She Speaks to Angels (18 page)

Jen

Jen had a way with forcing an issue, something in her lawyer genes I guess. My mind swirled with ideas, but I knew I had to think of something. Mol and Jen wouldn’t let me off easy. Why should they? They’d told me everything since Middle School and expected the same in return. We didn’t keep secrets. When the bell rang, the students flushed out of the door and down the hall like a tidal wave. The usually vacant cafeteria and outdoor lawn area were piled with bodies carrying grumbling stomachs.

Kian put his arm around me and gently tugged me close to him. He didn’t want to lose me in this mess, a mess that offered the perfect opportunity for chaos to ensue, for someone to have a so-called accident. We didn’t want to give Dameon any headway.

Eyeing Jen and Mol at our table inside, or at least the table we had used our first two years in High School before I had fallen for the ‘bad boy’ and Mol and Jen had decided to shun me by sitting outside with the newbies, I strolled up to my best friends with Kian close by my side.

“
Glad you made it. We were beginning to wonder.” Molly looked at Kian as she spoke, lifting her brown as if asking what he was doing here.

“
How quickly you move on to someone new!” Jen flicked her hair as she stuffed a muffin into her mouth.

Sitting across from them, Kian and I finally had time to rest. Nothing could happen in front of my best friends, two pairs of human eyes. “So, you two been waiting long?” I started the conversation.

“
No, but long enough to grab a lunch. Why don’t you grab yours first, and then spill all the details,” Jen suggested, and Kian placed his hand on my shoulder when I moved up an inch.

“
I’ll get ours.” His gravelly voice made him sound all the more street-like, like he could take two men down with one arm if he had to. Only I knew he literally could.

When he disappeared into the lunch line, Mol burst out, “So, out with the old and in with the new? Whatever happened to Dameon? The guy you always ditched us for at lunch?” She still sounded bitter.

Good question. I searched the cafeteria, my head bobbing left and right, and then aimed my gaze at Mol. “He and I...just didn’t work out.”

“
More men for me.” Mol’s cheeks puffed and a glint sparkled in her eyes.

My arm stretched across the table and snatched hers. “No! He’s no good. You have to stay away from him.” I eyed Jen. “You too!”

“
Geez! What’s wrong with you?” Jen reacted, straightening herself in her seat.

“
What happened over the weekend? Did he do something to you?” Mol’s concerned glare traced my face.

“
I just...I just think it is a bad idea.”

“
No, there’s something more to it.” Jen looked at Mol and then at me, putting the pieces together that Mol had already figured out on her own. “Something really bad happened. What, dammit?”

“
Ali, we’re your friends.” Mol grew motherly and tilted her head to soften her tone, the tone that said you’d-better-tell-us-or-else. “You can tell us anything.”

I couldn’t tell them this, at least, not the whole story. But I had to tell them something.

Noticing Kian in the front of the lunch line, I knew I had to hurry. He would fume if he knew I said anything. “Well,” I whispered as my two best friends hunched toward me. Like a team in a football huddle, it was the way the three of us shared secrets. “We were about to kiss, and he hurt me. He got too rough.”

“
Hurt you how?” Jen’s mouth fell agape.

“
He got dangerous. I mean, after he left I had bruises.”

“
Bruises?!” Mol’s mouth fell agape.

“
That’s it; I’m calling my father.” Jen reached into her back pocket and pulled out her cell. “He’ll fix this guy good. He knows a judge!”

“
No, no!” I shook my head as Kian walked toward us with two trays in hand. “No, I don’t want this getting out. I’m fine now. Fine. Let’s just be quiet about this. Kian doesn’t know anything, and I don’t want him knowing anything.” I rushed my words and shooed my friends back with my swatting hand.

By the time Kian had arrived and set the trays on the table, Mol and Jen managed to occupy themselves with a ham sandwich and an apple.

“
Miss anything?” Kian asked, and I shook my head.

“
No, nothing.”

“
Nope.” Jen shook her head profusely. I could see that lying wasn’t second nature to her. If she wanted to be a lawyer, she’d have to work on that one. Mol kept her eyes aimed at her lunch tray.

Somehow sharing a bit of what happened between Dameon and me eased some of the tension between me and Jen. I shared some of my secrets and that made her feel important again, but more than that I needed her. I needed her comfort from the big-bad-Dameon and she sensed it. My story of bruises made her sensitive to my plight and the riff once between us seemed to vanish.

When I finally made it through lunch with no further drama, Kian and I headed to my Journalism class. Jen and Mol seemed satiated by the story I told them, which in essence was true, and I could refocus my attention on staying alive.

“
See you in fifty.” Kian rubbed the side of his head against mine. Lingering for a minute, I enjoyed the smell of him. It reminded me of something milky and sweet. My lips lay in limbo, somewhere between kissing him and staying put, until Kian pulled away again.

“
In fifty,” I whispered as he melted into the crowd in the hall.

Plopping into my desk, I took out my assignment folder, my NOOK, and set my eyes on the board. Mr. Zimmerman marched up to me and cleared his throat. When my puppy dog look didn’t draw any response, I fidgeted in my seat.

“
Your assignment, Ali. Due today, remember?” Mr. Zimmerman scolded me.

Remember? How would I remember between being choked to death by a demon and then watching two students from Millennium High transform into angel-like beings? Or no, perhaps I could have done the paper sometime between being lifted into the sky by Kian -slash- Angelfire, and being mesmerized by his magnificent mansion.

I must have sat there, with a blank expression on my face, for some time.

Coming to my rescue, Nathaniel pulled out two papers from his satchel and handed them to Mr. Zimmerman. “Here you go, Sir. Ali and I worked very hard on these over the weekend. But I think you’ll like our results.” Nathaniel’s bronze hues glimmered ever so slightly under the dull lighting of the room as he sat back down in his seat.

“
Thank you.” Looking surprised, Mr. Zimmerman turned from the desks and headed back to his whiteboard. With his back still to the class, he finished, “And both typed up nicely. Good; I hate trying to decipher handwriting.”

I tilted my head to Nathaniel and whispered. “Thank you!” He smiled, red splotches appearing in his cheeks.

Suspicions

Walking
to the parking lot after school, I squeezed Kian’s hand. We hadn’t officially announced our dating, and in fact, I couldn’t be sure what I would even call us, perhaps witness protection? But for better or worse, Kian could always be found beside me.

“
What do I do now?” I worried. I knew Kian could always tell when I worried by the crevices that formed in my forehead.

“
You go home as usual. I’ll be watching from up there.” His eyes veered skyward. I kept my eyes fixed on his lips. All through Calculus and through most of Spanish all I could think about was kissing those copper-tinted lips.

“
Sure,” I agreed, stepping away from him and toward the sedan where Jen and Mol waited in the leather seats.

Rolling down her window, Jen shouted, “Hurry up, Ali. I have to get home.”

Jogging up to the car, I waved bye to Kian before slipping into the backseat behind Mol, who usually sat in the front seat beside the driver. She had a thing about the backseat, as if she had once had a bad experience there or something. Once, I took the front seat, and she about freaked.

“
So, are you two like a thing now?” Mol craned her neck back to look at me.

“
We just really get each other now, is all,” I defended our position. Mol could be possessive over me and Jen. Loyal to a fault.

“
I like him much better than Dameon. Glad you’ve moved on,” Jen commented as she turned out of the parking lot. She turned up the music volume and Maroon 5’s ‘She Will Be Loved’ permeated the car.

“
Me too.” I said under my breath, staring out the window.

“
So, is Kian going to be joining us at the lunch table the rest of the week?” Mol adjusted her position in the car.

“
Yes. Is that a problem?” I leaned forward between the two front car seats.

“
No, I just want to know what I’m looking forward to.” Mol curled her lip in half smile.

“
How’d you two end up together anyway?” Jen questioned as she turned down my street. “I mean, last we heard you hated him.”

“
I didn’t hate him; I just didn’t care for his company as much as Dameon’s, I guess.”

“
Well, whatever you want to call it, you sure changed company real fast.” Mol interjected.

“
Dameon turned out to be a jerk, and I bumped into Kian over the weekend. We got to talking and he...” I couldn’t find the right words.

“
He what?” Mol teased. “Made your heart go pitter patter?”

“
Made me believe in love again,” I said plainly, and the car grew silent; even Maroon 5’s song finally ended.

As we pulled up to my house, Jen and Mol waved good-bye, and I scurried over the sidewalk to the front door. Looking up before entering, I saw the corner of a white wing disappear in the clouds above me. Kian really never was far away, and I wondered how long he would be there, beside me. Did he only protect me because Dameon wanted to kill me? Or did he have feelings for me? Would he be there for me long after this Dameon thing?

I didn’t have time to ponder those questions, though, because as I closed the door, I noticed Samuel, in uniform, sitting at the dining table in the kitchen, finishing up a bowl of Mom’s soup. Mom just poured him another ladleful and then made her way to the sofa, picked up her newspaper and plopped down in her favorite chair.

“
Samuel wanted to talk to you after you freshen up. I poured you a bowl of soup already.”

“
Thanks, Mom.” I dashed upstairs with questions itching in every corner of my mind. Talk? Flinging my knapsack with the NOOK inside, along with an assignment paper from Spanish class, on my bed, I plopped onto the chest at the foot of the bed where Dameon had once sat inches from me. Sighing, I pulled the pine wood chest open and rummaged through my pictures. My fingers found Dad, and I gazed at his photo, the one with him holding a fishing pole in one hand and a large fish in the other. A proud smile crossed his face. I remembered how the red and white plaid shirt he wore had stunk of the sea that day.

“
What do I do? How would you get through this?” I whispered to Dad as if he could still hear me. Somehow, I liked to believe, he could.

“
Ali?” Mom shouted from downstairs, and I slipped the photo back inside the chest.

“
Coming.” I skipped down the stairs and found my bowl at the table. Mom continued reading her paper in the living room. I could hear the faint sound of the television. After scooping a spoonful of soup into my mouth, I glared at my brother. “What do you want?”

Samuel put his spoon down and said, “I figured out what Tommy meant on a note he left before he died.”

Damn! Samuel had learned that Tommy left something in Francis’ locker. I shrugged as if I had no idea what he was talking about.

“
He left something behind at the local cafe.”

“
What does this have to do with me?”

“
I went there.”

“
And?”

“
And they told me that my sister, Allison Maney, had already picked up the item Tommy left there.”

I stared at him with what I hoped was a blank expression on my face.

“
So, it got me thinking. How would my little sister know that Tommy hid anything there? And more importantly, why would she take it?”

His badge reflected the kitchen lights and beamed over my face, reminding me of a hot interview light used to sweat the truth out of suspects. I started sweating.

“
So I dusted the note I jotted Tommy’s info on and guess what?”

“
What?” I swallowed hard.

“
I found your fingerprints.”

I fidgeted in my seat and then bit my lip.

“
So, why would you snoop through my stuff for information on Tommy, and why would you take evidence?” He leaned over the table, his badge drawing closer to me. It appeared to me to be a lie detector.

“
I...I,” I couldn’t completely lie. He would know it. He conducted interviews on hardened criminals all the time. And he knew me; he would be able to tell. “I needed a Journalism assignment and thought Tommy’s suicide would make for an interesting story.”

“
So, you snooped through confidential information for your school assignment? Do you know how much trouble you could get into--or get
me
into?”

“
I needed a good grade.”

Samuel took a deep breath before answering. I tried his patience. “So, what did you find inside the locker?”