Outcast

by Adrienne Kress

There was a part of me that did think I could handle the ghost thing showing up if it meant it was going to tell me something about the Circle. But I had to admit to myself, I always felt relieved when it didn’t show up again.

  After two weeks with no ghost thingy, I concluded that I wasn’t going to be able to interrogate it any time soon, and I couldn’t just sit around waiting for it maybe to appear again. So I did what any reasonable person would do when they need to find out about something.

  I Googled it.

  But nothing came up. Well, there was a band that had that as a name, lots of clubs too, and there were these Canadian painters from the early 1900s that had called themselves the Group of Seven. But Circle of Seven and angels?

  Nothing.

  So I figured the next logical step was to take the really big one. The one I’d been avoiding for over a month now. Going to Commune. I didn’t have the guts to ask Pastor Warren any questions about angels one-on-one. There was something deep inside me that just didn’t like the idea of revealing to him that I might know something extra about angels that the rest of the town didn’t. I didn’t need him snooping into my private business.

  But maybe at Commune something would be mentioned, or something would happen. I wasn’t really sure, but I figured, what was the harm in trying, right? It was one night. If nothing happened, oh well. One wasted evening.

  I guess I could have gone on my own, but selfishly I wanted Gabe to come with me. I really didn’t want to go to Commune by myself. Also because of his strange reaction to the ghost thingy after the pool party, I thought maybe something like that might happen at Commune too. Maybe something would jog his memory.

  I stopped by the garage after I was done with my homework in the library. Gabe was perfectly suited to being a grease monkey, loved working with cars. I had to admit it totally suited him. He looked great all clean, but, man, he looked amazing dirty.

  “Hey there, sweetheart.” He wiped his hands on a rag, a rag really similar to the one I’d shoved in his mouth those many weeks ago.

  “Hey.”

  “Dwight, I’m taking my five.”

  Dwight gave him a wave from under the hood of Wade Wright’s old pickup. Didn’t know much about cars, but I knew Wade’s old beat-up Ford. People become associated with their vehicles here. Kind of like how some dogs look like their owners, people here start to look like their cars. And if there was anything that was more beat-up than that Ford, it was Wade.

  “Let me show you something,” said Gabe as he came over.

  I nodded.

  We walked through the garage out back. The sun felt extra hot today, even more so in the closed-off dusty lot.

  “Check it out.”

  I looked at what he was showing me. It was a bike, a motorbike. Old. Looked like it was falling apart.

  “Where’d you get it, the junk yard?”

  “Out back. Dwight had this baby hidden behind all these tires. Didn’t even know he had it.”

  Made sense. Dwight’s sons were infamous for collecting crap from everywhere and dropping it in their dad’s scrap metal yard. It was like a compulsion. Wasn’t sure if they actually did anything with it.

  “It’s…great.”

  Gabe shook his head. “Should have known better than to show a girl…”

  “Hey!”

  “Don’t you know what this is?”

  “No I don’t.”

  “It’s an Ariel Square Four.”

  “Oh, well then…that’s awesome?”

  “1953, pretty sure. Amazing acceleration. Always wanted one of these babies. Couldn’t afford it, though.”

  Okay, so it was something nostalgic for him, I could understand that. “Where’d it come from?”

  “No idea. Just know that someone was a total square to get rid of this thing.”

  “Well…it is junk.”

  “Oh, dollface.” Gabe clutched at his chest melodramatically and staggered backward. “She’s beautiful. Look at those bones. All she needs is a little polish, a little love. She’ll be purring in no time.”

  “Would you like me to leave you two alone?”

  Gabe laughed. “Trust me, sweetheart. I’ll get her all fixed up, and then I’m taking you for a ride.” It was my turn to laugh. “I bet you’d look swell on the back of a bike.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “clinging to you for dear life. Crying like a baby. Real swell.”

  “You showing her your new toy?” Dwight joined us with a grin.

  “Can’t thank you enough, man,” replied Gabe.

  “Alls I need is for five minutes to mean five minutes, and I’m good.”

  “Right.” Gabe nodded. “Gotta get back to work. Sorry, Riley.”

  “Wait,” I said as he started to head back inside, “I actually came here to talk to you about something.” I looked at Dwight, tried to bat my eyelashes, but I just gave myself a bit of a headrush.

  Dwight sighed. “Two minutes, Gabe, and you’re making it up end of shift.”

  Gabe watched Dwight go and shook his head. “That guy’s got one heck of a internal clock.” He turned to me. “What’s up?”

  “It’s been a while since we talked about this, but I was thinking, it’s Commune tomorrow…”

  “Sweetheart…”

  I knew what he was going to say. It’d been pretty obvious since school started he wasn’t as interested in investigating the crazy that was our lives as I was. “Gabe, please. I mean. It’s not ruining your fun, and I just think it’s my turn now. You’ve had your chance at your second shot, to live it up. But there’s still a mystery, and you’re not the one being stalked…” Shit, so did not mean to say that. Just keep talking, maybe he didn’t notice. “And…Even if you don’t care why you’re here, I just want to know what happened to Chris, Gabe. Please?”

  Gabe put his hands on his hips and leaned toward me. “That thing’s shown up again?”

  “Thing?”

  “That thing. Thing we saw on the road after the party.”

  “Oh, sure,” I said lightly, “stands outside my window sometimes.” And at the foot of my bed. But yeah, didn’t need to share that with him.

  “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” He looked angry now.

  “Because I knew you’d get like this.” Oh, and also because the ghost thingy likes to talk about you not belonging to me and stuff.

  “’Cause you know me so well.”

  “Well, you got like this, didn’t you?”

  He stopped for a second, trying to process my logic.

  “You stay away from it,” he finally said.

  What he didn’t realize was that my staying away from it wasn’t exactly the problem. It was it staying away from me that I really didn’t have much control over. Oh, whatever, we were getting off-track.

  “Gabe, I need you to come to Commune with me. Please.” And because I was feeling desperate, I added: “Don’t make me go interrogate that thing outside my window.”

  He shook his head. Yeah, he knew what I was doing. “Don’t threaten me, sweetheart. You talk about me getting second chances, but you don’t know what I did with the first one. When I’m backed into a corner, I’m not a nice guy.”

  “No one likes being backed into a corner. How do you think I’m feeling right now?”

  “Babe…can’t we just…be? We’re having fun, aren’t we?”

  “Sure. For now. But who knows what’ll happen when it’s the Taking again? What if we could figure it all out before it comes round again? What if instead of one year of goofing off, you had one year of work followed by years and years of fun?”

  “You don’t much live in the moment, do you?”

  “Planning might seem boring, but it makes sense. You know it makes sense.”

  Gabe sighed.

  I didn’t bat my eyelashes, just looked at him in the eye. “Please.”

  “I still get to work on my bike.”

  “You stil
l get to work on your bike, work here with Dwight, and most importantly on your school work.” He scoffed. I grinned. “You know you love it.”

  “Damn hard is what it is.”

  “If you ever need a study buddy…”

  “Yeah that’s what I want, some junior being my tutor…”

  “Gabe.”

  He sighed and his expression softened. “Okay, I’ll go to Commune.”

  “You’ll help me investigate?”

  “Yes, Nancy Drew.”

  “Thanks.”

  He extended his arms toward me. “Come here.”

  “No.”

  “Come here.” He was walking toward me like Frankenstein’s monster.

  “You’re covered in grease.”

  “You love it.”

  “Gabe, no, Gabe!” Too late, his long lean arms were wrapped around me, my head against his sweaty chest.

  He was a really good hugger.

  19.

  There was still an hour before dinner, and I walked slowly down Main Street, not really ready to go home, kind of hoping I could wait until Gabe ended his shift. ’Course he’d been forced to stay longer ’cause of me. I sighed. It made sense to just get back, see if Mother needed any help.

  I picked up my pace and then slowed down again. I was passing the Catholic Church. I really hadn’t noticed I was walking right by it. When you’ve lived someplace your entire life, you don’t really notice things for what they are anymore. In this case, the Catholic Church, in my mind, had more to do with being white and having a steeple that broke up the otherwise steady line of rooftops surrounding the town square than with actually being, you know, a church.

  But I noticed it this time. I stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked at the glass case that Father Peter would dutifully place bulletins in as if anyone read them. I thought for a moment. Couldn’t trust Pastor Warren enough to just ask him, “Hey, Pastor, Circle of Seven, what’s up with that?” But Father Peter? Sweet, quiet Father Peter?

  Well now, that was a pretty interesting idea. And there were angels in the Catholic religion, after all. Maybe he knew something I didn’t.

  What’s the saying—when Google doesn’t work, ask a priest?

  I smiled inwardly, kind of wishing it actually was a saying.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been in the church. It seemed smaller than I’d remembered. I guess there was no need for it to be big, but compared especially to the Church of the Angels, it seemed almost like an afterthought. Which didn’t make sense because, of course, it’d been around way longer than the Church of the Angels.

  Father Peter was sitting in one of the front pews. He was the only one inside and he heard me come in. He turned around, draping his left arm over the back of the seat.

  “Riley!” he said when he recognized me and stood up. “What are you doing here?”

  Good question.

  “Hey, Father.”

  I walked down the aisle to meet him. He smiled and folded his arms across his chest.

  “I…” I stopped.

  “Yes?”

  I felt stupid. And awkward suddenly. He was looking at me slightly confused, but still with that open expression of his that made you totally trust him. I couldn’t quite figure out where to start. So instead I just blurted out: “Angels.”

  “Angels.”

  “Yes.”

  Father Peter furrowed his eyebrows and looked at me carefully. I think he could sense my discomfort. “Riley,” he said softly, “why don’t you sit down?”

  I nodded and allowed him to guide me to the front pew. I sat down and he sat next to me, a respectable distance between us.

  “Okay, Riley, why don’t you start at the beginning?”

  Well, yeah, no, I couldn’t do that.

  “It’s…okay, look. Can I ask you something without you asking me why I’m asking you that something or where I heard that something? Like, can I just ask you if you have any information about something and you just answer the question?”

  Father Peter smiled slightly. “Absolutely.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “Okay.” I felt silly then, like I couldn’t really ask him. Already I was second-guessing myself and I hadn’t even said anything. “Have you ever heard of something called the Circle of Seven?”

  “The Circle of Seven?” repeated Father Peter.

  “Yeah.”

  Father Peter shook his head, “No. Why what is it?”

  I sighed. “No, Father Peter, that’s what I’m asking you.”

  “Oh.”

  “You’ve never heard of it?”

  Once more Father Peter shook his head.

  “It has something to do with angels,” I added.

  “What do you mean?”

  I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t explain to him that some ghost thingy had told me that Gabe, back when Gabe was an angel and not some guy from the 1950s, belonged to the Circle of Seven. That was personal. Besides, it was also unbelievable. There had to be another way…

  “Right, so, Father Peter, again, this next thing I say you can’t ask me why I think it okay?”

  Again Father Peter gave a slight smile. “Sure.”

  “The Circle of Seven owns angels.”

  I watched Father Peter’s expression, hoping maybe to see the light bulb moment when he suddenly understood what I was talking about. Or had a hint. A clue. Something. Anything.

  But his expression didn’t change, just stayed thoughtful and slightly confused.

  “I don’t know Riley…a Circle?” he said.

  “Nothing rings a bell? Even something small?”

  Father Peter shook his head and leaned back in the pew, turning his face away from me and staring out before him in thought. The confusion was growing as he pondered it. He was starting to look kind of agitated, actually. Then he gave a big sigh and looked back at me. “Why don’t you ask Pastor Warren? He knows all about angels.” He said it bitterly, with an edge to his voice. I’d never heard Father Peter sound anything other than nice.

  “I’m asking you,” I replied. Without warning, Father Peter stood up and walked out to the aisle. It took me by surprise. “Um, are you okay?”

  Father Peter paced back and forth for a moment and then stopped and leaned against the pew. He gave a small laugh and smiled kind of sadly. “Yes, I’m fine. I’m sorry, Riley. It’s just…no one from this town has asked me about angels…well, ever. And it’s hit me in a strange way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I followed Father Peter’s gaze to the pine carved Jesus on the cross over the pulpit. “I was raised to believe certain things. I went to the seminary and was educated to believe certain things. And then I come here and…what I was taught, what the Bible tells us, and what’s been going on in this community…it’s all very hard on a person who’s spent his life believing these certain things. It makes you start to doubt yourself.”

  “Oh.” I was starting to feel a little uncomfortable, like I was in reverse confession or something. Not that I’d ever been to confession.

  “I’ve had to work very hard to wrap my mind around the behavior of our angels in this town. It doesn’t reflect what’s in the Bible, and when you see something that is totally different from everything you’ve come to think is true…you can doubt. You can doubt a lot of things. All I’ve ever had in my life was my certainty in what I believed, and now that it’s been shaken…” He paused. I think he realized how personal he was getting. He cleared his throat slightly. “Because it doesn’t make any sense that they come and take people. That they only come to this community. That they only come once a year. That is to say, it doesn’t make sense if you believe what the Bible tells us.”

  “But maybe what’s in the Bible is how people at the time interpreted what was happening,” I said. I didn’t like hearing that Father Peter was confused like this. He always
seemed so content in his small role in the town. And he was so well-liked. Of course, being liked the way a lost puppy is liked is not the same thing as being respected. I’d never really thought of it like that before. “Like Pastor Warren now and his theories. Maybe what has been written about angels is observation without the whole story. Maybe it doesn’t conflict at all.”

  “Maybe.” He didn’t sound convinced.

  I didn’t think it was wise to stick around anymore. Things were getting way personal, and I didn’t want to make Father Peter more uncomfortable. “I’ll go now,” I said quietly. I stood up and made my way over to him.

  “Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.” He seemed genuinely so.

  “No problem.”

  I gave him a smile and then, not sure of what else to say, turned and headed up the aisle.

  “Riley,” called out Father Peter, his voice echoing in the empty church. “Do you mean Nephilim?”

  I turned. “I don’t think so, seeing as I’ve no idea what that word means.”

  “That this Circle of Seven, that they own Nephilim?”

  I shook my head. No they owned angels…they owned Gabe. That was indisputable. “No, angels. Not…that thing you said. What is that thing you said?”

  Father Peter walked up to me and once again gestured for me to sit. We sat in opposite pews, facing each other across the aisle. “Nephilim. They’re mentioned in the Bible, but little is known about them. The Hebrew word “Nephilim” translates to “fallen ones,” but what “fallen ones” actually means, no one’s sure. The most common explanation is that they are the children of angels and humans.”

  “Nephilim.”

  “Yes.”

  “So angels can have relationships.” I felt myself turn red realizing why I’d jumped to that conclusion.

  Father Peter must have noticed my face change color because he asked, “Are you okay?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  He nodded. “To answer your question about relationships, that’s also highly debated. Definitely not the Archangels of course, but the other angels…” He stopped.

  “Father?”

  “I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before, maybe because I’d never heard that Circle term.” He spoke slowly, as if the thoughts were forming as he articulated them. “You’ve heard of Archangels, right?”