Phoenix: The Rising (2 page)

Allison returned to the middle of the road and settled into her pace once again. She removed a band from her wrist, gathered her curly auburn hair and secured it into a high ponytail, never breaking stride. About a half mile up the road, she saw the lights of her house and decided to sprint. As she kicked it in gear, the roar of a racing engine came up behind her. She turned to see headlights bearing down on her. Too late.

The crack of bone and snap of ligaments registered in Allison’s brain at the same time her face slammed onto the hood of the car. It was at that moment she realized she had been hit, and she wondered why it didn’t hurt. A microsecond later, she was airborne, catapulting off the hood when the driver hit the brakes.

I’m Superman!
 
Clark
’s words echoed in her head as she flew through the air. She could see her legs extending outwards, following her in flight, but they didn’t look right. The knees were bent the wrong way. Backwards. Backwards was not good. She couldn’t run with them backwards.

She heard another crack as she landed. The blacktop seemed to mold itself around the back of her head, cradling it like a stinky, black, memory foam pillow. Allison felt no pain, only a muddy sluggishness that seemed to be clouding her senses. She was, unfortunately, still lucid enough to taste the metallic tang of blood as it pooled in the back of her throat, choking her. Still lucid enough to come to the horrible realization that she couldn’t turn her head to spit it out ... or cough ... or feel her body. As she struggled for one last breath, someone spoke.

“See, I told you she had green eyes.”

Julie Mason threw her book bag into the backseat of her best friend’s Honda then plopped into the passenger seat, slamming the door behind her. Digging around in an overstuffed canvas bag, she produced a cigarette and a small blue lighter. She flicked it once, lit the cigarette, and tossed the lighter back into her bag. Taking a deep drag, she leaned back and closed her eyes. She’d had a shitty day and now had an ominous feeling that it was about to get shittier.

“Holy crap, Jules! Did you hear about that girl over in
Palisades
?” Charsey Winters slid into the driver’s seat, grabbed the cigarette out of Julie’s hand and took a quick drag. Julie opened one eye, glared at her, and snatched the cigarette back.

“Smoking’s bad for you, Charse.”

Charsey pulled down the visor and took a look at her reflection. She wet the tip of her finger on her tongue and wiped away a stray smudge of eyeliner. “Well, did you?”

Julie took another drag, then flicked the cigarette out into the parking lot and watched as it rolled across the neighboring parking space. It lodged itself against the front tire of a motorcycle. “Did I what?”

“Hear about that girl over in
Palisades
,” Charsey flipped the visor back up, “the one that went missing Saturday night?”

“Yeah, I heard they found her body.” She slid a bit lower in her seat as a young man sitting on the motorcycle looked over at her and dismounted. He bent down, picked up the still-smoking cigarette, and turned towards her with a slight smile tipping the corner of his perfectly shaped lips. A shock of raven hair hung down, brushing the outside of one eye—one sapphire blue eye—the bluest Julie Mason had ever seen.

“Weird, isn’t it?” Charsey continued.

Julie swallowed a lump in her throat and sat up quickly. “Weird?” Her heart began to race as the young stranger approached her side of the car and held up the cigarette.

“Yeah, I guess they found—” Charsey stopped mid-sentence when she saw the young man by Julie’s window, raised an eyebrow, and smiled.

“I believe you dropped this.” A tanned, muscular hand presented Julie with the stray cigarette. Julie took the cigarette out of his fingers with her own trembling ones. “You really shouldn’t smoke, you know,” he continued, “it could kill you.” Julie was speechless.

Charsey’s voice, however, had not abandoned her. “Thanks. I’ve been telling her that for weeks.” Charsey smiled and batted her eyelashes. “Are you new to
White Mountain
?”

The young man leaned over and looked in the window.

“I just signed up for classes. I’ll be starting tomorrow. He reached across Julie to shake Charsey’s hand. “I’m Eli Sullivan.”

“Charsey Winters.” Julie shot Charsey an unmistakable ‘deer-in-the-headlights’ look. “And this is Jules, I mean, Julie Mason. She’s new here, too—and catatonic, obviously.”

Eli stifled a laugh as he stood back up.

“Well, nice to meet you, Julie Mason.”

He made a move to shake her hand, but Julie just sat there. Her mind seemed to go blank as she stared at him.
Damn it
!
Why was she reacting this way?
He pulled his hand back as the telltale heat of embarrassment climbed up her neck.

“If I were you, I’d close that mouth of yours before a fly decides to take up residence.”

Julie snapped her mouth shut then flicked the cigarette at Eli’s feet. He placed the toe of his boot over the cigarette, gave it a grind and snuffed it into oblivion, then took a couple of steps back from the car as Charsey put it in gear.

“Eli Sullivan is hot!” Charsey gushed as she drove away. “I got dibs!”

Julie still felt the burn of embarrassment on her face. “Whatever, Charse. He’s a jerk. Now, what were you saying about that girl?” She looked over at Charsey, who was smiling and glancing in her rear view mirror.

“What girl?” Charsey asked, obviously lost in thought.

“The girl they found over in
Palisades
.” Julie sighed. Charsey had a one-track mind and right now it was on the Eli Sullivan Express. “You said something about it being weird. What did you mean?”

Charsey seemed to regain her senses and glanced over to Julie. “Weird, yeah. You didn’t hear?”

Julie took a deep breath trying to calm her voice before speaking. “Charse, I wouldn’t be asking if I had, now would I? Now could you just please answer the damned question?”

Charsey crinkled her brow. “You don’t have to get all snippy, Jules.”

Julie bit her lip and looked out the window. She felt bad for taking out the day’s frustrations on her ditzy friend. It wasn’t Charsey’s fault that she ended up with a detention for being late to AP Biology three days in a row. It also wasn’t Charsey’s fault that she froze up in front of Eli Sullivan today, completely and utterly embarrassing herself. She just was not having a good day.

Charsey sighed. “Well, I heard that they found her body along the road to her house this morning.”

Julie continued staring out the window. “I told you I already knew that. What’s so weird about it?”

“Jeez, Jules, don’t you ever listen to the news?” Charsey stuck a piece of gum in her mouth and began chomping. “A search party had been up and down that road a zillion times since Saturday night. They didn’t find a thing, except for a splotch of blood on the road. Then, this morning, they find her body. It was in plain sight, just lying in the ditch. Somebody obviously dumped it there.” She blew a bubble then cracked it between her teeth. “I heard her neck was broken.” 

Julie closed her eyes briefly and swallowed the lump in her throat. “Was anything else done to her?”

Charsey shrugged. “Somebody said she was naked, but I wouldn’t want to spread any rumors.”

Right.
  Next to lengthening her list of male conquests, spreading rumors was Charsey’s favorite pastime!

Julie didn’t have it in her to carry on this conversation, but it wasn’t just because of Charsey’s
naïve
insensitivity. She’d heard enough. The topic of death was something she’d tried hard not to think about for the past few years
, so she was relieved when Charsey popped in her earbuds. The moment Charsey’s head started bobbing in time to the music, Julie knew she’d have at least a few minutes of peace as her friend entered her own little musical world. Julie closed her eyes, leaned her head against the window, and tried to erase the picture of the dead, bloodied girl their conversation had conjured...

“Hey!”

Julie’s eyes shot open. She turned to see Charsey staring at her with a big-ass grin spread across her face. Julie couldn’t help but smile. Charsey might be dippy at times, but Julie could always count on her to pull her out of her doldrums. Just what a good friend was supposed to do.

“Hey what?”

Charsey bit her lower lip and started bobbing her head up and down again. “I got a feeling...”

Oh, no!
Julie’s eyes widened as she turned the next line into a question. “That tonight’s gonna be a good night?”

A half-smirk tilted one corner of Charsey’s mouth as she nodded. “That tonight’s gonna be a good night.” She yanked the buds out of her iPod and The Black Eyed Peas ‘
I Got a Feeling’
blasted into the car as the two girls sang the next line in unison, “That tonight’s gonna be a good, good night...” After that, there was no holding them back. If there was one thing they had in common, it was their mutual, ridiculous obsession with The Black Eyed Peas. 

Charsey continued driving around for the next five minutes as the two rolled down their windows and wailed out their favorite song. Julie wouldn’t normally be caught dead singing in public, but she couldn’t help herself whenever she heard this song. She loved it, so she closed her eyes and pretended that people weren’t staring at them as they drove by. And ... she sang.

It wasn’t until the song ended that
Charsey
finally
pulled up the long, horseshoe drive
leading
to Julie’s house
. She slammed on the brakes and slid to a s
top by the front door. Julie hopped out and grabbed her bag from the backseat.

“Remember, you’re driving tomorrow, Jules.”

“I have early detention,” Julie reminded her.

Charsey
puffed
out her lower lip. “Rats.” Her face brightened. “Oh well, you can drive Friday.”

“Fine,” Julie conceded, “I’ll drive Friday.”

Julie slung her book bag over one shoulder and ascended the wide marble steps
, the high she had been feeling just moments before dissipating exponentially with each step
. She stuck her key in the slot, turned the knob, swung the right side of the double door open, and stepped inside. Taking three steps onto the checkerboard slate of the foyer floor, she stopped and dropped her bags.

“Hello?”

The lone word echoed in the cavernous foyer, then faded away to nothing. Julie cocked her head slightly to the right and listened. For voices. Footsteps. Anything. But all she heard was the ticking of her mother’s grandfather clock, accompanied by silence—the same silence that had haunted her for the last four days. She was still alone.

****

Thursday morning, Julie hit the OFF button just as the alarm started to blare. She rolled out of bed, walked straight to her bathroom, and turned on the shower. Ten minutes later she was blowing her shoulder-length platinum blonde hair dry. She ran the straightener through it, popped in her contacts, blinked them into place and stared at her reflection.
Plain,
she thought.
I’m plain. No one will notice me. I’ll blend right in
. Pale green eyes stared back at her, knowing that what she thought was a lie. She was anything but plain. She was different. She dressed differently. She spoke differently. She had lived a life no other seventeen-year-old she knew had lived. She wasn’t the same as them. She never would be. It was that simple, and she didn’t like it. Not one bit.

A half hour later, Julie pushed open the door to detention. As soon as the door shut behind her, the clock buzzed for a few seconds, alerting Mr. Moseman, the Assistant Principal of White Mountain Consolidated, that it was now seven a.m. Moseman looked up from the newspaper he had his nose stuck in and motioned with a jerk of his head for Julie to take a seat. Five of the twelve seats were occupied, and this was only the sixth day of school. Julie walked to the outside row farthest away from Moseman and sat two seats ahead of a mousy girl who dabbed her blood-shot eyes and runny nose with a handful of wadded tissue as her shoulders hitched from sobbing.

Just as she set her book bag on the floor, the door opened and two burly young men walked in. Julie did a double take. Although they wore their ebony hair differently—one had his pulled back into a ponytail, and the other had his blunt cut across the back and tucked behind his ears—Julie could tell they were twins, very large, intimidating twins.

Moseman glanced up at the clock. “You’re late!” He turned his attention to the two offenders and looked like he was about to say something, then hesitated as he stared at them. He looked back down to his newspaper. “Just sit down.” His words were barely audible.

The twin with the ponytail turned his attention to Julie. His eyes met hers and a close-lipped smile flashed on his face, disappearing as quickly as it had come. Julie turned as the brothers moved in her direction. She grabbed her book bag and pulled out the first thing she touched—a spiral containing her notes for AP Biology. She opened it, focusing her unseeing eyes on the page as the brother with the shorter hair took the seat behind her and the ponytailed one sat in front of her. Julie’s heart began to pound, certain she was about to be crushed between the two massive brothers like a Mini-Cooper caught between two Mack trucks on the Santa Monica Freeway.