The Key to the Golden Firebird (20 page)

“What you did to Pete was cold.”

“Okay,” May said, backing out onto the road a bit more aggressively than necessary. “I don't think you're far enough along the twelve steps to start criticizing me. Wait until you get your sixty-day chip or something.”

Palmer slammed her fist into her glove a few times.

“At least I'm not a user,” Brooks continued.

“I guess you haven't used me or used Mom. I mean, we really love paying for all of your screwups. It gives us a reason to live.”

“You're both retards,” Palmer mumbled, but neither May nor Brooks could quite catch what she'd said.

“He's been great to you,” Brooks said. “He'd do anything for you. And you treated him like crap.”

“Look,” May said, “I'm sorry that I didn't meet someone classy, like Dave Vatiman….”

Another jab. Maybe it was the driver's seat, May reasoned. Maybe it did something to her—made her evil. But Brooks didn't seem to notice the remark.

“That's my point. You could at least be
nice
to him.”

“You have no idea what you're talking about,” May broke in. “He's Pete. He's an idiot. He'll get over it.”

Even as May said it, she winced a bit. Why did she say these things?

Because she was crazy. Because she was a zombie.

They rode the rest of the way in silence. May brought the car to an abrupt stop in front of the clubhouse. Palmer was the first out. She pulled her things out of the backseat briskly.

“See you after,” May said.

“Yeah,” Brooks said over her shoulder. “Good game.”

Palmer didn't answer them. She walked off to the clubhouse. May and Brooks got out of the car.

“You know what?” Brooks said, looking her sister up and down. “You deserve it. You deserve to be weird and miserable.”

“Thanks,” May said, walking off toward the bleachers.

 

Seventh inning. Three to two in favor of this team of strangers Palmer found herself pitching for. She was perspiring. This was a game she could have played better. Three obviously incompetent batters had gotten past her—girls she could have struck out with her eyes closed on any other day.

She just needed to get through this. To get home and go back to bed.

Playing always took her mind off things, but today her head was still buzzing. She was exhausted—she hadn't slept much. May had argued with her mother and left her crying. May had argued with Pete about something, and Pete had gone away. May had gotten drunk at the beach. She was used to Brooks doing these things, but now even May was falling to pieces on her. But this wasn't the time or place to think about that.

Palmer squared herself off and faced the batter, putting both of her feet on the pitcher's plate. She gripped the ball with both hands.

Then it hit all at once, without warning. The nighttime panic was here, now. The strange heartbeat, the tunnel vision. Her arms didn't work. She couldn't throw. She couldn't move. She curled her knuckles up along the stitches of the ball. It was the only recognizable sensation.

The girl at bat straightened up impatiently. Palmer tried to calm herself, but she knew that she was rapidly approaching the ten-second mark, which was the maximum amount of time she was allowed between taking her position on the pitcher's plate and beginning her pitch. The batter crowded the plate, sensing her nervousness.

Palmer had to do something.

In one smooth gesture she stepped forward, wound her arm, and released the ball. She closed her eyes. It was a solid pitch. She could see it moving in her mind—how it arced, how it slowed. The batter, confused, would move in even farther. But then it would curve and go right back toward the plate, picking up speed. And if the girl didn't move away…

Palmer closed her eyes right before the ball hit the girl's helmet with a sickening thud.

 

Brooks had risen to her feet a moment before the impact; her instincts had told her that something was wrong with the pitch. Palmer had waited much too long. She watched the batter stagger and fall, and her team and coaches came running. There was confusion in the bleachers and on the field. Cell phones were pulled out. A few people leapt down and ran to the fallen girl. Palmer turned and ran off.

“What's going on?” May said.

Brooks was already climbing down the bleachers in pursuit. May scrambled for her purse and trailed behind.

Palmer disappeared around the clubhouse, toward the parking lot, so Brooks increased her pace. Even though she was a little out of shape, Brooks was still an excellent runner. Palmer was fast, but she could keep up with her. She followed her through the parking lot and watched her duck behind the Firebird. When Brooks jogged up a few seconds later, she found Palm sitting on the ground, curled up into a ball.

“Go away,” Palmer said in a low voice.

“What happened out there?”

“I said
go away
.”

“Are you all right?”

There was heavy breathing coming from behind them. May had just caught up.

“Palm, you should really go back there,” Brooks said. “Go back and explain.”

Palmer screamed. Not an angry scream but a painful, high-pitched, unbroken wail. Brooks remembered screaming like that when she was a little child, so hard that she felt her throat
might bleed. It carried across the parking lot. It drew the attention of everyone in the entire area. If her desired effect was to scare Brooks off, it worked. But May stepped forward and sat down on the ground in front of Palmer. Palmer scrunched her face together in what was probably an attempt at a threatening expression, but May didn't move.

“What's going on, Palm?” she said.

“It keeps happening,” Palm said through clenched teeth.

“What does?”

“The thing. Where I can't breathe.”

“Can't breathe?”

“It happened out there. Things get dark.”

May reached out and rubbed Palm's knee.

“Do you want to go home?” she asked quietly.

The knee rubbing seemed to subdue Palmer. Her face relaxed, and she gave a heavy nod, like little kids do when they're upset or tired. May looked up at Brooks, who was surveying the activity in the distance with a dark expression.

“I don't know if we should,” Brooks said. “They're going to want to know what happened.”

May was already getting out her keys.

“I don't care,” she replied. “Let's get her out of here.”

 

Palmer locked herself in her room the minute she arrived home. It was stuffy and overly sunny. At least the scary, closed-in feeling was going away fairly quickly this time, probably because it was daytime and people were around.

She didn't want to think about the pitch. She couldn't think about the pitch. Not yet. Her brain was already too loud and
crowded with stuff. Until she solved the problem of the urn, nothing was going to be right again. It sat there on her bed, gleaming in the sunlight that came through the blinds. She dropped down on the bed and stared at it.

“What do you want?” she asked it, hoping that by asking the question aloud, she would get some kind of magical inspiration. But the urn just slipped a bit to the right. Palmer straightened it, then lay back and stared at the ceiling.

Her life was over. She was so out of the camp. And if they kicked her out of softball, Palmer would die.

No. She could fix it. She could explain to them.

The attacks were coming in the day now. Now she really was a crazy person.

She would fix that too.

The urn…She just had to figure out what to do with the urn.

She just had to
calm down
.

She closed her eyes and tried to imagine the happiest place she could. Camden Yards. Definitely. Cheese dog in one hand. First inning. They hadn't taken their trip to Camden Yards this year. She had missed it.

Yesssssss…

The idea came as a sudden rush. Every detail was there, as if her brain had already written the plan and she had stumbled upon it. First she had to see if it was possible. She had a season schedule card pinned to her corkboard. She checked. The timing was perfect.

She looked at the urn. This was going to be hard, but she had to do it.

 

When Palmer crept downstairs a half hour later, Brooks and May were sitting at the kitchen table, holding conference over an assortment of dry crumbs, self-stick notes, and random pens. Brooks was methodically sticking and unsticking a Post-it to her forehead. May was chewing on a mechanical pencil with her back teeth, like a dog trying to tear the knobby end from a rawhide bone.

Palmer stood right outside the doorway and listened.

“It was an accident,” May was saying. “Accidents happen. And those helmets are really strong. Aren't they? I mean, they look strong, and they have that flap over the ear.”

“The girl's probably all right,” Brooks said, putting one of the Post-it notes over her eye. “That's not it.”

“Then what is it?”

“It wasn't an accident.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She was head-hunting,” Brooks said simply.

“She was what?”

“She aimed for the girl's head to knock her away from the plate. It's a really illegal move, but it happens.”

“You're saying Palmer hit her on
purpose
?” May asked.

“I don't know. I saw her face. Something was wrong. Maybe the sun got in her eyes or something….” Brooks pulled off her Post-it eye patch and started nervously folding it into the shape of a small hat.

“This is pretty bad, isn't it?” May said.

“It could be.”

Palmer couldn't listen anymore. It was time to act. She strode
into the kitchen, causing her sisters to lurch in alarm. Without giving them a chance to say anything, she gingerly removed the urn from the bag and set it on the table between them.

“I found it in Mom's closet,” she said. “It was in a box. A shoe box.”

May and Brooks said nothing. It was clear that they immediately knew what the thing was, and it seemed to affect them in the same way that it did Palmer. They flinched away from it, yet they had to look at it. Palmer took advantage of their silence to keep talking.

“I just figured it out,” she said. “We didn't go to Camden Yards this year. So we have to take him. There's a home game tonight. It starts in an hour. We have to leave soon.”

This concept didn't seem to click in May and Brooks's minds as quickly as it had in hers, because they looked up at her as if she'd just sprouted wings and a beak. Then they exchanged a long, puzzled look.

“You want to go to Camden Yards?” Brooks asked. “Now?”

“Right.”

“And take that?” Brooks pointed to the urn but didn't look at it.

“Uh-huh.”

“And do what?”

“Take him to the pitcher's mound,” Palmer said. “It'll be easy. We just—”

“Are you
nuts
? You just nailed some girl in the head with a ball, Palm. And now you want us to drive to Camden Yards to go to the pitcher's mound? What the hell is the matter with you?”

Palmer had been expecting an objection from May, but not from Brooks. And she didn't like being called nuts, either.

“Where do you think he'd like to be?” Palmer snapped. “In the closet or there?”

“I don't know,” Brooks said, “but he probably wouldn't want
us
to be in jail.”

“We won't go to jail. They're not going to arrest three girls.”

“Wanna bet?”

“There are buses to Baltimore from the city,” Palmer snapped. “I know how to get to the bus station. I know which train to take. If you guys don't come with me, I'll go on my own.”

She would, too, even though the bus station bit was a lie. She knew it was somewhere downtown, and people got downtown by train. She could walk to the train station and ask someone there. It wouldn't be hard.

Brooks exhaled loudly and picked at a scar in the wood. Palmer gingerly lifted the canister back up and put it back into her bag. May still hadn't spoken. She was watching Palmer as she worked. Palmer reached into the front pocket of her bag and shoved a pile of cash into May's hand. May looked at the cash in surprise, then counted it.

“Where the hell did you get that from?” Brooks asked, gazing down at the money in amazement.

“I saved it.”

Brooks, who never saved, just stared in awe.

“Eighty-five bucks,” May said, holding up a crisp, unused twenty.

“We have money. You can drive.” Palmer nodded to May on
that one. “We have the Firebird. It'll take two or two and a half hours to get there. Same to get back. We'll probably be down there for two hours, depending on how the game goes. Mom's asleep now, so she won't notice that we've even been back from my game. She'll be at work until seven in the morning.”

Nothing else was said for the next few minutes.

“So, we're talking about eight or nine hours?” May finally asked.

“You're not really thinking about doing this.” Brooks shook her head at May. “
You're
going to drive all the way to Baltimore? You?”

“I'm thinking about it,” May said thoughtfully. “Yeah.”

“Oh my God.” Brooks put her head down on the table.

“What about this pitcher's mound thing?” May asked.

“Easy. Trust me. I've got it all figured out.”

“If it's so important, why don't we just wait?” Brooks asked desperately, pulling her head up. “We'll do it later.”

“No, we won't,” May said, rising. “That's the point. We have to do it today.”

“Why?”

“Because we won't do it on some other day, when we've had time to think about it,” May answered. “I won't, anyway. And she means it. She'll do it by herself. So it's better to just go.”