Zack hesitated. Good, I was on the right track. He wasn’t supposed to tell me anything. But we had made this deal, and I had some leverage. After all, it seemed extremely important to Zack that I met Vitrella’s wish quota. He had to keep me motivated.
Finally, he answered. “Raphael.”
With that, he turned around and left.
For my next question, I would ask if Vitrella had acted under Raphael’s orders or if she had fallen on her own volition. Did Zack’s and Vitrella’s bosses know what they were doing? I had a suspicion they acted against them. Why? To what end?
So many questions—I really had to get cracking on those wishes.
3
A week had passed since my last meeting with Zack, and I really missed him. Admittedly, that wasn’t saying much, because I missed him pretty much every minute of every day I didn’t see him. Major crush.
In my defense, I was a little bit boy attention starved. I had never really had a boyfriend. I had been on dates, sure, and kissed a few boys—well, three, to be exact. But the boys at school had never really been that interested in me. They looked a bit small and puny next to me, which put them off, I think. They probably thought I was fat.
But there was certainly nothing puny about Zack. He was all lean muscles and had an agile, panther-like body. He was all man, even though he only looked a couple of years older than my seventeen years. I could have gone on for hours about how yummy he was, but who would I tell?
My aunt Jeannie had gotten the impression that Zack had broken my heart. I had been very distracted at work, and what else could a teenage girl be upset about other than boys, right? I went along with it, because what else would I have said? The truth was just too far out there.
I would have loved to have talked to my best friend Sarah about it. She had spent the whole summer with her parents in Europe then started college last month. I was sad about that, and it kind of made me regret that I had been dragging my heels with my college applications, which had resulted in me not having anywhere to go at the end of the summer. Working at Aunt Jeannie’s diner was supposed to have been an interim solution, but I really liked it there. Plus, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I had put off filling out applications until it had been too late. Sarah was kind of my only friend, and we talked about everything, so it was particularly hard not to tell her about my current situation.
I most certainly wouldn’t tell my family about Zack, especially since he had convinced me of his angel identity by time-traveling to the moment of my conception. I had actually seen the fallen star landing in my mom’s center when my parents had made love… um… when they had made me. Imagine having that conversation with your father.
Then there was my stepmother, Allison. She was great, but she was the no-nonsense type. She didn’t believe in anything that couldn’t be explained by science or reason. My sisters—six-year-old Marie and ten-year-old Anna—were a dicey subject. Of course, they were too young for me to talk to about a crush on a boy, but we could have talked about all the rest of this Zack business. After all, they had been caught up in it. They had witnessed the demon and possibly the angel too.
Marie has never spoken about that day. She had a couple of sessions with a child psychologist, where she’d claimed that she didn’t remember anything. There hadn’t been any more knife-stabbing incidents, so after a while, my parents had stopped worrying about it. At the time of the demonic possession, Marie had been sleepwalking, and now she slept fine. She behaved exactly like she had before Mal had taken over her body, so she seemed to have gotten over it.
It was different with Anna, though. She had corroborated the story I told in the hospital, which was that Anna’s injury had been an accident. She knew what really happened and had entered a silent agreement with me to not tell the truth. But she didn’t talk to me anymore, so I didn’t really know. I’d tried to talk to her numerous times, but she just tended to be really evasive and leave the room. I’d hoped she would come around, but instead, it was getting worse. She had been making pretty mean remarks about me.
That morning, we were all sitting down at the breakfast table. It was a Sunday, usually a day on which we were allowed to sleep in, but that day, we all had plans. Allison was going to take Anna and me to visit our grandparents—her parents. Marie had riding practice, and Dad had “volunteered” to take her. As he didn’t particularly get on with Grandma, I think he jumped at the chance to go with Marie. Allison put a plate of giant lemon poppy seed muffins on the table and encouraged us to take one. I didn’t really need encouragement. They smelled delicious, and I took a big bite.
Anna pulled a face. “Yuk. They look gross.”
“No, they’re really good,” I said between mouthfuls. “Go on, try one.”
Allison shot me a grateful look.
“No, thank you.” Anna crinkled her nose. “They look like Stella’s face.”
I stopped chewing.
“Anna!” Allison said sharply.
Dad put his newspaper down and looked at his daughter with a frown.
Now, it might seem like an ordinary situation, siblings teasing each other. But her tone was not humorous, and we didn’t really speak to each other like that. Before the demon incident, we had been three sisters who genuinely liked and cared for each other. We had never put each other down or made mean-spirited jokes about each other.
“What?” Anna said, unconcerned. “It’s true, isn’t it?”
She wasn’t exactly wrong about that. I had an infinite amount of freckles on my round, rather pale face. It probably looked a lot like a poppy seed muffin, which I knew wasn’t attractive. Had I mentioned that I wasn’t exactly a knockout?
Still, I was hurt. I didn’t say anything, though. I never did. What had happened to Anna had been completely my fault. If I had to pay for it by bearing some hurtful remarks, then I would.
That day, they just kept coming. Even our grandparents noticed. I overheard Grandma mention it to Allison in the kitchen when I was walking past on my way to the bathroom. I stopped and listened. “I know.” Allison sighed. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”
I did. But I couldn’t tell Allison.
When we left our grandparents’ house in the afternoon, I started to open the door to the backseat.
Anna moaned. “Don’t sit in back with me, Stella. There won’t be any room. Why don’t you sit in the front, where there’s more space?”
Sure, I was a little overweight, but that was just ridiculous.
Allison overheard the comment. “Anna, I don’t know what you think Stella has done to you, but—”
“It’s fine,” I interrupted. “Really. It’s no problem. I’ll sit in front.” I really didn’t want Anna to tell our parents what I had done to her.
We stopped at a gas station, and when we pulled out, it suddenly started snowing. It was the first snow of the year.
“Great.” Allison pulled a face. “The forecast didn’t mention that. I hope it doesn’t get too bad and we make it home.” It got worse. Thick flakes peppered in front of our windshield, and Allison cursed under her breath. She was forced to slow down significantly, much like the other drivers on the road.
I stared out the window. Snow had something hypnotic about it. It was easy to let thoughts whirl around in my head, much like the snowflakes dancing through the air.
Usually, the drive to my grandparents’ house took about three quarters of an hour. On our way back that day, we had already driven about half an hour, and we hadn’t even made it halfway home. Luckily, it stopped snowing as suddenly as it had started. We drove down a road that looked deserted—I guessed that most people had decided not to venture out once the snowfall had started. The trees on both sides of the road were covered in white. They looked beautiful, but Allison had no eye for the scenery. She had trouble finding her way on the road because the street was completely snow covered.
I was looking out at the wintery landscape, still lost in thoughts about A
nna, when I saw him. The boy. I shook my head and did a double take. Am I dreaming? Major, major déjà vu.
No, I was awake. This was happening.
“Stop the car,” I shouted.
4
“What? Why?” Allison asked incredulously, her eyes glued to the windshield and the road ahead.
“Stop the car,” I repeated. “There’s a little boy.”
Apparently, she had been so focused on the white expanse in front of her that she hadn’t even noticed him. Now, she slowly came to a halt and leaned over to peer out the passenger window.
“Da …darn it, what is he doing here?” Allison ran her hand through her short hair, clearly annoyed at the inconvenience of having to stop for this boy and delaying our journey even further. At the same time, she couldn’t just ignore the fact that a little boy was walking along a deserted road alone in this weather.
I was already out of the car before she could protest.
The boy had been ignoring us and had just carried on walking in the direction we had come from.
I crossed the road and ran after him as fast as I could, my trainers ankle-deep in the snow. “Hey, you. Stop.”
The boy turned around and looked at me. He didn’t smile.
“What are you doing here?” The cold condensed my breath to little puffs of air. “Are you okay?”
He didn’t respond.
When I reached the boy, I bent down so we were face to face. He just looked at me very earnestly with his big brown eyes.
I tried again. “Where are you going? Do you need a lift?”
Still no answer, but he also didn’t run away from me. There were tiny ice crystals in his long, dark eyelashes, and his cheeks were red. He must have been walking for a while.
“Aren’t you cold?”
He nodded. Relieved that he understood me, I made a decision. I straightened and offered him my hand. He hesitated, then he took it. I walked back to the car, the boy in tow.
“My name is Stella, and yours?”
He stopped, and I turned around to him. Had he changed his mind? But he was busy dragging his feet through the white snow blanket, making wavy lines.
I raised an eyebrow, but he just held up a finger as if to say “hang on a moment.” He continued dragging the toe of his boot through the snow. It looked as though he was making an A. Maybe the squiggle was supposed to be an S.
“S… A?” I asked.
He nodded and continued. The next letter was an M, and he looked at me expectantly.
“S… A… M. Sam!”
He nodded and gave me a shy smile.
“Well, come on, Sam, you can take a ride with us. We were going in the other direction, though. But at least you can warm up a little bit.”
He hesitated but then shrugged. We took the last couple of steps to the car. I opened the back door for him, let him take a seat, then quickly got into the passenger seat.
“This is Sam,” I said. “Sam, this is Allison, my mom, and Anna, my sister.”
Anna just stared at him with wide blue eyes. Allison studied him for a moment and turned to me expectantly.
“He doesn’t talk. I don’t know where he wants to go.”
Allison continued staring at me with raised eyebrows.
“Well, I couldn’t very much have left him walking around by himself in that weather,” I said, defending myself.
“If he doesn’t talk, how do you know his name?”
“He drew it in the snow.”
Allison nodded. “Hand me my purse.”
I took her purse out of the glove compartment. She pulled out a pen and rifled through the contents until she found an old receipt. She handed both to Sam.
“Here. Write down where you were headed.”
Sam paused then bent over to awkwardly write on the thin piece of paper he had put on his knee. He held it up for Allison and me to see. “Nowhere,” it said in big letters.
Allison closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then peered through the windshield and into the rearview mirror, most likely to check for cars. There were none. But the sun was starting to go down, and it would be even harder to find the way on this snow-covered road in the dark.
“Where did you come from?” my stepmom asked Sam somewhat impatiently.
Sam pressed his lips together, hesitated, then met her eyes with his own, which looked slightly frightened. He held up the piece of paper again and flinched, as if he expected my mom to hit him.
“Nowhere,” Anna whispered.
Allison sighed. “Okay, you’re coming home with us.”
The car crept home through the snowy winter landscape in silence. The roads got better the closer we got to our hometown of Average, but it also started snowing again. When we finally got home in the dark, Allison looked thoroughly exhausted.
Dad opened the door looking worried. A big smile spread across his face when he saw that we were okay, but his smile froze when he spotted Sam. His questioning eyes went to Allison.
She rubbed a hand over her tired face. “Sam, take off your coat and backpack. I’ll make some hot chocolate for all of you.” She looked at Dad and nodded in the direction of the kitchen. Dad understood that this was the signal for “I’ll tell you in private.”
“Anna, why don’t you show Sam your room, some of your toys or something. I’ll call you when the hot chocolate is ready.”
Anna was only too happy to oblige. She had been looking at Sam with interest the entire silent car ride and had even forgotten to insult me. “Come on.” She grabbed his hand, and they ran up the stairs.
Allison pointed at Sam’s backpack and coat and gave me a meaningful look.
I nodded, waited until the boy had disappeared upstairs with my sister, then checked his blue puffer coat. It looked quite old, like a hand-me-down, and I noticed that it seemed a bit too small for him. In his pockets, I found a stone, a snail shell, a broken pencil, and a handful of sand. Nothing gave a clue about who he was, which is what I assumed Allison had wanted me to find.
Maybe I would have more luck with his backpack. With another glance in the direction of the stairs, I picked it up and opened the zipper. There was a big old sweater in it, a pair of jeans that looked fairly new, socks, boxer shorts, a T-shirt, pajama bottoms, a well-worn copy of Harry Potter, a plastic dinosaur, and a toothbrush. It looked to me as if this boy was running away from home. There was nothing in his backpack, however, that indicated where his home was.
I checked the front zipper pouch. All that was in there was a folded piece of paper. My heart started beating faster, and I felt a tingling sensation in my fingertips when I unfolded what looked like a page that had been torn out of a lined notebook.
It was a letter.
Dear Santa,
I don’t want any toys this year or any clothes or stuff for school. My only wish is to spend Christmas with my dad.
Please, can you find him and make that happen?
Thanks, Sam.
5
It was a Sunday evening, but Allison worked at the town hall and was fairly well connected. When I told her that Sam’s belongings didn’t give a clue about his identity and that it looked as if he had run away from home, she left me to finish making the hot chocolate and got busy calling people.
A little later, Dad was making dinner, and Sam, Anna, Marie, and I were sitting at the kitchen table, drinking our steaming hot chocolate with marshmallows. My little sister Marie was quite talkative, and she had no qualms about asking Sam all those questions we felt too uncomfortable to pester him with.
“Can you really not talk?” Marie licked her spoon and, unperturbed by his silence, continued talking. “I couldn’t do that. My friend Kat and I play this game where whoever stays quiet the longest wins, and I always lose.”
Anna rolled her eyes at Sam and elicited a shy smile.
Marie didn’t seem to notice, though. “Why are you here and not with your family? Do you have a family? Where are they?”
Sam buried his n
ose in his mug, but I could see that his cheeks had turned pink.
Anna had noticed too. “Be quiet, Marie,” she hissed. “Maybe he doesn’t want to answer your stupid questions. Maybe something bad happened and you’re hurting him by asking him this. Have you thought about that?”
Evidently, Marie hadn’t. Well, she was six. She just stared at Anna, chocolate forgotten in her hands. Her bottom lip quivered, probably not because Anna had told her off but because it had now entered Marie’s head that something bad could have happened to Sam’s mom and dad.
“I’m sure everything is fine,” I reassured her. “We will soon find out what’s up with Sam and how we can help him.” I added a friendly nod in the direction of Sam, who looked firmly down at the table.
Anna opened her mouth, but luckily Allison came into the kitchen at that point.
“Girls, show Sam the bathroom, please, and wash up. Stella, stay and set the table for dinner, would you please?”
Anna and Marie did as they were told, and Sam followed them upstairs.
While I got cutlery and crockery out of the kitchen cupboards, my stepmom told Dad and me what she had found out.
“My first call was to the police department to find out if a boy matching Sam’s description has been reported missing. But that’s not the case. They’ll call us if that happens, though. It could well be that his caretakers haven’t noticed yet and that the call will come in later tonight. I wasn’t sure what the proper proceedings would be, so I gave Louise a call.”
Allison’s friend Louise worked at the Concord District office of the New Hampshire Department for Health and Human Services. Specifically, she worked at the Division for Children, Youth, and Families, which my mom reminded us of.
“She said that he could stay here tonight but that we should bring him to her office tomorrow morning at nine. She will have sorted out a foster family for Sam to stay with until they find his parents. There will also be a medical examination and a session with a psychologist to determine if there’s a physiological reason for his muteness or if he doesn’t talk for some other reason. It could very well be a psychological trauma, Louise said.”
Wish for Santa: Average Angel Page 2