Free Dream Dancer (Ghosts Beyond the Grove Book 2) by Joy Elbel Page B

significant change in his behavior.  And even if there was, you know they aren’t going to just release him that quickly—I’m sure they would want to observe him for a few days or weeks to be sure.”
         Two minutes later, it was Shelly who had the smug expression as she handed the phone over to me.  “Here, I’m going to let you hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.”
         Disappointedly, I listened to the words I didn’t want to hear.  Zach’s mental state hadn’t improved in any measurable sort of way.  I still believed that the stones were a sign—I just didn’t know what they were a sign of .  But against my better judgment, I was soon on my way back to Liberty with more unanswered questions than I had when I left.  Why couldn’t I ever seem to make progress?
         I made Shelly stop at Poe’s Corner before taking me home so that I could talk to Addie.  She’d said that she was interested in crystals so I thought that maybe she would be able to shed some light on what had happened to my moonstones.  The coffee shop was busy but she took a minute to look at them anyway.
         “Well if that ain’t the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen, I don’t know what is.  And I’m tellin’ ya girl, I’ve seen a lot of weird things in my time on this earth.  I don’t have the foggiest idea what happened to them.  All I know is, that sure don’t look normal to me.”
         Not normal.  If they ever made a movie based on my life story, I’m sure that would be the title of it.  “Not Normal: The Ruby Matthews Story”, coming soon to a theater near you.  Ugh.  Salma was probably the only person I knew that could tell me what made my moonstones alter so drastically overnight and I had no long distance way to contact her.  Signs were useless to me if I was unable to interpret them.
         Once back at Liberty Towers, Shelly unpacked my stuff for me and hung out for a while before heading home herself.  Even before she was gone, I felt lonely.  After she walked out the door, though, I felt really alone.  I texted Rachel to let her know what was going on then sat down at the kitchen table to decompress and try to think things through. 
         What I needed most was to talk to Clay.  What could Zach have possibly said to him to make him this mad at me?  I called his name several times but he never appeared.  I knew that I was supposed to be still but time was of the essence here.  If Zach continued to get worse, was it even going to be possible to save him once I did have all the answers?  Assuming I ever got the answers at all, that is.
         With nothing else left for me to do, I opened up my laptop and stared blankly at the screen for a few minutes.  I thought that finishing my first book would have made me happier than it did.  But how could I be happy when Zach was so insanely miserable?  The answer was I couldn’t.  With no other way to pass the time, I began pecking out the first few words of my next book—one I never originally intended to write.  Writing was all I had left to keep me sane. 
         After what felt like maybe an hour, my rear end began to go numb in that hard wooden chair.  That’s when I decided to take a break.  As I was saving my document to the hard drive, I noticed the time and thought that the settings on my laptop had drastically changed just like my moonstones had.  There was no way I’d been writing for that long.
         Yet the time on the microwave confirmed it—I’d been hunched over my computer for nearly four hours.  Since Addie had worked several double shifts while I was in Arizona, I’d begrudgingly told her I would take her early shift in the morning.  Don’t get me wrong—I was beyond grateful for how far she’d gone out of her way to help me.  But I still had jet lag and hated mornings even on a good day.  It was barely past nine but I knew that if there was any hope of me getting out of