I texted her back, C u there, and ran across the parking lot in time to see Mrs. Bishop lifting her daughter’s hightech wheelchair out of the trunk then standing back to let Zoey step out of the car unaided.
“Ta-dah!” Zoey glanced up and saw me standing there with my jaw hanging open. “Watch me!”
She took one step, two, then three. Her mom stood ready to dive forward to save her. I shook my head, amazed.
Three steps and she reached the chair. Slowly she turned and sat in it. She looked up at me and smiled.
I was crying, I was laughing, I was hugging her, then remembering Mrs. Bishop and trying to say hi and how cool this was, and I couldn’t believe it and I was so proud of Zoey, and still I couldn’t believe it!
Zoey’s mom was welling up too. She took my hand and squeezed it. “We have an appointment with the hairdresser, and Zoey wants to buy new clothes.”
“My old ones are so not cool,” Zoey said. “Mom, why don’t you run along to the hairdresser and leave me here in the diner with Darina?”
“Are you sure?” Mrs. Bishop hesitated, but not for long. Like me, she thought she’d got her old Zoey back. “Yes, great idea—give you two time to catch up.”
And she went, stretching to a breaking point the invisible cord that attached her to the sick Zoey, constantly glancing over her shoulder as she walked on down the sidewalk to her hairdresser.
“Look at you!” I sighed to Zoey, following her whizzy wheelchair into Starlite’s, ignoring the fact that she was way too pale, way too thin, and her smile was only skin deep.
The waitress moved a chair to make space at a table. A few people stared.
“Yeah, look at me,” Zoey sighed. Once she let go of the surface smile, I could see the pain in her eyes. “Truth, Darina. How much will hair color and a makeover do for me?”
“It’s a start,” I said, letting my own smile grow sadder. “And the walking thing, Zoey—it’s amazing.”
“I promised Kim.” Zoey stared straight at me, refusing to take notice of the other customers. “I said I’d come to town at least once before my next therapy session.”
“And you did.”
“I’m here,” she agreed, but flatly. “And dying every step of the way.”
“It’ll get easier.”
“You think?”
The waitress brought our Cokes with the smile that you put on for people who have been unlucky in life. “Something to eat?” she asked.
Zoey shook her head. “I did it—I made Mom drive me in. But I’m a wuss. I had to text you to get me through this.”
“I’m glad you did.” Desperate not to patronize, I said almost nothing. I hoped my eyes were saying it all for me.
And it was going well. Zoey grew more relaxed, sharing with me that her physical therapist had given her new routines to work on, when Matt Fortune, Lucas, and Jordan walked in.
God give him the decency not to walk up to us! I prayed. Literally—I prayed. God didn’t hear me. For a split second, Matt looked thrown off balance then he crossed toward us. “Hey, Zoey, how are you doing?” he said, straddling a chair at our table while Lucas and Jordan hung back.
“Good, thanks.” Zoey whispered without seeming to move her lips. She attempted a smile for the other two but it didn’t happen.
“I’m shocked,” Matt went on. “Don’t get me wrong, Zoey, you look cool, but I didn’t expect to see you here.”
I wondered if he was hassling us just so that he could get back at me. It was a Matt Fortune type of action. Or maybe he had an even worse, deeper reason, directly to do with Zoey.
“Hey, guys, come and say hi!” he called to Lucas and Jordan. “I was telling Zoey, we didn’t expect her to be back so soon.”
As they came across I kept my eyes on Zoey, saw that she was trembling, and snuck her a look that asked if she wanted to get out of there. She gave me the smallest possible nod.
“Hi, Jordan, Lucas. Sorry we have to go meet Mrs. Bishop at the hairdresser’s,” I said, hurriedly pushing back my chair, flinching at the scraping noise. I made room for Zoey to exit.
“Well, Zo, you’re doing great.” Matt too made a big deal of making space. “So maybe, since you’re feeling better, you’ll be there Tuesday.”
I wanted the ground to open and swallow us. I looked straight into Matt Fortune’s weird flecked eyes and I wanted to kill him.
“Tuesday?” Zoey repeated in the smallest whisper. She obviously didn’t know a thing about it.
“Jonas’s memorial procession,” he explained. “It’s one year to the day. But then, I don’t need to tell you that.”
Zoey went straight back to her car. “Open the door,” she begged. “Darina, please open it.”
“I don’t have the key!” I was feeling sick to my stomach, desperately looking around for Mrs. Bishop. Matt was still in the diner with Lucas, while Jordan was running down the sidewalk, presumably to fetch Zoey’s mom.
Zoey sagged forward in her chair. “Why didn’t anyone tell me? Darina, how long have you known about this memorial thing?”
“Not long. Matt’s planned it. Everyone else just fell in behind him.”
“Why? It doesn’t make sense.”
“To honor Jonas—that’s the reason he gives. From anyone else it would be cool.” I crouched next to Zoey, gripping the arm of her chair.
“But not from Matt,” she breathed, shaking with sobs. “Matt didn’t like Jonas. He hated him.”
“Exactly.”
“When I see his face in my nightmares, that’s what it’s filled with—hate. It’s in his eyes, the way his mouth twists in a fake smile. That’s what I can’t bear.”
“Me neither.” All I could do was hold her hand.
“What is it with him? Why can’t he leave me alone?”
“I think he’s scared,” I said quietly—the first time I’d voiced it, even to myself. “Beneath the hate, he’s scared of what you know.”
Zoey looked up. For a millisecond I thought she’d remembered but then it faded. “Darina, you know how it feels when your heart breaks—the exact moment it happens?”
I nodded.
Her eyes were tragic and swollen; her mouth had lost its shape. She’d slipped beyond help. “I lost Jonas, and crack, my heart split in two. Like you with Phoenix.”
I put my hand over my mouth, but the sob escaped between my fingers in a warm rush.
“And you know the worst thing—the very worst?” Zoey waited for me to answer, knowing that I knew.
“You never got to say good-bye,” I whispered.
Mrs. Bishop came running and got Zoey into the car. “I trusted you to take care of her,” she told me bitterly.
I watched the car drive out of the mall. Then I walked away from Jordan who was admitting that Matt was wrong to blurt it out that way, he had no people skills, and that’s how guys were.
“He didn’t plan to do this to Zoey,” she called after me.
“You have no idea what Matt planned,” I yelled back.
My heart was racing; I was overcome with sorrow. “Zoey did not need to know that!” I repeated out loud as I got behind the wheel and drove out of the lot. “Especially not from Matt Fortune.”The news had blown apart her shaky path toward a future without Jonas, like a landmine exploding beneath her feet. And he’d delivered it without caring what it would do to her, thinking only about himself. I am the leader of the grief procession. I wear leathers and ride Harleys. Everyone, follow me.
Zoey had almost died in that crash. She’d lost Jonas.
I drove fast out of town into the gathering dusk, reaching Turkey Shoot Ridge and turning left onto the back road just as the blue light of the neon cross began to glow.
As always, the force field on Foxton Ridge hit me hard. I was out of the car and heading for Angel Rock.The mountains were black against a purple sky and a million wings battered me, took my breath, bruised my racing heart. I didn’t care. I could fight through it, knowing what lay on the other side. It
’s me, Darina. I know I’m not supposed to be here, but let me through!
But the wings were strong, like a storm over my head, driving me back. I lost my footing and slid down a granite slope, landing in bushes, feeling thorns catch and tear at my skin as I crawled out. Then I sat with my hands around my knees, curled up on the mountainside, waiting for it to ease. Endless millions of lost souls, a storm of thrashing wings pressed down on me, and I cried for them in their desperate sorrow.
Through my tears I saw the death heads—many skulls surrounding me, appearing out of the shadows, swooping toward me as if their sightless eye sockets had the power to see—dark holes in the skulls above rows of grinning teeth. They came closer, closer, drawing me into the nothingness behind their eyes.
“Hunter!” I cried out to the overlord of the Beautiful Dead. I was almost sucked in, on the point of losing any grip on why I’d come and who I’d come to see. I shouted the one name that remained inside my head.
A tall figure appeared by Angel Rock. It strode toward me in a weird half-light, almost glowing like the cross on the hill.
“Hunter,” I gasped. “Make them stop.”
He strode through the storm of pounding wings, his long hair blown back as he crossed the smooth rock where I’d slipped and fallen. When he reached me and stretched out his hand, the death heads had gone.
“Stand up,” he said. As soon as I was on my feet he let go of my hand and gazed icily into my eyes, reading my reason for being there. Slowly he shook his head.
“Let me explain,” I begged. I gathered the scraps of strength I had left to keep my own gaze steady, in spite of the wings crowding around us. “You know how much I want to help Jonas and the others—I’ve proved it to you. But there’s Zoey too. She’s hurting. You have no idea—.”
“That doesn’t concern me,” Hunter interrupted. “You disobeyed me, Darina. Phoenix told you to stay away until we were through with Tuesday. You understand why.”
“I do. But I just met with Zoey—you know that too, don’t you? She was making big steps forward. Coming to the mall was a huge thing for her, it’s taken her a whole year. Then Matt destroys her all over again.”
“She’s young. Her heart will mend.” Hunter was still staring at me, searching for something I didn’t understand. He didn’t look angry anymore.
“It won’t mend,” I argued. “Not until she’s said good-bye to Jonas.”
It was a deal. Hunter would allow Jonas to pay Zoey a visit. He didn’t let me thank him, said he wasn’t doing it out of kindness—but because I was putting myself on the line for the Beautiful Dead and deserved some payback.
“When you leave here, go straight to Zoey’s place,” he instructed. “Jonas will come soon after.”
“Thank you,” I said anyway. “She’ll talk with Jonas but then he’ll zap her memory and she won’t recall a thing. Is that how it works?”
Hunter nodded. “She’ll be in pain. That’s why you need to be there.”
The pain—I’d forgotten about that. It made me shudder. But then I remembered that Bob Jonson and the other vigilantes had been through it and were still living and breathing. But then they were tough guys and Zoey had already been through so much…
“You thought it was simple,” Hunter said with a faint smile. “But it never is.”
I drove back and found Zoey in the stable yard with her two horses. The yard was brightly lit by lights with sensors that responded to movement. She was in her wheelchair, close to Pepper’s door.
“Go find her,” Mrs. Bishop had told me when I’d rung the doorbell. “I’m sorry I yelled at you earlier, Darina. Zoey told me about Matt and the memorial procession. She’s so traumatized; I can’t begin to tell you. It’s…well, it’s affecting me.”
I’d told her that she had no reason to apologize. “It brings the whole thing back. The crash, losing Jonas—everything.”
“Her father’s gone to visit Dr. Valenti. He says the ceremony is inappropriate—the Harleys and all. He wants the school to stop it if it can.”
If I hadn’t made my pact with the Beautiful Dead, this would have been music to my ears. As things stood, my heart had almost stopped beating. So I’d gone ahead, through the hall into Zoey’s room and out through the patio doors into the stable yard. And she’d glanced at me and turned away with a shake of her head.
She didn’t want anyone in her world except the one person she couldn’t have.
I waited.
The sound of the wings began softly, enough to alert Merlin and Pepper, but not to startle them. They stretched their heads out over the stable doors. Zoey paid no attention. In a dark corner of the yard a shimmering shape appeared. The security light didn’t respond.
The shape was pale at first, glowing yellow and red around the edges and creating an effect like light seeping into the edge of a reel of celluloid film. Then Zoey sensed that someone was there. She looked with wide, shining eyes toward the emerging figure.
Jonas appeared. He didn’t move or say a word until she recognized him. Then he smiled.
Zoey’s eyes opened wider still and she leaned forward in her chair. She checked and double-checked that Jonas was really there.
“Hey,” he breathed, taking a step toward her. There was everything in his expression: shock at how sick she looked, sorrow at having lost her, but most of all—undiluted love.
“Jonas.” She breathed his name, gripping the arms of her chair and slowly raising herself until she stood unsteadily by Pepper’s door. Her face was transformed. This was a miracle happening in front of her eyes. “You came back.”
Jonas ran toward her and scooped her up. She flung her arms around his neck, sobbing and laughing at the same time. She buried her head against his shoulder while he held her close.
“Put me down—I’m too heavy,” she said after the longest embrace.
“You’re light as a feather,” he smiled, putting her back on her feet and stroking her hair. “You need to eat.”
Zoey put her fingertips to his lips. Then she spotted the tiny angel-wing tattoo on his neck. “This is new.”
He nodded. There was too much to explain—stuff that she was never going to remember, so he just held her.
“You left me all alone,” she whispered, her lips against his cheek. “Where did you go?”
It was agony for him. All he wanted to do was kiss her and keep her silent.
“I crashed the Dyna,” he reminded her. “I’m so sorry. I loved you more than my life.”
“Say that you love me now,” she pleaded. “That you won’t leave me again.”
“I do love you more than anything. I’ll never love anyone else.”
“I love you too,” she echoed.
“Remember Hartmann Lake?”
“The cool water. You, holding my hand.”
“One of your shoes slipped into the water.”
“You fished it out.” Zoey smiled with trembling lips. She held every diamond detail inside her head—how the reeds had parted and the shoe had floated like a canoe. “And now I’m holding you, I can see your blue eyes, feel your soft lips.”
“Eat!” he pleaded with her. “Don’t fade away.”
“I will.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
“Learn to walk again.”
“Watch me!” she whispered, loosening her hold of Jonas just long enough to take two steps away from him and two steps back. She smiled at him as if she’d walked a tightrope across the Grand Canyon.
“Be strong.” Jonas held her tight again. Over her shoulder he saw me standing quietly in the far corner of the yard. “Even when you don’t see me anymore or hear my voice, be strong.”
For a long time Zoey didn’t seem to move. But her hold on Jonas was slowly slackening, until she stood upright and stared at him. “You’re going away again?”
“I need to—I don’t have any choice. I love you, Zoey.”
“You won’t come back?”
r /> “I love you.” There was nothing else he could say. Nothing he could do.
Zoey’s lips moved to say the same three words, so quiet that even Jonas didn’t hear. Then she whispered, “Good-bye.”
Jonas left the yard the way the Beautiful Dead do—there one second as solid and alive as can be, then shimmering and fading away to nothing.
Zoey closed her eyes and I helped her back into her chair, holding her hand as her body turned cold and started to shake as if she’d been dragged half dead from a frozen lake. Her face was deathly white.
“It’ll be OK,” I murmured.
Her head fell back against the chair, exposing her long neck, thin and delicate as a bird’s. Her eyes rolled under lids threaded with deep blue veins.
“Hold on,” I pleaded, scared to death by her shallow breathing. “It’ll soon be over.”
Zoey arched her back and clung to my hand, still trembling but starting to make her eyes focus on her surroundings. She turned her head toward me and spoke my name. “Darina?”
I nodded and breathed deeply. “Hold on,” I whispered.
“I can hear wings,” she said in a tiny voice. “They’re all around. And my head hurts. Where am I? What just happened?”
I was sworn not to explain, so I waited in silence.
“Unbelievable. I never heard so many wings—a great flock of birds—but I didn’t see them.” Zoey sighed and licked her dry lips. “I saw Jonas.”
I waited again.
“In a dream. No, it was more than an ordinary dream, it was a vision. Jonas, just as he used to be.”
I watched anxiously, stroking her arm.
“We were so happy. Unbelievably happy. Then we said good-bye. And now I feel totally different—not heavy anymore. I can’t describe it.”
“No need,” I told her.
“I don’t feel afraid,” she confided. “I know Jonas has gone away and he won’t come back. And I felt pain, but somehow I’m not alone anymore.” Color was returning to her face, she was breathing evenly.