Tommy swaggers onto the stage, his hair curling charmingly over his handsome face. The bidding begins fast and furious, with four or five girls hardly waiting for a bid to be acknowledged before throwing their paddles back into the air once again.
And then Mackenzie stands. The bids slow and then stop as she saunters to center stage. Even Principal Winter halts his spiel.
The bidding girls collapse in their seats, defeated. They know what's coming. We all do.
Every year, Mackenzie's father gives her $500 to bid on the boy of her choice. Not a dollar more, not a dollar less. Invariably, the chosen date becomes Mackenzie's boyfriend and can look forward to catered dinners at the Myers household and tennis lessons at the country club.
So no one's surprised when Mackenzie lifts a bedazzled paddle and announces, “Five hundred dollars.”
The audience cheers. A whistle slices through the air. A row of students begins to drumroll their feet.
I move as if underwater, pushing myself to my feet and lifting my paddle in the air. I feel the scorch of Justin's eyes thirty feet away. I know I'm crossing a line that I'll never be able to uncross. But I leap over it anyway.
“Five hundred and twenty-two dollars,” I say.
The noise cuts off like a power outage. It's as if no one can believe what I just did.
Least of all me.
Chapter 34
“Congratulations,” Raleigh chirps, like she's auditioning to be a camp counselor. She consults her clipboard and hands me a piece of paper. “Your date's waiting for you in room 222. You can leave for your night out from there. Thanks for supporting literacy!”
I thank her and turn, thinking I'm about to get off easy. Before I can leave, however, my former friend digs her long, red fingernails into my skin.
“Why'd you do it, CeCe?” She opens her eyes wide, so that she looks even more like a plastic doll. “Dissing Mackenzie, and for the boy your mom slept with! Can't you see how this looks?”
I try to retract my arm, but her nails seem to have grown spikes.
“You know what they're saying, don't you?” she fake-whispers. “They think you're the one who altered the photos. That you put your head on your mom's body because you couldn't look enough like her. And now, you're going after her high school boy toy!” She relaxes her grip, and a trail of half-moon indentations decorates my forearm. “If you can't be yourself, there are better people to imitate. Let's face it. Your mom was never going to win any prizes in the morality department.”
I stare. “My mother washed your pajamas, underwear, and sleeping bag when you wet the bed at my house, Raleigh. She did it that very night, so you wouldn't have to tell your mother and get in trouble. Do you remember? Sounds like a decent person to me.”
She flushes and drops my arm. I skirt around the table and squeeze between the barrier of chairs before anyone else can talk to me. No one's allowed past the barricade other than the dates, the winning bidders, and the auction committee. Thank goodness. That means I won't have to deal with either Justin or Mackenzie.
I shiver, even though the air inside the hallway is hot and stuffy. I defied the school princess in front of an auditorium full of people. Not once, but twice. If she attempted a school-wide humiliation of Sam after he cut her down in the locker corridor, what's she going to do to me?
I swallow hard. I can't think about Mackenzie, not now. Not when I have another nemesis to confront.
I enter the classroom. Tommy's facing the bulletin board. I scuff my feet through the confetti hearts Raleigh and her committee sprinkled on the floor, probably hoping the decor would push the auction participants into paroxysms of lust.
At the sound, Tommy turns, his eyes widening. “You!”
I wipe my palms across my jeans. “You've been avoiding my phone calls, Tommy.”
He stumbles backward. Scared? Of me? Now that's a new one. “I don't have anything to say to you.”
“You did the other night,” I say, with a confidence I don't feel. “At the bonfire, you had plenty to tell me. Plenty I âdeserved to know,' if I remember correctly.”
“I was drunk. I didn't know what I was saying.”
“Well, you're not drunk now. And by my estimation, $522 should get me at least an hour of your time. So start talking.”
“I don't have to do this,” he rasps, scanning the room for escape. “I'll tell Principal Winters. This was false pretenses. This was entrapment. This wasâ”
“Me winning the auction, fair and square. I paid a lot of money for your company, Tommy. So you can tell Principal Winters you don't want to support literacy, and they'll give me my money back. Or you can talk to me for a few minutes.”
He sizes me up and then nods, reluctantly, as if I've cornered him with two bad options.
And maybe I have. But what choices has he given me? When you accuse a woman of sexual exploitation, where does that leave her daughter? Did he ever think of that?
I perch on the edge of a desk. “Tell me about my mom.”
He holds up a finger and tilts his head, as if he is straining to make out something in the hallway. I listen, and then I hear it, too. The slightest squeak of rubber against linoleum. A breathing so light I can't tell if it's real or imagined. The same breathing that haunts my dreams every night. The same breathing I thought I heard inside my house.
Somebody is outside the classroom. And he or she is listening to our conversation.
My heart rate cranks up. Justin Blake. It has to be. Tommy's watchdog has somehow made it past the folding-chair barrier, no doubt by turning on his sleazy charm for that airhead, Raleigh.
Tommy creeps to the door. I follow him, but when we're halfway there, I slip on the stupid confetti hearts.
“Oooofff.” I muffle the sigh as best as I can, but we hear the thup-thup-thup of footsteps scampering away.
He opens the door, and we look up and down the hallway. I think I catch a glimpse of black curls disappearing around the corner. Briony? Nah. I remember all of a sudden that she's on the auction committee, but why would she be skulking around the hallways? I probably didn't see anything at all. Probably it was just a wavering shadow.
“Nobody's here,” Tommy says.
“Not anymore. Some of your buddies checking up on you, perhaps? Do you need their permission to use the bathroom, too?”
His neck turns red. “Justin can be a little . . . overzealous. But he means well. He's a good friend.”
I raise my eyebrows. That's the last phrase I would use to describe Justin Blake, but the clock's ticking. Now that the eavesdropper is gone, I need information. “My mother.”
“Right.” He sighs and grabs a scalloped heart with a love poem printed on it off a desk. “What do you want to know?”
“Anything. Details on how you met. The nature of your relationship. Why you liked her. That kind of thing.”
“It's not anything you want to hear.”
“Not true,” I say. “At this moment, there's nothing I'd like to know more.”
He sits down, holding onto the paper heart as if it were a life preserver. This is the most we've talked since my mom's death. In fact, other than the night at the bonfire, he's gone out of his way to avoid me. I thought it was because of how intimately he knew my mother. But maybe I had it wrong. Maybe it's because he never knew her at all.
“The police are reopening my mom's case,” I lie. “They found fingerprints on my mom's body. Semen, too. The detectives are wondering if maybe you had a lover's spat. If maybe the spat escalated and turned into murder.”
He leaps to his feet, knocking over the chair. “Murder? What are you talking about?” His Adam's apple bobs like a buoy at sea. “I've got nothing to do with that. I never even touched her, I swear!”
I narrow my eyes. “You never touched her? Now that's interesting, Tommy. If you never touched her, then how on earth did you have sex with her?”
He stares at me, his mouth opening and closing. Then, he picks up the chair and sits back down. He drops his head into his hands, crushing the paper heart.
“It was only a rumor.” His voice is so low I can't tell if he's talking to me or the poems. “I never testified in any court. I never swore it was true.”
I suck in a breath, but it's too little, too late. The confession washes over me like a mammoth wave, and I'm coughing, sputtering, spitting out the salt water of deception. “Everything you said about my mom . . . was a lie?”
“I didn't know she was going to commit suicide,” he says miserably.
“But why? What was in it for you? Did you hate my mother so much?”
“Listen, I didn't know your mom, okay? I've got nothing against her.” He looks about how I feel. Tortured, exhausted. As if he were dumped on the River Styx six months ago and has been trying to row his way back ever since. “I was blackmailed. If I didn't do what he said, he was going to expose my sister's photos.”
I go perfectly still. “Her photos? You mean to sayâ”
He laughs, and it's like he swallowed a mouthful of rusty nails. “Yeah, you'd know all about that, wouldn't you? Topless photos, see-through lingerie. The kind of pictures you never, ever want to see of your kid sister. Especially when she's only fourteen.
“He said all I had to do was say this one thing, and the photos would go away. Otherwise, he'd e-mail them to every inbox in the school, post them on social media. And my sister's life would be ruined.”
I breathe out slowly. If I can make my breaths even enough, maybe this will all turn out okay. But part of me knows that all the yoga classes in the world can't erase this kind of evil.
“Ruined? Kinda like my life. Kinda like my mother's. Except her life isn't just ruined. It's over.”
“I'm sorry, CeCe.” He takes my hand and pulls it to his chest. “I've relived that moment a million times and wished it had come out differently. Wished I'd been able to think of another way. Wished my sister weren't stupid enough to get involved in that mess.”
I pull my hand away. Like Tommy, I wish things had come out differently, too. But the past is past. And I'm not ready to forgive.
Because part of forgiving is giving up. And I won't do that. I won't let my mother's killer get away.
“Who, Tommy? Tell me. Who made you do this?”
He picks up one of the poems and begins to shred it. “That's the thing. I never met him in person. We communicated purely through text. And his phone number was from a prepaid cell, so I couldn't trace it.” He piles the bits of paper into a small mound. “I've been doing nothing these last few months but look for this guy. My grades are suffering for it. Nearly all my friends have dropped me because I never want to party anymore. The night I saw you at the bonfire was an exception, and I only went because I finally admitted to myself, once and for all, that I was never going to find this guy. That's why I got so drunk.”
I frown. “Did you talk to your sister? What did your parents say?”
“My sister won't talk. He must still have some hold over her, or maybe she's afraid he'll release the photos, after all. He sent me the negatives when I told everybody about my supposed affair with your mom, but that doesn't mean anything. He could still have copies.”
Tommy smashes his fist through the mound of paper, and the ripped-up bits flutter in the air. “My parents are divorced, and we never see our dad anymore. Lila refused to confess to my mom, and she said she would deny everything if I told her. The only way I could've convinced my mom was to show her the negatives, and I wasn't about to do that. Having one sexual deviant for a child is enough.”
“Waitâyour sister's name is Lila?” My tongue is as dry as sandpaper. “Her nickname wouldn't be Lil, would it?”
He attempts to pick up the scraps from the floor, but the pieces are too small, and his fingers are too large. “That's what I used to call her as a kid, but I don't think anyone's used that nickname since. Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” I say, mind whirling.
“That reminds me, though. The only thing Lila let slip was that the guy called himself âPhoenix.' Didn't help in my investigation any, though.”
My blood runs cold. Phoenix. As in, the bird who always rises from his ashes. The legend who never dies. The predator who always wins.
Well, not this time. Not if I have anything to do about it.
Chapter 35
“Hey, CeCe,” a varsity soccer player snickers the next morning at school. “Who did Tommy prefer, you or your mom?”
A few feet later, a girl from the drama club rolls her eyes. “I know Tommy's hot, but to use your mother as an âin' to the relationship? That's sick.”
And then, before I can make my escape into the classroom, the student council president clasps my hands in her clammy grip. “I'm so glad you took Mackenzie down a notch. She thinks she runs the school, and frankly, that's my job.”
I'm drained by the time I crumple into my seat in psych class. At least this morning, I don't cower in the face of these comments. Instead, I give the soccer player a withering look, tell the drama girl
she's
sick for letting her mind go there, and smile and thank the student council president. In each case, the commenter blinks, as if he or she didn't expect me to respond, and then hurries away.
I could get used to this standing-up-for-myself thing. And I think my mother would approve. I have her leather-bound journal in my backpack. Maybe it's risky bringing it to school. Riskier than a measly old printout of my mom's call entry. But having the journal close to me gives me a shot of courage, which I'm going to need in order to track down Phoenix and confront him.
If only my partner would get to class already.
I wanted to text Sam last night. The second I left Tommy, I wanted to go straight to his house. But he had a date, with a pretty junior girl with glowing brown skin. And he didn't bother to call me. For all I know, he was so preoccupied with his date, he's forgotten my name, much less our mission.
So I passed the time running Internet searches on “Phoenix,” looking for a connection with either Mr. Willoughby or Principal Winters. But Tommy was right. I didn't find anything remotely useful, and by morning, the only thing I had to show for my efforts were the bags under my eyes.
And now Sam's late.
He beats Mr. Willoughby through the door by half a step.
“I waited for you to call all night,” he says as he dumps his books on his desk. “I was worried about you, but I didn't want to intrude on your date. And this morning, I slept through my alarm. So how did it go? Did Tommy tell you anything?”
I flush. He was worried? Maybe he didn't forget about me. Maybe this is just a case of both of us being insecure. “Tommy told me he was blackmailed to lie about my mom,” I blurt out. Class is going to begin any second, and we don't have much time. “The guy threatened to expose his sister's topless photos if he didn't comply. The guy called himself âPhoenix,' and Tommy's sister's name is Lila. Do you think she could be Lil?”
“Maybe. It would make sense.” Sam frowns. “Phoenix. The same name that's in your mom's journal. And now that I think of it, the entity that posted your mom's photo was âPX1990.' Nineteen ninety. As in the year the journal is dated. It has to be the same person.”
Before I can respond, Mr. Willoughby calls the class to order. I face forward, clenching my jaw. I've waited all night to talk to Sam. And now, I'm supposed to sit through a boring lecture about god-knows-who researcher doing god-knows-what experiment? It's not fair.
I hunch over, positioning my textbooks in a wall around my desk. My backpack gapes open, the corner of the leather-bound journal sticking out. I take the notebook out so that I can reposition it more securely inside.
Sam watches me put back the yellowed pages, and then he bends over his own desk. A moment later, my phone vibrates.
A text message from Sam:
It's got to be a code name. What could Phoenix stand for? There's the capital of Arizona.
I quickly respond.
Yeah, And the mythical bird. A basketball team, a bunch of newspapers. What other phoenixes can you think of?
Sam:
Some comic book characters are named Phoenix.
Comic books? Mr. Willoughby is a comic book fiend. Could that be the connection?
I peek through my fortress at the psych teacher. He's flipping through bar graphs on the interactive whiteboard, and threads of silver shoot through his light brown hair.
I turn back to my phone. Before I lose my nerve, I type:
How was your date last night?
A fly buzzes through the air. Raleigh flips her hot-roller curls over her shoulder. Someone opens their lunch, and the smell of bologna wafts through the air.
Finally, Sam responds.
Fine.
Fine? Lots of things are fine. My class schedule, for example, or the frozen Hot Pockets Gram eats for her dinner. That's the best he can do to describe his date?
Me:
She's pretty.
Sam:
She's not you.
I try, and fail, to blot the smile from my face. I could dwell on that statement for hoursâprobably will, in fact, when he's not around.
A shadow falls over me. All of a sudden, I realize the room is silent. Oh, crap. How could I forget where I am? What I'm supposed to be doing?
“Ms. Brooks, would you like to contribute your thoughts to the class discussion?” Mr. Willoughby asks.
I wince. “Sorry. I guess I wasn't paying attention.”
“Apparently.” Quick as a hummingbird, he swoops down and plucks the cell phone out of my hands. “You can have this back at the end of the day, after you've had a chance to think about your actions.”
And then, he carries my phone, with its revealing texts about Phoenix, back to his desk.
* * *
Mr. Willoughby can't read the texts. By the time he looks, my phone will have locked up with my security code, right?
Still, I worry. I worry all the way through sines and cosines, through the lunch I can't eat, through conjugating verbs in Spanish class.
But when I arrive in Mr. Willoughby's office, my phone seems to be the last thing on his mind. He taps his feet as if late for an appointment, and a musky scent emanates from him, something I've never noticed during class. Plus, he's freshly clean-shaven. As in: His cheeks weren't this smooth earlier today. Did he sneak a razor into the faculty restroom?
“Hot date, Mr. W?” I blurt out.
He fiddles with a string bracelet around his wrist. When I look closer, I see images of The Avengers woven into the bracelet. “Of course not. Where would you get that idea? I've got a tutoring appointment.”
As long as we're pretending, I plaster on a smile. “I mean, you're a teacher, but you're human, too. How come you don't date more? Good-looking man like you?”
“I appreciate the vote of confidence, Cecilia. But it's just not a priority in my life right now.” He fishes my phone out of his briefcase and hands it to me. “I'm willing to overlook this infraction, since you're normally such a good student. And I know there's been upheaval in your life lately. But will you give me your word you'll do a better job paying attention in class?”
I nod, trying to appear contrite. He's not acting like he saw the textsâthank goodness. But he looks like he's about to fly out the door any moment, and I can't let this meeting end without finding out if he's Phoenix.
I pinch the inside of my arm until tears well in my eyes. “To tell you the truth, I've been having a rough time lately.”
He glances at the clock, as if calculating how much time he can spare. Then, with a sigh, he gestures to the sitting area. “Would you like to talk?”
Gotcha.
I sit in the same folding chair I did a few weeks ago, twisting my hands together. “You know about the topless photo, of course.”
“Yes, and I'm surprised you haven't come to me before. I hope you know I'm always here for you.” His voice is gentle and sincere. It's hard to believe this man could be capable of abusing my motherâor anyone, for that matter. But as Gram says, we always think we know someone. Until we don't.
“The photo made me realize how little I knew my mother. At least, how she was at my age,” I say. “But you did. What was she like when she was your student? She was in the first class you taught, right?”
For some reason, this makes him pick up the pewter frame containing the photo of his dead wife. “Your mother was an extraordinary person, Cecilia. Beautiful and popular. The girl all the boys wanted, the one all the other girls wanted to be. But life wasn't always easy for her. Sometimes, I'd see sorrow on her face, behind that fabulous smile. Maybe she was depressed even back then. Who knows?”
“All the boys?” I press. “Even you, Mr. Willoughby?”
The hand holding the frame trembles. Then, he places the picture facedown on the coffee table. “What? Well, no. I mean, she was gorgeous, of course. Anybody could see that. But I was her teacher.”
“Some people wouldn't let that stop them,” I murmur.
“I suppose. I'm not one of those people.”
“What about later, Mr. Willoughby, when she was your colleague? Did you ever want to ask her out?”
He laughs, but it stutters and stalls in his throat like a car with a bad engine. “This isn't a very appropriate line of questioning, Cecilia.”
“I guess I'm trying to collect as many different viewpoints of my mother as possible.”
The lines in his face relax. “That's fair. I guess you could say I had a crush on her. It wasn't the way she looked, but the utter passion she had for life. When she was around, I felt like I could jump out of an airplane without a parachute and not get hurt. She made me feel like I could do just about anything.”
I stiffen. This is essentially what my mother said in her journal, right? I struggle to recall the words she'd written. Something about defying gravity and flying without wings. So not exactly, but close. Too close. Uncomfortably close.
He clears his throat. “I don't know what happened those last few months of her life. If she had sexual relations with that boy, it was highly inappropriate. But she doesn't deserve to be vilified the way she has.”
“That doesn't sound like a crush,” I say carefully. “You sound like you were in love with her.”
He rubs the heel of his palm against his chest. “Maybe I was. But she was always married, so I didn't bother to find out.”
Chills run up my spine, and I lace my fingers together to prevent my hands from shaking. What, exactly, did Mr. Willoughby just confess? He was in love with my mother, sure. But for how long? Was he her sexual predator? Has he been obsessed with her all these years?
“Mr. Willoughby, did you send a flower arrangement to her funeral? A glass cube with an all-white arrangement, with a card signed, âW.'?”
“It's possible I did, Cecilia. To be honest, I don't really remember.” He glances at the clock. “I hate to cut this short, but I'm late for my appointment. Perhaps we can schedule a time to talk next week?”
“Sure.” I stand, my mind whirling. I pick up my backpack, holding it zipper-side down. While it's unzipped. Pens, note cards, textbooks, and paper spill everywhere. “Oh, crap! I'm sorry, Mr. W., I'm such a klutz sometimes. Please, don't let me keep you. I know you've got that appointment to make.”
He checks the clock again. “Are you sure?”
“Oh, yeah.” I wave my hand. “Go. I'll be out of here two minutes after you.”
With one last glance around the room, he leaves. I count to ten and then dash over to his desk. I don't know exactly what I'm looking for, but there's got to be something incriminating here. A planner. Manila files with blank college applications. Next week's lecture notes.
And then I see it. On the corner of his desk, beneath a stack of junk mail, I find a glossy X-Men comic book, featuring a voluptuous woman in a skintight green costume, complete with gold sash, gloves, and thigh-high boots. Flaming red hairâstrikingly similar to my mom'sâfalls down her back. Her name, according to the cover, is Jean Grey.
And her story is told in the Dark Phoenix Saga.