Kissed by an Angel

by Элизабет Чандлер

  "Give me a break," Gregory said.

  Ivy sat back in her chair and glanced at her watch. Well, it had been eight whole minutes that she had thought about other people. Eight whole minutes without imagining what it would have been like if Tristan had been sitting beside her. That was progress.

  Pat took their order. Then she dug in her pocket and handed some forms to Will. "I'm doing this in front of your friends, so you can't back out, Will. I've been saving your tablecloths- I'm planning to sell them once your paintings are hanging in the Metropolitan Museum. But if you don't enter some of your work in the festival, I'm entering the tablecloths."

  "Thanks for letting me choose, Pat," he said dryly.

  "Do you have any more of those forms?" asked Suzanne. "Ivy needs one."

  "You've been saving my tablecloths, too?" Ivy asked.

  "Your music, girl. The Stonehill Festival is for all kinds of artists. They set up a stage for live performances. This will be good for you."

  Ivy bit her tongue. She was so tired of people telling her what would be good for her. Every time somebody said that, all she could think was, Tristan is good for me.

  Two minutes this time, two minutes without thinking of him.

  Pat brought more festival forms along with their pizzas. The others reminisced about the summer arts festivals of the past.

  "I liked watching the dancers," Gregory said.

  "I was once a young dancer," Beth told him.

  "Till an untimely accident ended her career," Suzanne remarked.

  "I was six," Beth said, "and it was all quite magical-flitting around in my sequined costume, a thousand stars sparkling above me. Unfortunately, I danced right off the stage." Will laughed out loud. It was the first time Ivy had heard him laugh like that.

  "Do you remember when Richmond played the accordion?"

  "Mr. Richmond, our principal?"

  Gregory nodded. "The mayor moved a stool out of his way."

  "Then Richmond sat down," said Eric.

  "Yow!"

  Ivy laughed with everyone else, though mostly she was acting. Whenever something did interest her or make her laugh, the first second it held her attention, and the next second she thought, I'll have to tell Tristan.

  Four minutes this time.

  Will was drawing funny little scenes on the tablecloth: Beth twirling on her toes, Richmond's legs flying upward. He put the scenes together like a comic strip. His hands were quick, his strokes strong and sure. For a few moments, Ivy watched with interest.

  Then Suzanne breathed out with a hiss. Ivy glanced sideways, but Suzanne's face was a mask of friendliness. "Here comes a friend of yours," she said to Gregory.

  Everyone turned around. Ivy swallowed hard. It was Twinkie Hammonds, the "little, petite" brunette, as Suzanne called her-the girl that Ivy had talked to the day she first saw Tristan swim.

  And with her was Gary.

  Gary was staring at Ivy. Then he checked out Will, who was seated next to her, then Eric and Gregory. Ivy prickled. It wasn't as if she were on a date; still, she felt Gary's eyes accusing her.

  "Hi, Ivy."

  "Hi."

  "Having a good time?" he asked.

  She toyed with a crayon, then nodded her head. "Yes."

  "Haven't seen you for a while."

  "I know," she said, though she had seen him- at the mall once, and another time in town. She had quickly ducked inside the nearest doorway.

  "Getting out a lot now?" he asked.

  "Pretty much, I guess."

  Each time she saw him, she expected Tristan to be nearby.

  Each time she had to go through the pain all over again.

  "Thought you were. Twinkie told me."

  "You got a problem with that?" asked Gregory.

  "I was talking to her, not you," Gary replied coolly, "and I was just wondering how she was doing." He shifted his weight from foot to foot. "Tristan's parents were asking about you the other day."

  Ivy lowered her head.

  "I visit them sometimes."

  "Good," she said. She had promised herself a hundred times that she would go see them.

  "They get lonely," Gary said.

  "I guess they do." She made dark little X's with her crayon.

  "They like to talk about Tristan."

  She nodded silently. She couldn't go to that house again, she couldn't! She laid the crayon down.

  "They still have your picture in his room."

  Her eyes were dry. But her breath was ragged. She tried to suck it in and let it out evenly, so no one would notice.

  "Your picture has a note tucked under it." Gary's voice wavered with a kind of tremulous laughter. "You know the kind of parents they are-were. Always respecting Tristan and his privacy. Even now they won't read it, but they know it's your handwriting and that he saved it.

  They figure it's some kind of love note and should stay with your picture."

  What had she written? Nothing valuable enough to save. Just notes confirming the time they would meet for their next lesson. And he had saved such a scrap.

  Ivy fought back the tears. She should never have gone out with the others that night. She couldn't keep her act together long enough.

  "You jerk!" It was Gregory's voice.

  "It's okay," said Ivy.

  "Get out of here, jerk, before I make you!" Gregory ordered.

  "It's okay!" She meant it. Gary couldn't help how he felt, any more than she could.

  "I told you, Gary," Twinkie said, "she's not the kind to wear black for a year."

  Gregory's chair fell back as he rose, and he kicked it away.

  Dennis Celentano collared him just before he got to the other side of the table. "What's the trouble here, guys?"

  Ivy sat still with her head down. At one time she would have prayed to her angels for strength, but she couldn't anymore. She held herself still, wrapping her arms around herself. She shut down all thoughts, all feelings; she blocked out all the angry words that whirled around her.

  Numb, she would stay numb; if only she could stay numb forever.

  Why hadn't she died instead of him? Why had it happened the way it did? Tristan had been all his parents had. He had been all she wanted. No one could take his place. She should have died, not him!

  The room was suddenly quiet, deathly quiet around her. Had she said that out loud? Gary was gone now. She couldn't hear anything but the scratching of a pencil. Will's hand moved quickly, with strokes strong and even more certain than before.

  Ivy watched with numb fascination. Finally Will drew back his hand. She stared at the drawings.

  Angels, angels, angels. One angel that looked like Tristan, his arms wrapped around her lovingly.

  Fury rushed through her. "How dare you!" she said. "How dare you, Will!"

  His eyes met hers. There was confusion and panic in them. But she did not relent. She felt nothing but fury.

  "Ivy, I don't know why… I didn't mean… I'd never want to, Ivy, I swear I never would-" She ripped the paper off the table.

  He stared at it in disbelief. "I'd never hurt you," he said quietly.

  It had been so easy. In less than a millisecond, it seemed, Tristan had slipped inside Will. There was no struggling to communicate: the angel pictures had come quickly, as if their minds were one. He had shared Will's amazement at the sight of the image his pencil had drawn; if only Will could make it real for them, his comforting Ivy.

  "What do I do now, Lacey?" Tristan asked.

  "How can I help Ivy, when all I do is keep hurting her?"

  But Lacey wasn't around to give advice.

  Tristan wandered the streets of the silent town long after Ivy and her companions had left. He needed to think things out. He was almost afraid to try again. Statues of angels, pictures of angels, just mentioning angels stirred up in Ivy nothing but pain and anger-but that's what he was now, her angel.

  His new powers were useless, completely useless. And there was still the question of his mission,
about which he was totally ignorant. It was so hard to think about that, when all he could think about was reaching Ivy.

  "What do I do now, Lacey?" he asked again.

  He wondered if Lacey was being overly dramatic when she had said that his mission could be to save somebody from disaster. But what if she was right? And what if he was so caught up in his and Ivy's pain that he failed someone?

  Lacey had said to stay close to the people he knew, which was why, as soon as he awakened from the darkness, he'd sought out Gary and followed him to Celentano's that evening. She'd also told him that the clue to his mission might be in the past, some problem he saw but did not recognize as such. He needed to figure out how to travel back in time.

  He imagined time as a whirling net that held thoughts and feelings and actions together, a net that had held him until he suddenly broke away. It seemed that the easiest point of entry would be his point of exit. Would it help to go to the place itself?

  He quickly made his way along the dark, winding back roads. It was quite late now and no cars were on the road. An eerie kind of feeling, the sense that at any moment a deer might leap out in front of him, made him slow down, but only for a moment.

  It was strange how easily he found the spot and how certain he was that it was the spot, for each turn and twist in the road looked the same. The moon, though it was full, barely filtered through the heavy leaves. There was no silver splash of light here, just a lightening of the air, a kind of ghostly gray mist. Still, he found the roses.

  Not the ones he had given her, but roses like them. They lay on the side of the road, completely wilted. When he picked them up, their petals fell off like charred flakes; only their purple satin ribbon had survived.

  Tristan looked down the road as if he could look back into time. He tried to remember the last minute of being alive. The light. An incredible light and voice, or message-he wasn't sure if it was actually a voice and couldn't remember any words. But that had come after the explosion of light. He returned to the light again and focused his mind on it.

  A pinpoint of light-yes, before the tunnel, before the dazzling light at the end, there had been a pinpoint of light, the light in the deer's eye.

  Tristan shuddered. He braced himself. Then his whole self felt the impact. He felt as if he were collapsing in on himself. He fell back. The car was rushing backward, like an amusement park ride suddenly thrown in reverse. He was caught in a tape running backward, with words of gibberish and frantic motions. He tried to stop it, willed it to stop, every bit of his energy bent on stopping the backward-racing time.

  Then he and Ivy sat side by side, absolutely still, as if frozen in a movie frame. They were in the car and eased slowly forward now.

  "Last glimpse of the river," he said as the road made a sharp turn away from it.

  The June sun, dropping over the west ridge of the Connecticut countryside, shafted light on the very tops of the trees, flaking them with gold. The winding road slipped below, into a tunnel of maples, poplars, and oaks. It was like slipping under dark green waves. Tristan flicked on his headlights.

  "You really don't have to hurry," said Ivy. "I'm not hungry anymore."

  "I ruined your appetite?"

  She shook her head. "I guess I'm all filled up with happiness," she said softly.

  The car sped along and took a curve sharply.

  "I said, we don't have to hurry."

  "That's funny," he murmured. "I wonder what's-" He glanced down at his feet. "This doesn't feel…"

  "Slow down, okay? It doesn't matter if we're a little late- Oh!" Ivy pointed straight ahead.

  "Tristan!"

  Something had plunged through the bushes and into the roadway. He saw it, too, a flicker of motion among the deep shadows. Then the deer stopped. It turned its head, its eyes drawn to the car's bright headlights.

  "Tristan!" she shouted.

  He braked harder. They were rushing toward the shining eyes.

  "Tristan, don't you see it?"

  "Ivy, something's-" "A deer!"

  He braked again and again, the pedal pressed flat to the floor, but the car wouldn't slow down.

  The animal's eyes blazed. Then light came from behind it, a burst of headlights-a car was coming from the opposite direction. Trees walled them in. There was no room to steer to the left or the right, and the brake pedal was flat against the floor.

  "Stop!" she shouted.

  "I'm-" "Stop, why don't you stop?" she pleaded. "Tristan, stop!"

  He willed the car to stop, he willed himself back into the present, but he had no control, nothing would stop him from speeding into the whirling funnel of darkness. It swallowed him up.

  When he opened his eyes, Lacey was peering down at him.

  "Rough ride?"

  Tristan looked around. He was still on the wooded road, but it was early morning now, gold light fragile as spiderwebs netting the trees. He tried to remember what had happened.

  "You called me, hours ago, asked me what to do next," she reminded him. "Obviously you couldn't wait to find out."

  "I went back," he said, and then in a rush he remembered. "Lacey, it wasn't just the deer. If it hadn't been the deer, it would have been a wall. Or trees or the river or the bridge. It could have been another car."

  "Slow down, Tristan! What are you saying?"

  "There was no pressure, no fluid. It went all the way down to the floor."

  "What did?" Lacey asked.

  "The pedal. The brake. It shouldn't have given out like that." He grabbed Lacey. "What if… what if it wasn't an accident? What if it only looked like one?"

  "And you only look dead," she replied. "Sure fooled me."

  "Listen to me, Lacey. Those brakes were in perfect shape. Somebody must have messed with them. Somebody cut the line! You have to help me."

  "But I don't even know how to pump gas," she said.

  "You have to help me reach Ivy!" Tristan started down the road.

  "I'd rather work on the brakes," Lacey called after him. "Slow down, Tristan. Before you knock off another deer."

  But nothing would stop him. "Ivy has to believe again," Tristan said. "We have to reach her. She has to know that it wasn't an accident. Somebody wanted me-or Ivy-dead!"

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