Little Red Gem (6 page)

“
I’ve come to help
you.”

“
Unless you have a
chocolate muffin to go with the coffee I’m about to inhale, I doubt
it.”

Flicking a nervous look
inside the café, she stepped in closer and lowered her voice. “You
can’t go inside.”

The quiver in Audrey’s
lips captured my attention more than the warning in her words.
Maybe she was better at predicting the future than her mom. “Is
something bad going to happen to me if I go through this
door?”

“
What if I were to tell
you something bad already happened?”

“
It already has,” I
answered, thinking back to the argument with Leo.

“
You can’t go inside.” She
glanced down at her feet. “It’s, well, it’s because nobody can see
you.”

Maybe I still wore the
same underwear, dress, leggings, and boots I’d worn last night,
didn’t mean people would publicly ridicule me. I scowled at Audrey,
but my aggravation shifted into uncertainty when I noticed the fear
in her eyes.

“
You’re serious, aren’t
you?”

Her eyes shimmered from
fighting back tears. “They won’t see you. I really hate to be the
one to break this to you, but you’re dead.”

I was about to tell her to
get lost, but she carried on. “Ruby, I’m not making this up. You
have.” Her hands floated through the air. “Passed on. Crossed over.
Are no more of this world.”

“
That’s the most insulting
thing anyone has ever said to me.”

A couple – a man and a
woman about my parent’s age – came walking down the sidewalk.
Audrey stepped in their path, catching me by surprise. We had not
been raised to force strangers to sidestep around us. At the last
moment she moved aside to let them pass, and she was lucky not to
have copped an earful from them.

“
You’ve known me for
years,” she said. “Have I ever been one for practical
jokes?”

Out of loyalty to my
mother I had always kept a cool distance from Teri and Audrey. I
wasn’t about to cross into the realm where we pretended we’d been
close growing up. “I haven’t known you for years. I knew you years
ago, there’s a huge difference.”

“
I’m not crazy and I’m not
making this up. Don’t you remember? You died. A week ago. Mom’s
freaking out because you showed up at the shop—”

“
Okay, stop right there.”
I lifted my hands in exasperation only to find they’d curled into
fists. Why was Audrey provoking me? Aside from a few childhood
pillow fights and wet willies, what had I ever done to incite such
wrath? “You expect me to believe you? Your mom had a conversation
with me. You’re having a conversation with me right
now.”

“
My mom can see ghosts.
And you and I can see each other because I’m an astral projection
and spirits can set eyes upon those of us who walk the astral
plane.”

One game Audrey and I had
enjoyed playing together as children involved pretending to have
special powers. Being two years older, I’d had better access to
movies and comics, so I’d usually come up with the most inventive
powers, thus I’d often declare myself the winner. We were too old
now to pretend to have special powers, yet what Audrey mentioned
was something new, and curious by nature, it piqued my
interest.

“
Okay, I’ll bite. What’s
an astral projection?”

“
It’s a state taken during
deep meditation. Many people travel on the astral plane when
they’re asleep, only they wake up convinced they’ve had the most
amazing dream. Sometimes they’ve had a dream, but sometimes their
spirit has left their body. Some people go on wild adventures,
others on quests that they can’t recall when they wake up. Others
become almost superhuman, and they get into fights. They wake up
with aches and pains and don’t know how they got them. Thankfully,
I’m invisible to my mom’s ghost detecting radar, but not
Oleander’s. He went nuts this morning because both you and I were
in the room.” Audrey stopped abruptly. She shook her head and her
frosted purple tips danced across her face. “You really don’t know
you’re dead? My god, Ruby, I don’t know what to say, except…where
have you been?”

An odd shift took place
inside my head, like someone had slammed an internal door shut and
caused trinkets to crash into my stomach. One of the other reasons
I’d often bested Audrey at our imagination game was her innate
inability to lie. Even now, Audrey’s eyes reflected nothing except
the honesty that used to signal I was once more about to crown
myself the winner.

But she had to be lying.
Or else she was playing a cruel hoax. What other reason was there
for this elaborate story?

“
I haven’t been anywhere,”
I snapped. “I was at the log cabin—” I stopped. Bits and pieces of
information floated up through the murky waters of my brain, but I
had trouble dragging it to the surface. Nothing. “I woke up and
raced to an appointment with your mom.”

Audrey sighed. “You had an
appointment with my mom a week ago.”

“
So the date got muddled
up. Probably explains why your mom was surprised to see
me.”

“
Oh, she was surprised all
right.”

I couldn’t believe I was
buying into her malicious theatrics. But the thing was, I had
always liked Audrey. I thought she’d like me, too.

“
I was on my way to my
body when I heard your voice,” she said. “I wanted to see if it was
really you.”

“
Who else would I
be?”

She ignored my remark. “I
can walk the astral plane any time I want. Here, I’ll show you how
it works.”

Two boys from school
appeared from around the corner. Audrey stood right in their
path.

“
Hey, you might wanna
move,” I said. “Those two are real pricks.”

She winked at me. “I
know.”

She continued to stand in
their way while I stared at her courageous stupidity, praying the
two bullies would decide against knocking her to the ground in
front of witnesses. Audrey stayed braced for impact and the two
boys continued to barge toward her.

“
Audrey,” I cried. “That’s
enough. Get out of their way.”

She shook her head and
laughed. “Relax. I’ll be fine. Watch this.”

The boys were inches away,
almost on top of her…

I pushed her out of their
way, prepared to take the brunt of their anger in order to save my
half-sister. I felt an odd sensation when they barreled into me,
almost as if I’d been electrified instead of pummeled.

Audrey scowled. “You
always have to be the star, don’t you?”

Shivers ran all over me
and I stared dumbfounded as the bullies kept on walking. “The star?
Audrey, those two would have made minced meat out of
you.”

“
They would have walked
right through me, just like they walked through you. Don’t you get
it? They walked
through
you.” Audrey’s voice croaked and her hands swiped
at the tears in her eyes. “We cried so hard when you died. Everyone
in town cried so hard.”

“
That’s not funny,
Audrey,” I snarled. I’d never experienced this type of cruelty
before. Hurtful didn’t begin to describe how she was making me
feel.

“
Please, Ruby. You’ve
gotta believe me. You’re wandering around in the afterlife with no
idea you’re dead. You need to move on. There are demons and
poltergeists in the otherworld.”

She’d gone beyond too far,
and I could now see the wisdom behind steering clear of Audrey and
her mom for all these years.

My lips pulled back into a
snarl. “Get out of my way or I’m screaming for the cops. You and
your mom, you both need to be locked up.”

“
Go on, scream. It won’t
work.”

This nasty streak of my
half-sister was something I would never have expected. I turned my
back on her, and I had to quickly step aside for a customer to come
out. I waited for the familiar scent of coffee beans to hit me.
Instead, I copped a whiff of the pungent perfume given off by
decayed flowers. The water in the vase on the counter needs
changing, I told myself, except the water and orange lilies looked
fresh and a customer even had her head stuck inside the open
blooms. She beamed a huge smile when she pulled her head
out.

The front door had closed
while I’d stood transfixed by the customer soaking up the flower’s
perfume. When I reached for the door, my hand tingled. The
sensation increased the nearer my hand got to the door, and the
more I pushed the more intense the pain became.

I wrenched my hand back.
“Ouch.”

“
You have to be invited
inside,” Audrey explained.

The burning, tingling
sensation subsided but I blew cool breath onto my fingers out of
habit. “Isn’t that a vampire myth?”

“
It’s the same rule for
ghosts. My mom says ghosts can’t touch objects, and passing through
walls is possible only if they’re invited in. She also says she
talks to spirits, like every couple of days. She says they’re
pulled to the scene of their death, something to do with a magnetic
force playing havoc with the real world if the ghosts drift too far
out of their dead zone. Apparently that’s the reason why ghosts
haunt houses and not cemeteries. People end up in cemeteries but
they don’t die there, you know.”

I pressed my hand up to
the glass. The burning buzz attacked me instantly, tripling in
intensity this time. “Is there a fire inside? Is this why you’ve
come to stop me?”

“
No fire.”

“
So why can’t I open the
door?”

She looked up toward the
sky. “I don’t get paid to be a spirit guide.” Her eyes drilled into
mine. “Listen carefully. The spirits clever enough to move objects,
open doors, rattle chains, pass through walls, all that stuff.
Well, they’re not the kind of spirits you wanna meet. Mom says by
the time they’ve learned to connect to the real world it’s too
late. Something about them staying on the other realm for so long
makes them turn nasty.”

“
You’ve
been on the other realm for too long.”

She wasn’t deterred by my
insult in the slightest. She even grinned. She’d often blasted me
with that stupid grin whenever she’d wanted me to play with her. I
realized that this could take all day unless I cooperated. “You’re
talking about poltergeists.”

She clapped her hands
together like she was five. “Correct. Poltergeists. Malevolent
spirits. Demons. Whatever you want to call them. The reason you got
inside my mom’s store was because she invited you in. And the
reason you need to cross over is to avoid being found by these
malevolent spirits. I’d hate for you to end up with the wrong
crowd. Mom has books on demons and they aren’t exactly fairy
tales.”

What she said brought a
twisted smile to my face. “Aren’t you concerned about poltergeists
attacking you?”

She shrugged. “I stay out
of their way. I’d suggest you do the same.”

I gave up listening when I
spied Natalie and Shanessa pushing their chairs out from under the
table. Shanessa wedged some bills under the salt shaker, and with
their arms around each other’s waists they headed for the exit.
Natalie pushed open the door, the chime tinkled, and they walked
toward me with their heads rested against each other’s.

“
Hey, superstars,” I sang
out to get their attention.

My two best friends
ignored our customary greeting and kept walking down the street in
the opposite direction to where I stood.

“
I still can’t believe
she’s never coming back,” said Natalie.

“
It’s too surreal. Her
funeral is tomorrow,” said Shanessa.

“
Whose funeral is
tomorrow?” I asked, running ahead of them to block their path. “Who
died? Tell me.”

They turned toward the
curb and I guessed they were pissed at me for ignoring their advice
about not going to see Leo at the cabin. I’d gotten the vibe a few
weeks back that their resentment toward the time I spent with Leo
was increasing exponentially. Neither of them had boyfriends, so
they didn’t realize how being in a relationship meant that I felt
as if I were trapped in the middle of two equally strong pulling
forces.

“
They’re not being rude,”
Audrey said, standing so close to me I could tell what flavor
toothpaste she’d used this morning, except I couldn’t sniff
anything. Not the coffee beans roasting, not the sugary cakes in
the cabinet, not the exhaust fumes caused by traffic.

“
You’re nonexistent to
them,” she continued. “Stay here. I’ll prove it.”

Audrey ran ahead and
landed with a jump in front of Natalie and Shanessa. Then she
walked backwards, waving her hands in front of their faces. She
even shouted out, “You sing like two tortured cats”, and they
didn’t give her the slightest bit of acknowledgement.

Natalie and Shanessa were
very sensitive toward criticism of their singing, and for them not
to react meant they really couldn’t see Audrey. The proof was
sobering. This was not a prank.

When Audrey returned to my
side, she wore a sad expression on her face. “I’m a projection and
you’re a ghost. My body is lying on my bed. Yours is lying in the
funeral parlor. You’ve got to believe me.”