal for me
was
being with Ruby.  Now, I wasn’t so sure about that.

     Things were never going to be normal again after what I’d done to her at the Hideout.  I smashed her hand in that car door and left it there to make her feel the same kind of pain I was feeling inside.  Her hand was probably destroyed.  She needed that hand to write with.  Writing was her passion and I went and selfishly took it away from her.  I may have been deserving of her at one point but certainly not now.  And if she hated me, I had no choice but to hate myself even more.

     I
had
to find a way to die.  But how?  I was almost to the point of thinking I would never have the opportunity to end it when they handed it to me on a silver platter.  Now she would see how much I really loved her.

27.  Diving Headfirst

     The first thing I did when I woke up was look into that teacup.  Sometimes—make that
most
times—my dreams were so vivid that I had a hard time distinguishing between fantasy and reality in those first waking moments.  What I saw in that cup last night was encouraging.  But was it all just a beautiful dream?

     I heaved a sigh of relief when I peered inside and saw the same thing I was expecting to see—a feather.  But this was the best feather I’d found so far.  It was huge and swallowed up half of the cup.  That wasn’t the best part, though.  The part that encouraged me the most was the actual shape of the feather.  It was still clearly a feather but it was contorted around until both ends touched and formed a second symbol.  A heart.  No one was closer to my heart than Zach.  This was my sign that everything was going to work out in the end.