Black

by Angelina J. Steffort

  I was having an out-of-body experience. Whatever had happened, it was none of her business.

  “I don’t want to tell you what to do or not to do, Claire, but if you keep going like this—I don’t think I’ll be able to give you a passing grade.”

  “We haven’t even had a test this semester,” I protested, waking up to the meaning of what she was trying to tell me.

  “You think so?” Ms. Weaver’s eyes were more serious than ever. “We did. You just didn’t take any notice.”

  “What?—When?”

  I was shocked. How could I miss such a thing?

  “A week ago.” She shook her head. “It was one of the lessons you decided too much for you. You stood up and left the room without a word.”

  I remembered something like that darkly. I had done that several times—whenever I had preferred not to cry in public. Damn!

  “Sorry,” I tried.

  “No need to be sorry,” Ms. Weaver told me. “I know how hard it is to lose the people you love—especially when you’re young and think there will never be anyone you could love as much as the one you lost...”

  She glanced away uncomfortably, giving her thoughts distance, “—but believe me, there’s always a way to overcome it.”

  Her head snapped back to me, her face back to normal. “Just promise you’ll put some effort into history in the next days. We have another exam next week and I don’t want to see you fail. Your future is too precious to just throw it away like that—because of things you had no influence on.”

  She gave me an understanding smile. “It’s not your fault he jumped off that roof.”

  I swallowed down the tears which were about to press their way out. “—anything else?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “Go ahead.”

  “Thank you,” I said, using all my strength to stay appropriate, although my voice was thick and quavery. I wanted to say just the opposite. I was furious and unstrung. I had to get out of there before I lost it.

  I bolted gracelessly from the desk and charged into the corridor. I didn’t remember deciding to hide in the bathroom, but seconds later, I was flinging the old red door open with such force it bounced noisily against the wall behind it and forced me to step in quickly to avoid the rebound.

  The bathroom was empty.

  I took a deep breath and looked into the mirror. I hardly recognized the girl staring back at me. Her face was a grimace of anger and pain. Unable to stand the vision of my face, I turned around and paced the small room several times.

  It seemed like my period of grace was over. People were expecting me to pay attention and to behave normal again. A few weeks were all they had given me. A few weeks to grieve, to mourn. A few weeks to dwell in self-pity. It made me want to cry out loud or hit something with my fists.

  None of them knew the truth. None of them had the right to tell me to move on. None of them had a clue about what was going on inside me—how it felt to live with only half your soul. I was drowning in people’s misinterpretation of my behavior.

  Full of frustration and despair, I punched the door of the nearest cubicle.

  “Ouch!” I cried aloud.

  I looked down to see my knuckles starting to bleed. Red liquid was escaping from small cuts in my skin.

  “Oh damn it—Jaden,” I whispered. “Where are you?”

  I felt utterly helpless just knowing that he was nearby, that he could heal me with just a touch of his hand, and he was the one person who would understand the pain in my soul.

  I had to pull myself together and go back to class. One deep breath and another and another, and I was ready—well, not ready at all to be honest, but as ready as I would get.

  Before I opened the door—gently this time—I rinsed my fingers at the sink, patting them more or less dry with a paper towel, then hustled out.

  The corridor was empty and I realized with a sinking feeling that I must be late. Sure enough, class had begun.

  “Sorry, I’m late,” I mumbled an apology to Ms. Watts as I scanned the room for an empty desk. There was just one. In the second row—right in front of Jaden.

  As I headed for the table, I noticed Amber sitting beside him. She was leaning a little too close for my taste. I gave her what should have become a half-smile, but I was positive my mouth hadn’t managed to curve the right way. She winked at me, radiating with joy.

  “When Ms. Gabriel has finally settled down somewhere I would appreciate to continue with my lecture,” Ms. Watts said blackly.

  “I said I was sorry, didn’t I?” I whispered to myself and hurried into the chair, dropping my bag to the floor beside me.

  “Homework, Ms. Gabriel.” Ms. Watts had followed me to my table and was holding out her hand.

  I wished for the floor to open and swallow me.

  “I’m sorry, I forgot it,” I said tonelessly.

  “Well, that’s too bad, isn’t it?” She turned around and marched off to the teacher’s desk where she wrote down something into her book. Then she stretched up and started talking about a book we apparently had had to read and I definitely hadn’t.

  I lived through the English lesson petrified by Ms. Weaver’s speech and Ms. Watts’s sudden harshness. I had to change something in the way I was handling my everyday life. I had to become more attentive and at least do as much work as was necessary to not stand out in a negative way. I wanted to be invisible and this included being invisible to teachers as well. If it took studying with Greg for history and reading books and writing essays for English and literature and whatever things it was for other subjects, I would gladly do them—anything was better than being exposed like that. I was too much the center of attention already, just because I was unable to control my stupid tears.

  I was surprised by how much faster the lesson seemed to pass when I payed a little attention. The day was over in no time, which was something good for once. I walked home with Lydia. She had gotten used to my silence. Since she had started out with Richard, she had changed into a way more communicative person than she had been. I liked it. She kept talking and I listened without any pressure to answer. She didn’t talk gossip. All she said was relevant somehow. It was ordinary things about her family, about school, sometimes she complained about Richard. I didn’t mind most of the time, as long as she didn’t expect me to offer some good advice.

  Today I had something I wanted to tell her.

  “Lyd,” I interrupted the flow of her words. “I’ve got a question.”

  “Sure—ask,” she encouraged me, surprised that I was pulling information.

  “I know I’ve been a bad friend in the past month—”

  “No, you have your reasons—I don’t mind,” she quickly undermined my explanations.

  “Yes, but I’m really not worth anything right now. I want to thank you for being so patient and kind with me.”

  She just smiled at me without a further word.

  “And I wanted to ask whether you could help me catch up at school a little.”

  I knew that it was too much to ask, but I needed help. I couldn’t do it all by myself, considering there were subjects I had already had problems keeping track of when I had been all happy and motivated.

  “No problem,” Lydia said, and her smile stretched across her face.

  “Thanks, Lyd!” I really considered myself lucky to have friends like her. “You don’t need to help me with everything—I will talk to Greg about history, and Amber for—I guess Amber’s occupied at the moment...”

  Lydia grinned. “Guess so. I talked to Jaden after you left the cafeteria. Amber introduced us. He seems fairly nice.”

  She had no idea how right she was about nice. He was beautiful and good. But a human who grew too close to him would be in danger. I had experienced myself what it meant to be with an angel, what demons would do to drive an angel insane, what they did to make an angel’s human suffer—

  “I hope she’s careful, still.”

  We had reached Lydi
a’s house. She took a step toward me and slung her arm around me in a cautious hug.

  “See you tomorrow,” she said and squeezed me for a second.

  “See you, and—thanks.”

  She let go and turned to walk away, but then stopped and looked back at me. “I’m glad you’ve decided to return to normal life. You’ve been so far away in the past few weeks, I sometimes wasn’t sure you were still there.” She half-smiled, hope flashing in her eyes. “I missed my friend.”

  I didn’t know what to answer. Before I could think of something fitting, she had turned and vanished through the front door of the Porters’ house.

  Hopefully she was right. Would I find a way to return to normality—ever?

  I started walking down the street towards my house. I had just turned the corner when I heard the low thrum of a powerful engine and the whisper of tires. A car was deliberately pulling up alongside me. I turned as casually as I could and my heart jumped. The car was a bit flashy. And it was gray.

  Effort

  “Fancy a ride home?” Jaden asked through the open window.

  I was surprised to see him talking to me after a day of ignoring me at school.

  “Thanks, but no thanks,” I was only a few streets away from my house and walking in the cold air made my head clear a little. I continued walking. Some part of me felt strangely satisfied that he had to roll beside me to be able to keep talking to me. I hadn’t realized I had been angry at him for not talking to me at school—for not telling me that he was going to be at school in the first place.

  “Okay,” he lifted one hand from the steering wheel and waved at me without enthusiasm before he closed the window and accelerated around the next corner.

  I at once regretted being rude. Sure, it had been an awful day. First Jaden, without warning or explanation, had appeared at my high school as an enrolled student and—who would believe it—had exactly the same schedule as I did. Then he acted weird by staring at me when no one was looking, but ignoring me when others could notice. Then two of my teachers had made it crystal-clear that I was failing and I had better do something about it immediately. Stress and exhaustion were dominating my feelings.

  Jaden was the one person I could trust with everything, and I considered him my friend. He was probably the only person who truly understood my situation. Maybe I should have given him a chance to explain.

  Trying to not think at all, I hurried my steps past the comfortable little houses on my street. Thinning patches of snow still stood where the ground received no winter sun. The houses were warm islands in the still frosty winter-landscape. I thrust my hands into my pockets for warmth and shifted my backpack which was extra-full because now I knew I had to really hit the books. My breath turned into white fog before my face.

  When I turned into our driveway, I found Jaden’s car sitting there, as if it had never moved this morning. And there he was, pacing my porch, the look on his face showing that he’d been obviously waiting for me.

  “What are you doing here?” I blurted out. “For that matter, what were you doing in school?” It was churlish and disrespectful of me to start in on him like that. After all, he was my guardian angel. But my social resources were entirely depleted.

  “I’ll be gone in a minute,” he promised. “I just needed to know what happened today. You were really upset—I could feel it—but I couldn’t understand it.”

  “A second may be all you have,” I advised. “If Sophie comes home and finds you here, what’s going to be the explanation? She probably knows you were here this morning, too.”

  “Just tell me what’s wrong, Claire,” he said.

  “It seems like the officially accepted time for mourning is over,” I told him sarcastically.

  “I don’t understand,” he said, his face instantly changing to a questioning expression.

  I eyed him for a brief moment. After a day of seeing him at school, it was so easy to forget that Jaden wasn’t a normal boy.

  “It’s everything,” I complained. “You, showing up like that and then I didn’t know what to do or how to act. And school, having two teachers back-to-back put the hammer down on me for my grades. I can barely make it through a normal day, but this was horrible.”

  “The teachers must have had a meeting about me or something. What do they call that, a staffing? And they agreed to try to get me to put things behind me, but I don’t think I can do that. I don’t think I can—move on. And I don’t think I can be the student they want me to be, anyway. And with you in every classroom every day, for some reason, that makes it all worse.”

  I stepped past Jaden, unlocked the front door, and walked inside.

  “I’ll be back in five minutes—okay?” Jaden called after me and closed the front door from outside. A second or two later, the engine of a car sprang to life and the sound moved away down the street and around the corner.

  Where the hell was he going now?

  My room was like I had left it that morning. I placed my bag on the desk, then picked up the milky jeans from the floor and carried them to the washing machine. A pile of dirty clothes was waiting to be washed, so I stuffed it into the washer and switched it on. I stayed, hunched on the floor, and watched the pile of clothes blur into a multicolored whirl behind the glass of the machine’s door.

  Sophie wasn’t home yet. If she had been at the campus today, she would arrive any minute. It wouldn’t be wise if she took any notice of Jaden turning up. I didn’t want her to even know that he existed. It would be way safer for her, keeping her in the dark.

  It wasn’t even five minutes later when Jaden popped up beside me. I half-fell into the washing machine, jumping with surprise.

  “How did you know I wasn’t in my room?” I asked him critically.

  “I always know where you are,” he plainly said, not showing any kind of emotion. “It’s my job.”

  I really didn’t want to hear that. It was bad enough that he always knew how I felt when he was around me—which meant now, too.

  “It’s really your job?” I was skeptical. “How exactly does it work? Who’s your boss?”

  “One of the archangels—Michael. I don’t know if you’ve heard about him—” he answered casually.

  “Michael? Like Michael-Michael?” I asked disbelievingly.

  Jaden nodded and took a step towards me.

  “Let’s take this conversation to your room. I don’t feel comfortable here, when your sister might show up any second.”

  “I thought he was only a figure in the Bible—” I ignored his request.

  He stretched out one hand and placed it on my shoulder. I instantly lost track of time and space and the solid ground vanished from under my feet. Then I felt like I was being pulled through cold water and finally my feet hit the floor in my room.

  I looked around. Jaden was standing right in front of me, his hand still on my shoulder.

  “Could you at least warn me before you do this again?” I growled. “I could have easily walked here—”

  “Oh,” was Jaden’s answer. He instantly removed his hand from me and took a step back towards the window. His eyes lingered on the floor for a few seconds.

  I turned and walked over to sit down on the chair at my desk beside the closed door.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just so used to doing this—you know, protecting people. In life-threatening situations I never ask if I can teleport someone—”

  “This is not a life-threatening situation, is it?” I snapped at him.

  “I know.” Jaden leaned against the windowsill and eyed me, guarded. “I’m still not good at being human,” he said, his face suddenly sad. “I used to be worse, but at least now I look like a human when I move, and sound like a human when I talk.”

  I looked at him from the other side of the room. “Just promise you’ll ask me next time before you teleport me through the house—or elsewhere,” I said, not really able to take in the meaning of what he was saying.

 
“I will do my best,” he said solemnly.

  “Good. And now tell me more about your job and about why the hell you decided to become a student at Aurora High,” I demanded. If I had to have him around every day at school I might as well know why.

  “Yes,” he glanced sideways out the window. “I will—later. Sophie is coming.” And without another word, he was gone.

  “Hey,” I started to protest the second he vanished from my windowsill, but he didn’t hear me—or didn’t react to it. Anyway he remained gone.

  The front door made a noise that revealed that it was being opened. Sophie.

  I decided to go downstairs and greet my older sister so she wouldn’t surprise me in my room later when Jaden was back.

  “Hi,” I called as I was on my way down the stairs.

  “Hi, little sister,” Sophie greeted me from the kitchen. “Have a nice day?”

  “Mhm...” I lied. I didn’t want to pull her into the trouble of my life more than necessary. She had already become too much of a caring parent substitute for me. “How was yours?”

  “Great,” she beamed. “I got the results of an exam—I got an A,” she couldn’t hold back the good news.

  “That’s great,” I faked enthusiasm. Actually, I was happy for Sophie, but right now I didn’t have it in me to be the gleeful celebrating companion.

  “I know,” she couldn’t stop grinning.

  “And there’s another thing,” she said happily.

  “That is—” I waited for her to tell me what she wanted to get out.

  “I can finish my internship in Indianapolis,” her voice became guarded. “They said I could start in early March if I want to. And I need to stay for three months.” She rushed the words out as if trying to make bad news sound good by spilling it quickly.

  Sophie had been in Indianapolis for her internship when Adam had died—I felt my heart twist—and she had come back to be there for me as soon as she had heard what had happened. I was so grateful for what she had done and I was the last person to want to stand in her way when it came to her dreams; and becoming a doctor was her dream. She needed to go to Indianapolis.