Kissed by an Angel/The Power of Love/Soulmates

by Elizabeth Chandler

  “Once I know what is going on, I can find the proof,” he reasoned.

  Lacey shook her head.

  “Right now,” Tristan said, “I’ve got to get Ivy to remember what happened at the train station. I’ve got to find Will and convince him to help me.”

  “Gee, what a great idea,” Lacey said. “I think someone else suggested that about fifteen minutes ago.”

  Tristan shrugged.

  “That same someone will come with you, in case you need further help,” she added.

  “No jokes, Lacey,” he warned.

  “No promises, Tristan.”

  They found Will by the patio, dancing with Beth. Ivy and Suzanne were sitting next to Ivy’s mother, watching kids from their class getting into the reggae music. Lacey started dancing by herself, swinging her hips, lifting her hands above her head, then dropping them to her waist. She’s good at it, Tristan observed as she twisted and turned her way across the patio. Ella, seeing Lacey’s light, began to follow her. Somebody stepped backward and fell over Ella, landing on his rear next to the cat.

  “Would you like to dance?” It was Lacey’s projected voice.

  The guy stared at Ella for a moment, then scrambled to his feet.

  “Come here, Ella,” Maggie called out, and the cat sauntered toward Ivy’s mother, with Lacey following. Ella leaped into Maggie’s lap, and Ivy’s mother settled back to watch the dancers.

  “No one will ask. me to dance, Maggie.” Lacey again.

  Maggie shifted the cat around, cupping Ella’s chin in her perfectly manicured hand, staring at the cat as if she expected her to speak once more.

  “Did you girls hear that?” Maggie asked, but neither replied. Suzanne was giving Ivy a detailed analysis of the relationships of all the couples on the patio.

  Tristan left Lacey to her games and moved through the crowd toward Beth and Will. They were dancing with their heads as close as a romantic couple’s, but he knew why Beth and Will were really together—Ivy.

  “I’m afraid,” Beth said. “I know things I don’t want to know—I know them before they happen, Will. And I write things I never meant to write.”

  “I draw pictures I never meant to draw,” Will replied.

  “I wish someone would tell us what’s going on. Whatever it is, it’s not over yet—that much I know. I have this sense that things are terribly wrong, and they’re going to get worse. I wake up scared, scared to death for Ivy. Sometimes I think I’m cracking up.”

  Will drew her closer. Tristan glanced over at Ivy and saw her quickly turn her head away.

  “You’re not cracking up, Beth. It’s just that you have some kind of gift that—”

  “I don’t want this kind of gift!” she cried.

  “Shhh. Shhh.” With his hand, he smoothed Beth’s hair.

  “She’s watching us,” Beth said. “She’ll get the wrong idea. You’d better ask her to dance.”

  Tristan knew at that moment what Will would be thinking. He gazed at Ivy and thought how it would feel to put his arms around her, to pull her to him, to let his fingers get lost in her bright hair. In that instant they matched thoughts, and Tristan slipped inside Will.

  Will suddenly sagged against Beth. “It’s that feeling again. I hate the feeling.”

  “I need to talk to Ivy,” Tristan told him, and Will spoke the words aloud.

  “What are you going to say to her?” Beth asked.

  Will shook his head, bewildered.

  “Ask Ivy to dance,” Tristan said, and once again Will spoke the words as if they were his own.

  “You ask her,” Beth replied.

  Will’s jaw tightened. Tristan could feel his struggle, how Will’s instinct told him to thrust the intruder out of his mind, and how his curiosity fought back against this instinct. “Who are you?” Will wondered silently.

  “It’s Tristan. Tristan. You’ve got to believe me now.”

  “I can’t believe,” Beth said.

  Will and she had stopped dancing and stood looking at each other, trying to understand.

  “He’s inside you, isn’t he?” Beth asked, her voice shaking.

  “It’s his words you’re saying.”

  Will nodded.

  “Can you make him leave?” she asked.

  “Don’t!”

  “Why don’t you leave us alone?” Beth cried.

  “I can’t. For Ivy’s sake, I can’t.”

  Will and Beth clung to each other. Then Will led her to the edge of the patio, where Ivy was sitting. “Will you dance with me?” he asked Ivy.

  She glanced at Beth uncertainly.

  “I’m beat,” Beth said, pulling Ivy up out of the chair and taking her place. “Go on. I’ve got to give these dainty, size-nine feet a break.”

  Will walked quietly with Ivy to the least crowded part of the patio. Tristan felt him tremble as he put his arms around her. He felt each awk-ward step and remembered how he himself had felt the previous spring when he had first tried to get to know Ivy. Face-to-face with her, he couldn’t manage a sentence with more than four words.

  “How are you?” Will asked.

  “Fine.”

  “Good.”

  A long silence followed. Tristan could feel questions forming in Will’s mind. “If you’re there,” Will said silently to Tristan, “why aren’t you telling me what to do?”

  “I’m not that fragile,” Ivy told him.

  “What?”

  “You’re dancing with me as if you think I’ll break,” she said loudly, her green eyes shooting brilliant sparks.

  Will looked at her, surprised. “You’re angry.”

  “You noticed,” she said sharply. “I’m tired of the way people are acting—everyone’s being so careful around me! Tiptoeing, as though they’re afraid they’ll do something to set me off. Well, I’ve got news for you, Will, and everyone else. I’m not made of glass, and I’m not about to shatter. Got it?”

  “I think so,” Will said. Then, without warning, he spun her around twice, pushing her away from him and drawing her back like a yo-yo. He dropped his arm so she fell back, then he caught her at the last instant, leaning over her and pulling her up.

  “Is that better?”

  Ivy pushed back the hair that had tumbled over her face, and she laughed breathlessly. “A little.”

  Will grinned. Both of them were more relaxed now—it was time to speak to her, Tristan thought. But what could he say that wouldn’t anger her again or scare her away?

  “There’s something I want to talk about,” Will said, using Tristan’s words.

  Ivy pulled back a little to look into his eyes, then quickly glanced away. Eyes a girl could drown in—that was how Lacey had described Will’s. And that’s why Ivy looked away, Tristan thought, struggling to control his jealousy.

  “It’s about … Beth. She’s kind of shaken up,” Will said for Tristan. “You know how she has premonitions.”

  “I know I gave her a good scare a few weeks ago,” Ivy said, “but that was just a—”

  Will shook his head quickly, as Tristan did. “Beth is more afraid of the future than of what happened then.”

  “What do you mean?” Ivy asked. Her tone was indignant, but Tristan heard the slight tremor. “Nothing more is going to happen,” she insisted. “What do I have to do to convince everyone that I’m okay?”

  “You have to remember, Ivy.”

  “Remember what?” she asked.

  “The night of the accident,”

  Tristan could feel Will pulling back now, wondering what his words were leading to. “What accident?” Will asked silently. “The one you died in?”

  “The accident?” Ivy repeated. “Is that a nice, polite way of talking about my attempted suicide?”

  “Ivy, you can’t believe that! You know it’s not true,” Will said, passionately speaking each word Tristan gave him.

  “I don’t know anything anymore,” she replied, her voice breaking.

  “Try to remember,”
Will pleaded for Tristan. “You saw me at the train station.”

  “You were there?” she asked with surprise.

  “I’ve always been there for you. I love you!”

  Ivy stared at Will. Too late Tristan realized his mistake in speaking directly.

  “You can’t, Will.”

  Will swallowed hard.

  “You should love someone else. I—I’ll never love you.”

  Tristan felt Will take the blow.

  “I’ll never love anyone again,” Ivy said, stepping back, “not the way I loved Tristan.”

  “Tell her it’s me speaking,” Tristan urged.

  But Will stood still and said nothing. Other couples bumped into them, laughed, and danced around them. Will held Ivy at arm’s length, and Ivy would not meet his gaze. She turned suddenly, and Will let her walk away.

  “Go after her,” Tristan ordered. “We’re not finished.”

  “Leave me alone,” Will muttered, and started off in the other direction, his head down.

  Gregory, who was leading Suzanne into the crowd of dancers, caught Will by the arm. “You’re not giving up, are you?”

  “Giving up?” Will repeated, his voice sounding hollow.

  “On Ivy,” Suzanne said.

  “On the chase,” Gregory said, grinning at Will.

  “I don’t think Ivy wants to be chased.”

  “Oh, come on,” Gregory chided him. “My sweet and innocent stepsister loves to play games. And take it from me, she’s a pro.”

  A pro at escaping you, Tristan thought as he moved out of Will.

  “I’d never give up,” Gregory said, glancing at Ivy, who was standing at the edge of the patio. His lingering smile made both Suzanne and Tristan turn toward Ivy uneasily. “There’s nothing I like more than a girl who plays hard to get.”

  P3-3

  “Therefore,” Philip told Ivy on Wednesday evening, “I can watch Jurassic Park again.”

  “Therefore?” Ivy repeated with a smile. Leaning over her mother’s hand, she quickly repainted Maggie’s nails. Her mother and Andrew were headed for another college fund-raiser.

  “Andrew said so.”

  “So he’s already checked your homework?” Ivy asked.

  “He said my story about the party was highly imaginative and very fine.”

  “Highly imaginative and very fine,” Maggie mimicked. “Before you know it, we’re going to have a four-foot-tall professor walking around here.”

  Ivy smiled again. “Go set up the VCR,” she told Philip. “As soon as Mom and I are finished, I’ll be down.”

  She lifted the scarlet brush just in time as Philip jumped off the bed, leaving her and her mother bouncing.

  When he was outside the door, Maggie whispered to Ivy, “Gregory said he’d stay around tonight, so if Philip gives you any trouble—”

  Ivy frowned. She had always been able to handle Philip much better than either her mother or Gregory could.

  “—or if you start to feel, you know, under the weather …”

  Ivy knew what her mother meant—depressed, crazy, suicidal. Maggie couldn’t bring herself to say those words, but she had accepted what others told her about Ivy. There was no fighting it, so Ivy just ignored it. “It’s nice of Andrew to help with Philip’s schoolwork,” she said.

  “Andrew cares about both you and Philip,” her mother replied. “I’ve been wanting to discuss this with you, Ivy, but with everything so, well, you know, in the last three weeks …”

  “Spit it out, Mom.”

  “Andrew has filed adoption papers.”

  Ivy blobbed Scarlet Passion on her mother’s knuckle. “You’re kidding.”

  “We’re going ahead with it for Philip,” her mother said, wiping the knuckle off. “But you’ll be eighteen soon. It’s up to you to decide what you’d like to do.”

  Ivy didn’t know what to say. She wondered if Gregory knew about this, and if he did, what he thought about it. Now his father would have two sons, and it was becoming more and more obvious that Andrew preferred Philip.

  “Andrew wants you to know that you will always have a home here. We love you very much, Ivy. No one could love you more.” Her mother spoke quickly and nervously. “Day by day, it’s going to get better for you. It really will, honey. People fall in love more than once,” Maggie went on, talking faster and faster. “Someday you’ll meet someone special. You’ll be happy again. Please believe me,” she pleaded.

  Ivy capped the bottle of polish. When she stood up, her mother remained sitting on the bed, looking up at Ivy with a concerned expression, her red fingernails spread out on her lap. Ivy leaned down and kissed her mother gently on the forehead, where all the lines of worry were. “It’s already getting better,” she said. “Come on, let me blast those beauties with the hair dryer.”

  After Maggie and Andrew left, Ivy settled down on the couch in the family room to watch Jurassic Park’s dinosaurs thump and thrash. She stuck a pillow behind her head and propped her feet up on the stool that her brother was leaning against. Ella jumped up and stretched out on Ivy’s long legs, resting a furry chin on Ivy’s knee.

  Ivy petted the cat absentmindedly. Tired from her nonstop performance over the last few days, her cheerful effort to prove to everyone that she was okay, she felt her eyelids getting heavy. With the first tremors from the storm at Jurassic Park, Ivy was asleep.

  Scenes from school ran together in a constantly shifting dream, with Ms. Bryce’s pie face, her probing little counselor eyes, fading in and out. Ivy was in the classroom, then the school halls—walking down endless school halls. Teachers and kids were lined up on the sides watching her.

  “I’m okay. I’m happy. I’m okay. I’m happy,” she said over and over.

  Outside the school, a storm was brewing. She could hear it through the walls, she could feel the walls shaking. Now she could see it, the fresh green leaves of May being torn off the trees, branches whipping back and forth against the inky sky.

  She was driving now, not walking. The wind rocked her car, and lightning split the sky. She knew she was lost. A feeling of dread began to grow in her. She didn’t know where she was going, yet the dread grew as if she were getting closer and closer to something terrible. Suddenly a red Harley came around the bend. The motorcyclist slowed down. For a moment she thought he’d stop to help her, but he sped by. She drove around the bend in the road and saw the window.

  She knew that window, the great glass rectangle with a dark shadow behind it. The car picked up speed. She was rushing toward the window. She tried to stop, tried to brake, pressed the pedal down again and again, but the car would not stop. It would not slow down! Then the door opened, and Ivy rolled out. She staggered. She could hardly hold herself up. She thought she’d fall into the great glass window.

  A train whistle sounded, long and piercing. A dark shadow loomed larger and larger behind the glass. Ivy reached out with one hand. The glass exploded—a train burst through it. For a moment time froze, the flying glass hanging in the air like icicles, the huge train motionless, pausing before it slammed her to her death.

  Then hands pulled her back. The train rushed by, and the shards of glass melted into the ground. The storm had passed, though it was still dark—the kind of sky one sees just before dawn. Ivy wondered whose hands had pulled her back; they were as strong as an angel’s. Looking down, she found she was holding on to Philip.

  She marveled at the peacefulness surrounding them now. Perhaps it really was dawn—she saw a faint glimmer of light. The light grew stronger. It became as long as a person, and its edges shimmered with colors. It wasn’t the sun, though it warmed her heart to see it. It circled Philip and her, coming closer and closer.

  “Who’s there?” Ivy asked. “Who’s there?” She wasn’t afraid. For the first time in a long while, she felt full of hope. “Who’s there?” she cried out, wanting to hold on to that hope.

  “Gregory.” He shook her awake. He rocked Ivy hard. “It’s Gregory!”

/>   He was sitting next to her on the couch, gripping her arms. Philip stood by her other side, clutching the VCR remote.

  “You were dreaming again,” Gregory said. His body was tense. His eyes searched hers. “I thought the dreams were over. It’s been three weeks—I was hoping….”

  Ivy shut her eyes for a moment. She wanted to see the light, the shimmering again. She wanted to get away from Gregory and back to the feeling of a powerful hope. His words ate away at the edges of it.

  “What?” he asked her. “What is it, Ivy?”

  She didn’t answer him.

  “Talk to me!” he said. “Please.” His voice had softened to a plea. “Why are you looking that way? Was there something new in the dream?”

  “No.” She saw the doubt in his eyes. “Just at the beginning,” she added quickly. “Before I was driving through the storm, I was walking down the halls at school, and everyone was staring at me.”

  “Staring,” he repeated. “That’s all?”

  She nodded.

  “I guess it’s been hard for you the last few days,” Gregory said, gently touching her cheek with his finger.

  Ivy wished he would leave her alone. With each moment she spent near him, the dream’s light and its feeling of hope faded.

  “I know it’s hard facing all the gossip at school,” Gregory added, his voice full of sympathy.

  Ivy didn’t want to hear it. If she could find hope again, she didn’t need his or anybody’s sympathy. She closed her eyes, wishing she could block him out, but she could feel him staring at her, just like the others.

  “I’m surprised your, uh, experience at the train station wasn’t part of your dream,” he said.

  “Me too,” she replied, opening her eyes, wondering if he knew she was holding back. “I’m fine, Gregory, really. Go back to whatever you were doing.”

  Ivy couldn’t explain why she held back, except that the light seemed to be growing weaker and weaker in Gregory’s presence.

  “I was fixing a snack,” he said. “You want anything?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Gregory nodded and left the room, still looking concerned. Ivy waited till she heard him banging around in the kitchen, then dropped down on the floor next to her brother, who was watching the movie again.