Beautiful Dead Book 1, Page 2

  Brandon never smiled. Especially not now, three days after his brother died.

  “Get in the car,” he told me.

  I fumbled with the lock and the ignition. Brandon sat down in the passenger seat. “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Just drive.”

  I took a deep breath then did as I was told. Soon we were heading west, out of town. I stopped my hands from shaking by holding tight to the steering wheel.

  Brandon sat deep in the seat and laid his head against the rest. He closed his eyes. “So?” he mumbled.

  “So?” I took a turn off the paved road and rattled off down a dirt track, toward Hartmann Lake, where Arizona had drowned.

  “So, now’s your chance to ask me some questions,” Brandon replied. “Anything you like.”

  I frowned, not believing that compassion was Brandon’s style. But I did want to know—so many blurred details.

  “Phoenix—did he die right away?” My voice hardly qualified as a whisper. I had to ask the question three times before Brandon picked it up.

  My memory burned with an image of the spot where I saw the blood on the road, outside the gas station.

  “No, we got him to the hospital, but they couldn’t bring him back.”

  “Was he conscious?”

  Brandon shook his head. “Only for the first couple of minutes. He was losing blood fast, so he blacked out.”

  “Did he—did he say anything?”

  “About you?” It made me sound mean and selfish, the way Brandon said it. And he didn’t open his eyes.

  “Yes. Did he mention me?”

  Brandon stayed in the same position as we bumped and rattled toward the lake. “He asked me to come and talk to you.”

  “To say what?”

  “Good-bye, I guess.”

  Good-bye. Two syllables. “Just that?” The lake spread out in front of us now, glimmering silver for miles either way.

  “‘Tell Darina I’m sorry.’” Brandon gave me the exact quote. He pulled himself upright and stared out at the water. “He made me promise.”

  My struggling heart rose up into my mouth. I couldn’t speak anymore.

  “Turn the car around,” Brandon ordered after a whole silent minute of lake gazing. “Drive back to town.”

  “Who killed him?” I asked faintly as Brandon gestured for me to pull up outside his apartment block.

  It was as if metal jaws had snapped shut and trapped all the information inside his head. Brandon shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  “But you were there. You saw it.”

  He shook his head. “Were you ever in a fight?”

  “No.”

  “There were twelve or more guys. Kicking, punching, shoving. Someone pulled a knife. That’s all I know.”

  Brandon stepped out of the car. He leaned one arm along the roof and lowered his head to look me in the eye. “We’re holding a wake out at Deer Creek. Me and a bunch of my brother’s buddies. It was Phoenix’s favorite place.”

  “After the funeral?” I whispered.

  He nodded and walked off.

  I gripped the steering wheel and let my head fall forward. I sobbed.

  A woman pushing a stroller walked by. She stopped, turned, and came back to speak to me. “How are you doing?”

  I raised my head. “Good, thanks.” Though it was plain obvious I wasn’t.

  “You sure? Do you need anything?”

  I wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand. “No. I’m good.”

  The stranger hovered awhile longer. “Whatever it is, honey, it’ll look better tomorrow. And the day after will look better still.”

  “Thanks,” I told her. She was maybe seven or eight years older than me, with a baby and a life ahead of her-husband, more kids, a home. She smiled kindly, nodded, then walked on.

  I was left with myself and my own crazy thoughts, rerunning events, longing to glance sideways and see Phoenix sitting in the passenger seat, smiling and saying, “Hey, Darina, drive this crappy car out of here, why don’t you?”

  “Where to?” I’d grin.

  “Any place she’ll make it to. Let’s get the hell out of here!” he’d tell me.

  And he’d slide his arm along my chewed-up driver’s seat, put his feet on the dashboard, and lay right back.

  I’d see his face in profile as I drove. His eyes would be closed, the wind would push his hair back from his face. I would be totally in love with him.

  As it was, now that Brandon had gone, I was free to drive out to Foxton again.

  Do it! I told myself. What’s holding you back?

  In my mind’s eye I saw the empty house and the broken-down barn, heard the door banging and the rustle of the aspen leaves in the breeze. Maybe that’s where it was and nowhere else—inside my unreliable, traumatized head. Did the house exist? How come I’d never come across it before, or ever heard anyone mention it?

  Foxton wasn’t that far out from Ellerton; maybe fifteen miles up a narrow road into the mountains. There were half a dozen houses at a small crossroads and a pokey local store that nobody ever used. Oh, and there were a few weekend shacks overlooking the creek, used by fishermen and hunters—city slickers mostly.

  OK, so I could drive to Foxton and check things out. I could ask in the store if they knew about the house in the aspens. It seemed like a plan, so I set off.

  Not much of a plan, as it turned out. I pulled up at the Foxton store and found it closed for business and a handwritten For Sale notice taped inside the window. Grit blew across the dirt road and into my eyes so I got back into the car. I was expecting tumbleweeds and lonely guitar music, like in Clint Eastwood movies.

  “Shoot!” I turned the key and heard the engine splutter. The gas gauge showed empty. I hadn’t even been paying attention… “Always carry spare gas in the trunk,” boring Jim would say. “You never know when you might run out.”

  Jim would have been right.

  I rejected the obvious choice of calling Laura on my cell phone. She’d be mad as hell with me, and it would mean the end of my expedition out to the old house.

  I got out of the car again and thought hard about other options. Hitch a ride to the nearest gas station? Yeah, and get picked up by some psycho—too risky. Call a buddy and plead for help? It seemed too pathetic. Plus, they’d start asking questions.

  “Hey, Darina,” someone called out.

  I recognized Mr. Madison as he pulled off the road in his silver SUV. He was Summer’s dad, still taking time off his work as an architect to help his wife handle the grief of their daughter’s death. He looked pale and drawn as he stepped down from his vehicle. “You got a problem?” he asked.

  “Clean out of gas,” I admitted.

  He nodded. “I lost count of the times I told Summer to check she had a gas can in the trunk.”

  “I know. I’m so dumb.”

  “She never listened either. Kids, huh?”

  I felt guilty for still breathing, poor guy.

  “Lucky I came along,” Mr. Madison said, fetching a green can from the back of his car. He unscrewed the nozzle and the strong smell of gas hit my nostrils. I watched him pour the clear liquid into my tank. “This’ll get you home.”

  “Thanks.” I breathed, avoiding meeting his gaze, remembering all the blue-sky evenings I’d spent at the Madisons’ untidy, arty, friendly, out-of-town house before Summer… well, when Summer was alive.

  “You’re welcome,” he said with a faint smile. “Turn the ignition—make sure you’re OK.”

  I did as Mr. Madison said. The engine started up. I was good to go.

  “OK,” he said, climbing back into his car. “Glad I came by. Take care, Darina.” And he drove off.

  I could’ve said, “I’m on my way to see Summer’s ghost, Mr. Madison. She’s up there, along the dirt road, in a derelict barn. Along with Jonas, Arizona, and Phoenix. All of them together, calling themselves the Beautiful Dead. The fact that you’re here right now is kind of fate. Why not come along
?”

  But his heart was already broken and I suspected that what I had to offer was pure, grief-fueled craziness. So I watched his SUV disappear down the road.

  And now I had no obstacles left—I had to drive on, up the dirt track past the weekend hunters’ and fishermen’s shacks perched on jagged granite rocks overlooking the fast running creek, on into the pine forest with the heavy, scented boughs. Then I was out of the long shadows onto a clear road zigzagging up the mountain to the aspens ahead.

  My car bumped over boulders. The tires crunched over gravel and skidded around tight bends. There were no houses, no other vehicles, just a big evening sky and a pale moon rising.

  Still no house, I thought when it felt like I’d driven far enough. And no barn. I searched for the place where I had parked my car the day before. A couple of hundred yards farther along, I decided, slowing a little and trying to recognize landmarks.

  Then I came to a bunch of trees and saw a narrow track to my left. In the long grass, a mule deer raised its startled head.

  This is it! I recognized the track rising up through a natural meadow into a cluster of aspens. I glimpsed the top of the rusted water tower beyond the ridge.

  So I got out of the car and followed the path, sending the deer bounding away. I came to the trees, whose leaves rustled in the breeze. It reminded me of a million wings beating.

  I had to stop before I reached the ridge and take a deep breath. Then I steeled myself to walk on.

  The leaves rustled louder than before, though they were still a long way off and I was walking through long silvery grass. Then I struck away from the track, taking the shortest route to the top of the hill and resting again in the shadow of the water tower. Now the land sloped away, down into a wide valley where a creek ran.

  At first I didn’t see the house. And I was already telling myself how crazy I was to have imagined all that, how grief could play weird tricks, like it was the mind’s way of kicking you when you were already down.

  I was ready to give up when I heard a door banging and I spotted the broken-down barn.

  My heart pounded.

  Bang—again! And the rustling leaves still reminded me of flapping wings, filling my ears with an immense sound. So I stumbled from the shadow of the water tower, down the slope toward the barn.

  But I’d only gotten halfway down the slope when I saw two figures working in the overgrown meadow—a couple of guys fixing a gap in an old razor-wire fence. It was such an everyday sight that I forgot to be afraid, until the younger of the two glanced up and I recognized him.

  “Jonas!” My voice came out strangled and hoarse. I stopped on the hillside and gazed at his tall, skinny outline.

  Jonas Jonson had ridden his Harley on a straight road out of Centennial with Zoey riding behind him. He crashed and died but there was scarcely a mark on him. Zoey spent six weeks in a coma and still doesn’t remember what happened.

  Jonas saw me and turned to the older man—the gray-haired guy they called Hunter who had closed the barn door on my first visit. Immediately, Hunter put down the tools he’d been working with and made a beeline up the hill toward me.

  I could hardly breathe. I wanted to run but I didn’t know which way to turn.

  Hunter kept on coming at me—a tall figure with gray, flowing hair, dressed in a dark shirt, his face pale and expressionless. I saw Jonas in the background shaking his head at me and warning me off.

  I raised my arms in surrender. “Look,” I said to Hunter, “I don’t know who you are or what’s happening, but just back off, OK?”

  He stopped around ten paces away. His dark eyes glared.

  “I came to find Phoenix,” I explained.

  Other people were emerging from the willows—two girls in their twenties, one with short, red hair, the other carrying a little kid with fluffy hair the color of straw. And there was a small, wiry guy with them. They all went to stand beside Jonas.

  “Phoenix,” I said to Hunter in my desperate, strangled voice. “Where is he?”

  Hunter kept on staring, feet planted wide apart, hands on hips.

  He didn’t react. I was drawn to his gaunt face and unflickering, dark eyes.

  Why was his skin so pale? Outdoors guys like him usually looked tanned and healthy after a summer working in the sun.

  It was the last clear thought I had before the pounding of wings grew louder still and filled my head. Hunter stared and the wings beat, like a force field battering me back the way I’d come. A smothering sensation came over me, and then a panic.The invisible wings were all around, forcing me to fight with my fists at thin air. I punched but there was no enemy. Breathless, turning this way and that, I yelled for Jonas to help me.

  Hunter didn’t glance over his shoulder. He seemed to know that Jonas wouldn’t move a muscle.

  “Phoenix, where are you?” I cried. He loved me. He would save me.

  But whatever Hunter was doing was stronger than any plea I could deliver. He was staring at me and making the million wings beat louder, forcing me back to the water tower, sending me reeling into its shadow.

  “Where am I?” I gasped. I crouched and put my hands over my head to shield it. “Please, someone, tell me what’s happening!”

  I was down on the ground, in deep shadow, and suddenly a shape loomed over me, a face came close to me with eyes as dark as death. A skull face that shifted and dissolved and didn’t seem to be attached to a body. And then another came at me, worse than any nightmare, so close that my heart almost stopped and I screamed—again and again.

  Here’s a question for an ethics major in search of a project: Who invented funerals and why? I mean, what sense do they make?

  Six guys from our class carried Phoenix’s coffin down the aisle. Logan was one of them. Phoenix’s mom, Sharon Rohr, stood next to Brandon, with his little brother, Zak, on her left. Zak wore a black tie and a stiff white collar that wouldn’t lie flat. The Rohrs were dry-eyed while the whole church wept.

  “You OK?” Hannah whispered to me a hundred times.

  I nodded and stared at the cross on the altar, trying not to hear the wings or see the two skull faces lunge at me then dissolve.

  “Ashes to ashes,” the pastor chanted at the graveside.

  Mrs. Rohr threw a single red rose onto the lowered coffin. Brandon stood with an arm around Zak’s shoulder.

  The wings sounded loudly in my ears. The day was still and blue, and it didn’t feel as if I was saying good-bye.

  “OK?” Hannah and Jordan checked with me again.

  I nodded. The churchyard backed up against a steep hillside where a dozen or more of Brandon’s friends had gathered to watch the ceremony. They were perched on the rocks, dressed in jeans and T-shirts, mourning Phoenix in their own way.

  “Look!” I gasped, and pointed to a high, flat rock. Phoenix was standing there, gazing down on us, looking serious for once.

  “What? I don’t see anything.” Jordan shook her head sadly, took my trembling hand, and lowered it to my side. Hannah put her arm around me and led me away from the graveside.

  As soon as I could, I left the official wake. I went home to change out of my black shirt and pants into a patterned summer smock and jeans that I knew Phoenix liked.

  For once Jim was home, talking at the kitchen table with Laura.

  “You didn’t stay long at the funeral,” Laura said, interrupting me en route to the front door.

  “So? You didn’t even go.”

  “Four in one year,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s too many.”

  “The Madisons went. So did the Jonsons.” For some reason I wanted Laura and Jim to feel bad.

  “Well, your mom isn’t good friends with the Rohrs,” Jim pointed out. “They only came to live in Ellerton a year ago.”

  “Just before all this started.” Laura sighed. She pushed a newspaper across the table toward me. “Did you know they finally recorded a verdict at Jonas’s inquest?”

  I picked up the paper and rea
d the headline. “First Teen Fatality: Death Rider Traveling at 90 mph.”

  The rush of wings grew louder again. I saw Jonas as he’d been yesterday, bending over the fence, twisting two ends of razor wire together.

  “Was the Bishop family at Phoenix’s funeral?” Jim asked.

  I shrugged. Wings, please stop. Ghosts, stop messing with my head.

  “I guess not,” Laura decided. “They only brought Zoey out of the hospital on Saturday. They would want to stay home and take care of her.”

  Zoey: Jonas’s passenger—and my ex-best friend—who’d had four surgeries since the accident. This time the doctors hoped she would walk again.

  “Imagine how they must feel about the dangerous driving verdict.” Jim had to state the obvious, as usual. “If Jonas hadn’t been on a speed trip, this never would’ve happened to their daughter.”

  “And I’ve known the Bishops forever,” Laura said. “They’re such good people.”

  I felt the unspoken contrast and it blew a fuse in my brain. “Meaning the Rohrs aren’t good people? Meaning, they have a son with a criminal record and no one wanted them to move here, not when they heard that Brandon had been to jail.”

  “Your mom didn’t say that,” Jim pointed out. He took the newspaper, folded it, and stacked it in the magazine rack.

  “She doesn’t have to say it,” I accused. “She didn’t come clean and admit she didn’t ever want me to date Phoenix, but it was totally obvious. She’s probably even glad that he’s dead!”

  “Darina!” Laura stood up in protest. “That’s not true. I wouldn’t want this to happen to anyone. I feel so sorry for you…”

  “All we’re saying is you need to get a hold of yourself.” Jim stepped in, and this was a big mistake. If he’d left Laura and me to talk it through, we might have been OK.

  “As in: ‘Don’t play the drama queen’?” I yelled. “As in: ‘Remember you only dated the guy for a couple of months. Get over it, why don’t you?’”