by Brian Knight
Flanna snapped awake and upright in her bed, a final scream still stuck in her throat.
Chapter 12
Conquest through Chaos
Flanna’s first day at school did not go as smoothly as she’d hoped it would.
She argued with Zoe, who wouldn’t stop asking what she’d done to deserve the silent treatment Flanna was giving her. By the time they left, Zoe was returning the silence, and as soon as they were clear of the driveway, Zoe piloted her bike off the ground, into the air, and out of sight on the other side of the trees that pressed close to the road. A stupid chance to take in the daylight, Flanna thought, when you were a magic user trying to hide in a world of people who didn’t believe in magic. She couldn’t follow Zoe, of course. The bike she rode was tuned in to Penny, and would no more fly for Flanna than put on a red wig and go to school in her place.
When she arrived, Zoe’s bike was already parked and locked, and Zoe stood talking with Katie and Ellen. When she saw Flanna coming she turned and walked away without another word, leaving her friends in confusion.
“What did you do to piss her off?” Katie regarded Flanna with undisguised irritation, and Flanna was sure Zoe had already told them. Katie at least seemed to be taking Zoe’s side of the argument. Flanna parked her bike beside theirs without comment, locked it, and walked away from them. She knew she should be using Penny’s friendship with these girls, especially on a day when she was expected to find her way around the zoo that was Dogwood School, things would be much easier for her if she could just follow their leads all day, but she hated them, and pretending otherwise was becoming too difficult.
She was running late, trying to locate the first class on her schedule, when someone called out from behind.
“Hey, Little Red!”
She turned and saw a fat boy with stained clothing and long greasy hair approaching her at a near run. It took her a moment to recognize Rooster from Penny’s memories, because he looked different than he had in Penny’s memories, taller, wider, more unkempt than usual, and without the typical cadre of friends.
She recognized his intent and reached for a wand that wasn’t there. A moment later he hit her, leaning into his charge and crashing into her with his shoulder. She flew feet into the air and heard the screams of a group of girls still walking the halls. She landed and her head slammed the floor. For a moment she existed in pain and darkness. She realized she was fainting, and shook herself back to full awareness to find him leaning over her, reaching down to grab or hit.
She responded without thinking, sweeping his legs out from under him with a hard kick, then rolled away as he fell. He landed where she had been a moment before, and without pausing to consider the move, rolled again and dragged herself atop him. She punched down at him, hitting him in the face, then again and again. He reached for her, and she swept his grasping hand aside with an arm. He brought his knee up into her stomach and she rolled forward off him. She landed in a crouch and turned to find him struggling to his feet.
“Get back down there,” she shouted, and then helped him back to the floor with a kick to the back of one knee.
This is from Penny, she realized, and felt a new admiration for her sister. Memories of Aikido practice flashed in her mind, fights she’d been in during her time at the orphanage, before she came to Dogwood.
Rooster went down to his knees with a grunt of pain, and Flanna launched herself at him again, but strong arms grabbed her from behind and restrained her.
“Penny, stop it!” The voice was familiar but out of context. A boy’s voice, and one she at first associated with weak knees and the heat of a blush in her cheeks. “He’s finished, let him go.”
Flanna forced herself to calm, to relax, and saw that Rooster was finished. He crawled away from her whimpering, and clutched the leg of an approaching teacher who’d come to the sound of fighting.
“And what is all this about?” The woman looked down at Rooster and pulled her leg out of his grasp. She looked at Flanna next.
Flanna felt like someone poured ice down the back of her shirt.
The woman standing in front of her featured in Penny’s earliest memory of Dogwood. It was Susan’s sister, Miss June Riggs. She looked at Flanna with an undisguised contempt that Penny would have recognized.
“What did you do to this boy, Sinclair?”
“She defended herself,” Trey Miller said. “That...”
“Consider your next words very carefully, Miller,” Miss Riggs said.
“Rooster attacked her,” Trey said.
“It’s true,” one of the screaming girls shouted. They were all very young, bug-eyed and traumatized. The others nodded in agreement with their bolder friend. “He hit her and knocked her down.”
“She didn’t kick his butt until he tried to hit her again,” another of them said, and then decided she’d rather look at the floor than Miss Riggs’s face.
“I can speak for myself,” Flanna muttered, and heard the sound of scampering feet as the girls scattered for their homerooms.
Trey either didn’t hear her, or chose to ignore her. He continued to hold her, though more gently now. Any boy who had dared to touch her this way in her home city would have finished their day in a Crow Cage, hanging in the public square for the amusement of the people.
She liked it. She liked him. She wondered if this unwelcome feeling was hers or the part of Penny that lived in her head now.
“They’re lying,” Rooster said, finally managing to pick himself up off the floor. He limped slightly and his lips and nose were bloodied, but Flanna thought he would survive.
“Go to the Principal’s office, Price. You too, Sinclair. I will join you shortly.” Miss Riggs looked at Trey. “Let go of her and get to class. You don’t want to be late.”
The final bell rang out, as if to say too late.
“I’m going with them,” Trey said. “I saw what happened.”
Miss Riggs aimed her small, bright eyes at him for a few seconds, then shrugged and motioned for them to go before stepping back into her room.
Rooster was already halfway down the hall. Flanna shrugged out of Trey’s arms and followed. She could hear Trey following.
“Are you okay, Penny?” Trey’s longer strides brought him up beside her in a matter of seconds.
“I’m fine,” she said, almost shouted, and winced at the volume of her own voice. She sighed, and forced a gentler tone. “My head hurts.”
More silence, Rooster long gone. They turned the corner from the side corridor into the main hallway. Up ahead, she could see the office.
“Listen, about this summer,” Trey said.
Now she knew who the boy was, and understood her response to his touch.
Please shut up... please shut up... please shut up!
“I don’t like Zoe that way anymore,” he said, despite Flanna’s mental barrage. “And she never liked me.”
You have no idea, Flanna thought, recalling Penny’s conversation with Zoe the day she came back.
“I’m sorry that I scared you away. I missed you this summer.” He fumbled for her hand, and she let him take it. “But I’m not sorry I kissed you.”
Flanna knew that Penny had avoided him all summer following the kiss, even staying away from town most days. She’d ignored his calls to her house, racked with guilt at first because she had liked the kiss, had even kissed back for a second. After most of a summer avoiding Trey, Penny had decided to ask Zoe’s permission, but had not gotten the chance. Zoe had been disappointed when Trey didn’t arrive to welcome her back, so Penny had determined then to pretend none of it had ever happened, and never mention it to Zoe, ever.
Flanna’s uncomfortable reminiscences of Penny’s crush on this boy were swept away by the sound of running footsteps behind them. She turned, bracing for another attack, and saw Zoe pounding toward them at the other end of the long hallway.
Trey, perhaps taking her turned head for an invitation to kiss her again, smiled and lean
ed toward her.
Flanna did not shy away from him. Instead she reached up and cupped the back of his neck, standing on her tiptoes to meet him halfway. She closed her eyes, ignoring the last fleeting image of Zoe, the shock on her face, ignored the unexpected guilt she felt, even ignored her own racing heart, the terror and excitement she felt.
Flanna had been searching for a wedge to drive between herself and Zoe, a way to rid herself of this complication to her and her father’s plans, and by pure chance, she had found one.
When Flanna finally broke the kiss, Zoe was standing only feet away. Her expression of shock had given way to a cold, almost vacant look. Her gaze seemed to be aimed somewhere over Trey’s left shoulder, and strayed nowhere near Flanna.
“We heard you got in a fight,” Zoe said, speaking to no one in particular.
Trey jumped as if goosed, and spun around. “Oh, geez, uh... hi, Zoe.”
“Mr. Cole said I could see if you were okay,” Zoe said, ignoring Trey’s words entirely.
“Tell him I’m fine,” Flanna said, and had to look away from Zoe. Ignoring her guilt was getting harder than she would have thought.
Zoe turned and marched back the way she’d come without another word.
“Oh man, I am so sorry,” Trey said. “I didn’t think she’d get so mad.”
I did, Flanna thought.
“It’s okay,” Flanna lied. “She wasn’t interested in you until you liked me. It’s her problem.”
It’s not okay, the small, distant voice of conscience shouted deep in her head. How could you do that to her?
“Sinclair and Miller, get in here now.”
The principal waited until they were moving again and stepped back into his office with Rooster to wait for them.
* * *
“No!” Penny’s eyes snapped open, and she felt a momentary confusion at her surroundings. This happened every time she came out of her meditations, but the confusion cleared quickly. She found Ronan sitting cross-legged in front of her, and looked around until she found her father curled up and sleeping a short distance away.
“Are you alright?” Ronan seemed to be doing his own meditating. He regarded her with one open eye, which quickly slipped shut again as soon as he saw she was.
“She kissed him,” Penny blurted. She leapt to her feet and began pacing. “Right in front of Zoe! She’s going to hate me now!”
“Good,” Ronan said. “That’s good.”
Penny screamed.
Ronan’s eyes popped open and Torin jerked awake.
“Whoa... what?” Torin stumbled to his feet and raised his fists in front of his face. He blinked and spun in place, then lowered his fists when he realized they were alone. “Why did you do that?”
“Apparently Flanna kissed someone,” Ronan said, closing his eyes again. “And right in front of Zoe.”
“Zoe likes him,” Penny explained, as if to idiots. “And he kissed me while she was gone. I avoided him all summer, and Flanna must have known, because she kissed him right in front of Zoe.”
She had their attention now.
“Why would she do that?” Ronan had given up on his meditation and stood towering over Penny.
“Your friend Zoe lives with you,” Torin said. “She would notice something amiss with her.”
“If she didn’t live with you,“ Ronan said, “where would she go?”
“Her parents,” Penny said, seeing where this was going. “On the road, or maybe her other grandma in Idaho.”
Flanna was trying to drive Zoe away.
“But you made contact,” Ronan said, as if trying to locate a silver lining on this new cloud.
“No,” Penny said. “I got inside her head but she couldn’t hear me.”
“Maybe next time,” Torin said, settling back down to resume his nap.
“Maybe,” Penny said, but couldn’t help wondering how much damage Flanna would do to the Phoenix Girls before then.
* * *
Flanna waited in one of the overstuffed easy chairs scattered across the reading area of Taylor and Pi’s while Susan spoke on the phone with the school principal.
“I understand she was in a fight,” Susan almost growled into her phone. “What I don’t understand is why she is suspended.”
Susan paused, visibly shaking with anger while she waited. The explanation did not calm her.
“You have witnesses who say he attacked her, knocked her down, and then tried to punch her, and you’re suspending her for defending herself?”
She glanced over at Flanna, and the sharpest edge of her anger seemed to dull a little. She tried a sympathetic smile that looked like a grimace of pain, then turned her back.
Flanna had expected Susan Taylor to be hateful, unfair, and cruel, as befitting a Phoenix Girl, and would have found her job here in Dogwood easier if Susan had lived up to expectations. In reality, Susan was pleasant, kind, and apparently fiercely loyal, to Penny at least.
“So there’s nothing you can do, huh?” Susan made it clear what she thought of that by slamming her phone into its cradle.
Susan said nothing for a full minute, and Flanna was beginning to think she would be punished after all.
She’ll wish she hadn’t, Flanna thought. Father will punish her.
“Did you have to give him a bloody nose?” Susan plopped down into a chair facing Flanna and fetched a deep sigh.
Flanna shrugged and held her silence. She also held Susan’s gaze, refused to look away.
Susan sighed again and dropped her face into her cupped hands. When she spoke again her voice was muffled.
“Well, I’m not going to punish you for defending yourself.” She looked up, and Flanna saw she was smiling. “I’ve wanted to do the same thing to his father for years.”
According to my father, he feels the same way about you, Flanna thought.
Flanna returned Susan’s smile, but it died quickly. She would soon be working with that boy’s father against Susan. She liked that arrangement less and less.
“I’m sorry I caused trouble.” Flanna was sorry to have caused Susan trouble, but pleased with the other consequences.
“You’re suspended until next Wednesday. You can spend it with me at the shop if you want, or at home.” Susan looked up at the sound of the bell ringing over the front door.
Taylor and Pi’s was still a few days away from its grand opening, but interested town people and friends of both Susan and Erasmus dropped in from time to time. This time it was Erasmus, wandering in from his friend Bowen’s shop, Golden Arts.
“Good morning, ladies,” Erasmus said.
They both waved.
“Zoe can bring your school work home so you don’t fall behind,” Susan said, rising to go back to work. “You better head home for the rest of the day.”
Flanna rode away from Taylor and Pi’s, and a block from the edge of town had to swerve onto the sidewalk to get out of the way of an approaching car. Rooster glared at her from the backseat.
* * *
Penny spent the rest of that day oscillating between white-hot rage and lethargic despair, convinced in both states that her unwanted sister had ruined the most important friendship in her life. She paced or lay down curled up on the floor. She growled and cursed her absent sister until Torin shot her a sad and unhappy glance, then wrapped herself in a sullen silence and cried as silently as she could. She didn’t attempt more meditation that day, and Ronan didn’t press her on the subject, only left her alone to brood. When the light began to fade around them and the shadows merged together into a solid darkness, she curled up in her sleeping spot and closed her eyes without a word to her cellmates.
She decided she was finished with the day. She could begin again with the dawn, and she drifted off determined that she would break through the final effervescent barrier shielding Flanna’s conscious and give her sister a hard mental slap.
So it was no surprise when she found herself in Aurora Hollow facing her sister. The surprise was t
he lucidity of the dream, the texture of the duff and dirt beneath her bare feet, the scent of living green, the sound of the creek and the rustling of the willows around her.
Flanna seemed engrossed in a large flat object on her lap, a familiar oval mirror. She didn’t notice her company until Penny called to her.
“What are you looking at?” The desire to slap her sister silly vanished when Flanna looked up. Her eyes were red with tears, and she looked confused, not all there.
However lucid this dream was to Penny, it was just a regular dream to Flanna, one she may or may not remember upon awakening.
“My mom,” Flanna said, and pried a photo of their mother off the surface of the glass. “She died, and I never knew her.”
“I know,” Penny said. “She was my mom too.”
Flanna narrowed her eyes at Penny, doubt clear in her expression.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Penny,” Penny said. “Your sister.”
“No you aren’t. Penny looks just like me. You’re some kind of nightmare aren’t you?”
Penny realized she was still wearing her mask, even in the dream.
“King Tynan did this to me,” Penny said.
“He never would,” Flanna said. She jumped to her feet and the mirror slid off her lap. It hit the ground, but didn’t break. Forgotten, it simply disappeared. “He’s my father and he would never do such a thing.”
“He’s not our father,” Penny said. “He’s our uncle.”
Flanna froze in place, still as stone, and for a second Penny thought she would attack, or simply awaken and leave Penny alone in the dream.
“You’re lying!” Flanna lunged forward and gave Penny the slap Penny had planned to give her. The leather mask blunted the blow, but it still rocked her back a step.
The scene around them wafted away like smoke and they were standing in their mother’s tomb. Penny saw the cairn, the skull she had uncovered on her last visit, the spill of auburn hair.
