Pale Phoenix (7 page)

Miranda felt inexplicably shy. This was simply Dan, her good friend. So why was she studying the cracks on his ceiling to avoid looking at him?

"Go on, turn over," he said. "You're all tense. I give good back rubs."

Then she did look at him. His head was bent low next to hers, and she could see his lashes, short and spiky, framing his dark eyes. "First class, five-star back rubs, I hope."

He grinned. "Absolutely."

She tugged the stone phoenix and her wallet out of her back pockets and set them on his bedside table. Then she turned onto her stomach, and he straddled her thighs, placing his hands on her shoulders.

"Relax," he said. "How can I massage you if you bunch up your shoulders like this?"

"That's your job," she said. "You can't just tell someone to relax. You've got to
make
me relax."

In answer, he pressed his fingers lightly under her shoulder blades, then more firmly. He lifted her hair to prod the nape of her neck. She lay quietly, trying to calm her pulse. All thoughts of Abby and the strange situation awaiting her at home fled from her mind as Dan kneaded her muscles. She tightened up for a moment as she realized he would feel through her sweater that she wasn't wearing a bra. Didn't need one; though she wore one on gym days so the other girls in the locker room wouldn't tease. Then, just when she began to relax, Dan suddenly slid his hands up under her sweater and T-shirt and she tensed again. He rubbed her back in wide, firm circles in time to the beat of the music, his hands warm on her skin. Finally she stopped worrying and just enjoyed the soothing massage.

When the song ended, his hands slowed then stopped. He let them lie there against her skin for a long moment, palms down, until she made a move to turn and sit up. Then Dan drew his hands out from under her sweater and sat back on the bed.

For a second she could not look at him, but when she glanced over, he was staring at the bedspread, his face flushed. She felt better suddenly, better about being with Dan in this new and exciting way, and even better about Abby's infiltration of her house. "
Well,
" she said finally.

"Does your back feel better?"

Miranda, who could not recall having complained her back hurt in the first place, smiled at him. "Much better. Maybe you'd better forget being a museum curator or a photographer and go work at a health club instead."

He laughed and turned up the volume. They sat listening to the music another fifteen minutes or so until Miranda looked at his bedside clock and stood up. "I guess I'd better go. I told my parents I wouldn't be long. Although I doubt they'll miss me when they've got Abby to talk to and fuss over."

"You sound like a jealous only child who doesn't like the new baby."

"Oh, shut up. Abby isn't our new baby. Don't say such horrible things." She headed for the stairs.

"Hey, don't forget these." He handed her the stone whistle and her wallet from the bedside table and she stuffed them back into her pockets.

Down in the front hall, he loaned her his boots to wear across the drifts back to her house. "My ulterior motive is"—he grinned—"that now you'll have to bring them back early tomorrow."

"How early is early?"

"As soon as I get up. Oh, like after lunch."

Miranda rolled her eyes and darted out the door, carrying her damp shoes. The snow had stopped and the moon peeked through the dark clouds, and Miranda smiled even as the cold wind bit into her. She had the memory of Dan's hands on her back to keep her warm. But as soon as she entered her own house, the smile faded from her face. She could hear gut-wrenching sobs coming from the top of the stairs—from her mother's office. And yet Helen and Philip sat peacefully in the living room, sipping tea and talking before the fire.

"Here's Mandy now," said Philip when she stopped in the doorway, her hands on her hips. "Can we talk now, sweetheart? Mither and I know you were shocked when we asked Abby to stay, but what else could we have done right then? Sent her back out into the snow? Called the cops?"

Miranda stared at him. "Well, why don't you go to her now, if you care so much? She really sounds awful."

Philip and Helen were on their feet in an instant. "What do you mean?" asked Helen, coming into the front hall.

Miranda kicked off Dan's dripping boots and set them on the mat by the radiator. "What do you mean, what do I mean? Lost your hearing?"

Philip shot her a puzzled glance. "What are you talking about, Mandy?"

From the floor above them, Abby's sobs rose. "Oh, yeah, I guess it's only the wailing of the wind." Miranda couldn't keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

Helen and Philip looked at each other, concern and puzzlement clouding their faces.

Miranda lost her patience. "Come on, you guys! Are you
deaf?
Are you going to let Abby cry like that and not even try to help? I thought you two were the charitable ones around here." She stomped up the stairs. "I don't even want her here. Why do I have to play Florence Nightingale?"

At the top of the stairs she threw open the door to her mother's office without knocking. The sofa bed was all made up, its bedclothes rumpled as if Abby had been lying in them. Her sweater and jeans lay in a heap on the desk chair. The beaded satchel sat on the desk. The light was off, but the room was illuminated by soft moonlight. And Abby was not there.

Miranda flung open the closet door, then ran across the hall into the bathroom. Abby was nowhere, yet the crying continued, mournful and deep. Miranda ran to the stairs, frightened.

Her parents were on their way up. "What is it, Mandy?" demanded Philip. "What in the world is going on with you?"

Then the crying abruptly stopped. The house seemed to ring with the sudden silence. Miranda stood there uncertainly. "Are you telling me you didn't hear anything?"

Helen and Philip shook their heads. "We haven't heard a peep out of Abby since she went to bed about a half hour ago," her mother told her. "She was exhausted, poor thing."

"Well, she's not in bed now. Maybe she's out ripping off a few more cars or burglarizing the neighborhood. Maybe we'd better go down and lock up the silverware." What Miranda felt like doing was running downstairs and out the door, back over to Dan's house.

"What do you mean, she's not there?" Philip reached past her and pushed open the door to Abby's room. He flicked on the light switch.

Abby lifted her tousled head from the pillows and stared at them, blinking in the sudden blaze of light. "What—?" she asked in a thick voice, though whether the thickness was from tears or tiredness, Miranda could not say.

Miranda's heart thumped in her chest.
What is going on?

Helen hurried to her side. "Are you all right, Abby?"

"Oh, yes," she mumbled. "The bed's very comfortable."

"Miranda thought she heard you crying," said Philip from the doorway.

Miranda could see Abby's face in the moonlight as she blinked at them from the bed. Her cheeks were red and her eyes were bright, surely signs that she had been crying. "She did?" asked Abby. "She heard crying?"

"Please come to us if you need anything," Philip said. "Anything at all."

Abby stared at Miranda. "I—I will. But I'm fine. Thank you."

"Sorry to bother you," said Philip, and he ushered Helen and Miranda out into the hall. He closed Abby's door gently. "Now what was that all about, Mandy?"

"She was crying. I heard her," said Miranda flatly. "And then when I looked in the room, her bed was empty."

"Oh, Mandy." Helen shook her head. "Getting us all upset about nothing at all."

"Nothing at all? Mither, I'm telling you, her bed was
empty!
"

"I think we're all tired," said her father. "Let's go to bed now. We can talk more about all of this in the morning." He headed for the master bedroom. "If we must."

Miranda stomped down the hall to her own room. She slammed her door and leaned against it, trembling. From behind her closed door she could hear her parents out in the hall.

"Mandy's just fanciful," Helen said to Philip.

"Well, it's not like her at all. Do you think she's jealous because we're going to try to help the poor girl out for a while?"

Then their door clicked shut, leaving Miranda standing in silence, her fists balled tightly at her sides.
Abby wasn't there—she wasn't, she wasn't.
The words slid through Miranda's mind, wormlike, insidious, and the anger and hurt were replaced by fear. Abby had been crying. She had not been in the room. Then she had reappeared—as if out of thin air.

But that's impossible.

First the vanishing footprints, and now this.
The bubble of fear deep inside expanded with each breath Miranda took, and one question pumped in her ears with her heartbeat:
What in the world is going on?

I
N THE MORNING
Miranda blocked the bathroom door while Abby was brushing her teeth. Abby's long hair was tied back from her face with a faded pink ribbon. In the too long, white flannel nightgown, borrowed from Miranda, she looked very small and innocent—almost angelic. But Miranda was not fooled.

"I want to know what's going on." Miranda's voice held all the pent-up hostility and fear of the past night.

"I'm brushing my teeth. That's what's going on. What do you think?" Abby rinsed her mouth and patted her lips with a towel.

Miranda stepped into the room. "I heard you crying. And then you weren't there. So where were you? You'd better tell me, or—"

"Or what?" Abby smirked. "See how I'm shaking? Trembling with terror of what you might do." She reached back to untie the pink ribbon and shook her hair over her shoulders. Her eyes met Miranda's in the mirror over the sink. "There is no way in the world you could have heard me crying, Miranda Browne. So just put it out of your head. You imagined the whole thing." There was a challenge in Abby's expression, frighteningly at odds with the angelic hair and heart-shaped, pale face.

Miranda stamped out of the room, unsure how to meet that challenge. Abby's laughter followed her down the hall.

Abby settled in quickly, much too quickly as far as Miranda was concerned. Helen moved her files and medical journals to her office in town, and soon the room at the top of the stairs was referred to by all the Brownes as "Abby's room." The sofa bed remained unfolded during the day, and Helen gave Abby a quilt, brightly patterned with blue cornflowers, to cover it. Abby's schoolbooks lay on the desk by the window, and her two dresses and one blouse hung in the closet. She didn't have many personal belongings. Most of what she owned she carried around with her in the bulging beaded bag. Helen promised her a shopping expedition to Boston for some new clothes.

But the hostility between Miranda and Abby grew thicker each day. Abby bristled at everything Miranda said to her, and Miranda counted up all the snide remarks, the insults, and sarcastic comments Abby flung her way, and brooded over them. Miranda spent a lot of time holed up in her bedroom, curled on her window seat, reading or staring out the window at the snow. She could not forget the vanishing footprints and the mysterious crying. She longed for spring. Spring sunshine would melt the snow, and maybe also the icy grip of unease she felt with Abby around.

If only Abby were quieter. That might help Miranda pretend she wasn't really there. But Abby was loud. She had appropriated the old upright piano in the family room at the back of the house and played all the time. Or at least it seemed that way to Miranda, who used to practice her flute in the family room but shunned it now. Abby's music flooded the house.

Helen and Philip were impressed. They urged her to see Mrs. Wainwright about playing in the spring concert. Miranda would be performing on her flute.
Yeah,
thought Miranda.
If I ever get a chance to practice around here.
Abby ducked her head and said she was too shy, but the big house rang with music that seemed anything but shy. Abby played Bach and Mozart and Beethoven with the touch of a master. She played folk songs and ballads, sometimes singing along in a thin, soft soprano. She hammered out boogie-woogie and wrenched out the blues, playing sometimes from memory and sometimes from one of the old, yellowed scores of music she pulled from her beaded satchel. Helen and Philip sang along and sometimes even danced when Abby played. One night Abby taught them the Charleston, and Miranda watched dourly from the doorway as they shimmied, laughing uproariously, across the family room. Another night Abby taught them the steps to a minuet. As the bell-like notes of the simple Bach tune rang out and Helen and Philip faced each other formally to begin, Abby glanced from the music over at Miranda in the doorway. Abby's smile was the quirky, crooked one that made Miranda shiver. She hurried away, back upstairs.

One night after Abby had been with them about ten days, Miranda couldn't keep her anger inside anymore. She had promised her parents she would try to make Abby welcome, but enough was enough. Abby was banging out a fifties' tune, "At the Hop," down on the piano and the house reverberated with the beat. Miranda's head ached. She left her essay for English unfinished and crawled into bed, pulling the quilt over her head. Finally the music stopped. She waited until she heard her parents coming upstairs to go to bed, then left her warm quilt and stalked into their bedroom, plopping herself down into the middle of their big bed.

Philip pulled his sweater over his head and dropped it onto a chair. "Insomnia, Mandy? You have school tomorrow."

"Dad, I can't sleep because I'm going crazy." Tears pressed hotly behind her eyes.

Helen sat down next to Miranda on the bed. "Mandy? You're crying! What is it, honey?"

Miranda shook her head. "No, I'm not crying. I just have a headache. But, Mither—oh, how much longer does she have to stay? It feels like forever already. I can't stand it."

Philip sank onto the bed, too. "I take it 'she' refers to our houseguest across the hall?"

"I mean it. Having her here is making me sick. All her nasty little digs at me. And that
piano!
I'm
trying
to live with her, but all I can think of is that soon she'll have to go. I'm practically crossing the days off on my calendar."