“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 real 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 was growing more relaxed, sharing with me that her physiotherapist 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 towards 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’ 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 nauseous, desperately looking round 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 forwards 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 honour 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 sobbed. “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 while she sobbed.
“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 goodbye,” 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, 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 towards 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 on to 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 mountain side, 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 towards 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 in to 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 towards 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 round 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 so bad.”
“That doesn’t concern me,” Hunter replied. “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 d
estroys 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 goodbye 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 thing—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 rang 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 brings the whole thing back,” I’d said. “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.”
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 towards 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 towards 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 towards 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 again,” she pleaded.
“I loved—I 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 and saying you loved me.”
“One of your shoes slipped in to 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 do.”
“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?”
“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, “Goodbye.”
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 towards 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 goodbye. 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.” Colour was returning to her face, she was breathing evenly.
My face was wet with tears of gladness.
“I don’t hear the wings. They’ve stopped.” Zoey looked around the yard as if slowly waking from anaesthesia. “That was so amazing!”
“I’m so happy for you.” Use any words—a weight lifting, shackles falling away, sun coming out from behind the
clouds—that was what had happened to Zoey.
“I have my life back,” she breathed.
I slipped my hand into my jeans pocket and slowly drew out Jonas’ silver buckle. Always Stay True to the Core. I handed it to her.
She let it lie in the palm of her hand. Then, with a look of wonder, she raised it to her lips and kissed it.
11
Then there was the normal, everyday stuff to get through.
Laura told Jim what Matt had done to me in Starlite, and Jim went round to see Charlie Fortune—the only family Matt had in Ellerton. He came back with Charlie’s promise that Matt would back off from now on.
I loaded my thanks with sarcasm, a. Because I can take care of myself, and b. Because Jim’s ploy wouldn’t work. In fact, it was guaranteed to make Matt even meaner than before.
On Sunday word got round that Mr. Bishop had called on Dr. Valenti to try and stop Tuesday’s procession, but it turned out the principal had no powers beyond the school gates. “What the students do in their own time is down to them,” was the message. And he’d suggested that Zoey’s dad should talk to the sheriff, to check on the traffic situation to see if Matt’s motorcade was breaking any laws. Which shows the limits of II Duce’s imagination, but it didn’t help the Bishops.
Oh, and then there was Logan.
He came to my place late on Sunday afternoon, minus the negative signals he’d been giving off lately and more like the old, chilled Logan. We sat out on the porch like we’d done a million times before.
“Aren’t you going to ask me if I did my homework?” I kidded. “Or if I checked the oil gauge in my car?”
“Yeah, I’m a pain in the ass,” he sighed, stretching out his legs and sitting back on the creaky swing. “I’m hard to live with, huh?”
“We’ve had a few crossed wires lately,” I agreed, happy that he was keeping his distance. I’d slept late and stayed indoors, trying to recover from the day before. So I wasn’t wearing mascara, and I was slopping around in old jeans and a T-shirt.