1st 5 Pages December Workshop - Johnson Rev 2

Name: Tiffany Turpin Johnson
Genre: Young Adult Speculative Thriller
Title: The Phoenix

CHAPTER ONE

There's a dead boy at my window.

I slide out of bed and squint in the darkness to be sure my eyes aren’t playing tricks. I recognize the dead boy right away, and he’s at the wrong window.

My ex-best friend Evan huddles on the second-floor porch, clinging with both hands to my window frame in the moonlight. A year and a half ago we sprinkled his ashes (so we thought) behind the Coral Beach High School football field. His parents said some nice things, and a lot of kids cried. The principal even shut down school for a few days. Seemed like an overreaction to me, but when the most popular guy in school disappears and turns up dead, overreaction is status quo.

Yet somehow here he is, staring at me with eyes wide and bloodshot and definitely alive. His hair is all gone, his skin so sickly pale it glows silver in the moonlight, and there's a huge, jagged scar running across his skull. Beneath the flimsy hospital gown his body is shrunken, concave. Not at all the cocky quarterback I remember. Despite all that, I'm sure it's him.

"Brie," Evan says, voice muffled through the glass, "are you in there?"

I blink a few times, so hard that blue spots swirl on the backs of my eyelids. This can’t be happening. I must be hallucinating again, but why would I imagine a Frankensteiny Evan? We’ve been polite strangers since the Blowout in fifth grade. That's been seven years ago now, part of which he spent being dead. Besides, I'm over him now. Completely. Utterly. And if this is a hallucination, it’s nothing like the ones I had before.

My heart pounds so hard that blood roars in my ears louder than the ocean outside. I swallow hard, willing the roar away. I can’t think with all this noise.

“Brie, please.” Evan reaches up one hand to tap on the windowpane. When the sleeve of his hospital gown rolls down, I see that part of his right thumb—the throwing one—is missing. Something about that empty space where the other half of his thumb should be transfixes me, holds me still and silent, but then the sound of his fingernails tap-tap-tapping on the glass makes me recoil in the darkness.

That sure sounded real enough. But why would he come to me? And why the hell is he wearing a hospital gown like some mental asylum escapee?

It can’t be Evan. People don't just come back to life. The Reanimist Association raised an animal or two before it disbanded, but the one time they tried with a human was a total disaster. So bad that no one even thinks about resurrection anymore. Not after what happened to Jenny Lee.

"God, Brie." I watch Evan’s lips shape my name. He leans toward the window, opening his eyes even wider, as if that will help him to see me lurking to the far side of my pitch black bedroom. "Brie," he says again. "Let me in." I can hardly hear him over the ocean booming at his back, and though the voice is raspy and exhausted, damaged even, I recognize it.

He’s really here.

Evan, I think, one single word filled with a longing I didn’t think could exist in me anymore. I try to say his name out loud but my throat closes and won’t form the word. Eyes stinging, I take a deep, shuddering breath and try again. "Ev," I whisper, and find my feet shuffling forward without permission. I get all the way to the glass before my legs freeze and pull me to a halt.

My arms ache to yank the pane up. Still, I can’t let him in. Resurrection is illegal, which means I could be charged with aiding and abetting. Or something else equally ominous-sounding. And I’ll never shoot for National Geographic from jail.

Evan lets his head fall forward, pressing the scarred flesh of his bald forehead against the pane. He closes his eyes and presses the palms of both hands flat on the glass. I feel mine rising to meet them, pressing against the window with my fingers lined up to his. His fingers eclipse mine in all places but one, where the sad little half-thumb ends in a jagged knuckled stump. Even separated by the panes of glass, I haven’t been this close to him in years.

"Please let me in," he says, speaking so softly now that I have to read his lips forming the words. "Someone's after me. Brie. Please. Let me in."

"Evan," I say again, the word a mere breath this time. My fingers freeze around the window’s lock.

I think of the day we first met, the day he disappeared, of all the days between. The scrawny little boy whose long auburn hair always fell into his evergreen eyes. Who shared ice cream with me on blazing summer days and let me have the melty chocolate bits at the bottom of the cone. Who let me camp out at his house whenever Mom went on one of her binges. The same sweet, awkward little boy who grew up into the gorgeous football star that pawed my stepsister on our couch after winning yet another game. The memory of his once-whole thumb rubbing along the outside of Cora’s shirt is creepier than seeing him here now, when he should be fertilizing the Friday night turf he worshipped.

What if he's a zombie or a vampire or something, and he's going to eat me if I let him in? God, that would be so cliched. Plus he's not glowing or fangy or anything. He's not even dripping blood. Not a monster then.

At least if I get eaten, I’ll know for sure I’m not hallucinating.

I unlock the window and slide it open.

CHAPTER TWO

Evan tumbles through the window and throws both arms around me, forcing me to stumble backwards until I hit the bed and we crash into a pile. He smells vaguely of cleanser, a sharp sort of soapiness that reminds me of Mom’s hospital room. Instinctively I shove him away and scramble toward the headboard, drawing my legs up to my chest and wrapping both arms around my knees as tight as my muscles will allow. My eyes flicker to the open window, as if a cop will climb up any second.

Evan sits perfectly still at the foot of the bed, staring at me with deer-in-headlight eyes. The hospital gown crinkles with each of his quick breaths. He keeps one arm carefully pressed to the tied opening at the gown’s side, as if hiding something there.

I can’t speak. We both breathe hard now, and stare, stare, just all this stupid staring. What do you say to a dead boy? A boy you weren't even friends with anymore when he died?

I should turn on the lights, but I can’t make myself move. What if someone’s taking a random redeye stroll on the beach and sees us? I leap up and shut the window, pulling the shade down for good measure.

As I walk back to the bed my fingers itch for my camera, only a few arms’ lengths away. I ignore the itch.

The silence stretches long and awkward between us. I should say something, anything, but everything I think of sounds idiotic.

What are you doing out of your grave?

Does Jesus really wear Jesus sandals?

Have you missed me at all since fifth grade?

To keep my itchy fingers busy I turn on the bedside lamp. Evan squints, looking paler than ever in the new light. "Thanks for letting me in," he says after his breathing finally slows.

I realize I've been holding my breath and let it out with a whoosh. "Um, sure. No problem." I clear my throat and add, "So you couldn’t find Cora’s window?"

Total failure picking a clever first question.