“I feel so bad I’m leaving again. You’re sure they’re all okay?” For the second time in a year I was taking a leave of absence from my volunteer hospital job and I couldn’t help but feel guilty—I grew up at that place, and I didn’t like to let down the people there. They were like my extended family.
“It’s fine. They love you,” Joan assured me as she scanned the titles again. “How long is the flight?”
“Just under three hours. Not bad.”
She plucked a third magazine—Entertainment Weekly—and slapped it on the counter. “We’ll take this one too,” she said to the woman ringing everything up. “Nothing worse than running out of reading material on a flight.”
“Thanks, Joan.”
“Of course, sweetie, it’s the least I can do.” She paid for the magazines and handed me the bag, then put one arm around me, wheeling my suitcase with her other arm as we walked out and found seats near the security checkpoint. “I’m very proud of you, you know.” She squeezed my arm. “Even if I’m not one hundred percent thrilled with this trip.” I nodded. Joan had had to put up with a lot in the years she’d spent with me, aside from watching the place where I interned in the spring burn to the ground. She had taken me in when I was just a five-year-old kid left for dead on the side of Lake Shore Drive with no memory and no one looking for me. It probably hadn’t been the easiest way for her, then a single nurse working the late shift, to begin her tenure as an adoptive mom.
“I still don’t really know why this is so important to you, but I do understand it’s a good opportunity,” Joan continued. “But I did tell you that New Orleans happens to be the murder capital of the world right now, didn’t I?” She whispered this last part, as though she didn’t want to offend the city. And, yes, she had told me this a million times, and it wasn’t even true.
“It’s not the murder capital of the world. It’s more like it sort of leads the nation.” I wasn’t exactly helping my cause. I tried again. “Every city has crime.”
“Well, it should be leading the nation in SAT scores. Or random acts of kindness.”
“I don’t think there’s any way to measure for that. Who knows, maybe it does.”
She put her hands on my cheeks, looking in my eyes. “I’m just going to miss you so much.”
“Me too.” I tried to steady my voice and steel my nerves, but O’Hare Airport wasn’t exactly the most Zen-like place. Lines snaking endlessly, people running for their gates as though competing in a track and field event. I felt a sharp pang, wishing to be under the covers of my bed at home, but fought it back. “You really don’t have to wait, though. Dante and Lance will be here soon, I’m sure. I mean”—I checked my watch—“they have to be here by ten fifteen or they’re getting left behind.” I hoped Dante, forever fashionably late, wouldn’t make us like those frantic people racing for their flights.
“I don’t want you waiting here alone. Besides, I’ve got to soak up all the time I can with you.” She put both arms around me. “And, by the way, can I get a little credit for letting you go on this trip with your boyfriend?”
“Joan,” I said, rolling my eyes. This was also well-covered territory. “You love Lance.”
“I know, I know. I just can’t believe I won’t see you for so long.” We had planned for her to come visit midway through the trip, since she’d never been to New Orleans.
I nodded but was instantly distracted by four numbers— proclaiming the new year, which was about fourteen hours away—bobbing toward me. They were attached to springs and a headband atop Dante’s head. I always felt relieved having him near. It settled my queasy stomach.
“Hey, Ms. T!” He reached down and gave Joan a hug.
“So good to see you, dear! And aren’t we looking festive?”
“Thanks!” He shook his head for effect.
“Will they let you through security like that?” I joked, flicking one of the numbers. “You look like a threat for sure.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere! And relax, I brought a pair for you, too.”
I had to laugh. “Lance oughtta be here soon.”
“I saw him. He’s, like, two minutes behind me. He was still trying to talk his mom out of escorting him in here. I had to run to keep mine from following.”
“See, Hav, I’m not the only one,” Joan piped up.
“I can’t get rid of this one.” I pointed to her. I couldn’t help but feel how I’d miss her. I still wasn’t entirely sure about this new life I was leading, and I didn’t like keeping secrets from her. But what was I supposed to say? So, it turns out I really have to go because, you see, I’m an angel in training—all three of us are—and this trip is somehow part of the second of three tests we need to pass to get our wings. And, by the way, if I fail, I basically . . . I couldn’t even finish the thought. My stomach churned and I broke out into a cold sweat.
Joan was still talking: “And besides, you wouldn’t want to have to buy your own magazines, would you?”
“There he is,” Dante piped up as Lance ambled in through the doors with his oversize duffel bag.
“Sorry, guys,” he said. “Hi, Ms. Terra. How are you?”
“Why, hello, Lance! So good to see you. You’re looking dapper today,” she said, sparkling. He wore jeans and a hoodie poking out from under his fleece.
“Um, thanks, Ms. Terra.” He smiled shyly. “Hey, lemme get these,” he said as he grabbed my bags.
“Oh, thanks, you don’t—” He just shook his head. I still tended to protest gestures like that out of habit, but I was secretly glad that Lance didn’t listen. “So, I guess we should probably get going, right?” I proposed. Joan gave the boys hugs and wished us luck and then, as they started walking off to security, she held me in a long embrace.
“I’m proud of you, Haven, honey. Remember to call.”
“Promise.” I nodded and, with a wave, began walking away, to catch up with the guys.
In the distance, Joan called out: “Let the good times roll, sweetie!”
I waved again. “Laissez les bon temps rouler,” I said to my compatriots. Lance slowed his pace a second to give me the quickest of kisses.
“But not too much!” Joan’s voice rang out again.
2. Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler
I let Dante have the window seat, taking the middle myself, and within moments of nestling in, he already had all three of my magazines in his grip and a pillow tucked beneath his closely cropped hair, with his eyes closed. On the other side of me, Lance pulled out his copy of Popular Mechanics and his earbuds. He leaned in, his eyes alive with excitement and what looked like an undercurrent of fear. “Next stop, New Orleans . . .”
“Your second attraction on the Metamorfosi tour,” I whispered back, using the word we had learned in the spring for the passage of angels and devils earning their respective stripes. A chill swept over me.
“We got this,” Lance whispered. “Promise.” He craned his neck for a peek at Dante slumbering then inched closer to me, resting his hand at my jaw and kissing me. It was enough to make me forget for just a moment about what lay ahead. He cradled my neck and placed one of his earbuds in my ear, the other in his, and slouched in his seat, then opened his magazine as one of his favorite songs cued up. I watched him for a moment and noticed a crease forming between his brows, evidence that he was losing himself in the details of an article on math and science and architecture, subjects that made sense to him.
I sat back and fooled with my mysterious new smartphone. Lance had presented the phones to Dante and me at the Lexington ruins on the last day of school.
“Wow, this is a pretty extravagant graduation gift. Maybe I should’ve treated to the hot chocolates?” I said, puzzled, when he handed mine to me. Like theirs, it had the initial of my first name engraved in gold on its black case. I still had a strictly utilitarian cell phone. Joan always said she didn’t think a high school kid needed all the bells and whistles. Maybe she had a point, but nevertheless, it co
uld be embarrassing to take out my completely boring little phone at school.
The eyes of gadget-obsessed Dante lit up instantly. “This is sweet!” He grabbed his phone and began hitting buttons. Then he frowned, shaking it as though he might hear something loose inside. “Dude, I think mine’s broken already.”
Lance shrugged. “Yeah, I took mine apart and put it back together again and still can’t get it to operate. But I have a feeling they’ll start working soon enough.” Dante and I looked at him. “The story is, we’re getting an upgrade.”
He said he’d gotten home from school and found three phones on his bed along with a typed note that read:
No more postcards, no more books . . .
For each of you. Further instruction to follow.
That was it. But it was enough. We could only imagine that we would be receiving some sort of guidance from these phones, just as I had once had a book that automatically wrote new pages for me, advising me how to stay alive through our first angel test at the Lexington. Lance received postcards that did the same thing. They never gave us all the answers—they seemed to want us to think for ourselves. But they gave us hints and, more important, convinced us that something, somewhere, was looking out for us.
In the middle of the flight I tried the on/off button a few times, but still got nothing.
“I’m afraid you’ll need to put that away, miss.” A honey blond flight attendant leaned in with the bright smile of a pageant finalist. Not a single strand of hair had escaped her precise bun. I couldn’t quite fathom how this level of perfection was achieved. But hadn’t I learned by now that you never really know what’s going on beneath all that? Tucking the phone away in my backpack, I then dug out my new copy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, one of the books from AP English Lit that I had brought along to reread.
The plane shifted direction, my ears popping as it careened through the sky, just as Dante snarfled a snore and repositioned his head on my shoulder. I glanced over to see if Lance had heard him, hoping we could share a comforting laugh, but saw his eyelids were struggling to stay open. His glasses slid just enough to make that scar beneath his eye more visible. On his wrist he wore a leather cuff bearing an angel wing that matched the one on my necklace. My fingers felt for it now around my neck, as though it had the power to transport me back to prom night. We had shared a core-shaking episode that night, almost getting killed in the process. I couldn’t imagine many relationships started that way. And it had changed us too.
We were scarred—and not just on our shoulder blades with their matching marks that seemed to be waiting for wings to be fastened on. Nor merely by the three slashes above my heart or the swipe below Lance’s eye or the sweep on Dante’s arm. We were equally marred on the inside. We couldn’t have gone through what we had and not been.
We had been inseparable ever since. We just needed to be near one another, in our own odd little angel support group. We were in a sort of purgatory, a limbo of being on constant guard for the next challenge. All summer we were skittish, edgy. At first we felt rundown from this endless waiting to be attacked. Then we started looking for ways to get strong again: we ran around the track at school for hours at a time after summer classes. Lance and Dante would sometimes join me at the hospital unloading and lifting boxes of heavy supplies.
When school started, we manically raced through our course work. We were not typical sixteen-year-olds. I still felt unsure of how exactly to navigate a remotely normal romantic relationship with Lance. I thought perhaps I was some kind of adrenaline junkie, operating at my best only under the threat of imminent death. And it was with that in my mind that I let my head rest on Lance’s shoulder and I drifted off. I didn’t wake until the pilot’s voice crept into my subconscious and I took a drowsy peek out the window to see that we were beginning our descent.
The cab weaved through streets studded with revelers sipping mixed drinks outside on a sunny weekday afternoon, loops of purple, green, and gold beads shining from their necks. Jaunty trumpet-heavy jazz poured out of the open doors of every bar we whizzed past. It was exactly as I had imagined New Orleans would be. But I hadn’t anticipated the heat. Sticky and sweet-smelling, the thick humid air smothered us as soon as we set foot outside the airport. By the time we found the car that had been sent for us, I had already stripped down to the T-shirt under my sweater. I hoped I’d packed enough of my summer clothes.
“This is hot, even for us, so don’t y’all worry. It’s not just you northerners,” said the driver, clearly a native judging by his tanned and glistening skin. His lilting twang sounded so wel-coming that it convinced me I would be one of those people who went on vacation and inadvertently picked up the accent of the locals and came home sounding ridiculous.
“Where’s good shopping around here, sir?” Dante was already thinking ahead. Lance busied himself cleaning his glasses, which had steamed up instantly, on his shirttail.
“Canal Street, Magazine Street, all over the Quarter. Y’all are gonna love it.”
The city unspooling outside my window could not have looked less like Chicago. Shops and eateries lined every street. Wrought-iron balconies were wrapped around precious row houses, some painted in candy colors. A horse-drawn carriage pulled out in front of us, clomping along at a pace far slower than I walked even when I was relaxed. But no one seemed to mind. Time moved differently here, I could already tell. I breathed deep, taking it all in.
“Your house is a short walk from Jackson Square, real pretty —”
“And just a block or so from Bourbon Street, right?” I piped up. From my guidebook, it looked like our new home was within striking distance of the famous strip, which pretty much sounded like a nonstop party.
“Please, what are you going to be doing on Bourbon Street?” Dante laughed.
“Unleashing my wild side maybe, you never know.”
“Because you really let your hair down at the Vault,” he volleyed back, a reference to our evenings as underage fish out of water at the Lexington’s posh nightspot.
Lance turned around in the front seat and smiled at me. “You can take the girl out of the club but you can’t take the club out of the girl,” he said. “But, culturally speaking, Bourbon Street is definitely worth a look.”
The driver pulled to a stop outside a quaint red brick building on Royal Street. The two-story home seemed perfectly charming and plenty exotic to me, even sandwiched between what looked to be two sprawling mansions. Our residence had one of those delicate balconies I’d already admired so much and featured two sets of tall double doors flanking a metal gateway designed to look like leafy vines. An old-fashioned lantern—like something out of Sherlock Holmes—dangled above the doors, waiting to be lit as soon as the blazing sun set.
Our driver lined our bags up on the curb. “Bienvenue!” he said. “This is a great location, heart of the French Quarter.” I liked how he said Quarter, drawing it out—Caaaaahrter—and I had been lulled into such a state of calm by the city’s relaxed pace that I had to ask him to repeat what he said next because I thought I’d heard him wrong. “Just said, y’all are right next door to that haunted house.” He pointed toward the gray house next to ours, spanning the corner of Governor Nicholls Street. “LaLaurie mansion. Watch out. Oooo.” He waved his fingers, a show of mock spookiness.
“Why am I not surprised?” I whispered to Lance.
Lance smirked, looking at me from the corner of his eye. I studied the imposing mansion. Rising a full story above our hostel, it had black-lacquered shutters framing the windows and a grand balcony wrapping all the way around the corner. The dove-gray paint of its façade was chipped and there were a few boarded-up windows on the upper level. A honking horn pierced my thoughts, and I looked back to see the cab disappearing down the street, a hand waving goodbye out the window.
“Haunted house? Please. That’s nothin’.” Dante brushed it off and gathered his tiger-striped bags. “After where we’ve been?”
Luggage in
hand, we turned our attention back to our own residence and clustered around the center gateway. We peeked inside and could see through an arched walkway back to what appeared to be a patio. There was no one anywhere in sight. I nudged the gate, and it creaked open.
“Well, shall we?” I asked.
“Let’s do it!” Dante said.
Lance shrugged, but proclaimed, “Laissez les bon temps rouler.”
I led the way through the passage until we came out into what would be our own secret garden. I had never seen anything like it: the courtyard was hemmed in by the sides of the building, but above was sun-soaked sky. An ornately carved stone fountain gurgled in the center, with a ledge around its circular pool that seemed the perfect place to sit and read a book. A wrought-iron table and matching chairs stood to one side with a cush- ioned chaise longue beside it. All around the garden, patches of tropical plants flourished, their giant leaves fanning in the hot breeze. Technicolor flowers in luscious candy-apple reds, hot pinks, and citrus shades blossomed up trellises that lined all four interior walls. I tried to call up anything I could remember from my last trip to the Chicago Botanic Garden, where Joan would take me each summer. I let my fingers sweep a wall of magenta blooms. “Bougainvillea,” I said, almost to myself.
“Gesundheit,” said Dante, who’d already sat on the chaise and put his feet up.
“You’re good.” Lance came to my side and leaned in for a closer look. “I think you’re right.”
“There are banana trees too. Anyone interested?” Dante asked. He was on his feet now, trying to reach a cluster.
“Um, maybe we should have a look around before we start eating the landscape,” I said, scanning to see if there was anyone to notice that we were about to tear the place apart.
“Suit yourself,” he said, wiping his dirtied hands on his jeans. “But I’m totally coming back for a snack later.”
Infatuate Page 2
