Beautiful Dead, Page 2

  “I don’t need the details,” Haley said. “The past is the past. We don’t get it back, however hard we try.”

  “I wish…” Zoey began, but her sentence wound down like a clockwork toy and no one ever knew what it was she wished.

  “Listen to me,” Haley whispered, gently putting her hand under Zoey’s chin and raising her head. “Look ahead. Don’t look back.”

  I called Mrs. Bishop to say I’d bring Zoey home. We drove by Hartmann, most of the time in silence, until I parked the car on an overlook that took in the whole of the lake, glistening in the sun.

  I’d like for there to be reasons,” Zoey began. She leaned her head against the warm leather of the headrest, half closing her eyes.

  “For what?” I took my shades out of the vanity shelf, put them on, then took up the same position.

  “For all of this. Jonas, Arizona…”

  “Summer and Phoenix,” I added. “Four in one year. What are the odds?”

  Zoey sighed. “If we only knew why.”

  The sunlight was hot, bouncing off the red hood. “I know. We all want it to make some kind of sense. But maybe it’s just random.”

  “That’s too scary.” She stared at the lake in the distance. “How could Arizona drown in something that beautiful?”

  “Questions, questions!” I complained. It was time to sidetrack again. “That’s an eagle up there—see.”

  The bird soared on a warm current of air, the tips of its wing feathers spread wide. Then it tilted and dropped from the thermal, hovering over one spot, ready to swoop.

  “I don’t believe she did it.” Zoey turned her head toward me.

  We were treading on thin ice again. I hid my edgy reaction behind my dark glasses.

  “She didn’t kill herself—no way!”

  “They say she did.”

  “Who’s ‘they’? People in the town. Journalists. What do they know?”

  It had been on TV and in the papers—a second fatality at Ellerton High. This time, a drowning, and it looked like suicide. That’s what the forensic report had suggested.

  “They didn’t know Arizona the way we did.” Zoey watched the eagle drop to the ground. It flew up again with a small animal draped from its hooked beak. “For a start, if she’d wanted to kill herself, it wouldn’t have been in water.” It was no good—I was trying to resist, but I couldn’t keep myself from speculating. “I hear you. You’re saying Arizona was a great swimmer, she snorkeled, she was a scuba diver—”

  “No, not that. I mean, Arizona had a big thing about her hair and makeup, remember? Her appearance in general. And she was pretty much into the drama of every occasion. If she knew someone was going to find her dead, she’d make darned sure she was looking good.” Zoey paused then blushed. “Am I as mean as I made that sound?” she asked.

  “Yep.” I grinned. “But I totally agree.” And she hasn’t changed any, I wanted to add. Last time I saw her, among the Beautiful Dead out at Foxton Ridge, she was still the same high-maintenance drama queen.

  I chewed my lip. Don’t talk about it, don’t even go near. And to remind me, Hunter sent the million winged souls fluttering around my head, making me dizzy, forcing me to sit up straight in my driver’s seat.

  “So you agree—she didn’t plan to do it?” Zoey’s theory had brought her upright too.

  I shrugged. The wings were still with me. They didn’t scare me anymore, but I was definitely paying attention. “What am I—a mind reader?” I protested.

  “Think about it, Darina. Would anybody who was sane head all the way out here, knowing that she had no car to drive because it was in the garage waiting to be fixed, so she had to walk a distance of—what, three whole miles, which everybody knows Arizona had never done in her entire life…?”

  “OK.” I put both hands up in surrender. I was practically deafened by Hunter’s winged warning not to betray the Beautiful Dead. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Darina!” Zoey raised her voice to let me know I was letting her down.

  I shook my head and turned the ignition key. “Like Mrs. Jonson said, the past is the past.”

  We don’t get it back, she’d added. Only I knew we could, or at least the Beautiful Dead could—and did. The wings beat like crazy as I backed off from the overlook and swung onto the road.

  Hi, good to hear from you at last, I said to the wings. I’d dropped Zoey off at her place and was heading home. I was worried crazy that you would never come back.

  I drove with the top down and they fluttered around my head in a feathery flurry, more a reminder than a warning now. Do you know how many times I’ve driven out to Foxton lately? Yeah, I guess you do.

  I stopped at a red light and glanced sideways. “Phoenix!”

  He was sitting in the seat Zoey had just vacated, waiting for me to see him and giving me his crooked smile.

  “Jeez!” I cried. The light turned green and I eased the car across the intersection, too slow for the guy behind me, who almost rammed my back fender.

  “Phoenix, don’t do that! Don’t just appear!”

  “So you want me to go away again?” he asked in that lazy, mumbling voice. “I can do that!” He got ready to dematerialize.

  “No, don’t! Listen, you almost gave me a heart attack. Let me turn off the road.” I fumbled with the controls, finally jerking to a stop in a small parking lot outside a general grocery store.

  “Hey, Darina.”

  I put my hand out to touch him, to check that he was… you know, real.

  He grabbed my hand and grinned. “Long time, huh?”

  “Forever,” I breathed. I’d been counting the days, the hours, and the minutes. But now Phoenix was here, I was having trouble finding something meaningful to say. Instead, I stared down at our two hands, his big and broad, mine smaller and smoother, enjoying the feel of his thumb stroking my palm.

  “Hunter made us stay away,” he told me. “You know how he is.”

  “A control freak,” I muttered.

  “Yeah, I could make a zombie joke about him being heartless…”

  “Don’t!”

  “Bad taste?”

  I couldn’t even bring myself to nod. No feelings, literally no heart—that’s how it was when you came back from the dead. And a skin so pale it looks like sunlight never touched it.

  Phoenix’s beautiful, smooth face made my own heart beat fast enough for the two of us.

  “I’m here now,” he said softly.

  Then he made me move out of the driver’s seat and he took my place. Without saying anything, he drove onto a road that led out of town—so that five minutes later we’d left the houses behind and were heading down the dirt road that leads to our favorite spot by Deer Creek.

  As the car bumped and jolted, I stared up at the sky. Not a cloud in sight, no breeze.

  That’s if you needed a weather report right now.

  Phoenix parked the car by the creek, near a bunch of thick, low-growing golden willows. Again he grabbed me by the hand, this time to pull me out of the car and lead me past the willows to a rocky ledge overlooking the water. We stood side by side, arms around each other’s waists, staring down.

  The water was so clear you could see each pebble resting on the bed of the creek. It flowed smoothly, carrying the first leaves of fall on its eddying surface.

  Then we sat on the rock to catch the last rays of the sun, Phoenix with his long legs crooked and offering me space to sit in between, resting my back against his chest. His arms encircled me.

  “I missed you,” I murmured. Which didn’t go any way toward describing the gaping gash in my heart, the nights of black loneliness with no one to lead me out of despair.

  I twisted around to see his face—features that didn’t quite fit the beauty stereotype, though his high forehead and cheekbones missed it by a millimeter and those big, blue-gray eyes hit it right on target. No, it was the mouth that made him different—just that downward turn at one corner and the way his
full lips moved around those laidback, drawled words.

  He leaned forward to kiss me.

  Again! Again! my body sighed. It was all I wanted. Nothing else mattered, lips to lips, shared breaths, seeing him up close and blurred through a fringe of dark lashes.

  Phoenix pulled me back against a bank of long, dried grass and kissed me harder. I went headlong with the surge of love, strong and dangerous.

  Then suddenly Phoenix broke off and pulled his head away from me. His eyes narrowed and he raised his hands to keep me at a distance.

  “What happened?” I looked around. Had someone crept up on us? What was the matter? “Don’t tell me—Hunter. Is he here?”

  Phoenix shook his head. “No—yeah. I mean, he’s always here.”

  “The overlord,” I muttered. The passion was cooling fast; I was back in control. “Dude, he’s better than any other form of birth control.”

  We laughed. Then we grew serious again.

  “There’s a rule,” Phoenix explained. “I can’t…you know… give myself totally. We need to keep a distance.”

  “Says who? Hunter? Doesn’t he know that rules are made to be broken?”

  Hunter was way worse than Laura and Jim. Or I should say, his sanctions were a whole lot tougher. If I stayed out late, Laura could still ground me—it was her house, she paid the bills, etc. But obeying the rules gave Phoenix his only chance to set the record straight—if he overstepped the mark set down by his overlord, he got kicked out of Foxton and was back in limbo, period. And if I listened hard right now, I could hear the wings of a million lost souls in limbo beating and begging to take his place.

  “OK.” I nodded. No contest.

  Phoenix closed his eyes. “You understand.” He sighed. “You know how hard this is for me?”

  “I do,” I whispered. “From now on, I promise to keep my hands off you.”

  The humor this time was less belly laugh, more bittersweet.

  “What did I do to deserve this?” he asked, grabbing my hands and refusing to let me move away. “I mean you, Darina. You’re the most beautiful thing I ever saw, plus I never know what crazy thing you’re going to do or say next. You always catch me off guard.”

  “And you, the mind reader,” I kidded. I felt myself falling away swiftly into the dark, lonely place and heaved myself back by switching the topic. “So tell me, how come Hunter let you show up at last?”

  Phoenix shrugged. “He never gives reasons. The truth is he only showed up again earlier today. I don’t know where he’s been hanging out since the Jonas thing.”

  “So where were you and the others?” I asked. Not at Foxton, I was certain.

  He was uneasy and looked away. “Arizona took control. She said we had to leave Foxton for a while, let things get back to normal around here.”

  “So where did you go?” I insisted.

  “A couple of places I’d never been before—I can’t tell you exactly.”

  I did the tutting thing. “You mean ‘won’t.’ As in, it’s another of Hunter’s rules.”

  “All I know is Hunter went off and Arizona took care of us and warned us not to ask any questions.”

  “OK, you don’t need to answer, but let me take an educated guess. Hunter went back to limbo to update whoever or whatever it is he answers to—like, an overlordoverlord. He left the Beautiful Dead in some secret hiding place, kind of hibernating until he made it back to the far side.” I studied Phoenix’s face for a reaction but didn’t find one, which meant I was right. “That’s interesting. There’s someone or something telling Hunter what to do. And listen, Phoenix, I don’t want to hear you telling me not to worry my pretty head over these things—OK?”

  “As if.” He leaned back and rested his hands behind his head. “What a waste of energy that would be.”

  “So what was it like, taking orders from Arizona?” There was an edge to this question, I admit.

  “Arizona’s cool. She’s real smart.”

  “Should I be jealous?” I only half kidded. After all, I knew a dozen boys at Ellerton High who’d been into Arizona’s looks and style, even if her frosty personality had been about as inviting as skinny-dipping in an icy lake. Like Phoenix, all the male students admired her from afar.

  “As if,” he repeated. “But seriously—you don’t want to mess with her, OK?”

  “No, I only have to save her soul.” I reminded him of the baseline reason we were here. “A lot of people are turning their attention to Arizona since the mystery surrounding Jonas was cleared up. Zoey, for one.”

  Phoenix sat up straight. “She’s asking questions?”

  “Yes, and don’t worry, I didn’t share any secrets. Hunter and a million wings made sure of that.”

  He relaxed again.

  “Zoey is saying she doesn’t believe Arizona drowned herself, and she doesn’t think it was an accident either,” I added. “And I guess she may be right.”

  “You do?” Mister Cautious gave nothing away, reminding me there were things he couldn’t share, even with me.

  “Yeah. Otherwise, why would Hunter choose her to return to the far side?” I knew the overlord only dealt with injustice and doubt—the random shooting of Summer Madison by an unknown gunman, Phoenix’s death by stabbing in a fight between gangs. A straightforward, explicable death didn’t deserve all this special attention. “She’s Beautiful Dead because there’s a mystery.”

  We sat in silence for a while, watching the endless flow of water at our feet.

  “Darina, you really don’t have to do this.” When he spoke, Phoenix moved away into some remote headspace. “There’s a good chance we can find out what happened without you.”

  I reacted like I’d been stung. “Yeah—like the Beautiful Dead have had eleven months plus to do that already, and how far did you get? You don’t have much time left, remember.”

  How could they forget? A soul can exist for twelve months in the undead community, not a day more. The end.

  “You still don’t have to do it.”

  I stood up and balanced, arms wide, right at the edge of the rock. “What are you saying—that I can have my memory zapped by your superpowers and walk away from here as if you never existed? Good—thanks!”

  “The alternative—maybe it’s too much to ask.” Phoenix offered me an exit from the craziness, but I could see in his eyes that he didn’t expect me to grab it. He knew me better.

  “When did I ever walk away?” I murmured.

  He drew me back from the edge and kissed me gently this time, stroking the back of my neck. “So you’ll help Arizona the way you helped Jonas?”

  “Like I’ll help Summer and you.”

  “Then it’s time,” he said, taking me by the hand.

  The barn out at Foxton was filled with sunlight but I was cold in my T-shirt and jeans. I shivered and stayed close to Phoenix.

  “Who’s that?” I asked him, pointing to a new guy, who looked as lost and confused as I had been the first time I came across the Beautiful Dead.

  Phoenix shook his head. “I’ve never seen him before.”

  The newcomer sat on the ground in a shadowy corner, hugging his knees to his chest. He looked as if he were trying to catch his breath, as if he were in a lot of pain.

  “Meet Lee Stone.” Arizona made the introductions among the Beautiful Dead. “Lee, this is Phoenix Rohr.”

  The new guy struggled to his feet. Phoenix stood over six feet, but Lee was taller still. He was broad and strong, with fair hair bleached by the sun, looking like he’d stepped right off a beach.

  “Summer, come and say hi to Lee,” Arizona invited. She drew my old buddy into the tight circle, excluding me by turning her back.

  Phoenix realized it and made room for me. “Hey, Lee, this is Darina.”

  The poor guy could hardly stand. He didn’t have any idea where he was and there was no Californian tan to match the muscles and the bleached hair.

  “It’s OK. Everything’s cool,” Summer assured him.
Her blond hair shone like gold in the sunlight. She was wearing a loose, light white cotton smock and jeans.

  Lee didn’t speak. Fear and pain were written all over his face.

  “What’s happening?” I whispered to Summer. The cold seemed to intensify, though the sun still shone.

  “We’re waiting for Hunter.”

  I shivered—partly because of the lack of heat, partly at the sound of the overlord’s name. I felt Phoenix grasp my hand and keep a firm hold.

  “So don’t ask any more questions,” Arizona warned. “Because we don’t have the answers.”

  As we waited, more familiar figures appeared. There was Eve with baby Kori, drifting in from the yard. Donna came down the rickety stairs from the hayloft. Eve and Donna were Hunter’s right-hand helpers—always on guard and ready to set up the force field to repel far-siders. As of yet, I’d never asked their histories and they’d never spoken of it. Right now, no one said a word.

  So I had some time to figure things out. Poor Lee might be sinking under a landslide of confusion, but I could coolly put the pieces together. Young guy, tall and athletic, in pain and confused. Who did that remind me of when I first came to the barn, a lifetime ago? Young guy, recently dead, pale and perfect, taking his first faltering steps out of limbo into the far-side world of the Beautiful Dead, like Phoenix before him.

  All I had to do now was find the death mark on that smooth, cold skin.

  A shadow fell across the entrance to the barn. We all turned as Hunter appeared.

  He was straighter, sterner even, than I remembered. Not a single muscle moved in his stony features as he walked toward Lee and his deep-set eyes took in every detail. “You made it back,” he noted.

  “What is this? What happened?” Lee had caught his breath and looked ready to flee or to fight, he hadn’t decided which.

  “Take it easy,” Hunter told him. “Right now you’re hurting, but you’re safe here with us.”

  His words seemed to calm Lee, who took his first real look around the circle, taking in Summer and Arizona, Eve and the baby, Donna, Phoenix, and me. “This is too weird,” he muttered. “Last thing I knew I was on the slopes with my snowboard…”