Summer (3 page)

He glanced at his watch then up at the Madisons’ front door. ‘Ten minutes ago. I’m in trouble. Here she comes.’

Finally I got past him and jumped in my car. I was out of there before Sharon Rohr made it down the drive.

And now I was out of patience, through with the waiting and I was driving across town, through the Centennial district to where the highway stretched out clear into the mountains, climbing steadily with the tyres thrumming over tarmac, eating up the distance between me and Foxton.

I know – Summer said Hunter would give me the call. He’d specifically told me to wait. But she’d also used the word ‘soon’ and I took that to mean a couple of hours, right after daylight broke, no time even for breakfast. Not all this endless, crappy waiting, trying not to picture Phoenix coming back from wherever the Beautiful Dead stayed when they weren’t on the far side, settling in with Summer and the others, maybe doing chores like lighting a fire in the house or clearing snow from the yard.

I don’t do waiting patiently, never have.

So I made Foxton in record time, not bothering to stop for gas in Centennial. A weather forecast on Rocky Radio told me to expect snow before nightfall.
Just give me time
to reach the ridge before the heavens open,
I prayed. The station played more Country tracks about guys in jail missing their gals, and gals getting even with their mean, cheatin’ guys. I switched off the music to concentrate on frozen puddles on the dirt road by the creek.

They were only half right about the snow – clouds rolled down from the peaks but it came earlier than forecast, falling softly at first and coating the rough road with white powder. Then the wind rose and I had blizzard conditions. Snow hit the windshield too fast for the wipers to handle and pretty soon I had to stop the car to clear the screen.

Turn around, go back,
a voice in my head told me.
This
car isn’t built to drive through deep snow. What happens if you
skid off the road?

Since when did I turn into my mom? I ignored the common-sense voice, got back into the car and drove on. But then I had to stop before I reached the ridge, after I heard the wiper motor whine and cut out. After that, it was either sit in the car with the heater running until the gas gave out, or walk the rest of the way to find Phoenix.

It was a no-brainer – I pulled out a pair of boots from the trunk, zipped up my jacket and headed across country.

Anyhow, by the time I reached the shelter of the aspens, the wind had dropped and the snow was easing. Patches of blue appeared in the sky. I told myself this was a sign that I’d done the right thing, never mind Hunter’s orders, and hurried down the hill.

I was so expecting to see Phoenix, to fall into his arms and act out all the clichés. I was so convinced in my mind that I made it real.

It’s clear in my head … He’s strong as he wraps his arms around me. I’m melting at the sound of his voice, the grey world is turning bright. I feel his breath on my face.

The new fall of snow hid the hollows on the hillside, making me stumble. I didn’t care that I didn’t have gloves
or a scarf, or that packed snow wedged itself inside my boots. I was happily dreaming out the reunion.

So I was surprised there was no light on in the house, but then told myself it was still daylight. No footprints in the yard either, but the recent snow accounted for that, and like I said before – maybe the Beautiful Dead don’t make marks in the snow. No smoke from the chimney. I slowed to a walk.

He’s not here!
It hit me like a punch to the belly so that I almost had to lean forward and hug myself to recover.
Idiot – he’s not even here!

When I thought it through it was obvious. There’d been no call from Hunter, no barrier of beating wings up on the ridge. The Beautiful Dead
always
set up the warning to keep out far-siders, even when they knew it was me. I guess that was just in case I had someone hidden in the trunk of my car – Hunter’s paranoia. Anyway, there were
always
wings. I stood in the yard and wondered what to do next.

Then I remembered Summer – at least she was around, probably sitting inside the house doing that patient waiting thing that I’m so lousy at. The second it occurred to me I sprinted for the porch, but when I tried the door I found that it was locked.

Which left only the barn. That was it – Summer was
busy with chores, stacking firewood, loading it into a sack to drag fuel into the house or fixing something that had broken.

I walked to the barn door, listening out for clues. I was straining so hard that maybe I imagined it – not a sound but a presence beyond the door, a sense that the barn wasn’t deserted.

I reached out my hand for the latch, then hesitated. At that moment a breath of cold wind raked through the recently fallen snow, raised a flurry of icy flakes and blew them against the door.

How cold was that wind! Sub-zero, and getting up stronger, rattling at the wide door, covering me in frosted white flakes. I had to get inside the barn or freeze to death. So I lifted the latch … and that was the exact moment when the perfect reunion fell apart.

They were all there – the Beautiful Dead – standing in a circle in the murky light, all facing inwards towards Hunter and a second, grey-haired guy of about the same age, who I’d never seen before. I made out Summer in the rich red woollen jacket she wore the day before, Donna in a long, grey woollen coat, Iceman in a black ski jacket, and Phoenix.

He had his back to me but he knew I was there.

‘Phoenix.’ I had to say his name. Surely when I spoke
he would break out of the circle and come to me.

Hunter raised his head and stared right at me. I felt the cold wind grow stronger, banging the door shut behind me.

Actually, Phoenix didn’t turn. It was as though he hadn’t heard, though I knew this was wrong – super-hearing is part of their thing, plus the mind-reading ability that would have told him how much I wanted to be in his arms.

Hunter was doing this to us out of spite, zombie-zapping Phoenix’s willpower, keeping us apart.

‘Phoenix!’ I pleaded.

Hunter stepped out of the circle. He was taller, stronger than I remembered, his eyes were deeper set, his mouth a hard, thin line, and there was still the death mark on his forehead – the angel-wing tattoo where the bullet had entered his brain. He came towards me, shaking his head.

Then I don’t know what happened. I saw anger in the overlord’s eyes. It overpowered me and made me fall to my knees, though he didn’t lay a finger on me. I was down and hurting, feeling sharp pains run through my body as my head spun and my vision went weird – like Summer’s mind-zap but a hundred times stronger. Instead of Hunter’s figure I saw fiery red patterns floating in the dark air,
flickering to orange then fading and leaving me in a pitch-black space, unable to see. I remember reaching out for anything solid to grab hold of before the stabbing pain in my head took over and I heard the sound of beating wings fill my ears.

Waves of airy sound swept through my head, a million invisible wings, a coldness against my face. I was blind and falling. I was crying out for help but I was alone.

And then everything stopped except the echoing sound of Hunter’s footsteps walking away. And then that stopped too and there was blackness.

3

I
don’t know how long I was out. When I came around, it was dark and I was alone.

I had no idea where I was or how I got there.

I closed my eyes and opened them again. I was in a place that smelled of dust and damp. It was very cold.

After a while of lying on the floor, testing out which bits of me hurt, I raised my head and rolled on to my side, then on to my knees, where I stayed and groaned a while, arms still supporting me, my head hanging. I felt like it was filled with heavy mush.

A door blew open, then banged shut, awakening a spark of memory about where I might be. It made me haul myself upright and try to walk.

When I made it to the big wooden door, I pulled hard, met resistance, and so began to push. The door gave way and I stepped outside into the moonlight.

Did you ever have a dream where you recognize a scene – maybe somewhere where you once went on vacation but you can’t quite place it, and anyway it’s the wrong situation but you can’t get to where you really need to be? That’s the closest I can get to explaining what it was like – yes, I’d seen the old truck in the yard before, but I didn’t recall where or when. Sure, I recognized the old ranch house, the porch and the log pile stacked neatly at one end, but how had I got here and why? Then I saw two guys – strangers – on the porch drinking beer. Maybe they could explain.

Ouch
– my head hurt and felt weirdly hollow as I walked unsteadily towards them. The older one was facing me, the younger one wore a black ski jacket. Grey-haired, ponytail guy looked like he was angry at me. Black jacket guy must have heard me coming because he glanced over his shoulder then looked back at his companion as if waiting to be told what to do.

‘Stay right where you are, Darina.’ The boss man stopped me in my tracks.

I stood there shivering and hurting.

‘Hunter, what did you do to her?’ the younger guy asked. He was definitely worried. ‘Did you wipe her memory clean?’

‘And if I did?’ The one called Hunter didn’t blink, he
just looked at me with a stone-cold stare.

‘What about Summer?’ young guy asked.

He shrugged. ‘If Darina doesn’t follow orders, what good is she to us?’

‘Does Phoenix know what you’ve done?’

This time Hunter’s eyelids flickered shut. Released from his staring eyes, I risked another look around the snow-covered yard with a racing heart. Why were they talking about Phoenix as if he was still alive? Phoenix was dead – how loud did people have to announce it? How many times? What planet were these two guys living on?

‘Phoenix is in the house with Summer,’ Hunter said. ‘I told Donna to take Dean up to Angel Rock and show him the territory. Dean is top of my list of priorities right now.’

‘So Phoenix doesn’t know you zapped Darina’s mind?’ The younger guy wouldn’t let it drop. He even took a step down from the porch as if he planned to come and help me. Then Hunter turned one of his icy looks on him and he stopped, mid-stride.

Meanwhile I stood in the middle of this nightmare with a hole in my head where my memory used to be.

Hunter stepped down into the yard instead. My stomach lurched. I wanted to back away but my feet wouldn’t move. ‘What do you think, Darina – should I let
you stay zapped and send you home?’ he taunted. ‘Maybe that would be a good idea. You wouldn’t remember anything, I promise.’

I was staring right into his face, at the grey eyes shaded by the prominent forehead, the long hair swept back, the sculpted chin and harsh line of the mouth. At that moment I knew there was no arguing with him – I was totally in his power. And somehow he was the cause of what had just happened – my blackout, my hurting head, my total confusion.

‘Your mind would be a blank,’ he promised. ‘You would be back with your family, going to school, grieving for Phoenix and learning to let go. You would put one foot in front of another like the other bereaved residents of Ellerton.’

No!
I wanted to yell at him, but nothing came out.
I’ll never let Phoenix go!

‘Believe me, you will.’ Hunter’s eyes dug deep into me and seemed to read my unspoken thoughts. ‘Your connection with him will weaken. You’ll continue to miss him – every day at first, then every other day, every week, until you learn to move forward and live again.’

‘That’s not how it works,’ I said bitterly. ‘You don’t understand. I’ll always love Phoenix.’

Hunter planned every move. He stretched his lips in a
disbelieving smile and chose that moment to let Phoenix walk through the door on to the porch. A split-second later he let my knowledge of the Beautiful Dead flood back into my head.

I fell to the ground again but this time Hunter permitted Phoenix to be there to catch me. The moment of our reunion had arrived – I was in his arms, but it wasn’t how I’d imagined it; we were just puppets with the overlord pulling our strings.

Phoenix kept me from falling. He held me close and I clung to him until my head began to clear. He picked me up and carried me into the house, up the stairs to the bedroom where he laid me on the bed.

‘You’re going to be OK,’ he promised, bending over me so that his lips were against my cheek. ‘Hunter relented.’

I could see him in the lamplight and raised my hand to touch his smooth, cold skin. ‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered.

Phoenix sat on the edge of the bed. ‘For what?’ He took my hand away from his cheek and kissed my fingers.

‘For angering Hunter. For messing things up.’

‘Hey, Hunter upsets real easy. You didn’t mean to do it.’

‘Don’t be nice to me! Tell me I’m an idiot for pushing his buttons.’

He smiled warily. ‘You’re an idiot, but you’re
my
idiot.’

‘You make me want to cry.’ I lay with my head on the pillow, my face turned away. ‘I thought I’d be so happy – here, with you again!’

‘Don’t cry,’ he pleaded, lying down beside me. ‘You’re here. I’m here.’

‘Where have you been, Phoenix? Why did you stay away? I know, don’t tell me – Hunter is the one who makes the decisions. You don’t get to choose.’

Phoenix tilted my head towards him. ‘That’s the deal,’ he agreed. ‘We have to accept it.’

‘It doesn’t stop me wishing that it could be the way it was before,’ I whispered. With his body next to mine, his clear eyes looking at me, taking in every detail of my face, his fingers brushing my lips while I talked, I felt so close, like we’d never been apart. ‘Remember how we did things back then, with no one to stand in our way?’

‘I remember every second we spent together. It’s stored up here.’ He tapped his forehead then pressed the centre of his temples. ‘You know what I wish?’

‘What? That we had longer?’ Two months of Beautiful Dead reunions was all we had left. Eight and a half weeks.

‘That I could put it in a bottle and keep it. I don’t want a moment of it to slip away, not ever. I want your voice with me wherever I am, your eyes looking at me the way
they do right now, arm in arm, side by side.’

‘You never told me this before.’

‘I never put it into words,’ he whispered. ‘But you already knew.’

I nodded. ‘Let the heart speak – that’s what you once told me. But hearing the words is good too.’

Phoenix’s smile grew warmer, got right behind his eyes and made them sparkle in the soft light. I felt myself melt as I leaned my head back and he kissed me.

‘Darina, I want you to meet Dean.’ Hunter introduced the new guy over the kitchen table, calling Phoenix and me down from the bedroom soon after Summer and Dean came back to the house. ‘Dean, Darina is the only person from the far side who gets to know about the Beautiful Dead. We trust her with our secret.’

Was he mocking me, or was he genuine when he used the ‘trust’ word? I glanced at him but couldn’t tell, so I switched my attention to the newcomer – a heavy-set guy with a shaved head, whose open-necked shirt showed his death mark: the dark-blue angel-wing tattoo in the angle between his neck and his collar bone.

‘Dean is an ex-cop,’ Hunter went on. ‘A hundred punks and dope-heads wanted him dead.’

‘How did it actually happen?’ And why was he here?
I knew you only got to be Beautiful Dead if there was a mystery that needed clearing up. You had to deserve to come back.

‘Car crash,’ Dean told me. ‘Severed the top of my spinal cord. Drunk driver.’

I shuddered, wondering whether or not Hunter would want me to work for Dean on the far side and exactly where he was on the list – before or after Phoenix, Donna and Iceman? All I knew for sure was that Summer was next.

‘The culprit was never traced,’ Hunter said. ‘Dean had been following the car out by Amos Peak, ready to pull him over. The driver refused to cooperate.’

‘Which is the last thing I remember.’ Dean spoke like a cop – like he’d seen every bad thing a person can do and then some.

I don’t know why but I felt that helping him might be harder than working for the others. Maybe it was the generation gap, or my particular problem with authority figures.

‘Except that Dean radioed in the car registration plate before the crash,’ Hunter added. ‘Which means the details should’ve been on record, but evidently someone in the office got careless.’

‘That piece of data was wiped from the computer, or it
never got recorded,’ Dean said between gritted teeth. ‘No driver was ever traced.’

‘So Dean gets to come back and set the record straight.’ Hunter rounded up the discussion. ‘Keep it in mind, Darina. And remember, he died doing his job.’

I frowned. ‘Summer is still priority, though? I mean, how many days do we have – twenty, twenty-one?’ Searching for her among the quiet figures in the room, I saw her standing by the doorway and went to join her. ‘I drove to your house, did you know?’

She took a deep breath. ‘How was it?’

‘There were people there – Allyson and Frank Taylor, some others. A party.’

‘For my birthday?’

‘Yeah. They were cool, though. I can honestly say that no one cried while I was there.’

‘Mom?’

‘She held it together, even though she didn’t expect to see me.’

‘Dad?’

‘Cool. He’s strong. I really like your dad, Summer.’

What else could I tell her? That they hadn’t moved a single object in her room since she died, that her mom wasn’t painting any more. I avoided the deep stuff because there was no comfort there.

She probably delved into my mind and saw it anyway.

‘So now we need to focus on you, Summer.’ This was Hunter speaking, and it was weird because he’d done one of his sudden shifts of tone from harsh to almost gentle. ‘Tell Darina everything you remember about the DAY.’ He said ‘day’ in upper-case letters so everyone knew what he meant. ‘And Darina, please give it your full attention.’

Meaning,
tear your mind away from Phoenix, forget about
yourself and your own grief for a change.
‘Why do you always think the worst of me? What did I do?’ I wanted to protest, but a glance from Phoenix warned me off.

‘Let’s walk,’ Summer suggested.

We had regular sleepovers when Summer was alive. Usually I would take my guitar to her house. We would hole up in her room, maybe play a song she’d just written, she would change a few notes or words, while I designed an album cover on Photoshop or wrote sleeve notes. We’d dreamed of her making the big time since we were ten years old.

So we were used to looking up at the night sky together, star-spotting and working out which was Orion, getting it all wrong and saying, ‘Hey, there are a million stars up there. Who needs a name?’

Tonight as we walked we saw two shooting stars.

‘So I’ll find your gunman,’ I promised. We were up by Angel Rock, out of sight of the barn and house. ‘If that’s what you want me to do.’

It was a long time before she reacted. ‘Sometimes I wonder what difference it’ll make to find out who did the shooting. Why not leave it at “Some crazy guy who ran away and who they never caught. End of story”?’

But we both knew we couldn’t leave it hanging in the air like this. ‘And other times?’

‘Then I think it through and I know it makes all the difference in the world to the people I left behind.’

‘Your mom and dad?

‘My mom especially. She needs closure.’

We walked on a while before I asked Summer something that was bothering me. ‘And you? Do you have any anger towards this guy?’ The guy who sprang out of nowhere and started spraying bullets around the mall. Scrawny Psycho Man with the peak of his white cap and a pair of shades hiding his face, not even aiming before he fired.

‘Anger?’ she echoed with surprise.

‘Why not? He stole your life. Don’t you picture all the stuff you could’ve done – the music especially. All just gone – wiped out. Don’t you hate him for that?’

‘No. I think of Mom and Dad and how their lives are
on hold. That’s it. That’s why I’m here – to get the truth so they can move on.’

‘So I guess that’s me,’ I confessed with a sense of shame. ‘I’m angry for you.’

Summer stopped on the ridge to look at me, the wind in her hair, an infinity of stars above her head. ‘All my life I wanted to be more like you, Darina.’