Wish Upon a Fallen Star: Average Angel

by Felicity Green

  “And now, if you’ll excuse me.” She walked to the front door, and I had not much choice other than to follow. “I have a spot of dusting to do before I have to leave for the salon.”

  She stopped walking so abruptly that I ran into her. Mrs. Mancini didn't smell of lavender or vanilla like most old ladies, but of something I couldn't quite put my finger on until after she had closed the door without much ceremony.

  A little bit dazed from the encounter, I walked down the street with the clipboard that only had two words on it—collector and church—under my arm. Then I remembered what that awful stuffy smell was. Mrs. Mancini smelled of mothballs.

  She probably took them to bed with her when she went to sleep. I began wracking my brain. How I was supposed to find that old hag—who clearly had no interest in spending time with another human being—a boyfriend? My enthusiasm for matchmaking dwindled rapidly. No wonder she was alone, even though it seemed all the same to her. Who would want to spend time with her? Mrs. Meyers had probably secretly only had that wish so that she wouldn't feel so guilty about not spending more time with her mother. But who could blame her? Matching Mrs. Mancini with a partner seemed a near impossible task. I might as well have picked the one guy’s wish for his own island. What had I gotten myself into?

  7

  “She really isn’t that nice.” I crossed my arms in front of my chest. Not because it was cold—it was a warm summer night—but because I felt I needed to brace myself against Zack. He had lost his calm and easygoing demeanor somewhat, and it scared me a little.

  The more I had thought about Mrs. Mancini since leaving her house, the less I felt inclined to find her a boyfriend. In fact, it felt a bit ridiculous to even attempt such a thing. A “boyfriend” had no place in that woman’s life. A husband may have been more suitable for Mrs. Prim and Proper, but honestly, I doubted I would find anyone in Average who would have her. I would be hard-pressed to find her a friend, male or female. And no matter what her daughter had wished for, Mrs. Mancini didn’t seem to be in need of company.

  A couple of days had passed, and I had stopped thinking about it, having kind of given up. I had been busy enough, pulling a couple of double shifts at the diner because another waitress had been sick. And we hadn’t been getting a lot of sleep these days because Marie had made a habit of sleepwalking. In fact, I had been awake when Zack had thrown some stones at my window around midnight. It would have been way cooler if he had knocked—where were his wings?

  This time, my sleeplessness hadn’t been Marie’s fault. There had been something wrong with the mouthwash. Anna had used it after brushing her teeth and had spit it out immediately after noticing a funny taste. She must have still gotten some in her stomach, though, because a little later, she had been so violently ill that Allison had taken her to the hospital. Luckily, it hadn’t been necessary to pump her stomach, and they had come back an hour or so before Zack arrived. But we’d all been pretty shaken up, and I hadn’t been able to get to sleep yet. The rest of my family apparently didn’t have the same problem as everyone else's lights had been out when I walked downstairs to meet Zack outside.

  Now I was talking to an unimpressed angel in the garden.

  “That hardly matters. You committed to the wish, and you have to fulfill it,” Zack said for the umpteenth time. He scowled, and to my dismay, he still looked pretty.

  I scowled back. “Says who?”

  “You said you would do it. You can’t give up just because it suddenly seems a bit harder than you thought.”

  “If you would have met her, you’d understand. It isn’t a little bit harder; it’s impossible. And why should I help her? Wouldn’t it be better if I fulfilled a wish for someone who really deserved it?” I thought I had some pretty good arguments and didn’t quite understand why Zack still insisted on this stupid wish.

  Zack raked his hand through his thick brown hair. “It’s not up to you to decide who deserves what.”

  I had been under the impression that angels were serene, and he had done a pretty good job of proving that… until tonight. It seemed as though he was unraveling a bit. Had it all been an act so far? Suddenly I felt the urge to push him a little and see how far I could go. Ordinarily, a gorgeous guy like him would have intimidated me, and I did admit that I had been gushing a bit so far. But there was something about standing in the garden at night that made me bolder. Or was it the lack of sleep? Whatever. He hadn’t exactly revealed an awful lot, and I was dying of curiosity.

  “What is it to you, anyway? What do you care if Vitrella’s wish quota is down?”

  He shook his head impatiently. “I just have to make sure that you do her job. I’m an angel of apocalypse, remember? My job is to prevent tragedy, and if Vitrella's wishes are not fulfilled, the imbalance in the universe will lead to a catastrophe.”

  “Yeah, you said that, but it all sounds a bit arbitrary,” I said, unconvinced. “It would be logical if there was a particular chain of events you had to stop and me fulfilling a particular wish would do the trick. But you said that it doesn’t matter what wish I pick. That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It’s not quite as straight-forward as that. And I can’t really explain it to you. You just wouldn’t—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” I said, interrupting. Now it was my turn to become impatient. “My teeny tiny human brain would not be able to take it and explode. Anyway, I’ll just unpick Mrs. Meyers’s wish and choose another one if it makes you happy.” Of course I still wanted him in my life. I didn’t want to antagonize him so much that I would lose him. I had waited seventeen years for a cute guy like him to be interested in me, and I was not prepared to let him go yet, even if he wasn’t interested in me for the reason I would have liked.

  “I told you a million times that that’s not possible,” he yelled. “You committed to it.”

  I shushed him. “Shh, you don’t want to wake up my family.”

  He exhaled loudly, closed his eyes, and remained silent, probably trying to collect himself again.

  “Yes,” I continued calmly. “But it would be easier if I could just pick another one, fulfill a wish for a person who actually deserves it. You wouldn’t believe how that Mrs. Mancini—”

  “Aaargh,” he said, interrupting me as he clutched at his head. “We’re just talking in circles. Nothing gets through that thick skull of yours. I have never met such an obstinate person in my life!”

  I pressed my lips together and tried not to cry. To my surprise, I got angry. “I am only doing this to help you.” My voice was as icy as I could make it. “I don’t buy your apocalypse story, to be honest, because you’re not prepared to show me any evidence or even explain it to me. So why else would I do it? I’m just trying to be nice, but I might as well not bother if you’re going to swear at me like that and put me down. I don’t need this. Why don’t you fulfill these wishes yourself? I’m done.”

  And with that, I just left him standing there and walked back through the French doors into the house. I locked them behind me and saw him staring at me. Before he could see that my tears had started flowing in earnest, I quickly turned around and ran upstairs to my room. I put my headphones in my ears, cranked up the music, pulled the duvet over my head, and cried into my pillow until I finally, mercifully, fell asleep.

  ***

  The next day—Saturday—Anna felt much better, but Allison called Dr. Monroe, our pediatrician, and asked him for a checkup, just in case. Dad was out playing golf for the day, and Allison asked me to look after Marie.

  I fed my little sister the lunch Allison had prepared. Marie was really dazed and unresponsive, which was totally unlike her little bubbly self, but then she had been behaving strangely lately. I hoped that Allison had taken the opportunity to ask Dr. Monroe about Marie’s sleepwalking thing. That had to be the problem; she probably wasn’t getting enough sleep. I tried to press her about it, asking if she had bad dreams sometimes, but she didn't really give me an answer. I realized how tir
ed she was when she almost fell asleep over her yogurt. I put her down for her nap immediately after that and didn't even need to read her a story—something she usually couldn't get enough of. She was asleep before I had tucked her in.

  After the night I’d had, I was feeling pretty tired too. I decided to take a nap as long as Marie was sleeping as well. So I went to my room and lay down on my bed. Unlike my little sister, it took me a while to fall asleep. Thoughts were running round and round in my head, but I finally drifted off.

  When I woke up, it was with a start. I knew immediately that something was wrong even before I opened my eyes. They flew open, and I saw Marie leaning over me, a gleaming silver kitchen knife in her hand. In the instant between her bringing the knife down to my throat and me instinctively putting my hand up, I saw the red glint in her eyes. I remembered I had seen that same red gleam the night I fell down the stairs. I’d assumed it had been an optical illusion. It wasn't.

  I didn't really have time to think about it, though, because the blade cut through the flesh on my forearm, and it hurt like hell. I screamed when dark-red drops spewed onto my white duvet cover and more blood came gushing out of my arm. I looked up with incredulity at my six-year-old sister, who had already raised her arm again, ready to stab me once more. Her face was impassive.

  Suddenly, a bright light appeared above her, and something seemed to arrest Marie’s arm. It looked for a second as if she was straining against something as she twisted her little mouth and drew her brows together. Her eyes looked like rubies on fire. The white light around us slowly morphed into something else, something tangible. I squinted. Feathers. I saw what looked like bird feathers. And in the middle of them, right above Marie, Zack’s face appeared. He moved, and the thick wad of feathers struck Marie, who fell down. I screamed again, forgetting the pain in my arm, as I realized the feathered things were Zack's wings. They were so huge that they spread from wall to wall and ceiling to floor. The light got brighter again, blending out the feathers, and they faded until only Zack remained, standing there wingless above my little sister, who lay motionless on the floor.

  “Oh God, Marie!” I yelled, jumping from my bed and clutching my still-bleeding arm. “Is she okay?”

  “I just knocked her out,” Zack reassured me. “She'll be all right. The question is: are you okay?”

  In his eyes, I saw real concern. He had come to my rescue. I just couldn't believe it. I almost would have been excited that Zack had turned out to be my knight in shining armor if my little sister hadn't just tried to kill me.

  “I—” I started, but was interrupted by Allison's voice downstairs.

  “Stella, where are you?”

  Zack looked at me then at Marie in alarm.

  “Go,” I said. “I can explain this somehow, but I won't be able to explain why you’re in my room.”

  “But you need to go to the hospital.”

  “Allison will take me,” I said quickly. “Go.”

  Allison's voice was outside my door. “Stella, where's Marie?”

  How was Zack supposed to leave now? I looked back at him in panic, but he had already disappeared. Before I could wrap my head around that, Allison came barging into my room. “She’s not in her bed.”

  When she saw my arm and all the blood, she went white as a sheet. Then she spotted Marie on the floor, next to the knife that had slipped out of her hand, and she screamed. “God, what happened?” She rushed to an unconscious Marie and cradled her in her arms. “What's wrong with her?”

  Just as I was wracking my brain for a way to explain—should I tell on Marie?—, my little sister came to. “Mommy?” She looked helplessly at Allison then clutched her head. “Ouch.”

  “What happened here?” Allison wanted to know.

  Marie looked confused. “I don't know, Mommy.”

  I decided I needed time to puzzle this out, needed to talk to Zack first. “I accidentally cut my arm with the knife, and Marie fainted. She must've hit her head.”

  “What on earth were you two doing in your room with a kitchen knife? Let's see your arm.” I didn't have an answer to her question, but Allison didn't wait for one. “Never mind, you can tell me in the car on the way to the hospital. Let's put a bandage on your arm to stop the bleeding.”

  Allison shook her head as she ushered us downstairs. “Seems like all of my daughters decided that this would be a great week to visit the emergency room.”

  8

  “What’s wrong with Marie?” That was my first question when I stepped from the path alongside the river behind the tall grass and walked to where Zack sat on the bench. The bandage around my arm shone extra white in the pale moonlight. The doctor had stitched the wound up in the hospital—ten stitches, but the blade hadn’t gone in deep—and had sent us home with instructions to watch me and feed me, as the blood loss would probably make me prone to fainting.

  Luckily, Marie seemed to remember nothing of her own supposed fainting spell, and I had been so interested in Marie’s medical exam that I had hardly paid any attention when they patched me up. I had been sure they would diagnose her with something really bad, but apparently she’d just had a bump on the head, not even a concussion, and was completely fine. She had acted fairly normal at the hospital. Needless to say, I hadn’t taken my eyes off her for one second. I watched her all the way there and back in the car and at the dinner table. After dinner, I had excused myself with the intention of lying down immediately. But having to sleep with one eye open, wondering if Marie would come back, meant I couldn’t sleep at all. Also, I had questions. Lots of them. So I had been relieved when I found a note from Zack under my duvet, asking to meet me at the same spot by the river where we had chosen the wish.

  Now Zack got up and stepped toward me. “Are you okay?” He almost looked as if he was about to give me a hug but seemed to think better of it. I had too much on my mind to get excited about the possibility of him taking me into his strong arms, though. When I felt a tingle, though, I realized I must have still had a little bit of space left up there.

  “Never mind me,” I said. “What about my little sister? It looked like… it looked like…” I swallowed.

  “She wanted to kill you?” Zack said, finishing my sentence. “Well, yeah. She did.”

  It had already dawned on me that it hadn’t been her first attempt. “She tried it before, right? The fall down the stairs… that wasn’t an accident. And the mouthwash… Anna! Why would she want to kill Anna?” I sounded like a scared little child when I realized what danger my sister was in. “I have to get back and protect her!” I was about to turn around and run back home, when Zack grabbed my arm.

  “She wasn’t the intended victim,” he said. “It was meant for you.”

  I spun around again. “But why? Why?” I screamed almost hysterically.

  “Calm down and sit next to me.” Zack looked around worriedly. “You don’t want people to get the wrong idea. After all, we wanted to have a secluded spot where we could talk without being disturbed.”

  “Zack!” I said urgently, but quietly, letting myself be pulled down onto the bench. I held onto his hand. “You tell me right now. What happened to my little sister?”

  He sighed. “I’m afraid she’s possessed by a demon.”

  I stared at him incredulously. A moment of silence passed, which was only disturbed by the sounds of the night insects. “A demon?”

  “A demon who is after you… Vitrella.” He shook his head, and his dark hair flew across his face. “No matter. The demon chose Marie because small children are easier to possess.”

  “Is… is she still Marie? Will she be all right again?”

  “You mean if the demon leaves her? Yes. And she is Marie most of the time. An active demon inside a person drains an awful lot of energy, so the demon has to lie dormant most of the time in order for the human to still be useful to him.” That explained why Marie seemed so tired and exhausted all of the time.

  “Is he hurting her?” I whisper
ed.

  Zack shook his head. “She doesn’t know on a conscious level what’s happening. It might haunt her in her dreams, though. And sometimes, people possessed by demons kind of… wake up during whatever the demon makes them do, and then it is… traumatic.” He probably just left it like that because he saw how alarmed I looked.

  “How do we make him leave her alone?” I had a million questions, but the most important thing to me was that my little sister got out of harm's way.

  “That’s difficult. I’m already working on it.” Zack pressed his lips together. “We might just have to accept it and hope the demon leaves soon.”

  “What?” Tears shot into my eyes, and I looked down at my white bandage. “She’s only six, Zack. We have to do something.”

  “I know, I know.” I felt his hand on my shoulder. This time I was far too upset to find it exciting. But it felt very reassuring.

  I almost forgot what I wanted to ask, but then I pushed the words out. “Why does this demon want to kill me?”

  “It’s to do with Vitrella. Let’s focus on the way to make him stop, okay?” If that meant that Marie was going to be demon free soon, I was more than okay with that.

  He moved his hand from my shoulder, and I felt a little bit colder all of a sudden.

  “Demons can’t kill angels,” he explained. “Angels have a purpose. When they fulfill that purpose, help people, they get their grace. It gives them a kind of… armor against evil.”

  I furrowed my brows, and he must have seen my expression despite the dark because he elaborated. “Just think of it like a light surrounding them, a bubble that the demon cannot penetrate. You’ll have this light too when you take over Vitrella's purpose. As long as you fulfill wishes, the demon cannot kill you.”

  “But… that doesn’t mean the demon leaves Marie, does it?”

  “No, but he might lose interest after a while, when he gets that he can’t harm you. That’s why it’s so important that you commit yourself to fulfilling a wish that you declared you would fulfill. It’s about an attitude, an intent. You cannot lose that intent, you cannot give up, or else you’re in mortal danger.”