The Gryphon Project

by Carrie Mac

  Saul poured whisky into Nadia’s mug, but when he went to do the same to Phee’s, she shook her head. She didn’t want to drink if Tariq wasn’t going to.

  “Hey, Tariq, you have a budding clean and sober disciple over here.”

  “No.” Phee blushed. It was true that she had a little crush on Tariq, but she’d melt into a puddle of embarrassment if he knew. “I just don’t feel like it, is all.”

  Tariq glanced at her and shrugged, settling himself in one of the big easy chairs and surfing the music channels. Phee watched him. There’d been a small smile, hadn’t there? When he shrugged?

  PHOENIX REMEMBERED the time before Gryph was famous. Back then he changed with everyone else, in the sweat-stink dampness of the shared locker rooms. Now, his agent wouldn’t sign him to a race or competition or commercial unless he was guaranteed his own private dressing room, stocked just so, with bowls of chocolate-covered almonds and a fridge full of mango juice and vitamin water. Gryph used to say that he felt weird about it at first, but really, who would turn down the warm, well-stocked comfort of this in favour of the cold, clammy stench of a communal change room? And besides, this way he could have his friends with him, whereas before they’d had to wait for him outside with everyone else.

  The whisky episode over, Phoenix flopped down on the white leather couch beside Saul. Nadia was perched on his knee, leaning forward, her hands gripping a mug of hot chocolate.

  “Saul?” Phoenix raised her eyebrows.

  Saul was staring at the band of skin above Nadia’s pants and below her top, or more specifically at the thin stretch of pink thong pulling against her dark, olive skin. He placed a finger on her spine and started tracing down.

  “Saul!” Phoenix punched his shoulder.

  Saul let his hand drop. “What?”

  “Get a room, or get a grip. God.”

  “I almost spilled this all over my jacket!” Nadia licked a splash of hot chocolate off the back of her hand and twisted to glare at Phoenix. “Do you even know what this jacket cost? It’s real fur around the collar, you know.”

  Gryph emerged from the bedroom, fresh from the shower, dressed in a pair of track pants, barefoot and bare-chested. He pulled his hair, dark and past his shoulders—much to Chrysalis’s dismay—into a ponytail. He looked like a muscular rock star, with his gryphon tattoo along one forearm (their mother had been livid) and his nipple ring (even more livid) and his chiselled six-pack that had a legion of teenage girls wishing they could cop a feel. Phoenix looked at him and then quickly away, grimacing at the thought of how many girls wished they were in this room right now, within arm’s reach of that famous six-pack. Never mind his fans, Phoenix could probably name a hundred girls just from school who would die to be in his company. But Gryph wasn’t one for girlfriends. He went through girls as fast as he could down a meal, and bugged Saul for being with Nadia for almost two years. He called them Mr. and Mrs., while the girls lined up to hang off Gryph’s arm, even if only for five minutes.

  Gryph pulled on a T-shirt just as the door flung open and his and Phoenix’s little sister hurled herself onto his back.

  “Some kids from my class want to meet you. They’re outside waiting. Come on!”

  “Your wish is my command, Princess Fawn.” Gryph slid his feet into a pair of flip-flops and piggybacked her to the door, where their parents stood just inside the room, looking as if they were just about to leave.

  “You were amazing, hon.” Eva tiptoed to kiss her tall son on the cheek. “Even if it looked as if you gave that other kid first place like some kind of present.”

  “There’s my boy!” Oscar grabbed Gryph’s hand and pulled him into a hug. “We’re so proud of you, son. Good race. Good race. What happened at the end there? Looked as though you got distracted.”

  “He was just faster than me today, I guess.” Gryph shrugged. “I’ll get him next time.”

  “Not a doubt in my mind, son.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  Oscar nodded at the rest of them in the room. “How about a—”

  “No!” they all said in unison, except the agent’s assistant, who was newly back at work after being reconned from a fall while on vacation in Mexico. There was some talk about just how she’d fallen from a six-storey hotel balcony, but nonetheless, here she was. She used to be higher up than Lex, but she’d lost her memory during the recon and had to start back at the bottom. Gryph’s agent put his phone call on hold and muttered to her, likely explaining that Oscar always offered to lead them in a prayer of thanks after every competition, and the offer was always unanimously declined.

  It wasn’t that Phoenix and Gryph didn’t appreciate Oscar’s bringing God into the whole equation, it was just that it was a little embarrassing when there were digicams and fans and friends around and you could never be sure who was watching. The last time Oscar led them in prayer, the boys and Nadia joining in reluctantly, a picture of the circle of them, heads bent, had landed on every podcast within five minutes, and the boys had run major interference for all the teasing. Having a sports celebrity among them made everything that much more public, which was perhaps the one and only downside of Gryph’s fame.

  Since then, no group prayers, though Oscar prayed enough for all of them. Eva put up with his piety, and even went through the motions, but she didn’t believe in God. Phoenix’s parents were the odd couple to the extreme that way. A doctor and a minister. Science and spirit. Fact and fancy.

  Eva took Oscar’s hand. “You can pray for all of us on the train on the way home, sweetheart.”

  “And I will, thank you very much.” He kissed her forehead, and then plucked a reluctant Fawn off Gryph’s back. “Let’s go, kiddo.”

  “But I don’t want to go! And he has to meet my friends from school!” Fawn wrapped her arms tighter around Gryph’s neck. “He said he would. Right, Gryph?”

  “You’re choking him, honey.” Eva pulled Fawn’s little wrists, but she just held on, as the colour drained from Gryph’s cheeks.

  “So? He’s got three recons!” Fawn leaned her whole six-year-old self into her grip. “Doesn’t matter if I kill him.”

  “Fawn—” he croaked as he pulled her off and plunked her hard onto her feet. “That’s not funny.”

  “Yes it was.” Fawn stared at the floor. “And you do. Have three. Recons.”

  Oscar took her hand. “Fawn, you know better.”

  “I was joking.”

  Eva knelt and took her other hand. “No, you were being hurtful.”

  Fawn glanced over at Phoenix, who said, “I’m the last one you should be looking to for support in this one, brat.”

  “I was just joking!” Fawn looked at Saul, her favourite of Gryph’s friends.

  “Sorry, kid.” He shrugged. “You’re on your own this time.”

  “Recons are no laughing matter, even if you thought you were joking.” Eva sighed. “Now come on, we’re going home.”

  “I’m not going!” Fawn yanked herself away from her parents and ran to Gryph, locking herself around his leg this time. “I was only kidding. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry—”

  “I hear you, Fawn.” Gryph swung her up onto his back and then said to their parents, “She can stay with us. I did promise to meet her friends.”

  Eva and Oscar glanced at each other, then once more at each of their children.

  “It’ll be fine,” Phoenix said. “Don’t worry.”

  “I cannot tell you how much I detest that platitude.” Eva rummaged in her purse for Fawn’s inhaler. “I think it should be banned. Don’t worry. What a ridiculous thing to ask of a parent.”

  “Don’t,” Phoenix said as she put the proffered inhaler in her pocket, “worry.”

  “I”—Eva took Phoenix’s face in her hands—“always will.” She kissed her on both cheeks. “Always. Especially about you. Especially after this morning.”

  Again with the dead-baby reminder. And it wasn’t restricted to just a few ways of dre
dging up Phee’s past. It could be pretty much anything that sent Phee back into the murky stories of her death. Like the time she broke her leg the year before, rock climbing with Nadia and the boys, or when she had an asthma attack at the swim park, with her inhaler sitting at home, forgotten, beside her bed. Thankfully, Fawn had found Phoenix wheezing and wide-eyed, and she’d had her own puffer, and known what to do, so Phoenix had been okay. But if she died again, there was only one more recon. Most three-pers never had to be reconned, but Phoenix was down to her last one. And then after that, no more. A fourth death would be for real and forever. And she was only fifteen.

  Fawn dragged Gryph out of the room to meet her friends just as the cart of food arrived from the canteen. The others set it out and dug in, while Phoenix backed up to the couch and sat, thinking about Fawn, and how she was her age when she’d died for the second time.

  PICNIC

  She’d died for the second time at the annual picnic for the West Sector One United Church, Oscar’s church. The congregation had the park to themselves. It would’ve been similar to the picnics she’d been to since, starting with a sunrise sermon at the river’s edge, and then a pancake breakfast, and then games for the children, and then lunch at tables with cheery cloths and colourful salads, baskets of buns, the smell from the barbecue wafting over the meadow to the river’s edge.

  Since that recon, every year at the picnic Phoenix had gone down to the river after her father’s sermon. She stayed for hours, praying for her memory to return. The sound of children playing, birdsong, and the water rushing all surely part of the same soundtrack from nine years earlier, when it had happened.

  Six years old. She’d been collecting rocks. That was no surprise. Phoenix still loved rocks. She was supposed to have been with Gryph, but she’d wandered off, and he was looking for her. After that, who knows what happened. She slipped? Fell? Thought she’d go for a swim? She could swim, her parents told her that, but the current from the river was too much for her.

  The next thing she knew for sure was that Gryph saw her floating face down, the river carrying her south, toward the picnic meadow. He ran along the bank, screaming, and then the adults came, Oscar and Eva at the front of an alarmed crowd. Oscar dived in for her.

  “You had a yellow dress on,” he always reminded her when he told the story. “And your hair was the colour of corn silk. You were like a piece of sunshine floating down the river. It was as beautiful a sight as it was tragic. I knew, even as I swam out to you, that your soul had gone again. It was like the first time, as if some of the air had left the world and we were all a little heavier for it.”

  And Eva, screaming, wading in to take her in her arms. “All I could think about was your tired little lungs filling up with water.” Her mother had set her on the grass and tried to bring her back, pressing her little chest and breathing for her, until Oscar finally pulled her away. “And how I’d been eating potato chips while your heart beat slower and slower, until there was nothing, and how scared you must’ve been. I’m just so very, very thankful that you don’t remember.”

  But Phoenix wanted to remember. She wanted to remember the time before, the years she’d lost, and even her death. She wanted to remember the fear she must’ve felt as she was swept down the river, just as much as she wanted to remember everything from before that moment. Riley, for example. The dog had been her constant companion, following her around, always keeping an eye on her. Maybe if he’d been allowed to come to the park that day he would’ve saved her, like a heroic dog out of the movies. But he’d overturned the barbecue the previous year and made off with a large steak, so was not welcome to come back.

  Most of the pictures of her from that time showed her and Riley against various backdrops. Phoenix had seen the photos and the movies—she watched them all the time, trying to recapture pieces of her young self. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t remember Riley at all. Worse, though, she didn’t remember her mother or her father, or Gryph from before either. Or Nadia, even though they’d latched on to each other the first day of preschool. She didn’t remember anything at all.

  “PHEE? ” Phoenix pulled herself away from the riverbank of nine years ago and forced herself to focus on Nadia, who was shaking her by the shoulder. “Phee.”

  “What?”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “Nowhere.” Phoenix glanced at Fawn, sitting on the floor at Saul’s feet now, reading to herself. Could Phoenix read before she died? She’d never asked her parents that. Fawn was an early reader. She could read picture books when she was four, but she still liked it best if someone read to her.

  “Never mind.” Nadia put a slender arm across her shoulder. “I know where you went. Same place you always go. We understand.”

  “No you don’t, Nadia.” There was no way she could understand. Nadia had never been reconned. Phee glanced at Lex’s assistant. She was the only other person in the room who’d been reconned. In fact, she was only the seventh person Phee had met who’d been reconned at all. And the only one she’d ever met who’d lost her memory too.

  “Yes I do.” Nadia leaned against Phoenix’s shoulder. “I understand.”

  Phee was going to let it go, because she loved Nadia and knew that she was only trying to be nice, but Saul piped up on her behalf.

  “No, we don’t understand, Nadia.”

  “Well, I do. I’m her best friend, after all. I know her better than any of you guys.”

  “That’s true, but you’re out of line, Nadia.” Saul’s tone was harsh. “You can’t understand unless you’ve been through it.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Nadia stood, hands on her hips, poised to launch into it with Saul.

  “Go for it, baby.” He sat back, arms wide open. “How are you going to argue this one?”

  Nadia growled at him. Fawn joined in, growling too. Nadia leaned forward, her hands on his knees. Her jacket was open, her low top offering a good view of her cleavage. “Saul!”

  “Nadia!” He kissed her full on the lips and pulled her onto his knee. “It’s a good thing we know each other’s name, considering—”

  “That there’s a small child hanging on your every word?” Phoenix lifted Fawn onto her lap. She took Fawn’s wrist and waved her hand. “Hello?”

  “Read to me again, Saul?” Fawn teetered forward to pull another one of their grandparents’ old children’s books out of her pack. But Saul’s eyes were locked on Nadia. “Phee?” Fawn thrust the book at her. “You read it.”

  The Velveteen Rabbit. Phoenix sometimes loved this story, and sometimes she hated it. This was one of the times she hated it. It made her feel funny in her gut, and reminded her of how she was different from her friends. As though she wasn’t quite as real as they were, as though she was less of herself for having been reconned twice. As though she were her own second cousin—twice removed from herself, so to speak.

  “Read!” Fawn ordered.

  Phoenix opened the book, smoothing her hand across the pages. “‘There was once a velveteen rabbit,’” she started. “‘And in the beginning he was splendid.’”

  CHARITY

  A week after Gryph’s snowboarding race, he joined Phoenix and Fawn in the garden as they packed squash and beans and spinach and tubs of raspberries into crates. He hadn’t helped out much in the garden all year, whereas he used to like digging in the dirt and making things grow. Furthermore, she’d hardly seen him at home since the race.

  “Thought you’d finally help?” Phoenix chucked a berry at him. “It’s about time. Where have you been?”

  He told Oscar and Eva that he was staying with Saul while his parents were out of town, but Phee knew from Nadia that Saul’s parents hadn’t gone anywhere. The boys still showed up for school every day, so she’d decided not to rat him out. But why the lie? What was he hiding?

  Gryph bowed. “All in the name of being the Chrysalis poster boy.”

  “All in the name of getting wasted and scoring with countless girls with I
Qs to match their dress size, more like.”

  “Well, it’s not their IQs I’m interested in, is it?” Gryph heaved a box of carrots onto the cart. “And the dresses come off pretty quick if I have anything to do with it.”

  “Why?” Fawn was suddenly at his side, munching on a dirty carrot.

  “Never mind about Gryphon and dresses.” Phoenix grabbed the carrot away. “What’re you doing? You’re six, right? Not three years old. Why are you eating a filthy carrot?”

  “I washed it!”

  “You wiped it on your shirt, Fawn.” Phoenix poked the evidence with the carrot.

  “That makes it clean!”

  Oscar peeked around the side of the greenhouse. “The shuttle’s here. Let’s get going.”

  “I’ll push the cart,” Gryph said.

  “It’s the least you can do.” Phoenix picked a handful of carrots and rinsed them thoroughly with the garden hose. “Mr. I’m-Too-Famous-to-Ever-Come-Home. What do you do all the time? You can’t drink that much, and Saul would tell me if you were getting into trouble. I bet if I told Mom that you lied about Saul’s parents going away, she’d freak.”

  “How come?” Fawn asked.

  “Off you go, kiddo.” Gryph took the carrots from Phoenix and thrust them at Fawn. “Why don’t you hand these out to everyone? We’ll meet you around front.”

  “What?” Phoenix looked away from Gryph’s critical glare. “You’re the one who—”

  “Look at me, Phee.”

  Phoenix huffed, reluctantly turning her eyes back to him. She could tell by the set of his jaw that he was mad. Really, really mad.

  “I didn’t—”

  “Don’t ever say anything like that in front of Fawn ever again.” Gryph’s tone was even, but his eyes burned with a look that shrank Phoenix. “She’s got a big mouth and even bigger ears. If she tells Mom, then I’m stuck here at home.”

  “So?” Phoenix kicked the dirt. She felt like Fawn, petulant and in the wrong, but earnestly self-righteous nonetheless. “What’s so bad about that? What do you and the guys get up to that’s so exciting, anyway?”