A Phoenix First Must Burn

by A Phoenix First Must Burn (retail) (epub)

  “I don’t know . . . it’s just been hard.”

  “What’s been hard?” Etta tried to touch his cheek, but he jerked away, flinching like she was a stranger touching him for the first time.

  “I feel like I should be doing something else. That this has had its run. I need to be on my own for a little bit.”

  “What do you really mean?” Etta replied. The scent of him wrapped around her, pulling her to him despite his painful words. “Am I not pretty enough?”

  “You’ve always been the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known.”

  “Did you meet someone else?”

  “No.”

  “Then, what is it? What could it possibly be?”

  “I don’t know,” he said with a sigh. “It just doesn’t feel right anymore.”

  “We can make it feel right again. Just tell me what I need to do.” Etta hated the pleading tone in her voice.

  “I need to figure it out,” he said. “Alone.”

  “Please. We’re supposed to be together. Our mothers matched us.”

  “I know.”

  “We’re destined.”

  “Destinies change.”

  “Not ours.” Etta pressed her mouth against his. He let her. The soft pad of his bottom lip grazed hers and she tasted the chocolate he’d eaten before climbing through her window.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Etta woke to the sound of a bird tapping against the window. She thought she was back home in her bedroom and she’d roll over and see her diorama of Paris staring back at her, but the conjure woman’s living room sharpened into view.

  “How are you feeling?” Madame Peaks asked.

  Etta pressed a hand to her chest. The pain was gone. “Is it done?”

  “Almost.” Madame Peaks motioned to the table. “You can watch for yourself. There’s a mirror jar. It’ll show you what’s happening inside your chest.”

  Etta picked it up and thumbed the glass. Inside, a nest of branches interlaced with the flesh of a heart, and tiny green stems coiled around it, holding the promise of flowers. A sense of peace washed over her; the sadness of losing Jackson a bruise lightening, the soreness of it easing out.

  “Be more careful with that one. Get to know it better.”

  The image of him drifted into her mind, but it didn’t hurt this time. She’d seen the good and the bad, she’d remember how she’d drowned in him, forgetting her grandmother and Mama and her friends and her dioramas, forgetting herself. “I will,” she told the woman.

  LETTING THE RIGHT ONE IN

  By Patrice Caldwell

  A vampire stands outside my window with a question on her lips.

  I peer down at her. Her skin glows blackish-blue in the moonlight. She waits for my answer, hands in her jean pockets. Her backpack is thrown over her left shoulder.

  The Prozac bottle I knocked down earlier rolls across the slanted floor of my room. My tattered copy of Dracula is strewn across my bed. More books decorate the floor, all illuminated in the same moonlight that colors the vampire.

  My parents’ yells come from downstairs through the too-thin walls of this house that still doesn’t feel like home. I don’t think it ever will.

  I glance back to my window to the vampire just outside. The heat from our kiss still lingers on my lips.

  What am I going to do?

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  I met the vampire yesterday at the central library. Technically, it’s Mainville’s only library. I’d been a regular since we moved here nine months ago. In that time, I had read over two hundred books.

  The genre didn’t matter, as long as it featured my favorite tortured souls: vampires.

  I started with classics like Polidori’s The Vampyre and Stoker’s Dracula and Octavia Butler’s Fledgling. Then I moved to series like The Vampire Diaries and standalone novels like Sunshine, The Silver Kiss, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, and Peeps.

  I’d been drawn to vampires ever since I saw Blade with my dad years ago. Though some had found families, like Rose’s friendship with Lissa in the Vampire Academy books, they never fully fit in. They were all eternal outcasts. Black sheep.

  Loneliness clung to vampires like a too-snug coat—just as it does to me.

  Yesterday, the head librarian looked up from her desk at the front just long enough for me to wave. Then I immediately headed downstairs and took a right to where the R’s are. I’d just finished a reread of the Vampire Academy series and was moving on to rereading The Vampire Chronicles. I just needed to grab Interview with the Vampire and then I could be—

  But when I turned the corner, I saw her.

  A girl. In my section. A section in which I hadn’t seen anyone in the nine months I’d spent there.

  Her hair was dyed the coolest shade of pink that perfectly contrasted with her dark-brown skin. She had my book—Interview with the Vampire—in her hands. She was browsing through it. Laughing.

  “Are you checking that out?” I asked. My voice came out sharp. Who was I to be so possessive? This was a library, after all.

  The girl quickly looked up, snapping the book shut. “You can have it. I’ve read it a few times already.”

  Another Black girl who loved vampires!? Who was she? “What were you laughing about?”

  “How surprised Louis is when he realizes that his family’s slaves know that he and Lestat are vampires. Oh, Louis.” She laughed again.

  “No one listened to Black people. Not then and certainly not now,” I said.

  “Exactly.” She cocked her head slightly and stepped toward me. Thick, coarse curls framed her face and stopped just past her shoulders. Even her slightest movements seemed incredibly graceful, like those of a dancer, aware and in control of every muscle in her body. She was maybe a foot taller than me, and her eyes were a dark brown. I lost myself in them.

  She cleared her throat.

  I blinked, snapping myself away from her gaze, the moment gone.

  “I said you can have it.”

  She held it out to me. I took a step toward her, but as if my legs lost their footing, I tripped, falling headfirst toward the ground. In a blur, she grabbed my arm. A jolt shot through me. Her skin felt ice cold. Lifeless.

  I laughed, shakily. “I’m not usually such a klutz.” I pulled myself upright.

  She tucked her hair behind her left ear, then smiled, averting her gaze to the ground. “It’s fine.” She laughed again, filling the empty space with warmth that sent shivers down my spine. “I am.”

  “Yeah, right,” I said before I could stop myself. “I mean, you just don’t seem like the clumsy kind.”

  She shrugged. “Some things never leave you.”

  I furrowed my brow. What an odd thing to say.

  She shook her head. “Here you go.” She placed the book in my hand. I took it and we rounded the corner. Out of habit, I glanced up at the security mirrors placed in corners and under the stairs so you wouldn’t run into someone coming around the corner.

  My eyes widened. Impossible. I dropped the book.

  Though I was there, clear as a sunny Mainville day, she was not.

  She glanced at me, taking in the confusion warping my face, then quickly moved out of the mirror’s view. “I should get going.” She stumbled backward.

  “Wait,” I said. I grabbed the book from the floor.

  When I turned around, she was gone. Vanished. As if she’d never existed.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  When I got back home, it was dinnertime. Mama was in the living room, sitting at her desk behind the couch, and Daddy was in the kitchen humming to himself.

  “Could you quiet down in there?” Mama demanded. “These bills aren’t gonna pay themselves.”

  I cleared my throat to announce my presence. Daddy
gave me a small smile, but the light didn’t reach his eyes. It hadn’t in a long time. Not since we left Chicago, and his friends and job there. Not since we moved here—for me.

  Mama said he’d find a job. Hadn’t taken her long—she was a doctor. He had started at his old company right after college and quickly worked his way up to the senior staff position he held when we left. He never said so, but I knew he missed it.

  I adjusted my jacket, fumbling with the zipper. The guilt gnawed at me. I took a deep breath to calm myself. It’s not your fault. But it was. It was my fault my friends stopped talking to me. My fault Mama became so worried about me and moved us here. It was—

  “What grand adventure did we have today?” Dad interrupted my thoughts, grounding me back in the now.

  I half rolled my eyes. “I’m seventeen, not five, Dad.”

  “Doesn’t mean you can’t still have grand adventures.”

  “Never mind grand adventures,” Mama said. “She needs to be thinking about college. Did you consider that internship Shayla mentioned?”

  Her best friend in Chicago had offered to let me shadow her for the summer at the law firm where she’d recently made partner. Shayla was the first Black woman there to do so. I guess they both thought I could be another.

  “No, ma’am,” I said finally.

  “Well, you can’t just sit around here all summer. Dr. Freeman said you need structure, and I think that—”

  “Samantha,” Daddy interrupted, “she just got in the door. Can she remove her shoes? Take off her jacket? She’s your daughter, not one of your patients.”

  Mama flinched.

  That was my cue. “What’s cooking here?” I asked too cheerily. “The food smells great.” I placed my bag, stuffed with all the books I’d checked out, on the floor.

  “Welcome to Chez Dad.” He made a grand gesture toward the pot of chili. Mama laughed. Another argument averted.

  Mama made the table, setting out plates, and Daddy served the chili in big scoops. “So what are you reading now, Ayanna?” Mama nudged the books on the floor with her foot.

  “Oh, nothing,” I said quickly.

  She’s trying, said a voice in my head. So I took a deep breath. “Uhh, just Interview with the Vampire and the next books in the Sookie Stackhouse series. The hold came in for them.”

  “Sookie Stackhouse? Is that the one about the werewolves?”

  I shook my head. “Well, there are werewolves—there are a lot of creatures actually—but it focuses on this waitress who’s telepathic and falls in love with a vampire, and the hot mess that ensues.” I explained the series to her between bites of chili. “The series wrapped up a while ago, but I’m just now getting into it. I’m also rereading some favorites, so I have those books, too. I’m thinking about reading Salem’s Lot—” I stopped as I caught Mama’s frown. “What?” I said, already dreading her answer.

  “Have you considered calling any of the other girls in your class?” Mama wrung her hands. “I met a girl named Veronica who was visiting her grandmother at the nursing home today. She seems nice; maybe you can invite her over sometime and—”

  I cut her off. “I’m fine, Mom.” It always came back to this. Me needing to make friends, as if I hadn’t tried.

  Crease lines settled on her brow. The room grew silent save for the scraping of our spoons against the bowls.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Mama likes to say that we moved here to be closer to her mother. Mama grew up in this town, and my grandmother had been living alone since my grandfather died two years ago.

  Truth is, Grandma didn’t need us around. Mama didn’t start to worry about her “being alone out here” until my friends stopped talking to me, until I quit sports and spent more time in my room with books than I did with “people my age.”

  Grandma had her own life here. A social calendar so full we barely saw her. As for me, my classmates had their groups, their cliques formed since pre-K. Books became my lifeblood.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  “Thanks,” I said, gobbling down the rest of my meal. When I finished, I took my bowl to the sink and washed it off, then grabbed the book bag. “I’m going to go read.”

  Daddy placed his hand on Mama’s. She quickly removed it. The facade was starting to crack again.

  “Don’t stay up too late,” she said.

  But I was already up the stairs to my sanctuary.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  My therapist, Dr. Freeman, once told me that some people are just sadder than others. That some of us are naturally sensitive. More in tune with our feelings, our emotions. That it’s okay. Normal.

  But try telling that to middle-class Black parents who were one generation away from segregation. One heartbeat, one connected thread to sharecropping and slavery. Who gave up so much so their kids could have more.

  Try harder.

  Stay busy.

  Be strong.

  To them, whose parents broke their backs to put food on the table, who remembered moments of having no food in the fridge, nothing “in your head” was hard to overcome.

  That was always their advice.

  And it worked for a while. I joined sports team after sports team. I studied hard to be at the top of my class. I even made friends, but I never quite fit in. I was always the black sheep of my friend group, just as I was in my family.

  They think you’re stuck up. That you like being alone, when really you’re barely hanging on. You’re muffling tears at night with your pillow. If you could get rid of your softness as easily as they put their expectations on you, you would.

  And those very friends abandoned me, after. So now I don’t try. I have books and therapy and Prozac. I’d rather be a loner than hate myself again.

  Vampires get it. There’s no place for them in our world, either. So they make a place, they create their own families. In a world that would hunt them down, they survive—they thrive.

  I placed the books on my bedside table and closed my door. I took in the Twilight Saga movie posters to my right. Bella looks so uninterested in Edward. Let’s be honest, she would’ve been better off alone—or with Alice. A collection of Blade DVDs I “borrowed” from my dad years ago are on the bookshelves to the left of the door.

  Romantic leads. Detectives. Best friends taking on evil. The safe haven I built myself.

  The facade faded as the argument began like clockwork.

  “Her problem is all of those books,” said Mama, snapping at Daddy in that hushed tone parents use when they think you can’t hear or they don’t want you to hear. But the walls of this old house are thin, and the sounds wafted up until they reached my ears.

  “Well, she got it from your side of the family,” Daddy retorted. I cringed.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Mama asked, even though we all knew. Mama’s brother died by suicide. She never said so, but I knew she blamed herself. Just as she thought my depression was her fault, too. She wore guilt I didn’t ask her to put on.

  Dr. Freeman said that healing is a process. I only wished my parents could work on themselves, too, so I didn’t feel like I was carrying my problems and theirs.

  Their argument continued, each blaming the other for how I “ended up this way.” Each word was a slap until I couldn’t take it anymore. I slipped in my earbuds, turned up the music until Brendon Urie’s vocals were all I heard. I drowned myself in dreams of the girl I’d just met. The girl who was graceful yet clumsy. Gorgeous, irresistibly cute. Who loved vampires, whose touch was ice cold, and who didn’t have a reflection. It could’ve just been a trick of the light, I told myself. But I shook reason aside.

  As impossible as it sounded, I’d just met a vampire.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  The next morning, I found a note on the livin
g room table. Dad had gone into town. Mama, to church.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. She’d stopped dragging me to church a year ago, after our old pastor did a sermon about how it’s Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve and I walked out the door.

  I made eggs and turkey bacon. Slapped some jam on bread, then headed back upstairs. Time to enact my plan I’d spent all night considering.

  Using paper and pen, I browsed through all my books, my collection of films and TV shows on DVD and on my laptop. I threw out outliers like sparkling during the daytime, because it was a sunny day when we met, and turning into a bat, because as much as I love Dracula, the obsession with bats is a bit much and not consistent when it comes to world vampire mythologies.

  Fangs (duh).

  Sleeping in coffins (ugh, just ew).

  Wooden stakes. (A bit difficult to test . . . I’m not trying to kill her. I want to, uhh, well, I’m not sure yet.)

  Aversion to sunlight. (Which, given the sunny day, is probably a no . . . are Black vampires more resistant to sunlight??? Hm. Fledgling makes a great case for this.)

  By the time I was done, the sun was just starting to set. I grabbed my things, then I wrote Mama a note of my own: Going to a study group. Be back for dinner.

  A lie, yes. But a necessary one. I needed an excuse she would want to believe, and the library was closed on Sundays.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Mainville is a small Louisiana town, where the railroad tracks that used to separate Black and white are now just remnants of an era long gone, but never forgotten. In every park there are monuments of some famed soldier or general who fought on the wrong side of the Civil War. It’s near enough to Baton Rouge to not be completely remote but far enough to not attract regular visitors, aside from, according to Dad, the occasional camera crew hoping to use the small town as a backdrop for some scene or another in a story set in “the American South.”