End of story. There was Darina-pre-Phoenix and Darina-post-Phoenix—two different people, a new chemical mix, a white-hot fusion of souls.
And it was impossible to reverse the process, to clear up the misunderstandings and get back the communication I’d once had with Logan. Clearly he wanted more, anyway.
All Tuesday and Wednesday I avoided him and his secret, significant glances. As if I didn’t already know it, the anniversary of Jonas’s death was approaching fast and there was talk at school of some kind of memorial procession of Harleys, headed up by Matt Fortune of all people, on a bike provided by his brother, Charlie.
“We’ll meet in town after school next Tuesday,” Matt explained in the cafeteria to the familiar gang of boys, which included Christian and Lucas but not Logan. “We ride out through Centennial—slowly, at maybe ten miles per hour—and hold the same speed when we reach the Foxton highway. We stop at the exact spot where the crash happened.”
“Creepy.” Jordan backed out of the group and left the guys to their plans.
Hannah stuck around with me, a few tables away. “I don’t know, maybe it’s a good thing in a Gothic sort of way,” she muttered.
“Or totally ghoulish.” I poked at my drab food, not hungry at all. I couldn’t decide either, only I found it interesting that Matt was right at the center of the plan.
“Cool!” Lucas got behind the idea. “I bet Jonas will be up there, looking down on us and giving his blessing.”
I shuddered at the rose-tinted picture of angels floating on fluffy, floaty clouds, probably playing harps and surrounded by sunny peacefulness. No, I wanted to say, it’s not like that. It’s dangerous, hard, and restless. A million winged souls are fighting to return.
“Where will you get a bike?” Christian asked Lucas.
“Maybe Charlie has a spare. Can you ask him, Matt?”
“Do the girls get to ride with you?” Hannah didn’t want to be left out. “I want to leave flowers by the roadside.”
The plan was taking shape. Matt’s next neat idea was that the slow procession should be led by Bob Jonson, with the kids Jonas’s age following behind.
“Whoa, can he handle it?” Lucas asked. “I hear he’s pretty shaky right now alone in the house. We don’t want to push him too hard.”
“At least give him the chance,” Matt insisted, strutting his stuff in front of another couple of girls who’d been drawn in. “We’ll be riding right behind him, remember.”
“It’s so cool!” one of the newcomers sighed, clearly hooked on Matt’s idea and not caring in the least about Jonas. “The rest of us can line the route then drive out later to lay flowers.”
“Maybe we should contact Zoey and ask her to come along,” someone else suggested.
Flowers, Harleys, silent tributes at the roadside by people who couldn’t care less…and now Zoey. To me this was turning into a crazy circus. “Jonas wasn’t that sort of guy,” I reminded them. “He wasn’t into drama and making a big deal of things.”
Matt turned on me. “Yeah, Darina, don’t tell me. You knew Jonas way better than the rest of us. Go ahead, speak for him, why don’t you?”
“I don’t remember you being close with Jonas,” I retaliated. “How come you’re so into this procession thing?”
“What are you saying?” Matt broke away from the group and came right up to me, eyeball to eyeball. “That I’m faking? That I don’t have any feelings for Jonas?”
“Do you?” I refused to look away, staring into Matt Fortune’s weird flecked eyes, a mix of hazel and green, under heavy, straight brows.
Matt blinked and he turned away. “So about next Tuesday,” he went on smoothly. “Who’s going to ask Bob Jonson?”
“Dude, you do it,” Christian spoke for the others. “Say it’ll help bring closure, poor guy.”
Matt waited until Thursday for payback. He cornered me as I was driving out of the school gates in my convertible, driving his flatbed truck alongside and forcing me onto the sidewalk outside the 7-Eleven.
“Nice car,” he said, leaning across his passenger seat.
I was more than a little ticked off. “Are you crazy?” I barked. “What are you trying to do to me?”
“I hear it’s a gift from Brandon Rohr.”
“That’s none of your business.”
“And you’re so good at keeping your nose out of other people’s stuff.” He sneered, jumping out of his truck and walking around to my window. “In the future you stay out of my face, you hear?”
“I’m not in your face.” I was scared but I didn’t show it.
“No? Didn’t you come sneaking around to Charlie’s place? Didn’t you make me look small over next Tuesday’s deal?”
I stared calmly from my driver’s seat. “It’s not difficult to make you look small, Matt.”
“You’re a real bitch, you know that?” His fist landed on my windshield, making a shopper exiting the store stare hard before she went on her way.
“I only wanted to know how come you were suddenly Jonas’s buddy,” I said, hammering the nail into his thick skull. “I remember the time, not too long ago, when you and he were fighting tooth and claw over Zoey.”
Matt was tanned, strong, and healthy, so he didn’t turn pale. But everything else about him registered shock. He kind of shrank back, then boosted himself up again, back to the guy who spent too much time in the gym. “That’s crap,” he told me. “Zoey and Jonas were the real thing, everybody knew.”
“So, if you knew it, why try to get her back?”
“Says who?”
“Says Zoey.” The more he toughed it out the calmer I grew. What was the worst that could happen? A fist through my shiny new windshield, Matt blowing off a whole lot more hot air.
“BS,” he muttered.
Pushing the gear stick from Neutral into Drive, I got ready to coast away. But before I left, I wanted to give Matt plenty to think about. “Whose word do I take?” I asked him. “Yours or Zoey’s?”
And I headed straight for the clinic in time to intercept Zoey as she came out of Kim Reiss’s room.
“You two are good friends, huh?” Kim asked when she saw the greeting Zoey gave me.
Zoey had zoomed over to me in her wheelchair and grabbed me by both hands as I sat in Kim’s waiting room. “Darina, I’m sorry about Sunday—about my dad,” she’d said.
“Zoey and I go way back,” I told Kim. “Can you give us five minutes?”
“Come in when you’re ready,” Kim replied, going back into her room and closing the door.
“How are you doing?” I asked. I’m not big on the healing power of hugs, but for Zoey I made an exception.
“Good.”
“You’ve been crying?”
“Yeah, but positive crying,” she said, trying to smile. “Kim says let the tears fall. I told her I remembered after the crash, lying on the road with Jonas hovering over me. She says that’s good too. I told her you’d helped.”
“Thanks.” But I needed more, and I truly didn’t have much time. “How about before the crash?”
Zoey shook her head. “My mind won’t go there. I want it to, but every time I try, I hit a wall.”
“Anything? Anything at all?”
She struggled again, closing her eyes and squeezing her temples with her long fingers. “Matt Fortune,” she muttered.
The name sent my head spinning. “What about him?”
“I don’t know. I keep seeing his face. I don’t want to. I want to see Jonas. But Matt won’t leave.”
“When is this? How long before the accident? Is it the same day?”
Zoey let her hands fall into her lap. “No. It’s maybe a week before. Yeah, Matt was hanging around, coming to my house, following me home from school.”
“He was stalking you?” More, Zoey, more!
She nodded. “He was a pain in the butt, I remember. It’s kind of hazy, but he would wait until Jonas wasn’t around then he would act like we were still an item. I w
asn’t comfortable and told him to back off, even though I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.”
“Matt Fortune has a thick skin,” I pointed out. “His feelings aren’t easily hurt.”
“Well, he didn’t back off and things got kind of nasty when I finally mentioned it to Jonas. I was scared there was going to be a fight.”
At that moment, Kim opened her door. “Darina, it’s past four thirty. We’re into your hour—the clock’s ticking.”
“OK, another minute,” I told her.
Click went her door. “Was there a fight?” I asked Zoey.
She frowned. “No. At least, I don’t remember one. All I get is Matt’s face when I want Jonas’s. Why is that?”
“I wish I knew. Go back to crash day. Focus on that.”
“I tried to do that for Kim. I really tried,” Zoey said. “All I get when I picture the Foxton road is a flash of light—no noise, no wheels spinning, no brakes, nothing. A flash and then darkness.”
A flash of light. And Matt Fortune’s face where she didn’t want it to be. There had to be a connection between the two. But Mrs. Bishop was coming to fetch Zoey and my own hour was ticking. I squeezed Zoey’s hand and went in to talk with Kim.
“I still see Phoenix all the time,” I told my shrink. I figured it was best to tell the truth in here and let her draw her own conclusions. She wasn’t allowed to tell anyone anything I said, anyway.
“And how does it make you feel?”
“Happy.”
“And?”
“Sad, awful, chewed up, when I have to say good-bye.”
“Describe Phoenix to me, Darina.”
“He’s the most beautiful thing you ever saw. Plus, he makes me laugh,” I told her. “He has this crazy point of view. He jokes about things that people say are serious—politics, money, whatever. Then again, he’s serious about the right stuff—telling it like it is, being honest. I love that about him.”
There was no sunlight today in Kim’s office. The sky outside was blue-gray, the color of a bruise, with a rim of bright gold around the edge of the heavy clouds.
“And more about his appearance?” she asked quietly.
“Every time I look at him I notice his eyes. Like I’m hypnotized.”
“What color are his eyes?”
“Gray-blue. Shining. His skin’s so clear.”
Kim sat for a while, resting back in her soft taupe chair. “I notice something significant,” she said at last.
I waited again.The hour was almost over. I’d said zilch this session about the Beautiful Dead and I wondered how much my therapist had figured out.
“When I ask you to describe Phoenix, you talk about him in the present tense,” she pointed out. “So much so that it’s as if you almost feel him here in the room.”
Right after my shrink session I switched off my phone and drove out to Foxton. Slow drops of rain splashed the windshield but I didn’t bother to stop and put up the top. The cold wetness on my skin felt good.
I was driving fast into the mountains, into an approaching storm. Before I knew it I’d passed the spot where the road splits, keeping to the highway, not caring whether or not I was seen. Soon I reached the huddle of houses at the Foxton junction and turned left, past the rickety fishing lodges overlooking the clear green, fast running water of Foxton Creek.
The rain came down harder now, soaking my hair and my white T-shirt. Stop and fix the top, I told myself, but another impatient part of my brain said, Don’t waste time. Keep on driving. Past the lodges and a Jeep driven by a solitary hunter who kept steadily to the speed limit. Through the trees ruined by a forest fire—black, twisted stumps and gray burned-out logs left to rot back into the earth. Then on up the incline into fresh, green aspens under the blue-black sky. One name was driving me on and making me desperate to see Jonas: Matt Fortune. He’d grown in my mind from a minor irritant into a major player in the mess that had ended in Jonas’s tragic crash. If there were an answer, it lay with him.
Tell me about Matt. Zoey said you two almost had a fight. How jealous was he? Was he out of control? I put my foot on the pedal as I rehearsed the questions I’d ask Jonas and drove through the rain onto Foxton Ridge.
When I couldn’t drive any farther, I finally put the top on, jumped out of the car, and ran through the long grass to the water tower. By this time I was soaked to the skin and shivering with cold—the only living thing out there in the storm, with the rain splattering against the rusted metal of the tower as background noise.
That’s weird—there are no wings beating. I waited for Hunter to set up the barrier that drove unwelcome visitors away, but it didn’t happen.
Where are you all? I stepped out from under the tower and began to walk down the hill.
Phoenix, it’s me, Darina!
I hated the silence, longed to hear the spooky wings of the Beautiful Dead. Why hadn’t their super-sharp hearing picked up the sound of my car engine or the swish of my footsteps through the grass?
“Phoenix?” I reached the side meadow and called his name out loud.
The barn door creaked then banged. Once, twice, three times. I walked inside and looked around. There were cobwebs in the rafters, dust on the floor, as if nothing had disturbed them in years.The old bridles and harnesses hung on their hooks, a rusty hay fork, an ax, and a shovel rested against a stall door. “Jonas! Summer! Is anyone around?”
My voice disturbed a small, scuttling creature in the hay loft above my head.
Bang! The wind in the door sent a strong shudder through my body.
I ran out of the barn, across the yard toward the house.The door was locked. “Let me in!” I yelled, rattling at the handle.
Outside the porch, the rain poured down. There was a flicker of lightning and then a low roll of thunder.
“Hunter, let me in!” I ran to the window and peered through a film of grime.The rocking chair, the stove, the table looked untouched, like a museum that had been closed for decades. Around the side of the house I found a rotting rain barrel and the shafts and base of an ancient wooden cart. I missed my footing and slipped down the slope toward the rushing creek, only saving myself by grabbing at the slim trunk of an aspen sapling. When I got my balance I started to cry.
Where has everyone gone? Please come back! Under the low clouds and pouring rain I wandered out into the yard, stepping through puddles and searching every corner of the deserted place. Another fork of lightning split the sky in half and the crash of thunder sent me running back to the barn.
Bang! Suppose it never happened.
Bang! The Beautiful Dead don’t exist.
Bang! Phoenix didn’t come back. He’s dead and gone forever.
I sank to the floor and wept until I was exhausted. Then I thought it through and tried to deal with the shock of realizing that I was one crazy girl driven out of her head by the loss of the person in the world who had meant everything to her.
I said it out loud to teach myself the lesson. “Who else saw the Beautiful Dead, Darina? Sure, there were rumors. Everyone in Ellerton was shaken up by these four deaths, that was only to be expected. Scared minds invent stupid stuff—ghosts and supernatural noises that turn out to be the wind rustling through trees, period. And sure, I found Jonas’s belt buckle, but what did that prove? Only that he was here some time before he died. What other so-called proof did I have?”
Phoenix’s kisses, his eyes staring into mine, and an angel-wing tattoo.
My belief crumbled under the force of the storm and the eerie stillness of the barn. It ebbed out of me, leaving a hollow that was soon filled with a creeping sense of death and decay all around. Now the horse halters looked like hangman’s nooses and the ax in the corner belonged to a masked executioner.The scuttling feet upstairs were rats ready to gnaw at dead flesh. Lightning struck again and thunder rattled and crashed down the valley. I sat on the barn floor wishing that the storm would gather me up and hurl me against the mountains, smashing me into a thousand pieces.
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For a long time despair held me in its grip until the sky grew quieter and the clouds began to part. A crescent moon appeared—an arc of silver light—then tiny stars millions of light years away.
“Maybe there’s a reason they had to leave,” I murmured, raising myself up and shuffling to the door to gaze at the heavens. “Phoenix was here for a short while, along with Hunter and the others.The Beautiful Dead did exist.”
A wind carried the clouds in the direction of Amos Peak and now the night sky seemed huge, the Milky Way a curving stream of pale light against the sparkling blackness.The world was a tiny speck in the unknowable universe. Which made me smaller than a single atom in the grand scheme, my sorrows invisible.
I saw a shooting star dart across the darkness, then flare and fade. Another one made its spectacular descent, then another and another. Four in quick succession—Jonas, Arizona, Summer, and Phoenix shining bright and dying.
Tears filled my eyes.
At dawn there was not a cloud in the sky, only a pink light in the east and a golden sun rising clear of Amos Peak.
With the rising sun I felt hope, and I grew more certain that Phoenix would never leave me without saying good-bye.
This hope replaced the panic of the night before, when the storm was at its height. It filled me with warmth, so that I could walk out through the wide door and calmly breathe the fresh morning air. I noticed the house, battered but watertight, then spotted a rain-soaked coyote slink out from under the rusted truck where it had taken shelter during the storm. In the air all around was the lovely, sighing sound of wind rustling through the aspens. When I turned back toward the barn, I saw the Beautiful Dead.
“Together we are strong,” they murmured, hands clasped, the men naked to the waist and all standing in a tight circle inside the barn. Hunter the overlord stood in the middle of the circle, head bowed, hands clasped in front of him.
“We are stronger than the warring heavens.” He led the chant while the others followed, like priest and congregation. “Stronger than the light that splits the sky. We, the Beautiful Dead, rejoice in our strength.”