by S. L. Naeole
I stayed in the shower until the water ran cold, and I shivered almost violently as I dressed, suddenly angry at myself for not choosing something warmer to sleep in. I wrapped my hair in a thick towel and ran to my room, anticipating the warmth that would soon build beneath my covers with Robert.
“Oh dangit,” I said aloud when I entered my room once more and found that Lark hadn’t moved from her spot in the middle of my bed, her eyes still glued to the book. “Are you going to be there all night?”
She finally looked up at me, her face eerily calm. “Robert’s not going to be coming back tonight, remember?”
Oh.
“Oh? Is that all you can say? ‘Oh’?” Lark tossed the book aside and stood up, her movements lithe and graceful. “You sent my brother to spy on Erica. You got him to tell you about the others. You got him to tell you about our mother. And all you can say is ‘oh’?”
I started to back up as she approached me. “I didn’t get him to do anything. I didn’t ask him to tell me about any of that, Lark. He did it on his own.”
She laughed, the sound of bells filling my head. The harmonious peal distracted me long enough for her to maneuver herself directly in front of me, blocking out any path of escape.
“You never have to ask him, Grace. He will always tell you everything because you mean more to him than any of us.” She walked away and sighed, her head hanging low. “It’s how it should be when you’re in love.”
“Lark, I-”
She held up her hand, stopping me from continuing. Her body began to float above the bed, leaving behind no impression that she’d even been sitting on it. “I didn’t come here to argue with you about Robert. He’s a big angel; he can deal with his own mistakes.”
Angry, I folded my arms across my chest, tucking my hands away so I could hide the fists they made. “Mistakes? What mistakes? He-”
“He’s spying on a human for another human. He’s told you about a world that your kind isn’t ready for or willing to accept. He’s broken the rules because of you over and over again, Grace, and he’s going to have to face the consequences for it sooner or later.”
The idea that I was going to get Robert into trouble was enough to sober me up and keep me from interrupting her as she slowly drifted back down onto my bed, this time near the foot, and began pulling her legs in front of her, crossing them. “Come, sit. You must be cold by now.”
I nodded and walked briskly to the opposite side of the bed. I climbed beneath the covers, muffling a shocked squeal from their icy smoothness, and settled myself against my pillows.
When I was still, Lark began to speak again. “You know that Graham and Stacy broke up.”
I quickly bobbed my head down once, acknowledging her statement. She smile sadly and spoke, “I’m feeling very torn about it. The rational part of me says that I should be feeling mutual hurt for Stacy because she is my friend. It’s what an angel should do. But there’s a part of me that I don’t understand that is telling me that I should be flying and singing with joy.
“I cannot talk to Stacy about this, obviously, and Robert won’t listen to me speak about Graham at all, so I’m left with asking you why I feel this way. I consider you one of my closest human friends, Grace, and although you are Graham’s best friend and at one point felt the exact same way that I do about him, I know that you are capable of understanding how I feel and can explain to me why it is that I feel this way in the first place.”
I pushed the covers under my chin so that they wouldn’t muffle my voice, and I looked directly into Lark’s eyes as I began to speak. “You care about him a great deal. You care about Graham in a way that makes everything you know about logic and humans seem unimportant and unnecessary, and you like that because you’re like that. You are a walking contradiction—flawed perfection. You’re an angel who cannot see; at least, not in a conventional way, and that makes you different in both of the worlds you live in.
“Your feelings for Graham are the same way. They contradict what you’re used to and you don’t know how to handle it, so you choose instead to fight it, but it’s like a Chinese finger-trap. You keep pulling away from it and it in turn just grows tighter and tighter when all you really need to do to be free is to push towards it.”
Lark sneered at my explanation. “I give you an opportunity to help me and you give me metaphors involving a child’s toy? I know I care about Graham. I care about Stacy, too. I cannot help but care about them because it comes with this whole angel thing I’ve got going on here, just in case you’ve failed to notice or anything.”
The mocking tone of her voice felt like needles in my head as her words were repeated in my thoughts.
What I want to know is what can I do to stop this? I want to know how do I stop wanting to be with Graham? You did it. You stopped. Tell me how to do it so that I don’t hurt Stacy. Tell me how to do it so that I can avoid hurting Graham.
My head turned away from Lark and I gazed out of the window. The very same window that Robert used to come into my room that first night, the window that he drifted into that first night I told him I loved him. “I fell in love.”
Lark threw up her hands in annoyance. There’s that love talk again. What is with you humans and your incessant speeches about falling in love. Even Stacy said that she didn’t want to date anymore, that she just wanted to ‘fall in love’ and be ‘blissfully complete’ for the rest of her life.
I watched as a car drove down the street and smiled. “Humans may have long and fancy speeches about love. We might write stories or sing songs about it, watch movies about it and yes, we dream about it. But angels…you physically change because of it. Robert would never have grown his wings if he hadn’t admitted that he loved me. You know this far better than I do, so quit trying to find reasons to hate it and instead find reasons to seek it out.”
Lark glared at me, her pale sage glow growing deeper in hue until it reached a deep emerald. You humans always think you know everything, but history proves that you’re consistently wrong.
I pulled my comforter down to my waist and glared back. “And yet who’s the one coming to a human for advice?”
I saw the flicker of anger in her eyes in the same instant I noticed the muscles in her neck clench with frustration. Every instinct in my body told me to try and get as far away from her as possible, but I ignored it. This wasn’t Sam I was facing. This was Lark. Confused and hurt though she may be, she was still my friend and I wasn’t going to run away from her when I was the only person she had to talk to.
I misjudged you again it seems. Just when I think I have your kind figured out, you go and prove me wrong. You, Stacy, and even Graham.
Feeling brave, I finally asked her the question that had been weighing on my mind for the past few days. “Why did you tell Graham to come and help me?”
She looked up and I could see nothing but raw pain in her gilt eyes. He’s your friend. I knew Robert wasn’t able to help you, and I couldn’t lie about why I’d be there.
My chin jutted out as I listened to her half-answer. It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth, either. “You know there’s more, Lark.”
She stubbornly set her feet onto the floor and began to leave. I quickly grabbed her arm and tried to tug her back onto the bed; it was like trying to move a house.
I did it for you. I saw what was in your head. I saw what you were thinking and I knew you needed someone who could support you and help you. I knew you could count on Graham.
Lark pulled her arm out of my hand and faced me. I could see the twinkle of light reflecting in the corner of her eyes as small, crystal tears began to form there. They fell like snow drops onto the floor, first one, then two, and eventually twelve little spots of glistening crystal glittered there. It was the most emotion I had ever seen expressed by her that didn’t involve anger.
“You also did it for yourself. You needed to see what was in his head, needed to see if he’d reject your voice or if he’d welcome i
t,” I accused. “And when he didn’t reject it like you had hoped, you knew that there was no excuse left to not admit that he’s a good person, a good human-being and that there was nothing wrong with you feeling the way you do.”
She turned away and stared at the blank wall opposite the bedroom window. You know, for a human, you’re a pretty good mind-reader.
“You’re easy to read…for an angel.”
She laughed at that, but it was an empty sound. It doesn’t matter anyhow. Graham will graduate; he’ll leave Heath and everything in it behind forever. There is no future for us. My past has already deemed it so.
The finality in those last words jolted me. I began to ask her what she meant by that, but she was already fading away into a light gray mist.
“He is your future,” I said softly as the last wisp climbed up over my window sill and out into the night sky. “Don’t let your past dictate what you can and cannot have now, Lark.”
COMPOSITION
When Robert returned to my room the next evening, the information that he had gathered by watching Erica told us very little. He had had to leave her for a short period of time in order to answer his call, and he admitted to being afraid that it was during that time that she’d had her memory once again erased.
He offered to watch her again, but Lark’s words echoed in my head about breaking the rules and having to face the consequences—consequences that I knew nothing about—and I simply couldn’t let him go through with it.
“Lark is being paranoid, Grace. I didn’t violate any rules,” Robert assured me.
“Well, I’d rather not take any more chances. You’re more important to me than whatever is going on in Erica’s head. There are only a few more months left of school anyway, and then I’m out of here.”
I opened up one of my drawers to pull out a pair of sweats—it was very cold, despite it being on the cusp of spring—and proceeded to gather other articles of clothing in preparation to shower. I looked up and caught Robert’s reflection in my mirror, his face filled with hurt.
“What’s wrong?” I asked when I had turned around, immediately concerned.
“The way you spoke of leaving—you only mentioned yourself,” he said stiffly.
“Well, yeah. I’m the one heading off to college in the fall. Or, at least, I’m planning on it. I don’t expect Erica to follow me all the way to wherever it is I’m heading.”
Robert glanced at the clothes in my hands and began to sit up from his position on the bed. “I’d better leave.”
I threw my little bundle on the bed and reached for his hand. “Wait, why? What did I say?”
Robert pointed to the clothes that had fallen loosely apart. “Nothing, Grace. Nothing at all.”
I tightened my grip on his hand and then felt my fingers curl into my palm as Robert disappeared into a plume of black mist. “You know, you and your sister are getting on my nerves with this-this poofing into smoke thing,” I said, annoyed. “This is why humans date other humans. They don’t just poof into nothing and run away!” I said that last part as the smoke disappeared out of my window.
I heard a knock on my door and felt relieved for the distraction. “Come in,” I called out and then grabbed my clothes from the bed, tucking them under my arm.
Graham poked his head in. “Hey, Grace. Look, I wanted to know if you had any extra folder paper.”
“Yeah. Sure.” I grabbed my backpack and handed it to him. “There’s some in my binder.”
Graham thanked me as I walked past him towards the bathroom. I turned the shower on and allowed the bathroom to fill up with steam. I climbed into the hot spray and allowed it to beat into me a pattern of relaxation and calm.
I ignored the knock on the door while I washed my hair and soaped myself. The knock grew louder as I rinsed off, and by the time I was dry and fully dressed, the knock had grown so insistent I thought it would fall off its hinges.
“What?!” I demanded as soon as I opened the door. Graham stood in front of me with a blank sheet of paper and a pencil in his hand, a look of utter despair on his face.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he said sadly.
I looked at the paper and the pencil and eyed him out. “You don’t know how to do what? Write your name?” I pushed past him and walked into my room, noting that he had at least put my backpack in the right spot.
“No. I don’t know how to write a letter to Lark.”
I pulled the towel out of my hair and began to rub it dry as I processed his words. “You want to write a letter to Lark?”
He nodded his head dumbly.
“And you don’t know how?”
Again, his head shook up and down. I sighed. “What’s keeping you from doing it?”
“I don’t know how to put my thoughts down to paper. It’s like with everything else, I’m alright, but when it comes to her…Grace, I tried this three times and the furthest I got was the D in Dear.”
I grabbed the sheet of paper from him and sure enough, there were several indentations in the shape of a letter D marring its otherwise perfect surface. “What made you decide to write a letter to her in the first place?”
“I just have this feeling that if I’m ever going to tell Lark how I feel about her, it’s got to be now. Spring break is coming up and mom wants me to fly down to Florida and spend it with her-”
“But you’re going to miss the wedding!”
“I have no choice, Grace. I can’t be sleeping on your couch while you and Janice do all that wedding stuff. You’ve got plans you have to take care of, and she’s going to have a baby soon. It’s time I started to think about the future—my future.” Graham shook the piece of paper in his hand and tapped it with the pencil. “That’s why I need you to help me with this. I don’t want to leave Heath without letting her know how I feel about her, without giving it a shot.
“Thing is…I don’t know how to do it. I need our help, Grace.”
I admired him for his tenacity. He had never looked more determined before. Even when he was on the football field he still appeared slightly aloof, as though that wasn’t where he truly wanted to be.
“Well, okay then. Let’s get started on this letter.”
He grinned at me like a kid who’d just been given a new toy, and I tried to smile in return with equal exuberance, but in the back of my mind I kept hearing Lark’s words…
There is no future for us…
Graham was determined that there would be a future for him and Lark, and I was equally determined to help him prove Lark wrong.
***
Spring break was almost here when Graham knocked on my bedroom door, a thin stack of papers in his hand. “Are those college applications?” I asked as I pointed to the disorganized piles that lay out before me on my bed. “I’ve got mine almost completely done; I’ve just got a couple of essays left.”
“No. I only applied to one college,” he replied. He handed me the sheets of filler paper, each one completely full of his semi-neat handwriting. “This is it.”
“What is it?”
“The letter.”
I looked at the first page closely and saw that indeed, this letter was meant for Lark. The time he had taken to embellish her name told me that whatever it was that he had written had also been done so with equal care and attention.
“That’s nice,” I said as I traced the L with my finger. I could feel the deep indentation and smiled as I realized what he had done. “You did this on purpose so she could feel it and read it.”
He blushed at the truth. “You’re too smart for your own good, Grace.”
“Nah. I’m just a sucker for romance.” I handed the stack back to him, but he pushed it away.
“I want you to read it,” he said. “Read it out loud and tell me if this would be enough to tell you that whoever wrote it was in love with you.”
“I don’t think I should,” I objected, trying to have him take his letter back but he stood up and walked away, putting as mu
ch space as possible between himself and the words that he had written.
“Please, Grace. I need you to read it. I need to hear it.”
Sighing, I stared at the words on the page. Knowing that if I didn’t, I’d sorely disappoint him, I began to read the composition that had taken him two weeks to complete.
“Lark,
“I’m not very good at expressing how I feel, especially when what I feel is something that I’ve never felt before. I don’t really remember much about the first time I saw you. I was living in a fog and I couldn’t have appreciated you for all of your beauty and your charm.
“I do remember the second time I saw you, though. You were surrounded by some of the most beautiful girls in school, but none of them shined like you did to me. It wasn’t a day that should have held any brightness, any kind of hope, and yet you stood there like the only star in the sky—meant to be wished upon. And I wished on you. I wished that one day, you’d remember my name.
“I know that sounds pretty stupid. Everyone remembers my name. I’m one of the biggest jerks in school. But I wanted you to remember my name for another reason. I wanted you to be able to say my name and be able to say ‘Graham Hasselbeck is a good guy.’
“When I saw you again at the cemetery, I thought it had to have been fate that brought you there to my Grandmother’s grave. Why else would you have been there? And then you said my name; you said it and I knew that my wish had come true.
“Every single day since then, I’ve thought of you. That sounds kind of stalkerish. I’m sorry. Let me try that again.
“Every single day since then, I have thought of how wonderful it’s been just being around you and that light you seem to bring with you. I cannot think of a day yet where seeing your face hasn’t made me happy.
“But happy doesn’t begin to describe how good it feels. It sucks sometimes, not being able to see you, not being able to hear your voice. And I wonder if you might feel the same way. I had a chance with you, a chance to tell you how I felt, but my heart fumbled that ball and instead my head won out.