The Gryphon Project (6 page)

Phee turned to her father. “She wants food?”

“Maybe,” Oscar said. “But more likely she wants us to take the baby. She probably can’t care for him.”

“Oh.”

“Not so full of opinions now, are you?” Gryph said to Phee as they all watched the woman dangle the baby over the edge.

“No electricity. No running water.” Oscar touched the window with his hand as the shuttle took the corner. “Those poor people. Imagine.” He closed his eyes, his lips moving in silent prayer. The guards accompanying them snickered.

“Not here, Dad,” Gryph said. “Come on.”

Oscar finished and opened his eyes. “Prayer is for everywhere.”

“You should get that on a shirt,” one of the guards said, and all of them laughed. Phoenix saw Gryph bristle, ready to defend their father.

“There’s the church,” Oscar said.

As the pilot flipped on the landing lights and siren and lowered the shuttle onto an old parking lot, the back door to the church
burst open and a jumble of people poured out, running for the shuttle, pushing each other, screaming, arms reaching up.

“Something’s wrong,” Oscar said. “There shouldn’t be this many.”

Below, a fist fight erupted between two men. A third picked up a plank of wood and swung it into the crowd, knocking over a mother with a toddler trying to hold on to her skirt and sending an old man face-first to the pavement.

“Go up!” The guard by the shuttle door pulled it open and trained his weapon on the crowd below, an angry belt of bullets spooling at his feet. “Take us up! Up!”

There was a sharp jolt as the pilot, startled, yanked the shuttle back into the air.

“What’s happening?” Phoenix gripped her father’s hand.

“These people shouldn’t be here,” Oscar said. “Something’s gone wrong.”

Phoenix gawked at the sight below.
Pandemonium
. It was a spelling-test word that she’d aced only last week, and exactly what this was. Pandemonium. The crowd churned and roiled as if it were a pot of boiling muck. The looks on their faces made Phoenix wince.

“Gross,” she whispered, as a woman ripped her shirt off and shook her breasts at the shuttle, as if that would bring it down, as if that would get her fed. And then a man pulled himself out of the jumble and reached into his pocket, his eyes fixed on the shuttle. He lifted a handgun and pointed it skyward, his hands steady, his gaze a watery fury. Phoenix’s breath caught in her throat. She coughed, suddenly breathless.

“Faster! Up! Up! Let’s go!” The guard shoved Phoenix away from the window. “They’re armed!”

“Do you blame them?” Gryph yelled at the same guard as he tried to pull Gryph away too. “Let me go!” Gryph wrenched free and kept watch over the chaos below.

“Gryph!” Oscar reached for his son, his eyes pleading.

Gryph reluctantly slid to the floor of the shuttle beside Phee as the guard at the door fired on the crowd.

Gunfire was returned from below as the shuttle banked sharply to the left, tipping Oscar to the floor too.

“Don’t shoot!” Oscar pleaded. “Just take us out of here, please.”

The gunman tossed Oscar a frown but lowered his gun.

Phoenix gasped, her asthma like a fist clutching her throat. She clung to her seat, her knuckles white, her lungs hot with the effort to breathe. She dug in her pocket for her inhaler and sucked the medicinal mist down her throat.

Within seconds, they were at a safe height.

“Wow.” Gryph grinned as he lifted himself off the floor. “As messed up as that was, that was very, very cool.”

The guards just stared at him. One of them shook his head, dumbfounded at Gryph’s delight.

At last the fist at her throat relaxed, and Phee took a long, unsteady breath before speaking.

“Cool?” She kicked Gryph hard in the shin. “How can you say any of that was
cool
?”

“Maybe ‘exciting’ is a better word,” Gryph allowed when he saw her expression. “The rush, I mean. The adrenalin, you know?”

“That same adrenalin gave me a friggin’ asthma attack, Gryph!” That said, Phee turned on her father. “Gunfire? Riots? What the hell were you thinking? Why did you bring me here?” she screamed at him. “Are you stupid? What if I die? One more recon. That’s it!”

“Well, how about that.” Behind her, a guard scoffed. “Not really a three-per yourself, then, are you?”

Phee spun around. “Who said that?”

The guards all looked back at her with solidly blank expressions. One of them dared a shrug.

“Phee, honey. Please sit down.” Oscar steered her to the seat beside his. He buckled himself in and then reached across Phoenix and buckled her in too. “I’m sorry, baby.”

“You’re sorry?” She hit his chest, and then hit him again with both hands as the shuttle sped out of the city just slightly faster than her pounding heart. “Why, Dad?”

“You shouldn’t have brought her,” Gryph said when Phoenix’s tears finally made it impossible to speak. She leaned against her father and sobbed. She still smarted from the comment from the guard too cowardly to admit to saying it. “Not if you knew it was like this.”

“But I didn’t,” her father said. “I would never put you children at risk.”

“But you did!” Phee started in earnest again.

“But I had no way of knowing. In almost twenty years, they’ve never rushed the shuttle like that before.” Oscar held Phoenix as she cried. “And I didn’t recognize any of them from the church. I think someone must’ve leaked that we were coming, and the church couldn’t stop them. I didn’t know. Usually there’s no problem.”

“Still,” Gryph said, “you shouldn’t have brought her. She can’t handle it, obviously.”

Phee lifted her eyes to glare at her brother. She wiped her tears, wishing she could argue with him. But there was no point. He was right. She couldn’t handle it. Not at all. What she wondered was why Gryphon could. How was he so different from her? Did he get off on adrenalin so much that danger excited him? Was it because he still had his three recons?

BACK AT THE SHORES
, they collected Fawn and walked home along the waterfront path. The air was warm and fragrant with summer flowers and the salty sea, the sky was a cloudless blue, and the waves rolled up happily against the shore, but it was all lost on Phee. She felt dark and stormy and foul. Still shaken, she hung back from the others, refusing her father’s invitation to walk with him.

“Why couldn’t I come too?” Fawn tugged her father’s jacket. “How come, Daddy?”

Oscar kissed her forehead. “Quiet, pet.”

“But why not?” Fawn skipped ahead and then pirouetted so that she was walking backwards, facing them. “I’d be good. I’d help. I would!” She stumbled, and then turned so that she was walking normally, her back to them. “Next time, I’m coming too. You’ll see.
I’m going to tell Mom you guys left me behind. It’s not fair. She’ll make you take me with you next time.”

Gryph lifted his eyes and looked at Phoenix. This time, the darkness was gone. Replaced by something only slightly less chilling. Blame? Resentment?

“No one likes a tattletale, Fawn.” Phoenix shoved her hands in her pockets. It had gotten colder suddenly, a chilly wind kicking up off the ocean. “Do up your jacket.”

“Do this! Do that!” Fawn started skipping again. “Don’t do this, don’t do that!”

“Your mother—” Oscar covered his face with his hands. “What are we going to tell your mother?”

“The best thing would be to not tell her at all,” Gryph said. “But little miss motor mouth Fawn is going to make that impossible.”

“We’re going to have to tell her anyway, Dad,” Phoenix could hear the quaver in her voice. Truth was, she wanted her mother to know. She didn’t want her father to get away with such a stupid decision. He should’ve known better. He was the parent, after all. Sometimes his optimism got the best of him, but ultimately he should’ve known better. “You screwed up, Dad. Own it. That’s what you’re always telling us when we do something wrong. Choose bravery, right? Choose truth.”

“Fair enough.” Oscar nodded. He walked a little farther, thinking. “You’re absolutely right. I’ll tell her. Of course I’ll tell her. We have no secrets in this family.”

Phee aimed another glance at her brother. He certainly had secrets. Lots of them. Gryphon stared back at her, challenging her. “I don’t think you should tell her, Dad.”

But Oscar shook his head. “Your sister is right. No secrets. Honesty is the best policy.”

“You’re sure you want to tell her?” Gryph raised an eyebrow. “You’re really sure about that, Dad? We’re okay. No one got hurt. Everyone got home safe and sound, right?”

“True.” Oscar nodded. “But nonetheless I’ll tell her.”

Oscar walked ahead, giving Gryph the perfect opportunity to whisper harshly to Phoenix, “Way to go, baby.”

Phee gave him the smallest of smiles. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Gryph. We don’t have secrets in our family. Right?”

With an exasperated sigh, Gryph sauntered off ahead of all of them, making a bee-line for home.

THE CHILDREN STAYED
out of the way while Oscar made his confession when Eva came home. Moments later, she stormed upstairs and burst into Gryph’s room, where all three of them were piled on his bed, reading to Fawn while they waited.

“Pack a bag. Each of you.” She plucked Fawn off the bed and perched her on her hip, as if she were a baby. “We’re going to Grandma and Grandpa’s.”

Gryph and Phoenix stared at her.

“Now!” Eva started crying, but quickly gritted her teeth and steeled herself, and the tears stopped. “Get off your butts and do what I tell you!”

“This is about you,” Gryph said to Phoenix as Eva carried a protesting Fawn out of the room. “This kind of thing is always about you.”

Phoenix threw a book at him. “Don’t blame me for Dad’s dumb move.”

“He should’ve taken just me.” Gryph pulled a backpack from his closet and started shoving clothes into it. “Then we could’ve kept it from her. If Fawn hadn’t known where we went. If you hadn’t insisted on telling Mom. Stupid idea, I might add.”

“Should’ve, could’ve, would’ve. Talk to me after you’ve been reconned, Gryph. I’m sick of your bullshit.” Phoenix slammed the door behind her. She hesitated in the hall, her heart pounding, waiting for him to come after her. When he didn’t, it was almost worse.

Fawn’s door was open. She was face down on the bed, bawling, as Eva thundered around, stuffing things into a suitcase, muttering
to herself. “Go pack!” she yelled when she looked up and saw Phee just standing there, stunned. Phoenix tiptoed downstairs to find her father. He was slumped in a chair in the dark living room, his treasured old Bible balancing on his knee. He looked up and saw her in the doorway, but he didn’t say anything. They looked at each other for a long moment, then Phoenix went back upstairs, her mind and heart in a tandem tailspin. What was happening to her family?

On Monday, Gryph and Phoenix walked to the train station in silence, with Fawn swinging between them, her knee socks already drooping at her ankles, her school uniform shirt untucked and buttoned up squint. She wasn’t fazed by any of this. To her it was just a sleepover at Grandma and Grandpa’s. A sleepover that might just go on and on and on.

“Me and Grandma’s going to make cupcakes after school. And we’re going to ice them with blue icing. And some purple too, maybe. Or red. I’m not sure. But I get to choose. But you have to be careful if you mix the colours too much because then it just looks like baby poo.” Fawn laughed. “Did you hear me? I said baby poo. On the cupcakes.”

“We heard you,” Gryph said.

“But you didn’t laugh.”

“It’s not funny,” Gryph said slowly without looking at her. “That’s why.” Fawn fell quiet. This always shut her up, the way Gryph snubbed her. It worked for Phee too, his famous silent treatments. Come to think of it, it worked for everyone in the family. His friends too. He was the only one who could change the mood of an entire gathering just by being in a bad mood himself. Or a good one. He was big like that. He took up a lot of space, both
physically and mentally. Not like Phee, who wanted to be as small as possible at all times. Preferably invisible.

Phoenix glanced back at her grandparents’ house. Her grandmother stood on the porch, smiling and waving, as if nothing was wrong, as if she saw them off to school every day, when in fact this was a first. Some people want to be invisible, some want to play the denial game. Phoenix didn’t want to go back there after school. She wanted to go home. She wanted everything back to normal.

Eva had joined them at the breakfast table, bedraggled and small, awash in one of her much larger mother’s housecoats, her face a puffy tear-stained red. She’d managed to nurse a cup of coffee and then she’d folded her arms on the table and laid her head down and started crying again, only taking a breath to tell the three children to come back there after school. They would not be going home. At least not yet.

“But
when
?” Phoenix pushed her breakfast away, the jiggly eggs and grease-slicked bacon suddenly repulsive. This was all Phoenix’s fault. How she wished she hadn’t gone with Gryph and her father. “He didn’t mean for it to happen like that! It’s not his fault! He just wanted us to understand, Mom.”

“
Understand
,” Eva said into the folds of the housecoat’s arms, her voice muffled. “That’s just it. You don’t. You don’t understand, Phoenix.”

Eva’s mother hugged her daughter, raising her eyes to the children in a silent suggestion that it was time to leave for school.

“
KNOW WHAT, PHEE?
” Fawn had given up on Gryph and had turned her attention to her sister. “Grandma started reading me
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
last night.” Fawn swung hard, jerking Phoenix’s arm back. “She’s going to read me the whole thing. She says Grandpa read it to Mom when she was my age, but he can’t because his brain is foggy. Grandma says that he read it to you too, but that was before you died that time in the park. So you don’t remember neither.”

“Can’t you just be quiet for once, Fawn?” Phoenix yanked free of Fawn’s hand, sending her stumbling forward.

“You pushed me!” Fawn planted her fists on her hips and glared at Phee. Then she switched to one of her perfected pained looks and appealed to Gryph. “She pushed me, Gryph!”