The Eureka moment—it might have seemed as if I was slow to catch on, but it all happened so fast—was when I saw that Petrelli’s was missing. It wasn't there. A regular house-type building stood in its place, but there was no restaurant at all. And the flower shop on the corner was a butcher's shop. This was Average in the past, a not-so-distant past. It had to be.
“It is eighteen years ago,” the angel said, as if he could read my thoughts. He was still pulling me along at a breakneck speed, and my dizziness would not stop.
I shook off his grip and struggled to keep up with his long strides. “Where are we going?”
“You'll see.”
Even though I was occupied with breathing evenly so the angel wouldn’t notice how unfit I was, it soon became pretty apparent that we were on our way home… my home.
“What are we doing here?” I wheezed. At least I wasn't cold anymore after walking so fast.
“You'll see.” Zachriel rushed me. “Hurry up, we don't want to miss it.”
We stood in front of a tree that hadn't been there in the future. Wasn't gonna be there? Whatever. Someone must have chopped it down before I was born. I also realized it wasn't summer, which explained why it was so cold. No snow, but the tree was bare. Before I could fully wrap my head around this strange tree in my otherwise familiar garden, Zack had climbed the tree and held his hand out to help me up.
“I don't know if I can climb this,” I said skeptically.
“At least give it a try or else you won't see,” he insisted, seeming somewhat exasperated.
Curiosity won, so I took his hand, which felt surprisingly warm. He half-pulled me up, while I put my foot in a knothole and caught hold of the lowest branch with my other arm. Once I was up there, it wasn't so hard. We climbed up a bit higher, and even though I was slightly worried the branches wouldn't hold my weight, I was actually a little bit proud of myself for getting up there.
I had almost forgotten we were in the past. When Zack pointed at the upstairs window to my dad’s bedroom, which we now faced directly, I almost fell off the tree.
The curtains weren't drawn, the light was on, and I saw a younger version of my dad entering the room. He didn't look that different, actually. In my present, his hair was almost entirely gray; that was the main difference I noticed. But seeing my mom shocked me. She looked the same as in the pictures I had of her but so completely different at the same time. I was captivated, and for a moment, I forgot everything around me—the tree, the cold, the angel. But then I saw what my parents were about to do. That made me want to barf again.
“Eww.” I covered my eyes when they undressed each other. “I don't need to see that. What kind of a pervert are you, climbing trees like a peeping Tom?”
Zack reached up from his branch and pulled my hands off my eyes. “Don't be silly. That is not what this is about. I wanted you to see how it happens—your conception.”
I looked at him in disgust. “Why would I want to see this?”
“Because it proves what I told you. You get to see how Vitrella is reborn.”
“I guess.” It was all a bit much for me. I couldn't really think.
“Now, come on. Watch,” he urged me.
I threw a quick glance into the direction of the bedroom, but luckily, my parents were prudes and did it under the covers. Still, looking at them as I sat there with Zack made me really uncomfortable.
“Look up through the branches into the sky,” he told me after a while. “In a minute, you'll see the falling star. And then you have to be quick and look into the window again. Understood?”
I nodded and diverted my eyes from my mom’s nice, shiny, dark hair—I wished I would have inherited that. I tilted my head back and looked up into the night sky at all the stars. It was kind of magical. Soon enough, I spotted a falling star coming toward us. “I see it,” I shouted.
“Shhh,” he said.
I looked into the bedroom window and saw my mom on top of my dad. They had thrown off the covers, and Mom’s naked back was toward us. I had to admit that I was more fascinated by my mom than creeped out by what they did. Suddenly, it looked as if a light exploded in my mom’s back. It faintly glowed, then everything was back to normal.
Okay, that was weird. “Was that… the star?” I whispered. “Vitrella?” I asked incredulously.
Zack nodded.
“But… how could they not have noticed? How do people not notice such a thing?”
Zack looked at me, his eyes glinting with amusement in the dark. “Have you ever had sex?”
I was sure I had turned bright red and hoped angels couldn't see in the dark.
“Have you?” I retorted. I was really curious. Did angels have sex? What a waste if he didn't.
“Never mind me. If you ever had an orgasm with or without a partner, you would know that it feels like an explosion of light, anyway. You wouldn't notice the energy of a star entering you because that’s exactly what it feels like.”
“Okay,” I said lamely, still mentally preoccupied with the image of Zack having angel sex.
Ordinarily, I would have been more mortified about this conversation and about what I was seeing through the window. But considering I was sitting in a tree with an angel, looking at my conception, I already had a lot to wrap my head around. That didn’t leave a lot of space in there to deal with my feelings of embarrassment.
“So that's how it happened,” Zack said. “You saw it for yourself. Shooting star, fallen angel.”
“But… but…” I had so many questions, I didn't even know where to start. Also, my butt started to hurt from sitting on the knobby tree branch. “How… I mean, I paid attention in health class. I know how babies are made and what happens biologically. It doesn't happen the instant you have sex.” I was still feeling a bit shy about saying such things in the presence of this gorgeous guy, but I got bolder. “It takes a while for the sperm to make its way to the egg and whatnot. And it hasn't got anything to do with an orgasm.” I could feel the heat rising into my cheeks again. “Women can get pregnant without having an orgasm.”
“It hasn't got anything to do with biology,” Zack explained. “Everything you learned about the beginning of a new life is probably right—with you mammals, anyhow. But with every creation, there is something else happening, something your sciences like biology cannot or do not attempt to explain.”
That was starting to sound rather cryptic. “Huh?”
“The thing that is created is infused with something—I guess you’d call it a soul, although I’m always a bit cautious with using that word, because what I mean is vaguer than what you humans usually associate with it.”
He was being very vague indeed. But I decided to run with it. “So, it gets this soul thing as soon as it’s created? The baby, I mean? From the moment of its conception?”
“Yes, as it is with everything that’s created.”
Well, that would end the debate of whether an embryo had a soul or not. Wouldn’t that be dynamite information in the hands of anti-abortionists? I wouldn't tell them, though. I wasn't quite clear on the pro-choice stance myself.
“But it's not a fully formed thing.” Zack felt the need to qualify. “It’s an energy, and like all energy, it changes; it adapts. It’s not static.”
“Okay, so it’s not like this is the person's soul from conception to death? My soul is not exactly Vitrella's anymore?” Weird. Weird, weird, weird. Suddenly I felt as though I had an imposter inside of me—an angel from space. That was a bit like an alien, wasn't it? Shouldn't Vitrella have busted out of my mother's gut like in that movie? Instead of an ugly alien thing coming out, I had been born. I was that ugly alien thing. I shuddered.
“No,” Zack said. I didn't see his face because he had started to climb down, but when he spoke, it sounded as though he smiled. Then he said something that could have been “It's nothing like Vitrella’s” or “You're nothing like Vitrella.” He was already at the lowest branch and jumping to the ground, so I was
n't sure.
“Come on,” he said from below. “We gotta go.”
“Hang on. Give me a moment.” I looked into the window, where my parents had finished the unspeakable act of making me and had gotten dressed again. My mom stood in the middle of the room, chatting with Dad and smiling. I had a perfect view of her face.
Now, I had said that I wasn't too sad about having lost my mother when I was still really young because I had a nice stepmom and a really great family. But to tell the truth, I’d fibbed a little bit. The loss of my mom made me incredibly sad sometimes.
I didn't have an awful lot of memories of my mother. Fragments, really, the kind of stuff someone remembered from when she was three or four. My memories were snapshots, but I wasn’t really sure if it was the photograph of the moment or the moment itself I could recall. I also had vague memories of smells and sounds, so fleeting that I could hardly grasp them, but nonetheless, they were forever etched into my brain. Tangerine. I was sure that my mom must have used a shampoo, body lotion, or perfume that smelled like tangerines because I associated it with her. I still loved that smell. Sometimes, when nobody was around, I would peel a tangerine, not to eat the fruit, but just to bury my nose in the pieces of skin.
On occasion, I got downright panicky because I worried that I would forget about her. Then I got the pictures out that I had of her so I could study her face and imprint it on my brain.
Now I had a new memory. I would never forget that shiny brown hair and that happy smile. She was so pretty in that big gray T-shirt she had pulled over her head; she was almost glowing. I could see the love she had for my father, and they both seemed so… free.
I stared so intensely at my mom that my eyes began to hurt, but I wanted to remember every little detail. She came toward the window and looked out, still smiling, and I was so enraptured, I forgot that I was sitting directly opposite her.
Her facial expression changed. She furrowed her brows and shouted something over her shoulder to Dad, who was still lying in the bed. He got up and came over to the window, and I realized they were looking at me. They saw me. Or better yet, they saw someone sitting in the tree, spying on them.
As my dad turned around and ran out of the room, presumably to either come outside or call the police, I climbed down as quickly as I could. “We got caught,” I called out to Zack, who was still waiting for me underneath the tree.
In my hurry, I slipped and fell—right into Zack’s arms. He held me like a groom who was carrying his bride over the threshold. His muscular arms seemed to have no problem with catching one hundred sixty-five pounds of me. It felt good to be in his arms.
Then I remembered my dad. “We gotta run.” But he didn't put me down. Instead, he carried me to the low hedge that separated our property from our neighbor's garden. Before I could get confused about what he was doing, everything started to spin, and I was barfing into the tall, green hedge of my present.
3
Before I had fully come to my senses, Zack had given me some instructions on what to do next. I had nodded like a moron, and he had disappeared.
I took a couple of deep breaths and walked over to my house. Mechanically, I turned the key in the door, greeted my family, walked up to my room, and flipped open my iPad. As usual, I checked emails and other messages. I wasn't really paying attention, though, all the while thinking about the sexy angel and his incredulous claims. I had agreed to try and think of a way to figure out what the people of Average had wished for, but only really so I could see Zack again. I mean, seriously, how was I supposed to go about finding out people’s wishes? Go door-to-door and pretend to work for a market research company? People in Average knew me anyhow.
While I was checking my Facebook messages, I got an idea. I saw a post on the Average community page that someone had shared. Using the anonymity of the Internet, I could ask the online community.
In no time, I had created a fake profile on Facebook, using the name Angel Average. I knew it wasn't allowed, but I figured by the time Facebook noticed and tried to corroborate my identity, I would have deleted it anyhow. It was only supposed to be an experiment, so what the hell? I browsed Flickr for a profile pic and just chose one of the first ones I found of a woman's silhouette in the sun. I thought it looked a bit like an angel with all the blinding light behind her, so I felt that it was appropriate.
A knock startled me. Allison stuck her head in the door. “Dinner in five,” she said.
“Already ate at Jeannie's,” I responded, my eyes glued to the screen.
“You don't have to eat anything, but you have to come and sit at the table with us. Dinnertime is family time and we waited for you to come home.”
Before I could protest, Allison closed the door. I sighed. Tuesday night was mac and cheese night. If I sat at the table, I would definitely eat some. Mac and cheese was way too tempting. Remember what I said about the curvy-could-be-sexy-if-I-ate-less thing? Well, this was the reason why I was more like muffin-top-and-side-boobs-if-I-wear-the-wrong-clothes curvy.
I quickly switched from my fake profile to the Average community page and wrote without thinking about it. “…to wish upon a star. If you could make a wish upon a shooting star, what would it be?”
I hesitated until Allison shouted, “Stella! Dinner!” Then I quickly pressed the post button.
I went downstairs, where my dad and my two younger sisters were already sitting at the dinner table. When I saw ten-year-old Anna and six-year-old Marie, it briefly occurred to me that Zack could have gotten the sister wrong, because they both really looked like angels with their blond hair and bright blue eyes. This was probably where I did diverge from your average teen older sister, because I absolutely adored my younger siblings. They were such cutie patooties, and my heart always overflowed with love when I saw them, especially Marie, who I remembered well as a teeny, tiny, little baby. I tousled her hair as I passed her then sat down on my own chair.
Marie flinched at my touch. That was new. Usually, she was very affectionate.
“What's up, pumpkin?” my dad asked before I could think more about Marie’s reaction.
Now, I'm sure he didn't mean to imply that I was round and squishy, because my dad was the nicest guy in the world and didn’t have a mean bone in his body. Nevertheless, it prompted me to help myself to more salad and only one or two spoonfuls of mac and cheese, just for the taste. After all, tomorrow I was going to meet the sexy angel again. Not that eating less for one night would make any difference in my appearance, but what the heck? At least it was a reason.
“Not much,” I answered after taking my food.
Allison got down to business. “Applications are closing this week, aren't they?” I knew there had to be a reason she’d insisted on this “family time” thing.
“Uh-huh,” I said with a mouthful of melting cheese and pasta.
“Cutting it kind of close, hon,” my father commented.
“I don't think I’m going to get around to applying in time,” I said after I’d swallowed.
“Stella,” Allison said sharply, laying her cutlery down. “You had the whole summer to apply.”
“I know, I know. But you said I could work at Jeannie's until I figure out what I want to do. And I haven't. It seems stupid to rush it now. Plus, college is expensive. I can take a year off, work at Jeannie's, and then make college count instead of just going there without any direction.” I thought that sounded reasonable. Dad and Allison couldn't argue with it.
“Don't just work at the diner, though,” Allison suggested. “We have a college fund. You could do some internships. Volunteer. That looks good on your college application. And that might give you an idea about what you would like to do.”
“Maybe,” I said dubiously. “I just wouldn't know where I'd like to do an internship.”
Dad chimed in, trying to be helpful. “I could ask at the firm.” He was a tax accountant.
I pulled a face, and Allison saw it. “Hey, accounting is a worthwhile
field to spend the college fund on.”
Something in the way she talked about accounting implied that I shouldn't even get the idea to study fine art and drama. Not that I wanted to, but I felt a rebellious streak coming on. “I like working at the diner.” That wasn't even a lie. I did like working with customers. It was never boring. “Maybe I want to choose waitressing as a career.”
Allison and Dad looked at each other in alarm.
“But honey, you can do so much more. It's fine for Jeannie; she’s a business owner. But a young, smart girl like you…” Allison nodded vehemently as she spoke, getting all red in the face. I chewed on a mouthful of salad to hide my grin as I watched her. “We sure don't want to tell you what to do with your life, but—”
I interrupted a relieved Allison. “It's all right. I was only joking. Of course I’ll go to college and get a decent degree for a decent job. No worries.”
“Maybe a rich man will walk into the diner and marry Stella,” Anna piped up. “Then she won't have to get a degree or a job at all.”
We all stopped eating and stared at her in shock, except for Marie, who pushed her macaroni around on her plate. That seemed strange because she had been known to inhale mac and cheese faster than any of us. But she was so preoccupied that she seemingly would not be interrupted by adult conversation.
“It's a fifties-style diner, Anna. It doesn't mean you’re automatically time traveling to the fifties,” I said distractedly, thinking of the man who had come into the diner earlier that day. There had been no talk of marriage, though. But we had done some time traveling.
Wish Upon a Fallen Star: Average Angel Page 2
