The Key to the Golden Firebird

by Maureen Johnson

  She turned off her bedside lamp and stared up at the shadow of her blinds, rippling across the ceiling. Someone drove by in a car with way too much bass, and the room thumped and rattled until it passed by.

  “I suck,” she said out loud. “How could I fail?”

  The phone rang. Probably her mother’s midway-through-shift call to check on them. May clawed around next to her bed for the phone and answered it. The person on the other end breathed heavily into the phone. She allowed this to go on for a minute or so.

  “What’s up, Camper?” she finally asked.

  “Do you like scary movies?” the voice whispered.

  “Do you like getting hot coffee poured in your lap? Because that’s what’s going to happen the next time I see you if you don’t stop it.”

  Pete cleared his throat.

  “I forgot to ask you when you wanted to start,” he said. “Monday?”

  “Okay.” May yawned. “Monday.”

  “Six?”

  “Fine.” After a moment she remembered to add, “Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  “Good night, Camper.”

  Shaking her head at the great unfairness of it all, May hung up and dropped the phone beside her bed.

  2

  Even though Palmer was only a freshman, she was already the pitcher on Grant High’s varsity softball team. This would normally be a rare and remarkable accomplishment, but really, no one expected less from the little sister of Brooks “Solid” Gold—shortstop, Grant’s record holder for most hits in a season and in a career, two-time All State selection, with the team-best batting average of .692.

  Palmer intended to do even better than her sister. Along with the formal daily practice at school, she did a separate workout at home. Her father had helped her design this routine. It was based on his college workout, and he’d modified it carefully for her. She followed it religiously. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays she worked on her pitching. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays she stretched and ran a few loops around the neighborhood.

  Since it was Monday, Palmer slipped on her fleece jacket (which she wore all year round, except in the most excruciating heat, to keep her body warm and prevent injuries), grabbed her small bucket of softballs, and went out into the backyard. First she set her face in her standard pitching grimace—she narrowed her eyes, sucked in her round cheeks, and tipped her head to the side. (It was actually her imitation of Dirty Harry. She thought it made her look a little older and more imposing.)

  Then she started to throw.

  Twenty wrist-snap pitches close to the pitch back. A series of fastballs, ten inside and ten outside. A few rise balls, a dozen drop balls and screwballs. Last, she worked the changeups, the balls that actually slow down as they travel. These were the hardest, but they were also some of her best. She wrapped the whole thing up with a dozen very fast, very accurate throws, aimed directly at the center of the net.

  With the formal practice over, she allowed herself to throw whatever she liked as her brain tried to process the news, which she had gotten along with everyone else, dished out cold at an impromptu team meeting after practice. Brooks had quit the team that morning. In fact, Brooks was completely AWOL. She hadn’t even been around to help Palmer get home. She’d had to bum a ride home with one of her teammates.

  When she heard the minivan pull into the driveway, she stopped her practice and went inside. Brooks was in the kitchen, staring into the fridge.

  “What’s going on?” Palmer said bluntly.

  “Yeah,” Brooks said, “I was going to tell you.”

  “Going to tell me?”

  “May made you dinner,” Brooks said, pointing inside the fridge. “She says it’s meat loaf, but it looks like one of those old Duraflame logs from the garage.”

  “You were going to tell me?”

  Brooks let go of the fridge door.

  “Look, I’ve just had enough, all right?” she said. “I’ve been playing for what, twelve, thirteen years?”

  “You could get a scholarship,” Palmer said, her lips clenched. “Or try out for WPSL or the Olympic team…”

  “Palm,” Brooks said with a laugh, “I don’t want to go pro. And there’s no way I’d even make it.”

  “Yes, you would. You could. Easy.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to.”

  “Why didn’t you even tell me?” The strain in Palm’s voice was clear now.

  “I just decided,” Brooks said as she played with the fridge magnets.

  “So? You should have told me before you quit.”

  “You’re right,” Brooks said. “I should have. I was going to.”

  May ran into the kitchen. Without bothering to greet either of them, she moved Brooks out of the way, opened up the fridge, and grabbed at the meat loaf. She cringed when she saw it—it looked kind of wet, and it was dotted with soft, sick-looking peas. She sliced off a chunk, dropped it on a plate, and tossed it into the microwave. Normally she went right upstairs to remove her school uniform. Today she just pulled off her maroon blazer and threw it on a chair.

  “You’re in a hurry,” Brooks said.

  “I have a driving lesson.”

  “With who?”

  “Pete’s teaching me,” May said, dropping her bag onto a chair.

  Brooks gave her a sharp sideways glance.

  “Pete Camp?”

  May pulled out a book and instantly started reading.

  “What are you doing?” Brooks asked.

  “Homework,” May said, not looking up. “It’s work. You do it at home. You take it back to school the next day.”

  “Ohhh.” Brooks nodded, looking over May’s shoulder. “Romeo and Juliet. How appropriate.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Getting in the mood?”

  “I’m getting in the mood to wing this book at you,” May said, snapping to the next page.

  “Touchy, touchy.”

  Palmer watched this exchange, then sat down next to May and folded her arms over her chest.

  “Did she tell you?” she asked.

  “Tell me what?” May asked, reaching around to grab the meat loaf from the beeping microwave.

  “She quit the team.”

  “What?” May’s mouth dropped open. “You quit softball?”

  Brooks didn’t reply. Instead she bunched all of the magnets together and then started dividing them into groups—picture frame magnets, fruit magnets, baseball magnets….

  “Can you do that?” May asked. “I mean, can you quit in the middle of the season?”

  “You can quit anytime,” Brooks said.

  “But that’s not good, right?” May persisted. “If you wanted to play again?”

  “No, probably not. But I don’t want to.”

  “Not even in college? I thought you wanted an athletic scholarship.”

  “Well, I don’t anymore.”

  “A scholarship, Brooks. You’re going to need it. Think about it.”

  “I have thought about it.”

  “You couldn’t have, or you wouldn’t be doing this. How else are you going to get a scholarship? You’re not going to get an academic one, and we can’t pay full tuition.”

  “I’ll work.”

  “And make ten or fifteen or twenty thousand dollars?” May said. “Doing what?”

  “Why is this your business?”

  “It’s all of our business. There’s only one pool of money for tuition. We have to figure out how to divide it.”

  “Like that’s up to you,” Brooks said. “Besides, you’re the only one whose school costs money. Why don’t you just go to our school?”

  “We don’t pay my tuition,” May said quickly. “Grandma and Grandpa Gold pay it.”

  “So? Couldn’t we use that money for something? It’s what, six thousand dollars? Seven thousand?”

  “It’s different.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t throw it away,” May s
aid, her voice rising. “I actually work. If I get a scholarship, it will all be worth it. It’ll be worth more.”

  Palmer started chomping furiously at her nails.

  “I’m telling Mom,” she said.

  “Go ahead,” Brooks replied, meeting Palmer’s gaze.

  There was a knock at the front door. May made a move to get up and answer it, but Palmer beat her to it. She had to get up or she would start screaming.

  Pete was waiting there when she opened the door, dressed in a loose pair of jeans and a blue T-shirt that said 100% Hawaiian Pure.

  “Hey,” he said. “Is May here?”

  He looked just over her head, in the direction of the kitchen. Palmer waited a minute before answering, trying to figure out a way to get him to come in and join the conversation. Maybe he could talk some sense into Brooks. Before she could think of anything, May came up behind them.

  “I’m ready,” she said, stepping around both Palmer and Pete and out the door.

  “You can come in,” Palmer said to Pete, even though it seemed like the wrong time to finally say this.

  “That’s all right,” he said. He looked over his shoulder at May. “We’re just going to go, I think.”

  “Uh-huh,” May said, folding her arms over her chest. “Definitely.”

  She walked across the lawn toward Pete’s car.

  “See you later,” Pete said, smiling at Palmer.

  “Later.”

  Palmer watched Pete follow May. When she turned around, she saw Brooks coming up behind her and heading for the stairs.

  “I’ll tell Mom myself,” she said.

  Palmer shut the door.

  “Whatever,” she said. But Brooks was already gone.

  Pete’s car was saunalike. Waves of heated air came blasting from the vents.

  “Sorry,” he said. He threw his arm over her seat and craned his neck around to back out of the driveway. “My radiator is leaking.”

  “What?”

  “My radiator. I have to keep the heat on so the car doesn’t overheat.”

  “You have to turn on the heat to keep the heat down?” May asked. “That makes no sense.”

  “It pulls the heat out of the engine and pushes it inside the car. That’s how heaters work.”

  “Is this a joke? Like the one from the other night?”

  “No,” he said. “This just sucks.”

  May noticed that his skin was flushed and he’d stripped off his sweatshirt, so he probably wasn’t kidding. Pete tried to turn on the radio, but the stations drifted wildly every time he turned the steering wheel, so he had to switch it off.

  “I think my car’s possessed,” he said. “And I just finished paying it off, too.”

  “Didn’t your parents buy it?”

  “Yeah, but I’ve been paying them back. It was fifteen hundred bucks.”

  “I didn’t know you were working.”

  “Yeah, I am,” he said, running the back of his hand over his forehead. “I work for this place in New Hope that rents theatrical equipment. Lights and stuff. I only help out when they’re busy or behind, so it’s really off and on. I need something more regular for the summer. More hours.”

  They stopped talking for a minute to lean out their windows and catch a breath of air.

  “So, that’s your uniform?” Pete asked, glancing over.

  May looked down at the mass of maroon that was herself. She was so used to wearing her uniform now that she forgot how strange it had to look to other people. It was kind of severe—a plain, straight skirt with a single pleat, a white oxford-cloth shirt, maroon kneesocks, and loafers. The blazer, which she had tossed into the backseat, completed the look, which was kind of a cross between a stewardess and Thelma from Scooby-Doo.

  “It’s ugly,” she said.

  “No. It’s…I’ve just never seen you in it,” he said. “It says academy, you know? It’s kind of serious looking.”

  “It’s kind of polyester.”

  “Okay…”

  “Sorry. I’m just irritated. And hot.” She leaned out and took another breath of air. “Is it ever legal to kill your sister? If you had a really good reason?”

  “I guess it depends. What’s the reason?”

  “Forget it. It’s too annoying to even discuss.”

  “Brooks or Palmer?”

  “Really, forget it.”

  “I’m guessing Brooks.”

  “Camper…”

  “Ve can fix zees problems, you know. Ve hav ways of fixing ze peoples.”

  “Camper,” she said sharply, “forget it. Where are we going anyway?”

  “I’m psyched. I found the perfect place.”

  The perfect place turned out to be a deserted housing development still under construction. The roads were just laid, there were backhoes and cement trucks parked against the shiny new white curbs, and the streetlights weren’t on.

  “It’s dark,” May said, squinting.

  “There’s some light.”

  “From the moon.”

  “Driver’s ed by moonlight.” He grinned. “Come on—that’s cool.”

  “I guess. It’s your car.”

  May spent about fifteen minutes going over all of the controls in Pete’s car. It wasn’t that they were hard to understand, but she was nervous about practicing with his most valuable possession. She tried to relax and get the news about Brooks out of her head, but that didn’t really work.

  “So,” Pete said, rubbing his hands together, “I guess you should just start driving around.”

  “You want me to just…drive? Around? What, in circles?”

  “No, just normally. Like this was a real street. Just for practice. Let’s see what you need to work on. We’ll try the three-point turn, parking, all of that.”

  The first discovery they made was that May only seemed able to drive at five miles an hour or fifty—and she usually alternated between the two rather abruptly. The second was that she seemed to think things were much closer than they actually were. As a result, she drove down the center of the road.

  “A little closer to the curb,” Pete said, looking out the window.

  “I’m going to hit it.”

  “No, you’re not. Ease it in a little.”

  Pete watched for another minute.

  “A little closer, May,” he repeated.

  “I just moved it closer!”

  “We’re still in the middle of the street. A little more.”

  May pushed harder on the gas.

  “Not faster,” Pete said. “Closer.”

  In frustration she slammed on the brakes, sending them both pitching forward. She ran her hands through her hair and grabbed two big handfuls.

  “Okay,” Pete said, pushing himself back off the dashboard. “So, I guess we’ll kind of start at the beginning.”

  “I think I need to get out for a second.” May sighed and wiped some of the perspiration from her face. She put the car in park and turned off the engine. They both got out of the car, leaving their doors hanging open to air it out. May sat on the brand-new curb and rubbed her eyes.

  “How did you learn how to drive?” she asked.

  “My dad. And driver’s ed.”

  “You passed the first time, didn’t you?”

  “I had more practice.”

  Somehow May didn’t think that was it.

  “Things come easier to you,” she said.

  “I’m not even going there,” he replied, shaking his head.

  “What?”

  “You know what.”

  “School stuff doesn’t count,” she said.

  “Since when? I’ve always been way behind you. This is the only thing I’ve done better at first.”

  The flattery lifted May’s spirits a bit, but she didn’t want this to show.

  “The only reason I have to learn is because my mom has all these jobs she needs me to do,” she said.

  “That doesn’t matter,” Pete replied. “The best part about driving
is that you can just sit and think or play music. Whatever you want. You’re totally on your own.”

  May turned to him. He was too tall to sit with his knees tucked up, like hers were. He had to stretch them out.

  “I want that,” she said seriously.

  “So, come on. Back in.”

  The car was slightly cooler when they got in, but this didn’t last long.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Pete said. “We’re going to play ‘let’s pretend we’re in England.’ This is how it works: You drive on the left side of the road. That way you can see how close you are to the curb.”

  “So I watch out the window?”

  “Bloody right.”

  Pete was using the same strange voice that he’d been trying out on Saturday.

  “We’re going to do this without the accent, okay, Pete?”

  “You got it,” he said, again with the accent.

  It took about an hour of going back and forth between the left and right sides, but she eventually managed to drive on the correct side at the correct distance from the curb. But an hour in the punishing heat of the car drained them both, and they turned around and headed back to May’s house.

  “So, what do you think?” he asked. “Want to do this again?”

  “Yeah,” May said. “It was good. I think I almost got it.”

  “You did get it. You were fine.”

  “So what’s the catch?” May asked.

  “Catch?”

  “I’m just waiting,” she said. “I know you have something planned. I know I’m walking into some plot of yours.”

  Pete snickered. “Just wait and see.”

  “Yeah,” May said, getting out of the car. “I can hardly wait.”

  3

  One of May’s ultimate pet peeves was when people said to her, “Your dad’s in a better place now.” Like he had moved. May always wanted to say, “Yes. He loves it in North Carolina.” Or, “He says Spain is amazing.”

  May resented the idea of anyone else thinking they knew where her dad had gone. She didn’t know where her dad was. Not even physically. His body had been cremated, and the ashes were being stored somewhere. She had never asked where because she didn’t want to know. As for the spiritual part (which was what the “better placers” were talking about), she got the impression they were talking about a heaven where he was floating around in the clouds, consorting with famous dead people.