Blackwood (32 page)

  "Mom!" Phillips released her hand, moving through fallen bodies to reach his parents.

  Miranda followed, afraid the death wasn't over. What if she'd made everything worse?

  Then a wave of sound rolled across the stage. Sudden intakes of breath – gasp after gasp – as the returned stirred back to life. Some sat up drowsily. Others stretched, and climbed onto unsteady feet.

  Miranda listened to their laughter, to confused questions.

  "It's really her," someone said. More laughter. The buzz of happy conversation. Shrieks. Miranda called out, "Polly?"

  "Here," a weak voice said.

  On the other side of the stage, Polly was touching her shoulders in confusion, like she didn't know where or who she was. She reached back to tighten her ponytail in a gesture Miranda knew well. She seemed surprised to find her hair was down instead of up.

  "They're really back," Miranda said.

  Her grin died when she turned back to Phillips and Chief Rawling. Sara was still unconscious.

  Phillips shook his mother's shoulder, gently as if she was breakable. He moved to check her pupils. Her eyelids fluttered beneath his fingers. Her eyes opened.

  "Mom, you OK?" Phillips asked.

  In answer Sara climbed unsteadily to her feet, folding Phillips and his dad into her arms. "I'm so sorry," she said it over and over. "I'm so sorry."

  Phillips shifted his head over her shoulder to meet Miranda's stare.
We did it.

  Miranda nodded.
We did.

  But she didn't linger there. They were a family. She needed only to look over at Bone, sitting shell-shocked beside his dead father to remember that she didn't have that. But it existed, and that was something.

  Miranda reached down to squeeze Bone's shoulder as she walked past him. Her steps were slow, but they brought her to Sidekick. She eased down beside his furry yellow body, stretched prone like he was sleeping, but too still for dreaming. She placed her hand against his ribs.

  She felt no movement, and part of her died. Part of her followed her father off the land, into the deep water, and met the fate of the Blackwood curse.

  At first, what was left of her thought the slight rise and fall beneath her fingers was wishful thinking. It was what she wanted, but not reality.

  But Sidekick
was
breathing. His ribs lifted against her hand, then fell. Lifted, fell.

  She held her own breath in to better feel his, relaxing when he groaned and wriggled against the pressure of her hand.
Belly scratch.

  "My good boy," she said. "Welcome home."

  The missing returned, the natural order salvaged, and gentle waves embracing the shore. The time to mourn what had been lost would come, but not tonight. Tonight, the island was all around them.

  And that was good.

30

Curtain Call

Phillips had talked to Miranda once on the phone since the night at the theater. That was two days ago. The phone conversation had been like a blind date – frustrating and stuttering like they'd just met and had nothing in common. Jokes had met with expanding pauses. At the end of the "talk," when the silence became too much to endure, too many dead fish and insects swimming between them in its gulf, he'd said, "I'll come by on Sunday?"

  She had Sundays off, he knew. The theater was closed that day.

  "Sure," she'd said, in a weird tone he had analyzed over and over and come up with a thousand theories to explain. He didn't know what to expect.

  He still wanted to see her.

  So when he knocked at the front door of her house why did he feel like he was about to walk in and discover Dee sitting at the breakfast table?
If she doesn't open the door
pointing a gun at you, it's progress.

  She didn't.

  "Um, hi," she said.

  She smiled at him, tentative. Nervous.

  He had never been happier to see a dog in his life than when Sidekick bounded past Miranda and jumped up on him. Heavy paws thumping into his thighs gave him a furry face to pat and focus on. "I'm so glad he's OK," he said, looking up at her.

  The smile was real this time. "Yeah. So," she said. "You want to come in?"

  "That's the plan."

  Phillips followed her to the couch, but decided not to give Sidekick the advantage this time. When Miranda sat down, he carefully eased down beside her. Not touching, but an inch or two away. Sidekick hopped up on his other side, licked his hand until Phillips petted him.

  "You're not in jail," she said.

  He snorted. "Because the feds had no freaking clue what to put in their report. They got out of here as fast as they could. And Roswell having your dad's body bag at his place… it was enough for Dad to close the case. But I'm sure he told you about that."

  Her nod was tight. "He called."

  "We went to Officer Warren and Delilah Banks' memorial services yesterday. Bone's not having one for his dad. He's going to live with his mom in Ohio."

  "You know that wasn't you. You didn't hurt them."

  "I didn't kill them. But it's still hard. Knowing…" Knowing that if he'd learned how to cope earlier, he could have stopped their deaths. He didn't know if he'd ever get over that.

  "Yeah. How's your mom?"

  Miranda must have sensed he needed to move on.

  "She's atoning," he said. "Even though we keep telling her we understand."

  Miranda pushed her hair behind her ear. He couldn't help it – he reached out and untucked it. Finally, the beginning of a flush.

  "I like it loose," he said. "It's nice that way."

  "Loose women are the most popular, that's what I've always heard."

  He really wanted to kiss her again. "Miranda–"

  "Wait," she said. "I have something for you."

  She leaped to her feet and hurried up the hall.
Screw waiting
. He trailed her the short distance to her room, meeting her at its door. He walked forward, and she backed up with each step. They ended up in her room, standing close, which was all right with him.

  "What's that?" he asked, pointed at her hands.

  "I wanted to make you something." Her head angled toward the small sewing table in the corner of the tiny room. It was set up so she'd have to sit cross-legged on the bed to use it. Scraps of fabric were discarded next to it.

  "Please tell me it's not a gray cloak."

  She thrust her hand out. He took the fabric bundle from her and shook it out.

  The T-shirt was blue – Superman blue, really – and the block lettering she'd stitched on was made of a motley collection of fabrics. The words stacked on top of each other said: Random Fact Boy.

  He grinned. "I still think we could have come up with something better."

  "Check the label," she said, still sounding too anxious. The gift had made him a lot less nervous.

  He pulled the neck down and checked it. Stitched in black thread, twined in script:
My hero.

  She didn't say anything, and it took him a moment to figure out how to react.

  He said, "Best present ever. Up there with the Statue of Liberty."

  "Really?"

  "Really."

  Her smile was real, then, and finally he kissed her.

Miranda had been convinced that Phillips would have decided the girl that put him through all that was damaged goods. Convinced that what was between them would turn out not to be real without the constant threat of death and destruction.

  She
almost
couldn't believe she'd been wrong.

  He stopped kissing her, and she wondered why. She chased him back onto the bed, but he held up his hand. "This is going to sound weird, but… I just heard a voice and I want to know if what it said means anything to you."

  Miranda straightened. Her immediate worry that it would be something terrible kicked into hyperdrive. "You're still hearing the voices then?"

  "When I let them in," he said. "But a lot of them seem to be gone. Like they don't need to hang around anymore. But this voice, it just kind of showed up, just now. Bad timing. But, do you know the song 'Heartbreaker' by Blondie?"

  Miranda swallowed. "It was my mother's favorite song."

  Phillips reached out, casually put his hand against her neck, cradling it. She was distracted, but not distracted enough not to notice how nice that felt. "What else?"

  "The voice – I heard it once before, when I first came back. When we were at the cemetery at your mom's grave. I heard it say '
Curse-bearer, curse-born child
'."

  "Me," Miranda said. "She was talking about me."

  "But just now, when she stopped singing that song – which I'll have stuck in my head for days now, thank you very much, Miranda's mom – she said "
Curse-breaker, curse-broken child
'."

  She traced a finger along the snake, which had lightened to a pale pink.

  "Do you think? I still have this."

  "I think we should take a drive and find out. A scientific test."

  "Me too. Plus, I'm too freaked out to stay here right now."

  "Why?" He applied slight pressure against her neck.

  "Um. My mom was watching us make out."

  "She's gone now," he said.

  But that didn't matter. She wanted to know if it was true, if she was free.

Miranda convinced Phillips that Pineapple was superior to his mom's sedan, what with the plastic covering the window she'd smashed. And she asked him to drive, not wanting him to croak if it turned out the voice from beyond the grave hadn't been her mother.

  But she believed. She could feel the truth of what he'd said. Plus, Blondie.

  "I forgot to tell you," Phillips said, "I'm doing senior year here."

  "Congratulations. You're dating the school freak."

  "Oh, I am?"

  Why had she said
that
?

  But he cut the tension by laughing. "I am, I am. You think you're still the freak? After the way you saved everyone. I don't think so."

  
Oh boy, he's got a lot to learn
. Small towns didn't reclassify people. She'd just be the Blackwood freak who saved everyone. That was fine. "This is going to be a fun year. Assuming I survive the next five minutes."

  They were heading out I-64 toward the new bridge, not the site of her previous attempt to leave and the shoving incident of shame. And they'd know whether she could make it over and keep breathing a lot quicker in the car than on foot.

  "It's good luck that the bridge's named after Ginny the good," he said. "Did I mention I really like my present? You should go to fashion school. Or straight to 'Project Runway.' 'My hero' could be your label."

  He was chattering to distract her. She appreciated the effort.

  "Let's just see if I'm still cursed." But she felt an unfamiliar flutter inside her stomach at the idea. If the curse had been broken by Dee's real, final death, then she could. She could go to fashion school. She could go on reality TV (and not be the villain, not ever say the words of infamy – "I'm not here to make friends"). She could do anything she wanted.

  "Ready?" he said, as the bridge came into view ahead. "You sure you want to chance it in the car?"

  Phillips eased up on the gas, waiting for her answer. She took a moment to admire the nice view she had of the side of his face, before looking ahead. The water sparkled on both sides of the asphalt and concrete like a sea of diamonds.

  "Don't slow down," she said.

END

Author's Note

This story was inspired both by Roanoke Island's history and its present-day reality. As in most mash-ups of history and reality with fiction, I've taken some major liberties. Locations have been altered in many cases, and some have been invented or moved (the courthouse and the jail, for instance). I also tweaked the structure of local law enforcement. And I hope it goes without saying that nothing in this story is meant to reflect on the real people living on the real island. Sources differ about the final tally of missing colonists, so some books may give a different number than one hundred and fourteen.

  Also on the historical side, I enhanced John Dee's role in the colonization effort. That said, Dee actually was the titleholder for the land and was consulted by Sir Walter Raleigh in developing the route for the journey. In fact, I had the odd experience of finding
some
historical support for just about every outrageous leap here. We really do know very little about the colonists and why they made the voyage. And it turns out that alchemy was a bigger influence in the early New World than we're taught in history class (at least,
my
classes tragically neglected the subject). I discovered from Walter Woodward's book
Prospero's America
that John Winthrop, Jr., who was elected governor of Connecticut in the 1650s, actually did found a "New London" in America intending it to be a great center of alchemy. He even used Dee's
monas hieroglyphica
as his signature.

  Of course, it's still unlikely that the majority of the lost colonists were alchemists who longed for immortality and world domination… or is it?

Acknowledgments

Like most first novels, this one wasn't born in a vacuum of just girl and computer. That means there are many people to thank.

  For looking at very early versions of this story, my thanks to Write Club (Melissa Moorer, Katherine Pearl, Christopher Rowe, and honorary member Melissa Schwartz) and the Left Door Workshop. Thanks are also due to the entire wonderful community at the Vermont College of Fine Arts' Writing for Children and Young Adults program, but especially to my last semester advisor Martine Leavitt and to my last workshop group (Kelly Barson, Kari Baumbach, Liz Cook, Pam Watts, Rachel Wilson, and leader Cynthia Leitich Smith) for comments on the beginning of this novel. Emily Moses was invaluable in offering insider theater dirt and gave me Dare County Night. I also offer many thanks to Holly Black, Sarah Rees Brennan, and Scott Westerfeld for help as I was finishing up. And, of course, thanks to my fabulous editor, Amanda Rutter, for making the book better, and to the best agent in the world, Jennifer Laughran, for everything.