BURNING

She caught the keys in her fist, and the sunlight glinted off her painted fingernails, throwing the light back into his eyes. He blinked the glare away and hurried down to Shea’s car where she was proudly honking the horn and holding up her shiny keys—a birthday present from her father.

“I’ll have him back in one piece, Mrs. Mac!” she called to his mother, a silent specter at the window. “Bye!” She winked and honked the horn for good measure before pulling out into traffic just in time to almost hit a commercial truck. She swerved wildly, honked and shook her fist, but let go of the wheel only a minute later to dance to her favorite song. He grinned at her profile; driving with Shea would definitely be interesting, if he survived.

Senior year felt good like the leather stretched tight across his shoulders, emblazoned with all of his athletic achievements in football, baseball, and track. This year he hoped to lead the team to the league championship in football, and he thought they had a reasonably good chance at it. Yes, it would be a good season; a good year; a good finish to high school.

Shea somehow managed to park in her space—a small miracle—then left him to join a group of friends she hadn’t seen all summer. He made his way across campus and wondered why there were so many new students before spotting some teammates. He hurried towards them.

Their mouths were pulled down in tight frowns, and Dan was even slumped against a vending machine. He was talking to the ground. “Matt, Andrew, Jason—all of ‘em over at Ridgeway.”

“Ridgeway?” he asked, startled. It was a neighboring high school with an excellent football team—more excellent now, if they had the team’s quarterback and two blockers.

“You didn’t know?” Conner was surprised. “We all got a million things in the mail about how they were redoing the school boundaries. And it’s been everywhere—newspaper, TV, you name it. You didn’t know?”

“We don’t get anything from the school,” he answered. “And my mom’s really out of it.” She always was, this time of year, before school started. “So our team’s gone?”

The three of them nodded dismally, and he fought the urge to leave a dent in the unoffending vending machine. Bye-bye league championship. Or any other championship, for that matter. All of it, gone.

The bell sounded, and he walked to math feeling that things couldn’t get worse. But they could, and since this was math, they did get worse and he was assigned an hour’s worth of homework from a teacher who wanted to assess where they were. He walked to his locker and slammed his book down, papers flying everywhere. He didn’t care.

The remnant of the team sat together at lunch and reviewed the room with a resigned air, looking for those who might be able to fill the empty spots. He was not very optimistic, but a burly guy sitting in the far corner could be trained to be a blocker, and a boy playing catch with an orange had good reflexes. He was a little comforted, and settled down to his lunch. And then he saw her.

Hair the color of pale sunlight made him stop mid-bite. It had been shorter when he’d known her, but no one else had that hair like silk and summer, long and loose in the breeze. But she was in high school, just like she’d been all those years ago, so that didn’t work out. He finished the bite, but abruptly spit it out when she turned her head to talk to a friend.

It was she. Her blue eyes sparkled with life from the fire within, and her ivory skin wore no makeup to conceal blemishes. She had none. Her small hands with their long fingers picked up her milk carton and she sipped from it, setting it down precisely to laugh at something someone had said. Her laugh was a spark, a dancing flame, lively and riveting. He remembered those hands and that laugh as well as if he’d seen her yesterday.

“Yeah, I know,” said Jake, elbowing him playfully in the ribs. “Almost makes it worth it to have the football team gone.” Jake, too, was looking at her, his eyes taking in every detail of her blond hair, and how she ran her hands through it sometimes. To give it lift, she’d told him when he’d asked her about it. He noted that the tactic was brilliant. Every male within a twenty-foot radius was staring openly.

“Kimberly Jordan,” he breathed, tasting the sound. He’d wondered about her but had never said her name since that night.

Jake raised his eyebrows. “Kam Gordon. I already had chemistry with her. If you’re going to talk to her, better get her name right.”

He was lost, but Jake didn’t see his confusion. “Kam Gordon,” he whispered. Like Kim Jordan, but not at all. Hmm.

He saw with a groan that his next class was English with Ms. Blake, the poetry nut. He shoved all thought of the Kimberly-Kam-person to the back of his brain as he received condolences for his bad luck in teachers.

He trudged to Ms. Blake’s class slowly, and his heart sank to see all of the poetry on the walls, verses penned by the likes of Emerson, Dickinson, Shakespeare, and Frost. It would be a long year. He took a seat in the back of the room and glared at the textbook on his desk.

The bell had almost rung when Ms. Blake took her place at the front of the classroom and began to call roll, mentioning that by the end of the month they would have to answer Monday roll call with a verse of poetry. There was a definite lack of enthusiasm as people raised their hands to identify themselves and correct mispronunciations.

“Kam Gordon?” There was a twitter as the guys in the class squirmed to search the room for her, but the girl was nowhere to be seen.

“Kam Gordon?” Ms. Blake called again. “Is Kam Gordon here?”

“I’m here!” a voice sang out brightly from the doorway, and everyone turned to see her.

She looked like a model standing in the doorway, and when she smiled her white smile at Ms. Blake a dimple was brought out. He hadn’t remembered the dimple before, but he remembered it now.

Ms. Blake, who disliked tardiness to an unhealthy level, sniffed pointedly. “Miss Gordon, please be prompt from now on. This class begins at 1:20 precisely. Do you understand?”

The girl who went by Kam nodded, completely unfazed by the teacher’s disapproval. “I’m so sorry, Ms. Blake. I just ran to my locker to grab my book of sonnets.” She held it out, and Ms. Blake flipped through it, her anger dissipating quickly in her excitement. “I understand that you enjoy poetry, Ms. Blake.”

Ms. Blake nodded absently and handed the book back to her, beaming warmly. “That’s quite all right, Kam. Now if you will just take a seat?” Kam looked around but couldn’t see any open desks, despite the fact that every boy was wishing the seat next to him was empty.

“Oh, there’s one,” said Ms. Blake, sensing her difficulty. She gestured towards the one in front of him and his heart froze for a moment. But Kam only nodded graciously and made her way down the row towards him. He was sure now that she didn’t recognize him. And why would she? She had known him back in Arizona, and couldn’t know that they had moved down here a year after the incident. And he’d grown up some. It was only a matter of time.

Roll call continued. “Joseph Henderson?” Ms. Blake stopped to change Joseph’s name to Joe. “Ryan Lack? Susan Nelson? Do you have an older sister, Susan? Miranda? She’s a chemist now? Oh, my.” He could tell that Ms. Blake didn’t know what to make of a chemist; she continued on down her list. “Christopher MacArden?” He raised his hand, and Kam shivered at his last name but must have forgotten that Christopher was his first name. “Yes?” Ms. Blake said, seeing that he wanted to correct something. “You go by Chris?”

“No,” he said, his voice broad and deep. “I go by Nick.”

“Nick,” she repeated, making a note of it. “Middle name?” He nodded, and Ms. Blake continued with the roll call. “Tara Paulson?”

When she said his name, Kam Gordon who had once been Kimberly Jordan turned slowly in her seat to face him. Her eyes widened in horror and he stared back with open hostility. They knew each other without a shadow of a doubt. There were so many emotions visible in those blue eyes—recognition, amazement, shock, terror, and horror at what had happened in Arizona. There was also pleading in her gaze for forgiveness and secrecy and something else. He couldn’t take in everything and deliberately lowered his eyes to the textbook. With a deep breath as if she’d just completed a long and strenuous swim that had drained all of her energy, she turned forward to face Ms. Blake and tried to calm herself. No one thought anything of it, but he could see that she was far from calm—her fingers moved up and down on the desk in an endless pattern. She only did that when she was very upset; she never showed emotion openly.

He would never remember what had happened in English, remembered nothing after that moment of recognition, in fact. He somehow got to all of his classes before running home to look for something.

Their photo albums and memorabilia were a mess, but only a few years ago, his mother had been an avid scrap booker, and he found her old work stuffed in a corner of her closet. He took the box down with care, sneezed as all of the accumulated dust flew up at him. He almost felt like he was committing a sacrilege, going through this stuff that hadn’t been touched since they had moved from Arizona four years before. And this stuff hadn’t been opened since before then. Putting aside all feelings of guilt, he removed the lid and took out the scrapbook.

It was an album from five years ago, dressed up with all of the frippery his mother had insisted on then. There he was—graduating from seventh grade with a wide grin on his face, and eyes hidden behind glasses. No wonder Kimberly/Kam hadn’t recognized him—he’d been a different person then. He flipped through photos of grandparents and reunions before coming to a section labeled Christie’s Birthday in bold cursive with flowers drawn up the side of the page. He turned the page slowly, holding his breath, almost fearing what he would find.

On the first page was an enlarged picture of his sister and a group of people, standing over a cake brilliantly lit with seventeen candles. The same cursive below the picture identified all of the laughing friends. Greg, Bev, Nicole, Tyler, Bryan, Christie, Kim, Nick, Steven, Natalie, Eric. They were all laughing and urging her to blow the candles and make a wish. He’d been there too, next to a girl with hair the color of pale sunlight, and so proud to be included.

There were more pictures. Christie and Bryan with their arms around each other; the friends hopping into her new car for a spin around the block; Christie surrounded by friends and gifts and laughter. She was always between Bryan and Kimberly, but he allowed himself only a brief glance at each photograph before finding the grail of his quest on the last page

It was just Christie and Kim, the two of them, swinging on the back porch after everyone had left. For all he knew, they’d been talking about their upcoming senior year and future dreams. Christie wanted to go into medicine, but Kim had always been devoid of any ambitions to the surprise of everyone—academically, she had been second only to Christie.

There, in the moonlight, they looked so complete. Best friends forever, everyone knew it. Dark Christie MacArden opposite pale Kimberly Jordan. They had been together since the seventh grade and were never apart. Senior year would be no different, and if Kimberly was prom queen, then Christie would be the prettiest princess and cheer with everyone else.

So perfect and secure. Best friends in the moonlight with their whole lives ahead of them. Christie was hopeful and on the brink of success, but Kim looked pale and tired, troubled almost. She was smiling in the picture, but he’d never noticed how feverish she had looked that night. Had she known?

For three weeks later, on October the seventeenth, Christie MacArden had died in a terrible accident.

Kimberly Jordan had disappeared that night. They had never seen her again.

Kam and Nick avoided each other over the next few weeks. His friends accused him of shyness towards her, and he didn’t bother to correct them. His friends hadn’t been there in Arizona, and had seen too much Oprah to believe that Kimberly Jordan was Kam Gordon. He knew they would just laugh and say it was twin cousins, or sisters, or something. At home, sometimes, he thought they were right and it was just a bizarre case of extreme similarity, but then he’d see her at school, remember the look they had shared, and he was sure that his sister’s best friend from five years ago sat in front of him in English. It was unexplainable, and it terrified him.

They won their first football game and recruited a few of the new guys to join the team. They worked together really well, but, to Nick, football and the league championship were no longer the all-important issues they once had been. He played decently, but he could be better, and both he and the coach knew it. He gave up his position as captain to a more motivated player but was still good enough to play most of the time.

He was quieter and ate less. His mother usually would have noticed within a moment, but she too got quieter as October seventeenth approached. The house was silent as the awful day neared, and both were immersed in remembering and straining for a detail that they had missed that night, a detail that might explain everything.

English was terrible. He didn’t like poetry under the best of circumstances, and Ms. Blake was forcing it down their throats. He dutifully analyzed poems and learned his verse for every Monday, but found no joy or significance in any of it. Kimberly, he remembered, had loved poetry, but Kam was so afraid of him and what he could do that she sat silently through Ms. Blake’s class, her back ramrod straight, and her eyes terrified.

Afraid as he was of her and what she meant to the puzzle, he couldn’t help notice that she was not doing well. At the beginning of the school year, she had been the most popular and celebrated girl on campus, but as the weeks went on she withdrew into herself. She lost weight she didn’t have and began to resemble her picture in the scrapbook; tired, even sickly. People still paid attention when she came in the room, but they were disappointed by her lack of zest and fire.

And then, in the first week of October, Ms. Blake decided to open the gates to their creative urges and announced they would be trying their hands at poetry. “And no shoddy ‘roses are red,’” she said severely. “Poems of grace and symbolism and meaning. I am sending them to the school literary journal.” Even those with creative urges hid their heads at this suggestion. Only Kam had some light come back into her eyes, and she smiled for the first time in days. Nick felt guilty for liking it when she smiled; it brought back the feeling of Christie, for they had been inseparable. But Christie was not coming back.

A week later, Ms. Blake went down the rows and had each person read his poem aloud. She frowned at several, obviously written that morning, but smiled thoughtfully at others. Finally, she checked the clock and stood. “We only have time for one more, I’m afraid. Kam? You’re up.” She settled back down with her clipboard and looked up expectantly.

Kam slowly made her way to the front and he saw how weary she looked. She slowly straightened, locked eyes with Nick, and read in a clear voice:

Phoenix

Bird of flame reach for the sun
Lash your tail and cry your tears
Of healing.
Fly to be free and yearn to stay
Back.
Like a bird, this phoenix
Pale and unworldly
Real.
But flames climb high
Reach for the sun!
Climb and envelop and reach till
Rebirth.

She stared at him, eyes burning desperately, like he was supposed to understand something from the wave of imagery and symbolism. Something important. Her eyes were pleading and her voice yearning. Whatever it was that she meant to tell him, it was important, and he had missed it.

He leaned back, shut out the rest of the world while Ms. Blake praised Kam’s poem, and was still thinking when the bell rang and he drifted absentmindedly to his next class. Phoenixes. He strained to remember, but could only remember that a phoenix was a bird with tears of healing that torched itself and was reborn out of its ashes. Weird. Nick shook his head to clear it. The poem had said just that, but there had been something more.

With a sigh, he locked away that piece of information for a rainy day and braced himself for chemistry.

It had been three days since Kam had read her poem, and his mind wouldn’t settle. English was out of the question and math was hopeless. Even ESPN couldn’t get rid of the itch that had seemed to permanently settle in his skin. He was restless as he’d never been before and paced around the house trying to vent his energy. Finally he threw himself down on the couch and counted to twenty before sitting up again.

The restlessness wasn’t gone, but he knew its cause now. Christie’s birthday had been two weeks ago; in another week it would be the seventeenth. There was always a sense of apprehension and fear around this time, but this went beyond that. It was as though all of the things that had happened together were starting to fit, but he couldn’t quite grasp the picture. He struggled for a moment before flopping back onto the couch, his eyes shut tight and his hands clenched.

Nick thought back. He’d been at the computer and she’d been groaning, throwing around papers looking for her keys. Finally she had found them and, twirling her key chain lazily, she had stridden out the door, stopping only to call back, “Nick? I left my chem book in my locker and Kim won’t answer her cell.” It was no use calling her home; Kim lived with her mom in an apartment, but Kim was never there. She practically lived over at the MacArdens. Because her mom was never home, she said. She didn’t like her house, Nick could tell, and he couldn’t even remember a time Christie had been over there. “Tell mom and dad I’m going to the school, and I should be home in time for dinner. Got it, Nick?” He’d nodded yes and she’d walked out the door and out of his life jingling her keys and singing something from Showboat. No wonder his parents hadn’t even considered a car for him.

But Christie had met someone at the school and hadn’t come home in time for dinner. They hadn’t worried; Christie was probably chatting with some teacher staying late to prepare for a class, or maybe she had even stopped for dinner with some friends. Christie was like that: spontaneous. But she was responsible and so her parents didn’t worry until there was curfew and no Christie or even a phone call. Nick remembered thinking how she was in big trouble. The phone rang only a half-hour later, but it was the police saying they’d found an unidentified teenager. They had buried her three days later.

He rolled over, burying his head in the pillows. He thought about Kimberly Jordan, Christie’s best friend, and about Kam Gordon, the girl who sat in front of him in English. That didn’t make sense, but it was true, and he tried to go beyond that. Kim had liked poetry, he remembered. She had recited to an invisible audience, her voice rising and falling with the words. She and Christie would take turns reading to each other. It had been yet another facet of their vast and complicated friendship.

Kam’s poem echoed in his mind over and over again until he could think of nothing but her haunting words. Listening to her had put him in mind of those old poetry readings and Kim’s love of the written word. He hadn’t told her of the memory, of course, and she hadn’t spoken to him since then; hadn’t really spoken to anyone. All she did was look at him with those pleading, smoldering eyes and beg him to understand.

Once again, he was reminded of that last picture of Christie and Kim, talking in the moonlight. Kim had been quiet and pale then, like Kam was now. They were the same person, he was sure of it. But what had happened that night?

He licked dry lips and closed his eyes. He hadn’t thought about it since Arizona. Tried not to think about it at all cost. Christie had been so beautiful and vivacious, but that night she’d just been still. They’d never discovered what had ended her young life though everyone had a theory. It had just been so strange…

He shivered, and for the first time he tried to remember what she’d looked like on that asphalt, right outside the school. Christie, Christie, Christie.

His glasses were fogging up from the tears, but Christie didn’t reach up to wipe them away. She just laid there, her eyes closed like she was sleeping. But she looked anything but peaceful.

She was severely burned everywhere. Less than three hours ago, the police had said and they had only nodded numbly. It was so unreal, like Christie would just spring to life in a minute and laugh at them all for being overprotective. But she didn’t, and she was dead from a fire in the chemistry building. A tragedy, certainly, and a mystery. For Christie was wet, though there had been no sign of rain in weeks, and there was no water anywhere else. The wetness was an odd pattern—splattered and random, not like someone had thrown a bucket at her. Burned and wet, she lay there. They never found the arsonist, or her best friend.

Nick opened his eyes and tried to breathe. That picture was so vivid, with her dark hair burned to a crisp and her features melted grotesquely into each other. He’d had nightmares for weeks and had even gone to therapy, but nothing would ever erase that awful picture.

Something clicked. Something terrible. For a moment, he didn’t know what it was. He closed his eyes again, searching the recesses of his mind for what had made such horrible and perfect sense.

Lash your tail and cry your tears
Of healing.

Christie had been burned, but was wet in a completely random pattern. He’d never noticed it before, but those drops been the size of tears. Who had cried those tears over Christie? Who had it been? Who?

Nick was out the door before he knew it. His feet carried him, unbidden, to the school even while he tried to unravel a knot made five years ago. It didn’t fit, and yet it did. Let me not be late, he pleaded. Let me not be too late.

He reached the campus, stopped, and sniffed the air. Gasoline. Without another thought, he ran to the edge of the school, to the chem labs, and prayed this wouldn’t end as it had five years ago.

Someone with pale gold hair was emptying the last of the gasoline around the lab. Finished with the can, she threw it to the side with the three other cans, already empty. She raised her head to admire her work, and a slow smile spread across her face. He felt sick to see that smile, and unknowingly raised his hand to signal her to stop. She spun around, and, seeing him, bit her lip. She looked like she was trying not to cry.

“Nick.” He stepped closer to her and noticed how sickly she looked in the moonlight. Her face was gray and there were dark circles under her eyes. He got a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. Something was wrong; terribly, horribly wrong.

“It was you,” was all he could say, not understanding at all. She’d always been a prime suspect of course, with her disappearance, but he had never once taken the theory seriously. They had been best friends! There were no secret vendettas or looks of hate when no one was looking. They’d just been normal average best friends. But they hadn’t been normal average. He shook his head from the wave of thought and tried to listen to Kimberly-Kam. His sister’s murderer.

“I didn’t mean to kill her,” she was saying, shaking her head violently. “That’s never happened to me before. Please understand.” Her voice was hysterical, and she was rocking and coughing so badly that he almost stepped forward to steady her, but her eyes stopped him. They were that same pale blue, dull now from whatever was affecting her, but they were dry. She shed not a single tear though her voice quivered and shook. He took a careful look at her again. She was dry all over, her hands so cracked they looked ready to break and bleed. She looked like a wraith, and he shook his head to clear it. She was still talking; confessing, it sounded like.

“It was all perfect and I lit it. It was a good blaze, none better. I always was good at that. But then I heard her and it was too late to help her. I watched, powerless, as she succumbed to the flames. I watched my best friend die!” She was screaming now, and he took a step back but she immediately became so quiet that he had to strain to hear her. “Do you think it’s been easy, to think about it these five years, and especially with the Burning and you being here? But I was too weak and by the time I had tears she was dead. I cried over her, wept, but I can’t bring people back from the dead. Just know I tried, but I can’t bring people back from the dead.”

He was drowning in her words but heard and grasped on to something. “What do you mean you can’t bring people back from the dead? Why did you cry over her? What good did that do? What were you doing that night? What were you doing?” He realized he was standing over her, yelling, but instead of standing up to him she slumped down onto an overturned gas can.

“I thought you knew. And all this time…” She turned to look at him somewhat accusingly and her eyes regained a dull luster. “You were always the poet. I thought you knew.”

“Knew what?” he said tersely, but she continued to stare at him in amazement.

“Don’t you study metaphors and similes in high school? I know enough to write a book, but then I’ve been there several times.” He nodded violently, wishing she would stop playing cat and mouse with him. She’d done that when he was just the little tag along brother, but Christie had always eventually come to his rescue and diverted Kim’s attention. There was no Christie now, though.

“Well, don’t you see what the bird represents? The bird reaching towards the sun? And if a metaphor was too confusing, I threw in a simile. That’s a middle school analysis. Think, Nick. Think.”

He thought. Like a bird, this phoenix. But a phoenix was a bird! This was completely pointless, unless…

She stood and her gold hair whipped in the sky. “You still don’t understand, do you?” He shook his head and stepped forward. For a moment she looked like she wanted to put a hand to his face, but withdrew it at the last minute. Instead, she spoke so quietly he had to lean forward to hear her. “The bird is a metaphor for the phoenix.” She took a step back and took him in with a glance. “You still don’t understand?” He was looking at her blankly and she smiled sadly, forlornly. “The bird is a metaphor for the phoenix. I am a phoenix.”

He just stared at her before spluttering, “You, you can’t be! Phoenixes are…”

She sat down once more and her hair fell down around her face. “Birds? Just a pretty story, Nick. Much prettier than the truth—that a phoenix is an individual who must set fire to something that’s a part of her every few years and Burn to live again. That’s the real phoenix.” She looked up to see that he understood, then let her head hang as if it was too much effort to keep it up.

He was staring at her. There’d always been a fire about her, an energy, but he never would have guessed its source. “And Christie got caught in this Burning?” he asked, understanding gradually.

She kept her eyes closed tightly and her fists clenched. “There have been accidents,” she said stiltedly. “But that was my first. She was just suddenly there, and I was caught in the Burning. By the time I was reborn, she was dead and I could not save her. I cried those tears of healing over her, but she did not come back to me.” She opened her eyes slowly with effort and looked up. “I know this means nothing, but I am sorry. For both of us. She was the best friend I ever had.”

He didn’t have the energy to think about Christie and the regret of the phoenix. Instead, he surveyed every can of gasoline, the matches in her hand, and the puddle of oil at his feet. The smell of it was making him queasy. Without looking at her he asked, “How did you become like this?”

She shrugged, past wondering or even caring. “A fiery angel, a fallen star? Who knows? Certainly not I. There are others, but I’m the youngest, and, anyway, we keep apart. Too many fires set too closely together would surely be investigated and linked.”

He forced himself to look her in the face. “And tonight is the Burning?”

“Yes.” There was finality to that statement and he realized that however much he might hate her for taking away Christie, she was what she was and could do nothing to change it. That was beyond her power.

“You have to go now.” The skin on her hands had cracked and bled and she fumbled for a match. “Please. There’s nothing else I can do. Christie tried to help, but… Just go, Nick.”

The match was in her hand now; her entire focus was fixated upon it. She stopped seeing Nick, saw nothing but eternity in the match, and deliberately struck the match upon the box. It burst into flame and she reviewed her work one final time, smiling slightly as if remembering the last five years in a single moment, before holding out the match to drop it into the puddle of gasoline and conflagrate to live again.

Nick had watched her strike the match, had seen her look around one last time, but had not moved. Standing there, her hair loose and the color of summer and sunlight, she reminded him strangely of Christie. He didn’t know why. The phoenix looked nothing like his dark sister; was the opposite, in fact. But there was something in the smile, a smile of secrets and hidden mischief. They both had had that smile. People had gone mad over it and had tried vainly to discover the joke behind it, but the two friends hadn’t shared their secret and had only laughed when pressed. Yes, the phoenix’s smile was his sister’s.

He suddenly remembered Christie. And not the foggy memories of the dead, but clearly, as if she had left but minutes before. He recalled her love of poetry and family and fun. He remembered Bryan, Christie’s boyfriend of several months. He had brought flowers to her grave for months afterwards and had been irrevocably changed when the light of Christie’s life had been blown out. He remembered his parents as they once had been, lines of laughter around their eyes, toasting each other tipsily on birthdays and anniversaries, tangoing in the kitchen. Now they were separated, his father just a postcard and his mother a silent observer. He remembered himself as the tagalong, but tolerated, younger brother and the little boy who had been killed when the last mound of earth had so finally dropped on the casket. And he remembered the friendship between Christie and Kim, a funny, odd friendship full of Queen Elizabeth and secret confidences, Hamlet and boyfriends, Frost and summer jobs.

He remembered and wept for Bryan and Christie and Kim herself. The tears that hadn’t been shed since that awful night at the high school welled up and would not be held back. He was not ashamed; he was mourning the loss of life and death and the tragedy of two best friends, one because she was dead, and the other because she lived on alone.

His tears fell freely and the phoenix turned, the match still in her fingers. At first she was puzzled, confused, and she stepped closer to see what he was doing. His tears fell on her skin, hot tears of sorrow, cold tears of grief, and she looked closely at her hand. The bleeding had stopped, the cracks closed up. She looked up at him in awe but the tears did not stop. They felt like they would never stop, and he wondered if he wanted them to stop. There was something liberating in crying after so many years of nothingness, something healing in the salty tears on his face and her hand.

The phoenix was drenched, and suddenly she was crying too. She, who’s eyes had never shed a single tear, she was crying, but she was laughing too. Tears of fire and water alike coursed down her beautiful cheeks, and then she was fire, and she was rising to the sky, laughing and crying and beautiful.

Nick was alone then. He wasn’t quite sure what had happened, but it felt right, and he walked home in a caressing rain. His mother was up and waiting for him and she demanded to know where he had gone.

He was surprised. His mother hadn’t been motherly since… since before he could remember. He grinned and said he’d been at the school talking to a friend. She sensed there was more than what he had said but wisely did not press him. Instead, she asked him when he was going to clean the room, and why was he not eating? Nick almost laughed to hear her talk like that and promised he’d go finish eating dinner.

He watched the stars from his room that night. They shone brilliant and distant as always, but a new constellation in the North held his attention for long moments before he returned to the scrapbooks; he was brushing off the dust and taking them out of storage permanently. Christie—and Kim, if it came to that—deserved to be remembered. Later he would read that the astronomers were up in arms over the new star that had suddenly appeared. How had it gotten there; where had it come from? They would never satisfactorily answer these questions, nor were they able to agree what picture in the heavens this new star completed. Some said it was a bird and others, a woman. Nick thought it looked like a phoenix, but he kept that to himself.

The End