Ruby and Olivia

  RubyToozday: Oh, and a horse dropped dead dragging it out there, but I wasn’t going to mention that part because it’s sad. :(

  RubyToozday: The point is, by the time that special tree got to the site where Live Oak would be built, it had already done some damage, and it was about to do a lot more.

  OliviaAnneWillingham: Do we think the tree is why the house went creepy? Are we dealing with an evil tree here?

  RubyToozday: Maybe? We can look into any cases of evil trees, I guess.

  RubyToozday: That will be a fun search history to explain to my mom.

  RubyToozday: Anyway, the tree finally made it to the building site. At that point, they’d laid a foundation and everything, but Felix was really serious about the live oak being the first “real” piece of the house put in place. That day—May 4, 1903—was supposedly really nice. Bright blue sky, a little bit of breeze rustling through the leaves, everyone decked out in their Sunday best. People from Chester’s Gap came to watch, and Felix had even hired a little band to play music while they all watched the tree get put in place.

  RubyToozday: This story is really making me realize how awful things were before television. Can you imagine? “Get in the wagon, kids, we’re going to watch someone PUT A TREE IN A HOUSE.”

  OliviaAnneWillingham: Our town isn’t that much more interesting now, I have to say.

  RubyToozday: Truth.

  OliviaAnneWillingham: Also, are you typing this from the book, or are you still putting it in your own words?

  RubyToozday: This is all me. That’s why it sounds dumb.

  OliviaAnneWillingham: It doesn’t! That’s why I was wondering.

  OliviaAnneWillingham: It actually sounds really good. You should totally turn this whole thing into a book one day.

  RubyToozday: STAHP.

  RubyToozday: Okay, so, the big day. Band playing, perfect weather, people wearing a lot of white, probably some cool hats. The men go to place the tree. It was lifted up by some kind of early crane type deal with ropes and pulleys, and then there were a bunch of guys at the bottom, ready to set the trunk in place. Everyone was watching, and it seemed to be going well until suddenly and without any warning, the chains holding the tree snapped.

  RubyToozday: Crashed to the ground there in front of everyone.

  RubyToozday: ON everyone, basically.

  RubyToozday: Okay, only on two people, thankfully. Everybody scattered as it started to fall, but one of the workmen and Felix Wrexhall weren’t so lucky.

  RubyToozday: I mean, the workman was the unluckiest of all— he died.

  RubyToozday: Felix only got his leg crushed, and was NOT squashed. BUT! Live Oak House had claimed its first victim.

  OliviaAnneWillingham: Its only, right? No one else has died WEIRDLY in that house.

  OliviaAnneWillingham: No one has even lived in it except Felix, his wife, and his son, and they all died of old age.

  RubyToozday: TRUE. But the point is, from that very first day, people started talking about Live Oak House and wondering if there was something wrong with it. If it was cursed in some way.

  OliviaAnneWillingham: I feel like Killer Tree Cursed.

  RubyToozday: Right, but people still thought it was an accident. It was an accident. It’s not like anyone dropped a tree on Felix on purpose.

  RubyToozday: OR DID THEY?

  OliviaAnneWillingham: So what was his tragic past?

  RubyToozday: Oh, right, that. It’s all mysterious, and no one would talk about it, but basically, Felix Wrexhall just shows up here in Chester’s Gap after buying some lumber factory. He came from somewhere in Georgia with his wife, Lucy, and his family had been killed in a fire or something.

  OliviaAnneWillingham: But what about Lucy’s family? The twins?

  RubyToozday: There’s nothing about Lucy. Seriously, it’s like she just started EXISTING when she moved here. Was already married to Felix, they had a baby, and Garrett said she eventually went to some hospital because she’d kind of lost it.

  RubyToozday: Her mind, that is, not the baby.

  RubyToozday: Her baby was Mr. Matthew.

  RubyToozday: ANYWAY!

  RubyToozday: And the tree—like, THE TREE—is from his family’s old farm.

  RubyToozday: But here’s my thing: The house has been around for over a hundred years. One person dies, no one else, and there are creepy stories, but nothing like what we’ve been seeing.

  RubyToozday: So why this summer?

  RubyToozday: That house has been there for literally a thousand summers.

  OliviaAnneWillingham: No, it has not.

  RubyToozday: Literally a thousand. And suddenly, THIS summer, Mrs. Freely is all, “Oh, yeah, let me send some kids in to clean this super creepy house! And feed it their blood!”

  OliviaAnneWillingham: One kid cutting his hand is not feeding the house blood, Ruby.

  RubyToozday: I SAW A MOVIE LIKE THAT ONCE, THOUGH.

  RubyToozday: Where to keep the town, like, successful and crops growing or something, all the grown-ups were feeding the occasional kid to some kind of corn monster.

  RubyToozday: (I was not supposed to watch that movie, probably.)

  OliviaAnneWillingham: I’m not saying there aren’t weird things going on at the house.

  OliviaAnneWillingham: There are. I’m just not sure they’re THAT weird.

  RubyToozday: Do you have any other idea what might be going on?

  OliviaAnneWillingham: No, I don’t.

  OliviaAnneWillingham: But I need more than “I saw this in a movie once” to think that Mrs. Freely is behind all the creepy stuff.

  RubyToozday: She was related to the Wrexhalls, though, remember?

  RubyToozday: A distant cousin or something, not close enough to inherit, but still PART OF THE FAMILY.

  RubyToozday: I wonder if there’s anything in her office.

  RubyToozday: Like some history about the house.

  RubyToozday: Or a contract signed in blood, promising to give the house the souls of bad kids.

  OliviaAnneWillingham: Oh, yeah, I bet she keeps that right next to her package of highlighters. Probably on top of sheet music for “Kumbaya.”

  RubyToozday: We’ve talked about you being funny . . .

  RubyToozday: It’s unsettling and not okay, please stop.

  RubyToozday: Maybe we won’t find something that obvious, but there could be something. At least a hint that Mrs. Freely knew all the creepy stories but sent us in anyway.

  OliviaAnneWillingham: She had to have known them. Garrett had heard stories, and you said you’d heard a few things, too. It seems like the town council would at least be AWARE, right?

  RubyToozday: You’d think.

  RubyToozday: So we’re agreed that we need to break into Mrs. Freely’s desk.

  OliviaAnneWillingham: Um, no.

  OliviaAnneWillingham: We are so very NOT in agreement on that.

  RubyToozday: And we’ll do it on Monday, good plan.

  OliviaAnneWillingham: Ruby.

  OliviaAnneWillingham: RUBY.

  CHAPTER 24

  RUBY

  “Do you believe in ghosts?” I asked Mom as I closed the chat window with Liv.

  Only a few seconds before, Mom had been moving around my room, picking up things, hanging my clothes on hangers, doing her typical “Mom in my room” thing, but now she stopped and looked at me. That was never a good sign with Mom. Running her own business meant that Mom was an A-plus multitasker, so if she actually stopped doing three things at once to listen to me, it meant she was taking this seriously, and I wasn’t sure I wanted that.

  And I definitely didn’t want it when she tilted her head down a little, the bright pink stripe of hair she usually had tucked behind one ear sliding forward to curl around her jaw. “Is this about Grammy?” she asked, an
d yeah, definitely regretted bringing that up.

  “No,” I said quickly, closing the book on Live Oak House and moving over to sit on my bed. But it was too late. Mom was looking around again, her eyes settling on the stack of library books by my bed with all their GHOSTS! and HAUNTINGS titles. She frowned then, dimples showing up in her cheeks. My face did that same thing, dimples showing up not when I smiled, but when I scowled.

  “Rubes,” Mom said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “We can talk about this if you want to.”

  “It’s not about Grammy,” I told her, then bit my lower lip hard enough that it hurt a little bit. “I wouldn’t want Grammy to be a ghost.”

  To my surprise, Mom smiled at that. “She’d be so bad at it,” she said with a little laugh, and suddenly I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Mom leaned over, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. “Stealing all our Girl Scout cookies,” Mom went on. “Bumping into doors because she wouldn’t wear her glasses.”

  Now the laughing feeling was stronger than the crying one, and I leaned into Mom’s hug. “Putting records on in the middle of the night,” I added, and Mom nodded.

  “Linda Ronstadt,” she said. “Maybe Emmylou.”

  I smiled at that, remembering the way Grammy used to play music while she cooked dinner, singing along, dancing. She used to dance with me, too, and for once the memory didn’t make me sad. It was a good one.

  Her arm still around me, Mom asked, “So what are the ghost books about, then?”

  For a second, I thought about telling her about the house, the weird things that were going on.

  But then I thought she might talk to Mrs. Freely, or make me not go back, and I felt like I was onto something there. Plus, it was kind of fun, hunting ghosts with Olivia. Whoever would have thought Olivia could be fun?

  So I shrugged and said, “Curious, I guess. There are like a million shows on ghosts, and you’re always saying you want me to find some hobbies.”

  Mom raised her eyebrows, the little silver ball in the left one flashing. “So you want to start hunting ghosts as a hobby?”

  Even after what I’d experienced at Live Oak House, I wasn’t really into the idea of that. One Hall of Heads was bad enough, but seeking out more of them on purpose? No, thanks.

  Still, I sat up on my bed and lifted one shoulder, like I was thinking it over. “Not sure yet,” I said. “But keeping a lot of options open.”

  Shaking her head, Mom stood and picked up the nearest book, a green one called Am I Haunted? On the front, a guy with spiky black hair stared out at the camera while really bad Photoshopped spirits twined around his outstretched arms. “I think I’ve been on a date with this guy,” she mused, and I laughed, taking the book from her.

  “You’ve definitely been on a date with a guy with hair this bad,” I teased, and she gave an exaggerated grimace.

  Watching me slide the book back into its stack, Mom folded her arms over her chest. The V wasn’t there between her eyebrows anymore, so I figured we were okay. Or getting there.

  “Promise to tell me if any of that reading gets too heavy or scary, right?” she asked, and I gave a quick nod.

  “Absolutely. And if I don’t, the fact that I’m sleeping on your floor should be a dead giveaway.”

  Mom snorted at that, closing her eyes and shaking her head again. “You’re a mess, Ruby,” she told me, and I lifted my hands, palms up.

  “Learned from the best.”

  This was an old routine of ours, one I think Mom used to do with Grammy, and one I’d always liked. We were messes, both of us, really. Grammy probably had been, too. But we loved each other, and I thought that was probably more important than any of that other stuff, stuff like what Olivia and Emma Willingham had. I wouldn’t trade my mom for theirs, even with pancake breakfasts every Saturday.

  “Everything going good with Camp Chrysalis?” Mom asked, and I nodded.

  “I’m learning many fun and unique ways to list things,” I told her. “All sorts of lessons about old books and dead birds.”

  Mom had already moved to the door, and now she leaned against the jamb, arms folded. “Not exactly the best way to spend a summer, huh?”

  It was maybe the worst way to spend a summer other than being packed off to some camp where singing and Chubby Bunny contests were on the menu every night, but I made myself look unconcerned.

  “It’s actually not so bad,” I said, picking at a loose thread on my quilt. “Kind of boring, but the house is neat, and I have people to talk to.”

  I could feel my face going red at that, and hoped that I wasn’t blushing, but moms are superheroes when it comes to figuring out stuff you don’t want to talk about. “Are you talking to a boooooooyyyyyy?” she asked, her voice sliding up all those vowels, and if rolling my eyes were not a capital offense in our house, I so would’ve done it.

  “There are boys there, yes, and sometimes I have to work with them, but I’m not specifically talking to boys.”

  Mom was still smiling at me. “Worse places to get a crush than over a bucket of disinfectant, I guess.”

  Lying down on my stomach, I kicked my feet in the air. “We actually don’t clean anything,” I told her. “Because Mrs. Freely doesn’t want us breathing in chemicals.”

  “Oh, man,” Mom said, snapping her fingers. “And here I was so looking forward to suing when you grew an extra head.”

  I giggled at that. “Sorry.”

  Giving an exaggerated sigh, Mom flopped down on the edge of my bed. “We’ll find some other way to get that condo in Florida, I guess.”

  I nudged her with my elbow, and she kept smiling, but I noticed her eyes straying to the books again.

  “It’s nothing,” I promised her again, but Mom was smarter than that.

  “Is it the house?” she asked. “It looks pretty solid from the outside, but I can see where being in there every day might give anybody the heebie-jeebies.”

  Sitting up, I ran my fingers over the cover of Am I Haunted? “It’s definitely a weird place,” I told Mom, wondering how I could even describe Live Oak House. It wasn’t that it was weird or old or creepy. It wasn’t even that it felt all that haunted, really.

  It was more like it felt . . . aware. Like someone was watching us all the time, waiting for us to put the pieces together.

  “Did you ever get a bad feeling about a place?” I asked. “Like, you walked in somewhere, and it just felt . . . wrong? And if someone asked you, ‘Hey, what’s your problem with that place?’ you wouldn’t be able to say, really?”

  By the end of that little spiel, Mom was frowning at me, and she reached out to tuck my hair behind my ear.

  “Is that how Live Oak House is making you feel?” she asked, and I mulled over exactly how to answer that. I mean, of course it was, that’s why we were talking about this and she knew it, but I still didn’t want to come right out and say it. I didn’t know if that was because saying it would make it feel real, or because I was worried that if I did, Mom would make me quit going there or would talk to Mrs. Freely.

  In the end, I decided to come clean. “Yeah, but I don’t want to stop going there.”

  I could tell that was a surprise, and Mom sat back slightly, tucking her chin into her neck. “Okaaaaay,” she said slowly, and I sat up.

  “It’s a totally weird, creepy place with a totally weird, creepy feel,” I told her, “but, like . . . it’s fun? And definitely better than helping the teachers up at school scrape gum from under their desks or whatever else we could be doing. And as bizarre as this is going to sound, I’ve sort of started being friends with Olivia Willingham, and I feel like it’s because of the house? I don’t know, it’s all really weird. Not the house—me and Liv being friends. Well, the house, too, that’s weird and also a part of it, and I’m talking too much again, aren’t I?”

  Mom held up her thumb and for
efinger, pinching them together. “Little bit,” she confirmed, but she was smiling at me in that way she did sometimes, where her eyes looked warm and there were extra crinkles in the corners.

  “But,” Mom went on, “what I think you’re trying to say is that you’re having fun this summer after all, and even though things are weird at Live Oak House, you’ve made a friend.”

  “Made a friend because things are weird at Live Oak House,” I clarified, and Mom nodded.

  “Even so. And you don’t want me storming up there, telling Mrs. Freely the house makes you creeped out, because that might mess up this fun thing you have going. Even though the fun thing also scares you a little bit.”

  I made finger-guns at her. “Nailed it.”

  Laughing, Mom shook her head, then leaned over to ruffle my hair. “You are the strangest child in the entire world, but you’re my strange child, and I love you. And I will let you keep feeling weird in that house with your new friend in peace.”

  Relieved, I tilted forward so that I could hug her quickly. “Thanks, Mom.”

  She squeezed me back before getting off the bed and adding, “Just don’t get eaten by a ghost and make me regret this, okay?”

  “Deal.”

  CHAPTER 25

  OLIVIA

  I pretty much spent that entire Monday freaking out. Not because of the house—nothing actually happened that day, and cleaning was the good kind of boring—it was the idea of sneaking into Mrs. Freely’s office that had my stomach in knots.

  And looking at Ruby that morning, it was clear she was still planning on doing it. She spent most of the day giving me significant looks and at one point did some kind of pointing gesture that looked like she might be describing a complicated baseball play.