“Don’t be sorry.” Drawing me close and tilting my face up toward his, his lips brushed mine.
“All I want is for us to be together—you know that. It’s all I ever wanted. Every time I step over, away from the far side, I ache for you. I try to picture where you are every minute of the day—what you’re wearing, what you might be doing. I think of you and Zoey sitting together in class, of you and Hannah listening to Summer’s songs…you and Christian playing guitar.”
“That’s pretty much how it is,” I murmured, my lips against his cheek as I picked up another unspoken message behind his words. “You know you don’t need to worry about me with Christian or Lucas or any of the other guys.”
“It’s not you I worry about. It’s them.”
“Explain.”
“OK, so right now Lucas has Jordan, but Christian doesn’t have a girlfriend. He’s a good guy. Maybe he looks at you and thinks, ‘It’s been tough for Darina. I could step in and be her rock.’”
“Christian!” We were talking Christian Oldman—the boxer, the car fixer, the all-round guy’s guy.
“It’s not impossible.”
“Yes—it is!” I smiled then kissed him again. “But thanks for being jealous!”
Phoenix closed his eyes for a while and seemed to relax. “I do know what I’m asking. Not even asking—just hoping.”
“I don’t want anyone except you,” I promised. “You can stop thinking about it. Now, do you want us to discuss what Hunter asked me to do?”
Phoenix opened his eyes then shrugged.
“Hey, Mr. Casual, do you want to know or not? I’ll tell you anyway. He said for me to drive back to town and talk to your mom.”
He stared steadily into my eyes. “I already know.”
“Yeah, of course.” I keep forgetting—you get yourself a Beautiful Dead boyfriend and telepathy is part of the package. They’re better at it than the brain scanners in any high-tech hospital, so you keep no secrets, whether you want to or not. “So Hunter said, talk to Sharon, ask her if the cops gave her more details about the way you died.”
Phoenix was still gazing at me, tracking every minuscule neural connection in my brain.
“I know—you’re thinking that’s not as easy as it might sound, since I’m not at the top of your mom’s list of favorite people.”
“There’s that to face,” he agreed. “How come it’s turned out that way?”
It was my turn to shrug. “It’s like she’s accusing me of something, and I don’t exactly know what. She just doesn’t like me, period.” I thought again of the times I’d tried to help Zak and been on the end of Sharon Rohr’s hard, ungrateful stare, of the dozen times she’d passed me by in the street.
Phoenix leaned against the side of my car, standing on one hip and kicking at loose stones with the free foot. “You have to understand, Mom never had things easy. She was young—just nineteen—when she married my dad. He promised a lot of stuff that he never delivered. Then he messed around with someone else, walked away, left her with three young kids.”
“I understand. I really do. But I think it’s more personal than that, more aimed directly at me. Maybe it’s connected with Brandon giving me the car…”
A pause for breath gave Phoenix time to pull me toward him and kiss me. “Listen,” I went on, “Hunter’s right about this at least—if anyone knows more details, it’s your mom. Are you OK for me to try and talk to her?”
“OK?” He looked unsure.
“What? Am I suddenly speaking a foreign language?”
This time Phoenix didn’t smile. “Did you stop to think, it hurts Mom big-time whenever she sees you? You remind her—”
“Of you?”
Phoenix nodded. “She knows I totally gave myself to you. She felt squeezed out of the picture.”
“I didn’t aim to do that,” I protested.
“It doesn’t have to be planned. It’s just what happens—any mother wants to hold on to her son.”
“I guess.” Feeling that we’d headed down a cul-de-sac, I changed direction. “You know what I often dream?” I asked.
He grinned. “You mean, the one where I didn’t die and we’re still together on the far side? Or the one where you believe we can cheat this twelve-month deadline and carry on the way we are forever?”
“That one.” I nodded and twined my arms around him. “Why not? We could run away—right now. Why don’t we?”
“You mean—drive in your red car, head west until we reach the ocean, live on a beach in California where no one can ever find us?” Phoenix put his arms around my waist and spoke softly into my ear, teasing and lulling me with the music of his voice.
“I’m not kidding,” I protested. “What’s to stop us from planning our escape?”
He pulled back and grew serious. “The world isn’t big enough, Darina. We’re in the you-can-run-but-you-can’t-hide scenario. Twelve months is all I get, no matter what.”
“We can’t even try?” I murmured. In my dream, Phoenix and I always found a place where the overlord couldn’t find us, where Phoenix cheated death and we were free.
He closed his eyes, drew a deep breath, then opened them again. “Don’t tempt me. And don’t think I wouldn’t love to do it, because I would—more than anything, believe me.”
Then, abruptly, he pointed along the ridge to where Dean was walking through the aspens toward us. “Our thirty minutes are up,” he said.
As I drove the interstate from Foxton to Ellerton, I rehearsed what I would say to Sharon Rohr. I want you to know that the new car was Brandon’s idea—I never asked him for it. It’s his way of keeping his promise to Phoenix that he would take care of me. And I hope you don’t think I ever wanted to come between you and Phoenix when he was…No, skip that. Plus, I’ve heard there are a few issues with Zak lately—maybe if I saw him, he would relate to me. Nope, too cheesy.
In fact, whatever I came up with, there were serious flaws, knowing as I did that Sharon would most likely answer the door, take one look at me, and close it in my face.
Was there another way? Did I have to drive straight to her town house in the row squeezed between the movie theater and the computer repair shop, or could I be more subtle—write her a note asking to meet up for coffee, or track down Zak and ask him to pass on a message?
Only ten days to go, I reminded myself as I drove between the sheer granite cliffs on either side of the highway, coming out of the mountains, through Centennial on the outskirts of town. Deciding in the end that the direct approach was best, I headed for the parking lot behind the movie theater. A big sci-fi action movie was showing, and a long line curled right around the back of the building and along one side of the parking lot, on the wasteland where they’d recently pulled down an old office block.
“Darina!” Zoey’s voice called from the middle of the line, followed by a cheery hey and a hi from Jordan and Hannah. “Come to the movie with us! We tried you on your cell phone. Where’ve you been?”
“Hey. I’ve been busy.” I smiled at Zoey—it was good to see her in town on a Tuesday afternoon, still too skinny for sure, but looking relaxed and, well, normal. And these days she was out of her wheelchair, walking with two sticks. “Sorry, I can’t join you.”
“Why, what’s so important?” Hannah acted like she thought it would do me good to see a blockbuster movie. “Give yourself a break.”
“Sorry, but no.” I was ready to walk on across the parking lot, around the back of the Rohrs’ house. The line edged forward.
“We can buy you a ticket,” Jordan suggested. “Do whatever it is you need to do, then come join us.”
“No, sorry.” Now I really was turning my back and walking away, knowing they would stand in line analyzing what was still wrong with me and what they could do to fix me. “See you tomorrow,” I told them.
I cros
sed the asphalt and turned the corner, taking a deep breath before I walked down the row then swung through the gate into Sharon Rohr’s backyard.
I saw the metal bench where Phoenix and I used to sit on summer evenings, noticed that no one had bothered to weed the small patch of garden below the kitchen window.
The door stood open, and I could hear voices from inside the house—a man’s and a woman’s. Then Zak burst out of the door, threw me a quick glance, and hurried past without speaking.
“Hey,” I said. But he still didn’t stop. I went up three steps and raised my hand to knock.
“Which part of ‘Please leave’ don’t you understand?” Sharon demanded.
A conversation was taking place out of sight, in the narrow front hallway. A stressed-out man’s voice replied, “Sharon, I only want to…listen to me, please!”
“You think you can walk in here asking for Phoenix’s stuff? No way.”
“I know how you feel, I understand.”
“No, Michael, you don’t. Not the first thing. See—I’m picking up the phone, I’m calling the cops.”
My hand was still raised, but when I heard the name Michael the knock didn’t happen. Realizing that Phoenix’s dad was the unwelcome visitor, I stayed where I was.
“All I want is to walk away with something that belonged to Phoenix,” he muttered. “A shirt, a bag, a book, anything. Why is that such a big issue for you, Sharon?”
Personally I could see why—the guy cheats on her then disappears for almost ten years, he doesn’t even make it to his son’s funeral, and now he shows up on the doorstep, begging for mementos. Then again, I’d seen him in the flesh and knew what he was going through.
And he’d shown me the photograph.
There was a gasp of anger from Phoenix’s mother.
I guess she threw something at her ex—maybe the phone. I heard it clatter to the floor.
“Michael, for years we had nothing—not even a phone number for you. So how in God’s name could Phoenix call to tell you he made the school football team, or his best buddy was hurt in a car crash, or his big brother got sent to jail?” Sharon hurled a whole tidal wave of blame at her ex. “Did you ever once think about any of that? How a kid needs a father, and needs him most in the bad times. Did you ever think of me dealing with the kids by myself, Michael? I had no one to turn to when Brandon got caught fighting in the street over some stupid girl and they put him in reform school. His little brothers were scared that they’d lost him forever, just like they lost their dad. Soon Phoenix starts to follow in Brandon’s footsteps.” She paused for breath and for him to take in what she’d just said. “You want to know more about your golden boy? That’s the main reason you’re here, right?” I heard Michael give a stuttering reply that I couldn’t make out.
“You think it’s all good news?” Sharon challenged. “Poor, angelic dead boy who never put a foot wrong!”
Ouch! I flinched and almost turned and ran.
“No,” he stammered. “I know it’s not. I’ve asked people in the neighborhood. Phoenix was mixed up in things he shouldn’t have been.”
“Just like Brandon.” Sharon’s sigh turned into a sob that caught in her throat. “Those boys grew taller than me, Michael. I don’t remember the exact time when I lost control, only one day I realized they didn’t listen to me anymore. They went out nights instead of doing schoolwork, stayed out late, got into more fights.”
Not true, not Phoenix! I wanted to step forward into the hallway to clean up Sharon’s picture of her second son.
But I didn’t because some kind of nasty curiosity had wormed itself to the front of my brain. What exactly was Phoenix supposed to be guilty of?
“It drove me crazy. That was why I moved the family back here to Ellerton—the boys were bad news up in Cleveland. Brandon was out of the correctional facility, but he couldn’t find a job. Then the school called to tell me that Phoenix had lost his cool and punched another boy during a football game—they suspended him for half a semester.”
“I’m sorry,” Michael told her. “I wish I’d known.”
“That is so feeble.” She groaned, sighing again and stretching the four simple words for maximum effect. “You wish you’d known that you had two kids skidding off the rails so fast no one could catch them? And I had to stand by and watch it happen, not once but twice.”
“What about Phoenix’s girl?” Michael asked.
“Darina.” A ton of scorn weighed down Sharon’s next sentence. “You want to hear that your son was saved by love? Is that it?”
No! Now I really had to step forward and stop her, before she said something that scythed me down and left me dead.
“I already spoke with Darina out at Foxton,” Michael told her. “We’re a year on from Phoenix dying, and the poor kid is still grieving.”
“I have news for you—Darina didn’t save Phoenix,” Sharon scoffed. She’d stopped her rant and had become cool and merciless. “You think she kept him focused on his schoolwork, away from the street gangs? Think again.”
I love him. He loves me. That’s enough.
“That’s not how it worked,” she explained to her ex. “You have to realize that Phoenix wasn’t really in love with Darina—or at least not in a healthy way. It was more like an obsession. That was his personality—he had an addictive streak. He craved Darina like a drug. He couldn’t be away from her for a single minute. He had to go wherever she went, do whatever she wanted him to do.”
A jolt of surprise shot through me, and I shuddered.
Phoenix’s dad tried to soften the picture. “That’s what it’s like when you’re seventeen years old—remember?”
“No, Michael—you’re not hearing me. Darina had a bad kind of power over your son.”
“What do you mean?”
Sharon paused, preparing herself before she handed him some important facts. “Darina was waiting to meet Phoenix out at Deer Creek the night he got stabbed. He stopped at the gas station to buy gas, and he was in too big a hurry to get to Darina, so he edged a kid named Nathan out of the line. There was an argument. Brandon happened to be hanging out there with his buddies. He saw the fight flare up. He warned Phoenix not to overreact.”
“Brandon says the fight was over Darina?”
I took a step forward, hesitated, felt the words hit like hammer blows.
“According to Brandon, Nathan told Phoenix that Darina would have to wait, that’s all. Phoenix flipped. He punched Nathan right in the jaw, sent him sprawling against a gas pump.”
“Other kids joined in?” Michael muttered.
“Nathan’s brother, Oscar, was there. He stepped in to help his kid brother then Brandon moved in to take care of Phoenix. One thing led to another—punching, kicking, yelling. Then more of the older guys from out of town showed up on their Harleys. That’s when the gas station manager called the cops.”
“Who were these older guys? What did they have to do with anything?”
“They were the ones with the weapons,” Sharon told Michael flatly, her voice fading to a whisper. “Oscar’s buddies. One of them pulled a knife.”
“I hear you,” Michael said after a long pause. “They hunt in packs. Phoenix didn’t stand a chance.”
“And if Phoenix had just waited in line instead of fixating on meeting with Darina at Deer Creek, he’d still be alive today,” Sharon said.
• • •
My fault. Totally my fault.
Try telling me it wasn’t, that no way did I plan for it to turn out the way it did. I won’t hear you. I’ll just remember what Sharon said. I’ll recall standing by the creek that night, impatient, looking at my watch, thinking, Phoenix, where are you? And I’ll blame myself forever.
• • •
After Sharon said this and the guilt had time to hit, events moved fast. Footsteps came running do
wn the alley, across the yard, and Zak and Brandon burst into the kitchen.
Zak must have warned his big brother that I was there, too—the second unwelcome guest along with their estranged dad—so Brandon didn’t act surprised. Instead, he took hold of my wrist and dragged me through the house toward the hallway, where we found Sharon still trying to persuade Michael to leave.
It wasn’t working—Michael was heading upstairs toward Phoenix’s old bedroom, to grab the memento he’d come for. And it was ugly. Sharon had clutched her ex’s foot and was using her full weight to drag him back. Michael was kicking out, but he had tipped forward and lay full length on the stairs. In one second, Brandon had leaped over his mother and taken hold of his dad from behind.
Michael was halfway up the stairs, trying to swing around to face Brandon, but he lost his balance a second time, and the two guys tumbled down into the hallway, where they wrestled on the floor.
Sharon yelled for them to stop then, seeing Zak, pushed him out of the way, back toward the kitchen. He crashed into me, leaving me in a heap on the floor while he sprang up and ran to wrench open a drawer by the sink.
Meanwhile Brandon and his dad were evenly matched—they rolled on the floor, grunting and swearing, Michael’s arm locked around Brandon’s throat as they thrashed against a flimsy hall table meant for keys and bags. The table went up in the air, making contact with the mirror above it, which fell down and splintered.
“Watch out—broken glass!” I warned. Already a cut on Michael’s forearm had begun to bleed. “Make them stop!” I yelled at Sharon.
Then Zak reappeared, knife in hand.
I saw the blade, long and curved—a knife for carving meat. And the scary look in Zak’s eyes.
Sharon wasn’t looking at Zak. Her back was to him, and she was treading over shards of mirror, stooping to wrench Brandon away from his dad. “Someone will get killed!” she shrieked. Blood was streaming from Michael’s arm; there was a cut on Brandon’s jaw.
“Zak’s got a knife!” I yelled.
Brandon and Michael looked up from the floor. Sharon spun around. Zak was walking down the hallway, wielding the carving knife in front of him like a sword, looking from me to his mom then down at his brother and dad.