Halo (17 page)

Defying Gravity

All week long the beach bonfire loomed in my mind. What I planned to do terrified me, but I was also strangely excited. Once the decision was made, it felt as though a great weight had lifted from my mind. After all the time I’d spent in internal debate, I now felt surprisingly sure of myself. In my head I rehearsed over and over the words I would use to tell Xavier the truth, making subtle adjustments each time.

Xavier was now behaving as though we were a couple, which I loved. It put us in our own exclusive world that no one else had access to. It meant that we took our relationship seriously and believed it had a future. It wasn’t some infatuation we were likely to outgrow. We were making a commitment to each other. Every time I thought about this, I couldn’t keep my face from cracking into a broad smile. Of course I remembered Ivy and Gabriel’s warning and their belief that there was no chance of a future for us, but somehow that didn’t matter anymore. I felt like the skies could open and rain fire and brimstone, but nothing could wipe the smile from my face. That was the effect he had on me—an explosion of happiness in my chest, scattering like little beads and making my whole body shiver and tingle.

A life with Xavier was full of promise. But would he still want that when I revealed my identity to him?

I tried to conceal my elation from Ivy and Gabriel. It had taken them long enough to recover from my last escapade with Xavier, and I didn’t think they could handle another one. Whenever I sat down with them I felt like a double agent and kept wondering whether my face might betray me. But just because my siblings could read human minds, didn’t mean they could read mine, and my acting skills must have improved because my new enthusiasm passed without comment. It struck me that I finally had an understanding of the expression “the calm before the storm.” Everything seemed to be going smoothly, but I knew that appearances could be deceptive. There was an explosion waiting to happen. Tension, anger, and guilt were bubbling below the surface of our happy-family act, ready to erupt the moment Ivy and Gabriel discovered my betrayal.

“One of my juniors asked me today if there’s such a thing as Limbo,” Gabriel said over dinner one night. I found it ironic that the conversation had turned to punishment for sins.

Ivy put down her fork. “What did you say?”

“I said nobody knows.”

“Why didn’t you say yes?” I asked.

“Because good deeds have to be voluntary,” my brother explained. “If a person knows for sure they’ll be judged, then they’ll act accordingly.”

I couldn’t argue with that. “What’s Limbo like anyway?” I knew enough about Heaven and Hell, but no one had ever told me about the eternal midpoint.

“It comes in several different forms,” said Ivy. “It can be a waiting room, a train station.”

“Some souls say it’s worse than Hell,” Gabriel added.

“That’s ridiculous,” I scoffed. “What could be worse?”

“Eternal nothingness,” said Ivy. “Year upon year of waiting for a train that’s never coming, waiting for someone to call your name. People start to lose all sense of time, it blurs into one never-ending stretch. They beg to go to Heaven, try to throw themselves into Hell, but there is no way out. The souls wander aimlessly. And it never ends, Bethany. Centuries can go by on earth and they will still be there.”

“Sounds like crap,” was all I could think to say. Gabriel and Ivy looked surprised for a moment before bursting into laughter.

I wondered if an angel could be exiled to Limbo.

At Tuesday lunchtime I sat with Molly and the girls on the lawn in the afternoon sunshine. Around us green buds tipped the branches of the trees, bringing everything back to life. The imposing main building of Bryce Hamilton loomed behind us, casting a shadow over the benches arranged in a circle around the broad trunk of an ancient oak with ivy twining around its trunk in an amorous embrace. If we looked west, we had a view of the ocean in the distance stretching to the horizon, clouds drifting lazily overhead. The girls lounged on the lush grass, letting the sun warm their faces. I was feeling bold and ventured to tug my skirt up above my knees.

“Way to go, babe!” The girls applauded my progress, commenting that I was becoming “one of them” before falling into their usual routine of gossiping about teachers and absent friends.

“Miss Lucas is such a cow,” Megan complained. “She’s making me redo my Russian Revolution assignment because it was too ‘sloppy.’ What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I think it means you did it in the half hour before it was due,” Hayley said. “What did you expect—an A plus?”

Megan shrugged. “I reckon she’s just jealous because she’s hairy as a yeti.”

“You should write a letter of complaint,” a girl named Tara said with a serious expression. “She’s totally discriminating against you.”

“I agree she’s defs picking on you,” Molly began, and then fell suddenly silent, her gaze locked on a figure striding across the lawn.

I turned to identify the source of her fixation and saw Gabriel making his way toward the music center, some distance from where we sat. He cut a solitary figure with his faraway look and a guitar case slung over one shoulder. He had abandoned school protocol regarding dress sense some time ago, and today he was wearing his torn jeans with a white T-shirt under a pin-striped vest. No one had dared to query it. And why would they? Gabriel was so popular there would have been uproar among the students if he resigned. I noticed that Gabe looked so at ease with his surroundings. He had an easy gait and his movements were fluid. He seemed to be coming in our direction, which made Molly sit bolt upright and frantically smooth down her wild curls. Gabriel, however, suddenly cut across in a different direction. Lost in his own thoughts, he hadn’t as much as glanced in our direction. Molly looked crestfallen.

“What can we say about Mr. Church?” Taylah speculated when she spotted him, eager to resume their usual sport. I had been quiet for so long, absorbed in my fantasy of being stranded on a secluded island somewhere in the Caribbean or held captive on a pirate ship, waiting for Xavier to come and rescue me, that it seemed they had temporarily forgotten I was there. Otherwise they might have reconsidered discussing Gabriel in my presence.

“Nothing,” said Molly defensively. “He’s a legend.”

I could almost see the wheels turning in her head. I knew her fascination with Gabriel had grown in recent times, fueled by his remoteness. I didn’t want Molly to suffer the rebuff that would inevitably follow from this infatuation. Gabriel was made of stone, metaphorically speaking, and was incapable of reciprocating her feelings. He was as detached from human life as the sky is from the earth. When he looked at humankind, he saw only souls in peril, barely even distinguishing men from women. I could see that Molly was under the delusion that Gabriel operated like the other young men she knew; full of hormones and unable to resist feminine allure if the girl in question played her cards right. But Molly had no idea what Gabriel was. He might have taken human form, but unlike me, he was far removed from anything human. In Heaven he was known as the Angel of Justice.

“He’s a little uptight,” Tara said.

“He is not!” Molly snapped. “You don’t even know him.”

“And you do?”

“I wish I did.”

“Well, keep wishing.”

“He’s a teacher,” Megan interrupted, “and in his twenties.”

“Music teachers are kind of on the fringe,” said Molly optimistically.

“Yeah, on the fringe
of the staff
,” said Taylah. “Get over it, Molls, he’s out of our league.”

Molly narrowed her eyes as if she’d been issued a challenge. “I don’t know about that,” she said. “I like to think he’s in a league of his own.”

There was a sudden awkward silence as they remembered my presence. The subject was quickly dropped.

“So,” said Megan a little too brightly. “About the prom . . .”

When Xavier dropped me off at home that afternoon, I found Ivy icing cupcakes. There was a smudge of flour across the bridge of her nose, and her eyes sparkled as though she was captivated by the whole process. She had lined up all her ingredients neatly in assorted measuring cups, and now she was arranging her sprinkles so they formed perfectly symmetrical designs. It was something that no human hand could have managed. They looked like miniature artworks rather than something designed to be eaten. She presented me with one as soon as I came in.

“They look great,” I said. “Can I talk to you about something?”

“Of course.”

“Do you think there’s any chance Gabriel will let me go to the school dance?”

Ivy stopped what she was doing and looked up.

“Xavier asked you, didn’t he?”

“What if he did?” I was suddenly defensive.

“Calm down, Bethany,” my sister said. “He’d look very handsome in a tuxedo.”

“You mean you don’t see a problem with it?”

“No, I think you’d make a lovely couple.”

“Maybe, if I make it there at all.”

“Don’t be so negative,” Ivy chided. “We’ll have to see what Gabriel thinks, but it is a school event and it would be a shame to miss it.”

I was impatient to hear the verdict. I dragged Ivy outside, and we scoured the beach for Gabriel, where he was taking a walk. The shoreline wound in one direction up to the main beach, where bodysurfers rode the waves and ice cream vans set up shop beneath the palms. In the other direction, if your eye traveled far enough, were the jagged cliffs of the wild Shipwreck Coast and a rocky outcrop known as the Crags. The area was famous for its dangerously high winds, choppy seas, and fierce rips. Divers occasionally searched for wreckage from the many ships that had gone down there over the years, but usually the only visitors were the gulls bobbing harmlessly on the water.

We spotted our brother seated on a prominent rock, looking out to sea. With the sun reflecting off his white T-shirt, he seemed to be surrounded by an aura of light. He was too far away for me to see his face, but I imagined his expression as one of deep longing. Sometimes there was an inexpressible sadness about Gabriel that he struggled to conceal. I thought it must be due to the burden of knowledge that couldn’t be shared. He was more attuned to human suffering than Ivy and I, and this couldn’t have been easy for him to bear alone. He knew all the horrors of the past, and I imagined he could see tragedies that were yet to occur. No wonder he was somber. But there wasn’t anyone he could confide in. His service to the Creator of the universe resulted in his own isolation. This gave him an austerity of manner that made those who didn’t know him uncomfortable. The young adored him, but adults invariably felt as if they were being judged.

Sensing that he was being observed, Gabriel turned his face in our direction. I took a step back, feeling that we were intruding on his solitude, but as soon as he saw us, the clouded expression vanished and he waved, indicating we should join him.

When we reached him, he helped us both up onto the rocks, and we all sat together for a while. In that moment I thought he seemed more at ease than he’d been in a long time.

“Why do I feel an ambush coming on?” Gabriel joked.

“Please can I go to the prom?” I chimed.

Gabriel shook his head in amusement. “I didn’t realize you wanted to go. I didn’t think you’d be interested.”

“It’s just that everybody’s going,” I said. “It’s all they’ve talked about for months. They’d be so disappointed if I skipped it. It means a lot to them.” I tapped him lightly on the arm. “Don’t tell me you’re planning on missing it.”

“I’d love to miss it, but I’ve been asked to supervise,” he replied, looking less than pleased at the prospect. “I don’t know how they come up with these ideas. The whole thing seems an extravagant waste of time and money to me.”

“It’s still part of being at school,” Ivy said. “Why not look at it as research?”

“Exactly,” I said. “We’ll be in the thick of things. If we wanted to watch from the outskirts, we might as well have stayed in the Kingdom.”

“This wouldn’t have anything to do with
dressing up
now, would it?” Gabriel asked.

“Never!” I said, sounding shocked. “Well, maybe just a little.”

He sighed. “I suppose it’s just for one night.”

“And you’ll be there to keep an eye on things,” I added.

“Ivy, I was hoping you’d accompany me,” Gabriel said.

“Of course.” My sister clapped her hands. It was just like her to get excited once a consensus had been reached. “It’ll be great!”

Saturday evening was balmy and clear, perfect for a beach bonfire. The sky was blue velvet, and a gentle breeze from the south swayed the trees, making them look as though they were bowing to one another. I should have been feeling on edge, but in my head everything made perfect sense. I was about to cement my connection with Xavier by bringing our conflicting worlds together.

I paid special attention to what I should wear that night and chose a loose-fitting dress made of soft white crepe with a bow at the back. Gabriel and Ivy were in the living room when I went downstairs. Gabe was reading the minuscule print of a religious text with the aid of a magnifying glass. It was such an incongruous sight given his youthful physique that I had to suppress a giggle. Ivy was vainly attempting to train Phantom to obey basic commands.