I told myself before that I wouldn’t look back anymore, that I’d just face forward, staring at the bus driver’s stringy hair.
But now I can’t stop myself from looking back, can’t stop myself from watching the Dark Angel’s progress.
The Dark Angel doesn’t walk like other people do. I’m not sure what the exact word for it is. Floats? Glides? No, I don’t think there is a word. Who would have guessed it? All those hundreds of thousands of words in the English language—650,000 to 750,000 words to be exact, not including highly technical and scientific vocabulary—but in the end, language still lets a guy down.
A girl, not Red Ponytail, moves her backpack aside so the Dark Angel can sit down.
“What’s your name?” I hear the girl ask.
“Aurora Belle,” I hear the Dark Angel answer.
This is the first time I hear her voice. Like her walk, like everything else about her, her voice is different from that of any of the others here. Not a woman’s voice exactly, but it is definitely not a girl’s voice either. It’s soft and low and smoky, but clear as wind chimes somehow.
“You are going to love the school!” the girl says, and I wonder if the school board pays her to do public relations. But then I remember: no public relations were leveled in my direction.
“I’m sure I will,” Aurora says enthusiastically.
Then everyone around her starts asking her questions all at once: “Where are you from?” “Where did you go to school before this?” “What’s your favorite band?”
Up here, I am both a self-exile and an outcast.
But back there?
It is as though I can feel the arms of the entire school reaching out to embrace this Aurora Belle. They want her, want her to be one of them. They want to claim her as part of their pack.
If she were anyone else, I might resent the difference between our receptions.
We are in the same world, but different.
And yet, no, I do not resent this, because there is something just so obviously and basically good about this Aurora Belle. She even smiled at me, something no one else in the world would have done this morning.
I want what she has. I want that goodness.
Then I hear what I immediately recognize to be the sound of Shell-Necklace Boy’s voice.
“Hey, Aurora Belle,” he says with a laziness that does not deceive me, not one bit, “so you’re new. I like new.”
I do not like Shell-Necklace Boy at all. He is trouble.
Back when I was recovering after the explosion, I did a lot of reading. And, I freely confess, some of that reading was unusual.
One thing that particularly caught my interest was the subject of mercenaries: soldiers for hire. And the type of mercenary that most caught my interest was the Gallowglass.
Gallowglass, which in Irish means “foreign soldiers,” were elite military soldiers living in the Western Isles of Scotland and the Scottish Highlands in the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries. They were Scots, but they were also Gaels, meaning they had a common language with the Irish. They were retained by Irish chieftains, sometimes as personal aides, sometimes as bodyguards, because as foreigners the Gallowglass could not as easily be influenced by local feuds.
Imagine the greatest personal protection service you can think of all rolled into one person: that is what it is to be a Gallowglass.
I turn to look at Aurora Belle, see that she is struggling to keep a friendly smile on her face, know that she sees what I see: Shell-Necklace Boy is trouble.
He is the kind of guy who rips the legs off frogs, with no scientific purpose in mind. He is the boy who smiles at your mother and says, “Gee, I’m sorry, Mrs. Wolfe, I told Lucius we shouldn’t play catch in your house, but I’m sure he didn’t mean to break your favorite lamp,” when in fact it was his idea and his lousy throw. He is the kind of guy who every time a girl says no is absolutely positive she must mean yes.
It is amazing how much you can see in other people—the good and the bad, we won’t even talk about the ugly—if you just shut up and watch them: watch what they do, listen to what they say, hear how they say it.
I vow, hearing Shell-Necklace Boy continue to speak now to Aurora Belle in his insidious fashion, that I will become her Gallowglass.
Whatever happens, I will stand beside her.
Aurora
I sit here listening to all these new voices swirl all around me and I answer their questions as best I can, smiling brightly, but not too eagerly, all the while. And yet the whole time I’m doing it, beneath the surface I am back with those topaz eyes, more animal than human.
My dad always says that if you can take a thing apart you can understand it, and I try to do that now.
Why did that boy’s eyes nail me so like that?
It’s not like I’m vain or anything, but I’m aware that guys sometimes check me out. That’s just what guys do, and I don’t flatter myself to think I’m the only one who draws that kind of attention. And certainly I’ve had strangers who were guys say hey to me before. Did he say hey? I don’t even remember now. Huh. No, I realize, he didn’t. I don’t even know what he sounds like.
And it’s then, when I’m realizing he never said hey and wondering what he sounds like, that it hits me, a bolt:
I have, of course, read about love at first sight. My dad and I are great readers, after all, and he had me reading Shakespeare’s comedies, which are always romances too, while my friends were still reading Nancy Drew. So I know all about two people meeting, being instantly attracted, rejecting that attraction and the evidence of their own senses, Cupid wreaking havoc with everything, and everyone somehow ending up in a forest somewhere and getting married before the final curtain. Let me just go on record as saying, my respect for Shakespeare notwithstanding: hogwash. It doesn’t happen like that in real life. You don’t fall in love with people you’ve just met for the first time when you don’t even know the first thing about them.
And yet here’s the scary part, the thing that’s like a bolt:
There was an instant connection.
When I looked into those topaz eyes, I did feel like I knew him, at least briefly.
But that’s still not the scary part; I see that now. The scary part is that in that moment, it was like he knew me.
Lucius
I’m the first off the bus, feel the warm breeze against my face. What was all that stuff about Gallowglass? I shake my head, like I’m trying to wake myself up. What was all that stuff?
Sometimes I get carried away.
Aurora
I step off the bus with my group of instant friends. What was all that stuff about a connection? Sometimes I get a little crazy.
“Ready for your first day?” one of my instant friends asks. I toss my head without thinking about it. “Of course,” I say.
Lucius
Weapons-detection devices and hooks are not friends. On the contrary, they are natural enemies.
I know this, and yet somehow, what with the confusion surrounding my encountering the Dark Angel for the first time on the bus, I have forgotten this elemental fact of my new life.
What this means is that when I try to pass through the school’s metal detector at the front entrance, red lights go on and an annoying buzzing sound is heard throughout the hallway, the sound echoing off the painted cement-block walls and highly polished linoleum tiles. Those tiles? I’m thinking they won’t stay looking highly polished for long. That gun in that security guard’s pocket? I’m guessing he’s not happy to see me.
Metal detectors: my parents have said that when they were growing up, no schools had these. Of course, my parents also say they used to walk to school in the snow and that gasoline cost something like five cents a gallon. Who knows? Maybe they even say gas stations used to just give it away for free. Parents’ memories are never to be completely trusted, just like their repeated advice to “just be yourself.” Still, the first few years of my education, none of the schools I went
to had metal detectors either. But then kids started getting more violent, or at least more obviously violent, and the world made adjustments.
Violence: these days, it is all the rage.
And now this security guard is feeling some rage too—I can see it in his eyes as he growls at me, “Up against the wall!”
I let my backpack slide to the floor, brace for the coming confrontation.
In my first act of civil disobedience on my first day in my new school, I do not obey, and now I know more acts of civil disobedience are sure to follow.
Seeing my refusal, the security guard frisks me where I stand, arms in the air as he instructs me to raise them. It is a most humiliating position to be in, as the other students stream by, gawking as they go.
I let the security guard feel like he is doing his job, like he is saving the world from a fate worse than death—me—and it is just as he is finishing with patting down my ankles, starting to straighten up to a standing position, that I lower my arms, tap him on the shoulder with one of my hooks.
He jumps at my touch. It’s hard to tell if it’s from surprise at my daring to touch him or revulsion at what he sees resting on his shoulder now.
I wave both arms in the air, giving him a full three-sixty view of my permanent accessories. “Lots of metal here!” I announce brightly with a shake of the head, flashing all of my teeth. I could be a minstrel saying, “It’s showtime!”
The security guard’s face reddens, a mix of anger and embarrassment over his mistake.
For the first time, I look at him closely, see him clearly; funny how your vision can grow cloudy when you’re being treated like a criminal when in reality—this time—you didn’t even do anything. What I see now is that he’s not all that much older than I am, certainly not like the decrepit security guards in my old school who slept more than they watched. This guy’s maybe twenty-two, twenty-three, with hair the color of drying straw, large light blue chips for eyes, and a face so pitted with acne scars, it takes a while for it to register that he really is what girls would consider attractive. He’s also got a barrel chest that strains his uniform, and he looks like he used to play football in a serious way. I’m seeing a whole story here: someone who maybe had a real shot at the NFL until he blew out his knee.
And now he’s here. Sad. He’s here in a miserable dead-end job and he just got humiliated on his first day by trying to pat down the school “crip.”
And I think I have it bad.
What’s that saying about having no feet and meeting someone with no hands and then feeling better about yourself ? Or does that go vice versa? Regardless, when you have no hands you always feel sorry for yourself until you meet someone with hands whose life appears to suck even worse than yours does.
Geez. Being a security guard—an end-of-life job—when your whole life is still ahead of you. And I can see from the sharpness in his eyes: he’s not stupid. Okay, maybe he’s not as bright as I am, but who is? Still, there’s a light there, even if life has snuffed the wattage down a bit. He could still have more. But will he ever reach for it?
I feel sorry for him, I think, as I retrieve my backpack from where I dropped it to the floor during the pat down.
I raise my hook to my forehead, give him a salute that I hope he doesn’t find insulting even though I do mean it to be slightly ironic—he and I, after all, know each other now—as I begin to head off down the hall.
I glance at him as I pass by, but he doesn’t salute back or wave or smile. It’s tough to tell what he’s thinking now.
Poor guy.
Someone really should have warned him about me.
Aurora
The security guard smiles at me as I pass through the security checkpoint with ease.
This school really is just the nicest place!
Lucius
I discover that Shell-Necklace Boy’s real name is Jessup Tristan.
I discover this because we are assigned to the same homeroom.
Also here is Red Ponytail, whose real name is Celia Wentworth.
We are all together because our names are clustered at the end of the alphabet. You would think that by now schools would have formed a more sophisticated system for grouping people, but such is the current state of the education system.
“Lucius Wolfe,” I hear the teacher call my name.
I have no hand to raise as everyone else has done, so I raise my hook.
“Present,” I say from my seat in the corner of the back of the room.
I feel all eyes turn to stare at me, and I feel an almost uncontrollable urge to laugh.
I have heard characters on TV shows say, rudely, “Talk to the hand.” I have not always been certain I understand what that means. But now I want to say back to all those staring eyes, “Talk to the hook,” and it is all I can do to keep my mouth shut.
The more I keep my mouth shut, my dad keeps telling me, the better off I will be, the less likely to get into trouble.
So, other than the one-word “present,” I don’t speak at all. I merely raise my right hook to my forehead, tipping an ironic salute to the room at large.
Some days I am all about the ironic gesture.
They already know I have no hands, and some on the bus thought I might be deaf. Now, if I don’t speak again, perhaps they’ll all forget that “present” and assume I’m mute as well.
A boy can hope.
I see Jessup lean toward Celia, whom I already think of more as his sidekick than anything more, um, romantic, for want of a better word. I think he is going to whisper something stupid, but when he speaks, even though his face and body say whisper, his volume says I want everyone to hear me.
“Steve was right, on the bus,” Jessup says to Celia. “I remember that news story too. This guy with the hooks is definitely the same guy who caused that explosion.” He pauses just the barest of seconds before adding, “He must be crazy.”
You would think this would bother me, but if you thought that, you would be wrong.
So this is to be my designation in my new school: crazy. Everywhere around me, already I see cliques, the kinds of cliques you see in schools everywhere: jocks, troublemakers, mathletes, you name it. Me, I am in a clique unto myself, the sole member of the group called “crazy.”
But this is okay with me, I think. Maybe, if Jessup convinces them all that I am crazy, maybe they will all just leave me alone. Maybe they will be too scared to hassle me.
Sometimes it is better to have the world think you are harmful than that you are harmless.
I turn away from my classmates to stare out the window and can’t prevent a sigh from escaping. I know how many hours remain until the final bell, but I wonder how many minutes are left, how many seconds. If I felt ready to have these people watch me to see how I manage to use a pen, I would get one out plus a sheet of paper right now to do the math. It would be very easy, multiplying the number of hours by sixty minutes, multiplying that by sixty seconds. Hell, why don’t I just do it in my head?
Because of the archaic alphabet thing, I assume Aurora Belle is in one of the other homerooms.
I hope wherever she is, people are treating her well.
Aurora
Once I get over my initial nervousness, homeroom is fun!
Everyone is so friendly; everyone wants to know all about me.
When a boy named Gary Addams asks what I liked to do in my old school, I tell him I liked to act in plays. So then the girl who invited me to sit next to her on the bus, Deanie Daily, asks what kind of plays.
“I was the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz” I say, proud of it. It was my favorite role. Even as a freshman last year, I got major roles in the two productions at my old school.
“I find that hard to believe,” Gary says. “I would think you’d have played Dorothy.”
I laugh, remembering something.
“After the last performance, after we’d taken off all of our makeup, I ran into this little girl in the bathroom,�
�� I say. “She couldn’t have been more than four or five. So she asks me, ‘Were you in the play?’ and I say yes. So she says, ‘What part did you play?’ and I say, ‘What part do you think I played?’ She stops and thinks about it, and then her eyes light up. She tries to snap her fingers, but hasn’t quite mastered that yet, and she cries, ‘Toto! You were the little dog!’”
I’m laughing, and now everyone around me is laughing too.
“Here was my big theatrical break, and this little girl”—by now I’m laughing so hard, I can barely gasp the words out—“this little girl thinks I was the little dog!”
We’re still laughing as we spill out of homeroom and I start trying to figure out where I should be for first period.
As Deanie Daily looks over my course schedule, that boy I saw on the bus this morning walks by, the one who was seated behind the bus driver, the one who was the first kid in this new school to smile at me. Now I see for the first time that he has no hands, has hooks instead.
He smiles at me again, says, “Hey.” So this is what he sounds like. I like that sound. There’s a solidity to his voice, and yet it also sounds as though he doesn’t use his vocal cords very much.
I smile back, say hey back.
“What are you doing, Aurora?” Deanie grabs on to my arm as the boy disappears around the corner.
“What are you talking about?” I say, thinking, She sure has a tight grip.
“Why are you saying hello to that guy?” she says, easing up only slightly on my arm. “He’s new here, just like you. Before you got on the bus, Steve told us that guy did that to himself. Don’t you think that’s creepy? I think it’s creepy. I think he’s creepy.”
Anyone who’s ever gone to a school knows that there’s never a shortage of rumors, particularly about anyone who’s different. The trick is trying to figure out what if any truth lies within the rumors.
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “I think he seems nice.”
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