Phoenix: The Rising Read Free

gonna be a good night?”
    A half-smirk tilted one corner of Charsey’s mouth as she nodded. “That tonight’s gonna be a good night.” She yanked the buds out of her iPod and The Black Eyed Peas ‘ I Got a Feeling’ blasted into the car as the two girls sang the next line in unison, “That tonight’s gonna be a good, good night...” After that, there was no holding them back. If there was one thing they had in common, it was their mutual, ridiculous obsession with The Black Eyed Peas. 
    Charsey continued driving around for the next five minutes as the two rolled down their windows and wailed out their favorite song. Julie wouldn’t normally be caught dead singing in public, but she couldn’t help herself whenever she heard this song. She loved it, so she closed her eyes and pretended that people weren’t staring at them as they drove by. And ... she sang.
    It wasn’t until the song ended that Charsey finally pulled up the long, horseshoe drive leading to Julie’s house . She slammed on the brakes and slid to a s top by the front door. Julie hopped out and grabbed her bag from the backseat.
    “Remember, you’re driving tomorrow, Jules.”
    “I have early detention,” Julie reminded her.
    Charsey puffed out her lower lip. “Rats.” Her face brightened. “Oh well, you can drive Friday.”
    “Fine,” Julie conceded, “I’ll drive Friday.”
    Julie slung her book bag over one shoulder and ascended the wide marble steps , the high she had been feeling just moments before dissipating exponentially with each step . She stuck her key in the slot, turned the knob, swung the right side of the double door open, and stepped inside. Taking three steps onto the checkerboard slate of the foyer floor, she stopped and dropped her bags.
    “Hello?”
    The lone word echoed in the cavernous foyer, then faded away to nothing. Julie cocked her head slightly to the right and listened. For voices. Footsteps. Anything. But all she heard was the ticking of her mother’s grandfather clock, accompanied by silence—the same silence that had haunted her for the last four days. She was still alone.
    ****
    Thursday morning, Julie hit the OFF button just as the alarm started to blare. She rolled out of bed, walked straight to her bathroom, and turned on the shower. Ten minutes later she was blowing her shoulder-length platinum blonde hair dry. She ran the straightener through it, popped in her contacts, blinked them into place and stared at her reflection. Plain, she thought. I’m plain. No one will notice me. I’ll blend right in . Pale green eyes stared back at her, knowing that what she thought was a lie. She was anything but plain. She was different. She dressed differently. She spoke differently. She had lived a life no other seventeen-year-old she knew had lived. She wasn’t the same as them. She never would be. It was that simple, and she didn’t like it. Not one bit.
    A half hour later, Julie pushed open the door to detention. As soon as the door shut behind her, the clock buzzed for a few seconds, alerting Mr. Moseman, the Assistant Principal of White Mountain Consolidated, that it was now seven a.m. Moseman looked up from the newspaper he had his nose stuck in and motioned with a jerk of his head for Julie to take a seat. Five of the twelve seats were occupied, and this was only the sixth day of school. Julie walked to the outside row farthest away from Moseman and sat two seats ahead of a mousy girl who dabbed her blood-shot eyes and runny nose with a handful of wadded tissue as her shoulders hitched from sobbing.
    Just as she set her book bag on the floor, the door opened and two burly young men walked in. Julie did a double take. Although they wore their ebony hair differently—one had his pulled back into a ponytail, and the other had his blunt cut across the back and tucked behind his ears—Julie could tell they were twins, very large, intimidating twins.
    Moseman glanced up at the clock. “You’re late!”