“It’s okay,” he said.
May could have been wrong, but it seemed—it seemed—like he was forgiving her.
She couldn’t keep still any longer.
She ran up to him, stretched up onto the tips of her toes, and kissed him. It didn’t matter to her that she looked gross, or that he might still be mad, or that his mom was clearly gawking out the living room window. At first he seemed startled. He stood up quickly. After a second or two, though, he wrapped his arms around her. May didn’t know if it was a romantic embrace or just an attempt to keep her from losing her balance and falling backward onto the blacktop—and it didn’t matter. Pete was holding her, and he was kissing her. She was getting his entire face wet in the process.
When they separated, the freckleless spot between Pete’s eyes was bright red. Before anything else could be said or done, May grabbed her bike and hopped on. She waited until she was six houses down to turn and see if he was still standing in the driveway watching her.
He was.
She stopped for just a moment, and they caught each other’s eyes. Then he slowly started walking backward toward the house. May couldn’t see that well, considering that her eyes were still a little blurry and he was far away, but it looked like he was smiling.
May arrived home to find Brooks, Palmer, and their mom in the living room, freezing from the overfunctioning window air conditioner that shot out small pieces of ice along with cold breezes. Her mother was quietly crocheting a pale yellow baby blanket. Obviously a gift for someone. Crochet was a new thing for her mom. She had picked up the habit from some of her friends at the hospital. May thought it seemed like a weird activity for someone who used to go to clubs in outfits made of black trash bags, but it did seem to relax her.
“You’re home early,” her mom said.
“It was dead at work,” May replied, trying to look as casual as possible.
“What’s wrong with you?” Palmer said, looking May up and down. May was sweating profusely. Her shoes were covered in grass, her face was flushed, her eyes were red, and she was breathing a little too quickly—not things typically associated with a night spent at Presto.
“It’s hot out.”
May sank down on the floor. She immediately felt her energy leaving her, like the final, dying flickers of a battery indicator light sending those last-gasp warnings before blinking off. She had spent all of her emotions, and now she was going to slump on the floor and think about nothing. If she tried to analyze the Pete thing now, she’d go insane. As for her job, she’d think about it tomorrow. She’d definitely have the time.
Brooks flicked through the channels, trying to find something remotely interesting. Palmer didn’t seem to care. She sat on the floor with her legs stretched out, looking content with everything—CNN, golf, a documentary on the evolution of the battleship, a Spanish soap opera….
“Maybe we should get a movie,” Brooks said.
“We have plenty of stations,” her mom answered. “Find something to watch.”
Brooks sighed and clicked away.
So this was how it was going to be for the next few weeks, May thought. They would all be like Palmer now—dumbly staring at the television, never speaking. She focused on a commercial for some kind of wonder spatula. Usually infomercials entertained her. She liked the way they would always show people who were apparently so incompetent that they couldn’t flip a burger without putting out an eye or roll their garden hose without an ambulance crew on standby. That was why they needed product XYZ—they had very serious problems.
They were just getting to the part where they offered to send two wonder spatulas for the price of one if May called right now when Palmer suddenly spoke.
“We took Dad’s ashes,” she said. “Last night. We took them to the field, to the pitcher’s mound. That’s what we were doing at Camden Yards.”
From the way she said it, you would have thought that Palmer was just mentioning what she’d eaten for lunch. It was a very stealth move. May swung her head around and saw the old maniac gleam in Palmer’s eyes, even though they were still steadily focused on the television. May looked the other way to find Brooks backing up in her seat, looking like she wished the recliner would swallow her up.
The only thing that could be heard in the next minute was the Starks’ infrared bug zapper along the back fence.
May slowly turned to see how her mother was taking this news. Her hands were frozen midway through a stitch, and she was looking right at May. Not at Palmer, not at Brooks. Just at May. And her expression said it all very clearly: Tell me what the hell Palmer is talking about.
“We…”
That was as much as May could come up with. Palmer had just said it all. There was nothing to deny, nothing to add.
“We did it all together,” Palmer said, picking up from there. The light was still in her eye, but she was balling up her fists and releasing them over and over. She was afraid. “He’s gone. We did it. All of him is there, right in the middle of the field.”
At the moment May expected the blowup or the violent outburst of Dutch, her mother simply stood up and left the room.
One in the morning and hot. Hot, hot, hot. A million percent humidity. A universe of hot soup. The clickity fan did nothing but push heat from side to side. On nights like this one, the Gold sisters frequently camped out in the living room to bask in the air conditioning. But no one was down there tonight. They’d all scattered. Everyone was sweltering alone, in safety.
May had lived about three lifetimes in the last two days, so she wasn’t too sure where she stood on Palmer’s surprise announcement. On the one hand, she was glad not to have the secret hanging over her head. On the other, she was completely worn out. Brooks had freaked, completely. She’d screamed at Palmer. Palmer had just sat there and taken it. May had just wearily trudged up to her room in the middle of their fight.
For the last five hours she’d moved seashells around on her desk, stared at the wall, reorganized her bookshelf, and examined the cuts between her toes. She had nothing to get up in the morning for. Nothing to get ready for. Nothing to look forward to. She could stay in her room for the rest of the summer and count the ponies on the wall.
What she wanted to do was run out right now, in her boxer shorts and old T-shirt, and go to Pete’s and sit on the glider. But she figured that she could only turn up at his house once a day looking scruffy and desperate.
This heat was going to kill her.
She needed something to drink. If she was quiet, she could go down to the kitchen without attracting any attention. Peeking out into the hall, she saw that all the doors were shut. There was no light coming from downstairs. She was safe. She crept along on her toes down the stairs and through the hall to the kitchen.
May was surprised to see her mother sitting at the table, looking strangely young in her bleach-stained scrub shirt and her ruffled, spiky hair. She had both of her feet on the chair, and her knees were drawn up to her chest. May almost tried to back up and disappear, but her mother had seen her. She nodded toward an empty chair.
“Sit down,” she said.
May sat down. She was so stupid. She should have known better than to leave her room. Now she was going to go through this all over again.
“How did you get them?” her mom asked. She sounded exhausted, not angry, which was somewhat of a relief.
“Palmer found them.”
“Was it Palmer’s idea to take them to Camden Yards?”
“She was upset,” May said, nodding. “She said she was going whether we went with her or not. So I drove there.”
“So she wouldn’t go on her own?”
“Yeah…”
Zap. Another bolt of purple light from the bug whacker shot through the room. Another bug moved on to bug heaven. May stared at the microwave clock for a moment until her focus gave and the numbers went fuzzy.
“Who took them to the field?” her mom asked.
“All of us.”
“
Didn’t someone try to stop you?”
“They tried,” May said. “We ran. We got away.”
She couldn’t really blame her mother for looking so surprised. It was still a little hard for May to believe that she’d successfully run away from a group of grown men. Her mom tucked her head between her knees and scrunched her lips together. She looked a little like Palmer when she did this.
“Sometimes I don’t know what to do,” she finally said. “I’m not like your dad. He always knew.”
“Knew?”
“He knew how to talk to Brooks and Palmer. I don’t. I always felt like I had more in common with you. I was just like you when I was sixteen.”
“Right.” May snorted. “Because I always wear fishnets.”
“I was quiet,” her mom said. “Shy. The hair, the makeup—that was me just pretending I wasn’t. It was easy to fake it that way.”
“You were faking it?”
“Sort of,” her mom said, smiling slowly. “I liked some of it. But a lot of it was just trying to fit in. Your dad didn’t have to try that hard. He never seemed to be afraid of anything. He was totally comfortable with himself and with everyone else. I liked that. I wished I could be like that. And he knew who I really was, even under all that makeup and stuff. He liked me.”
There was something in her voice that May had never heard before. Her mom wasn’t talking like a mom—she was talking like someone with a huge crush. It was the same kind of voice that May heard in her own head when she thought about Pete.
“What you said yesterday,” her mom went on. “You were wrong. Your dad didn’t like Brooks or Palmer best. They’re a lot like him, so he understood them. But he could never believe that he helped make you. He thought you were amazing. When you got into Girls’, he couldn’t stop talking about it. He’d tell anybody he met about his May. You were always his May.”
“Why didn’t he tell me that?” May said quickly. “He always told Palm and Brooks how great they were.”
Her mother leaned back and thought about this.
“I think,” she said, “that he didn’t know how. He tried. He was almost in awe of you, May. You’re smart. You’re mature. It was almost as if he thought he couldn’t keep up with you.”
Having just heard something similar from Pete, May couldn’t help but feel ashamed. She couldn’t even remember why she’d thought her father hadn’t liked her. Now she remembered it all clearly—the way he’d managed to find the money for her school, the fact that she alone had been allowed to have the kitchen table for homework, and even how he’d called her “the professor.” It all made sense now.
There was a noise by the door. May didn’t have to turn around to know that Palmer was lurking somewhere in the darkness of the hall. She must have heard them talking. Evidently, her mom knew she was there as well.
“You can come in,” she said.
To May’s surprise, Palmer wasn’t alone. She had brought Brooks with her. Brooks shot her a look as if to ask, What’s the damage? May could only shrug.
“There’s something I want to know,” her mom said to the three of them. “Why didn’t you ask me to come with you?”
The bug zapper claimed another victim in the ensuing silence.
“Wouldn’t you have stopped us?” May asked.
“Of course I would have stopped you.”
“That’s why,” May replied, puzzled.
Her mom nodded, as if this confirmed something she had been thinking.
“I never knew what to do with the ashes,” she said. “I never believed they were really him. So I just put them away. You did a dumb thing. Something could have happened to you.”
All the control she’d been keeping herself under dissolved all at once as she said that, as if the thought of anything happening to them was more than she could even bear to contemplate.
“You’re good girls,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “You know that? You’re in a lot of trouble, but God—you’re really amazing girls.”
The four Gold women slept in the living room together that night, with the air conditioner blasting. May’s mother took the sofa, with Palmer splayed out all over the floor by her side. They were the first to fall asleep.
Brooks took the recliner. May claimed a patch of floor by the television and made herself a little nest of blankets and pillows to defend herself against the icy gale that was coming straight at her. She wriggled down into the plaid flannel depths of an old waterproof sleeping bag that she had opened up and wound around herself. The recliner groaned softly as Brooks shifted.
“It’s either kill-you hot or kill-you cold,” May whispered. “It’s never just right.”
“It’s better than sleeping upstairs,” Brooks whispered back.
May heard a tiny chip of ice rattle around before flying loose from one of the AC vents.
“What are you doing tomorrow?” Brooks asked.
“I don’t know,” May said, staring up at a moving shadow on the ceiling that was a car passing by. “My schedule’s pretty wide open.”
“Mine too.”
Lots more shifting around coming from Brooks’s direction. The footrest banged back into starting position.
“You want the chair?” Brooks asked.
“I’m good.”
“I can’t sleep here. Can I share those blankets?”
“Sure.”
She made some room in her warm pocket to accommodate Brooks, who managed to completely destroy the careful arrangement May had set up. But Brooks also acted as a human shield against the blast, so temperature-wise things were more or less the same.
“Hey Brooks?” she whispered.
“What?”
“Do I seem different to you?”
“What?”
“More unpredictable? Not as boring?”
“What?” Brooks said again. But this time it was a softer “what?” A “what?” that meant yes to anyone who spoke Brooks.
“Thanks,” May said.
“Go to sleep.” Brooks gave a tug on the blanket.
May took the suggestion and closed her eyes. She knew she would wake up on the living room floor, still grounded and unemployed, with Brooks’s hair in her face and no covers at all. But these things didn’t seem as bad as they would have even a few hours before.
Within a few minutes, Brooks was snoring in her ear loudly enough to cover the thick, icy coughs of the air conditioner. This didn’t bother her either. In fact, it was lulling, reassuring. Her eyes grew heavy. She was right at the point where the real world gets taken over by dreamy haze when she felt a bump as Palmer rolled over and joined them.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks are due to Leslie Morgenstein, Ben Schrank, Josh Bank, and Claudia Gabel at 17th Street Productions, and Abigail McAden at HarperCollins. They are the reason this book made it to the shelf.
Jason Keeley, Karen Quarles, John Vorwald, Joey Sorge, Matt Zimmerman, “the real” Linda Fan, and Chris Blandino provided inspiration and information. The Fasslers provided the starting point. Joseph Rhodes committed an act of kindness simply out of the desire to help a writer.
I would be lost without the assistance of my friend and longtime partner in crime, Kate Schafer. And it was Jack Phillips who—among millions of other things—explained to me how to remove corrosive buildup from the nodes of a car battery.
About the Author
Maureen Johnson is the author of GIRL AT SEA, 13 LITTLE BLUE ENVELOPES, THE KEY TO THE GOLDEN FIREBIRD, THE BERMUDEZ TRIANGLE, and DEVILISH, She lives in New York City, To hear Maureen's podcasts and more, visit her online at www.maureenjohnsonbooks.com.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Also by Maureen Johnson
GIRL AT SEA
DEVILISH
13 LITTLE BLUE ENVELOPES
THE BERMUDEZ TRIANGLE
Credits
Cover photograph © 2008 by Chad Johnston / Getty Images
Cover design by Amy Ryan
Copyright
THE KEY TO THE GOLDEN FIREBIRD. Copyright © 2004 by Maureen Johnson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub © Edition JANUARY 2009 ISBN: 9780061973949
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com
The Key to the Golden Firebird Page 23
