The A-Word

by Joy Preble

  Terry McClain had been in on it since Austin. He had cheated on Amber. He thought he could trade up. He thought he was smart enough to control things. He had signed on to create memory drugs for a top secret group inside Texicon, connected to other people whose identity he honestly didn’t really know. He thought he could get away with it. He thought it didn’t matter. It was just chemistry, right? Just a job. He was paid very well. He moved up and came here to Texicon where he could use all their labs to create whatever he needed. He figured he was on his way. People would know him. They would remember his name. He would be important. Somebody.

  But my brother and me—and Mags and Ryan—we’d stopped him. Because he’d been part of what had hurt my family even though none of us knew it at the time.

  And Amber Velasco, well, I could read between the lines on that one. Management sending her here to shepherd Casey and by extension me … that was no coincidence. She was the only one who could have been sent because all of this was about her, too. Like me, she had been in the dark. Unlike me, she’d wanted to be there.

  But like Casey, she made a damn good angel.

  The confession of Terry McClain did not take long.

  Of course, this was no Dr. Renfroe scenario. There would be no police involved. There was no one coming for Terry but us. And we were already here.

  “So what do say, Ms. Velasco?” Bo asked her when Terry’s voice had dried up. “What shall we do with this man? Drop him? Set him on fire? Might burn down the whole place. Could be problematic.” He licked his lower lip. Cocked his head, looking for all the world like a curious bird, what with his wings still being fully extended.

  A thin line of blood, dark and red, drizzled from Terry McClain’s nose. His glasses were gone. I’d seen them tumble and fall.

  It felt like a long time before Amber answered. From up here, I could see everything: the mall and the trees and the water tower and bunches of houses, all looking pretty much the same. The wind had picked up, and I don’t think it was Bo’s doing, just the weather changing—finally. A blue norther was fixing to blow through. Fall was finally here in Houston. In a few days the time would change and it would be Halloween and then Thanksgiving and then people would be putting up Christmas trees again.

  “I want him to forget,” Amber said. “I’d like all of them to. All of it, Bo. Every bit.”

  At first I didn’t understand what she meant. Not the actual words of it, but the nature of the punishment. And then it drifted over me what she was saying. He would remain where he was but the rest of it would be wiped. He wouldn’t know what he’d been involved in. He wouldn’t know what he’d been working on or toward. He wouldn’t remember the blond man in the boots who’d threatened him back in the lab. It would all be gone. He’d be head of the lab at Texicon. An ordinary person—not special in any way—working with his mice.

  “If I take it all,” Bo said, “It’ll take you out, too. What you had with him, what you were to him. All of it. You understand that, Amber?” He used her first name this time, voice wrapping it gently.

  She studied her feet like a great answer was written there. “Yes,” she said. “Yes I do. He deserves that, too.”

  Bo nodded, one brief motion.

  “And then we’ll wait.” Bo flicked his gaze over each of us. The world seemed to throb and thrum up here on the roof above the thirtieth floor—the tallest building in our little suburb. “We’ll see what happens. Who comes to see him. Who wants something from him. What else we can find out. Maybe nothing. Maybe something. Time will tell. And if there’s anything on this earth you and I seem to have, Ms. Velasco, it is time.”

  In the end, they did it together, Bo and Amber. Closing their eyes and using their collective angel powers and wiping Terry’s memory clean. Bo set Terry down on the roof. Gently, which was a surprise.

  Here was the thing about Bo Shivers, I understood then. For all his rage and badness, he was, like my brother, always at the core, an angel. He just couldn’t help it. Neither could Amber.

  “Go,” Bo said to Terry. “Go back to your office and call nine-one-one about the storm and the wind shear.”

  Terry went. We watched as he stepped back through the metal door and it closed behind him.

  And then Bo’s gaze fell on me. Something unreadable crossed his grizzled face. He strode to me, pressing a hand to my cheek, the tips of his wings fluttering against me and even though I was filled with something unreadable myself, I reached up and touched my fingertips to those scars he’d taken back to keep. “You okay, darlin’?” he asked, wings retracting and then gone like they had never been there.

  I told him that I was.

  Some other mild commotion ensued, both with the remaining lab guys and with more damage control and mentions of Management. The phrase “stupid and irresponsible” got tossed about more than once, including for the part where I had operated a motor vehicle while underage. And considerable colorful vocabulary once it really washed over Amber and Bo that I had told EVERYTHNG to Mags and Ryan.

  This, Bo announced all high and mighty, was “unprecedented,” and I made him swear on his wings that he wouldn’t do what he had done to Terry and make them both forget. I tried to say it lightly, like I couldn’t imagine he’d really do it, but my insides clenched anyway. He made no promises. And eventually I told myself that he was telling the truth. At least for now. As for the future, well, that was the future.

  Turns out that Amber had gotten my emergency pocket text, which was great to know. As for Bo, I figured Amber had called him or it had been that angel Spidey sense. But he said no.

  “I knew you were a you-know-what,” Maggie said, flapping her arms like she was doing the Chicken Dance. “And I figured Jenna needed all the help she could get.” Here Mags turned to Ryan. “No offense, Ry. But you were in over your head, both of you. So I decided if I called the school and pretended there was some kind of emergency at Bo’s house near Texicon and asked if they knew his cell, then one of those school secretaries would at least call him even if they didn’t give me the number. Which is what happened. I knew if they told him ‘near Texicon’ he’d know something was up.”

  Here Maggie fixed her gaze on Bo. “I mean you know you don’t have a house near Texicon, right?”

  Bo, for perhaps the first time in millennia, was speechless. Maggie Boland was a force of nature.

  There was more talk then. Ryan and I told everything we’d seen and heard, and I recounted the conversation between Terry and the guy in the boots. The two of them talking to each other had been real, not some crazy drug dream. This is what my own Jenna-sense—yes, this is what I was calling it—told me.

  Memory drugs were out there. Terry McClain had helped develop them. Probably independently of Renfroe, which was strange, but as has been widely proven, strange things happen all the time. Something Big was at stake. It had started with my family, but it was bigger than that. Much bigger. And Bo’s belief that Oak View was at the bottom of it seemed to make sense now.

  As for Terry McClain, it was his secrets that those men had come looking for that fateful night that Amber had been murdered. It was his fault that she was dead. He had betrayed her by cheating on her, had been gone the night she died alone and then came back as an angel. And now he didn’t remember any of it, even the parts he had known. That had been Amber’s choice, and now I almost understood it. She would never forget. That fear and that pain and that sadness would be with her always. Like Bo … like me.

  Except I was luckier than most. I had Mags. And for now, there was Ryan. Who, it turned out, had not run for the hills, not even one tiny, little step.

  Lanie Phelps had dumped my brother and Terry McClain had done worse to Amber. Bo had chosen angel-dom over love. My father had run off to Olivia-land. It was a long list of crappy, that much was for sure.

  How did you ever figure out if a person you loved was the right person? One who would stick with you no matter what? Was Ryan that type? I decided to believe he w
as. But I knew there were no guarantees.

  Still, we had gone undercover and solved at least some of the mystery.

  “We’re like gonzo journalists,” I informed Bo. (I had looked up that Hunter Thompson fellow to make sure Bo wasn’t joking and referring to The Muppets.) “But without the LSD,” I added.

  LATER, AS WE hiked to the Merc, which Amber was going to drive home for me, Amber scrolled the news on her phone. There was a breaking announcement that at least five heads of state had suddenly cancelled their appointments to come for checkups at the Houston Med Center. City Council was bemoaning the loss of income since that meant their entourages weren’t coming either.

  I frowned. “Did someone tell them something fishy was going on?”

  Bo looked at the sky and didn’t answer.

  Then he trained his gaze, inky and inscrutable, on Amber. “You should have let me drop him,” he said. But there was no heat in his voice.

  She didn’t respond and he didn’t push it—surely a first. But then Bo pulled me aside. Mags and Ryan were already climbing into the backseat. Amber slid into the driver’s seat, fit the key into the ignition. I followed Bo a few cars down, still half expecting Terry McClain to pop his head out of the smashed-up Texicon building.

  “Jenna,” Bo said. His face was solemn, but his voice was gentle. “You need to understand. You prevented a terrible crime from being committed. And by doing that, you may have just staved off a Battle to Come. For now, anyway. I hope for a long time. But you’re in the show, Jenna. Whether you want to be or not.”

  “I’m just fifteen,” I told him, pulse going erratic then steadying.

  “In my day,” he said, “That was old enough.”

  My sizeable and colorful vocabulary aside, I had no words. Was he telling the truth? Was it possible that I—the girl who didn’t even have a learner’s permit—had some fancy destiny in store? Like my brother becoming an angel so he could help me and the world, this seemed a rather cockeyed turn of events. And if I had a destiny, what did that say about free will and chaos theory and why Lanie Phelps was still alive and kicking? It made my head hurt.

  There was only one person I could truly trust to tell me straight, even if he did it in his own crazy roundabout manner. But he was gone.

  Was Casey watching me from somewhere, hoping for the best?

  If he was, I still didn’t know how to respond to Bo’s predictions. I did not think I was particularly special.

  So I said instead, “Why has Amber been so afraid of you? Does it have to do with why you didn’t want her to know what happened to her?”

  He looked at me hard, in that way he had the first time we met, that way that felt like he was mining to my soul.

  “Some things people have to come to on their own,” he said. “They have to be ready.” I reckoned he was very right about that.

  Over in the Merc, one of them—Mags probably—honked the horn. A thought floated: Ryan was still my boyfriend. He had helped save me and I had helped save him. That was good.

  Bo tilted his head, then looked at me straight on. “Sometimes I do things that make sense at the time. I told her if she didn’t stop your brother and you from meddling, that Management would pull her. She’s more fragile than you think. There are still things you don’t know. Not everyone is like you, Jenna. Not everyone has your strength.”

  I gave him the stink eye. “You angels sure lie a lot,” I said.

  “We’re an imperfect bunch. Like I told you, I think it lets us do our job. But the outcome of humanity? That we don’t manipulate. Not ever.”

  Was that the truth? I had no idea.

  We studied each other some more, Bo Shivers and I, and then he said, “I do believe you helped avert the apocalypse, Ms. Samuels. I think that’s enough for one day.”

  He started to drop his gaze, but I had one more question.

  “Could Casey come back still?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer.

  I took that as a maybe.

  Friday came and went. The coaches let Ryan play at the game, half of one quarter only, but Spring Creek ended up losing by a touchdown, which was a disappointment to everyone. But it was only one game. We still had a winning record. There was always next week.

  Also, Ryan brought me one of those fake mums. It was huge and gaudy and covered with little boxes of candy and trinkets and in the middle of the mum, he’d hot-glued a plastic angel.

  “Seriously?” I asked him, blushing.

  He grinned in that way that made my heart do handstands in my chest.

  On Saturday, as planned, Ryan and I went to the Homecoming Dance. I wore my new blue-sequined high-low dress, which honestly, looked mighty fine. In a nice turn of events, Billy Compton the alto sax player and Maggie had mutually decided that they should go together. Maggie said she’d been sure he was waffling around it and she was waffling around it, and finally Thursday night after being present for my near-death experience and learning that the universe had been cooking up some strange situations while most humans were looking the other way, she called Billy and said they should ask each other at the same time. Which they did. Billy Compton, it seemed, had boyfriend potential after all.

  So we were going as a foursome and Maggie’s mom was driving because the Bolands had an SUV and could fit us all.

  “You look awesome,” I told Mags as we got ready at her house.

  My mother was stuck in bed again too much of the time and it wasn’t pretty, but what could I do? The best I could, was all I figured. Maybe Casey would come back. I couldn’t—I wouldn’t give up hoping. Maybe my dad would start acting like a dad again and move home. Maybe Bo Shivers—who had taken over guarding me along with Amber—would stop confusing the ever-loving shit out of me.

  Anything could happen, right? I mean look at Houston. We were a port city even though we were miles from the water. But then some optimistic types had dug out Buffalo Bayou deep enough to make ships fit.

  I could do that with my life, couldn’t I? Believe that I could make it anything I wanted. Even if there was hole in my heart the size of a semi.

  So I did what a normal girl would do. I shared my Sephora kit with Maggie. We glittered ourselves up and even smeared the sparkly bronzing cream on our legs so they’d look tan and sexy. I tottered around in my new heeled sandals. We both did up our hair in fancy French braids. If some Big Bad wanted to take over humanity one memory at a time, and I was destined to somehow help stop them, well, I wasn’t going to do it tonight. We were pretty dolled up by the time Maggie’s front doorbell rang.

  Who was out there, but Amber Velasco.

  It’s not like it took her angel powers to figure out where I’d be.

  “You have a second?” she asked. I shrugged, then followed her outside, my too-high heels tapping against the walkway. I hadn’t had much use for angels the past day or so.

  “Don’t use up all that glitter crap,” I hollered over my shoulder to Mags. “I wanted to do some more of it on my décolletage.” This was a new word I’d read in one of those fashion magazines. A fancy term for a woman’s cleavage. Classier than saying boobs.

  “You okay?” Amber said as her conversation starter.

  I wrinkled my nose. “You came over to ask that?”

  “Seemed like a good plan at the time,” she said.

  “You okay?” I tossed back at her. She had said very little—okay nothing, which is less than little—about Terry and Bo and the whole shebang of crazy. Amber Velasco was still not big on Personal Revelations. Not that I blamed her anymore.

  She didn’t answer. An eternity ticked by. But I had a Homecoming Dance to go to with my boyfriend. I took the bull by the horns.

  “I would have let Bo drop Terry,” I said, but I didn’t think I meant it. I only meant to let her know that she deserved better … more. We all did.

  “Would you?” she asked, in the same even tone she’d used the other day when I understood what an idiot I’d been about angels and their power
and about her. There was a lot more to Amber Velasco than met the eye.

  Lot more to me, too. “Maybe,” I said. It was as close to being honest about this as I planned on getting. Would Bo—an angel—have killed Terry McClain if Amber had told him to? Would he have wreaked angel vengeance like something out of ancient days? What would it have changed?

  And me? Would I have applauded? If it was last year again, and Renfroe was leaping over that Galleria balcony, would I have just let him go?

  I stepped closer, realizing I was taller than her in these heels, although not by much. “You pretend you don’t care about … what happened. But that’s a lie. You have a good heart,” I said. “I mean obviously you do or you wouldn’t be a ‘you-know-what.’ ” I air-quoted it and then did Maggie’s goofy Chicken Dance wing flap as a joke. “I would have kicked Terry McClain in the nuts, by the way. Let him remember that part.”

  Amber pursed her lips.

  A few more seconds, and she said, “I hear Mr. Gilroy is going to stick around for a while.”

  I raised both brows, but I was glad to hear it.

  “You know that angel grapevine,” Amber said, lips twitching in what I realized was a smile.

  “That a joke?”

  “Maybe.”

  I hadn’t planned on hugging her, but that’s what I did. She hugged me back.

  “We have some unfinished business,” she said then, face serious. My heart bumped hard. Was she going to tell me the other stuff that Bo had hinted at? Whatever she’d done those first couple years after she’d come back as an angel? “I’ll pick you up in the front of school on Monday after classes. Finally get you that learner’s permit.”

  I hugged her again. It seemed only polite.

  After that, I went to the dance with Ryan and Maggie and Billy—the only one in the group who did not know A-word secrets. That made it easier to talk about other things, which was just fine with me. But I knew if something went wonky, I had my Twelfth Men, even if one of them was a girl. My brother might still be MIA, but at least there was that.