Phoenix (5 page)

Was there another way? Did I have to drive straight to her townhouse in the row squeezed between the cinema and the computer repair centre, 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 to 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 cinema. 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 car park, on the waste land 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, round 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 analysing what was still wrong with me and what they could do to fix me. ‘See you tomorrow,’ I told them.

I crossed the tarmac and turned the corner, taking a deep breath before I walked down the row then swung through the gate into Sharon Rohr’s back yard. 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, 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 for ever, 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, almost turned and ran.

‘No,’ he stammered. ‘I know it’s not. I’ve asked people in the neighbourhood. Phoenix was mixed up in things he shouldn’t.’

‘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 any more. They went out nights instead of doing school work, 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 excluded 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 school work, 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 called 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 for ever.

After Sharon said this and the guilt had time to hit, events moved fast. Footsteps came running down 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 towards the hallway, where we found Sharon still trying to persuade Michael to leave.

It wasn’t working – Michael was heading upstairs towards 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 had tipped forwards 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 round 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 towards 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 round. 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. We all stopped struggling, yelling, even breathing and stared at Zak.

His eyes were wide; he drew jerky breaths.

Calmly Michael broke free of Brandon and stood up, blood dripping from his arm. He took two steps towards

Zak. ‘Son, put the knife down.’

Zak gasped, looked confused, glanced at the knife then dropped it like a hot coal. It clattered to the floor.

Sharon darted forward to pick it up. Silently Michael turned away, stepped past Brandon and out of the front door.

I followed him. There was no point staying to explain. No point at all.

Chapter 4

I
was halfway across the cinema parking lot when Zak Rohr caught up with me. He came with a message from his mom.

‘Tell Dad to stay away from the house,’ he warned. ‘Mom means it about calling the cops. Next time she won’t be fooling.’

I didn’t slow my pace, just kept on walking.

‘You hear me?’ Zak insisted. ‘You and Dad need to stay away from us!’

‘Tell him yourself,’ I snapped. ‘I don’t even know the guy!’

For a second Zak hesitated, giving me the chance to reach my car and open the door. But then he ran towards me and grabbed the door handle, resisting my attempt to slam it behind me.

I tugged hard and won the battle. With the door finally
shut, I turned the ignition and was already moving off when Zak vaulted in beside me. He landed neatly in the passenger seat and grabbed the steering wheel. As the car veered towards a row of parked cars, I slammed on the brake and squealed to a halt half a metre from the back of a Ford truck.

‘Are you crazy?’

Zak kept his hand on the wheel, gripping it tight – the hand that two minutes earlier had been brandishing the knife. ‘Is that true? You didn’t hook up with my dad?’

‘I met him once – early today. That’s it.’

‘So why visit the house with him?’

‘That wasn’t planned, it happened by chance. He and your mom were already fighting when I showed up, remember.’

It took a while, but gradually Zak realized I might be telling the truth so he relaxed his hold on my steering wheel. ‘So again – why the visit?’

‘I wanted to talk to your mom about Phoenix,’ I admitted.

He shook his head, raising his hand like a traffic cop. ‘Uh-uh.’

‘Not a good idea?’

‘Don’t even go there.’

For a while we sat in silence, the car slewed at an angle
and looking like it had been abandoned between two neat rows. I realized that dusk was falling and was glad that the queue for the movie had disappeared. At least Hannah, Zoey and Jordan wouldn’t be witnessing this. ‘Sharon blames me,’ I muttered. ‘I heard what she told Michael – if it wasn’t for me, Phoenix would still be alive.’

‘She gave him the story about Phoenix running late?’ Zak’s eyes narrowed. His mood had altered suddenly, from crazy, out-of-control kid to been-there, got-the-T-shirt cynic. It made me look him in the face for the first time.

‘She said that was how the fight started – Phoenix pushed a kid called Nathan out of the line at the gas station because he was in a hurry to see me. That was the flashpoint.’

‘The gospel according to Brandon,’ Zak muttered, opening the car door and putting one foot on the tarmac.

I grasped at a straw of hope. ‘You’re saying it’s not true?’

‘I’m saying you don’t listen to everything Brandon says.’ He was out of the car, flipping up the hood of his sweatshirt, shooting one last glance in my direction as if he almost took pity on me and wanted to make me feel better.

‘Right. So what are
you
saying, Zak?’

‘Maybe that wasn’t exactly the way it was.’ His voice
was hardly audible as he turned to walk away.

I jumped out and followed him, grabbed him by the arm. ‘And you know different? How come?’

‘Because I was there,’ he admitted before he ran off. ‘I saw the whole thing – the start of the argument, who was there, who said stuff, who joined in … everything.’

‘You were there?’ I called after him. ‘So you know how Phoenix died?’

My question hung heavy in the air as Zak sprinted between the rows of cars. Somewhere way down on East Queen Street, an ambulance siren began to wail.

Ever since I first went out to Foxton and found the Beautiful Dead, some part of me has wished it could be over. For twelve whole months I’ve fought for them with every atom of myself – for Jonas to be released and to give Zoey her life back, for Arizona and Raven, her damaged and gifted kid brother, for pure-hearted Summer who lived for music.

I do it – I rescue them and set them free, yet my heart doesn’t beat smoothly. In my mouth I carry the taste of death and ashes.

In the end there’s no one to turn to. I see myself walking a hard, straight road to nowhere. The trees are burned and black, the steep hills and rocky horizons are desolate.

‘It’s a dream,’ Phoenix whispers, and I wake.

It was the middle of the night, my window was open and the white curtains billowed towards us.

Phoenix lay down beside me. ‘There is no road. You’re not alone.’

For a while I said nothing. I thought back through the day just gone to the fight in Sharon’s house, to the knife in Zak’s hand, the broken mirror and the blood running down Michael’s arm.

I recalled the way Sharon had looked. In the street, in a room full of people hers is not a face you would normally notice – she has small, tight features, her grey eyes are heavy-lidded and guarded. But today in her hallway, she was different. Lit up by anger, with colour in her thin cheeks, her jaw and mouth set in firm lines, she seemed stronger than her ex-husband and her two sons, for all their muscle.

‘All her life, that’s the way she’s had to be.’ In the dark, lying beside me, Phoenix read my mind.

‘It’s no good – no way will she talk to me now.’ I sighed. ‘You should tell Hunter what happened. Tell him we have to think of another plan.’

‘He wants to know what Zak told you,’ Phoenix whispered.

I rolled and reached across him to turn on the lamp.
The soft yellow light cast deep shadows across his pale, beautiful face. ‘Who did he send to spy on me this time?’

‘Dean. He saw you and Zak leave the house but he couldn’t get close enough to hear.’

Biting my bottom lip, I lay back against my pillow and stared up at the ceiling.

‘Did Dean tell you how come Michael left the house covered in blood? How Brandon got the cut on his face? Did he tell you about Zak and the kitchen knife?’

This was all news to Phoenix. He put together the pieces and jumped to the wrong conclusion. ‘You’re saying that Zak—’

‘No, don’t panic. Michael and Brandon fought. They broke a mirror. There was glass everywhere.’

He swallowed hard and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed so that his back was to me. ‘Darina, if you want to give up on me and my lousy family, I won’t blame you.’

I sat up beside him. ‘They don’t do too much talking, do they?’

‘The Rohrs have short fuses,’ he admitted. ‘No one stops to think.’

‘Or listen to what other people have to say. And I thought my family was bad that way.’ I turned to catch Phoenix in profile, head down.

‘Some days it was like living in a war zone,’ he muttered. ‘First, when I was a little kid, my dad and mom were always fighting. Then it was Brandon and Mom. As soon as I grew old enough, aged ten, I took every chance I could to walk out of there. I didn’t care where, just so long as I didn’t have to stay in the house.’

Little lost kid roaming the streets
. ‘Hey, look at me,’ I whispered. Phoenix didn’t respond. ‘Look at me!’

Slowly he turned his head. ‘I guess Mom told Dad a lot of bad stuff, back at the house?’

I nodded. ‘She wanted to know where he was when Brandon went to the correctional facility, when you got excluded from school in Cleveland …’

‘You heard it all?’

‘It’s OK. It doesn’t make any difference to the way I feel.’

‘Sure?’ There was a knot of doubt between his eyes, as if he was waiting for me to back off now that I knew the worst about him.

I studied his face. ‘Did you really punch a kid during a football game?’

Phoenix blinked and the frown deepened. ‘Luke Missoni. He threw the first punch – from behind. I went down in the dirt, and while I was down he kicked me in the ribs.’

‘They didn’t see that?’

He shook his head and ran his hand through his hair. The stray lock at the front swung back across his forehead. ‘Missoni lied about it later.’

‘I believe you.’ Relieved, I raised my hand and pushed the lock back again, deciding that this was the moment to release my guilt avalanche. ‘There’s something else. Sharon told Michael that the fight at the gas station started because of me. You pushed into the line ahead of a kid called Nathan because you knew I was waiting at Deer Creek. You punched him in the jaw.’

Tell me it isn’t true, let me off the hook. Give me another
version that doesn’t involve me, like the fight on the football
field
. But that would have been too easy – for Phoenix to have perfect recall of events leading to his death. The fact that he couldn’t was the whole reason we were here.

He looked down. ‘No way. Where did Mom get that idea?’

‘Nice try,’ I sighed. I didn’t have to be a mind-reader to know he was lying. ‘You don’t remember anything about the Nathan incident, do you?’

Shaking his head, Phoenix stood up and walked to the open window, where he gazed out at a black, cloudy sky. He seemed to be weary of a weight he carried, of the confusion, the fight, the blade, the blood.

‘Something else I learned today,’ I went on. ‘Zak told me he was at the gas station with you that night.’

Phoenix stood silently in the shadows.

‘Was he? Do you remember that part?’

The answer, when it came, was slow and unsure. ‘Let me think it through. I guess I remember leaving the house. For some reason I was late – Mom wanted me to run an errand, she needed cash from the ATM machine. Then she said would I drive Zak to a buddy’s house in Forest Lake? I didn’t want to do that – I was already running late, plus I was out of gas.’

‘Keep going,’ I urged as Phoenix ground to a halt. We were reaching the limit – soon everything would collapse into a huge black void. This happens with all the Beautiful Dead – when they get close to the point of dying there’s a big hole in their memory, as if the trauma of that sudden, violent moment of leaving this life turns their brain cells to mush. ‘Did you lose the argument with Sharon? Did Zak get in the car with you?’

He nodded. ‘I planned to get gas then drive him out to Forest Lake. Then it was back to Deer Creek to meet you.’

‘Gas first?’ We needed to be clear. ‘So Zak
was
there.’

‘I guess.’

‘But you don’t remember clearly? Listen, that’s OK. We
assume you two left the house together. But if Zak was there all along, why didn’t he say so before now?’

‘Because!’ Phoenix said quietly.

‘Keeping quiet was your mom’s idea,’ I guessed. ‘She wanted to keep his name out of it. It was bad enough that Brandon was being interviewed by the cops.’ Mother tiger protects her cubs. Quietly I went to stand beside him. We stared out of the window at the clouds drifting clear of the moon. ‘I’ll talk to Zak again,’ I decided. ‘Somewhere, deep down, I get a feeling that he’s on my side.’

Jacob Miller wasn’t a kid you would normally want to spend time with. As soon as he hit funky fourteen, he stopped washing and started shaving and piercing. He doesn’t change his clothes more than once a month and his hair is so short you can see every bump and dent in his Neanderthal skull. But next day I went looking for him after school.

‘Jacob, I need Zak Rohr’s number,’ I began, skipping the ‘Hey, how’re you doing?’ and ‘Good, thanks,’ preliminaries. We were out in the school yard, close to the janitor’s office, huddled under an awning because the clouds from last night still hung low over the mountains and had turned to slow rain.

Jacob stared at me like I was the one who’d crawled from under a stone.

‘Zak’s number?’ I said again.

You couldn’t print his answer, only that it ended with the words ‘cradle-snatcher’. A couple of kids from his class were standing nearby and they let out croaky hyena laughs.

‘OK, but this is important.’ I kept my voice steady. ‘When do they let him back in school?’

‘Who’s asking?’ Jacob’s little gang gathered round, fixing on me as the after-school entertainment. I saw his sidekick, Taylor Stafford, lurking in the background. Remember – Taylor, Jacob and Zak were involved together in the small matter of arson earlier in the year.

‘
I’m
asking, Jacob. Now do me a favour, tell me where I can find Zak.’

‘That would be a no,’ Jacob grunted, sticking his fists deep in his low-slung jeans pockets.’

‘N-O, no,’ Taylor echoed, stepping forward and getting right in my face. Taylor is marginally less nasty than Jacob, but then that isn’t too much of a stretch.

I refused to back off. ‘Where does Zak hang out? Are you going to tell me or do I waste my time hanging out on his street corner until he shows up?’

I got a second unprintable reply then Zoey interrupted
our cosy chat. I guess she thought, rightly, that I needed rescuing from this bunch of gorillas.

‘Darina, you missed a great movie!’ she breezed from the driver’s seat of her shiny black SUV – a recent gift from her dad for coming through her surgeries and months of physical therapy. ‘Get in,’ she invited, leaning across to open the passenger door.

I didn’t want to disappoint her. Besides, Zak’s buddies were quickly sliding out of control with the abuse and physical intimidation. ‘Thanks,’ I sighed, sinking into the black leather seats.