Summer (10 page)

‘I don’t believe you!’ I groaned. I could see Hunter over Phoenix’s shoulder, a lock of long grey hair whipped across his cheek by the wind, his eyes fixed on me.

‘Summer doesn’t agree that Fichtner is your man.’ As Hunter came into the room, he must have given Phoenix the silent order to step back from me. I felt Phoenix’s body stiffen as he released me. ‘How about you, Darina? Do you stick with your serial-killer scenario?’

‘I do.’ Briefly I wished that Phoenix would stand up to the overlord, just once. Couldn’t he resist the order, even for a second?

Phoenix caught my thought and quickly looked down at the rug in embarrassment.

‘I’m sorry – I know how it is,’ I whispered.

He looked up and put on a smile for me, glanced towards Hunter and took another silent instruction to leave the room.

I planned to protest, but Hunter zapped that thought away. Instead I sat down by the fire in a resentful slouch.

‘I want you to go home and get some sleep,’ he told me. ‘You need to be up early, to follow up the alternative JakB theory.’

This focused my still-wandering mind and I waited for more.

‘You saw Summer’s killer?’

‘From under a baseball cap,’ I reminded him. ‘And he was wearing aviator shades.’

‘So you need to take a look at JakB. Is he too tall, too short, too heavy, too skinny?’

This made sense. ‘You’re right. He’s been hassling Hannah, not taking no for an answer. I expect he’ll show up again soon.’

‘Why not throw him some bait? Reply to him on Summer’s website, tell him you can get him a concert ticket.’

‘Fix up a meeting?’

‘Take a look at him from a distance. No need to get too close.’

‘OK.’

‘Meanwhile, stay in touch with Jardine and let him check out the Oscar Thorne deal.’

‘You reckon it’s too dangerous for me?’ Foolishly I imagined that Hunter was looking out for me in warning me away from the underbelly of Ellerton society.

He laughed. ‘I mean, let the cops do the work because they have a network of contacts, something solid to go on. Let them go ahead and interview Thorne in his prison cell.’

‘Doh!’ I pretended to beat my forehead with the flat of my palm.
Dummy, Darina, for thinking that Hunter cared!

‘Now go,’ the overlord instructed, opening the door again and waiting for me to leave.

Unbelievable! Hunter had forced me out on to the hillside in the worst storm this spring. Rain lashed down from the night sky, driving against me as I battled towards the ridge. My denim jacket was no protection and I was soon soaked to the skin.

Phoenix, for pity’s sake, lend me a hand! Somebody, help!

The more I leaned into the wind and rain, the stronger it seemed to grow. Water was rushing down the slope in rivulets, dragging loose pebbles with it. A gust of wind tore up a sapling and sent it crashing against the trunk of an older, sturdier tree. I thought I would never make it to the water tower, and when I did I found that the whole ancient, rusty structure creaked and swayed so much that I dare not take shelter. Instead, I stumbled on.

This will teach you a lesson!
I told myself.
In future, even if you suspect Hunter’s playing mind games, don’t ever think
about defying Hunter over the Marie and Hester thing!

It was pitch black, the heavens had opened, the wind was savage. I’d be lucky not to catch my death of cold.

I was under the stand of aspens, about thirty metres from my car when I spotted the other vehicle parked by the trees I usually used for cover. It was a small car, a Honda like the one Logan drove. I would hardly have seen it except that it was white. The wind tore through the leaves overhead, ripping into me with the force of a tornado. A branch snapped and fell to the ground, just missing the Honda.

Now I was divided – should I get in my car and drive the hell out, or should I check out the mystery vehicle? And how had Phoenix and Dean missed it when they were out on patrol? Did it mean that it had just arrived? If so, where was the driver?

Check it out
, I told myself, my heart in my mouth and searching for an explanation of why I was here in case it turned out that I needed one. I went unwillingly, I can tell you.

I got close to the white car, close enough to squint through the dark and check the registration plate.
Logan’s number!

I stood trying to absorb this fact. Logan’s car was parked at the end of the Foxton track where no one except me
and a few hunters ever came. It was night-time, the middle of a bad storm. Everything led to the conclusion that he’d followed me here.

And I thought you were over me
, I said out loud in a burst of anger.
We agreed I could never look at you that way.

Way back in the past, when I was looking for answers for Jonas, Logan and I had had this talk:

Him:
I love you, Darina.

Me:
But I love Phoenix.

Him:
Phoenix is dead.

Me:
I still love him. I’ll love him for ever.

It broke Logan’s heart for a while, but eventually I thought he accepted the way it was. Lately he was even dating Jordan, wasn’t he?

But this was definitely Logan’s car, no doubt about it. And it was empty. I opened the driver’s door to make certain, felt the wind almost rip it off its hinges before I managed to force it shut again. The rain hammered on the hood and ran in torrents from under the wheel arches.

So he’d followed me and Hunter. Maybe he’d been driving through Centennial at the point just after Hunter showed up, seen him sitting next to me, giving me a hard time over my unwelcome curiosity. And Logan had wondered who the hell Hunter was and what he wanted.
It would be typical of Logan to follow at a distance in case I needed him.

But where was he now? I raised my voice to bring him back to his car. ‘Logan, where are you?’

There was no answer, only the wind howling through the aspens, the rain drumming on to the roof and the hood.

And then another thought struck me. Was Logan the intruder Dean had heard?

No way. Phoenix said they didn’t find any far-siders
.

Maybe they did and he was lying. Anyway, maybe they set up the barrier, the force field to keep them out, just in case. Had Logan got caught up in that by mistake?

I felt my stomach wrench into knots as I left the car and staggered past the rock towards the top of the ridge. ‘Logan, it’s me, Darina!’

I was sure that was what had happened – the Beautiful Dead had thrown the beating wings and skulls at Logan, sent him crazy, zapped his memory clean and abandoned him to the storm. And it was my fault.

I reached a rocky ledge in the pouring rain, clung to a tree trunk as a blast of wind wrenched me off my feet. I watched as, twenty metres behind me, the same blast rocked Logan’s car from side to side.

I’m out of here!
A new thought struck me that I should
leave while I could. What reasons could I give Logan if he found me out here? Surely it was better to leave his memory of the whole incident zombie-wiped and let him find his own way home. But I couldn’t do it – he might be in danger and I couldn’t desert him. So I held on to the tree and yelled his name.

I was closer to him than I knew. I just needed to glance down ten metres to the foot of the ledge to see a body slumped against a boulder.

At first I thought it was garbage – a tent ripped up by the wind and tossed against the rock, a piece of tarpaulin from the back of a hunter’s truck. But no, I knew I was fooling myself. ‘Logan?’ I whispered as I clambered down the slope. I reached his side and bent over him, lifting his jacket collar clear of his face.

His eyes were open but I knew he was seriously hurt. ‘Don’t try to move,’ I whispered.

He closed his eyes, opened them again, as if he was checking that he wasn’t hallucinating.

‘It’s OK.’ I knew it wasn’t, even though there was no sign of blood. ‘I’m here.’

‘The wind,’ he murmured.

‘I know. You’re OK. Don’t move.’ I knew he couldn’t.

He lay on his back in the rain, looking up at me. ‘The wind.’

‘I know – it pushed you over the edge. Don’t worry, I’ll get you out of here.’

‘Or maybe I was pushed.’ He said this so faintly I thought I’d imagined it. Then he sighed and closed his eyes.

‘Logan, stay awake! We’re going to get out, you hear!’

His eyes flickered open. ‘The wind,’ he whispered again.

‘That’s right. It’s a bad storm.’ He looked so weak that I felt his neck for a pulse then leaned down to listen to his breathing.

He whispered in my ear. ‘Darina, I never wanted anyone except you.’

Donna and Iceman came to help me get Logan to my car. They didn’t speak as they appeared in their halos of silver light, they just made me stand to one side and lifted him as if he weighed no more than a feather. They kept him flat on his back and carried him on their shoulders, letting his arms hang down. He groaned as they set him down in the car.

‘Drive,’ Iceman told me before he zapped Logan’s mind clear of the last few minutes. Then he closed the door and he and Donna dematerialized into the darkness.

Panic squeezed my heart. Logan lay slumped beside me, his head fallen back against the hooped metal rest,
his eyes almost closed. I turned on the ignition and the wipers, reversed from under the trees, hearing the tyres crunch on the shale as I swung round to face the dirt road. ‘Hang on, Logan,’ I pleaded. ‘Talk to me. Stay awake.’

‘What did I do?’

‘You didn’t do anything. You got caught in a storm, you fell.’ I was on the track, trying to avoid the ruts and hollows. I had to get Logan to a doctor. He had to keep his eyes open. ‘What were you doing here?’ I asked.

‘I was out at Foxton with Lucas and some other guys. I saw you drive by.’

‘And you had to follow me!’ I cried.

My car hit a ridge, we rattled and rolled down the next stretch, but the necklace of Foxton lights came into view, and I told Logan we were almost on the highway. ‘Hang on,’ I pleaded. I would break any limit, drive through any red light to get him to the hospital.

Up ahead, the spray from passing trucks rose in clouds, caught in my headlights as I waited for a gap in the traffic. The yellow indicator light flashed on-off, on-off, lighting up Logan’s face and throwing it back into darkness.

He’d lost consciousness by the time we reached the hospital. His head had tilted towards me, his eyes were closed.

The paramedics came and took him out of the car. They stretchered him into the ER, hooked him up to machines, ran the first tests.

‘He’s going to be OK,’ I told a nurse under the bright lights.

He nodded. ‘You see the woman at the desk? Go talk to her. We’ll take good care of your buddy.’

They needed to know Logan’s name, she told me. How old was he? Where did his parents live?

I could see Logan through a glass partition. He lay under a green sheet, surrounded by machines and medics. Then they rolled screens around him.

‘Logan Lavelle,’ I told her. ‘No mother, only a father. They live on West Seventy-Ninth, it’s the street next to mine.’

Logan’s dad came to the hospital at two a.m. He’d been drinking at Mike Hamill’s house until the small hours, had arrived home to an urgent message that he should call the hospital. By the time I saw him in the corridor outside Logan’s room, he was halfway sober.

‘Mr Lavelle, my name is David Hoffmann. I’m taking care of Logan.’ The doctor rested a hand on his shoulder and led him down the corridor. ‘Your boy sustained a serious head injury in a fall. The scan shows
damage to the skull and some pressure on the frontal lobe of the brain …’

I sat there feeling sick in my stomach, trying to control my breathing. The lights seemed too bright, the floor too shiny. I put my hand to my eyes and covered them, until I heard the doctor come back with Logan’s dad.

‘We’ll do everything we can,’ he promised.

‘When can I see him?’ Byron Lavelle asked.

‘We’re running a scan. I’ll fetch you when we’re through.’

As the doctor disappeared down the corridor, Logan’s dad sat heavily beside me. He was dressed in his work clothes, with two days’ stubble on his chin. I noticed that the pointed Western boots he always wore were dusty and scuffed. I closed my eyes with a feeling of total hopelessness.

We got through to four-thirty a.m. By now Laura and Jim were both at the hospital with me. Jim had taken Logan’s dad to a family room on the sixth floor while Laura sat and held my hand in the corridor. ‘This is because of me,’ I told her.

She put her hand up to stop me. ‘Don’t talk. Save it for later.’

The hospital had already told us that they planned
surgery the next day. ‘We have a tube in there to drain fluid from inside the skull and ease the pressure. The scan shows a blood clot. He’s on anti-coagulant medication. We hope the surgery will remove the clot altogether.’

‘And if it doesn’t?’ Byron Lavelle had asked.

Dr Hoffmann had tilted his head to one side then shrugged.

‘Logan drove through the storm after me,’ I said to Laura. ‘He was scared I was driving into trouble.’

‘That’s Logan,’ she sighed. ‘Always looking out for you.’

‘He told me he never wanted anyone except me. Word for word, that’s what he said.’

Laura stared straight ahead, her face drained of colour. She didn’t ask me the obvious question, which was why was I out at Foxton in the first place? She didn’t say, ‘Poor Logan.’ She didn’t say anything.

9

T
he thing was, Phoenix had lied to me. He’d told me they hadn’t found any far-siders up on the ridge while all the time Logan had been there, searching for me. That was why he and Dean had set up the winged barrier. But Phoenix hadn’t given me those facts.

I sat in the hospital corridor, unable to erase the picture from my mind – Logan getting out of his car, leaving the shelter of the aspens and staggering onto the ridge. Logan battered by the wind and rain, and then the Beautiful Dead wings, followed by skulls crowding in on him, terror ripping into his brain. He would put up his hands and crouch down to protect himself, he would lose his balance and fall over a sheer drop. It would feel like someone had pushed him.

The fall – a mighty blast from behind, a moment of shock then everything in slow motion … the tipping
forward into black emptiness, the drop into thin air.

‘Come home,’ Laura pleaded with me. It was Tuesday midday. Logan’s surgery was due to start at one-thirty p.m.

‘I want to stay here.’

‘Listen to your mom,’ Dr Hoffmann advised. He was a young guy just out of med school – nervous, a little out of his depth. ‘Go home and rest up. Logan will be in theatre all afternoon.’

‘I’ll be here anyway,’ Byron muttered.

They took him off to the family room again where he could wait in peace.

‘Come home, Darina.’ Mom was begging me. ‘You can be back here when Logan comes round from the anaesthetic.’

I looked up at Hoffmann. ‘Can I see him before I leave?’

He nodded and showed me into Logan’s room, which was full of monitors flashing numbers and graphs that showed heartbeat, pulse rate, blood pressure, whatever.

Logan lay on the bed, eyes closed, with an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose. More tubes fed into his arm, plus they’d positioned stickers and wires over his heart.

‘Logan?’ I crept to the bedside and leaned over him.

‘Go ahead.’ The doctor encouraged me to speak. ‘There’s a chance he can hear you even though he’s in a coma. But don’t expect any response.’ He left me alone with the patient.

‘Hey,’ I breathed. ‘How are you doing? … They’re taking good care of you … You’re going to come through this …’

The machines beeped and flickered their vital messages across the screens. Logan lay totally still, his face drained of colour, his thick brown hair combed back from his forehead. I touched his cheek. ‘Stay with us, Logan,’ I whispered. ‘I need you, you hear?’

He died anyway – my Logan. My poor Logan died in the cold, dark night trying to help me. I couldn’t get my head around the fact that he was dead and I was alive – Logan, who should have had a whole happy, wonderful life ahead of him.

I pictured him sitting on his porch telling me a funny story, asking me about my day. There was the Logan grin, the kind eyes that never lied – gone for ever.

My Logan died.

I got up from the kitchen table and left the house, I walked
down the street to Logan’s place and sat on the porch step. Any moment now he would turn the corner in his white Honda.

I watched the guy from two doors down drive his Toyota truck on to the sidewalk. I saw kids walk home from school. Late in the afternoon Byron drew up at the kerbside. He saw me on the porch step but walked right past me into the house. After five minutes I heard the faint, pressurized fizz of a beer can being opened.

Before it grew dark, Jim came to fetch me home.

The world went on, I guess. I stayed in my room.

I spoke to Phoenix, wherever he was.
You didn’t tell me the truth. How can I ever trust you again?

I knew in my heart that I had done a terrible thing. I had caused Logan to die.

Hannah and Jordan called at the house.

I stayed in my room.

I didn’t want to see them. Christian texted the news that Logan’s funeral was fixed for Wednesday the twenty-seventh.

‘It’s been three whole days.’ On the Friday after Logan died Laura knocked on my door and came in. ‘You need
to start to make an effort – take a shower, get dressed.’

It felt like she was talking to me through a screen of clingfilm, opening her mouth to speak but not making any sense. I’d lost touch with time, with everyone around me and most of all with the Beautiful Dead.

‘Today is your session with Kim Reiss,’ Laura reminded me, already knowing that I wouldn’t keep the appointment.

‘How come the surgeons messed up?’ I asked her. ‘If they’d done their job, Logan would still be here.’

‘Honey …’ she began then trailed off with a sigh. ‘Here’s a fresh towel. I’ll turn on your shower.’

I took the shower on auto-pilot, changed into clean jeans and T-shirt, caught sight of myself and turned my mirror to the wall. When I went to the window to raise the blind, a face was staring in at me.

I gasped and stepped back. For the first time in seventy-two hours I escaped the net of the past and had a reaction to a real-time event.

The guy had staring eyes. His lips were mouthing words at me through the glass. He rattled his fist against it until I thought it would shatter.

I went and opened the window – first floor, remember. Staring-guy had stood on the roof of his car and used my window ledge to haul himself up. He’d grazed the knuckles
of his left hand doing it. ‘What the—’

‘Listen to me,’ he hissed. ‘You have to do something for me.’

The idea of prising the fingers of his bleeding hand away from the ledge entered my mind. I didn’t care that he would drop four metres to the ground. Then I noticed something else about him – namely his black T-shirt with the exploding skull motif.

‘I need to get into Summer’s concert,’ he snake-hissed –
S-S-Summer’s cons-s-sert.

Jeez, I went for the guy’s fingers big time. ‘Get the hell out!’ I yelled. ‘Jim, Laura, come quick!’

I couldn’t make anyone hear and JakB hung on. I stared at his twisted face – the too-close-together, pale-lashed eyes and long nose, the big Adam’s apple jerking up and down as he fought to cling to the ledge.

‘I’ll blow my brains out if I don’t get a ticket,’ he threatened.

Go right ahead, weirdo!
Right now I had no softer side for him to appeal to. I raised my bare foot and stomped on his fingers.

‘Summer means everything to me!’ he grunted. He’d let go with one hand but still hung on with the other. ‘She needs me there with her!’

I stamped down hard on hand number two, heard him
let out a phlegm-thickened cry as he fell, then the thud of his body against his car roof. Leaning out, I watched him slither to the sidewalk. He looked up in agony, holding his wrist and pleading with me to join him, but the last thing on my mind was running downstairs to continue my conversation with Summer Madison’s ‘number one fan’.

Next day, Saturday, Lucas came to the house in person and Jim let him in. The message was he wouldn’t leave until I came downstairs to talk.

I wasn’t ready, but Lucas sat it out, even after Jim drove to the supermarket. Hearing Logan’s friend beat out a rhythm on the kitchen table drew me down in the end.

Lucas had known Logan as long as I had. He was the one in the gang we kidded along with and sometimes made fun of, especially when he grew tall and gangly and seemed never to know where to put himself without knocking something over or banging into stuff. Plus, because he didn’t know how to dress other than in sloppy T-shirt and faded jeans, Lucas was not considered sexy or cool. In other words, I really liked the guy.

And I was shocked when I saw him sitting at the table, tapping his fingers. He looked like he’d been crying and was about to start again. I went and sat down by his side.

‘Say it didn’t happen,’ he begged.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

‘Darina, it did
not
happen.’

‘It did,’ I whispered.

‘When you found him – how did he look?’

‘He was awake. I told him he was going to be OK.’

Lucas swallowed hard. ‘Was he in pain?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘I told him a couple of times not to leave, but he wouldn’t listen.’

No, this is too hard
. The memory net was closing round me, pulling me back in.

‘He saw you drive by in the storm so he set out after you. A big bunch of us – Christian, Parker, Ezra, a few others – were hanging out in Christian’s dad’s cabin, waiting for the rain to stop. I said, “Stay here, dude,” but he set off after you.’

‘I know. Believe me, I couldn’t feel worse than I already do.’

Lucas stared at me for a while. ‘I do believe you, Darina. But Logan wouldn’t want that. One of the reasons I came here was to say no way would he have blamed you.’

‘Thanks, Lucas.’ Clumsy, clunky Lucas was the one trying to rescue me from myself. I reached out to stop his fingers from drumming, then held on to his hand.

He grasped my hand back, his long fingers wrapping
tight around mine. ‘The funeral’s Wednesday.’

‘I know.’

‘Logan’s dad has asked the guys to carry the casket. He wants the girls to play guitar and sing songs.’

‘Who’s organizing the music?’

‘Hannah and Jordan. They asked me to ask you …’

‘To sing?’

He nodded. ‘Yeah, Logan would love for that to happen.’

‘I’ll be there,’ I promised.

And we both cried in my kitchen until Jim came home with the groceries.

The song I rehearsed for Logan’s funeral service was Summer’s new song, ‘Time to Go’.

I pulled the slip of paper out of my jacket pocket, unfolded it and flattened out the creases. The words were perfect for the occasion: ‘There’s a hill / I’ll wait until / The stars appear / And the sky grows clear / Then it’s time for me to go.’ And the chorus: ‘I loved you so / But it was time to go / You spoke my name / I never came / ‘Cos it was time for me to go.’

I sang and played softly until my voice grew into the sounds and my fingers stopped fumbling with the notes. I practised all through Saturday night and the whole of
Sunday, ready to go into school on the Monday to perform it for Hannah and Jordan.

It was only the song that got me out of the house at last. I stepped on to the porch and the spring sun dazzled me so much that I had to put on my shades. I turned left out of the drive to avoid Logan’s block and made myself focus on getting to school for the midday rehearsal. I parked in the grounds next to Lucas’s black SUV.

Inside the building, I avoided eye contact with students and teachers, who greeted me with sympathetic smiles. Everyone knew it had been me that found Logan on Foxton Ridge, but nobody except Lucas and the gang who were at the cabin knew the details. I walked through the main block into the theatre.

Jordan spotted me at the top of the raked auditorium. I waited as she climbed the wide steps. ‘Are you OK?’ she asked.

‘No. But thanks for talking to me.’ I was more than ready to take the blame from the girl who’d been dating the boy I’d led to his death.

Jordan sighed. ‘We’ve been using Summer’s music to get us through this,’ she explained as she led me down past rows of hinged seats. ‘You wouldn’t believe it but we’re almost ready for the concert already – five days ahead of schedule.’

I stopped her beside Row D. ‘Will you sing at the funeral?’ I asked.

She shook her head. ‘Logan was your buddy,’ she told me. ‘We dated, but I always knew he belonged to you.’

‘Sing anyway.’ I took out the ‘Time to Go’ music and showed it to her. ‘It’s a new song by Summer. I found it between some other sheets of music when I visited the Madisons’ house.’

Jordan took the paper. She chewed her bottom lip as she scanned the lyrics. ‘It’s beautiful.’

‘I don’t want to do it alone.’

‘So we’ll ask Hannah, we’ll sing it together, the three of us.’

I didn’t deserve for people to be so nice. As Hannah, Jordan and I studied the new music together, the concert rehearsal went on around us. In one corner of the stage I could hear Lucas practising the guitar solo that he’d taken over from Logan. In another, Parker wiped his hands on his dark T-shirt before uncoiling heavy cable and plugging wires into a battery of sockets lined up along the front of the stage. ‘Did anyone see Ezra?’ he yelled to some guys out of view backstage. ‘I need some help here!’

Halfway through the rehearsal, right after Jordan and I sang the backing vocals for Christian, Miss Jones called a break. She gave us fifteen minutes – time for me to split
from Jordan to get some air. ‘Are you feeling OK?’ she called after me.

I was heading across the stage, aiming for the side door. ‘A little dizzy,’ I admitted, pushing at the big exit sign.

Outside I needed my sunglasses again. I’d reached into the inside pocket of my jacket and put them on before I saw Ezra Powell leaning into a red saloon car to talk to the driver. A couple of seconds later it registered in my slow brain that the red car had a buckled roof and it belonged to JakB. A stab of alarm made me hurry across.

‘Ezra, don’t talk to him, he’s crazy!’ I warned. ‘If he’s asking for a ticket, don’t give it to him!’