by Dana Faletti
I started walking towards my house, leaving them behind. Hopefully Silas didn’t get his arsenal kicked too hard.
I’d learned as of late that the Micro’s concerns didn’t always concern me. Although they hung out in my little square of the universe sometimes, their world and their worries were celestial. They argued over politics, government, entertainment – none of it earthly, and most of the time their subject matter was totally lost on me. There were names and places I’d never heard of, or at least couldn’t remember… There were parties and other events they’d gab about. I’d learned to distance myself from their agendas unless the agenda included soul saving.
I’d taken sides one time. Never gonna do that again. I don’t know what Silas would have done to me, but a night’s worth of getting cussed out in loud and shrieky Italian was enough to teach me my lesson.
As long as little Georgia was safe, I could sleep well tonight. And I wanted to at least look rested tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
Sweet sweet tomorrow!
I was meeting Joshua Pride at Mackle Park. We were going to study for an English test together after school. Just thinking about it brought the familiar goose bumps to land on my shoulders and make their way down my arms. I shivered, smiling at the hotness I felt on my cheeks and in other places.
Killing demons and saving souls was definitely the greatest high ever. Being within arm’s reach of Joshua Pride was a really close second.
I sighed, pushing out all of that pent up air that ballooned in my chest whenever I thought about him. Hmm – maybe I wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight after all.
8
“So what do you think? Tomorrow night?” His black eyes stared me down hard, eyebrows raised, not really smiling but hopeful. His lips looked so soft, pouting just a little, just enough. When they parted to speak, I knew he could hear me breathing. “Six thirty?” He put his hand over mine. Electricity shot through me, and I had to close my eyes for a second.
What did I think? Wait a minute, let me catch my breath here.
I knew my face was flushed. I had to collect myself. Okay, so he’d just asked me out. The totally most gorgeous guy I had ever met wanted to go out with me. And, every last ounce of me wanted to say “Yes. I think it is absolutely perfect.”
I only had one problem.
How was I going to get past the dynamic duo?
I’d spent the first sixteen years of my life trying to get my parents to allow me to do things they always thought I was too young to do. Now, I was pretty sure Silas and Jules were going to thwart my efforts at having a life.
“Sounds Perfect.” What the hello else did I have but chances to take, right?
Then he smiled, and his whole face was sunshine, the kind that slowly comes out from behind a cloud and heats you up gradually to a smolder. It’s so hot, but you just have to close your eyes and turn your face upwards – bask in it, bake in it, take it in.”
“Awesome.” And then he so gently brushed a stray wisp of hair behind my ear. I sucked in my breath, trying to deny the goose bumps that must have been all over my face by then. If Joshua’s smile was August sunshine, his fingertips were the first rays of spring, warming up my skin. “See you tomorrow, Callie.” And he turned away, heading towards his car.
I watched him amble coolly away from the picnic table where we had been feigning studying The Scarlet Letter in between bouts of heavy flirting and staring at each other wordlessly.
Who even did that? I never expected to feel this way about any guy. I mean, my thoughts about him were poetic, my daydreams of him were borderline inappropriate, and my attraction towards him was impossible to interrupt once it was set in motion. I was magnetized by Joshua Pride. Something about being with him made me never want to be anywhere else. I was beginning to get used to the way he seemed to devour me with his eyes. I honestly didn’t think he even realized when he was doing it, which kind of made it even worse… or maybe better.
All I knew was when he looked at me like that, I wanted to smash his lips with my lips, pull his face so far into my own, that he could only see my eyes, maybe even see my truths. As scary as it was, something inside of me wanted him to know.
Everything about me.
It didn’t make any sense, and I knew that. Why on earth would I tell Joshua Pride? I could just hear the conversation we would have.
“In my spare time? Well, I mostly like to kill demons and talk to other angels who are invisible to your mortal eyes. Totally rocks. By the way, I’m an angel, and I don’t age. Staying sixteen forever. Pretty cool, huh? Oh, and I also like to swim. What about you?”
He’d run before I could say “How do you like me now?”
So, why did I feel this overwhelming urge to bare my innermost secrets to him of all people? I had to roll my eyes at my own utter stupidity. Probably just because he was so freakin gorgeous…
So. Freakin. Gorgeous. And I, Callie Evans, was going out with him tomorrow.
Smile, sigh, dance a little as I head towards home.
I still had to ask my parents if it was okay that I go out with Joshua tomorrow, but I wasn’t exactly worried about it being that they were so totally clueless lately about where I was and what I was doing. Not that I would use the whole cloaking thing to my advantage in this situation. Really tempting, but I didn’t want to cross whatever line might exist out there in the cosmic courts. I didn’t know for sure what the laws of Arc or whatever were, but if it looks and smells like it’s wrong… yeah – I’d just ask them like usual. If their reaction wasn’t what I wanted, maybe I’d revisit rebellion.
Mom had already sniffed out my crush anyways. She always did, and I was pretty sure that it had been cake for her. I mean English with Josh was the last class of the day, and the short bus ride home after was clearly not enough time for me to shake off the red faced permasmile or dreamlike gaga eyes he inspired in me daily. So, she asked, and I spilled, and she hadn’t totally freaked out like I’d expected.
We actually had ended up dishing for a while about guys and other things. She’d told me some stories about her first hard crush – she was apparently really into some dude who went to the military and was stationed in Japan or China or something. She’d sneaked and called him like a thousand times a day until Gram had gotten the phone bill and busted her. She’d had to work two jobs all summer to pay her phone bill.
“What happened with the guy?” I’d asked her.
“Turned out to be a real jerk. Then, I met your Dad, and the rest is history.”
“I can’t believe you were seventeen when you met Dad.” Nuts to think my mom had been one year older than I was now when she met her future husband. I hadn’t even had a serious boyfriend yet.
“Crazy, huh?” She had given me a half smile and patted my hand. “Guess it was just meant to be. I guess I believe that God creates matches for people, and your Dad is my match, my soul mate, you know?”
I didn’t know, but I hoped. At least for humans… I mean… and I guess I hoped for myself that Silas didn’t know all the rules. Maybe somewhere out there in the cosmos beyond the planet earth, there was a match for me, and I’d get to meet him someday after eternity.
I’d smiled at Mom then. Sometimes, she was actually really cool. We were having a moment when my Dad came wiggling through the front door.
“Gotta go gotta go gotta go right now. I gotta go!” His voice had echoed as he danced past, visibly squeezing his butt cheeks together and quickly saluting us before high kneeing it down the basement steps to the downstairs bathroom. “I’m goin’ in ladies! Wish me luck!” His voice echoed from below.
Slam. Click. Water on. I didn’t know why but Dad liked the shower to be on when he went to the bathroom.
I smirked and looked up at my mom. “Awww… That’s your soul mate.”
“Yep.” She’d shaken her head, and we’d both laughed.
So, I had a feeling that my parents were going to be okay with me going out on a date with a guy. I’d have to endu
re a painful pre-sortie lecture, no doubt, but I’d deal. My eyes were on the prize, and what a pretty prize he was.
So, how to get past Silas and Jules or to at least keep them out of my head? That was the bigger problem. Maybe they wouldn’t be around. I didn’t know where they went or what else they did when they weren’t my sidekicks. I wondered if they had other Arcs to coach or if each Micro was assigned to their own Arcs. Did every Arc get two like lucky me?
I still had a lot of questions about how angel training and warfare really worked, I guess. It just seemed like after a round of demon destroying, the Arc part of my brain would shut down, and I’d revert instantly back to being regular Callie, focused on tasks at hand – school, my family, friends, Joshua Pride’s big beautiful lips… What would it feel like to…?
Wait… this was exactly it. I’d get sidetracked by regular teenage girl thoughts and mostly forget my questions for Silas and Jules. Maybe it was a little mind game they used on me, like cloaking. I wouldn’t put it past them, that was for sure. I’d have to start writing down all of my questions.
Scary thought –what if I got a summons from Silas or Jules while I was out with Josh? Oh, that would be rich… Please God, let the demons take a personal day tomorrow.
Oh well, for now, I’d just focus on getting around them and getting out the door with my own personal version of what an angel should be.
9
“This is so amazing. I can’t believe you set this up.” We were on the roof of the school, lying on our backs next to each other, staring up at the sky.
“Yeah, I sort of have a relationship with Gus, the custodian.” He turned towards me, propping himself up on his elbow and looking down at me with those eyes. “I told him I wanted to impress a crazy special girl, and he gave me the keys to the utility room.” He smiled. “I can’t really take the credit; it was his idea.”
“Well, it was an awesome idea.” I stood up and walked over to the edge to lean on the railing, partly because I felt a sticky anxious need to not be practically under him and his deep black eyes, partly because I felt a sticky anxious need to be completely under him and his deep black eyes. This desire was almost too much for me, and I needed to rein it in. Physical distance was the only way I could regain my senses.
This night was just too perfect to even be real. When Joshua came to pick me up a few hours before, I wasn’t sure what to expect. He was wearing a white button down and jeans, looking perfectly simple and simply perfect, cheesy as that may sound. His normal nonchalance was just slightly off, but the fact that he was nervous only strengthened my crazy attraction towards him. I usually felt awkward around guys I was crushing on when my parents were around, but when Josh walked in, everyone else disappeared. Sure, there was a legion of butterflies in my stomach, but it wasn’t because anyone else was watching. Only his eyes made every inch of me - inside and out – completely aflutter.
“You can see the city lights from up here.” I didn’t really care about looking at anything other than him right now, but it was nervous chatter. He picked up on that and grinned up at me. “I wonder how many girls Gus has brought up here.” Attempt at humor. “What do you think?” Nervous laughter. Why was he staring at me so hard? Not polite to stare, Joshua. It was totally making my head spin over here.
“Do you even know how pretty you are, Callie?”
And, in fast forward slow motion - because I could have memorized every slight muscle movement he made in the second it took him to get off the ground and make his way over to me and the view from up here - he was next to me, his skin heating my own just by being inches away. I felt my face go a thousand shades of red, partly because of his words, partly because of how close we were. I wanted to look away but my gaze was stuck in his eyes. His hands found mine and he pulled me closer so that our faces were almost touching. I inhaled the apple mint smell of him that drove me crazy when I tried to replicate it in my daydreams. His fingertips circled their way up and down my arms, one finally resting on my shoulder, the other playing around in the tangle of sweat that was my hair. All the while, his eyes never left mine. The intensity of the moment stole my breath.
And when he kissed me, I didn’t need to breathe. I no longer needed oxygen. I could survive on him alone. He was sunshine on the inside. His lips, his skin, heat and softness all at the same time.
“Whoa.” I opened my eyes, and he was smiling down at me over the bridge of my nose.
“Yeah, me too.” He traced my lips and stared dreamily. Our bodies were still entwined. The fitting like a glove analogy couldn’t even touch us. Not only were we magnets that sought each other out, our bodies seemed to be two pieces of a puzzle, together finally solved. We flowed into each other in a way that clouded our personal borders. Where did I begin, and where did he end? His body curved around mine, turning us into a sculpture, a masterpiece.
“Okay, I have to be totally honest with you, Josh.” I backed up reluctantly and faced him. “I’ve never felt like this before. I mean… it’s a little weird, don’t you think? Like the way the volume of the planet is totally on mute when we stand close together?” He raised his eyebrows. “It’s just… intense... I mean, for me it is.” Hopefully I wasn’t the only one feeling like I was walking around in a dream state right now. Looking at him with his jet black hair cascading down his cheeks and his mysterious black eyes circled with smile lines, I realized I could very well be dreaming.
“Callie, there’s something I have to tell you.”
Thems sounded like bomb dropping words. No! Don’t say it. Don’t tell me you have a girlfriend back in Fort Meyers or you don’t want a relationship right now or worse – you want to be friends. When I looked up at him, he must have known what I was thinking, because he laughed and shook his head.
Then he kissed me again, and I forgot all about girlfriends, bombs and everything else… I think I even forgot my name. Somebody had turned off gravity, and I was floating. I let myself be swept up in the headiness of his lips, his fingertips, the music that played between our eyes when we parted just enough to look at each other.
The world could have stopped spinning, and that music would have kept playing.
When he placed his thumb between our lips and pulled his face back from mine, I came back to earth.
I looked at him, wondering, amazed. Of all of the strange things that had happened in my life over the past few months, this may well have been the most amazing, even hard to believe. “I never expected this.” I said quietly. Sometimes I said too much, but my thoughts seemed to fall out of my lips when Joshua was around.
“I did.” He led me back over to our picnic blanket, and we sat down.
“What?” Well, wasn’t he the picture of confidence...
“The first time I saw you… in class, I mean, I just had a feeling, that’s all.”
“What kind of feeling?” I remembered the way I’d felt about him. At first I thought he was a twenty something ex-con who’d come back to high school to get his diploma. Until he’d smiled at me.
“I just kind of knew there was something different about you.”
You could say that again. I got a sort of sick feeling in my stomach then remembering my earlier conversation with Jules and Silas.
“Of course we want you to go out on dates!” Jules had said earlier when I’d spilled to the micros about where I was going tonight. Totally didn’t expect this reaction but I was relieved. “We want you to act like a typical teenage human, Callie. Aye! Why wouldn’t you date?”
“You know, Calliope,” Silas began, “you have to be involved in day to day life. That is where the battle must be fought. Soon, you will be intervening in Darks crises on your own. Maybe they will arise in the middle of a school day.” Probably not, being that high schools were guarded by Sentries – Angels who stood outside the doors to kind of act like Demon security guards. Once in a while, a stray got past them, but not usually enough to cause too much trouble, just a lot of insecurity and teenage angst, l
ike the one I’d seen in Heather Chandler’s locker mirror before I even knew what a Rayser was. Crazy to think all that crying, all that whispering… and I’d had no clue what was going on around me.
Anyways, Silas and Jules’s reactions were pleasantly unexpected.
“You may be on a date sometime in the future when a situation occurs, Calliope, and you will have to act on it. This is why you are here, my dear, to blend into teenage life and fight on the front lines.”
“Please let the battles be elsewhere tonight” I thought.
“Aye, Mama. Callie, just go out. Have fun.” Jules flew over to me with a devilish grin on her angel face. “So, whose dis boy? Is he cute?”
Cute would not be my descriptive adjective of choice, I thought then, glimpsing at Joshua who was digging in his backpack for something. Demi-God? Micros wouldn’t like that one, probably. Unearthly? No, because there was lots of unearthly around these days, and some of it was anything but pretty.
Josh was just beautiful… that was it. Everything about him was beautiful and honest and just perfect. And, speaking of honest… I wasn’t being completely open with him about how different I actually was from other girls. That nagging to tell him was there again – pick pick picking away at my conscience. I pushed it away. I wasn’t about to sabotage a perfect night.
“What are you looking for?” He was still sifting through his pack, pulling out random items. I didn’t want to know why he carried binoculars and rubbing alcohol in his backpack.
“I want to show you something, but I think I left it in the car. Can you hang here for a sec?”
“Okay.” He leaned into me and brushed my ear with his lips before disappearing down the ladder to the utility room. Goose bumps were having a party on my skin again.
“Ahhh.” I sighed, stretching my legs out in front of me, excited for whatever was coming next.
“Calliope, take my hand.”
Crap! You’ve got to be kidding me!