Outcast

by Adrienne Kress

  Pastor Warren folded the handkerchief and put it back into his pocket, and then he came toward me. He placed his hands on either side of my face and gave me a meaningful look. It wasn’t the look of concern he’d given me when I’d first shown up nor the look of frustration. It was the Pastor Warren look. The all-knowing look.

  “So many questions. Miss Carver. There are things you just have to feel to understand.”

  Well, that meant absolutely nothing, and could you let go of my face? Your palms are really wet.

  “Okay,” I said.

  Pastor Warren nodded and then leaned over and kissed me on the forehead, which was even wetter than his palms. Then he released my face and returned to his truck.

  “You start coming to Church, little Miss Carver, and you’ll understand,” he said as he got into the truck and closed the door behind him.

  I’d seen him float with my own eyes, but that interaction confirmed it for me. Pastor Warren was full of shit. I didn’t know how he did it, maybe ropes or a mirror—who knew?—but all I knew was he wasn’t going to help me with my investigation. In fact, of the two of us, I reckoned I knew more about angels than he did.

  In hindsight I wish I had investigated the floating. I’d been selfishly only thinking about my concerns. I hadn’t considered the greater impact that Pastor Warren’s floating would have on the town. If I’d outed him as the fraud I thought he was then, well, maybe things would have turned out differently. And by the time I realized it, it was too late. No one would listen to Riley Carver over Pastor Warren.

  22.

  It started small. With individuals.

  At school Amber, for example, couldn’t shut up about it and kept wanting to talk through the event in tiny details. Her experience at Commune had even seemed to have cured her of her fear of cheerleaders as she had just sat down at the table I shared with them and started nattering on.

  Of course, the girls at the table actually found it really exciting, so they didn’t mind her telling it. Over and over again. Except Lacy, who just sat looking bored because she wasn’t the center of attention. At least that’s how it appeared. I remembered what she’d said at the party, about the Church of the Angels being “super dumb.” I wondered what she was thinking now.

  Oh, what did it matter?

  I stopped eating lunch with the cheerleaders after that.

  I was back to being by myself, occasionally sitting with the math club who didn’t seem to mind me joining them. Gabe was always absent from the cafeteria, outside loitering or hanging out with Charlotte. Not that I wanted him to sit with me. I didn’t like the gossip. Even though everyone looked at us like we were brother and sister more than anything, I knew they still didn’t like seeing us together. It was weird. People were weird.

  But then people in the town got weirder. Pastor Warren, who’d always been like the top guy anyway, became something more. The floating thing made his position rock solid. Totally validated his coming here. For being the leader of the Church of the Angels. His presence was now almost…divine. He was meant to be here. He was part of a great plan.

  The changes happened in increments. They began with the little things.

  I was sitting in third period English when Mr. Wood, the school’s custodian, knocked on the door. We all looked up from our books as he was ushered in.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Amber.

  “The council agreed with Pastor Warren that a statue of an angel should be placed in every room,” replied Amber.

  “What? Why would they agree to that?”

  “Because he’s right. It’s a sign of respect to the angels.”

  I looked at the little brass object, a delicate androgynous figure wearing a robe, its wings folded back behind.

  “They don’t look like that,” I said without thinking.

  “How do you know? No one’s ever seen one clearly,” replied Amber looking at me with confusion.

  “I guess…just never thought that they looked like that…could be wrong,” I muttered and returned to reading my book.

  After class I noticed the large picture of Pastor Warren up next to the mayor’s in the foyer. I couldn’t understand it. Mother explained it to me when I got home. For some reason, now Pastor Warren was sitting on the town council. He’d tried to get onto it before, even ran for mayor two years ago. But the council had always liked keeping him in his place as only a religious leader. They liked their power, and he already had enough. Well, no one said that, it was just pretty obvious. But now Pastor Warren was invited to sit on the council as a special advisor. More than that, he’d somehow earned the right to have the final vote on any issue.

  This meant he got say in school affairs too. By the time Christmas rolled around, he’d even made the selections of the songs the school choir was going to sing. He hadn’t managed to usurp Father Peter’s place in putting together the pageant, though. Father Peter might have been meek, but people still liked him, still wanted him around. And after all, the pageant was his thing. One of his only things.

  Despite everything, Christmas actually turned out to be really nice that year. It was also a great distraction from everything that had happened in the past few months. My cousins from up north could never understand how we could celebrate without any snow, or it not being very cold at all. I’d seen enough movies to know how cozy it looked to spend Christmas in the traditional way. But I’d never been good with cold. And the idea of snow was always way more appealing to me than the reality. So I’d always enjoyed a Southern Christmas.

  Our Christmases were always small affairs. Sometimes some of my mother’s friends would come over in the afternoon. She’d have a little open house, where people could come and go as the please, have a glass of champagne, some finger food. Then it would just be family for the Christmas dinner. I liked it like that. But it was unusual, I guess, when you thought how big other folks’ dinners were.

  This year, of course, we had an addition to the family. Gabe was pretty adorable the entire holiday actually. I’d thought he might be all cynical about it, but I guess he’d never really had a proper Christmas, back when he used to be with his ma. He loved our artificial tree and was excited as a three-year-old to decorate it. He wanted to put up all the other decorations too, and it’d been years since we’d done that. So the wreath went over the front door, the garlands along the staircase banister. Stockings got hung up.

  “Take mine, Gabe,” said Daddy when we realized he wouldn’t have one. But Gabe was having none of it.

  “That’s swell of you, Mr. Carver, but then where’s the Claus gonna put your loot? Be back in a bit!” And he swept out the door. He returned half an hour later with another stocking and a dancing stuffed snowman he’d picked up at the card shop on Main.

  “Check it out!” The little felt snowman moved back and forth in rhythm to its own music.

  “Very nice,” I said and laughed.

  “Hey, I bought it with my own money…”

  “Gabe, I said I thought it was nice. It’s cute.” And then I kissed him on the cheek. Everyone saw that, Mother, Daddy. Gabe of course grinned like crazy. Why’d I done that? It’d felt so right to do, it was so in the moment. I turned bright red.

  “Okay, enough decorating, time to get the table set,” said Mother, rescuing me. I followed her into the kitchen and helped her pull out the good china and the colored napkins. I brought out the plastic shopping bag with the crackers we’d bought the day before.

  “So you and Gabe are really getting along aren’t you?” she finally said. I knew she was going to say something.

  “Well, sure, he’s kind of like a brother now after living together so long,” I said, rolling the cutlery into the napkins.

  “Riley, it’s okay to like him. He’s a lovely boy,” she said.

  “Well, I don’t, okay?” I guess I kind of snapped that back at her, because she stopped stirring the gravy and came over to me, leaning her hip a
gainst the cutlery drawer.

  “Riley. You don’t have to like him that way. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. It’s just nice to see you finally getting over Chris.”

  I looked at her in disgust. “Over Chris? You think I’m over him? I’ll never be over him. Would you be over Daddy if he’d been taken?”

  “Riley, I’m not trying to say…”

  “All anyone wants is for me to get over Chris. Well, I don’t want to. He isn’t dead. It’s not all over.”

  My mother leaned in and grabbed me and held me. It was like everyone just always wanted to hug me. I tried to push her away, but my heart wasn’t into it. I finally gave in and hugged her back.

  “I feel so guilty,” I said into her shoulder.

  “I know.”

  “You know? You know what?”

  “I know that you feel guilty. That you couldn’t save him. But that you also feel guilty that you aren’t missing him as much anymore. And you feel even more guilty because of Gabe.”

  I pulled my head from out of the crook of her neck and looked at her. “How do you know all this?”

  She looked down at me and pushed my bangs off my forehead. “I lost both my parents at the same time, sweetie. I know what it’s like to lose people you love. And I know how awful it feels when you realize you’re moving on. It’s okay not to miss him as much. You still love him.”

  I nodded. I’d sort of forgotten everything my mother had been through. I’d been just a baby at the time, and when she finally told me what had happened, it seemed more like a story than something that had actually taken place.

  “Thanks,” I said. There was nothing else really to say.

  “You’ll be okay, honey, just try not to be so hard on yourself all the time.”

  I nodded.

  She gave me a last squeeze, and we returned to getting everything ready. Soon all four of us were sitting around our pretty fantastically set table, if I did say so myself, eating turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce from the tin. All the crackers except one exploded properly. Daddy’s kind of just fell apart, which was too bad. But he did get the best toy, a little wind-up truck. I got an eraser with a candy cane drawn on it.

  We took dessert into the living room and sat around the tree. We talked, we told stories. Gabe managed to tell a couple about his growing up without revealing anything about freaky time travel. The one about him and his dad getting lost in the bayou and having to stay out all night was pretty wild.

  Then my parents turned in and the kids were left alone. I was sitting on the floor my back leaning against the sofa Gabe was sitting on. He slipped off it to sit next to me and put his arm around my shoulders.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Sure. Why?” I sipped some of my hot chocolate and watched the blinking lights on the tree.

  “Back when you went into the kitchen with your ma, you seemed upset.”

  I shook my head. “It was…nothing.”

  “Chris?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Hey, Riley, holidays make you miss people. It’s cool. I miss my ma and pa.”

  “You do?” I turned a bit so I could look at him.

  “Sure I do.”

  “It’s hard,” I said softly.

  “It is.”

  I turned back and stared at the small pile of presents under the tree. I took a final swig of hot chocolate and set the mug to the side, using my free hands now to hug my knees to my chest.

  “It’ll be okay you know,” he said.

  “It will?”

  “Yeah, it will.”

  It was a simple thought, without much evidence, but it made me feel so much better. I leaned my head against his chest and snuggled into him. “Stupid angels,” I said.

  “Yeah. Stupid angels.” I felt his cheek against the top of my head and my face got hot again. Thank god we were both facing out and he couldn’t see. “Hey,” he said after a moment, “I’ve got a good joke about angels.” I could feel the reverberation of his voice in his chest.

  “Cool, tell it.”

  “Okay. So Santa’s in his workshop right? It’s the night before Christmas and everything’s all crazy. Elves are making last-minute presents. One of the reindeer’s gone missing. Mrs. Claus is nagging at him to take out the garbage, and he hasn’t slept in a week. He’s looking over his naughty or nice list, checking everything twice, answering questions to elves. Anyway. He’s just really overworked. So along comes this little angel carrying a Christmas tree, and he asks, “Santa where would you like me to put this?” And that’s why we have an angel at the top of the Christmas tree.”

  I had to think about it for a moment, and then finally I got it and laughed.

  “That’s stupid.”

  “Hey, it’s a true story…”

  I disentangled myself from him and turned and gave him a playful punch in the shoulder.

  “Wow,” he said, “that actually hurt.”

  “You gonna be a big baby about it now? Like with the splashing?” I asked.

  “No. I might hit you with a pillow instead, though.” And before I could think he’d walloped me from the side with one of the throw cushions on the couch. He tackled me, and I was on my back trying to prevent him from smothering me. Not that he was actually intending to smother me. It was more fun, though, to pretend he might.

  “Stop, stop!” I said holding up my arms to prevent him from lowering the pillow.

  “Hey, you’re the one who called me a big baby.”

  Something deep inside me told me that if I really wanted to I could give him a swift kick to the groin, and he’d let me free pretty fast. I also knew that after I did that I could probably sock him in the jaw. Then I thought, maybe that’s not the most playful thing to do. And then I wondered why I’d even thought any of it in the first place.

  “Riley? You okay?” He pulled the pillow off of me and sat up.

  “Yeah, fine. Why?”

  “You stopped squirming. You hurt?”

  “No, I’m good.” I sat up too. “Your hair’s a mess.”

  “You should look in a mirror, sweetheart.” He grinned. It was an awesome grin. It always was an awesome grin. So I grinned too. We sat there looking at each other, in the blinking lights, both of us a scruffy mess. It was the perfect time for a first kiss.

  But it didn’t happen. Because that wasn’t the kind of thing I did.

  Instead he helped me to my feet and escorted me to the hall.

  “See you in a couple hours,” he said.

  “Yup,” I replied.

  And then we went to our separate corners of the house.

  Because that was the kind of thing I did.

  23.

  The next morning we all had the usual Christmas breakfast before opening presents. Predictably my mother got me clothes, this time a dress, red, looked like it would be too small. It went right into the back of the closet. Though she did get me a couple of books too, so that was nice. But Gabe more than made up for my lack of enthusiasm by giving her a big bear hug when he unwrapped his two shirts. Mother smiled at me over his shoulder, and I rolled my eyes.

  Daddy had signed the cards with the gifts and secretly handed me a card with some cash in it. His present for Gabe was pretty cool too. He offered to help him out on his bike. Even though Gabe seemed to know what he was doing, I’d noticed that, with schoolwork and actual work at the garage, he hadn’t really had time to fix it up. My dad, of course, loved making things, and with them working together they’d get it done pretty fast. They actually started working on it that afternoon, with Gabe bringing it over from the shop once we were done lunch.

  I liked watching them work. Normally I wouldn’t like feeling left out of something like that, I’d want to get right in there and learn what they were doing too. But that day, it just felt really cozy sitting on the veranda with one of my new books and checking on their progress every once in a while.r />
  We were such a little family unit now, and it was nice. It was also nice having a guy around the house when Daddy went back to work, and I could tell my mother found helping Gabe with his schoolwork and taking care of him to be an excellent distraction from being on her own so much. We settled into a pleasant little routine, and the angel thing started to move further and further to the back of my mind.

  And just when it had almost slipped out of my consciousness entirely, my ghost stalker thingy was back.

  Its return concerned me on two levels. The first was that I really didn’t like the idea that I was being watched. Also I really didn’t want it suddenly appearing in my room again, though so far it hadn’t. It hadn’t even tried talking to me again. Just stood outside my window every so often at night like it used to. However, it was the fact that I’d almost forgotten about it until it showed up the week after classes had started up again that bugged me most. How could I have forgotten about it at all? How could I have been so reckless? Maybe it had come back because I’d forgotten about it. Maybe it wanted to remind me it was there.

  Or, as something deep inside me felt, maybe I had somehow reminded it to stalk me. But that didn’t make any sense.

  I didn’t bother Gabe about it. He was really more interested in having fun at school and working on his bike. Or at least that’s what I told myself. I was pretty sure Gabe would not have reacted well if I told him I was being stalked still. So I hung out with him at home and at school and kept my secret to myself.

  Hanging out with him at school had been a recent development and had meant I was instantly cool and allowed to be seen with his fellow seniors. I didn’t really know what to do with the popularity, and I knew it was fleeting. After all, before the Christmas holidays I’d been sitting with Lacy and the cheerleaders until Amber started showing up as the new center of attention. I’d gone from that chick who sits with the cheerleaders back to my invisible status in record time. And now I’d been elevated again by Gabe.