Outcast

by Adrienne Kress

  That was a bit of a surprise. I hadn’t realized anyone else felt like that. “You think so?”

  “Totally. Those eyes of his, all buggy and stuff. And personally I’ve always thought the Church of the Angels was super dumb.”

  “You have?”

  “Yeah, I mean, think about it. How much do we know about these angels? Why are we worshipping them? But shhh…” She leaned in holding her finger to her mouth. “We shouldn’t talk about it. Mom will get mad.”

  “Okay. We won’t.” But I was surprised. Lacy’s family were prominent figures in our town. Her dad ran the bank, her mom was the head of the PTA. They were seen with Pastor Warren at every event. From what I understood, they sat in the front pew at the Church of the Angels. And Lacy had always seemed like the kind of girl who enjoyed going with the norm. She reveled in her cheerleader stereotype. She was entering the county beauty pageant this spring.

  I guess she was allowed to have a mind of her own. I just hadn’t realized she’d had a mind in the first place.

  Which was really kind of judgmental of me when I thought about it.

  She still had a firm grip on my shoulder when she finally asked it. Maybe she’d said all that stuff about Pastor Warren to disarm me, lull me into thinking she could actually be interesting. I mean, of course she hadn’t. She was too drunk to make a complicated plan like that. Still, it caught me off guard.

  “So you have to tell me about losing it, Riley,” she said.

  Panic. “I do?”

  “You promised.”

  Yeah, I know, I’ve been thinking about it all day. “What do you want to know?”

  “Who was it?”

  “I told you, some friend of my cousin’s, Jeff, up in Rochester this summer.” I thought that if I threw a name in there casually it would make it seem more real. It worked.

  “What did you think?”

  “Of what?”

  “It.”

  Oh “it.”

  “It was okay.” I was starting to feel pretty ridiculous now. I’d had one stupid kiss my entire life and all everybody else my age wanted to talk about was sex.

  “Riley.” She grabbed my shoulders with her hands and looked at me seriously.

  “Yes?” I wanted to laugh, her expression was so intense.

  She blinked at me a few times. “What?”

  “It sounded like you were going to say something to me.”

  She nodded. “Oh yes. Riley, it gets better.”

  “What does?”

  “Sex.”

  “Okay.”

  “The first time is always a bit…Hurts you know?”

  “I know.” In theory.

  “But it gets better. But make sure you want to do it, because if you don’t want to it isn’t fun.”

  “Obviously.”

  “No, not ‘obviously,’ don’t be such a bitch.”

  “Lacy…”

  “Oh, shut up, you’re just so smart, aren’t you? Don’t care what anyone else thinks, in your stupid outfits and still looking like this. Never having to try. I was just trying to help, but whatever. At least I didn’t lose it to some loser up north.”

  “Lacy…”

  She was already staggering off before I could say anything. Not that I knew what to say. I kind of felt like I’d been ambushed, but sort of a reverse ambush, if that made sense. I felt like somehow she’d made me hurt her, and I didn’t like the idea that I’d upset her, especially when I hadn’t wanted to. So weird. In one short bizarre drunken conversation with a cheerleader my entire perspective on life had changed. Well, on cheerleaders at any rate.

  Who the heck was Lacy Green? Who the heck were any of them?

  I went back to watching my classmates. Some had climbed out of the water now, two of the guys were roughhousing in a way that looked like any second it would turn into a real fight. Who were these people? I’d grown up with them but barely spent any time with them. I knew them as lists of features, but that was it. I didn’t know them at all. Not really. Felt kind of stupid about that. Kind of bad.

  Then again, it wasn’t like any of them had tried to get to know me either.

  My brain felt loopy. Was I drunk through osmosis? What was being drunk like anyway? There were so many things that normal teens knew about. Here was Lacy acting all jealous of me, and she didn’t have any idea how not worth it it was, that I was just some crazy girl who had no idea how to feel like a real teenager. I should just drink and get it over with. Should just have sex.

  Even though I didn’t want to…not…yet?

  “Hey, sweetheart.”

  A quick intake of air. “Hey, Gabe.”

  And here he was appearing out of nothing again. He’d come up behind me, and I felt a pair of arms wrap around my waist. I got all tense.

  Just think of it as a hug. It’s just a friendly hug, nothing more. When his chin hit my shoulder I kind of died a little. “You look a little sad,” he said.

  “I’m not,” I replied trying to sound casual. “Just tired. I hate parties.”

  “This one’s pretty square, that’s for sure.”

  I shook my head, took the opportunity to disentangle myself from his grip, and looked at him, hands on hips. “What are you talking about? You totally hooked up with Charlotte!”

  “She kisses like a fish.” He dismissed it like it was common knowledge.

  “How does a fish kiss?”

  “All pucker. A bit too much suction.”

  “Oh.”

  “You wanna go home?” he asked, stretching his arms above him, the muscles of his torso responding appropriately.

  “Home. You don’t live with us remember?”

  “Dollface, trust me, come tomorrow morning we’re gonna be roommates. You, me, that hot mom of yours . . .”

  Okay, everyone knows she’s hot, but you didn’t just say it like that. “Don’t talk about my mom like that.”

  “Yeah, I guess she’s way too young for me anyway.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it.

  “Hey, look, I made her laugh.” Gabe grinned. He took a step in to me. I could feel his body heat now, radiating toward me. “We had fun making them all jealous, didn’t we?”

  “Yeah. Then you got all pissy when I splashed you.”

  He reached up with his free hand and pushed a drying piece of hair that had fallen in front of my eyes behind my ear. “Yeah, I’m sorry ’bout that. It felt like you’d done it on purpose or something, tried to make me choke, but I know you didn’t. I ruined it by being a baby.” He glanced over toward the churning pool of mayhem. “Can we go home now? Teenagers are just as annoying as they were in my day.”

  Couldn’t have put it better myself. “Yeah, okay. Let’s go home.”

  15.

  I changed quickly, and we were off in no time meandering toward home together. It was kind of nice to have someone to walk with. Not that I really felt unsafe walking home in the dark, it was just creepy walking along some of the dirt roads. So dark. People from the city didn’t always get how dark that could get.

  But the way home from Lacy’s had a couple houses along the way, so it wasn’t pitch black. And there was a small crescent moon in the sky. You could actually see several feet in front of you as you went. Still, walking with Gabe felt good. A bit, and here was a confession that ached, like walking with Chris. Not that he and I ever had parties to walk home together from. Also we didn’t live together. Not that Gabe and I lived together. Not like that. It just felt comfortable, like we’d known each other forever, the way Chris and I had. And he made me feel safe. Also like Chris had. I willed the ache to go away, pushed it aside, and tried to focus on not falling in the dark instead.

  He’d started to sing about five minutes in. I liked it. It was something I enjoyed doing too when I walked. But on my own. Not in front of everyone. I think the only person I’d ever sung in front of was Chris and only because he asked me to. He’d
caught me singing as I walked home from school one day thinking I was alone. I had been super embarrassed, but he’d thought it was awesome.

  Anyway, most people didn’t just tend to sing like that here. Well, not young people. Some of the older people in town would. And okay actually not that many of them either. Maybe I was just thinking of Etta Mae. She had this amazing throaty voice, kind of haunting, and she’d sing songs her grandparents had sung. “You sing ’em to remember,” she’d explained to me once. They’d send chills up my spine. But in a good way. You’d hear her coming. You’d watch her pass. You’d hear the music fade as she went on her way.

  Sing ’em to remember.

  Gabe was singing a different kind of song, though. He was singing a song that made me think of the movie Grease or something. A song I guess from when he was a teenager. I mean, he still was a teenager, but before, when he’d lived…before.

  My baby has a bright blue Cadillac

  She drives it so fast I think it could fly

  And someday soon we’re gonna go to the moon

  Aim that bright blue Cadillac right into the sky.

  “Let’s take a short cut,” I said. Gabe stopped singing, and I hadn’t meant him to. He had a nice voice. Untrained, but on key as far as I could tell. Warm.

  “Okay.”

  I turned off the road and started to stomp my way into the brush. It wasn’t a thick forest or anything here, and off in the distance you could see downtown. Far off. But at night, of course, you couldn’t see all the brambles and stuff. So it was still a little tricky.

  “You don’t know this short cut?” I asked him, as he followed close behind.

  “Nope. But I don’t think I ever needed to get to your place before.” There was a pause. “Funny. Now that I think about it. I think I knew your grandaddy.”

  I stopped and turned around. I couldn’t really look him in the eye, but I pretended to.

  “You did?”

  “He lived in your house, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Last name, Fowler?”

  “Yes.”

  Gabe started to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “He was below me in school. I’m older than your granddaddy.”

  That was a seriously freaky thought.

  “Were you friends?”

  “Nah, he was much younger, and we came from different kinds of families. Where’s he now?”

  “Dead. Both dead, my grandmother and grandfather. Not old age,” I always felt I needed to explain it. “Car accident. It’s one of the reasons we came back here.”

  “You were a baby?”

  “Never really knew them.”

  Gabe was silent. So was I. It was kind of a huge revelation that he knew my grandfather. Though also a pretty obvious one. There were people in the town who might remember him. But they’d all be old now. He’d be old. If whatever had happened hadn’t. He’d be old.

  I couldn’t see his face, like I already said, but I tried to anyway, to see if I could get a sense of what he was thinking. Something then caught my eye. Just beyond him, over his right shoulder. It was white or maybe not, but something light in the darkness. What it was reflecting was hard to say. I guess the sliver of a moon could have helped but…

  “What’s that?”

  Gabe turned around. We were both staring back out at the road.

  “No idea.”

  I guess I’ve always just been curious, probably again comes from my Daddy. I started to walk toward the strange something, passing Gabe. He grabbed my arm lightly as I went by, but I felt compelled to move on and shook off his grip.

  “Riley,” he said, now forced into following me once more, “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. Mr. Tough Guy was nervous?

  “Feels rotten, feels wrong,” he said.

  I didn’t care. At the time it hadn’t occurred to me just how odd I was acting. But I remembered later and it spooked me. I’d never been drunk, so I’d never really known what it was like to have that kind of loss of self-control. But as I approached that white something, I felt it now. I’d started to do so not because I wanted to, but because I had to. I had no other choice.

  We found ourselves back on the road, and I started to walk toward it. It became less of a something and more of a figure. A human shape. Someone was standing in the middle of the street. Staring at us. Or was his back to us? You couldn’t really see a face. I kept going and realized I’d started to jog, and Gabe’s footsteps were behind me. Keeping up with me.

  And then I stopped.

  And then I stared.

  The someone stared in return.

  I realized I was looking at its front, not its back. It was maybe twenty feet away, arms limp to the side, feet slightly apart, facing me direct on. It was wearing some kind of tunic, white or maybe not, trousers. No shoes. And covering its face was a white fabric, thin, but not sheer. The fabric wrapped lightly over the face and waved gently out behind it in a breeze that didn’t exist. All you could see was the imprint of a face, a bump for a nose, hollows for eyes.

  And for all the world I couldn’t tell you what was lighting it. But I could see it all clear as day.

  It didn’t move. It didn’t speak.

  There was a violent pull at my elbow, and I was jerked back as Gabe thrust himself in front of me.

  “Stay away from her!”

  I started to feel cold. Which wasn’t right. Even though it was late at night, it stayed pretty warm this time of year. There was no reason I should be feeling like this. But a cold started to creep up through me, seep into me. Reach inside of me.

  I felt Gabe take a step backward, pushing against me, forcing me to do the same.

  So cold. Everything felt so cold.

  “Run Riley,” I heard Gabe whisper.

  “What?”

  “Just run.”

  He turned.

  “Not without you,” I said.

  “Obviously.”

  He grabbed my hand, and we were running. But I felt so funny. Like I was in one of those dreams where you try to run but you can’t. Your legs are heavy, stuck in some invisible mud or something.

  “I can’t,” I said and started to slow down.

  Gabe didn’t stop, just kept running, practically dragging me along until I finally collapsed on the ground. This forced him to stop.

  I looked up behind me, to see if we’d got away.

  The figure had followed us, or at least so it seemed, as it was exactly the same distance away from us as back before we’d run for it. Still. There was no evidence that it had chased after us. It just was there.

  “We can’t outrun it,” I said, my voice thin.

  Gabe bent down. “You okay?”

  “What does it want?”

  “How would I know?”

  I looked at Gabe as he helped me up. He looked just as freaked out as I felt.

  “Are you cold?” I asked when I was on my feet.

  “No.”

  We turned and faced the figure.

  It stood there. Doing nothing.

  And then in a moment it was right in front of us, it was almost touching us. We both staggered backward, as if pushed by a wave or something. It stayed close. The thin cloth that covered its face moved slightly with its breath. Then it was standing several feet away from us again, as if it had been the whole time.

  Then it was a few more feet away.

  Then it was gone.

  Not that it disappeared. Even though it had. But it wasn’t like it had vanished. It was almost like it had never been. Damn it’s frustrating trying to explain it all.

  “What the hell was that?” asked Gabe.

  I shook my head. Of course I had absolutely no idea, but I felt wrong. Exhausted, cold…and like I did know what the hell that was. “Let’s get home.”

  We retraced our earlier steps back into th
e forest. He walked behind me, silently, and I trudged along, trying to get the blood flowing, trying to warm up.

  “Was it an angel?” asked Gabe suddenly.

  “No,” I replied. “Angels have wings.”

  “So you’ve never seen something like that before?”

  “No.”

  “Just angels.”

  “Just angels.”

  Gabe went silent again. And I couldn’t help but feel a little angry. Whatever that thing was, it wasn’t human. It obviously had to have some paranormal connection with something. And Gabe had been an angel once, after all. Chances were he probably did know what that thing was. It was so frustrating that he apparently couldn’t remember anything.

  “I hope you’re not lying to me, you know.” I pushed a branch up out of my face and let it fly out of my hand. It didn’t seem to get Gabe, though, or at least he didn’t respond to being hit by it.

  “Lying?”

  “I dunno, I find it hard to believe you just can’t remember anything about who you were or where you came from.”

  “I told you the truth, sweetheart. I don’t remember a damn thing. Hell, I should be the one not trusting you with all the angel talk, but I do.”

  I stopped and whipped around. “I don’t know what you’re playing at, I really don’t.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Like how trusting you are of me. And how you acted all flirty with me at the party and all protective tonight like I matter when we only just met. Maybe you’re just trying to get me to lower my guard or something, but I won’t. I know what you are.”

  “Glad you do, sweetheart. One of us should.”

  “It’s really hard to believe you’re not keeping things from me. What are you trying to do?”

  “I ain’t trying to do nothing.” I scoffed. “Look, dollface. You say you saw me as an angel. You say you shot me, and then I turned into me. I was one thing, then I was me again. We figure out that it’s been fifty years since I was in highschool, and I haven’t aged a day. Ain’t all that crazy enough to maybe make you think other crazy things are possible? Like that maybe I really just don’t remember anything, and it ain’t a trick or nothing?”