Beautiful Dead

  I sat down on the ground. “We were too late,” I murmured.

  The only answer I got was the wild beating of wings, gathering over Foxton Ridge and sweeping into the valley, and a horde of death-heads in the darkness, gleaming yellowish-white, the domes of their skulls like smooth pebbles on a shore, their eye sockets black and fathomless.

  Sadness weighed me down. I’d held Lee’s hand and watched him leave the far side forever. Now Hunter was gone too—a shadow of himself, so weak that he might not make it out of the far side to a safe haven beyond the storm.

  Lightning flashed. Thunder cracked. I sat by the creek and wept until the rain stopped.

  When dawn came I made my way up to the ridge, empty and aching, my hopes sunk lower than ever before. I walked to the water tower overlooking the barn then plunged down the hill, half running, stumbling, longing for the Beautiful Dead to come back to the far side.

  The sky glowed pink, streaked with wispy blue-gray clouds. Water drops fell from the aspen branches, puddling on the gravel earth. As the sun rose, I watched steam rise from the barn roof.

  So where are you? I asked Phoenix, Hunter, Arizona, and the rest.

  I thought back to a time before, when another storm had forced the Beautiful Dead to flee. I’d sat through the night, waiting for them to return, and it had been longer than I’d expected—a half day for them to rest up and gather their strength, ready to make it back to the far side.

  “And this is Thursday already,” I said out loud. I followed my gut feeling that I had only hours left and it was best not to waste them hanging out there. So I headed back up to the ridge, along the deer path onto the dirt road where I hoped to hitch a ride. It was twenty minutes before the first vehicle showed up. The driver slowed to take a good long look at my drowned-rat appearance.

  “You need a ride?” he said.

  “To Ellerton.” I didn’t care that he thought I was a homeless freak caught out by last night’s storm. I climbed into the cab of his truck.

  “What happened to you?”

  “My car got flooded out. I ended in a gully.”

  “You live in Ellerton?”

  I nodded. OK, so you’re giving me a ride, but I don’t need to give you my life story.

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty,” I lied.

  We swung off the dirt road onto the highway. “Did you spend the whole night on the mountain?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You couldn’t call anyone?”

  “No credit on my phone.” I sank down into the seat and closed my eyes to look like I was sleeping.

  We cruised past Turkey Shoot Ridge into Centennial.

  “You can drop me here,” I said.

  I don’t remember if I even said thanks as the guy pulled up and I walked away. I got no more than twenty paces down the street before Arizona stepped out from behind a parked car.

  “Before you launch into anything, let me speak,” she said. Her green eyes flashed with impatience. “We know what happened to Lee.”

  “Hunter and I—we tried. Hunter risked everything.”

  “I know. Lee was a good kid, that’s why. The Beautiful Dead will miss him. Hunter’s taking it badly—he figures he let him down.”

  “Hunter made it back to limbo?” I asked anxiously.

  “Yeah, he’s safe with the others. They’ll rest up and be here by midday.”

  “You came alone?” I walked down the street with her, knowing it was a risk. “What happens if someone sees you?”

  Arizona pointed to the houses with their blinds still drawn, their doors locked. “Everyone’s still asleep. You and I—we need to talk.”

  “I’m on my way to Westra—to your folks’ house. We don’t have much time.”

  She nodded. “No one knows that better than me. We have exactly thirty hours and fifteen minutes before my time is up. Which is why Hunter let me return early.”

  “Things have changed. These days he must trust you one hundred percent,” I murmured, still edgy about the fact that we were on view. I pulled Arizona into an alley down the side of a small block of apartments. “I don’t know why he should do that, after the way you acted.”

  She shrugged me off. “What do you know, Darina? Honestly—I mean, what do you really know?”

  Where did I begin? “I know you didn’t tell me about Kyle Keppler and Sable Jackson, or your kid brother, or even your grandfather. How am I supposed to help you?”

  She closed her eyes and sighed. “Do you know what it’s like when you need to protect someone you love?”

  “Yeah—you put them first, above everything else. And I understand that about Raven—the poor kid needs all the care he can get. But Kyle—he’s different.”

  “You mean, he can take care of himself?” she muttered.

  I remembered Kyle Keppler spinning his truck around, driving toward me, pulling me out of my car, and dumping me in the ditch. “Jesus, Arizona, the guy’s an animal.”

  Leaning against the brick wall, she looked at me through half closed eyes. “You know, that’s what people say about the Rohrs—Brandon and Phoenix.”

  “No way. You can’t make that comparison.”

  She overrode me with one of those old, arrogant flicks of her wrist. “They say Brandon can only settle an argument with his fists, and Phoenix took after his brother.”

  “You know that’s not true.”

  “But it’s how it looks from the outside—that’s what we’re talking about here.”

  “Are you saying that Kyle is like Phoenix?” I was fired up and ready to walk away, to leave Arizona to her Beautiful Dead fate and never speak to her again. “Phoenix didn’t cheat on me, remember?”

  She gave a small nod. “And if he had, would you still love him?”

  I took a sharp breath, unable to give an answer that didn’t hack the legs from under my own argument.

  “You see—you don’t stop having feelings for someone, even when they hurt you. You hang in and hope it will go away.”

  “But Sable was pregnant, they were going to get married…”

  “I know—don’t tell me. I should’ve walked away. I did try.”

  For a long time I stood in silence, shaking my head. “What about Kyle? After you knew the full story about Sable and the baby, did he finish it with you on the spot?”

  “He tried to. But he was like me—he couldn’t help himself. He would back off for a few days but then he would call me again.”

  “Saying he still loved you?”

  She nodded. “And I would go around to Mike’s Motors to see him. Other guys—Brandon, Jon Jackson—might be there and I would have to make some excuse.”

  I pictured the dirty looks and sly comments flying in Arizona’s direction. “You know something—that wasn’t love, it was masochism.”

  “An obsession.” She sighed. “Look, I know it. But I saw a side of Kyle you wouldn’t believe. Not scary, but funny. He goofs around and makes me feel good about myself… He did,” she corrected herself. “He understood the way my mind worked. With him I could be myself.”

  “That’s really sad,” I told her. “You couldn’t be yourself with anyone except Kyle. I get it now. At least, I think I do.”

  “So you see why Kyle needs you to stay away from Forest Lake—to keep his relationship with Sable and his kid,” Arizona stated. “The only time he ever got mad at me was when I showed up at his house.”

  “Well…that’s crazy. Why did you do that?” The old saying about pots and kettles might spring to mind. I mean, hadn’t I done exactly that?

  “To sit quietly in my car and watch. I wasn’t about to walk in on him and Sable—I just wanted to see them together, maybe convince myself that it was over between Kyle and me.”

  “But he spotted you?”

  She nodded. “He didn’t touch me or lose it with me, but he said never, never to do that again. And now I want you to promise me the same thing.”

  “What exactly?” I didn??
?t see that Arizona was in a position to lay down conditions.

  “To leave Sable out of it, and Kyle.”

  “Even though he was one of the last people you saw before you ended up in Hartmann?”

  She shook her head fiercely. “I don’t know that for sure. The last thing I remember was driving to the mall. I have no idea if I made it to Mike’s Motors, or if Kyle was even there.”

  I gave up on the questions, knowing we could never get beyond Arizona’s memory block. “So you’re OK with me going over to your family’s house?”

  “To do what?” she asked.

  Honestly, you’d have thought I was sleeping with the enemy, the way she reacted. “To talk with whoever’s there—with Peter. Or maybe Frank will give me some new details to work on.”

  “Or maybe not.” She laughed the old Arizona laugh—scoffing and humorless. “Getting information from my father is pretty much impossible. He should have been a spy.”

  “Yeah.” I didn’t get time to ask how come that was true before a window above our heads opened and a woman leaned out.

  “Quit that yakking at this time in the morning,” she yelled down.

  Arizona reacted as if she’d been stung by a swarm of hornets. We dashed out of the alleyway and back onto the street.

  “So go ahead—talk to my grandfather again,” she choked out at me, getting ready to dematerialize.

  “Where will you be?” I asked.

  “Around,” she said. “You won’t see me, but I’ll definitely be there.”

  I went straight to Logan’s house and knocked on his door. Though it was only eight a.m. he appeared, fully dressed and alert. “Hey, Darina, what’s up?”

  “My car got wrecked,” I said feebly. “And before you ask—no, it wasn’t my fault. A rock flew up and smashed the hood.”

  “So you want a ride to school?”

  “Not this morning, thanks. But can you drive me over to Westra?” To stop him asking more questions, I put in what sounded like a genuine reason. “You remember the woman who fell off her horse? Her husband is Peter Hall—he works out there.”

  “And you want to ask how she’s doing?” Quickly Logan grabbed his keys. “Sure, I’ll swing by there for you.”

  I smiled and sat beside him. Maybe we had taken a turn for the better the other day, before Laura walked in on us. Maybe we really could be friends again. We drove without a lot of conversation, just easy and relaxed as far as he knew. At the end of North 22nd Street, I asked him to let me out.

  “You want me to wait?” he asked.

  “No—I’ll walk back.” I gave him a grateful smile and watched him color up. How come I don’t fall in love with the easy-to-read, nice guys of this world? I asked myself, not for the first time.

  As Logan turned his car in the direction of Ellerton High and I walked the half mile to number 2850, I couldn’t help glancing over my shoulder to look for the invisible Arizona. How weird—she was coming back to visit her house a year after she died and only I knew.

  I turned in the drive and headed toward the gardener’s workshop, but before I’d gone far I saw Raven sitting in his usual spot in the summerhouse. He looked up from his sketch pad then quickly down again. For a few seconds, I heard Arizona’s startled, helpless reaction in a little gust of wind, a sigh through the redwood trees by the gate.

  Soon Peter Hall walked out of his potting shed and cut across the lawn to meet me.

  “How come Raven’s home from school?” I asked. “The last I heard, he was back at the institute.”

  “Thanks to you, I hear.” The old man steered me away from Raven toward his shop. “The principal gave Frank a description of the girl who found him—tall, skinny, with short, dark hair—we figured it might be you.”

  “You know me—I like to drive in the mountains.” I shrugged. “So have they taken him out of school?”

  “Finally.” Peter sighed. “I guess he ran away one too many times. Rebecca Davis and Allyson talked it through—everyone decided he should take a break from the institute.”

  There was more agitation among the branches of the fir trees—Arizona clearly in torture at being able to see her kid brother and hear this latest piece of news yet not able to walk up to him, put her arm around his shoulders, go through a few Warhol prints with him, and make his blank eyes light up.

  “You know something else?” Peter went on. “Frank finally left home last night.”

  “They’re going ahead with the divorce?”

  “For sure. He moved into Jenna’s and my place.”

  “Wow, that’s big,” I realized.

  Peter nodded. “Like a house of cards collapsing. Raven comes home. Frank leaves. And today for the first time in her life, Allyson cuts work.”

  “She’s home?” I looked in alarm at the big house with its open front door and a dozen blank windows glinting in the cold sun. “And what about you, Peter? Where do you and Jenna stand now?”

  “We’re still history,” he said, gesturing toward the cardboard boxes on the floor. He’d stacked his gardening books inside, along with his kettle and coffee cups. “Now that Frank’s off the scene, Allyson says she doesn’t want us to visit Raven—she’ll hire a professional caretaker instead.”

  “She’s cutting you out?” When I’m shocked, I have a bad habit of stating the obvious.

  Peter lifted his shoulders. “Unless she changes her mind,” he muttered. “But I know Allyson—she never goes back on her word. The fact is—we’re out of here for good.”

  Darina, you have to go back in and talk to Raven—help him get through this!” When I met up with Arizona outside the gates to her house, she was a mess. She’d overheard every word of the conversation between me and her grandfather and she couldn’t bear for me to walk away. She paced in small circles, her pale skin the whitest I’d seen it.

  “Why? What good will it do?” I asked.

  “Talk about his sketches, try telling him about me—why I’m not around anymore, how I didn’t leave him because I wanted to. No, forget that. Just tell him I love him.”

  The force of her plea nearly knocked me over, yet I remembered Phoenix telling me Raven’s autistic brain was wired differently, so he was impossible to reach. “He won’t understand,” I told her. “You know that better than I do.”

  Arizona looked at me in total despair. “Try,” she begged. “You know it’s the only thing I care about—that Raven realizes I would have done anything for him. He’s an amazing, special kid. Tell him that for me, Darina.”

  “I don’t think this is a good idea,” I muttered. I didn’t even know if I could get back into the garden without being seen, but luckily Peter had disappeared and there was no sign of life in the big house either.

  Gathering my courage, I went back into the garden and crept up on the kid, catching him by surprise.

  You’d think I was pointing a gun in his face, the way he jolted.

  “It’s OK,” I murmured. “Remember me, Raven? We met a couple of times before.”

  He clutched his sketchbook to his chest and started to rock back and forth, refusing to look at me. He was as skinny and fragile as a bird, with that black, glossy hair and eyes that darted here and there.

  “Show me what you just drew.”

  But no—he kept the sketches hidden and he rocked more rapidly.

  “I won’t hurt you—I’m your friend,” I tried to tell him, but I wasn’t getting anywhere. Hadn’t I lied to him and dumped him with the school principal?

  “Raven, I knew your sister, Arizona.”

  Her name was the one thing that broke down the barrier. I said “Arizona” and before the word fell from my lips, the kid had stopped rocking and was looking hungrily at me, wanting more.

  “Yeah, Arizona—she told me about you, Raven. ‘He draws the best pictures,’ is what she said. Do you want to show me your book?”

  His eyes widened. He looked from me to the sketch pad then suddenly thrust it toward me.

  I took
it and started to turn the pages. “Hey, this is your house, and this is the summerhouse—how neat is that. And Peter’s workshop, and this is your school.” Pretty soon we were sitting side by side on the summerhouse bench, heads bent over the sketchbook, tracing the images with our fingers. I turned another page and found myself staring at a portrait of Arizona. It was her to the smallest detail, but filled with warmth—I was drawn to the almond-shaped eyes and the arched eyebrows, the long, oval face framed by straight black hair. “You drew this?” I asked.

  Raven ran his forefinger around the shape of the face, touching it lightly and tenderly. Then he looked up at me with the ghost of a smile.

  I was smiling back at him, trying to hold back the tears when Allyson Taylor, alias Monster Mom, stormed up behind us. “I don’t know who you think you are or what you’re doing here,” she said coldly. “But you should leave before I call the cops.”

  “There’s no need; I’m out of here,” I told her. I stood up, surprised to feel Raven catch hold of the bottom of my jacket and refuse to let go. Another surprise was the way Allyson looked without her TV face—pale and drawn, with her fair hair pulled back, her mouth sagging at the corners, and bags under her eyes. “I came to see Peter,” I explained. “I was the one who found Jenna on the moun-tain after her accident.”

  “So did you see him before he left?” Allyson’s gaze had fixed on Raven’s hand clutching my jacket.

  I nodded. “And your son showed me his sketches. He has a real talent.”

  “He likes to draw.” There was a break in the frosty tone. “Let go of the jacket, Raven; be a good kid.”

  He turned his head away but held on tight.

  “It’s OK, it’s not a problem.”

  “Let go—please!” Allyson reached out and tried to uncurl his fingers. There was something so sad and hopeless about the tiny gesture that I nearly started crying—but to my shocked surprise, Allyson beat me to it. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed, stepping back and covering her face with her hand.

  “No problem—honestly. Arizona talked to me about her brother. I understand.”

  “She did?” Allyson found this piece of information hard to swallow. “I didn’t think Arizona confided in people. I thought she was more the bottled-up type.”