by J. L. Powers
I thought she had auburn hair, Elder #2 said.
She did, he said. Sometimes!
She had red hair when I met her, Her Excellency said. That’s probably why my son lost his head. I never met my grandson. So the child did not take after your daughter?
Not in looks, no, he said. And he was sickly from the beginning. But they loved him. Then came the real disaster.
CHAPTER 21
I’m done with Zachary. The next day after breakfast, during which he weirdly keeps falling asleep at the lunch table where he’s sitting with the other Angels, he follows us out to the bench under the big maple tree, a new study spot since we sort of don’t want to go to the porch anymore. At least I don’t. I know the staff has already cleaned it and not a single trace of my blood remains, but still, I just can’t.
I face him, fists clenched. “Go play with yourself, Zachary.”
“Adam, look . . .” he begins, and I think maybe he’s going to try to apologize again, but I don’t want to hear it because I don’t believe it, not for one instant. He totally meant to do that to me yesterday and I was just lucky he didn’t succeed. His shadow lurks behind him, hiding from me. Probably trying to hide the grin on its face. Fuck that. Fuck him.
“Shut up,” I cut him off. “You had your fun, hanging around with the lost kids, probably making fun of us behind our backs. Now get out.”
“Dude, I never made fun of you,” he says. “I feel really bad—”
“Just get lost.”
Rachel chimes in: “You almost killed him, Zachary. Just leave him alone.” I shoot her a grateful glance. She acknowledges it with a quick nod.
“I could really help you,” Zachary says. “You shouldn’t just dismiss me like this.”
“I’m better off without your help.” I jump swiftly behind him just in time to catch a fleeting glimpse of his shadow as it runs to hide. A sneer on its ugly little face.
Zachary startles, though, and grips my wrist. “What are you doing?”
“I’m looking at your ugly little soul.” I grit my teeth.
For just a second, his face is a windshield wiper clearing off a deluge of rainwater before the downpour returns, and I see something—hurt, maybe? Then it’s immediately gone. He starts giggling, high-pitched, either nervous or hysterical.
“Shut up,” I say. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing.” But he can’t stop giggling. “What do you know? Nothing, Lost Boy, absolutely nothing.”
What do I know? My mind races through all the classes I took last year. World history, English, math, sex ed. “I know how to put condoms on carrots,” I say.
Rachel snickers and I grin at her, glad she gets my sense of humor, but it’s a mistake because Zachary takes the opportunity to attack, the back of his hand smacking me hard in the face, knocking my head back, a gush of blood pouring down my nose. The salty, rusty taste of blood down my throat.
I react instantly and the next thing I know, we’re grappling, rolling on the lawn, his hand in the small of my back, my fingers hooked around his neck, ready to wrench his head off.
But Rachel didn’t spend her life in foster care for nothing. She hurls herself into the fight, tackling Zachary and sitting on him until he can’t move, his torso pegged between her thighs. Apparently, her very strong thighs. I pull my arm out from under his grasp and stand up, my lips twisted in a snarl I can’t seem to wipe off my face.
“Truce?” he gasps.
“What do you mean, truce?” I yell. “You attacked me!”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything.” He’s speaking into the ground. Let the earth take his words. I don’t want them.
* * *
I haven’t told Tomás a thing, but he seems to know all about it already. I expect we’ll ignore the topic, but then he launches into it almost as soon as we get back to the dorms after lunch.
“You’re making a mistake, man.” Words fall from Tomás’s mouth like small stones, stinging as they hail against my skin. “Zachary really is sorry but now you’re going to make a true enemy of him.”
“I don’t think he’s sorry.”
Tomás shakes his head. “Even if you’re right, Zachary Angel comes from a powerful clan. You want to stay on their good side.”
“I was already on his bad side before I ever stepped foot in this place.” Of course, Tomás doesn’t know that I’m a Reaper, and Reapers are on everybody’s bad side.
“You need to calm down,” Tomás says. “And I have an idea what might help.”
He takes me to another room in the farmhouse I didn’t know existed. It’s floor-to-ceiling shelves are stocked with vinyl records. Old-school shit.
“I didn’t know they even made vinyl anymore,” I say.
Tomás grins. “Yeah, and the best part?” He points his chin toward an antique wooden table holding two record players. Gen’s already there—surprise surprise—listening to something with headphones on.
“He lives here,” Tomás whispers.
He goes to a section marked F and riffles through it. After a few minutes, he comes back with a record. The cover shows a black man dressed in swanky underwear, playing a saxophone.
“Fela, the King of Afropop,” Tomás says. “If this don’t put you in a good mood, nothing will.”
I turn the cover over. It says Fela challenged corrupt politicians, was arrested multiple times because of his political activities, and died of AIDS.
We put it on the record player next to Gen. I sit in a wooden chair, put headphones on, and listen, the beats and rhythms making my feet tap. I feel light, bodiless, like I could just drift up to the skies and keep right on going beyond that.
Forty minutes later, the album is over. The needle scratches across the surface for the last time, then clicks as it lifts and returns to its resting place.
A thought loops through my mind, over and over, and it’s not the feel-good stuff Tomás thought I’d experience. No. The thought that I can’t get rid of is that it’s such a tragedy that a man like this had to die.
But don’t stop there.
Why does anybody have to die? Ever? Why can’t we just keep going and going, forever? What a terrible thing to have to say goodbye to people you love. To have to leave behind such talents. For the world to lose those gifts.
I open my eyes. Tomás is gone, Gen is gone, and now that the music is also gone, it feels like a heavy weight is tying me to the earth.
* * *
As I tramp back to the dorms through a light snowfall, my phone beeps. I almost don’t recognize it, it’s been so long since that happened. I don’t know why I even still carry it around or why I bother to keep it charged. But here it is, beeping.
I pick it up and notice about half a dozen messages from Sarah. In one she says she really misses me and can’t wait to see me. In another, she says her entire life has changed since our encounter with the fortune-teller on Coney Island. In another, she says she’s joined the most important group in the world, something she calls a “youth group that believes in life, eternal life, but here on earth!” In another, she tells me she isn’t mad at me for dropping off the face of the earth. She understands, she says. More important, she says, is what she’s learning from this group she’s joined and what she’d like to share with me.
This gets me all worried.
But her last message is the one that makes my stomach clench with dread and excitement: “Okay. Okay. I’m coming this Sunday. I’ll take the all-night bus and be at that coffeehouse on Main Street in Belfast early in the morning. Believe it or not. You better be there. After all we’ve been through . . . and to know you like me too . . . I can’t wait to see you.”
That’s, like, tomorrow. Urp. Panic mode sets in. Is this for real? And then a worse thought: is this even a good idea? Why’d I tell her how to find me? What if something bad happens?
* * *
Liliana’s lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling. The banned book rests on her stomach. She looks at
me when I come in and shakes her index finger at me. “You so naughty,” she says.
Apparently, Liliana also reads Latin.
I snatch it from her. “Leave my stuff alone.” What was I thinking, hiding it under the mattress? That’s the first place people look.
“And here I thought you were a goody two-shoes,” she says. “Where’d the contraband come from?”
“None of your business.”
“Aren’t we friends, Adam?”
“I thought you were ‘working me over,’ friend.”
“I am. Keep your friends close. But keep potential enemies closer.” She laughs, like this is oh-so-funny. “That’s why I’m here with you instead of hanging with Zachary.”
I glare at her. Why in the world did I think her shadow was like air, that it flitted about like a fanciful fairy? It’s heavy as lead and just as ugly too.
“I’m just kidding, Adam.” She glances up at me under thick black eyelashes, her skin this gorgeous coffee—Shut UP, Adam. “I just had no idea you were so—exciting.” She points her chin at the banned book, reaching over and resting her fingers lightly on my forearm. Goose pimples form immediately. I jerk my arm away. Yes, I’m sulking, just in case you were wondering, Liliana La Muerte.
“Obviously under the mattress is a terrible hiding place. And if Principal Armand caught you with this? I don’t think the Synod itself could save you from getting expelled.”
“Maybe I don’t care.”
“You should. If you’re expelled, your life is over.” She swings her legs over the side of the bed and sits up. When she does, her long hair swings too, cascading over her head. She looks at me out of these melty chocolatey-brown eyes and my heart does a loop-de-loop. Or maybe it just goes, Urp.
I decide to change the subject. To something more important. Like the question of Liliana and Zachary. “So you and Zachary, huh? I thought the Angels and La Muertes hated each other.”
“Appearances can be deceiving.”
“Well, speaking of deceiving appearances, I don’t trust Zachary.”
“Zachary’s okay. It’s not his fault he’s an Angel.”
“I don’t care if he’s an Angel or a devil.” My voice rises involuntarily. “But I do care that he almost got me killed and I think he did it on purpose.”
She snorts. “You’re one to talk, Mr. I’ve-Got-a-Wraith-Who-Follows-Me.”
I cross my arms across my chest. Half of me wants to grab her and smother her in my chest and the other half wants to push her out the window. “So what are you doing in my room again?”
“Same as last time,” she says. “Your Thing is back. The lady ghost that follows you.”
My heart lurches.
“I don’t want to be alone,” she says. “Safety in numbers, you know.”
I look at her and I know the truth. She’s not here to protect herself. She’s here to protect me. Because she thinks I’m in danger. “Thanks,” I say.
She narrows her eyes. “Somebody has to make sure fools and children don’t die.”
“What do you think it is?” I shrink down to my five-year-old self as I ask this.
“I don’t know. But it’s evil.”
I let my breath out slow. Maybe we should sleep downstairs. Or in the boathouse. “What if it comes back?” I ask. “What do we do?”
She’s busy pulling out her sleeping bag but now she stops and looks me full in the face. “We’re not going to run.Not this time. We’re going to face it. Because until you do, it’s going to keep coming back.”
“You’ll be safer somewhere else.” There. I said it out loud. I’m not a total coward.
“You think I’m the type of person to abandon a friend in trouble?”
“Am I your friend?”
“Yeah. I was totally kidding about the enemy part.”
Just like that, a joyous chorus of angels are suddenly singing, “Hallelujah.” I want to jump up and yell at the whole barn that Liliana La Muerte is my friend. But I don’t. I just go into the bathroom, brush my teeth, and then lie on my bed quietly.
Finally the barn is silent, everybody in bed. We lie there in complete darkness. Just as I start to wonder if she’s still awake, I hear her sigh.
“Are you scared to die?” I ask.
“No. Are you?”
“No,” I lie.
Silence.
“Are you scared of that Thing?” I ask. “I mean, Her? My wraith?”
“No,” she says. “You?”
“Of course not!”
Silence again.
“I’m not scared,” she says, “but I’ll hold your hand if you want.”
My heart is beating against my chest. “All right,” I whisper.
I slip my hand out from my blanket and she takes it in her cool, dry palm. Prickles inch their way up my forearm.
“You have goose bumps,” she says matter-of-factly, as if she doesn’t know she’s the one who gave them to me.
We fall asleep that way, holding hands. My sleep that night is restless, full of half-dreams, and when I wake up, Liliana is gone.
I rinse my mouth out with mouthwash, then step out of my room as if I’m going to find her in the hallway. Of course she’s not there. I stop beside Zachary’s door and put my ear up against it, listening. It’s silent inside. Then I tiptoe away, feeling like a stalker.
The back door at the bottom of the stairs is wide open. I descend, planning to just close it, but the newly fallen snow reveals several sets of footprints, shining brightly in the moonlight. I follow them a short ways into deeper snowdrifts, then wonder again what I’m doing. Am I looking for Liliana? Am I looking for Zachary?
On the way back, I pass a tree and the hair on my arms stands on end. She’s waiting for me. As I pass, Her head turns to watch me. Maybe if I pretend She isn’t here, She’ll leave me alone.
I wait until I’m completely past before I break into a run.
Maybe it’s because I’m running that I don’t see Zachary standing silently next to the barn’s back door. He grabs me around the throat, choking me with the crook of his arm. I react instinctively, my foot kicking backward, connecting with his crotch.
“What are you doing, trying to kill me?” I yell.
“Ugghhhh,” he groans, crumpling over and falling on the ground. His head rolls back and his arms fling wide open, like the arms of Jesus, and that’s when I see the blood seeping through his shirt where She must have swiped him with Her talons.
CHAPTER 22
The boat to the mainland is fuller than normal. Some of the kids are going to church, like usual, but half are there to see Zachary off. Even Principal Armand is coming. Aileen’s accompanying Zachary back to California, where he can recuperate. Even though she told me last night that it looks worse than it is, that Zachary’s going to be just fine, I could hear the uncertainty in her voice.
I know he’s going to be fine physically. That’s obvious. It looked like a lot of blood, but by now I know enough to realize we’d all sense it if he was in mortal danger. No, what we’re all worried about is that he’s been . . . touched . . . somehow. I wonder if Aileen and Jacob have told Principal Armand what happened when Zachary and I went to Limbo together.
I’m not seeing Zachary off, obviously, and I also don’t want to tell Rachel about Sarah, so I just say I’m in the mood for some good coffee.
“Because this isn’t good enough for you?” she says as she sips the cinnamon-flavored Mexican coffee the kitchen sent along in a large thermos. But she agrees to tag along without asking any other questions, which is only one of the reasons why I like her so much.
I tell her what’s up after we disembark and we’re some ways away from everybody else. “We’re going to meet a friend of mine from New York.”
“Oh no you didn’t,” she says.
“Didn’t what?”
“Tell somebody from your previous life where you are?”
“Sort of,” I admit.
“Fuck.” That single word
is all it takes to drop my pretense that anything about this is okay.
“I know it was stupid.”
She glares at me. “You think?”
“It’s going to be fine. We’ll go and say hi and have a cup of coffee and then we’ll explain that we’re not really allowed to be doing this and we have to leave and then she’ll go home and we’ll pretend it never happened.”
“Oh, it’s a she?” The scorn Rachel puts into the final word is impossible to describe.
“It’s not like that.”
She knocks me upside the back of my head with the flat of her palm. “It’s exactly like that, Adam, don’t even think you can lie to me. I grew up in foster care, lies are child’s play to me.” She stops in her tracks. “We should turn around right now and go back to the boat and pretend we didn’t even come here.”
Honestly, that thought has also crossed my mind but I can’t, I just can’t. “No,” I say. “I have to at least see her to tell her I can’t see her.”
“That’ll go over real well.” She starts walking. “Fine. Let’s just get this over with.”
I’m so relieved she’s still coming with me. “You can be a real grump, you know that?” I say.
“Well, you can be a real idiot, you know that?”
I grin. “Yeah.”
* * *
When we push open the door to the coffeehouse, I see Sarah waiting inside, her hair pulled back in a ponytail.
A little sun bursts in my heart.
Her eyes glitter warmly as I step inside. She runs over to give me a hug. My arms close around her slender waist and I smell that strawberry scent and my heart sinks even more, thinking about the gulf between us, a gulf I didn’t choose but which I can’t erase. But just under the strawberry scent is another, new smell that I don’t recognize . . . something decaying . . . something rotting.
I step away.
Then Rachel says, “Hi.” She lifts her hand in a sardonic little wave.
“Who are you?” Sarah asks.
“This is Rachel,” I say. “From school. Rachel, this is Sarah.”
