Letters to Phoenix

By Julie Deshtor

Derek has just spent his sixteenth birthday locked inside Farmstead, a behavior correctional facility for troubled teens. Now, he devotes every waking minute waiting for his girlfriend, Emma, to visit. But when she does not appear day after day, he takes out his frustration on an orderly and the steel door that separates him from everything he knows and loves.

Emma has no idea what has happened to Derek. When she finally learns where he might be from a beloved school counselor, she works through her grief by writing in her journaladdressing Derek as Phoenix. She lovingly wraps a birthday gift for him and takes it to his parents to deliver. As time slowly passes, Derek and Emma attempt to go on with their lives without each other. She thinks he has forgotten her: he thinks she has forgotten him. Six months later when she finally receives a clue as to Dereks whereabouts, Emma pens a personal ad in the newspaper, hoping he will see it. But as she waits for his response, Emma has no idea that there are people determined to do whatever it takes to alter her destiny with Derek.

Letters to Phoenix shares the tale of a rebellious teen and his one true love as they battle seemingly insurmountable odds to be together.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Nov 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781480812550

Julie Deshtor

Julie Deshtor grew up in the Soviet Union during the turbulent 90s, and moved to the United States shortly after the Soviet Empire collapsed in 1991. A bilingual author, Julie writes both fiction and poetry, as well as translating poetry and lyrics. She brings her rich cultural and life experiences to her fiction, exploring the psychological struggles of her characters with compassion and insight, as they navigate the murky waters of modern society. Julie currently resides in Utah, USA. Her interests include art, world literature, zoology, anthropology, and urban subculture.

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 Julie Deshtor.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are fictitious and are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to any actual events, or locales, or persons, dead or living, is entirely coincidental.

Cover artwork and author photo by Jonathan Sexton.

Archway Publishing

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.archwaypublishing.com

1-(888)-242-5904

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4808-1254-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-1255-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014919059

Archway Publishing rev. date: 11/12/2014

Contents

Acknowledgments

Special Status Staff Buddy Suicide Risk Run Risk

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Epilogue

Letters to Phoenix

Of Beasts and Men

Dedicated to all those who have ever lived in captivity, been torn away from those they love, or suffered an irrevocable loss of self.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my family for all these years of putting up with me, for encouraging my writing pursuits, and being there for me through everything. The same goes out to all my friends, who have throughout the years offered their support and their time. Special thanks to Jon, Raymond, Rachel, Jared, Chris, Wally, Kathy, Azrael, Rypa, Lee, Steve, Josh, Robert, Vadim, Dana, Miriam and Eli, and anyone else I may have failed to mention by name. I couldn’t have done this without you.

Special Status Staff Buddy Suicide Risk Run Risk

To shed your skin. To crack your skull against a wall you cannot walk through no matter how many times you split your skull open against it.

To be alone. To be tucked away so well, hidden so safely, that even you yourself do not know where you are.

To watch the years crawl by until freedom is no longer a gift, just a fact full of memories.

To watch from a distance.

_________________________

He was Phoenix.

Chapter 1

He had nowhere to go besides that place, having been committed to the program. He was sixteen.

Six days after he arrived there, his birthday came. Emma didn’t come. All the boys were out on the field playing football. He thought he saw her car on the road that day, a white two-door apparition that he chased in a frenzy. The orderlies chased after him. He caught up with the car only to see a stranger’s face behind the wheel. One of the men caught up with him. He snapped and took all his fear and frustration out on the orderly. The rest he didn’t remember, though he could imagine the crackle of bones shattering. He spent his birthday in an adult jail cell.

After three days he was released back to the Farmstead, into seclusion. The seclusion room had been converted from a basement bedroom. The sturdy old-fashioned windowsill was once intended as a shelf, so that plants, or pictures, could be placed along the window. Since then, the glass had been replaced with the thick bulletproof kind, and the windowsill now supported an oak board of equal thickness. Someone had been thoughtful enough to drill holes the size of a quarter through the wood to allow thick long beams of sunlight inside.

The sun only hurt his eyes.

He didn’t remember to eat or sleep. All he could see, like a playback video loop, was her car – tiny, white, lost on the dirt road. It didn’t matter that it turned out to be someone else’s car. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t Emma behind the steering wheel.

He practiced his punches on the oak board, driving the splinters deep in-between the knuckles. Twelve days into his seclusion the Farmstead owner, George, was forced to replace the steel door into the room. It was dented and warped, shaky from the boy’s full-body assaults. If only I could break through, he thought, nothing in the world would keep me here. The door became his adversary. He battered it like a ram, slamming his forehead over and over against the tempered metal. Eventually, the steel started caving in, losing its elasticity. He’d cracked his skull open a few times, but that didn’t seem to register in a brain overridden with panic and claustrophobia.

Out of twenty-three days spent in seclusion, the boy visited the emergency room a total of seven times.

Chapter 2

Emma sat on the brown checkered couch in the high school student counseling office, and stared out of the window at the crystalline snow that descended onto the ground below. The school counselor, Janna, had stepped out, and so Emma waited for a long time, almost the entire lunch hour, before the office door finally opened. Janna was a slight, thin woman,