Pale Phoenix (12 page)

The terror changed now. Instead of feeling strong and determined, Miranda wanted to hide. She drew the bitterly cold air into her lungs until they ached with protest, and heard herself blubbering aloud as she lumbered along in front of the principal, the words flowing out unchecked in a garbled stream. "You've got to know she's not normal, Mr. Raphael. She has powers—she can do all sorts of things. I think—I think she can
fly....
"

His voice thundered behind her. "Stop your nonsense now." She pressed her hands, numb with cold, to her mouth. She had to get a hold of herself, had to contain her fear. It wouldn't help matters if he thought she were tripping out on some drug.

In Mr. Raphael's office Miranda recovered her poise and tried to apologize, but the principal halted her flow of words. "Not so fast, Miss Browne. An apology won't be enough this time, I'm afraid. I have a note here from Ms. Taylor that you've already been cited for cutting English recently. You know what that means, don't you, young lady? First offense, extra homework. Second offense, suspension from extracurricular activities for a week. Third offense, suspension from classes." He flipped through a sheaf of computer printouts on his desk, searching for her name. "Ah, yes, here you are. Second offense. This is Wednesday. So you are barred from school activities until next Wednesday morning. No clubs. No meetings—"

"But the dance—"Miranda said weakly.

"No dance." He scribbled something on a pink slip of paper and handed it to her. "I'm sorry. You heard me say this morning I hoped every student would be there. But we take a dim view of people who cut classes. Now take this paper and go to your next class. I hope you won't repeat these errors in judgment again."

Miranda left the office without a backward glance, her cheeks suffused with color. Everyone in the school knew what an intractable disciplinarian Mr. Raphael was. His word was law. Miranda's anger at being forbidden the dance and her embarrassment at having lost control in front of Mr. Raphael merged into new fury at Abby. There was something wrong about Abby, and she'd sensed it from the first day they'd met. Miranda knew without a doubt now that her family was harboring someone who was not only a liar and a thief, but something even worse. The mysterious photographs, the crying in the empty room, and the disappearing footprints in the snow were all linked in her mind as impossibilities that were possible because of Abby.

Abby was not on the school bus home. Miranda sat next to Dan. With tears in her eyes, her mittened hands in his, she told him what had happened. "And now everything is ruined. I'm not even allowed to go to the dance."

"What a criminal you are, Miranda Browne," said Dan severely. "Good thing I've found out about your true nature. I wash my hands of you. You can forget about all the other dances, too. No April Fool's dance, no spring prom. In fact, I don't think I should even be sitting on this bus with you...."

Miranda sniffed. "You don't mind?"

Dan squeezed her hands. "Hey, we can have a better time somewhere else."

"Somewhere else," she echoed. "Far away from Abby."

The bus spilled them out at the bottom of the hill, and they began the slippery hike to their houses. Miranda headed directly up the stairs when she arrived home, straight to her father's office. She tapped softly on the door and entered when he said, "If you must."

"I must, Dad," she said as he looked up from his word processor. "I'm glad you're home. I really need to talk to you."

"I've got to finish the new museum catalog by Monday," he said, and poked a few more keys. "But this sounds serious." He swiveled around to face her and lifted a pile of paper off the chair next to his desk. "Okay. Shoot."

She related as honestly as she could what had happened at school. He raised his brows when she told him of cutting two classes, being suspended from extracurricular activities, and being barred from the dance. But he did not comment until she finished. Then he leaned back in his chair and sighed. "There are a lot of things in your story, Mandy, that don't meet the eye."

"What do you mean? What eye?"

"The eye of reason." He looked at her soberly. "First of all, I'm sorry about the dance. But what can you expect if you keep cutting classes?"

"Oh, Dad, I don't keep cutting classes. Both times were just accidents. I was following Abby and just lost track of time—"

"No, that isn't true. Let's stick to what you told me. You meant to follow her today—and there's a lot I could say about
that,
Miranda Jane." When her easygoing father called her by her full name, Miranda knew he was very upset. "But you
weren't
following her after all because she was inside reporting you to Mr. Whosits for cutting. So you must have been following someone else, or—"

"Or what, Dad?" Her voice held a warning note, as if she knew what he would say next.

"Mandy, Mandy." His voice was tired. "I don't know. I'm really starting to get worried about you. Mither and I both are." He held up one hand to stave off her interruption. "Listen to me, honey. I know you don't like Abby. You've made that very clear. You know Mither and I won't force you to live with her past March if you don't like her. But I just wish you'd try a little more. It sounds to me like you and Abby are really
determined
not to get along. You're playing games with each other—setting traps. This time you tried to catch her, but she caught you instead. Maybe you'll beat her next time, but I wish you'd both just give up the games for a while and work at getting along peacefully. If you can't, even having her through March is going to be horrible for everyone. How about it? Don't you think you can give it an honest try?"

Miranda stared at a worn space on the patterned carpet. "She scares me, Dad." Should she tell him about the photographs or wait till she could show him?

He put his hand on her arm. "How do you mean? Because you think she's hiding something from us?"

"Don't you feel it, too? That her story isn't true?"

"I think Abby has had a hard life, honey. Harder, perhaps, than she wants us to know. I sense she's left bits and pieces out of her account, that's all. She may have been mixed up with a rough crowd. We have no idea how hard it's been. But thank goodness she came to Garnet instead of hiding out on the streets of Boston or New York. Runaways don't have an easy time of it out on the streets. Maybe her rudeness to you—her rough edges—are the result of her troubles."

"It's not just that." Without the photographs, he would believe nothing. She needed to have them as proof.

Proof of what?
She felt very much alone in that moment. "Dad—Never mind." She would wait until she had the photos in hand.

Downstairs the piano music began again. Miranda stood up, her head beginning to pound. Hugging herself tightly, she turned to go. He could not help her, after all.

"I'm sorry about the dance, Mandy," he said as she walked out into the hall.

Miranda followed the sound of Beethoven's
Moonlight
Sonata played with furious intensity, and found Abby seated as usual at the piano. The beaded pink satchel was on the floor next to the piano bench. Miranda stood in the doorway to the music room, trying to formulate a plan to get the bag. She was taken aback when Abby lifted her hands in mid-chord and stopped playing.

Abby spoke first. "So have you come to apologize? I'm waiting."

"You'll be waiting forever, in that case. I'm waiting for
you
to apologize." They glared at each other. "And to explain. You have an awful lot of explaining to do."

"Not at all," said Abby. "I have nothing to say to you at all. You are beneath contempt. There's no reasoning with you. You're a spoiled child. Or else there's something really wrong with you."

Miranda glared at her. "I'm not the one with the problem."

"Oh, really? I just think there's something pathologically wrong with someone, Mandy, who can't keep her nose out of other people's business. Look at the way you act. You're always barging into my room hoping to catch me—at God knows what. You practically tore those photographs out of my hand the other night, you were so nosy. You cut school to track me through the streets the other week. I hate being followed. And today you went too far."

"Then it
was
you, wasn't it—crossing the playing field?"

"Maybe, maybe not," Abby taunted. "But it was I who told Mr. Raphael where to find you. I saw you wandering out there in the snow and stopped by his office on the way to class."

"And now I can't go to the dance." Miranda's voice was bitter.

"That's what you get for snooping. Besides, I had to tell him, didn't I? There you were, poor dear, off in the snow, all alone in the cold. Without a proper coat on. I thought you might be imagining things again—gone off the deep end. You can understand why I'd have to get someone to, ah, help you, can't you?" Her voice was smug, the smirk twitching at one corner of her thin mouth. "For your own good, of course. After all you've done for me."

Miranda clenched her fists at her sides, longing to hit Abby. Then she met the other girl's opaque eyes for an instant and caught a glimmer of ... something. Something old and secret. And she had to look away.

She strove for a casual tone. "Look, how did you make those tracks? Where did you go after you stopped walking?"

Abby's smirk was fully in place now. "I flew, of course."

The terror throbbed dully in Miranda's stomach. But she kept her voice even. "Come on. There's no way you could get back to school without leaving tracks, unless you walked backward in your own footprints."

Abby shrugged, but she was watching Miranda closely. "Well, then, I guess that's just what I did."

Miranda shook her head. "No you didn't. Because I was right behind you. I'd have seen you, you liar!"

Abby just shrugged again. "But I guess you didn't, though."

Miranda's eyes grew hard and angry. "You just
vanished
, and I want to know how."

"Shall we call it a draw, Mandy?"

Miranda stalked out of the room, expecting to hear the piano music begin again. She got as far as the kitchen, where she saw Abby's yellow boots neatly lined up on newspaper just inside the back door, when Abby's voice made her stop.

"Mandy?" Abby was right behind her, hugging the pink satchel.

Miranda stopped cold. "Now you're following me! Just leave me alone."

"When haven't I left you alone?" retorted Abby. "It's always you snooping and spying on me. But don't worry, I'll be leaving you alone. It always has to happen sooner or later. And I guess it'll be sooner, this time."

"What do you mean?" asked Miranda. The light in Abby's eyes made her uneasy.

"You can keep your precious house and parents and friends all to yourself. I won't steal them away, and I won't make you share them." Her voice was low, barely audible. "Because soon I won't be here. You won't even have to wait it out through March."

"Wait a minute, Abby!" Miranda moved toward her and looked the other girl right in the face. This was going too far. True, she
didn't
want Abby living with them, but she didn't want to live with the guilt of having driven her away, either. Or could she be threatening suicide?

Abby shifted her pink satchel. "Just wait a while longer. Then you'll never see me again." She turned to leave the room but snagged her skirt on the rough wooden edge of the door frame. As she twisted to free herself, Miranda caught a glimpse of Abby's thigh—of a red, angry welt.

"What have you done to yourself?" Miranda reached out to lift Abby's skirt.

"Leave me alone! It's nothing!"

"But you're hurt. How did this happen?" Miranda held the skirt up above Abby's knee, revealing a wound nearly an inch wide and perhaps a full three inches in length. "It looks awfully painful—Hey, it's a burn!"

"I know." And Abby pulled her skirt down abruptly. She was trembling. Hot spots of color stained her cheeks. "What were we just saying about leaving each other alone?"

"But the burn—"

"I've had it for a long time. I'll be fine."

"It doesn't look old at all. It looks like it just happened."

"It doesn't hurt much. Don't worry about me."

"But Abby—" Miranda didn't know what she intended to say, but just then Helen entered the kitchen by the back door, cold snow and wind blowing in with her. Both girls shot each other warning looks and rushed to help with the grocery bags.

As Helen disappeared into the pantry with a bag full of soup cans, Abby hissed, "Promise you won't tell her about the burn!"

"But she's a doctor. She can help you—"

"Promise me!"

Then Miranda hissed back, surprising herself. "Then you promise you'll stay through March the way it's planned. Promise you won't run away."

Abby smirked. Miranda itched to slap her.

O
N SATURDAY NIGHT
when most of the other high school students were dancing in the gym, Miranda and Dan sat across from each other at The Sassy Café on Main Street. Dan's father had dropped them off at the café, where Dan had reserved a quiet corner table. They ordered garlic breadsticks as an appetizer and munched companionably while Dan told Miranda about the special project he'd decided to do for his photography class.

"Since we're working on the Prindle House anyway, I thought I'd do a photo essay about it—you know, give the history and then show the different stages of renovation," he explained. "The Historical Society has all sorts of records and stuff I bet they'd let me see."

"Sounds good," said Miranda. "I bet you'll get an A."

Then their meals arrived. "This is much better than being at that stupid dance," said Miranda as she bit into her juicy burger. She reflected that although she and Dan had shared many picnics, school lunches, and family dinners, the two of them had never been out to dinner alone.

Dan nodded as he sipped his chocolate milkshake. Then he wiped his mouth and added, "But I
am
sorry I won't get to hold you in my arms for three hours!"