Pale Phoenix (11 page)

She put her hands on his shoulders. "Well ... only if you buy me flowers." She batted her eyelashes.

He wrapped his arms around her in a happy bear hug. "Hey, what's this?" he asked, feeling the hardness of the phoenix in her skirt pocket.

She pulled it out to show him. "I love it. I always carry it with me these days."

"For luck?" he asked.

She nestled against him. "Well, it seems to be working."

Later Miranda headed home and stopped in the living room to rave to her parents about Dan's culinary expertise. She felt sleepy and did not linger long. As she climbed the stairs, her mother called, "Why not stop and say good night to Abby?"

They certainly didn't give up easily. But there was a crack of light shining under Abby's bedroom door. Miranda hesitated, wanting nothing more than to go straight to her own room and burrow in bed under the quilt and play back the wonderful evening she had just spent with Dan.

There was no answer when she knocked, and Miranda turned away, relieved. But just as she started down the hall to her room, Abby's sullen voice said, "You can come in now."

Miranda opened the door. Abby lay on the pull-out couch, her math book open on the pillows. Yet Miranda felt sure Abby had not been studying. The air seemed charged with some emotion. Sadness?

"Hi," Miranda said. "I'm home."

"Evidently."

"Well, I just wanted to say hello."

"Hello." Abby carefully adjusted the quilt on her bed.

"Dan turned out to be a fantastic cook after all."

"That's good." Abby sat looking away from Miranda, out the dark window. The panes were frosted with ice patterns.

Miranda shrugged and moved to leave. "Well. Good night."

Abby stretched out her legs. "See you in the morning." She looked pointedly at the door, but now Miranda could not leave. She stared at the bed. Abby's math book still sat propped importantly against the pillows, but the quilt at the foot had been dislodged when Abby stretched.

Several dozen photographs—maybe more—lay uncovered by the rumpled quilt. Abby bent over them swiftly, her long, pale hair brushing them as she tugged the quilt back into place. Two bright red patches flooded her cheeks.

"What are those?"

"Get out of here, Mandy."

"Why? Let me see them. What are you hiding?" Miranda strode to the bed and pulled at the quilt.

"Get out!" hissed Abby, and Miranda knew she did not want Helen and Philip to hear their struggle. "You have no right!"

But Miranda was determined. The two girls engaged in a brief tug-of-war with the quilt, but Miranda, the stronger of the two, easily won.

She threw the quilt onto the floor and stared down at the pictures. Abby sat motionless on the bed, head bowed, face tight with anger, hostility, and something else. Fear?

In most of the photos a girl posed alone. In some she was part of a family or school group. Some photos were very old and brittle. Some were brown-and-white on thick cardboard, while others were shiny snapshots on thin paper. Still others seemed quite modern, in crisp black-and-white or in color. The most recent photo was one Miranda recognized: Abby's school picture.

As Abby swooped down to gather them up, Miranda shot out her hand and held the other girl back. She bent lower and examined the scattered photographs, then stared up at Abby in open astonishment. "Abby," she whispered. "All these"—she gestured to the pictures on the bed—"all these are the same girl. All these are pictures of
you!
"

The silence between the two girls lengthened. Miranda released her hold on Abby, but the other girl did not move. Miranda peered down at the assortment of photographs, then up at Abby again. Abby sat cross-legged on the bed, the long curtain of hair hiding her face. Her hair hung limp, swinging gently with the motion of her body as she breathed. It seemed to Miranda that the swaying hair was the only movement in the whole house, possibly in all of Garnet. Everything was oddly still. Even the snow had stopped.

"Abby?"

Abby lifted her head. Her eyes met Miranda's. The eyes, usually so dim and opaque, were now sharp and glistening with tears. Miranda flinched as if Abby had struck her, and felt relief as the light died out and Abby's eyes grew dry and empty again.

"Miranda Browne, you must be a lunatic." Abby's voice was low and calm. "Just listen to yourself. You barge in here, pry into my private things—and then say the most bizarre things. Look at these pictures!" She touched one of them. "Look how old some of these are. Look at the clothes—they're obviously before 1900. And look here." She picked out a few of the light brown-and-white pictures. "See this girl standing with the man in uniform? That's a uniform from World War I. And these here are from the twenties. And these are from the sixties—just look at the miniskirts. What do you mean, these girl? are me? You don't make any sense."

"They all have your face," muttered Miranda as Abby swept the photos into a big pile and shuffled them together as if she were playing cards. "You could dress me up in all different clothes and hairstyles, too, and I'd look a little different. But my face would be the same."

Abby's voice held a note of quiet superiority. "What are you saying? Why in the world would I dress up in different costumes and have a lot of photos taken? You can see for yourself that these photos really
are
old. Look at this one—it's so brittle it's starting to crumble."

Abby's words fell like hammer blows until Miranda's head was pounding just the way it did when the piano music filled the house. Abby's quiet voice pressed on relentlessly. "Look again. The girls do look like me. I can see that, too. But family resemblances are amazing, aren't they? The Chandler women have always been small and blond, it seems. Isn't that fascinating? I guess it's something to do with genes or DNA or something."

"Or something," murmured Miranda. She went to the door. The photos could not be of Abby, she told herself. Of course not.

But they are! Somehow they really are.
A leaping terror inside pressed to be released, and Miranda felt that if she stayed and listened any more to Abby's cool explanations, her fragile control would disappear. The feeling of holding panic at bay was one she had so far experienced only when she was walking alone in the dark somewhere and suddenly imagined she was being followed. Then she had to walk home quickly, but not too quickly; if she gave in to the panic she would be lost. Now, here in this room with Abby, Miranda's skin was beginning to creep with that same sense of danger.

"Sorry," Miranda said softly, backing into the hall slowly as if trying not to startle some unpredictable wild creature. "I should have realized. Family resemblances
are
weird. In fact, everyone always says I'm the exact replica of my grandmother." She turned away from the door. "Good night."

She walked slowly to her room, hands pressed against her temples, which were aching fiercely with tension. She knew those photos were of Abby—every single one of them. Yet, logically, they
could not
be.

Logically, people couldn't vanish into thin air, either. Nor could they be heard crying when they weren't even there.

Once in bed, the quilt pulled up to her chin, her eyes watching the flakes of snow illuminated by moonlight sail past her window, Miranda tried in vain to return to the safe, warm haven she had found in Dan's arms. But the memory of Abby crouched on the bed, shuffling all the old-time photographs in her small, thin hands, played through Miranda's head like a film, and she shivered.

I
N ASSEMBLY
on Wednesday the school was buzzing with excitement. The principal, stern Mr. Raphael, actually cracked a smile when he announced that ticket sales to the Valentine's Dance on Saturday night—added to the money raised by the walk-a-thon, the flea market, and the baked goods and T-shirt sales—had brought the school's total contribution to the Prindle House restoration project to over $40,000. Then he went on to say that the high school fund-raising efforts had been so successful, the Historical Society would reward students by offering them first chance at after-school and summertime jobs working on the project. Everyone cheered. His address ended with an unusual request from a man who was usually very dour: "If you haven't bought your dance tickets yet, please do so. We want to see each and every one of you right here on Saturday night, dancing as hard as you can!"

When the bell rang to send the students off to their first period classes, Susannah boogied up to Miranda's locker. "I wonder if old Raphael will be here on Saturday, dancing up a storm?"

"Well, I know I'll be." Miranda was preoccupied, but she smiled at her friend. "With Dan." She hesitated, then added, "We sort of want to make it a date."

Susannah smiled. "That's great. I'm going with Dave Dunlop. He called last night to ask me. Isn't that fantastic? Can you believe it?"

"Of course I can believe it," said Miranda. "But watch out. Sometimes he acts like he's God's gift to girls. Remind him that you're a gift, too."

"Oh, I will." Susannah hugged herself. "Hey, don't forget to come to the gym during study hall. We have to start getting the decorations up if we want everything to be ready for Saturday." She danced along beside Miranda as they made their way through the throng of students in the hallway, all chattering about the coming dance and the happy prospect of guaranteed summer jobs.

Miranda tried to feel happy and excited, too, but there was little room left inside her now for anything other than anxiety. She knew she had to see Abby's photos again, had to figure out who Abby really was. Getting the photos would not be easy, for Abby kept them inside her beaded bag and rarely left it unattended. But Miranda was determined now to take them the first chance she got.

Miranda was standing on a stepladder in the gym later that day during her study hall, a long, pink streamer looped around her shoulders, her fingertips lined with pieces of tape, when a sudden movement made her look up to the windows near the ceiling. The gymnasium was in the basement of the building, and the high, narrow windows looked out onto the playing field behind the school. In the window directly above her she could see a pair of feet in familiar bright yellow boots. On the ground next to the boots, lying in the snow against the window, was the beaded pink satchel.

Abby had geometry this period, Miranda knew—so what was she doing out in the playing field? Cutting class to go off and steal again? Miranda remained motionless, watching. After a moment the yellow boots moved out of view. But the beaded pink bag still lay in the snow.

This might be her only chance.

Miranda stuck the streamer up as high on the wall as she could reach, then jumped off the ladder. Pulling her sweater off a bench by the door, she raced out into the hall, paying no attention to her friends' startled calls. She slipped out the door of the school and ran back into the playing field behind the building;

Miranda hurried over to the gym windows but arrived too late. The beaded bag was gone. The ridged prints from Abby's yellow boots were well defined in the snow, but Abby herself was nowhere to be seen. Miranda bit her lip, then set off across the field in Abby's tracks.

They led in a straight line, each print widely spaced as if Abby had been running. Miranda took giant steps to stay in Abby's tracks. Just at the edge of the playing field, where the woods began, Miranda stopped and stared down. A sick throbbing began in the pit of her stomach. The footprints were gone.
Again.
They had not been obliterated by more falling snow; the sky was a steely, empty blue. They simply stopped, just as they had on the sidewalk around the corner from the grocery store.

Terror is a funny thing
, Miranda thought giddily, her heart pounding. Sometimes it made you want to run and hide. But sometimes it made you strong, determined to stay and fight. She strode on.

The snow on the ground was smooth and deep; only her own footprints marred the feathery white expanse. When she reached the fence surrounding the school property, she climbed right over and kept on walking. Where could Abby have gone? She couldn't fly—she
had to
be here! In spite of herself, Miranda found her eyes turning skyward.

She lost track of time as she circled around in the woods. She grew chilled. Finally she found herself back at the fence. She climbed it and hung at the top for a few minutes, peering back into the woods for a sign she might have missed. Then she looked upward again. Gray clouds hovered—more snow seemed imminent. But Abby wasn't anywhere at all. Miranda jumped down from the fence into the playing field, then gasped as a heavy hand clapped her shoulder and spun her around.

"Mr. Raphael!"

"The pleasure is mine, Miss Browne," said the principal, his voice hard-edged. "And now, if you have finished your little nature walk, perhaps you are ready to return to the seat of learning?" He was unsmiling and as grim as the gray suit he wore.

Miranda shrank from his sarcasm. She tried to explain. "Have I missed the bell? I'm sorry, but I was just following Abby. You know, she often sneak? out, and I just wanted to find out where she goes—"

Mr. Raphael, whose thick lips were beginning to look a bit blue with cold despite his gray wool suit, glowered at her. "Abby? I take it you mean Abigail Chandler?" He wheeled her around so that they faced the school building. "March back inside, Miss Browne. Straight to the office, if you please. Then you can tell me your tale."

She stumbled ahead of him along the trail she had followed. His voice close behind her acted as a prod. "You might have taken the time to think of a better story, however. Abigail is in her geometry class. It was she, in fact, who stopped by the office to report that she had seen you wandering off into the field toward the woods."

Miranda trudged on, her mind in turmoil. How could Abby be in class? Miranda had clearly seen those yellow boots, and the beaded pink bag. She had seen the running footprints deep in the snow, the prints ending impossibly.