by Lola StVil
“Dad, what is it? What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Nothing...nothing. You need to go back to class,” he says.
“Are you sure nothing is wrong?” I ask again.
“Yes, everything is fine,” he replies.
Why is my dad lying to me?
*********
My parents scold me for what seems like another hundred years. Then they do the worst thing a parent could possibly do: They refuse to sign me out of school. So I suffer through the day. When school is finally over, I race outside and find Randy waiting for me near the football field. Randy Westfield is my best friend and the reason I’m not in the psych ward.
He gets what it’s like to be on the outside. And he’s okay with not being Mr. Popular. Well, mostly. I think we always meet by the football field because it’s the closest he can get to making the football team.
Randy is not the toughest guy around. He’s tall and on the scrawny side. He wears glasses and has a mess of dusty blonde hair that refuses to be tamed. He has a few pimples that never go away no matter what medication his dermatologist prescribes him. He stands a few yards away, backpack in hand, shaking his head at me disapprovingly.
“Pryor, Pryor, Pryor. What am I going to do with you?” he jokes.
“My hand slipped and landed on Harper’s face—a few dozen times. Guess I’m really clumsy,” I reply, teasing.
“It was all anyone could talk about. Frankly, young lady, I’m disappointed,” he says seriously.
“You are?” I ask.
“Yeah, you should have texted me. You know I hate to miss your fights. I paid for season tickets and I expected to get front row seats.”
“I promise, Randy, next time I will send out an alert.”
We start walking down the New York City streets. We’re so used to the hustle and bustle of the city, we hardly notice the parade of people whizzing by us.
Randy takes a pill out of his pocket and pops it into his mouth.
“What’s this one called?” I ask.
“Pro-Buff.”
I burst out laughing, and he pushes me lightly to get me to stop.
“It’s guaranteed to work this time,” he vows.
“You know they are just scams, Randy.”
“No, not this one. It was endorsed by this famous actor guy.”
“Okay, what actor guy?” I ask.
“He does all those action hero films overseas.”
Randy has been trying to gain weight and bulk up since I met him a year ago. He takes a bunch of these crazy pills, shakes, and vitamins.
They all promise to give him muscle mass and strength. So far all the pills have managed to do is take hair off his arms, turn his lips green and, my favorite, make him cross-eyed.
That happened last month. It lasted about a week. I laughed so hard I was in serious danger of passing out.
“This one is different; it generates cells or something,” Randy pushes.
“So you’re going to turn into Spiderman?” I tease.
“Maybe. Then I could scale tall buildings and cause havoc in New York.”
“If you had super powers, you’d only use them to get laid.”
“Well yeah, what do you think I’m scaling walls for?”
We share a laugh just as a group of guys come from around the corner. We know them from school. They look like they are straight out of a bad after-school movie. There’s no need to describe them to you individually.
Let’s just say there are five of them: Stupid, Brawny, Idiot, Stupid Jr., and Loser. The fact is none of them have had a single thought in their heads that wasn’t put there by someone else. They block our way and prevent us from getting by. There’s a smile on their collective face that tells me they are determined to be assholes. Randy looks at me, troubled.
“Um...could you guys...excuse us?” Randy says, not making eye contact.
“Why don’t you try going around us?” Loser says with malice in his eyes.
Randy takes my hand and we try to go around, only to have them block our path once again.
Randy flashes me a warning. He jokes about it, but he hates when I fight. He’s the kind of guy who avoids confrontation as much as he can. Don’t get me wrong; he’s not a coward. He would never take off and leave me with these ‘Vin Diesel’ knockoffs. Still, he would rather we cross the street. So we try and they block us yet again.
“This ‘bully in the school yard’ crap is getting really old,” I warn them.
‘Brawny’ shakes his head and sneers as he talks.
“You know what confuses me?”
“Counting to ten?” I reply.
“What confuses me is why an okay looking girl like you would be caught with this pimple-faced freak,” he says.
The others smile, enjoying the look of defeat on Randy’s face.
“Randy has pimples so you call him pimple face? Really? That’s as far as your imagination can go?” I ask.
“It’s fine, Pryor, I don’t care,” Randy insists.
“You want us to be more creative, then fine. Your friend is a freak who has to jerk himself off because no girl would ever touch him. In fact, I’m pretty sure he’s still a virgin.”
The group starts to laugh and move in closer. I step up to the leader, AKA “Loser,” and look him straight in the eye.
“That’s much better. But you guys are not quite there. Say something really awful about Randy. Something that really shows how much of a prick you really are,” I challenge him.
The army of rejects is taken by surprise and so is Randy. They can’t believe I’m encouraging them to insult my best friend. We have only known each other for a year, but Randy and I clicked from day one. And yet here I am, daring them to talk crap about him.
See, the thing is I need them to say something really offensive so my parents won’t be too mad when I beat the hell out of the humans before me. The jackpot would be if they touched me. Then I could break a bone or two. At least that’s how I see it.
“You really want to hear what we have to say?” Stupid Jr. asks.
“Fuck this, enough talk. Let’s just pound his ass to the ground,” Idiot says, truly earning his name.
“Perfect. But to get to him, you have to get past me; so hit me,” I reply.
“Don’t think we won’t, little girl,” Brawny says.
“Yeah, maybe we can teach you some respect,” Loser says.
“Pryor, no. Let’s just turn back. It’s no big deal,” he says.
“Don’t you think it’s sad you need a girl to protect you? God you’re pathetic,” Stupid says.
“I don’t need her to protect me,” Randy says, coming to the front.
“Look, freak has some balls after all,” Brawny says.
“Yeah, I do. So what now?” Randy challenges, trying to keep his voice from shaking.
His fear level rises with every passing moment. His levels are spiking higher than I’ve ever seen them. Yet, he stands ready to fight.
“Forget it. You’re such a pussy; we can’t even bother with you,” Stupid Jr. replies.
They nod their heads in agreement and start to go past us. I watch Randy’s wave of fear decline the further away they get. They are nearly out of earshot when Brawny says to Stupid, “He’s such a damn loser. No wonder his mom took off.”
Randy moves so quick he reminds me of my uncle Jay, a guardian with the power to move at lightning speed.
Randy bolts after Brawny and tackles him. All of us are taken off guard. Brawny’s friends are just as shocked as I am. Soon they snap out of it and pull Randy off of their friend. They throw Randy to the ground and start to beat down on him. It never occurs to them to keep an eye on me: big mistake.
I yank Stupid by his collar and hurl him down the street with little effort. Idiot and Stupid Jr. swing at me from both sides. I duck their blows, plant my feet firmly on the ground, grab them both by the leg, and flip them onto the concrete.
The other two come to help their fallen
friends. They tackle me to the floor. I grab Brawny by his neck and press tightly. I can see the shock spread through his face. He is nearly twice my size and knows it’s impossible to do what I’m doing.
I don’t choke him hard enough to kill him, just hard enough for him to wish he were dead. Then I throw him over to the side like a bag of trash. Loser, the last fool remaining, looks down at me on the ground with venom.
He picks me up from the ground by my throat. My feet dangle helplessly in the air.
Randy runs to help me by pounding on Loser, but it does no good. He thinks he has me, so he leans in and says, “If it weren’t daylight outside, my punishment would be more...personal.”
He looks for fear and panic in my eyes but doesn’t find it. Instead I smile at him.
“You’re really going to miss them,” I say, managing to choke the words out.
“Miss what?” he shouts.
“These,” I reply as I reach out with both arms and rip his nipples from his chest.
He drops me instantly and cries out to Omnis. Blood makes its way down the front of his shirt. He holds his chest in pain as his friends come over to help him.
“We can’t just leave them there,” Randy says, looking back as we make a run for it.
“Nipples are not, in fact, essential to humans. He’ll live,” I inform him.
Randy looks back at the bloody footballer and says:
“You’re right about one thing; he sure will miss them.”
*************
It’s an hour later and we are at Randy’s favorite place in the world: McDonald’s. He eats so much junk; I have yet to figure out how he stays so thin. He has downed four burgers and a pile of fries. Now he sips his fountain drink, quietly.
“What is it?” I ask, knowing how rare it is for him to be silent.
“Nothing, just thinking,” he says.
“About the plight of the bald eagle or about what just happened?” I joke.
“Well, the eagle is a majestic bird,” he jokes.
His smile doesn’t last long, however.
“Randy, talk to me.”
“You just pulled a guy's nipples off, you tackled like a gang of football guys. How the hell did you do that?” he asks.
“I’ve got like the whole Buffy The Vampire Slayer series on DVD so...”
“C’mon, Pryor. How are you so powerful and you know, so ‘kick-ass’?”
“My dad is nagging me about being able to defend myself. So, he taught me some self-defense stuff.”
“It’s more than that. What are you hiding?” he insists.
I’m a Noru: A very powerful hybrid of Guardian Angel and the Angel of Death. Only five of us exist, and we are always in danger of being hunted by evil.
“Randy, I’m not hiding anything. Now, why don’t you tell me why you tackled those guys?” I ask.
“They never should have said the stuff about my mom. She only left us because she wants to make her dreams come true. That’s what you’re supposed to do with dreams: chase them until they come true. And they will. Someday she’ll be a famous singer and then she’s coming back,” Randy says.
We both know his mom most likely will never show up. She took off five years ago to work with some music producer who was interested in her songs. Turns out, it was a scam. Randy’s dad asked her to come back to New York, but she telephoned and said that Randy and his dad were holding her back. She hasn’t been heard from since.
“Sometimes, I can’t remember her face,” he admits.
“I know it sucks big hair balls that she’s gone but you have me. And I don’t know if you realized it or not, but I’m quite a looker,” I say in a bad 1940’s accent.
Randy looks at me strangely.
“Sorry, I’ve been watching all these old movies with my mom. She used to do like quality time and junk with her mom and so now, it’s my turn to suffer,” I tell him.
“Pryor, the whole ‘family together’ thing mostly sucks, right?”
“Well, my little brother took my favorite sweater and gave it a green crayon makeover.”
“Sam is gonna be a hell of an artist,” Randy replies.
“My mom totally betrayed me this morning and talked about my love life in front of my dad.”
“Someone dared to mention ‘he who shall not be named’? Someone actually said the name ‘Aaden’?” Randy jokes.
“Ha, ha, it’s not funny.”
“Seriously, when are you going to tell me more about this guy?”
“There’s nothing to tell, Randy,” I lie.
For the record, I don’t enjoy lying to him. I want to tell Randy everything, and I will one day. But I don’t want him to freak out. He might think I’m nuts. Or worse he might start to think of me differently somehow.
“So...having a family is lame, right?” he asks.
“You have a family. You have your dad,” I remind him.
“Yeah, he’s alright. He likes to give me high fives, and he can’t figure out how to work a computer to save his life, but yeah, he’s alright.”
I leap into his arms and hug him tightly.
“I think I need one,” I say to him.
“What, here? No.”
“Please, Randy?”
“No, it’s embarrassing.”
I stick out my lower lip in a dramatic pout.
“Okay, okay, put that weapon away,” he says.
He then leans in and starts singing in my ear. His voice is beautiful and makes me feel like I do when I am flying in the air. Randy’s voice can make the drama that is high school go away, and that’s his special power.
“So, what do you think?” he asks when he’s done.
“I think your voice can move angels...”
************
“Reesie!” Sam yells as I walk through the door. Although he often gets on my nerves, Sam is pretty cute. He’s the only four-year-old in the world that could lift our townhouse up over his head. He did just that a few months ago. Thankfully it was late at night and my Uncle Jay was able to use his powers to convince the neighbors they didn’t see what they saw.
I hug the rug rat and look down at him. He looks up at me, smiling. That usually means he wants something from me.
“Chess?” I ask.
“3D chess,” he says.
His intelligence far surpasses kids his age, which is why it’s not a good idea to put him in human school. It would bring about unwanted attention, not to mention the fact that Sam is immortal.
“Okay, set it up, and I’ll be right there,” I tell him.
“Yes!” he says gleefully as he takes off down the hallway.
I look up and find my parents looking at me with concern.
Aw crap, how could they find out about the fight, I mean really, I just had it. Did the footballers tell? No, they have too much pride to admit a girl beat them up. Wait, are nipples really important to humans in some way that I overlooked? Hmmm...I should have just ripped a toe or two from Loser. Damn it.
“Reesie, your mom and I need to talk to you,” my dad says in a tone way too serious for my liking.
“Wait, before you say anything, I didn’t know it was a useful body part; honestly,” I vow.
“What are you talking about?” my mom asks, confused.
“Um...nothing. Never mind. So no one called you guys?” I ask casually.
“No,” my dad replies.
“Good, so...what’s up? Oh wait, I know: I’m grounded. No Internet. No phone and no flying.”
“This isn’t about this morning,” my mom says with deep sadness in her voice.
“Okay, well tell me. What is it?”
My mom comes over, takes my hand and guides me towards the staircase. It’s our special spot, ever since I was little. When she had to explain something she knew I would have a hard time with, she would sit down with me at the top of the stairs.
“Mom, what’s wrong?” I ask, growing suspicious.
I wish I could read her fear leve
l, but I can’t read my family members. However, I only need to look into her eyes to know something very bad is coming.
“Mom?”
“Carrot, I have something to tell you and I want you to know that I did everything I could in order to stop this from happening. It’s out of my hands,” she replies with a pained voice.
“Stop what?”
“I was at work today and I received the new Bytrin for the week.”
You know how there’s supposedly a list that Death has of people that are going to die? Well, it’s not a list. It’s actually an app on iTunes. Or at least it is nowadays. The app is called Bytrin.
Bytrin shows a 3D map of the human world. On that map there are complex patterns that come to life. And every week, a new piece of the pattern reveals itself. Within the patterns are names of the soon to be dead. The Bytrin’s patterns are so complex, only Time, Fate and my mom can make them out.
“Mom, stop with the pausing, I can’t take it. Whose name did you see on the Bytrin? Who is about to die?”
“Randy.”
CHAPTER TWO: THE GATHERING
Panic creeps between my toes, up my spine and spreads to my heart. It feels like someone has yanked the only solid ground I had right from under me. Now I’m floating away into the abyss. Anytime I ever felt that way, I always had Aaden. Now I don’t have him. All I have is Randy, and I’ve just been told he’s about to be taken away.
“Mom, you can’t take Randy. Please, you can’t!” I shout as I stand up and latch onto her.
“I tried to reason with the other Council members, but I’ve looked at the pattern and there’s no way around it; Randy has to die.”
“No, he doesn’t. Please, I need him. He’s my friend.”
“Honey, I know how much he means to you, and I’m sorry it has to be this way.”
“No, it doesn’t have to be like this. You have to talk them out of it. Randy can’t die, Mom, please.”
“Believe me, if there was a way to stop this from happening, I would. You know that,” she pleads.
“How can you take him from me? He’s my only friend. He’s a good guy; he has never hurt anyone,” I shout at her.