by S. L. Naeole
Dwayne leaned forward and nudged Chad’s head out of the way so that he could be heard more clearly. “I know what makes her tick, and he’s not going to find it by listening to her talk about lip gloss.”
I looked at Dwayne and pressed him for details. “She’s got a boyfriend, one that she’s been dating since before Graham. They never broke up, even when she and Graham were together. He’s one of those über rich guys that are always traveling and stuff. She brought her car into my dad’s shop one day and he was with her. She was all over him but he wasn’t having any of it.”
“What did he look like?” I asked.
Dwayne smiled at me. “What? You want me to describe him like a girl would?”
My eyes rolled at his question and he laughed. “He’s okay, I guess, if you like that blonde, muscular, super handsome type. All the girls I’ve gone out with prefer the dark and handsome type.”
“So what happened with you? Charity date?” Chad piped in.
While the two of them started quibbling, Shawn squeezed in. “You’re so very different from the other girls, Grace. My girlfriend would be screaming with jealousy if she caught me sitting next to any girl. It’s a good thing she goes to a private school.”
I laughed and sighed, turning my attention back to the two beautiful people sitting in the corner of the classroom. “I hear that a lot. The different part.”
Shawn’s head bobbed in agreement. “You’re the good kind of different, though, and Robert’s very lucky to have you. Don’t tell him I said that. He might think I’m hitting on you or something. And forget I said the first part, too; you might get a big head and totally want my body or something.”
My laughter continued, my face turning red with both amusement and embarrassment. “I give you my word.”
He smiled and leaned back. “Uh-oh. I think Erica just got a bit of bad news.”
I could see what he meant when Erica’s face went from gleeful to devastated with just the few words that Robert said to her as he stood up to leave. I could have felt sorry for her, her face was that pained. But she focused her gaze on me and I saw the cold venom there and I knew that there wasn’t pain there. It was a hurt pride.
“Well, that was informative,” Robert said as he sat down next to me. “I feel like I’ve just been sucked through a vacuum bag that was filled with her entire life story.”
Chad held his nose, as did Shawn and Dwayne as Robert spoke. I looked at them curiously and they all winked at me. Robert chuckled as he filled me in. “They’re preparing for the pile of…well, you-know-what that they’re fairly certain she told me.”
Dwayne smiled and said with a nasal voice, “You got that right. That girl can drop loads like an elephant at a diuretic party.”
I watched Robert’s face light up as he saw Shawn’s reaction to Dwayne’s comment. “She did tell a few pretty outrageous stories, I’ll say that much.”
The bell began to ring, heralding the day’s end and I jumped up and out of my seat, eager to hear what it was that Robert had discovered from what Erica hadn’t said out loud. He gripped my hand and threw my bag onto his shoulder quickly. He said a polite goodbye to Chad, Shawn, and Dwayne and then pulled me out of the classroom with as much speed as he dared without appearing unnatural.
We were out of the school and on his bike before anyone else had exited. I didn’t see the faces of any students as he sped out of the parking lot and down the street, heading in the direction of his home. He said nothing to me, leaving me alone in my thoughts as we raced past homes and trees until we came to the large, white walls that surrounded his house. The gates that kept the outside world at bay opened up and allowed us inside. I had once asked how exactly they did so without a keypad or some kind of remote control and he had simply smiled and wiggled his fingers.
He pulled the bike into the garage that was located on the side of the large house and parked it next to the black Charger that my dad had insisted I be driven in should Robert ever want to take me somewhere. A fine layer of dust covered it, a testament to the lack of use it had received since Robert had convinced my dad to allow me back onto the motorcycle.
I climbed off the seat and looked at the empty stall next to the car. “Your mom isn’t here?”
He shook his head. “She’s away.”
I said nothing else. Over time I had learned that that two word phrase was all I would get as an explanation whenever she was somewhere I wasn’t allowed to know about, answering her call. The small, white Honda that she drove was as inconspicuous as it got until it was parked next to the collection of ebony vehicles that Robert owned, so its absence was just as noticeable.
Robert’s hand lashed out and he caught me by my waist, pulling me into his embrace. “Hold on,” he whispered and before I could even process what it was that he had said, we were whizzing by walls and furniture, doors and windows until we were in his room.
He chuckled as he pried my hands from his jacket, my nails digging so far in, they left little half-moons in the leather. “That wasn’t that bad. I’ve put you through much worse.”
This was true, but he’d never done so while taking me to his bedroom when everyone else was gone. Stacy and Lark would be together somewhere most likely and I doubted that Graham would suddenly appear out of nowhere to disturb us. “So what’s with the rush anyway?” I asked as I felt my heart rate return to normal.
“I wanted to talk to you about what I learned, but I wanted to do it in private. You can’t get any more private than an angel’s bedroom, right?”
I laughed nervously and quickly shifted my focus to the wall behind the bed. He had been doing some redecorating, it appeared. “What’s with the photos?” I pointed to a collage of photographs, all framed in black that were staggered and stacked in a large, asymmetrical grouping. Each photograph was of the two of us, shots from various outings and moments. Some I recognized, others I did not.
“When did this go up?”
He glanced negligently at the photos and shrugged his shoulders. “Probably right after fifth period started.”
“You cut class to put up some pictures?”
He placed his hands on his hips in mock offense and scoffed at me. “As if I would ever do something like that!”
I rolled my eyes and sat on the edge of the bed near the collage. “This isn’t one that I recognize. Who took this one?”
I was pointing at a shot of the two of us seated outside of the school, his arm draped over my knee, the two of us caught in mid-laughter. As surprising as the shot was, what amazed me more was the fact that the two of us looked like we belonged together despite the obvious differences between us.
“Lark did. She took all of the others, too,” Robert responded, not even looking in the same direction. He was standing in front a small white box, his MP3 player in his hand. He fiddled with it before nodding, happy with whatever it was that he’d selected, and placing it into a slot that sat in the middle of the box. The room was soon filled with one of my favorite songs, the mellow rock beat bringing a smile to my face.
“I didn’t know she took pictures, too,” I said and gently stroked the two dimensional angle of Robert’s cheek in one particular photo where he was staring down at me while I laid my head in his lap. I stood away to admire the different shots, each one capturing a moment of intimacy, regardless of the activity that was pictured.
“We’re glowing in each one,” I murmured as I noticed the bright softness that each photograph possessed. “It’s like you’re so happy, it’s bouncing off me, like I’m the white to your black.”
He walked over to me and pulled me to a standing position as one of my favorite songs began to play. “You make me happy. How could it not be seen?”
He placed my hand onto his shoulder and wrapped the other one around his waist. He rested his hands against my waist and we slowly rocked in a circle. “I could spend the rest of eternity with you, just like this.”
I flashed him a wide grin. “I think we�
��d eventually get tired of this song after the first thousand plays.”
“That’s true, but I’m sure that by then we’d be singing our own song.”
I stopped moving and tried to pull away. “Is that what this is about? You’re still trying to get me to turn?”
Robert held fast and forced me to look at him as he argued his point for what was probably the millionth time. “We’re destined to be with each other, Grace. Trust my divine knowledge on this one.”
“I don’t think that I need to remind you that even divinity has a flaw,” I reminded him.
Sighing, Robert allowed me my need for distance. “Well, since we’re not going to talk about our distant future, how about we talk about our near future instead?”
I nodded, liking that idea much better. “I want to know what you learned from Erica today.”
Robert walked over and sat down near the foot of the bed. He patted the wide expanse next to him, the invitation obvious. When I hesitated, he groaned and I ended up sprawled on my back on the bed while he appeared as though he had never moved a millimeter.
“O-kay,” I said with as much patience as I could muster. “Now that you have my undivided attention…”
The bed gently vibrated as he laughed softly. “I’m sorry. I’m just impatient today, aren’t I?” He waited for me to nod in agreement, which I did enthusiastically, before he continued. “What I learned today was something I didn’t expect. Her head was filled with the usual nonsense: movie stars, clothing trends, etc… What I didn’t see there was what surprised me.”
Robert laid down on the bed next to me and the two of us stared at the ceiling as he began to explain what made Erica tick. “Grace, she has no memories of her family. No memories that go past a few days anyway. There are sections in her mind that stretch back weeks, months, but they do not involve anything that would include her parents, any siblings. They simply don’t exist. Not in her head, anyway.
“The entire area where one contains the memories of their loved ones is completely blank.”
“How could that be? She goes home to them every single day. Graham’s met them, spent time with them. How can she not have any memories of them?” The idea that you could not remember those who mattered the most in your life terrified me. How could I even exist if I had no recollection of my dad, or my mom?
“The void isn’t a natural one, Grace. The human mind is capable of erasing itself, to be sure. Disease, stroke, trauma, even shock can all cause the brain to shut down and in an effort to protect itself, it’ll dump memories, skills, even basic human functions. What I saw inside of Erica was something completely different; something that looked like someone intentionally erased the part of her that grounded her, made her, for lack of a better term, human.”
I sat up and rolled over onto my side. “How is that possible?”
Robert turned over to face me, raising himself onto his elbow. “There are many ways. Medication, hypnosis, surgery to name a few.”
“So you think that this was done by a doctor?” I asked, suddenly understanding.
“I don’t have a definitive answer but I am fairly certain that her memory loss is due to medication. It’s the only explanation to the recurring loss. If she’s going home every day then she should form new memories of the people in her life, even if they come as a shock to her, but there is nothing,” Robert explained. He reached his hand out and brushed a finger down the bridge of my nose. “She has a directed focus. It’s a mentally visual mantra.”
“To hurt me,” I said quietly.
He nodded his head. “I cannot be assured that the thoughts that are in her head are genuinely hers but from what I have discovered, as well as from what I have observed, she views you as a threat.”
“A threat to what though?” I heard the pitch in my voice grow higher as my confusion and frustration started to break through my stubborn calm. “How am I a threat to her? She’s the beautiful one, the popular one, the rich one. As she keeps on pointing out, I’m the freak. How am I a threat?”
Robert’s fingers trailed down my arm, ending at my own and intertwined with them as he replied. “You disprove every single one of her claims, Grace. You discredit her simply by existing and when you do so, you become a threat to everything she has built: her reputation, her popularity, her brand of beauty.”
The idea that by “simply existing” I was taking down the monster that was Erica Hamilton sounded about as ludicrous to me as it probably would have to her had she been listening.
“Grace, open your mind and think about it. She calls you the freak, puts you down because of the way you dress, the way you look, ridicules you about who you are and who you associate with but ask yourself, if it came down to it, whose friends would save whom? Would those she calls her friends even bother to acknowledge her?”
I threw myself back down onto the bed and laughed. “That’s cheating, Robert and you know it; Erica would be invincible if she had you on her side.”
Robert moved over me and I looked down to see him hovering, his body just inches above mine. I lifted my hands to grab onto him but he raised himself out of my reach, the tips of his hair falling forward like black rain into his face. “That isn’t fair either,” I said, laughing.
“It’s not supposed to be, but I think I can make an exception for you,” Robert said in a low voice as he lowered himself down on top of me. He should have felt much heavier but I knew he was doing that on purpose to keep me from having to bear his weight.
“So do you really think that Erica’s the way she is because someone is drugging her?”
Robert pushed his hands beneath me on the bed and, holding me, rolled over until I was perched above him, my hair now framing his face in mahogany ribbons. “I would be certain if there was a face that I could see there, or a memory of her receiving the medication, but I suspect that she wouldn’t remember that either if such were the case.
“I hold out hope that this is from human interference and not from something else.”
“Something else? You mean like another angel?”
His eyes grew dark, the glimmering silver turning to a dusky charcoal. “Not another angel. No angel would deliberately mess with another human’s mind like that.”
The hard edge to his tone coupled with the stony iciness behind his eyes caused my blood to run cold as I ran through the possibilities in my mind. “What else could it be then?”
Robert’s sat up slowly, allowing me time to ease myself off him until the two of us found ourselves in a seated position facing each other, me—confused and slightly afraid, he—still and serious.
“I think it’s time I told you about what it is that some humans become when angels try to turn them without permission.”
MYTH
“How good are you with your mythology, Grace?”
The question caught me off guard. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” he began, “more specifically, how well are you versed on mythological creatures?”
“That depends on what you mean by mythological. Are we talking Grecian myths, Scottish? Asian?”
The air around us turned very cold as his mood grew darker. “Have you ever wondered why so many cultures have different versions of the same type of myth? Angels, or winged people are described in various myths all across this Earth. You know the reason for that is because we exist everywhere. We’re far too numerous to exist in the same area without drawing suspicions.
“The same can be said for those that we turn.”
Puzzled, I frowned at his incomplete explanation. “Yes, and you said that you were going to tell me what exactly they are. Is there some kind of correlation between mythological creatures and the humans that have been turned?”
He nodded his head as the beautiful lines of his face grew harsh and hard, his mouth forming a grim line. “When the human being is turned by an angel, the change is usually very beautiful. Your body ceases to age, your illnesses, weaknesses become nonexistent. Yo
u become immortal, with a heart that beats with the rising and setting of the sun and moon, unstoppable, constant. Your skin takes on a glow, nearly imperceptible by humans, and your eyes change color, usually to the same color as the angel that has turned you because that is how the angel turns you; he passes to you some of his divinity.
“But, when an angel isn’t given permission to do this and he does so against the wishes of the Seraphim, his divinity is tainted, cursed by his disobedience. This affects the human he is trying to turn in different ways.”
I listened intently and watched as he stood up to pace the room, his explanation demanding he be anything but still right now.
“I asked you about how well versed you are on mythology because a great deal of mythological creatures are the results of those cursed turns.”
He turned to face me, needing to see me, watch my reaction as he spoke. “Nearly four thousand years ago, a poor, but beautiful farmer woman named Varmila was turned without the permission of the Seraphim by an angel who had fallen deeply in love with her. The turning seemed to go well. There was nothing outwardly different about her until she had an affair with a human and, surprisingly, became pregnant as a result.
“It should have never happened—the turned are incapable of breeding—but still, it did, and her pregnancy went on its normal course. Soon she became sick, and her appetite for normal food waned; she began to crave the taste of raw meat.
“With each subsequent child she bore, she grew hungrier and hungrier for the taste of blood until finally she began killing her own children, even as she continued having them. By the time she gave birth to her last child, the bloodlust had taken over her completely and that baby was born having been nurtured in her mother’s womb solely on the blood of its siblings.
“The Seraphim had had enough of this and destroyed Varmila immediately after her last child was born. They then sentenced the angel who had turned her to a mortal life. This was the beginning of the new laws, the laws that required angels who turned humans without permission to destroy their…creations.”