Forcing words past her pain and fear, Dusty said, “Even if you killed my father, he’d be better off than you are right now.”
“Move! Or I’ll take you, too!”
“Dusty, get out of here,” her father whispered.
She shook her head.
“Dusty, go! Get away! Let him have me.”
“No!” She stood thinking feverishly; how could she break through Skye’s rage? She said, “Skye. So you’re dead, what’s the big deal?”
“Get out or I will show you what’s the big deal!”
Her belly went watery, she felt sick with terror, but she tried not to show it. “No, Skye, listen, I mean it. What’s the problem? Okay, you’re dead, but you’re standing up, moving around—”
“Are you crazy?!” he screamed. His hair seemed to have turned to black fire. His eyes blazed red.
“Yes. I mean, no. I don’t understand. Explain it to me. What’s so bad about being dead?”
“You jerk, I can’t feel anything!”
All his anger was for her now. As if he’d almost forgotten about her father. Good. Good. Dusty kept pushing it. “Like what? You can’t feel walls when you walk through them? You can’t turn doorknobs, so what?”
“Not like that, idiot! I can’t feel anything good. I can’t feel wind, or bike roar, or grass when I lie on it, or … or smell the road heat, the leaves, the trees, anything.” His fiery, upraised hands menaced her—but then they wavered in the air like windblown birds. “I can’t smell sunshine. Or a new car. Or food. I can’t remember what a cheeseburger tastes like. Or pizza. Or cake and ice cream.” Still vehement, his voice shuddered. Sadness jostled with his anger now. “Nothing seems real except Tazz, and he can’t talk. I—there’s nobody to talk with. My friends can’t see me. Nobody sees me.”
“I see you.”
“You—you’re a special case.”
“I told your mother about you.”
“So what? She can’t even tell when I’m there. I went … I went to the house, but—they can’t see me at all.”
The fire leached out of Skye like lightning draining away into rain. His stance went dull; his head sagged. His hands drifted down to his sides, no fiercer than fog.
He said, “I can’t bear it. They’re … crying.”
He was just a boy standing there, dim and gray and wretched.
“Skye …” Dusty stretched her hand toward him.
“Damn it.” He closed his eyes hard and turned his face away.
“Skye, they love you. Look, you’ve been going around made of nothing but anger, you couldn’t feel how much they love you—”
“Stop it,” he whispered. His lidded eyes winced. His hands faltered up to cover his face.
Dusty did not stop. “If I’d known you—if I’d known you when you were alive, I think I would have loved you, too.”
“Dusty, please stop.” He could barely speak.
“I think I do love you.” Her voice had dropped to a whisper, because it was a truth like a silver sword. “I think I do. I cry, too.”
His shoulders clenched like a fist. He stood there with his head bowed, quivering. Dusty knew he could not see her hands lifting toward him.
“I’ve been there. Grief, I mean. I know what your family is going through.”
He flinched and lowered his head even more. Dusty ached to have mercy on him and shut up. But she could not. Her father still stood behind her, pressed against the wall, white-faced, panting—and Skye could still kill him with a touch.
She said, “Skye—when I go to see your mom, what do you want me to tell her?”
He did not answer.
“Do you want me to tell her you’ve turned into a ghoul?” Dusty could not quite keep her voice steady. “Do you want me to tell her that you’ve had your revenge, you—you killed my father—”
“Shut up! I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!” Skye’s hands flew down from his face, he crouched like a fighter, his fists curled at his sides, he glared white fire daggers at her. He shouted, and his voice broke like a heart.
“Goddammit, you can keep your father, okay?”
He spun away from her and ran.
Chapter Eight
Skye ran out of the house, straight through the closed door.
For maybe three heartbeats, Dusty stood in a great stillness broken only by her father’s ragged breathing. Then she ran, limping, to the door, pulled it open, and headed out after Skye.
Dark out there. Shadows, dim stars, moonlight, a charcoal-and-white-ashes night like that first night when he had come to help her, when her heart was breaking because of Tazz and she had turned around to see him standing like a white marble Michaelangelo in Levi jeans at the stable door.
There he stood.
Not far from the house, with his horse—he had run to Tazz just the way she used to. As muted and gray as rain, he stood with his arms around Tazz’s neck, his face hidden in Tazz’s mane. Dusty saw him quaking, saw his shoulders heave.
She had to be merciless just a moment longer. “Do you mean it?” she demanded, walking toward him.
His head jerked up and he whirled to yell at her; she saw the wet sheen of his beautiful face. “Of course I mean it!” Tears and fury in his voice. “Would you …”
Go away and let him alone, probably. But her chest swelled, aching like sunrise, and before he could say anything more, she took one more step and put her arms around him, crying as hard as he was.
Crying for her father, crying for herself, her own pain, her own death someday—but mostly crying for Skye. Weeping with relief and sadness and love of him, she hugged him and laid her head on his shoulder. Or on what looked like his shoulder—there was nothing there, she could feel no solid body, she might as well have been embracing air. But she could see him turn to her. She could hear him sob deep in his throat, see his shoulder tremble. She could see his arms come up around her to enfold her, though she could not feel the touch of his hands on her back. Did he love her, too? Maybe he loved her, too—but she didn’t know, probably she would never know, and the thought made her sob harder. And with every breath, her back hurt. Her stupid back hurt from crying. Damn, why did everything have to hurt so much? Oh, Skye. She could see his black hair, his bowed head. She could see the wet spot where her tears had soaked his shirt.
She could see … rising from where her tears had touched his back and shoulder, a white dawning so bright it made her close her eyes.
She gasped. For a moment everything seemed to stop—her tears, her breathing, her heartbeat, the night breeze, the voices of spring peepers from the pond, the whispering of trees, the slow, distant wheeling of stars, everything paused, caught up in a feeling of—not fear, exactly.
Awe.
Awe of the whiteness that aspired so bright it burned its way into her even through her lidded eyes. For a moment she could not move. But she could feel—
She gasped again. Glory. Wonder.
Healing.
She felt it running through her like spring water—and in that moment everything began anew, her breath, the moonlit breeze, the song of spring in breeze and pond and trees, her heart’s warm drumming, her life. Wellness flooded her from Skye’s hands, straightening her back, lifting her shoulders like wings, giving her strength and wholeness to run, leap, shout, ride wild horses. Joy warmed away her tears. Her eyes snapped open. She cried, “Skye!” She flung her head up to cry the miracle to him. “Skye, my back!”
But she stood openmouthed, and slowly, as if on their own, her hands released him. She stepped back, for his face, gazing gravely at her, was the starlight face of an angel.
He was … he was the texture of moon halo, he was indigo infinity and the glimmer of distant galaxies standing there. He seemed made all of starlight now, a misty constellation with shining eyes. And from his back rose great moon-white wings.
“It’ll stay healed this time,” he said. His voice was low, as always, gruff, as always, yet different. A warm trail winding thr
ough springtime woods. A red hawk flying. A hearth fire quietly talking.
Dusty couldn’t speak. He gazed at her for a moment with just a wisp of a smile, and then his gaze floated away from her like a white moth, past her and upward, far away. His voice was husky, almost a whisper, as he broke the silence. “Well,” he said, “I’d better get going,” and for a moment she heard the kid in him again, trying to sound casual even though the words quivered with eagerness like his horse’s pricked ears.
Tazz stood waiting, a silky shadow in the night. Skye turned to him and vaulted onto his back, starlight riding a shadow, wings rising high and white against the sky. With one hand he patted the horse’s shoulder.
Looking down at Dusty he asked, “Tell my mom I’m okay?”
She nodded.
“Thank you, Destiny. Thanks for my wings. Thank you for everything.”
He looked upward. Then his wings cupped and seemed to catch a rush of wind she could not feel. Tazz felt it, too; he arched his lovely neck and whinnied and lifted his forefeet into an easy leap and went cantering up the sky as if he were skylarking up a dark meadow thick with starflowers. Dusty stood watching Tazz running to the Milky Way, watching Skye ride. At first she could see Skye’s rapt face, the arrow-straight lines of his arms and back and shoulders as he rode. She could see Tazz tucking his chin and snorting like a colt. Then she lost sight of the horse in the stardark, she could see only those great wings, and Skye seemed to be a white swan flying. Then he was a white comet in the night. Then a bright star.
Dusty got her mouth moving at last. “Thank you,” she whispered. He was far away, but she knew he heard her, even … even in eternity, whatever it was like. She whispered, “If you see my mother, tell her I’m all right too, would you, Skye?”
“Well,” Dusty told Katelyn in homeroom, “I got to stay in a foster home last night.”
“What?” Katelyn stared. Katelyn was wearing frosted lilac eyeshadow that matched her frosted lilac fingernails but not her brown eyes.
“You didn’t hear? I bet it was in the papers this morning.”
“Like I read the newspaper?”
“Don’t you listen to the news either?”
“Not in the morning! I’m doing good if I can stand upright in the morning.” Although she’d managed to get her makeup on, obviously. “What happened? Your father—” Katelyn stopped short.
Dusty had long since forgiven Katelyn for speaking the simple truth about what had happened to Skye. “Daddy confessed,” Dusty said as cheerfully as if she were talking about new shoes. “He spent the night in jail.”
Katelyn peered at her, and no wonder. Dusty knew she shouldn’t be smiling, but she couldn’t help it. It was so good to be well again. No pain in her back. None. She felt well and strong enough to handle anything, even what might happen to her father. “He’s out on bail now,” she added. “He’s home.” And he was smiling, too. When she’d left for school, he had been sitting at the kitchen table, stark sober, watching her sashay out the door and looking like he wanted either to cry or to sing hallelujah.
Katelyn was still staring at her. “I don’t get it. Why are you not totally freaked?”
“I … I’m just really relieved.” Dusty couldn’t tell Katelyn about her back, because that would have meant telling Katelyn about Skye, and Katelyn wouldn’t understand. Katelyn was the kind of person who was good with people but not spirits. “I’m glad it’s over,” Dusty added, her words sounding lame even to her. It wasn’t over yet. Daddy had to stand trial. He might go to prison.
“I don’t care,” Daddy had said to her, his eyes alight. “Just so you’re all right, I’m the luckiest guy alive, and I don’t deserve it. Your back is really okay? Really?”
“Daddy started to get himself a drink,” she told Katelyn, “but then he threw it down the sink.”
“Don’t expect that to last.” Katelyn was tapping her pale purple fingernails on the desk.
“My back’s feeling better,” Dusty blurted.
“That’s good.” Katelyn was not impressed. “Does your father have a good lawyer? Don’t answer the phone when you get home. If it’s in the paper, you’re going to get hate calls.”
Katelyn was just trying to help, Dusty knew. But there was too much that Katelyn did not understand, had not experienced and therefore could not possibly understand, no matter how hard she tried. With a pang, Dusty realized that Katelyn was no longer her best friend.
An angel was. An angel she would probably never see again.
Dear Diary,
Saturday. I went to see the Ryders today and told them all about Skye. I tried to explain what it was like when he got his wings. And when he rode Tazz up to the stars. I tried to show it to them, but I don’t know if I can ever tell anybody what it meant to me to see that. I think that all the rest of my life, whenever anything seems too hard or too scary I will just think of that angel boy on horseback, riding up that dark sky trail, and I will be okay. It’s a blessing that will never leave me that I was able to see that.
Good-bye, Skye. Smile down on me sometimes.
Good-bye, Tazz. I miss you, but I’m glad you’re strong and well now, like I am.
I feel all the way alive now, right to my bones. These past couple of years I thought I was living, but I wasn’t, not really. In my heart I felt like it was all over for me, I just wanted to lie down and stay that way. But now that Skye touched me I feel like it’s all just beginning. Funny that a dead boy should give my life back to me, but … It’s weird, but it feels good. Like I do. Just plain good. Like I want to go out and eat cheeseburgers, and pizza, and cake with ice cream.
And go riding. Tazz was the best horse ever, but still–there’s a whole world of other horses out there.
It was October, one of those blue-and-gold October days when you knew winter was coming but it didn’t matter, and Dusty was out riding on her new horse, a tall gray thoroughbred mare named Dawn Treader. Her best friend rode with her on one of the chestnut mares, and her best friend was Skye’s brother Canyon.
“This is pretty cool,” he said, the hush in his voice telling her that he was seeing the same things she was: that the woods trail was a dream of silver-yellow aspen; that the gate was gone, the ditches filled in and overgrown with wildflowers, the scars almost healed on the hemlocks; that the sky was as blue and deep as the blue fire in Tazz’s eyes the night Tazz had run to the stars. “It’s no wonder Skye liked this,” Canyon said. The trail, he meant. Or maybe he meant being on a horse. It was the first time he had ridden the trail on horseback, his head eight feet above the ground.
“He rode like he absolutely loved it,” Dusty said.
They followed the path through the fringes of the woods, into a meadow wild with scarlet sumac, blackberry sprawls, purple fall flowers in yellow sunlight. Ahead lay soft trail running gently uphill. “Want to canter?” Dusty asked.
“Sure!” Canyon leaned forward like a young hawk spreading its wings.
She cantered a little behind him, watching him, feeling a lump in her throat: He was so handsome. Most of the time she saw him for who he was, Canyon, her buddy—but today, riding, with his face lifted to the wind that way, he looked just like Skye.
“Hot dog!” she yelled at him.
At the top of the rise they slowed to a walk again. Canyon was smiling, his head high, the color riding high in his cheeks.
“Feeling groovy?” Dusty kidded him.
“Huh?”
“Never mind.” What a glorious day. Just because it was another reason to be glad, Dusty said, “Dad called me today.” Her father had been sentenced and was serving his jail term, but on a work-release program so that he could continue to support his daughter and she could stay in their home. “He said, ‘You know what day this is?’ It’s been six months since he’s had a drink.”
Canyon nodded. “Six months since Skye died.”
As suddenly as the weather changing, life was serious—yet Dusty knew he hadn’t said it to be me
an. There wasn’t any meanness in Canyon. He had something on his mind.
The horses swished through late daisies and asters. Down below, the darkwater pond threw off sparkles like stars. Dusty rode in silence, waiting.
Canyon asked, “You ever talk with spirits anymore?”
She wasn’t expecting that. It spooked her. “Um, no. Why would I?”
“I don’t know. I just … Listen, I just want you to know it never seemed weird to me. I mean, even the very first time I met you, I believed you. It makes sense to me that there would be … you know, angels and stuff.”
This wasn’t like Canyon. He didn’t usually talk much. Dusty’s mare swerved to a halt as she peered at him. “Something got you thinking about Skye?”
He stopped his horse and looked at her. The only sounds were a lark calling, a horse stamping, late summer bugs talking in the tall grass.
“Canyon, spit it out. What’s happened?”
He sighed, then asked her very quietly, “Did you hear about that little girl who was lost out west? Out in Glacier Park?”
“No.”
This was it, this was what was riding heavy in him, she could tell by his intense stillness as he faced her over his horse’s ears. “There was an article in the city paper. Mom showed it to me. Little girl three years old, wandered off, and she was missing for days, they gave up on her, but here she came toddling up to a ranger station. She said an angel came and rescued her and gave her a horsie ride out of the woods. An angel on horseback.”
Everything seemed to stop for a moment. Dusty could not hear the summer bugs. She could not feel Dawn Treader breathing under her.
“Huh!” she managed to say.
“Of course, nobody’s paying any attention to her. It’s just a cute story. Maybe she dreamed something. She’s just a little kid.”
The world rustled back to life as Dusty got herself and Dawn Treader moving again, lifting her head to look to the sky. She saw a butterfly rising like an orange spark. She saw a hawk soaring. Off in the distance, thunderheads billowed.
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