Pale Phoenix (2 page)

"What's your name, dear? I'm Helen Browne. Where are you going? Let me drive you there." Helen's voice was worried.

"I'm going to school. To the high school." She brushed snow off her coat with a flutter of thin fingers. "But I can walk."

"We're on our way there, too," said Dan.

"I
said
I can walk."

"I still say a doctor should see to her," spoke up the old man. "Get an X-ray."

"Listen, I'm really fine. The car never touched me. I just wasn't watching where I was going and—I just slipped. That's all. I'm sorry I made you run off the road. I hope you can get your car out of the snowbank." This was all said in a rapid monotone, and Miranda shivered despite her warm red jacket and scarf. The girl sounded so odd—like a recording of a girl. As if she weren't really there at all and only her voice were talking....

The girl turned away and walked carefully back to the sidewalk. "Thank you, all of you. I'm sorry to worry you. I really am ... quite fine." Most of the people who had gathered began to leave now that they realized the girl was not injured.

Helen lifted her gloved hands helplessly. Miranda sighed with relief. "I guess there's nothing we can do," she told her mother. "If she says she doesn't need help, then I guess she doesn't." They all watched the girl moving slowly down the slippery sidewalk.

"She looks 'quite fine' to me," said Dan. "Weird, but all in one piece."

"Looks like you're the ones needing help." Two men who had been part of the crowd moved to the car in the snowbank. "Let's see if we can get you on your way again."

"Oh, thank you," said Helen, turning back to the car. They all began the business of tugging it out of the snow. Helen kept looking over her shoulder. "I don't feel right about letting her go." The car slid backward out of the drift.

"Maybe you two can keep an eye on her at school today," one of the men suggested to Miranda and Dan.

"What did she say her name was?" asked Helen.

"She didn't," said Miranda.

At two o'clock the high school students began setting up their wares in the gymnasium. Banners painted with slogans hung across the room: Save the Witch House! and What Would We Do
Witchout
the Prindle House?! By three o'clock the first customers filtered in, many with small children in tow. Miranda moved the two stuffed bears to the front of her display. "These should catch their eyes," she murmured to her friend Susannah. "It's just a matter of knowing the customer."

Susannah sighed. "Well, I know no customer's going to want these old jigsaw puzzles. And my mother refuses to let them back into the house. We already have dozens. My dad is addicted. Do you think I can
give
them away?"

"Sure. Buy a stuffed bear, get a free puzzle," Miranda cast her eyes across the crowded gymnasium, searching for Dan. Her gaze rested suddenly on the small, white face and pale, long hair of the girl who had fallen in the street. Miranda turned to Susannah. "Listen, can you handle all my stuff as well as your own for a few minutes? Try to get those little boys over here to buy the bears. Tell them it's a great deal at only three dollars per bear. I'll be right back."

She pressed through the throng of people, stepping adroitly around display tables jumbled with castoffs. When she came upon the girl, she stopped. "Hi. I saw you—and just had to come ask, well, you know. Whether you're really okay. After this morning."

The girl sat hunched at a regular classroom desk. Some pieces of jewelry, several tools, a fine silk scarf, and a lot of silverware in need of polishing lay before her. The girl's pale eyes flickered to Miranda's face, then away. "I told you I was fine."

Miranda hesitated. "I'm Miranda Browne." She waited, but the girl was looking down at the jewelry, fingering one of the rings. "Well, what's your name?"

Again the eyes flickered. "Look, do you want to buy something?"

"No. I just wanted—"

"Why not?" The girl shook her pale hair back over her shoulders. "The jewelry is real, you know. I bet your mother would like it."

"She doesn't wear much jewelry, and I only have ten bucks anyway." Miranda frowned. "What's your name?" she asked again. "You're new here, right? I haven't seen you around."

The girl rearranged the items in her meager display. "I really need to sell this stuff."

Miranda shook her head, exasperated. Apparently the girl was going to guard the secret of her name as if it were some precious jewel. "Well, it looks like good stuff. I'm sure you'll sell some of it, and it ought to bring in a lot of money for the Prindle House."

"Oh, yes, that's right. We do have to take care of our past, don't we?" The girl's voice was expressionless.

Dan was right; the girl was weird. "I think it's important to try." Miranda's voice was sharp. "Don't you?"

"Look, my name is Abby," the girl offered suddenly. Her voice sounded choked. "And if you aren't going to buy anything, then maybe you'll move on and give other people the chance to look. I really need to sell this stuff."

Miranda stared at her, taken aback. "Well,
excuse
me!"

The girl looked about ready to burst into tears. But Miranda didn't want to stay and find out what the problem was. She looked around the crowded room and saw Dan tending his table in the eleventh grade section. She hurried toward him gratefully, nearly knocking over a card table in her haste to cross the gym.

He threw his arm around her shoulders in welcome, another of the new affectionate gestures he had been making the last few weeks. It was a casual enough move, but it made Miranda worry. She and Dan had been close friends from the day they'd met. She liked him so much, she didn't want any of the usual boy-girl complications wrecking their friendship. So she gently moved out of the circle of his arm as she spoke: "I just saw Abby, and boy, you sure were right when you said she was weird."

He put his hands into his pockets. "Who's Abby?"

"The girl we hit this morning. The one we
didn't
hit."

"Well, is she all right?"

"She said she was." Miranda shrugged. "But she was totally rude about it."

"Oh, well, at least you can tell your mom you talked to her and she's not dead. Right?" He steered her closer to his table. "Now, Ms. Browne. Look at all this great museum-quality stuff. Tell me you can resist any of it."

Miranda laughed. "I can resist all of it."

"What about the pink pig? Remember—every cent goes to the Prindle House fund."

"I'm afraid I can resist it, even then."

"Can you resist me?"

A warm flush crept up Miranda's cheeks. She did not answer, but snatched off his table the first item that came to hand. "So, how much is this whistle, then?" It was the one he had blown in the car that morning.

"You can have it. A gift." His voice was huskier than usual.

"No, I really should donate some money to our cause." She inspected the little statue so she wouldn't have to look at him. She wished they could just act natural with each other.

The whistle was a bird about three inches high, carved out of cold, white stone. The bottom of the base was covered in a circle of green felt. The statue was smoothly and intricately detailed, with small feathered wings and a sharp beak. The bird resembled an eagle, but its folded wings were longer, its face faintly human. It seemed to smile.

"It's a stone phoenix," Dan told her.

"What's that?"

"It's the bird from the legend. You know—about the bird who rises out of its own funeral pyre to live again and again."

She noticed gratefully that his voice was back to normal. "Sounds bizarre."

"Yeah. I don't really know much about it. My mom found it in a jumble of stuff that was donated to the museum. She knows the whole legend. Get her to tell you." He moved away to wait on a teacher, who wanted to know the price of a pair of wooden candlesticks.

Miranda turned the stone figure over and over in her hand. She found it strangely fascinating. She raised it to her lips and blew into the small hole at the top of its head. Across the gymnasium she saw Abby raise her head and look around, startled at the high, clear note.

Miranda waited while Dan sold the candlesticks. She waited while he sold the ugly china pig to Mrs. Wainwright, who was his great-aunt and Miranda's flute teacher. Mrs. Wainwright claimed she wanted it for her collection of china animals that sat atop the grand piano. When she walked away, carrying her pig, Dan turned back to Miranda, grinning. "See? See? Ten bucks."

Miranda snorted. "She took pity on you, that's what I see."

"Hey, you'd better get back," he said suddenly. "Susannah's going crazy over there."

Miranda glanced at her friend, who was beckoning her. Their table was crowded with customers. She held out the stone whistle to Dan. "I really do want this," she said. "How much is it?"

"Well, if I can get ten bucks for my beautiful pig, I have to ask as much for such a rare old bird."

Miranda thought ten dollars was a bit steep for such a little bit of stone, but she handed him her only bill readily enough, telling herself the money was for the Prindle House. Dan stuffed the money into a jar.

She felt him watching her as she hurried over to Susannah. Two small boys were clamoring for the bears; a woman was eager to purchase the dominoes and was waving her checkbook over the heads of the other customers. The old man who had stopped when Abby fell in the road was interested in the camping stove. He recognized Miranda and smiled.

As Miranda took her place behind the table and smiled back, she found her gaze moving beyond him, across the room to Abby at her little desk. A tremor went through her, and she reached her hand back to touch the chill, of the stone whistle in her jeans pocket. Unaccountably she felt a sense of great loss, almost a feeling of homesickness, steal over her. It was ridiculous, of course, for here she was in her own school, classmates all around her, and Susannah and Dan, her mother only blocks away in her office, her father maybe already on his way back from Lexington. But Miranda wanted to be home,
needed
to be home, cozily ensconced in her window seat with a book, with her parents down in the kitchen at the table drinking tea and a fire crackling in the living room grate. Why did the gym seem suddenly so barren and cold? As she pressed a free jigsaw puzzle on the old man, a vision flickered briefly across the back of her mind: Abby lying so still in the snow, those pale eyes meeting her own.

A
LTHOUGH
M
IRANDA RESOLVED
to forget about Abby, she found herself thinking about the girl all afternoon. She quizzed Susannah about her, but learned only that Abby's last name was Chandler, and that she was new in Susannah's science class. A boy who was browsing at their table and actually bought one of the jigsaw puzzles overheard and said Abby Chandler had moved to Garnet only a couple of weeks ago. Even though she looked too young for tenth grade, she was in his homeroom. He told them she kept to herself. Miranda asked other kids who came to their table, but no one knew anything more about Abby.

In the car on the way home, Miranda told her mother she had tried her best to talk to the girl. Dan sat in the backseat but leaned forward to add that Abby didn't seem injured.

Helen sighed, driving carefully through the snow-covered lanes. "I thought about the poor thing all day. Even if she says she wasn't hurt, it still was a nasty fall. And so sudden—it almost seemed a faint. She was awfully pale, didn't you think? And so thin. I'm worried about her."

"I get the feeling she doesn't want us bothering her, Mither."

"Well, I feel responsible. I'm going to call her parents."

"I hope they aren't as rude as she is."

"Oh, Mandy, she's probably just lonely. It's hard being the new kid at school."

"I know all about being the new girl, don't forget. But in order to make friends, you have to be friendly. It isn't as if I didn't even try, Mither. She was totally weird when I talked to her. No
wonder
she doesn't have any friends."

"It's not like you to be so uncharitable." Helen glanced over at Miranda sharply. "Don't be so quick to judge."

"I don't know what it is. I just don't like her." She felt the pressure of Dan's hand on her shoulder and pressed her lips together, scowling out the window. Dusk came early now, and already the windows of the houses they passed were filled with warm yellow light. From the backseat, Dan reached forward and gently tugged a strand of her hair.

Helen slid the car to a stop in front of the Hootons' house. Miranda got out of the front seat so Dan could climb out. Virginia Hooton, Dan's mother, threw aside a snow shovel and struggled through the drifts in the driveway to their car. Helen rolled down the window.

"Hi." Mrs. Hooton smiled, bending down to peer in the window at Helen. "Slippery enough for you?"

Helen grimaced. "Cold enough, too. I wonder if I'll even be able to get in our driveway."

"How did the flea market go?" asked Mrs. Hooton. "I stopped by, but I couldn't stay. I had to get back to the Prindle House. We're setting up an exhibit about the history of the house to help with fund-raising. It's hard work."

"Poor Mom," said Dan, clapping her on the shoulder with a handful of snow.

"Keep away from me with that white stuff," she warned him. "Or you'll get a whole drift of it packed into your shirt."

"See how she treats me?" Dan appealed to Miranda. "Can I come live with you instead?"

Miranda grinned at him but spoke to his mother. "The place was a mob scene." She reached into her coat pocket and drew out the stone whistle. "I bought this."

"Oh, the phoenix. How much did he charge you for it?"

"Ten dollars."

"Hmm." Virginia Hooton glanced at her son. "I doubt it's worth that much—though maybe I'm wrong. It does look quite old. It was in a box of junk I got at an estate sale when old Mrs. Penny died. The box had been up in her attic for ages, unopened. It was labeled 'From Uncle Henry Longridge, Boston.' Whoever that was, I don't know. But since it wasn't Garnet history, it doesn't belong in our museum."