Firebirds Rising

by Sharyn November

  She dragged Rosie across the road into the trees. The light kept buzzing around them.

  Lucy reached into the pocket of her gray sweatshirt. It was empty. She reached into the other pocket and felt around. Nothing. The screwdriver was gone.

  Gone, Lucy thought.

  Rosie dropped to her knees on the soil.

  “Lucy, look.”

  “What?” Lucy said. Her mouth felt numb, it was hard to talk.

  “Blood roses.”

  “They don’t grow here.”

  “I know that. ”

  The two sisters looked at each other, waiting for the shivers to graze their arms, making the hairs stand up, but instead they felt only a strange, unnatural warmth as if spring had seeped into them and would stay there forever.

  FRANCESCA LIA BLOCKis the acclaimed, best-selling author of over fifteen works of fiction and nonfiction, including the beloved Weetzie Bat books, and has received the Margaret A. Edwards Award for the body of her work. Her latest novel is Necklace of Kisses. She lives in Los Angeles.

  Visit her Web site at www.francescaliablock.com.

  AUTHOR ’S NOTE

  “Blood Roses” came to me in a dream, even down to the details, like the screwdriver and the chain link fence. I rarely dream so vividly, and certainly never with this much plot. I had been experiencing a lot of conflicts in my life. I am sure this stress added to the dark tone of “Blood Roses.” My response to Elliott Smith’s death was another factor in the dream and the story. By writing this piece I believe my brain was trying to create some grace, order, and beauty out of sorrow. That is the power of art, and of dreaming.

  I am grateful to Sharyn November for asking me to write something; the dream came right after this request. I believe that a wonderful editor is a huge part of the alchemy of creativity. Sometimes just a word can spark something that might never have come into existence.

  Kara Dalkey

  HIVES

  The girl curled up on the battered couch wanted to die. I understood. I’d been there myself.

  “Get me her rig, doc,” I said.

  The thirtysomething juvie psychologist standing beside me turned and scowled. “That’d be giving a junkie a fix, wouldn’t it, Mitch?”

  I couldn’t blame her ’tude. Dr. Sophie McGlynn had seen bad stuff in her work. Me, I was Michelle Rodriguez, a seventeen-year-old smart-ass who just happened to be the niece of the head detective in the Chelliwah Police Department. Uncle Ted had asked me to come down to the station, thinking I could help the girl on the couch. He liked Dr. Sophie, though, so I’d promised him I wouldn’t act up…much.

  “Works if you want the junkie’s attention,” I said. “Look, I can reach her, doc. But I need her rig.”

  Doc Sophie sighed and rubbed her face. “Can’t you just talk like a normal person?”

  My turn to sigh. “Once you’ve been a hive-girl, Doc, outside talk doesn’t seem as real. She could tune me out like I was no more than a fly buzzing. An ESP call, though, she can’t ignore.”

  Something I said must have connected. Doc Sophie drew her lips tight with a quick nod. “Guess we have to try.” She walked out, shoulders slumped. Couch girl must have been a hard case.

  I walked across a floor of peeling paint, a floor that had felt the feet of too many sad people on their last legs. The girl on the couch didn’t deserve to be here. Her only crime had been wanting to belong.

  I crouched down beside her. Her name was Angela and she was fourteen. She had honey-brown hair and a face that was an ordinary sort of pretty. Probably she only saw the ordinary part when she looked in the mirror. Angela had tried to make herself into an all-meat patty by jumping off the 605 overpass. But a cop watching for speeders had seen her straddle the railing and got to her in time. She was lucky, though I bet she didn’t think so.

  I gently stroked her hair and said, “Hi, Angela.” She curled up tighter, pretending she didn’t hear me.

  Doc Sophie walked back through the door and handed me Angela’s headset, still looking dubious. “This better be legit or your uncle Ted will hear about it. Don’t think I don’t know your history, girl.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said, reaching up to take the coppery pink headset. I was proud that my hand only shook a little and that I stared for only a few moments, caught up in the junkie’s fascination with her drug.

  A wonder of technology is the ESP, the Ebisu SonoPhone. It looks like an old-style set of music headphones, but instead of earpieces, it has a pair of pads that press against the skull behind the ears. The ESP conducts sound waves through the bone, so that the voice or voices calling you sound like they’re in your head. Clear and close as your own thoughts. The added features include the throat pad that allows you to subvocalize. With practice, you can talk with no one “outside” hearing you. To dial, you can use a wafer-thin tongue pad that sits on the inside of your lower jaw or up on your palate. My generation is as quick with our tongues as our parents were with their thumbs. And, yeah, I’ve heard the nasty jokes so stuff ’em.

  Girls love phones. Girls love friends. Girls love being tight with the coolest clique. Put it all together with an ESP private network and you’ve got yourself a hive. All friends, all the time, right there with you, no matter where you are. Some hive-girls even sleep with their rigs on. I had, for a while. The ESP has really caught on—everyone from gangbangers to cops to biz-geeks to chatline callers love the ESP. Its popularity is even moving down the age ladder. There’s a company that sells a clip-on accessory that looks like a princess’s tiara. Oh yeah, they know their market. Bastards.

  Being in a hive is the sweetest thing in the world to a lonely girl. If you don’t like yourself or your life, you don’t have to think about it. Your friends are always there to fill your thoughts, to make you feel like you belong. Until something happens. Maybe you say the wrong thing, or your Queen Bee suddenly decides you’re not cool enough. You get Cut. Your conference code no longer works. And then you go crazy. Because the voices in your head stop. You’re left with that horrible silence, those lame, desperate thoughts. Nothing but you, despicable you. And you just want to die.

  I put the speakers on Angela’s scalp, behind her ears. She stirred a little. Using my thumbs (okay, so sometimes I’m old-fashioned), I called up a readout on her mouth pad and got her rig’s number. I slung my backpack off my back, unzipped it, and pulled out my old silver-and-powder-blue rig. It looked clunky compared to Angela’s newer model.

  My heart began to pound. I’d begged Uncle Ted to let me keep the ESP rig, even after my own crash and burn. “For emergencies,” I’d said. I swore I’d never do a hive again, and I meant it. And I’d been good, really good—hadn’t used it since. I’d kept it mostly as a reminder…of just how horrible some people can be. And Uncle Ted had trusted me. But he probably had checked the rig now and then to keep me honest.

  I slipped the rig on quick, turning to face the wall so that Doc Sophie wouldn’t see how hard I was controlling my breathing. I can do this, I thought. It’s just one girl. Not a hive thing. I’m maybe saving her life. It’ll be okay.

  I popped in the tongue pad (I wear mine left-lower). I tasted the sharp tang of the embedded disinfectant—the most delicious taste in the world to a hive-girl. I dialed Angela’s number and heard a riff from Frivolous Genocide’s latest track. The tone quality has gotten better, I thought, though that one was probably an illegal download. A click of connection. “Angela,” I said.

  Her whole body jerked. She blinked and sat up, eyes wide, suddenly very alive. Now somebody was home. “Who are you?” she asked. It was strange hearing her voice in front of me and inside my skull at the same time. Like her voice totally surrounded and soaked through me. Sweet/scary memories of hive life flooded back. I didn’t know whether to scream or cry.

  I closed my eyes, clenched my palms, and tried to ignore the rush of adrenaline. “My name’s Michelle Rodriguez,” I said. “Most people call me Mitch. I wanted to talk to yo
u.”

  “Me? Why?” She didn’t say it, but I could hear the “I’m nobody” loud and clear.

  “Because you’re going through something awful. And I’ve been through the same thing.”

  “What, being rescued when you didn’t wanna be?”

  I shook my head and grasped Angela’s shoulder gently. “You got cut out of a hive, didn’t you?”

  She stared at me as though I’d accused her of eating baby seals for lunch. Then she looked down and gave a slight nod.

  “It’s okay, Angela. That happened to me, too, about three years ago. I know how it feels. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me, worse even than losing my parents. I know what it’s like, Angela—that awful silence in your head.”

  Angela looked away, her face screwed up like she was going to cry. What she finally blurted out, though, surprised me. “It’s all my own fault!” The wail echoed through my head, bringing back even more memories. Helplessness. Rejection.

  “It is not your fault, Angela!”

  “Yes, it is! There was this boy I liked, and this girl that Sarah liked was all flirty with him. So I…I called her a slut!”

  “Well, calling other girls sluts isn’t a good thing, but it doesn’t get you the death penalty, last I heard. So. You think you made your queen bee mad, huh?”

  Angela shrugged. “I guess. I guess I wasn’t good enough for them. I should have known.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “No, really, I should have known!” She pounded her fist against the old couch, and I had to turn down the volume on my headset.

  “Stop blaming yourself.”

  “That’s not it.” She looked down again. “I should have known because…I wasn’t the first.”

  “The first what?”

  Her fingers tore at the already shredded upholstery. “Wasn’t the first girl Sarah cut from the hive.”

  “You mean, just suddenly, no warning, like you were?”

  Angela nodded. “Two other girls, one of them about three months ago, the other just last month. But I thought I’d be different.”

  Yeah, don’t we all? I thought in sympathy. “Sounds like your queen bee is a flaky bitch. Well, you can find new friends. Join a school club or something.”

  “Hah. Not at Condoleezza Rice.”

  “Oh. Shit.” A public school. A holding pen for kids not rich enough to go to a Corp or Church school. Poor Angela. Maybe her folks weren’t rich enough for Microsoft Academy, but they could have at least tried for Wal-Mart High. Hell, even some Jimmy Bob Jones Praise Jesus school would’ve been better.

  In public school, you were lucky if there were only fifty students per class. Lucky if you could hear the teacher talking through the bulletproof glass. Lucky if the teacher got to teach at all and not just be floor warden until the bell rang and the doors unlocked. No arts, no sports, no frills. No wonder she’d been desperate to join a hive.

  “Mom doesn’t have much money,” Angela said, shrugging. “Dad left when I was ten. It was so cool when Sarah and the others…they seemed to really like me. And they watched my back. Made sure I didn’t get beat up.” Tears started to roll down her cheeks.

  I put my arms around Angela and let her head fall onto my shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault and you’re not alone, Angela. Getting cut from a hive is like heartbreak. Lots of girls go through it. Just like I did.” Not all people get addicted to ESP networks, just like not every beer drinker becomes an alkie. And not every heartbroken lover becomes a police statistic. Just the lonely ones, the shy ones, the geeky ones, the ones who think they deserved the rejection. The ones who had never felt such intense closeness—and figure they never will again.

  My memory tossed up a vision of my former queen bee, Patty Nguyen’s cute, freckled sneer as she told me I wasn’t getting the new conf code. Her laughter had been like knives in my chest. All I did was cry as she and Cynthia and DaShauna and the others walked away, tossing their heads and laughing.

  “Ow?”

  I pulled back, realizing that I’d been gripping Angela’s shoulders way too hard. “Sorry.”

  “Yeah. Must have been easy for you. You didn’t kill yourself.”

  “I tried. I woke up that night in a hospital with my stomach being pumped.”

  Angela raised her head from my shoulder and looked me in the eye. I didn’t really like the props I saw her giving me. “No shit?”

  “No shit. No fun either. I learned my lesson.”

  Angela sat back, disappointed. “So you didn’t try again.”

  “Still here, aren’t I? No, I got too pissed off at what my hive did to me. What they nearly made me do. Anger kept me alive, Angela. Get mad at this Sarah person, that’s what you have to do. What your hive did wasn’t right. They promised to look after you and they didn’t.”

  Angela sighed and rested her head back on my shoulder. “No. It’s someone else’s turn now.”

  “Hey, survival is the best revenge. Get a zPod, fill your head with your favorite music—”

  “It’s not the same.”

  “Well, then, find those other girls that your queen bee cut, be friends with them. Make a new hive.”

  “I can’t. They’re dead.”

  A prickle danced down my spine and my stomach went cold. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, what?”

  “They succeeded,” Angela went on with a grim smile of respect. “One hung herself. The other slit her wrists in a bathtub. They weren’t stupid like me.”

  “Stop this!” My grasp on her wrist grew tighter and I shook her a little. “My God, didn’t anyone at your school notice this was happening?”

  “’Leezza Rice, remember?”

  I sighed. “Shit. They probably get three dead kids a week from one thing and another. And kids run away all the time. Nobody’d fuss about two or three more, would they?”

  Angela shrugged. “They’d be happy for the space.”

  My thoughts started clicking together like a Tau-Ka-Chi puzzle. After moving in with Uncle Ted the Detective, I read a lot of his books that weren’t exactly kid-appropriate. Psychological profiles, rambling prison confessions, tabloid tales of murder. “Angela, before you joined this hive, when the other girls who were cut…died, how did this Sarah and the other girls react when they found out? Were they sad at all?”

  “Ha. Sad?” Angela snorted. “No. Maybe the others, but not Sarah. She was kinda…smug. Like she knew a cool secret. I think she liked it.”

  “Uh-huh.” This queen bee was a killer bee. Angela was right. If this Sarah had gotten a taste for taking lives, it was going to be some other poor girl’s turn soon.

  Doc Sophie walked in once more and her face brightened with surprise. She gave me a nod of respect before saying, “Hello, Angela. I’m Dr. McGlynn. Your mom is here. She’ll be taking you over to Seacrest Hospital in just a little bit. Mitch, let me talk to Angela privately for a few minutes?”

  “Sure. You stay strong, Angela, okay?” I gave her arm one last squeeze and stood up to walk out.

  “Oh, and Mitch,” Doc Sophie added, “take off the rig.”

  “But I…”

  “Detective Rodriguez will have my hide, and yours, if he sees you wearing it.”

  I sighed loudly, wanting to say something really nasty back. She was sweet on Uncle Ted, I knew it, and I could—but then realized it was my phone jones reacting. “Yeah. Sure. Okay.” I reached up for my headset.

  “Don’t leave me!” Angela cried out, her voice so full of pain, it was like a physical punch to my chest. I felt hot tears start to well up in my own eyes.

  “It’ll be okay, Angela,” I said softly. “Hold on. Just hold on. Remember, get angry. Survive. It’ll be worth it.” It was hard, but I did it. I took off the rig.

  Doc Sophie reached for Angela’s headset. “No!” Angela wailed. She fell over sideways on the couch and curled up again. I stuffed my rig in my backpack and left to the sound of Doc Sophie’s gently cajoling voice, which now seemed weirdly flat and phony after th
e resonance of Angela in my head.

  I almost slammed the holding room door behind me as I walked out into the busier station area. I leaned back against the cold painted-plaster wall beside the door and closed my eyes a moment. I breathed deeply, trying to ignore the echoing silence in my skull. It was all I could do not to jam the rig back on and call somebody, anybody—a phone psychic, a porn line, some stupid corporate voice-mail system. Anything.

  I opened my eyes and saw a sad-faced woman wearing a faded coat sitting in one of the station’s cheap plastic chairs. She was staring, absorbed, into her Styrofoam coffee cup, completely ignoring the raving Oxy-head going by on the arm of a cop. I went and sat in the chair next to her. “You must be Angela’s mom, right?”

  She looked up with the same “lights on” expression Angela had when I called her rig. “Oh! Yes…how is she?”

  “She’ll be okay,” I said, totally lying. “She just needs, you know, some time.”

  “Of course, of course,” murmured the woman.

  What were you thinking? I wanted to scream at her, Sending your precious girl to ’Leezza Rice? But, as Detective Uncle Ted always says, “Don’t get mad, get information.” So instead, I asked her, “Was Angela happy at school?”

  She did the one-shoulder shrug thing. Like daughter, like mom. “No more than other kids. Until recently, like a month ago? She’d found some new friends. Suddenly she was happier than I’d seen her, well, since she was just a little girl. She got that new phone in a school raffle drawing—”

  Probably stolen by her hive sisters, I thought sourly.

  “—and her grades went up and she couldn’t wait to get to school. I always knew she was a real smart kid and I was so pleased to see her finally applying herself. That’s what I don’t understand about all this. She was so happy.”

  “Uh-huh.” It was odd that Angela’s grades had gotten better; usually hive-girls become total slackers. They’re having too much fun in their heads. Unless Angela wasn’t just studying for one. “Do you happen to remember a name or have a phone number of her new friends because, you know, I’d like to contact them. Maybe they could cheer her up or at least explain why she suddenly changed. It could really help.”