The Key to the Golden Firebird

by Maureen Johnson

  It wasn’t like Palmer had never seen anything like this before—she’d just never seen anything like this in her kitchen. With her sister. Against the magnetized frames that held the photos of their cousins in Maryland. Dave was pressing his one palm flat against their fridge now. Brooks turned her head in Palmer’s direction and opened her eyes. She jolted upright.

  “Oh my God, Palmer,” Brooks said, her face full of disgust. “What are you doing?”

  “I heard something,” Palmer said.

  Dave eased himself back against one of the kitchen chairs and laughed.

  “How long have you been standing there?” Brooks demanded.

  Palmer was thankful for the dark. Her face was flushed with embarrassment and she suddenly felt perverted.

  “Like a minute,” she replied angrily. “Not even. I heard you come in. You’re loud.”

  “Go away,” Brooks said. “Go back to whatever it was you were doing.”

  “Fine,” Palmer said. “Whatever.”

  Palmer was a little too spooked to go right back to her explorations. She went back into the living room and switched on the television instead, trying hard to quickly lose herself in SportsCenter. After a minute or two, Dave passed by the living room door and grinned at her on the way out. Brooks stalked past a moment later and went right up the stairs.

  Palmer had to wait another twenty minutes or so for Brooks to go to bed before she could slip back into her mom’s room to put everything back as carefully as she could.

  5

  On a bright, warm morning a week later, Brooks landed her fist on her alarm clock. She was dismayed to discover that apparently she’d been eating paste all night. Her mouth felt like it was full of it. There was a dull, grinding pain on the flesh of her brain that sent shocks along her eyebrows. She slid one of her legs out from under the blankets and sent it on an exploratory mission to the floor.

  Day? Probably a Saturday or a Sunday, since she was hung over. No…it was Friday. The night before, she’d been at the opening night party at the pool—the Memorial Day opening.

  She wiped the film from her eyes and focused on the clock. Seven-fifty. She was supposed to be at school in fifteen minutes. She swung out of bed and felt the first full shock of cold air. Everything hurt. Even the carpet hurt her feet.

  The house was quiet. The sun coming in through the window was cold and white. May and Palmer’s things were gone. Her mom’s keys were on the key rack. She could take the minivan to school. She opened the refrigerator and surveyed the contents. The only thing that appealed to her was half a lemon.

  Five minutes later Brooks stood in a hot shower, leaning against the wall and sucking on the lemon. She tried to work up the energy to reach her hands over her head to wash her hair. That wasn’t going to happen. The fragrance of her shower gel as it got caught up in the stream overwhelmed her. The transition from the warmth of the water to the cold air almost shattered her, and the rough towel grated her skin.

  She went back into her room and grabbed a pair of jeans and a shirt from the chair next to her bureau. It made no difference to her what shirt it was. She put the clothes on, stepped into some sandals, and made her way downstairs to go to school.

  There was a moment right between second and third period when Brooks thought she might be sick. She was walking past the art room, and a strong scent of spray mount came wafting out. Then she turned and looked at the putty-colored lockers, and the combined effect did her in. She ran for the nearest girls’ room, where she spent ten minutes sitting in front of a toilet with her head resting against the side of a stall.

  She delivered herself to study hall ten minutes late. The moderator was angrily fiddling with her laptop and didn’t notice. Dave looked up in surprise to see Brooks hunched over, pale and sweaty. She put her head down on the table.

  “From last night?” he asked quietly.

  “Kill me,” she said.

  “Come on.” Dave hoisted her up and grabbed her bag.

  “I’m fine,” she mumbled.

  “Come on.”

  He took her up to the desk at the front of the room.

  “I think she’s sick,” he said, pointing his thumb at Brooks’s slumping figure. “Can I walk her down to the nurse’s office?”

  The moderator pounded on her enter key and glanced up at the two of them. Taking one look at Brooks’s face, she nodded her assent, then continued slapping her disobedient machine.

  Dave put his arm around Brooks’s waist and eased her down the hall, joking with her the whole way. When they reached the door to the nurse’s office, he put her bag over her shoulder for her.

  “You’ll be fine,” he said, stroking back her long blond hair. “Tell them you have stomach flu. They’ll send you home.”

  “Today’s really bad.”

  “Drink some water. Take some aspirin.”

  “My dad died a year ago today.”

  She’d never mentioned much about her father before, except to convey the general information that he wasn’t around.

  He ran his finger along the line of Brooks’s chin very softly. The sensation momentarily cut through the racking pain she felt. She set her head down on his shoulder for a moment, and he rubbed her back in small circles. She could have stayed like that all day, but he gently pulled her upright and looked her in the face.

  “Go home,” he said with a smile. “Sleep.”

  “Right.”

  He kissed her once on her lips and once on the forehead, much more gently than he ever had before. For a moment Brooks almost thought the sickness was worth the sensation. She looked up at him, and he gave her a broad smile, showing off the gap between his teeth.

  “Go,” he said, pointing at the door. “In.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  Dave started walking backward, watching her until she was inside the office.

  “You all right, Palmer?”

  Diana had pulled up to Palmer and was looking up at her from the driver’s seat of her car. The day was long over. Practice had been finished for half an hour. Everyone else was gone except Palmer, who was standing at the edge of the field, her bag over her shoulder.

  “Yeah,” Palmer said, eyeing the road. “I’m fine.”

  “Need a ride?”

  “No.” Palmer shook her head firmly. “My sister’s coming.”

  “Brooks?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You want me to call her?”

  “No. She’s coming.”

  “If you’re sure…”

  “I’m sure.”

  Palmer wasn’t sure at all. Brooks could very well have forgotten. Brooks forgot everything. This wasn’t the first time she’d been left waiting. Brooks’s incompetence embarrassed her. She preferred to cover it up.

  With a nod Diana drove off, leaving Palmer staring out at the empty brown field and the expanse of surrounding trees. The sky was heavy, prematurely dark. A wind was kicking up. She set her messenger bag down in the dirt along the side of the clubhouse and started digging through the contents, finally producing a small address book and a handful of change. Enough for two calls. There was a pay phone at the front of the school. It would take her ten minutes to walk all the way around. If Brooks came while she was gone, she’d be stuck. She jingled the change in her hand and stared up the driveway. Then she took out her algebra book and put it in her lap. Then she stared out at the road again.

  Fifteen minutes later she was still staring.

  No one was in front of the building by the time Palmer made her way around. Somewhere, deep in the bowels of the building, there were probably meetings or detentions going on, but outside there was only the phone, a concrete bench, the flagpole, and Palmer. She took one of the two coins, dropped it into the phone, and dialed her house. No answer. She dropped in the second and dialed the work number that May had given her. An unfamiliar voice answered the phone, and she asked for May.

  “Brooks zoned,” Palmer said when May got on the line.
<
br />   “What?”

  “She forgot about me.”

  She heard May sigh into the phone.

  “Just stay where you are, okay?” May said. “Someone will be there for you soon.”

  “Who?”

  “I’ll figure it out. Just don’t worry about it.”

  Palmer hung up the phone. Undoubtedly Pete would be sent, since he suddenly seemed willing to run or fetch or roll over at May’s bidding. In response, May was going out of her way to make it clear that she didn’t notice this—until, of course, she needed him to do something. It was an annoying little game they played. Even if he was being dispatched to pick her up like a FedEx guy, a ride home with Pete was still a good thing. He was one of the few people who might actually make her feel better today.

  Palmer sat down on the bench and stared out at the road, waiting for Pete’s car to turn into the parking lot.

  As May hung up the phone, she noticed Nell had fixed her with a curious stare.

  “Was that Pete?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Who called before?”

  “My little sister.”

  “She’s stuck at school?”

  Nell seemed to have no desire to hide the fact that she listened to other people’s phone conversations.

  “Yeah,” May said. “She’s stuck.”

  “Pete’s going to get her?” Nell asked. “You know, we went out on Wednesday.”

  No. May did not know that. However, this was probably the best day to get this news. Listening to the story about Pete and Nell’s date—as nauseating as it was sure to be—would at least shift the focus away from her.

  Not only was it kind of ironic that her father should have died over the Memorial Day weekend, it also made it easy for people to remember when it had happened. That morning it had seemed like everyone in homeroom was watching May out of the corners of their eyes. Linda had shadowed her all day, constantly asking if she was all right. Her English teacher had quietly mentioned that May was exempt from her homework for the weekend. The guidance counselor had pulled her aside to ask her how she was doing.

  Today had reminded May, with shocking clarity, of what the first few weeks had been like last year. Constantly being watched. Constantly being asked if she was all right. Having conversations stop when she walked by. Facing that strange collage of forced smiles and concerned expressions at every single turn. Repeating the mantra “I’m fine” over and over again until it lost all meaning, and she had no idea what fine was anymore.

  So this was really a perfect time for Nell to be her normal rambling self and allow May to fade into the background. Unfortunately, she decided to act completely out of character and paused and took a good long look at May’s face.

  “You look kind of weird, Ape,” she said. “Are you sick?”

  “No,” May said, rattling a coffee mug full of tiny flags that sat by the cash register.

  “Maybe you’re a little toxic.”

  “Toxic?”

  “From dairy. Your vessels could be clogged up.”

  “Vessels?”

  “Dairy is harsh on the digestive system. So is meat. Do you know that it takes seven years for a piece of meat to leave your system? It rots in your body. Maybe you should do a cleanse. You should get some psyllium husk….”

  “Yeah…so you were about to say? About Pete?”

  “Oh, right!” Nell smiled brightly and pulled herself up on the counter. “Pete collects movies, did you know that? We watched The Fearless Vampire Killers, which is just classic. We’re really alike.”

  May doubted this but made no objection.

  “And this you will not believe, Ape. He asked me to his prom. How hilarious is that? We didn’t even have a prom at my school—we had ‘The Collective Experience,’ which was like an all-night thing with music and poetry readings and then we all went swimming at like two in the morning. So now I have to get a prom dress and prom shoes and a manicure, and all that. Seriously, how funny is this?”

  “That’s…funny.”

  “Know what’s cool, Ape? Pete’s got freckles on his eyelids. So when he closes his eyes, you can barely tell where they are. It’s like they’re camouflaged.”

  May suddenly felt a throbbing along her left temple and a pressing need to get out of Presto immediately.

  “You know, I really don’t feel well,” May said. “I think I have to go across the parking lot to get some aspirin from the drugstore. I’ll be right back.”

  When she arrived home four hours later, May was less than thrilled to see Pete’s car sitting in her driveway, right behind the minivan. She looked at her watch. It was almost nine o’clock. He’d picked Palmer up over three hours before. It made no sense for him to still be here.

  She dismounted, wheeled the Brown Hornet into the garage, and slipped in quietly through the kitchen. The first strange part was the silence. No blaring TV. Then the faint laughter. May followed the sound until she reached the doorway to the living room. She paused for a moment and listened. Palmer and Pete were talking. And laughing. Her appearance stopped them both cold.

  “You’re still here,” she said.

  “Oh…yeah.” Pete glanced between Palmer and May. “We were just talking.”

  “Where’s Brooks?” May said, looking up and around the room as if her sister might be clinging to the ceiling like a spider. “I have to kill her.”

  “She’s sleeping,” Pete said. “She seemed kind of sick today.”

  “Pete and I were talking,” Palmer said suddenly. She looked at May with a decidedly unfriendly expression.

  “Okay, then…,” May said. “I’m starving. I’m going to make something to eat. Anybody want some dinner?”

  “We ate,” Palmer said.

  “We?”

  “Pete and I.”

  “You went out?” May asked. “The two of you?”

  “Yeah.” Palmer almost looked defiant. “We went out. To the T.G.I. Friday’s near the mall.”

  Pete was not contributing to this part of the conversation, May noticed. Instead he seemed to be asking himself whether or not the two sides of his body quite matched up. He looked at his hands side by side. Then he grabbed the zipper of his sweatshirt and began pulling it up and down.

  May flicked her eyes in his direction and he glanced away.

  “Okay…,” she said. “Well, I’ll be in the kitchen.”

  A minute later, as she dug around the icy, uncharted territory in the back of the freezer, May heard someone come into the room. She retracted her head and peered around. Pete was standing in the kitchen doorway.

  “You took Palmer to dinner?” she asked. “What, was she complaining about my cooking again?”

  “No. She just seemed kind of lonely.”

  “Oh,” she said simply. “That was nice of you. I’ll pay you back for whatever you spent.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  May disliked the thought of Pete giving them money, so she left the freezer door open and reached for her purse anyway.

  “No, really,” he said, more insistently this time. “She was just upset because of today.”

  “Oh, right,” May said. Pete pulled out a chair and sat down. May pried a frozen dinner from a pack of unidentifiable meat and shut the door.

  “Brooks really looked kind of bad,” Pete said.

  “She was out last night.”

  “She looks like that a lot.”

  “She goes out a lot.”

  Palmer turned on the TV, and the kitchen wall began to shudder. May deposited the frozen lump on a baking tray.

  “I got a call about this summer job I applied for,” Pete said. “It would be really cool. It’s at a golf course, just inside the city, about fifteen minutes from here.”

  “That’s great.”

  May shoved the snowy brick into the oven. She could feel Pete’s eyes on her as she did this.

  “My dad…,” Pete said slowly, rubbing at his chin. “I don’t know if you
heard this, but he’s sponsoring a bench at the softball field, the one over by the middle school. It’ll have your dad’s name on it.”

  “A bench?”

  “I know,” Pete said. “It’s just a bench. And it’s going to take them four months or something to install it—don’t ask me why. But just so you know…”

  “Thanks.” May nodded.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  “Me? I’m fine.”

  “Are you guys going to be doing anything?”

  “No,” May said. “You know us, we’ve never been religious or anything.”

  “I thought you might have a dinner or a service or something.”

  “We’re not a dinner-and-service kind of family.”

  May had nothing more to say about this. She looked down at the floor. There was a blotch of something dark and sticky by her foot.

  “So Nell tells me that you two are going to the prom,” she said.

  “Yeah. I…you know. Asked her.”

  “I figured that.”

  Neither one of them seemed to want to push this subject any further, either.

  “Monday still good for a lesson?” he asked.

  “Monday’s fine.”

  “I guess…” Pete looked down the hall. “I should go.”

  “Okay. Thanks again.”

  After he’d let himself out, May spread her books on the table. She hastily flipped through a four-page biology lab report that she had to complete. She felt like she had lived this moment a hundred times over—making dinner for herself in the middle of a messy, empty kitchen with a pile of homework on the table. Feeling the walls rumble from the television. An endless, deadly cycle.

  “Turn it down!” she yelled to Palmer.

  The volume went up.

  Before, she could just as easily have walked into the living room and found her dad sitting on the edge of his recliner, yelling at the screen. Part of her almost wanted to try it to see if this was some kind of very long dream. Maybe he would be sitting there in the stretched-out navy blue T-shirt he always put on when he got home. He would laugh and apologize for “disturbing the professor,” and he would turn it down. He always called her that—the professor. May could never tell if it was a joke or a compliment, but she assumed it was a joke because Brooks would laugh, and Brooks got everything their dad said, and May didn’t. So it had to have been a joke.