Transgression

by Brandy C. Ange

  An overwhelming sorrow, like the kind of sorrow Shael had felt in the presence of God, filled the space between them. The sorrow here was melded with victory, an internal conflict. Luc’s loneliness grappling something unrecognizable within his presence. What might have been love, lay more along the lines of self-pity for being alone. But they had been friends, he didn’t want this fate for Shael, did he? How could he?

  The sorrow remained for only a moment before the selfish victory won out. Luc plunged his hand forward into Shael’s. As he did, all the air was squeezed from Shael’s lungs. Every breath he tried to take in suffocated him with a stinging remorse. He felt his strength ripped from him. His heart shattered into a thousand pieces and his back split open as his wings were pulled from his body like white ashes. As Luc let go of his hand, Shael fell to the floor– weak, human.

  1

  New City

  “Photos are the only way,

  To hold on to what you knew,

  Because the moments they show never change,

  When the people in them do.”

  -Erin Hanson

  The floor of the tiny two bedroom apartment was littered with packing boxes. Achaia and her father had become expert movers. They had moved thirty-six times since her thirteenth birthday. Now, Achaia sat on her unmade bed and stared at the mountains around her. She scanned the tops of the boxes which were labeled according to what they held.

  More than half of the boxes would remain packed. There was no use in unpacking them, only to pack them again in a matter of weeks. She hadn’t seen the contents of some of the boxes since their initial move from Washington. She sometimes wondered what they held; if it would be like Christmas when they finally did open them; and if the boxes made her and her father “hoarders”.

  Speaking of Christmas, Achaia and her father, Shael, had skipped it this year. They had spent the day finishing up their packing and paused for about ten minutes to drink a cup of hot cocoa together before going right back to work. Ho ho ho.

  Her father had been in a rush this time. He said he wanted time to move into the apartment in NYC before the schools started back up from Christmas break; to give her a chance to get “settled”. As if they ever settled…

  Achaia lay back on her bed, exhausted. Her copper hair stretched across the bed in curly tendrils. Her blue-green eyes scanned the ceiling, drawn to the dust on the blades of her ceiling-fan. She let out a sigh as her stomach growled, pulling her out of her trance. She stood and stepped around the maze of boxes blockading the door with her heart set on food.

  Down a short hallway, her father sat in the living room on an ottoman facing what used to be a fireplace, which was now bricked off. He had placed a number of pictures on one half of the mantle and sat hunched over a small box holding the rest of the family photographs, ninety-nine percent of them were of Achaia. The picture in his hand was the oldest of them all. Achaia knew which one it was—she had a copy of the same photo in her room. It was a study in contrasts. Her mother, fair skin and bright red hair, tucked under her father’s dark arm. After the terrorist attacks, people had started to look at her father differently. An old woman had even asked Achaia if she was really Shael’s daughter. Aside from the shape of her nose, and the set of her eyes, there wasn’t much about Achaia to point to her Israeli heritage. She looked almost like a clone of her mother, who looked more Scottish. At least from what Achaia could tell from the photographs.

  The one in her father’s hand, however, was beaten, folded, tear-stained and worn. He did this every time they unpacked. His fists were clenched around the picture. His face, red and blemished, looked as though he’d been crying, though his cheeks were dry.

  “Dad?” Achaia knew it’d be a minute before he noticed she was talking to him, so she took a few steps closer to move the process along.

  Achaia hadn’t known her mother, and though she’d missed out on having one growing up, now, at the age of sixteen, she had learned to deal. It’s not that she didn’t miss her mother, she did. Just not in the way girls who had once gotten to know their mothers did. She missed her mother, yes – she just never mourned her. “Dad?”

  “Oh! Yeah? Sorry, sweetie,” her father said sitting up and looking in her direction. Though his mouth spoke to her, there was no sign that his mind was following suit.

  “It’s not your fault,” she walked over and took the photo out of his hand and studied its tattered edges. “I’ll never understand how you could forgive the guy who shot her, but you can’t forgive yourself.” Achaia sat down on the floor beside her dad, looking up at him, searching his face for any sign of comprehension.

  “I don’t know. Maybe I should stop saying ‘you’ll understand some day.’ Maybe you never will. But I don’t blame him. His – state of mind– the way he was, wasn’t all his fault. I should have known better than to leave her alone.” His voice was strong and steady, but his face was weak and aged.

  “Dad, you had no way of knowing…” Achaia started. Talking about her mother was always an awkward and unproductive topic. At that moment her stomach rumbled, providing the perfect excuse for a change of topic.

  “Pizza?” they said in unison, smiling at each other halfheartedly.

  Shael stood up and walked over to the phone hung on the wall, the only thing in the room that could be easily located.

  The tile floor felt cold even through Achaia’s shoes, but not nearly as frigid as the expressions on the students’ faces as they passed her by. She’d counted exactly one smile, the guidance counselor, and even hers seemed forced. Nobody liked coming back to school after Christmas break.

  Pretty much every school smelled the same- every cafeteria, every gym, every library… She found her locker down a short hallway under a stairwell. It came pre-dented, and with the last resident’s old lunch sack still in it. She hoped it was empty; judging by the smell of it though, she guessed not. She tossed the old sack in the garbage bin at the end of the hall.

  No one seemed to have a locker in the little nook but her. She felt a little like Harry Potter, the only kid shoved under the stairs. She decided then and there to refer to the little hall as the dungeon. That, after all, is how the space felt—claustrophobic, dark, and abandoned. New York had been her father’s idea. It was the one city she had been hoping not to end up in; it was crowded enough already. The students that passed the mouth to the dungeon and noticed her, looked at her like they agreed; there was no room for her here.

  She opened the locker-door and started unpacking her book bag. Once empty, she hung the bag on a hook inside and took her schedule out to see which class she had first. Geometry, gross, she thought.

  As she looked up from the piece of paper, she noticed a group of students had formed a few lockers down, at the mouth of the dungeon. So, she wasn’t alone in this prison. The congregation was weird in that, unlike everyone else, they were wearing actual expressions on their faces.

  There were five of them: three boys and two girls. Two of them had to be brother and sister. They were both thin and pale, with bright blue eyes that she could see from a distance, accentuated by their pitch-black hair. It had to be dyed, nobody had hair that dark. The boy actually looked happy to be there. The first girl, on the other hand, looked ten times more miserable than the rest of the students, but at least she was showing some form of emotion.

  The students at this school were like mindless drones, listening to their phones and texting without even looking at each other except to scowl. Occasionally, a group of girls would pass by the end of the hall talking way too loudly. The second girl looked like she could join them. She looked like a model who’d fallen out of a preteen magazine. She was tall, thin, with light brown hair and brown eyes. She seemed chipper as well, smiling wider than Achaia had ever seen anyone smile. She’d never known a mouth could be so vast.

  The girl laughed and flirted with the black-haired boy tugging on the arm of his sweatshirt, and giggling at every word he said. Achaia came to the conclusio
n that either he was hilarious, or the girl was really ditsy.

  One of the boys looked younger than the rest, but he was the bulkiest in terms of muscle. He had dirty blond hair and green eyes. He looked like a surfer-skater punk. He held his books shoved haphazardly under his arm. They looked like they would fall and scatter at any moment, held in place only by his biceps; which flexed as he laughed along with the others. He looked like the kind of boy who wished he had an attitude problem, but in reality, was just too happy.

  The last boy grabbed Achaia’s attention more than the others, mainly due to the fact that he was staring at her, not seeming to pay any attention to the black-haired boy’s jokes. He didn’t seem to be ashamed of the fact; instead he held eye contact without reservation. He was confident, and he had a right to be.

  He was muscular for sure. He, too, had green eyes with a lighter shade of blond hair that was an intentionally-unkempt kind of shaggy. He was tan with freckles, and when he responded to his friends she could see his teeth were bright white, but not necessarily straight. He was flat out gorgeous. He was relaxed and reserved, more so than the rest of them. But something about him seemed restless. His eyes were captivating. They held onto hers with a magnetic appeal.

  The group divided into two and headed off to their classes. The boy flashed a brilliant, crooked smile at her before breaking eye contact and heading down the hall away from her. Her stomach flipped in on itself as she realized that she had noticed him staring at her because she had been staring at him. It made sense, but somehow, she’d not put two and two together.

  She bent down to grab her geometry book and tucked her schedule inside the front cover. She stumbled as she stood back to her feet before heading for the staircase. Idiot. Awkward idiot. She cursed to herself as she joined the swell of students climbing the stairs.

  Achaia walked into the classroom as everyone else was taking their seats. She was finally starting to see people smiling and talking to each other about what they’d done over break. Achaia walked slowly over to the teacher. The tall, lanky woman greeted her with a smile. “You must be… Ah-chee-ah?” She reached out her hand. “Did I say your name right?”

  Not unless you were referring to a clay animal that has grass growing from every orifice of its body, she thought silently to herself. Achaia smiled reaching for her hand. “It’s actually Ah-kay-ah.”

  “Oh, okay. Sorry, it’s not a very common name.”

  “No. No, it’s not.” Her smile widened diplomatically. Her father said she got her diplomacy from her mother who had been in politics before she died. Apparently she had been heading for the presidency.

  As the handshake ended, the woman turned to address the rest of the class. “Okay guys, listen up! We have a new student with us. Her name is Achaia, she’s from…” The woman looked down at her inquiringly.

  “Um…everywhere. My dad and I move around a lot,” Achaia said with a weak smile.

  “Oh, alright then. Um…you can take the seat next to Olivier. His name isn’t too popular either, so you have something in common,” the woman said softly, smiling. She pointed to the chair next to a boy who was rummaging around in his backpack.

  As Achaia took her seat, the boy sat back up, putting his notebook down on his desk a little too noisily for her liking. Just obnoxious. She looked over, exasperated, and found that the younger, bulky, too-happy boy from the hallway was smirking at her.

  “I’m Olivier.” The boy said in a whisper, ignoring the teacher’s lecturing and the notes on the board. She noticed that, unlike the other Brooklyn kids, he didn’t have an accent. Any kind of accent–

  “I know.” Achaia’s heart sped up involuntarily. “I mean, that’s what she said your name was.” Achaia said in a softer whisper, pointing toward the teacher with the eraser of her pencil. In that second she made a promise to herself to stare at her paper and at the board — nowhere else.

  “Well it’s nice to meet you,” Olivier said holding out his hand to shake hers.

  Achaia looked down at his hand, caught off guard. Are teenagers supposed to shake hands? She looked up for a second into his eyes, then looked back down at his hand. This guy is serious. She switched her pencil to her other hand and shook his hand quickly before turning back to her notes.

  Out of the corner of her eye Achaia had watched Olivier practically stare at her through the entire class period. What is it with these kids? Do they not pick up on social cues? Then it occurred to her that he had maybe seen her staring match in the hallway and was not-so-subtly making fun of her. Or, maybe she had something on her face… Or, maybe she was just paranoid.

  Achaia sighed as the bell rang. She hated the first day at a new school, the constant second guessing of herself. She closed her geometry book and pulled her schedule out again.

  “So what class do you have next?” Olivier asked putting one foot on his chair and leaning in closer to her, looking over her shoulder. He smelled musky. In a strangely comfortable way. “Do you need help finding it?”

  “Oh, um…” Achaia, taken off guard, fumbled around in her head with whether to accept or reject the offer.

  “It’s a pretty big school, and a little bit of a maze.” He nodded down to her schedule to coax her on.

  “I have French next, and yeah that’d be – nice.”

  “Yellaina is in that class,” he said smiling. “Do you need to stop back by your locker?”

  “Yeah,” Achaia said looking down to her single geometry notebook.

  “Okay, I’ll walk you. I think my locker is right down from yours.” A few girls in the row behind them looked at Achaia with complete disgust. Obviously Olivier’s attention is a hot commodity around here. “Not that I just mysteriously know where your locker is, in some creepy mind-reader or stalker kind-of-way.” He added a little too quickly. “I just, um, your hair is kind of hard to miss, and I’m pretty sure I saw you this morning.”

  “Right.” Achaia nodded with a small laugh, comforted by the fact that she wasn’t the only one who was coming across as a total weirdo.

  They walked out of the classroom and toward the stairs. He was only a few inches taller than her, but he carried himself as if he were the tallest person on earth, even with his endearing awkwardness. He reminded her of someone. Olivier was quirky, but somehow he just oozed confidence. Her father’s friend, Naphtali, was also like that.

  Naphtali would come and visit them all the time. He traveled a lot with his job too, and no matter where they moved he always seemed to end up in their area at some point. It was kind of nice that her father had a friend he could keep in touch with despite all the moving.

  If she was honest, Achaia envied that, though she supposed that Naphtali was her friend too. Sometimes her father would have to go out, and Naphtali would always offer to stay with her. He had a way of making it feel less like a baby sitter and more like a friend hanging out. He, too, was always sure of himself.

  “So, what’s your dad do?” Olivier asked, breaking the silence between them. It was as if he knew what she was thinking. “Why do you guys move so much?”

  “Oh, well, he’s a writer. So, depending on what he’s writing about, and for who, we have to go there.” Achaia fidgeted with the binding on her book, stopping only once they’d reached her locker.

  “That’s pretty cool. I guess you’d know a lot about a lot with that kind of job.”

  “Yeah, he’s brilliant.” Achaia thought of all the useless information her father would randomly heap out from time to time, about the most worthless places. Occasionally some of it was actually pretty interesting, but most of the time it wasn’t. “He is working with some history professors at one of the universities here on a new textbook. He is kind of an Historian, it’s a hobby. He writes a lot on anthropology.”

  She turned the lock and opened the door to her locker. Olivier leaned up against the locker next to hers, and she watched as girls passed by shooting her loathing glares. She tossed her geometry book in and looked around fo
r her French notebook and text. “So do you know any French yet? Or is this your first class?”

  “It’s my first class.” She said standing back up with her books, all of a sudden self-conscious about the lingering smell of the last occupant’s rotten lunch. She shut the door curtly. “I couldn’t even tell you what the words on the cover mean,” Achaia said holding up the textbook. The cover had two unbelievably happy looking teenagers waving over-enthusiastically.

  Olivier looked at the cover and laughed. “That is so, not realistic.”

  “Right!” Achaia laughed. “Have you been to France? Do you speak any French?” She asked as they started walking down the hall again.

  “I have been to France, actually. That’s a long story. But languages aren’t really my gift either. What about sports? Do you like sports?” He asked eagerly.

  “I don’t know. We never stayed anywhere long enough for me to join a team. I took karate when I was younger. I think I was pretty good, but then we moved. My dad wouldn’t let me take it again. He said we couldn’t afford it.”

  “Oh, that stinks. Well, I play soccer if you ever want to come out and watch me play. You know, when the season actually gets here.” He nodded.

  “Oh, well I don’t know. Maybe.”

  Olivier laughed to himself, his green eyes shining, as they reached his locker. He had it opened before Achaia could have even processed that he was reaching for the door. He had his books exchanged just as quickly and with them under his arm, he walked on, toward the others who had formed his group before.

  Olivier waved over to one of the girls.

  The model-looking girl separated from the group and met them in the middle. “Olivier?” She cocked an eyebrow in way of asking for an introduction.

  “This is Achaia.” He gestured to her Vanna-White-style. “Achaia, this is Yellaina.” He said pointing to the supermodel girl. “She’s in your French class.”