The Girl Who Looked Beyond the Stars

by L B Anne

“Looking for something?”

  “No, I thought—no, I have to get back to my dad.”

  He pulled the cart out of the way and watched me walk around him and down the hall.

  “You’re not lost, are you? I can help you, or have another nurse help you?”

  “No, I know the way, thank you.”

  My chin sunk to my chest. I couldn’t believe I messed up that opportunity. I looked back once more before turning the corner. Javan watched me and waved. He had a really nice smile. I waved back and bumped into a wheelchair as I turned around.

  “Oops, sorry!”

  “What did you see?”

  “Huh?”

  “You were down there a long time. You still have a residual proximity glow. You saw him, didn’t you?”

  The old man had thin white hair that hung to his shoulders and the strangest twinkle in his eye. “A lot of unexplainable things go on around this place.” He leaned forward in his chair and whispered. “I think he was assigned here.”

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Tobias, are you harassing this young lady?”

  “No, ma’am. Only you, Nurse Rita.”

  She laughed. “Good, let’s get you back to your room.”

  “I got out here by myself, didn’t I?”

  “You’re not even on the right floor.”

  “Oh. Well, this is where all the action happens.” He winked at me.

  I watched him being wheeled away.

  “There aren’t many special ones like us,” he yelled behind him. “We’re the last. May your vision be true, Little Gleamer!”

  Little Gleamer? That was weird. I turned the corner to get back to my dad’s room. My pace slowed.

  Like us? The last? The last what? Hmph, crazy old man.

  “Sheena,” my mom called from the other end of the hall. “Where did you go? Don’t you want to see your dad? I know it’s hard to see him like this—”

  “No, I just needed to—How is Daddy?”

  “It’s a miracle from heaven.”

  Those last words started my mind going all over again. A miracle from heaven. HEAVEN?

  My dad was able to smile a little. I mean, the normal person wouldn’t know it was a smile. It looked more like a grimace. I had made a joke, telling him if he didn’t want to start teaching me to drive, he could’ve just told me instead of wrecking his car. His mouth quivered a little and then the right side shifted up just a tad, and then down. That was the grin. He couldn’t talk, but he knew who we were and that was a big deal. It wouldn’t be long before he would be able to come home.

  It was early morning when we left the hospital because we’d stayed all night, but I didn’t care that I hadn’t had any sleep. When I got to my room, I went straight to my laptop. I looked up heaven and happened upon angel sightings. Was it possible that’s what I saw? An angel?

  My mind flashed back to Mr.— What did she call him? Tobias. He said he was assigned here and something about us being special. He sounded delusional to me, but if he wasn’t, did he mean here, as in the hospital, or here, as in the city of Muskegon?

  “Sheena,” my mom called from the hall. “Are you in bed?”

  “Yes!”

  I reached over, switched off my table lamp, and pulled my blanket up over me and the laptop. “Okay. Angel sightings. What have we got?” I whispered to myself and typed it in the search engine.

  Angels are spiritual beings believed to act as an attendant, agent, or messenger of God. They guide and protect people. They are represented in human form having halos, wearing long robes, with majestic wings.

  That’s not what I saw, I thought as I clicked on an image, expecting to find more valuable information. But what I found was a bunch of stupid stuff. Angels formed in clouds and images on walls by the way the light shined on it. “So, pretty much you’re saying, ‘Oh, look at those clouds. Doesn’t that look like an angel?’ or, ‘Hey, look how the floodlight makes it look like there’s an angel on the wall.’ This is stupid.”

  I give up, I thought after an hour of unsuccessful research. If I didn’t know any better, I would have believed someone was purposely blocking me from finding any information.

  My mouth opened in a huge yawn. If I didn’t get to sleep soon, I would be like the walking dead later that day when it was time to go back to the hospital.

  I shut the laptop and said a prayer for my dad.

  When I was little, my mom told me that if you sang to the heavens at night, angels would visit you and protect you. It’s funny how I just began remembering things like that.

  I knelt in front of my window, looking up at the stars with my head resting over my folded arms, and sang as quietly as I could so my mom wouldn’t know I was still up. “I’ll search for you. I look beyond the stars and find your glory. Here’s my honor,” I sang. A song my mom taught me years ago. Well, she didn’t actually teach me. She sang the words so often that one day while she was singing it while washing dishes, I overheard her from the family room and when she paused, I continued the song and we finished it in unison. She was shocked.

  I waited at the window a few minutes. I guess I thought an angel would materialize in front of me. I mean, why else did I sing? I laughed at myself for thinking like the four-year-old me and climbed into bed.

  As I lay on my side, I pulled my covers up, forming my cocoon, and sighed into the pillow. My dad was alive. I felt grateful and at peace.

  I closed my eyes, exhausted, and ready for sleep to find me. A few seconds later, my eyes shot open.

  Someone’s in my room!

  I could feel it. I tried to look behind me without turning or moving and opened my mouth to scream for my mom, but nothing came out.

  There’s an intruder in my room and there’s no one to help me! My eyes scanned over every inch of the room in front of me for a weapon. The nightstand was too far away to reach for the lamp. Beyond the nightstand was a closet and shelves of books, stuffed animals, and everything I’d collected since I was about five years old. There was nothing I could reach for to hit someone with. Why wasn’t I into baseball or softball? Then I would at least have a bat.

  My heart pounded hard in my chest and then in my ears, blocking out every other sound. I couldn’t decide if I should wait for a hand to reach out and grab me or turn and face whoever it was.

  Get up, Sheena! I yelled in my head. I shot towards my lamp, switched it on with a tap, picked it up, and swung it around. I was going to pulverize whatever was coming for me.

  The room was totally empty.

  My shoulders raised and lowered with my breaths. I looked down at the lamp pointed at the door and suddenly became aware of what I looked like standing there in my t-shirt, pajama pants covered in pink hearts, and my fluffy pink socks, shaking and ready to fight—or run. I felt so foolish. My mom would say, “That’s why you don’t look up that kind of stuff before going to bed.” She was right.

  I put the lamp back and laid down, this time facing the door. Although the room was getting brighter due to daylight, I left the lamp on. But when I awoke, the lamp was switched off.

  4

  M y life was boring as kids' lives go, and then WHAM. Of all the unlikely things that could happen to me, to anyone, this happened. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and I couldn’t eat. Well, I could’ve eaten pizza, but my mom didn’t offer me pizza. She offered me overnight oats. Blech!

  There was investigating to do, and there was nothing I liked more than wearing my investigator's hat. Not a real hat, just a mode I went into when I wanted to figure something out. It’s practice for when I become a detective, or a reporter, or an attorney, or an archaeologist—I couldn’t make up my mind.

  My parents don’t care what I become as long as I own the company. My dad says kids today focus on working for someone else. And that becomes a whole four-hour rant about my future. But you know what? I’d rather have my dad shouting to the heavens about his expectations for me than to have him near death in the hospital.

/>   I didn’t have to go to school that day or the next, and that was fine with me. We went back to the hospital to see my dad.

  In the car, I looked over at my mom. Her hair was pulled up in a bun. She wore no makeup and had bags under her eyes. She seemed deep in thought.

  “Mom?”

  “Yes,” she responded from a faraway place.

  “Do you remember what I was like as a four-year-old—I mean the things I did and everything?”

  She smiled at the road. “I remember it all.” After a few seconds, she added, “Why do you ask?”

  “I’m starting to remember things from that time.”

  My head jerked forward as she slammed on the brakes. The car screeched to a stop.

  “Mom!”

  “What things?”

  “Mom, are you trying to kill me?” I looked around us at the intersection. Cars were lined up behind us and honked like we didn’t know the light was green.

  “You’re blocking traffic. Why would you slam on the brakes like that? Now I have whiplash!”

  My mom laughed. “You don’t have whiplash.” She continued down the road. “Is there something in particular you remember?”

  “No, not really. Just bits and pieces of things that I hadn’t thought about in years. Like our willow. There’s something about our willow,” I said almost to myself.

  We were now at a red light, and my mom stared at me but didn’t say anything.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Just noticing you’re not much different than you were at four. You’re bigger, but you look exactly the same.” She ran her hand over my hair and smiled, but I noted a hint of concern or worry in her expression.

  My dad’s recovery in one night was amazing. He wasn’t sitting up or anything, but he was aware of everything and sucked on ice chips. While my mom read to him, I went to find a candy machine and thought just maybe I might run into Mr. Tobias again.

  No, I really just wanted to see if Mr. Tobias would say any other weird stuff. Maybe he could explain what he thought we both saw or what he meant by gleamer.

  “Are you lost?” asked a nurse.

  “No, I’m looking for Mr. Tobias.”

  “Who?”

  “The old man in the wheelchair? He was here last night. Early this morning, really. He was on the wrong floor?”

  She laughed. “Oh yes, he’s gone home, but I’m sure he will figure out a way to get back here as soon as he can.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. He likes it here for some reason.” She walked away.

  “Excuse me, nurse?”

  She turned back. “Yes?”

  “Do you know Nurse Javan?”

  She looked up at an angle as if she were trying to remember something. “I don’t think I do. Is she on this floor?”

  “He’s a male nurse. He worked last night.”

  “No, we didn’t have a nurse named Javan working last night. Was he cute?” she asked as she walked into the nurse’s station.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  The nurse checked her computer and asked others about Javan. “I’m sorry, I have no idea who that could have been.”

  “Thank you.” I turned to head back to my dad’s room. That’s so weird. Maybe I imagined it, the whole thing. A nurse no one has heard of, and a giant figure made of pure energy? Who says that was an angel in the first place? But, Mr. Tobias…

  5

  W ith each day that passed, what happened at the hospital seemed more like a dream. Only it was a dream I couldn’t shake.

  I went back to school and endured the awkward sympathies from students and teachers about my dad’s accident. The word sure did get around fast. I walked the halls in a fog, but I didn’t really know why. Something was beginning to stir inside me. And I kept having the feeling I was being watched.

  “Sheena, are you okay? What are you looking at?”

  I tried to see around the backdrop of an exhibit in the gym. “Yeah, what’s going on?”

  Chana looked confused. “What do you mean, what’s going on? They’re setting up for career day. This whole thing was your idea!”

  “No, I mean with that girl. Over there behind Jeremy. See, she just jumped behind that poster board. I think she’s been watching me all morning. Who is she?”

  The girl’s hair was in shoulder-length twists with the top section secured to the side. She wore a t-shirt and jeans, with a hoodie tied around her waist.

  “I don’t know. She’s new. She started here while you were gone.”

  “She looks familiar. She keeps looking over here.”

  “Maybe you should say something to her.”

  “I would if every time I looked in her direction, she didn’t look away or hide behind something.”

  “Weirdo.”

  “Ha! You called her a weirdo.”

  “Why is that funny?”

  “Because that’s what everyone thinks of me.”

  “Well, let’s see. You’re always with me, that may be kind of weird, but we’re best friends so whatever, we have the best lunches in the state, but you usually bring your lunch while the rest of us buy ours, you say things like pièce de résistance…”

  I had to laugh at that part.

  “...you look at boys like they have the plague, your mouth always gets you in trouble, you have the strangest taste in music and I’m not mad at you about it—most kids are into hip hop, but you want to listen to Fleetwood Mac.”

  “It’s all about Stevie Nicks. I’m telling you, don’t sleep on—”

  “I know. I know. Please don’t start. You need to stop listening to your parent’s satellite radio stations. And let’s see, what else? Oh, and you are socially awkward.”

  “All of that, huh? You just had to go there.”

  “Maybe you are weird.”

  “Then you are too,” I replied as we laughed.

  “I’m the outgoing one.”

  She was right. Chana was everyone’s friend, but mainly mine. I may not have been a geek or nerd, but I was certainly not popular. Well, I was popular in the everyone-knows-who-I-am way (It’s not important why everyone knew of me. I’m just saying), but not in the everyone-wants-to-be-my-friend way.

  I was mostly ignored unless I wore a new hairstyle, or the popular girls decided I looked cute. The last time that happened, they dragged me over and tried to introduce me to Cecil, one of the popular boys that didn’t have a girlfriend. I already knew Cecil from elementary school, but he never talked to me in middle school. I guess they were introducing him to what they considered the new improved me—the upgrade. For one whole day, I was like best friends with them. The next day when I went back to my normal self, they ignored me. Whatever. Those weren’t the type of friends I wanted anyway. And Cecil…I guess he didn’t find my awkwardness attractive.

  “Are you coming outside?” asked Chana.

  “No. I’m going to the library before class. Are you joining me?” I didn’t really want her to, because I didn’t want her to see what I was researching, but I had to ask.

  “In the library? No, you can have that. I’ll see you later.”

  Chana turned to walk away, and just like that, someone quickly took my place beside her, giggling as they went outside. Oh, to be so likable.

  Our school had a great library, but I wasn’t interested in books that day. I wanted to continue my investigation. I walked past aisles of books to the computer stations at the back of the room, having the area all to myself until a few boys came in and started horse-playing behind me. Obviously, they only came to the library to get out of going outside after lunch.

  A wad of paper hit my head.

  “Creep!” I said and faked like I would run after them.

  The boys scattered, but they came back a few minutes later. I was glad when they got kicked out, so I could focus.

  I started my search again on angels. Nothing I found specifically had to do with seeing an angel. Then I found an ar
ticle that taught you how to see angels.

  Hmmmm… I didn’t know that was something that could be taught. I quickly skimmed through the article, trying to hurry before the bell rang for the next period.

  “Angels appear as orbs or bright lights, yadda-yadda, they may not have wings, yadda-yadda, they’re on a high vibrational frequency. Call in the white light,” I whispered, reading aloud. Nope, not doing that. I don’t even know what that means, but that doesn’t sound right.

  “Hey!”

  WHAM! I jumped, hitting my hand on the side of the desk. “Ouch!”

  “Are you okay? I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “Aww man, I broke my nail.”

  “I’m Ariel. I’m new here.”

  I frowned at my hand while examining the nail. “Yes, I heard. I mean, I’m Sheena.”

  “Sheena? Nice name.”

  “Thanks. It means God is gracious.”

  “That’s cool that you know the meaning. Mine means lion of God. It is usually used as a boy’s name in Hebrew, but in the United States it’s the norm for girls—or mermaids.”

  She laughed at her joke.

  I smiled but really wanted to shoo her away like an insect. “I was kind of in the middle of something…I’m not trying to be rude. When I’m working on something, I have to give it my full attention. You understand what I’m saying, right? You’ll get used to me.”

  “No worries. What are you looking up?”

  “Oh, nothing.” I quickly shut off the computer monitor and powered down the system. I needed to get to class anyway.

  “Something about angels?”

  “You saw that?”

  She nodded with a bright, happy smile.

  “Yes, just curious, that’s all.”

  She placed her hand over mine. “No worries. I’d better get going, though. I’m always late to class.” She lifted her hand. “See you later, Sheena.”

  I watched her walk away. And they say I’m weird. She just put her hand over mine like she was my mom, or Nana or something. I looked at my hand. “My nail!”

  Ariel turned back. “What about it?”