“Phoenix—ask Darina to dance, why don’t you!” Hannah yells across the room, above the music, loud enough for everyone to hear.
I see fear freeze his features, and I almost die. “Ignore her!” I mutter.
“I don’t dance,” he mumbles.
“Me neither.”
“You want to get out of here?”
Surprise question—delayed response. Eventually I nod and follow him out of the bright, noisy house onto the dark, silent street.
“Walk?” he asks.
So that’s what we do, Phoenix and I, on that first night—we walk the streets of Ellerton.
At first we don’t say a lot, but Phoenix takes my hand, glances at me, grins, walks on. My heart thumps in my chest, I can’t believe what’s happening. And it’s weird; I remember so well the physical sensations—the first shock of his fingertips brushing my wrist, the surge of adrenaline when he held my hand, the coolness of the night air against my hot skin—without recalling exactly what we said. I remember shop windows brightly lit, dark avenues of trees, pools of lamplight. And the loveliness of Phoenix close up.
“I waited a long time to do this,” he tells me at last, leaning in, tilting his head to one side, kissing me.
That first kiss, that soft, warm touch. Warm. Alive.
• • •
Zoey and I were clear of the city streets, driving up the interstate into the mountains. “Come back to me, Darina,” she urged. “Honestly, you’re strong. You can get through this.”
I leaned my head back against the headrest, watched the wiper blade swish to and fro. “I’ll tell you one thing that really is weird, and that’s the way our friendship has switched around. It used to be me comforting you.”
Zoey smiled as she pulled up at the roadside shrine to Jonas—a small pile of faded roses and lilies. She turned and reached back to pick up her crimson rose, stepped out of the car, and placed Jonas’s flower beside the others.
“That’s what friends do,” she replied. Soft rain fell on the rose. “You took care of me. Now I take care of you—simple.”
• • •
Half an hour later I pulled up outside Kim’s office, guarding myself against the old temptation to sit in the oatmeal-colored chair and confess everything. I’m over that, I thought. The Beautiful Dead are real. I want to spend every last moment I can with Phoenix.
am seeing kim, I texted Laura then turned off my phone.
I walked up the path lined with low, clipped hedges, through the glass doors into Kim’s primrose yellow room.
I never met any professional as good at her job as Kim Reiss—not teachers, doctors, anyone. She sits in one chair, me opposite, with a low coffee table in between. Today there’s a glass bowl filled with small rocks and pebbles on the table, obviously there for a reason. Don’t get me playing silly games, I think sullenly.
Kim only smiles at me, and I’m clay in her hands. She can wipe away my suspicion and mold me any way she wants. “I want you to choose some stones,” she explains. “Find one that fits your mood right now.”
I’m feeling calm so I choose a smooth cream pebble. I weigh it in my palm.
“Now choose ones that fit other aspects of the way you feel. Tell me what they represent.”
For a second I’m backing off again, telling myself no, I’m not playing. Then I glance up at her. She has clear gray eyes, a long face with a mysterious scar on her cheek, a mouth where a gentle smile hovers. I cave in. OK. This tiny white stone is me when I’m scared, this sharp black lava stone is for when I’m angry and blaming myself, this crystal quartz with the light reflecting from it reminds me of Phoenix…I set them in a row on the low table.
“Pick up the small white one,” Kim tells me. “Describe it to me.”
“It’s me when I’m scared. You wouldn’t notice that it has a hole right through the middle.”
She looks at me, waits for more.
“I put it back in the bowl, and it easily gets lost.”
“You think people don’t see that you’re frightened?”
I blink and look out of the window. “I don’t let them.”
“They see anyway,” Kim says gently. Then she moves on to my big black guilt-and-anger stone.
• • •
All of which leaves me feeling like I matter until I walk out to the parking lot and bump into Jim talking to Henry Jardine.
Jim’s job is to sell and fix computers. He’d been working in an attorney’s office next door to Kim. I just have to glimpse my stepdad for the big old black stone to come hurtling out.
“Are you checking up on me?” I muttered. “I already texted Laura to say I kept the appointment.”
“How did it go?”
I shrugged then switched on the smile for the deputy sheriff. “Hey, how are you doing?”
“I’m good, thanks. I was telling Jim here about a fly-fishing contest in June. It so happens I’m carrying a spare entry form in my car.”
While Jardine went off to get the form, I insisted on letting Jim know that my session with Kim was a success.
“We played with pebbles.”
“Pebbles?”
“Yeah, and rocks.” Let him think that Laura paid good money for preschool activities. The deputy sheriff was soon heading back with a sheet of paper, and I was already out of there.
“Darina, before you go, I want to give you and your dad the latest news on Foxton,” Jardine said, real casual.
Ignoring the factual error over the relationship between me and Jim, I hit the mental brakes and slammed into reverse on my decision to leave. “What do you mean? What happened?”
“Hey, nothing exactly happened—not yet. But I’m letting people know that I drove out there with Sheriff Kors.”
I tried hard to keep my voice steady. “You did?”
“You know how it is—they say a new broom sweeps clean, don’t they? Danny is picking over recent big events in town, studying the deaths of the kids from Ellerton High. He’s been listening to rumors about Foxton Ridge.”
“Same old, same old,” I muttered. I was expecting Beautiful Dead wings in the air above my head any time now—Hunter’s way of warning me to take extreme care. “I guess you and Sheriff Kors came back empty-handed.”
Jardine studied me closely. “Kind of. For some reason we both felt a little shook up afterward. It sure is pretty up there though.”
“I like the place,” I admitted. Jardine already knew I spent time on the ridge, so I wasn’t giving anything away. So far, no wings—I must be doing OK.
“Laura and I wish Darina didn’t visit,” Jim butted in. “It’s too far out of town. And they say it’s haunted.”
“They? Who’s they?” I laughed.
“We didn’t see any ghosts.” Jardine seemed to agree with me, thank God. “It’s kind of windy up there—you get weird weather. And those stories mess with your head if you let them.”
“Not with mine,” I insisted.
“Well, it’s not just the rumors,” Jim went on like a dog at a bone. “We worry there might be squatters—undesirables, lowlifes.”
I glared at him. Drop the topic!
“No ghosts and no squatters either,” Jardine reported. “We found campers down at the Government Bridge campground and a couple of hikers up by Angel Rock.”
“Happy now?” I asked Jim.
“But I agree with your dad—it’s not a place I’d be comfortable for any kid of mine to visit,” the deputy sheriff added.
Thanks, Henry!
“It’s too far off the beaten track, like you say, Jim. And, ghosts or no ghosts, it is kind of spooky. We didn’t see any sign of civilization out there, but we thought we heard a door bang in the wind, maybe heard voices…”
“What did I tell you?” Jim crowed.
“We could’
ve sworn we heard them,” Jardine said, all the time keeping his eyes fixed on me. “I’m thinking maybe Danny will want to take another drive out there before too long.”
I swallowed hard, said nothing. Hunter, are you listening to this?
“What do you think, Darina? Should the sheriff pay a second visit?”
“I really couldn’t say.”
“You never came across the voices, a door banging—nothing like that?”
“Nothing.”
“No campers, no hunters holed up in an old shack hidden in the valley?”
“No.”
Jardine nodded briefly then turned to Jim. “You want my advice? I’d say keep Darina away from the place—at least until Danny checks it out with the National Forest people.”
“I hear you,” Jim said.
Now I was out of there fast, heading for my car. These guys thought they had the right to restrict my movements. How old did they think I was, for Christ’s sake?!
• • •
One bad thing can lead to a good. I would never have headed for the mall if I hadn’t have wanted to avoid the conversation at home with Laura and Jim, which would go like this:
Jim: Darina, take Henry Jardine’s advice—stay away from Foxton!
Laura: You hear, Darina?
Jim: Answer your mom when she asks you a question.
Laura: Stay away from Foxton, please!
Jim: Else we’ll take away your car keys. We’ll ground you!
Not so much a conversation, more a set of orders shrieked into my ear.
So I cruised the parking lot at the mall to give them time to wind down after Jim’s talk with Jardine.
And that’s when I got lucky and ran into Jacob Miller a second time.
I saw him from a distance, climbing into the backseat of an old black Chevy. He didn’t notice me, and the Chevy driver didn’t give me more than a couple of seconds to identify the passenger sitting next to him in the front—a younger kid with light brown hair. I caught only the profile, but it was definitely enough to recognize Zak Rohr.
Of course I tailed them.
It’s not easy to stay incognito in a car as bright red and shiny as mine. I had to hang back and hope the Chevy driver didn’t check his overhead mirror too many times as he left the parking lot and headed out of town toward Forest Lake. Luckily it was rush hour, and there was plenty of traffic.
We drove for ten minutes, stopping at lights, cruising past the KFCs, Cracker Barrels, and Dunkin’ Donuts lining the route. Then the Chevy turned off to the right into a district where old trailer homes were scattered among the pine trees and where broken trucks without wheels stood on piles of bricks and skinny dogs barked in dirt yards.
Great neighborhood, I thought, watching as the car I was tailing pulled up outside a derelict trailer and the four occupants stepped out. I decided to park out of sight a hundred yards back then approach on foot through some trees.
Up ahead I heard Taylor and Jacob telling Zak to relax and take it easy. “What’s bugging you, dude?” Taylor wanted to know. “We’ve been here a hundred times. The place is a dump—no one has lived here in a long time.”
“Yeah, I know.” Zak seemed to hang back as the driver went ahead, carrying a blue sports bag into the trailer.
From behind a tree I spotted Zak still nervously checking things out.
“Zak, you want a beer?” Jacob called from inside.
Buying and consuming alcohol—not one of those kids was legal, except maybe the dark-haired driver, who looked twenty, maybe twenty-one. And I worried what else might be in that bag.
“Sure,” Zak replied, finally following them inside.
I crept closer, only stopping when the car driver came back out carrying a can and a white plastic chair. He set down the chair and sat, legs sprawled wide, taking long swigs at his beer, giving me plenty of time to take in his round baby face, full lips, and stringy black hair.
Soon Taylor emerged, carrying a small plastic envelope. “Hey, Nathan, what’s the street value on this?”
“Plenty.” Baby Face was quick to take the packet from Taylor and stash it away in his pocket. “Listen, I only carry the stuff from point A to point B for my brother. I don’t go into value.”
“So how much does Oscar pay you?” Taylor sat on the trailer step, only to be shoved out of the way by Jacob, who threw an empty can down in the dirt and began to kick it around. Zak stayed inside—I could just make him out through the filthy window.
“Plenty,” the driver, Nathan, said again.
Nathan. Finally the name got through to me. Nathan. The Chevy driver was the kid at the gas station on the night…
So it’s a common name, but my gut feeling was that I wasn’t mistaken.
And Oscar. You don’t find too many Oscars in a town like Ellerton. The only one I knew was Oscar Thorne, the drug dealer who’d been sitting at a table near me in the coffee shop at the mall when my best friend Summer walked into a hail of bullets.
The driver of the Chevy was Nathan Thorne, Oscar’s younger brother. And the white powder in the packet stuffed into his shirt pocket was a class A narcotic.
I must have been careless. The tree I hid behind left colorful bits of me in view—my blue patterned shirt, flashes of silver jewelry. Anyhow, Nathan Thorne suddenly spotted me. He stood up, tipping the chair against the trailer as I turned to run.
I sprinted back through the trees, skirting around low thornbushes, almost tripping, lunging forward, regaining my balance, and running on. Behind me, Nathan yelled at Jacob and Taylor to cut me off.
I could see my car parked on the road, maybe twenty yards away. Nathan was crashing through the undergrowth, gaining on me, and I felt the way a deer must feel with hunters in pursuit—heart pounding, lungs sucking in air, my whole system flooded with fear.
Taylor and Jacob had followed orders and cut down onto the road, planning to reach my car before I did. It was neck and neck. Ten more steps, and then five—I arrived with seconds to spare, turned on the engine, sped away, making zero to sixty in four seconds flat. If Taylor and Jacob hadn’t thrown themselves sideways, I would have driven right through them.
I pointed my car for home and left them standing—Nathan, Jacob, and Taylor by the side of the road, Zak watching from among the pine trees.
Henry Jardine takes his job seriously. He truly cares about the Ellerton community and the people he serves.
That’s the reason he was waiting for me at my house after he came off duty, long after it grew dark. He was out of his uniform, having coffee with Laura and Jim in the kitchen. When I came in, he stood up to greet me and take me out onto the porch.
“It’s you I came to see,” Henry insisted, sitting on the swing and looking up at me.
“Why? What did I do?”
“Relax. You’re not in any trouble. I just know there’s an issue between you and your folks, and it’s been bothering me. I have a daughter your age, did you know?”
“No.” Even though I was dead tired, I kept up my guard.
“She’s at school in Forest Lake, thank God.”
“Why thank God?”
He tapped the seat. “Sit, Darina. I do thank Him every day that Anya isn’t a student at Ellerton High. Parents here—I can’t even imagine the stress.”
I sat down heavily then nodded.
“And you kids. After Jonas, Arizona, Summer, Phoenix—you all must get to wondering who’s next.”
“You missed out Logan,” I reminded him. I don’t often speak Logan’s name because his dying and the way it happened hurts me almost as much as whenever I think about Phoenix.
“Yeah, Logan Lavelle. Add him to the list.” Henry sighed. “What I’m saying, Darina, is that it might look like your folks are taking a tough line over Foxton, but you can see why they do.”
“Y
eah, and I need another lecture.” I closed my eyes and set the swing in motion. “I don’t know why you’re all so hung up on that place.”
“Are we? Yes, I guess we are. Including you, Darina. Weren’t you up there when Logan had his accident? Yes, you were the one who drove him to the hospital. No need to say anything if that upsets you. But last fall, I hear you were on the ridge the day Arizona Taylor’s grandmother fell from her horse. And there have been other times, too.”
We swung slowly to and fro—the chains creaked. “So? I like it up there—away from…everything.”
“And that’s it? Because I wouldn’t like to think you were getting sucked in by the rumors, that you go ghost hunting in that wilderness.”
“Please!” Suddenly my brain clicked into overdrive. I opened my eyes and slammed my foot onto the boards to stop the swing. “If you really want to know, I drive out to Foxton for a school history project. I’m researching the old cattle ranches of Shepherd County.”
“Cattle ranches,” Jardine echoed, running a forefinger down his thick mustache.
“Before the National Forest bought up the land and planted trees, this county made money on the back of cattle grazing.” Before I knew it, I was totally into my story, trying to convince Jardine that my interest in Foxton was legitimate.
“That’s true,” he agreed. “You wouldn’t know this, but I’m ancient enough to remember the last ranchers. They were already old-timers when I knew them in the 1960s and ’70s, with memories going back to the early 1900s. It was a tough life, bringing in steers from those mountains. The ranchers lived rough, rode all day, slept under the stars.”
Satisfied with the way the conversation seemed to have drifted, I set my mind on quizzing Henry. “So there were ranch houses in the valleys back then?”
“Even as far out as Foxton Ridge. That’s what I told Danny Kors the day I took him out there. Log cabins and shacks, probably gone now. Nature has a way of claiming back her territory, but maybe there are still a few old barns hidden among the trees.”
“Did you ever hear of a rancher out at Foxton by the name of Hunter Lee?” I asked.
“Hunter Lee. You came across him in your research?”