The Key to the Golden Firebird

by Maureen Johnson

  “Camper!” she finally yelled.

  “What?”

  “Why aren’t you saying anything?”

  “What am I supposed to say?”

  “That I suck!”

  “You suck!”

  It didn’t make her feel better.

  It took May a few minutes to realize that it actually hadn’t been her fault. It had been Pete’s. Instead of teaching her, he’d been his usual asinine self. But because May had been the one behind the wheel, she had mistakenly thought she was to blame.

  She looked over at him slouching down in his seat. He glanced over.

  “You’re mad now,” he said. “Aren’t you?”

  “A little.”

  “Thought so.”

  It was still early when they pulled back up in front of the Gold house. The garage door was open. Palmer was probably practicing out back.

  “Look,” Pete said, “we’re good, right? You’re going to try again?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I shouldn’t do stuff like that,” he said. “It’s just…old habit. Sorry.”

  He really did look sorry. And they were pretty much even since she had ended up almost destroying his car.

  “Fine,” May grumbled.

  “Just tell me something.”

  “What?”

  “Are you really wearing Brooks’s underwear?”

  May nodded and opened her door to get out.

  “Why?”

  “It’s a little game we play,” she said. “Sometimes we make out, too. Good night, Camper.”

  As Palmer lay in bed that night, she felt her heart jumping—hiccuping. She pressed her fingers to her neck and felt the irregular beat. Quickly at first, then a pause, then two hard beats at once. The sensation seemed to lock off her breathing for a moment. She sucked in air as powerfully as she could, and her heart staggered harder. By then the pressure was everywhere, blocking her nose and her throat, pressing down on her lungs. The dark in the room got darker. It throbbed.

  Her hands scrambled for the bedside lamp. Unfortunately, the light only caused everything to glow a heady orange, which made the walls look like they were leaning in. She was unable to move from her position, unable to call out for fear of wasting all the breath she had left. She bent over and pulled the blankets to her abdomen. She concentrated on her breathing. Her chest hurt.

  The fearless side of Palmer rose up long enough to tell the rest of her to ride it through. She tried imagining being on the field or being at school. Something with daylight, people all around her. She tried to imagine the most boring place to be—the back row of her algebra class, stuck in line at the supermarket. Sometimes those images were the easiest to pull up. Anything to distract herself, get her mind to a good place.

  The feeling of dread was impossible to shake. It was like a stench that clung to her clothes. She knew from experience that this would last for at least an hour. These night attacks had started about a month after her father had died. At first they’d happened about once a month. But she’d had one once a week for the last three weeks.

  She went down to the living room and switched on all the lights. She switched on SportsCenter and wound herself up in an afghan. The worst part was still coming—the feeling that the world was permanently screwed up. That this crippling fear would go right into her bones and stay there. That the afghan would suffocate her.

  She kicked it off and wondered if she was crazy. Probably.

  “Jesus, Palm,” May said, appearing in the living room doorway a few minutes later and squinting at the television. “Could you turn that down?”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Palmer said. Though she felt like she should barely have been able to speak, her voice came out very loud.

  “Fine. So you can’t sleep. Does it have to be so loud?”

  Palmer turned the television down a few notches.

  “Did Brooks come home?”

  Palmer shook her head mutely.

  “Whatever,” May growled. “If she oversleeps, she oversleeps. I’m sick of this.”

  May turned and went back upstairs, and Palmer pulled her blanket tighter. This wasn’t working. Even the living room seemed like a bad place to be. The dark plaid sofa and the green carpet made her feel claustrophobic. The bobble-headed baseball dolls on the top of the entertainment console seemed to be leering at her. And she needed more air. Someplace cooler. She would go get a flashlight and take a walk.

  She threw her fleece on over her pajamas and headed out to the garage. As she was sliding alongside the Firebird to get to the shelves on the other side of the room, Palmer looked into the backseat. She barely noticed the car anymore, even though it took up most of the garage. There was something weird about it now. It seemed forbidden.

  When she was little and couldn’t sleep, her father would put her in the backseat, take the top down, and drive her around. Palmer would stare up at the sky, and before she knew it, she would realize that her father was carrying her up to bed.

  She stared at the door and bit at her cuticles. No one had gone inside the Firebird since that day.

  If it would help her relax, she didn’t care. She carefully opened the door, released the front seat, and crawled into the back.

  Even though the seat wasn’t quite big enough for her to stretch all the way out, it was still large enough for her to be comfortable. She looked up at the black convertible top that stretched above her. It wasn’t like before, when she would look up at the stars, but still, things didn’t seem to be closing in as much. She breathed in and out slowly, taking long breaths and holding them in her chest. She ran her fingers along the stitching on the backseats that had always reminded her of the pattern on the front of a catcher’s chest protector. Slowly she started to feel a bit better. She actually started to nod off.

  The next thing she knew, there was a horrible grinding sound above her, causing her to jolt awake midsnore. The garage door was rolling back. Palmer crouched down, but Brooks was obviously going to notice the huge car door that was blocking her path into the house. Sure enough, Palmer heard the footsteps stop, and Brooks leaned down and peered into the back of the car.

  “What are you doing?” Brooks said, smirking.

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re sleeping in the garage now?”

  Palmer didn’t answer. She would just wait for Brooks to lose interest and go away.

  “You’re getting freaky, Palm,” Brooks said, tripping just a bit as she went up the two steps to the kitchen door.

  When Brooks was gone, Palmer gave up on her idea. She went back into the house and curled back up on the sofa, keeping the television on mute.

  4

  At work the next night, Nell approached May as she was restocking the milk-and-sugar counter. May went right on working, stuffed sugar packets into their clear plastic box, even though Nell lurked there for a solid minute or so. She got close enough for May to get a good whiff of her clove shampoo.

  “Did you want something?” May finally asked.

  “What’s your deal with Pete, Ape?”

  “My deal? I don’t have a deal with Pete.”

  “Yes, you do. You guys seem pretty tight.”

  “I’ve just known him for a long time,” May said, pushing way too many napkins into the dispenser. “My dad and his dad were best friends.”

  “Were? Did they fight or something?”

  “No.”

  “So they’re not friends now?”

  “They’re friends,” May said, not wanting to explain. “Is there a reason you’re asking?”

  “So if Pete’s not your boyfriend, why does he always come here?”

  “He gives me rides sometimes. That’s all.”

  “So you don’t have a boyfriend?”

  It was a piercing question.

  “Not at the moment,” May said, reaching for another pack of napkins. She wasn’t about to tell Nell that she had never had a boyfriend—but for some reason, she felt like Nell
could sense that fact.

  “I think that thing is full,” Nell said. The napkin dispenser was now groaning from the pressure of May’s overzealous packing. Nell’s cool hazel eyes said it all: You poor, sexually frustrated mess. Yeah. She knew.

  May stopped filling the napkin dispenser.

  “I did this photography project once,” Nell said, looking down at her nails. “It was a study on body markings. You know. Piercing, tattoos, stuff like that. But also natural stuff, like people who have extra skin somewhere or freckles. I like freckles. I liked your friend Pete’s freckles. He would have made a good subject.”

  “He’s got enough of them.”

  “You brought your bike today, didn’t you?”

  Automatically they both turned their glances out the window and focused them on the Brown Hornet, which was bathed dramatically in a pool of parking lot light. It was U-locked to one of the parking signs, and it slumped rather pathetically against the pole.

  “So he’s not coming to get you?”

  “No.”

  “Oh,” Nell said casually. “Too bad. Why don’t you give me his number?”

  May cocked her head, unable to accept what she’d just heard. Nell carefully pulled one of the napkins from the dispenser, produced a pen from her pocket, and pushed them over to May. May stared at them.

  “You just said there’s nothing between you guys,” Nell said. “Right?”

  May could only nod.

  “Does he have a girlfriend?”

  This was something May had not asked Pete, but it seemed very clear that he didn’t. She shook her head.

  “So…” Nell tapped the napkin.

  It was true. There was no reason May could give for not handing over the number—at least, not one that made sense. She couldn’t really say, “No, if you and Pete come together in any kind of romantic or sexual way, nature will rebel and the entire fabric of the universe will collapse. All will perish.”

  Nell was looking May right in the eye now. As calmly as possible, May wrote out a number she had known all her life. The first phone number she had ever learned, in fact, after her own.

  She pushed it over to Nell.

  As May was wheeling the Brown Hornet across the front lawn a half hour later, a car came up directly behind her. It pulled up so quickly that May actually shrieked and put her hand up to her chest, damsel-in-distress style.

  “Sorry,” Pete said, stepping out of his car. He was dressed all in black—black T-shirt, black jeans, black sneakers.

  “Were you at a ninja club meeting tonight?” she asked.

  “I ran the lights at a show. We have to wear all black.”

  “Oh.”

  “I got home early. You should have called. I could have driven you home.”

  May almost cringed. If Pete had taken her home tonight, she would have been able to witness Nell asking him for his number in person. That might have caused her to have a seizure.

  “I don’t mind riding,” May said. “It’s the only exercise I get.”

  “Exercise is good.”

  The black outfit made Pete look thinner and taller than normal. They’d always been the same height when they were younger, then suddenly one day he was six feet tall (even taller with the hair) and she was half a foot down. It was weird to have to look up at him all the time.

  “My mom asked me to bring something over, and I saw you go past on your bike a minute ago, so…”

  May eyed him skeptically as he went back to his car and pulled a shrink-wrapped case of dozens of ramen noodle packets out of the backseat.

  “That’s a lot of ramen,” she said.

  “I know,” he said, looking at the package critically.

  “Let me just put my bike inside and I’ll take it.”

  May reached into her bag and pushed the remote control for the garage door. It squawked hideously as it rolled up on its track.

  “I think that thing needs a little oil,” Pete said, watching it rise. “Want me to do it?”

  “You’re not our servant.”

  May ducked under and wheeled the bike into the darkness. Pete followed with the noodles.

  “Your friend called me,” he said.

  “Do you mean Nell?” May replied, trying to sound casual. “What did she say?”

  “She kind of asked me out.”

  “Kind of?”

  “Well, she did. She asked if I wanted to do something with her sometime.”

  “Oh,” May said.

  “I wanted to see if you were okay with it.”

  “If I’m okay with it? What does this have to do with me?”

  “Well, you know her.”

  “I work with her,” May clarified quickly.

  “I was just wondering what you thought. You don’t really seem to like her.”

  “Does that matter?” May asked.

  “No, but…”

  “Well, what did you say when she asked you?”

  “I said okay.”

  May shrugged, indicating that the matter seemed settled.

  “I haven’t figured out what to do yet about the prom,” he said. “It’s in the first week in June.”

  There was a long pause while May elaborately secured the Brown Hornet. She hadn’t seen this one coming. She should have, of course. Brooks had been talking about the prom. For some reason, she hadn’t connected Pete to the idea, even though he and Brooks were in the same class.

  “Who are you going to ask?” she finally said, having run out of things she could do with the bike.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh,” May said breezily, slipping between Pete and the Firebird and making her way out of the garage. He followed her and waited again for the horrible groaning and creaking of the garage door to stop. He shifted a lot, moving the lightweight box from arm to arm.

  “Are you saying you want to take Nell to the prom?” May asked. “Is that what I’m supposed to get from this?”

  “Well, maybe. I don’t know. Like I said, I don’t really…”

  Pete sighed loudly and rolled his head back on his shoulders. May relieved him of the load of ramen. He used his free hand to start pulling on the collar of his shirt. May didn’t even know what they were talking about anymore. Whatever it was, though, it was making her ill.

  “Just ask her,” May said. “I’m sure she’d go, especially if you sneak up on her with that smooth crouching tiger move.”

  “Right,” Pete said. “I thought you’d say something like that.”

  Palmer watched May and Pete talking through the blinds on the living room bay window. It was hard to tell what was going on. May was doing a lot of shuffling and staring at the ground. Pete looked happy but not as animated as usual, and he was carrying a big box of something.

  Palmer had a great interest in Pete. Unlike May, she had always found him amusing. (She had never been the direct target of any of his jokes.) He was kind to Palmer, and he liked to make her laugh. Plus he had his own car, and he always seemed to have some cash.

  Palmer watched as May took the box from Pete and turned back toward the house. She came into the living room a minute later.

  “What were you and Pete doing?” Palmer immediately asked.

  “Ballroom dancing,” May said, setting the box of noodles on the recliner. Palmer examined the package.

  “Are you guys going out or something?” she asked, digging her fingers into the shrink-wrap.

  “That’s sick, Palm.”

  “He’s always here now. And he brings stuff.”

  “You’re right,” May said. “You caught us. We’re dating. That’s why he brought me all this soup.”

  May jogged upstairs. Palmer listened carefully. She could read her sister’s mood from the sound of her walking above, since her room was right above the living room. May was particularly stompy tonight, dropping her bag heavily on the floor and then throwing herself onto her creaky bed.

  Palmer knew she wasn’t going to be able to sleep again ton
ight—she’d known this the whole day. To spare herself the trouble of having to find something to do to relax, she’d already come up with a plan: She was going to go through the boxes and bins she’d seen stuffed under her parents’ bed.

  She waited about half an hour for May to fall asleep (May usually read in bed for a while), then crept up to her mother’s room. Her mother, Palmer noticed, wasn’t as tidy as she used to be. The bed was unmade. A camisole and shorts were on top. A black bra hung from the bathroom door handle. A pile of dirty scrubs lay on the floor.

  Palmer lifted the cream-colored dust ruffle and evaluated the stash. The first thing she pulled out was a red expanding file full of drawings, tests, report cards, and notes from each of the girls. Each pocket was marked with a name and an age. From Brooks, age eleven: three certificates from various sports, a drawing of a dinosaur, a math quiz that she got 100 percent on (a rarity). From Palmer, age eight: a handprint in brown paint that had been drawn on to look like a turkey, a Little League certificate, a Valentine’s Day card. May, age ten: a science fair ribbon, a report on koalas, a poem about ice cream, and a carefully written note on heart-studded stationery that made a passionate but well-structured case for a family dog.

  Other things were under there. A cigar box brimming with concert ticket stubs, a few pairs of cleats, some rolled-up posters in a tube. She was in the process of trying to pull these out when she heard a car drive up. She hastily shoved everything under the bed and quickly left the room.

  There were voices downstairs, very low voices. It sounded like there might be a few people in the house. Palmer came down the dark stairs and slipped along the hall past the living room, heading back into the kitchen.

  A figure was leaning against the refrigerator in the dark. It took Palmer a minute to realize that it was actually two people, Brooks and Dave. They were the same height, and when they wound around each other, they seemed perfectly matched. Dave was on the outside, and Brooks’s back was pressed against the door. She had her arms down low inside his jacket and was pulling out his shirt. Dave was mumbling things to her, nuzzling his head into her neck, kissing her.