Beautiful Dead 02 - Arizona (2 page)

The guy didn't make a move so I stepped in and handed Jordan a Kleenex.

'You were there, Darina,' she said. You saw him ride over the cliff.'

I nodded. 'It wasn't an accident. Bob forced Matt to skid over the edge, then he revved his engine and rode after him. He definitely wanted it to end.'

'It's stil too tragic,' Jordan insisted. 'The guy had his revenge. He didn't have to die.'

'Yes, he did.' Logan spoke, not looking at Jordan, but right at me. 'There was nothing else for Bob, not after Jonas was kil ed. Life was hol ow. He was always at my place, drinking with my dad. I personal y watched the guy fal apart. Right, Darina?'

I nodded again. 'Did Jonas's mom make the trip from Chicago?' I asked him.

'Yeah. She flew down with her sister. They're inside with the guys.'

'How did she look?' Jordan asked.

You can lose your son then split with your husband because he's crazy with grief, but you can stil care. And the proof is she came to the wake. 'How do you guess she would look?' I asked.

Other kids from El erton High were showing up. Someone turned up the CD player in his car and began blasting out Bob Dylan from way back. A track cal ed 'Knock- knock- knocking on Heaven's Door'.

'Bob Jonson would be cool with this,' Logan said.

The bleak words to the songs made me want to cry but I'd handed Jordan my last Kleenex. Instead, I stared at the shiny metal tubes and tanks of the motorcycles and tried to remember how total y happy Jonas and Zoey had been.

'Why are you smiling?' Jordan asked impatiently. 'You're weird, Darina.' She walked away, with Lucas trailing behind.

'No, you're not,' Logan assured me, trying to stick a Band Aid on 14

what he supposed would be my shredded ego. 'I know where you're coming from.'

I stared at him. You think you do, Logan, but you don't!'

There's back story here between me and Logan, which means I push him away whenever he tries to get close. To be fair on myself though, he definitely trades on me knowing him since kindergarten, living on the

next street and him buying me a white orchid corsage and taking me to

our first prom - like we're always going to be that close, Disney

bluebirds in the trees and wedding bel s in the distance. Not!

I caught the hurt look in his eyes, the hand running uncertainly through his curly brown hair. Then he went into damage limitation.

'Wel , no one knows exactly how another person is feeling - obviously.

But no way are you weird.'

'Thanks,' I mumbled, spotting Zoey's mom dropping Zoey off in the parking lot. Zoey was stil in a wheelchair, but her hair was styled and coloured and she was looking good. I went right across to talk with her.

'Hey,' she said softly.

I tried to pinpoint the way she smiled at me and scraped up the word

.

wan'. I must have read it somewhere. 'Hey, Zoey,' I replied. She looked

smal and fragile in the wheelchair beside the monster Dynas and

Softtails. 'I guess this is hard for you?'

She nodded. 'I came because of Jonas.'

'Have you stil got his Harley buckle?' I asked. With Zoey, there was no ice to break. We just jumped right in to the stuff that mattered.

Raising her sweatshirt, she showed me that she was wearing it on her

belt.

'What do you think, Darina - that Jonas and his dad are together now?'

'Big question!' I shrugged. 'It depends what you believe.'

There was a long silence. A couple of long-haired, badge-wearing, Bud-toting guys came out of the bar and sat astride their bikes. Two women wearing tailored black jackets and black trousers stood just inside the door. I recognized the fair, petite one as Jonas's mom.

'What do you believe?' Zoey wanted to know.

What did I do now? Did I shrug the question off, or did I give her what 15

she wanted to hear? 'I guess they are,' I mumbled.

'Together,' she repeated with a sigh. 'You're not just saying that?'

I was side-stepping here. I knew for certain that Jonas had split from the group of Beautiful Dead the day his dad died - next stop freedom and

peace for them both. That was the way Phoenix had explained it. But I

couldn't breathe a word to Zoey. 'I believe it,' I said through clenched teeth.

Did you ever have a secret so big that it screamed to get out every time you opened your mouth? I pictured myself jumping up on to the saddle of one of the Harleys, stretching my arms wide and yel ing, 'Listen to this, al of you! Jonas and his dad are cool. They're free. They got the peace they wanted. Be happy for them!'

'Darina are you OK?' Zoey asked. 'I'm good,' I lied.

Luckily she moved on. 'There's Mrs Jonson. Shal I speak to her? What do you think, Darina?'

'I say yes. Do you want me to tel her hel o, get her to come over

here?'

Zoey shook her head. After multiple surgeries to fuse her spine in the places where it was broken in the Jonas crash, it was stil an effort for her to raise herself out of her wheelchair and take slow, unsteady steps towards the door of the bar.

The kids in the parking lot did the decent thing and tried not to stare. One of the grey-haired bikers straddling his Dyna put down his beer, went up to her and said, 'Hey, let me help.' Together they went up the single step into the doorway.

Haley Jonson flinched when she saw Zoey, then set her face in a

smile. ' Zoey, look at You!'

Zoey spread her hands like she'd performed a magic trick. 'Da-dah!'

'Hey, that's great,' Haley said, her voice choked, her eyes fil ing up. She stared at Zoey for a long time, maybe thinking: If someone had to survive the crash, why couldn't it have been my Jonas? A dozen emotions

lfuttered across her pale face, then she took Zoey's hand. ' It's good to see you,' she whispered at last.

'Did you hear?' Zoey murmured. 'Darina final y helped me remember exactly what happened.'

'Honey, stop!'

Zoey dropped her gaze.

It was like everyone in the bar and the parking lot was holding their breath, waiting for a break in the unbearable tension between Jonas's mother and his girlfriend.

'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 cal ed 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 which 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 al 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 sun was hot. It bounced off the red hood. *I know. We al 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 come Arizona could 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 towards me.

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

'She didn't kil 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 El erton 17

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 smal animal draped from its hooked beak. For a start, if she'd wanted to kil herself, it wouldn't have been in water.'

It was no good - I was trying to resist but I couldn't not speculate. 'I hear you. You're saying Arizona was a great swimmer, she snorkel ed, she was a scuba diver-'

'No, not that. I mean, Arizona had a big thing about her hair and make-up, 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 total y 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 stil 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 mil ion 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 stil with me. They didn't scare me any more, but I was definitely paying attention. 'What am I - a mind-reader?' I protested.

'Think about it, Darina. Would anybody who was sane head al 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 practical y deafened by Hunter's winged warning not to betray the Beautiful Dead. I don't want to talk about it.'

'Darina!' Zoey let me know I was letting her down.

I shook my head and turned the ignition key. 'Like Mrs Jonson said, 18

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 on to 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 in case you never came 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 junction, 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, final y jerking to a stop in a smal parking lot outside a general grocery store.

'Hey, Darina.' Phoenix grinned.

I put my hand out to touch him, to check he was, you know, real. He grabbed my hand. 'Long time, huh?'

'For ever,' I breathed. I'd been counting the days, the hours and 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 smal er 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 nodded. No feelings, literal y no heart - that's how it was when you

came back from the dead. And a skin so pale it looks like sunlight never 19

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 on to a road that led out of town so that five minutes later we'd left the houses behind and were heading down the dirt track that led to our favourite 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 to a bunch of thick, lowgrowing golden wil ows. Again he grabbed me by the hand, this time to pul me out of the car and lead me past the wil ows 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 fal 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 towards

describing the gaping gash in my heart, the nights of black loneliness with no one to lead me out of despair.

I twisted round to see his face features that didn't quite fit the beauty

stereotype, though his high forehead and cheekbones missed it by a

mil imetre and those big, blue-grey 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 ful lips moved around those laid-back, drawled words.

He leaned forward to kiss me.

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