Summer (15 page)

Hunter had dragged angel-me back here from my time travel. It felt like I had a hand around my throat, choking me. I struggled for breath, my head was still in that dark tunnel, my body was still on the rack. The last thing I remembered clearly was staring down at Summer’s killer’s face and seeing the purple birthmark behind the aviator shades.

‘We need paramedics, we need the cops,’ the janitor jabbered into his phone.

Parker was still retching loudly.

The swinging rope rasped against the metal bar from which the noose was suspended. JakB’s feet were splayed out like a fish tail.

As Ezra lifted his hand to tip his glasses further up the bridge of his nose, I reached out and took them clean away.

‘What …?’ He tried to grab them back.

I hid them behind my back, twisted them and snapped them in two.

Ezra’s eyes widened as they met mine. What did he see
there? Did he know right then that I knew?

‘Sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking,’ I gasped, showing him the broken shades. Events were racing on – the paramedics and the cops were on their way, Parker had finished retching and the janitor was saying for us not to touch a thing. ‘I have a spare pair of shades. They’re in my bag. I left it in the theatre.’

He took his wrecked pair from me, looking like he might cry. You never saw Ezra without his shades, never saw that disfiguring mark – that Rorschach blotch that, to me, had a weird, angel-wing similarity.

‘I can get them for you,’ I volunteered. ‘I’ll show you.’

‘Don’t go anywhere,’ the janitor warned me. ‘You’re the main witness.’

‘I’ll be five minutes,’ I promised. ‘Come on, Ezra.’

He followed me across the car park, in through the main door of the theatre. I reckoned correctly that, to him, covering his birthmark mattered more than anything.

We were in the empty auditorium, minus daylight, feeling our way down the broad central aisle and up the steps on to the stage. Dimly lit signs above the doors showed the side exits.

‘I guess it was the shock,’ I explained. ‘Maybe I was trying to grab your hand for something to hold on to.’

‘Whatever,’ Ezra mumbled. He seemed calm and in his element, up on the stage with me, surrounded by snaking cables, microphones and lights. With the toe of his sneaker he clicked a switch on the floor which brought on a solitary overhead spot.

‘My bag is in a locker next to the girls’ dressing-room.’
Keep a grip, don’t look scared
. I faked a smile – I actually managed to do that. ‘Honestly, Ezra, I like you better without your glasses.’

His hand went up to the purple mark.

‘You don’t even notice,’ I assured him. ‘Believe me.’

‘You say that,’ he muttered. ‘But people stare.’

‘Not in a bad way.’

‘Yes, in a bad way. Kids in kindergarten used to point or sometimes they totally freaked out.’

‘Not now we’re older.’ Dipping into my pockets, I acted out a search for the locker key. Failing to find it, I stopped by the water fountain to fill a plastic cup. ‘Everyone has something they’re ashamed of. Take Logan – he hated that he had curly hair.’

Mention of Logan’s name made Ezra put his hand up to cover the mark – he really couldn’t stop himself.

I took a sip of water, inched forward with the pressure.
Don’t freak him out, push him slowly, slowly
…

‘And Logan hated that he was jealous.’

‘What about?’ The hand dropped from the mark. Ezra looked hungry for more.

‘About everything.’ I shrugged. I was doing it – putting on the act, hiding my terror. ‘I’ll tell you something – Logan had a huge crush on me. He was jealous of everything and everyone who came within half a mile.’

‘Do you miss him?’

‘Some.’
Forgive me, Logan. I hope you understand
. ‘He was jealous of you, Ezra. Did you know that? Yeah, course you did – you two had that fight.’

We stood under the spotlight, Ezra and me. I carried on fly-fishing, casting my line to hook him.

‘Logan said for me to back off,’ Ezra admitted. ‘He said no way would you notice me.’

‘Like I said – he could get crazy with jealousy. But honestly, I never felt that way about him.’

‘So he was wrong? Should I have let you know the way I felt?’

Look Ezra in the eye
. Light-brown, honey-coloured eyes set shallow in their sockets with drooping upper lids, the dead-straw hair spiking straight up from his forehead, thin cheeks, a heavy underlip mis-matching the thin, wide upper one. His bottom lip was pulpy and moist.

‘Yeah, ’cos what am I – a mind-reader?’ I actually joked. ‘But then again, I guess I picked up the signals. So there
was totally no need for you two guys to fight.’

‘Logan acted like he was Mr Big and he made me mad.’ Suddenly Ezra was feeling safer with me, walking across the stage to tidy some cable into a neat coil, then coming back under the light. ‘He said I should back off, you were too good for me. Why did he need to say that?’

‘Exactly. But it worked.’

‘How come?’

‘You did back off. In fact, I heard you called me some mean names.’ Another sip of water, another step towards gaining Ezra’s trust.

‘Sure – that was because I didn’t get you like I’d planned. But I got him.’

‘You got him?’
I know, I absolutely know what you’re about to tell me!

The light was hot and intense. It narrowed the pupils in Ezra’s staring eyes until they were all honey-coloured iris. ‘They told me there would be payback time with Logan, even if it took a while. They said it doesn’t matter how long you have to wait – there will come a time.’

His soft red lip shone with spittle; beads of sweat appeared on his forehead and cheeks. I listened without even asking what he meant by ‘they’.

‘They’re always right. I mean – they see things from the outside, they employ a perfect rationality, which a guy
like me appreciates. They figured sooner or later Logan would put himself in a position where he was vulnerable, where I wouldn’t have to do hardly anything.’

I had stopped breathing. I struggled to suppress a scream rising up into my throat.

‘It happened. The night of the storm out at Foxton. Logan said something else that made me mad – like, I had to quit even thinking about you, Darina.’

‘Oh!’ I sighed. Ezra misinterpreted it as a signal to move in close. He put his arm around my waist and stepped me back out of the circle of light like two dancers about to waltz.

‘Logan had no right,’ he whispered in my ear. ‘That’s when I made my plan to get out of that cabin and lie in wait. Sure, it was dark, but that was good. Plus the rain and the wind – all good.’

‘You waited for Logan to leave the cabin?’

Ezra put his cheek against mine. He gripped me tighter around the waist so that I lost hold of the cup and water spilled down the front of Ezra’s T-shirt. ‘It was more than luck that he came out and drove off in his car – it was meant to be.’

‘They told you that?’ He stepped me across the stage in the dance-hold, breathed me in, swung me round.

‘Fate, they said. I followed him as far as the track went.
Logan didn’t even see me, something crazy was happening to him out there in that storm.’

He was taking care of me. He gave his life
. My legs went weak. I relied on Ezra to hold me up.

‘All good, all good,’ he chanted, his lips on my cheek. ‘Wind and rain. No moon or stars. Christ knows what he was searching for.’

Me! Me!

‘So easy,’ Ezra breathed, relaxing his hold. ‘Logan reached a ledge, the edge of the world. “Push!” they told me. And I did.’

14

I
needed to sit down. My legs collapsed under me and I dropped to the floor. I was in an empty theatre with a double killer. The guy followed voices inside his head.

‘It’s OK, Darina,’ Ezra soothed. He sat beside me, knees crooked under his chin. ‘This doesn’t need to go any further, it stays between you and me.’

‘I hear you, Ezra.’

‘I mean, I shouldn’t even have told you. I may get into trouble for that.’

‘I hope not.’

‘I’ll tell them you’re to blame. You made me talk. That’s what you do.’

‘What do I do?’

‘You look at me a certain way. All girls do that.’

‘But it’s a secret. I won’t tell anyone.’

‘Because you love me?’

The stage tilted, the whole place shook – we were on a geological fault line, an emotional earthquake was taking place inside me. ‘Because I love you,’ I confirmed with what felt like the last breath in my body as the familiar framework of my inner world collapsed.

Ezra sprang on to his haunches and spun me round to face him. ‘Say that again.’

My voice was lost in the after-shock. I shook my head.

‘You love me!’ he echoed. Then he gripped both my wrists. ‘But they said you didn’t. Even after Logan died, they said you still couldn’t love me.’

‘Let me find those shades.’ I made an enormous effort to speak and make him let go.

‘I don’t care about the shades,’ he argued. ‘Be quiet – they’re helping me to figure something out. Yes – Darina, I think you’re lying to me.’

‘No, really—’

‘You are. That’s another thing you do. I’m learning all the time about how you use guys. You never say what you truly mean.’ His face changed, setting into firmer lines. The fleshy lids almost closed.

I pulled away from him, but he was too strong. Instead of letting me break free, he stood up and dragged me after him, towards the small booth at the side of the stage which
housed the lighting board and the sound system. He leaned on the glass door and we half fell inside. The door swung shut after us.

‘We need to go back,’ I gasped. ‘The cops, the paramedics …’

‘No. They’re saying for us to stay here, not to trust you, you’re the same as Summer Madison.’

I groaned from the pit of my stomach.

‘Yeah,’ he smiled. ‘To look at Summer you’d say she was pretty near perfect. And guys were always falling in love with her, like that loser hanging at the end of the rope, for example.’

‘But you’re not JakB,’ I argued hopelessly. ‘He was totally out of control.’

‘Right. His trouble was, he didn’t apply logic.’

‘I never saw anyone so desperate.’

‘To get the backstage pass. I know. I was never like that with Summer – I always knew where my boundaries lay. When she told me to back off, I could do it, no problem. In fact, it’s them I have to thank – they didn’t even let me get close to sharing with her how I felt because they knew how she’d laugh in my face. They just said for me to forget her, or deal with her so she couldn’t get to me any more.’

‘Summer never knew how you felt?’

Ezra pushed me back against the lighting board. He
stood with his back to the door, not seeing the figure who had walked down through the auditorium and slowly up the steps on to the stage.

‘What was the point? Was I going to join a line of a dozen other guys in school and a thousand mindless fans? They said forget Summer or deal with her.’

I recognized the figure. It was Parker, come looking for us so I could talk to the cops.
Walk this way!
I pleaded silently.
It’s confession time. Listen to what your buddy has to say!

‘How?’ I asked Ezra. ‘How did you deal with the Summer problem?’

His eyes flashed open. ‘It’s OK – I won’t share with her,’ he promised his voices. ‘I know – I already said too much.’

Parker chose the wrong direction. He walked off into the wings at the far side of the stage. I tried to draw breath.

‘No problem,’ Ezra muttered as if he was under fresh pressure. He sounded angry with his voices, or with me. ‘I know what I’m doing.’

‘OK, no more questions,’ I gasped as he moved in on me. I looked for a weapon in his hand – a gun or a knife.

‘Think it through with me, Darina. Is there any clear reason why you should walk out of here?’

‘Yes. You want me to love you? Give me time, Ezra.’

‘You mean, don’t give up on you? So where do I come in line? Is it after Logan Lavelle, after Phoenix Rohr? Are there any guys who are not dead that I should be aware of?’

‘No one,’ I murmured. He was standing so near I could feel the heat of his body through the damp shirt.

He raised his left hand to his birthmark. ‘You made a big mistake,’ he said coolly. ‘You said you liked me better without my glasses. So I knew you were lying, right from the start of this conversation.’

I gave up the pretence, pushed him backwards with both hands. ‘And I knew about what you did to Logan!’ I cried. ‘And now Summer. I know it all!’

Knocking him off balance, I reached the glass door before he hooked his arm around my neck and dragged me back, half choking me.

He kept up the pressure against my throat with the crook of his arm. I struggled, knowing that he planned to kill me with his bare hands – no gun, no high ledge to push me from. He put pressure on my throat, bending me backwards and sticking his knee in the small of my back until it felt as though he would snap my spine. My eyes rolled upwards and I could see his thin, vicious upside-down face.

I kicked. I did fight back.

And then there was a burst of white light inside the booth.

One second it was me fighting Ezra alone, the next Phoenix appeared, radiating light.

He filled the room. He blinded us with his beauty and his strength. Phoenix as I’d first seen him when he returned to the barn – stripped to the waist, broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped, pale as death.

Ezra stared at him, totally shocked. This time his voices didn’t help him compute what was taking place.

Phoenix reached out and took hold of a thick cable leading to the lighting board. He wrenched it free like he was snapping sewing thread and held the raw end above his head.

Ezra saw the arc of yellow sparks crackle from the wire, knew the current should have felled Phoenix on the spot. He let go of me and got ready to burst out of the booth. I dropped to the floor.

Phoenix swung the heavy cable around his head like a lasso. It sparked and fizzed when he threw it, wrapped itself around Ezra’s neck, connected with the wet shirt and let the volts shoot through him.

Ezra’s head jerked back. His hand shot up to wrench himself free of the cable, but the muscles in his arm
locked, the current gripped him and his heart juddered to a halt.

Phoenix turned towards me before his knees buckled and he dropped to the floor beside Ezra. He gave me the ghost of a smile.

I bent over him, begging him to open his eyes.

He lay with his head turned towards me. His light was fading, his power was draining away.

I’d seen this before – the Beautiful Dead flee from lightning storms, they can’t be near electrical current of any kind. If it happens, they fade and dissolve.

They never come back.

‘Why did you do that?’ I sobbed, raising his head clear of the floor and stroking the hair back from his forehead. I kissed the smooth, pale skin, willing him to stay with me.

Beside us, Ezra sprawled face up, one arm locked crossways across his chest, the live wire still sparking through his body.

Phoenix had risked everything, and so did Hunter and Dean.

They came to us in the death booth, materializing in that suffocating space. Their light blazed as Phoenix faded.

Hunter bent over and lifted Phoenix. He stood tall,
bearing his weight without effort. I saw he was strong where Phoenix was weak.

I took Dean’s hand. He made me tear my gaze away from Phoenix and fold myself into his arms, ready for the journey.

I was hurting again and the wings were beating, the light blazing all around. I had my arms locked tight around Dean’s neck.

Donna held open the barn door to let us in.

Outside in the still, silent yard, a late-afternoon sun cast long shadows.

‘Where’s Phoenix?’ Donna asked, her eyes shaded with dread.

‘With Hunter.’ It was time for Dean to unlock my arms and sit me down on the worn and splintered steps. He surveyed the gloomy interior of the barn. ‘What about Summer?’

‘Upstairs, sitting in the last rays of the sun.’

I closed my eyes and held my breath, prayed that Hunter’s light would soon lift the gloom and that Phoenix would open his eyes and grow strong again.

An age passed. The door opened and Hunter walked in. Alone.

A shock went through my heart. It stopped. I wanted
it never to start again.

Hunter’s frame was outlined against the daylight, his features lost in shadow.

As I tried to stand and run towards him, he raised his hand. ‘There’s hardly any time – only minutes,’ he warned.

‘What happened to Phoenix? I need to know.’

Hunter looked beyond me, up towards the top of the steps and my heart flooded with joy as I saw my Beautiful Dead saviour with his arm around Summer. She leaned against him. He was strong again.

‘Thank you,’ I breathed into the dark, dust-laden space.

Hunter lowered his head in acknowledgement.

Phoenix led Summer down the steps. ‘Hunter and I came past your house,’ he was telling her, willing her to gather her wandering thoughts. ‘Your dad was in the garden. Your mom was in her studio.’

‘Painting?’ Summer whispered. She stumbled on the bottom step and would have sunk to the ground if Phoenix hadn’t supported her.

‘And playing a soundtrack.’

‘Which one?’

‘“Time to Go” – the song you said Darina should give her.’

Summer raised her head to look at me. She held out her hand and I took it. ‘And it is,’ she murmured. ‘Time for me to go.’

We walked her slowly out of the barn, Phoenix and I, past the rusting truck in the yard, past the weed-strewn corral, out towards a meadow speckled with blue flowers.

‘Phoenix told me about Ezra,’ she sighed, and she squeezed my fingers.

I squeezed back. ‘How do you feel?’

‘Sad,’ she breathed. ‘And glad too. Thank you, Darina.’

Her face was so fine and delicate as she left us, walking alone across the meadow, glancing over her shoulder towards the barn. A breeze blew strands of golden hair across her cheeks. She smiled and turned towards the mountains.

There was a wilderness beyond, where eagles soared and snow stayed on the peaks until summer, where footsteps didn’t tread. Summer walked barefoot, looking straight ahead, into the shimmering haze.

Phoenix and I stood hand in hand, at peace. He turned to me and studied my face, soaking up what he saw. ‘I have to make this last,’ he whispered.

‘For how long?’ I wanted to know.

‘Until.’

‘Until it’s your turn.’ I already knew the answer. Phoenix and the Beautiful Dead would leave now and go back to limbo. The barn and the house would sink into silence, I would miss him so much it would half kill me.

Then, when Hunter was ready, they would return.

‘Stay safe,’ Phoenix murmured as he brushed my cheek with the side of his thumb.

I nodded, sighed and let go of his cold hand.

In a week or two, maybe a month, he would come back to me one last time.