Nash and Diego were at my locker when I got there, both wanting to talk about movies our group of friends could see on Friday. Switching out textbooks quickly, I said, “You know, I think I’m just going to have a quiet evening at home with my grandfather after last Friday.” They protested but I held fast and went out to my mail truck.
A plastic bag had been tucked under the windshield wipers. I pulled it out and let myself in with it, assuming it was a joke or trapped there by the wind. Not until I got home and was about to drop it in the garbage did I realize there was something inside. It was another container of the cream for my leg, and a note in awful handwriting from Zakia that his sister thought I might need more.
Gratitude was definitely in order. Feeling out of my century, I searched the phone book for the last name Cooper. There were far too many of them. When Grandpa Jack walked in, I asked, “Do you have the number for the Coopers? Lotus sent more cream and I’d like to say thank you.”
“Oh, just call the store, she was there an hour ago when I dropped off the mail,” Grandpa Jack said. “Botanic Wonderments, look up that.”
“Do you know it off the top of your head?”
“I know there’s a seven in it,” he said, which I didn’t find helpful. Flipping pages, I ran my finger down columns of Bs until I found it. I couldn’t believe people used to live like this, and that some chose to live like it still when they didn’t have to any longer.
“One day you’ll have cell phones in Spooner and your lives will be so much better,” I said as I went into the living room to the caveman’s phone.
“Can’t see how,” Grandpa Jack rumbled from the counter, where he was fixing up some dinner.
“It saves you time,” I called.
“Saves it for what?”
“Are you being purposely obtuse?” I asked in frustration.
He grunted with laughter. “The cell phone generation! If you think hardship is looking up a number in a phone book, I don’t know what you’ll do when faced with true adversity.”
Spooner qualifies as true adversity, I thought. Dialing the number, I listened to three rings. An answering machine picked up and I said after the beep, “Hi, this is Jessa Bright calling for Lotus. I just wanted to say thank you so much for the cream. It works fantastically.” I hung up the phone and returned the book to the kitchen. “With cell phones, I could have just texted Lotus directly. Now she’ll have to wait until tomorrow to get that, or whenever she’s in the store next time.”
“Nothing you said was so important that it couldn’t wait until tomorrow,” Grandpa Jack said. Water boiled on the stove and he dumped in a thick handful of pasta. I looked over the counter for anything green.
“Were you planning on adding some vegetables to the meal?” I asked.
He harrumphed and motioned to the jar of pasta sauce. “Made of tomatoes. And it’s got spinach in it and dehydrated onion. So there you go.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” I muttered, and made a cucumber salad with an olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing. Pushing the bowl to him once it was finished, I said, “Do you eat cucumbers?”
“Nothing but crunchy green water, cucumbers.” He snagged one out of the bowl and popped it in his mouth. “I could see to eating those every now and then. Hey, I’m going to go fishing with Barney one of these weekends, so you can either drop me off at the Cooper place and keep the mail truck for yourself, or do without it if you don’t think you’ll be driving anywhere.”
I couldn’t stand the thought of not having any means of transportation. Hastily, I said, “I’ll drop you off.”
We ate dinner and watched television afterwards in the living room until it was time for bed. The feather was a drab thing in my pencil holder when I got upstairs. I picked it up, feeling morose at the glory turned to plainness, and carried it to the window. There I sat for a long time, the lights off in my room so I could watch the night slowly growing over the street. The sky was empty, and that made me even sadder.
Then I let the feather go with the breeze and watched it drift toward the ground, no one rushing up to save it.
Chapter Six: The Visit
A package came from my parents. Within was a beautiful journal, the buttery smooth cover deep blue and with a thin metal plaque in the middle. The plaque had a Celtic knot engraved on it. The letter was undated, but had obviously been written before my accident since it was peppy and excited. There was also a present for Grandpa Jack, a book of exotic fish identification. He sat down on his chair to look it over, the bag of veggie chips at his side and checking each one as he snacked to make sure it wasn’t spinach flavored.
I was happy to see my parents’ smiling faces in the picture tucked inside the journal. Both were beaming in a shot taken on the deck of the ship, with giant margaritas held aloft in their hands for a toast. Already they looked ten years younger. This was going to be so good for them, and they deserved every moment of their vacation. Running my fingers over the ivory pages full of blank lines, I thought about what I might write. Then I closed the journal and put it on my desk so I could see it often. The picture I propped up against the pencil holder.
Under my happiness for them though, I was miserable. Adriel was always polite at lunch and in sixth period, but he was polite to everyone. Nothing special was reserved for me, although sometimes he seemed to be fighting himself not to say more as I left our last class. But every time he managed to catch whatever words were rising to his throat, and throttled them at his lips. It disappointed me, not getting to know what he was going to say.
The sun was out, but all I saw was the gloom under the heavy tree cover of Spooner. Light was the exception on these streets and shadows the rule. It mirrored how I was feeling, and though I put on a bubbly face with my friends while at school, I was always aware that it was faked. Beneath the smiles and laughs, I was mourning for something that was never in my possession anyway. Every night, I watched the sky from my window. Little of it could I see with the canopy. It was amazing that anything could grow beneath these trees.
Once I drove my mail truck north until I found cell service, where I pulled off the road and surfed the Internet for hours. I called my friends and listened to their updates of Bellangame High happenings, yet still I felt so separate. How had such a distance grown between us in such a short period of time? How was it possible when I could picture our school so clearly, the faces of our other friends and their personal details? But they were creating new in-jokes, giggling over you-had-to-be-there stories, and grousing about teachers I wouldn’t ever have. The distance was there, and it was only going to grow wider and wider until people I had known as well as my own reflection were featureless dots on the horizon.
Even as I spoke to them, I knew it was going to be a long time before I did this again. It was too painful. Downy and Taylor were planning a pool party, and I was watching two guys with missing teeth and dressed in dirty overalls stroll out of the woods from one side of the road to jaywalk and vanish into the trees on the other. Quickly, I made sure the doors of the mail truck were locked. I didn’t bring that up for discussion, since it defeated my purpose of trying to make Spooner seem a little grander than it was. Once I hung up on the call, I stared out the window.
I was smart enough to know life wasn’t fair, so I didn’t know why I expected fairness from mine. And it wasn’t like I was hungry or mistreated, so it was important to keep this in perspective. That was the mature response to this, when kids were starving and the environment was being polluted. The trials of Jessa Bright weren’t that great. Yet I couldn’t help but feel disappointed. I wanted more than this life, a life I technically shouldn’t even be having. This was a gift, every breath I had taken since riding off the cliff. To not feel appreciative was hideous.
Still, I wasn’t appreciating it right at the moment. I wanted to drive the mail truck down south to the pool party and let my life return to normal. Obsess with Taylor about outfits and shop for party supplies with Downy, dance a
round the pool through the evening and laugh at whoever fell in, as someone inevitably would. June was so far away.
On Saturday I went shopping on Jacobo just for something to do. Even that failed to cheer me up, lifting clothes from racks and wondering if I had died who would have bought them. It almost didn’t feel like they were mine to take, that I was cheating someone of this find. I ended up not buying anything and spent the rest of the weekend in a funk. Diego called on Sunday evening, with the excuse of wanting to talk about colleges in southern California. Grandpa Jack had passed me the phone before I could think of an excuse to not talk. We chatted between long pauses when neither of us could find anything to say. It was a relief to hang up.
On Monday I ate lunch in my mail truck, sorry to be thinking of it as mine. I couldn’t bear for Adriel to keep on treating me like I was just another student at the school. Sixth period was overtaken by a rally in the gym, where the weird creature that was this school’s mascot danced around while the band played. The principal talked about school pride, the cheerleaders did a routine, and the football team engaged in a playful scrimmage on the floor.
I sat among students I didn’t know in the corner of the topmost bleachers. That had been a mistake, since it meant I had to wait for everyone else to file out first once the rally came to a noisy conclusion. Crazy Critter continued to jive to music on the basketball court, waving and hugging people, and posing for pictures.
My friends were at my locker when I stopped there to dump off my books. Once I’d done that, I slammed shut the door and wondered how rude it would be just to push through them to the parking lot. Something caught my eye at the curb. It was the sun catching at those gold threads in Adriel’s hair. He was standing by a sweet blue ride idling there, and a girl in a bomber jacket was coming around the hood to embrace him.
Jealousy flooded me so hard and fast that my body stung with it. I didn’t know who she was but that he’d lied! He was hugging the girl back enthusiastically and with great familiarity, and she was beautiful. Downy had been hands-down the prettiest girl at Bellangame, but this one rendered her dull by comparison. Although she was short, she looked to be a senior. Her hair was long and thick, a wavy river of mahogany that curled around her shoulder blades and plunged down to her narrow waist. And her clothes! Those were designer jeans. She wore the bomber jacket well over a slinky purple top, and her boots were black and tall. Her laugh rang out when she hugged Adriel, and then she tipped his forehead down and kissed it soundly.
If Downy was drab next to this girl, I was practically invisible. So he did have some special girl in his life, and I hated it. I looked at her and felt inadequate, the others following my gaze to the parking lot. Then Savannah was shouting, “Kishi!” with joy, and I felt like an idiot.
They pulled me along to meet her, although I really wasn’t in the mood. Kishi yelled to see the crowd of people approaching. Everyone was hugged as Adriel went to the driver’s side to turn off the car and close the door. Kishi even hugged me, before pulling back to exclaim, “Wait, I don’t even know you! Oh, never mind.” She hugged me again.
“This is Jessa Bright,” Savannah explained.
Kishi’s eyes grew keen at my name. “From Los Angeles! Adriel has told me so much about you.”
“I- I hope it was good,” I stammered. It was easy to imagine this girl as a guardian angel; I couldn’t think of anyone looking at that beauty and the sweetness in her blue eyes and not trusting her at once. Nash’s arm went around my waist like we were dating. Although I smiled with strain, something must have shielded in my soul since both Kishi and Adriel looked over me simultaneously.
Then Kishi offered her hands and drew me away from Nash. “It was all good, I promise, and I’ll tell you what I don’t miss about this place. The handshaking. Do you know what effect it’s had on me? I went to my first class at the junior college this semester and extended my hand just by reflex to my teacher as he was handing out the syllabi. He stared at me like I was nuts and I felt like such a dork.”
Everyone laughed and I wondered what color her wings were, and for what reason she’d fallen. The others bobbed around, asking about college classes and telling her what was going on at the high school lately. Then the group began to break apart so people could go home. Nash jumped down from the curb and said, “Come on, Jessa, I’ll walk you to your fine steed.”
Laughing quietly behind me, Kishi whispered, “Need rescue?”
“Yes, please,” I mumbled.
“She’s mine, Nash! Girl talk!” Kishi said, sliding her arm over my shoulders and motioning me to the passenger side. I got into the car and marveled at the luxury of it. The back seat was messy though not trashy. Books, clothes, and art supplies covered it from end to end in cheery disorganization. A dozen ornaments hung from the rearview mirror, strands of beads and fuzzy dice, hair bands and scented trees and little animals like she just bought whatever she came across and added it to the batch though there wasn’t any room left. A bobble-head angel wearing a flowing white gown was stuck to the dashboard with a suction cup.
“See you at home, Kishi,” Adriel called. I watched him go through the rows to his car as Kishi swung into the driver’s side. Plopping into the seat with a happy sigh, she shut the door.
“All right, we’ll talk until he pulls out of the parking lot,” Kishi said, moving the mirror to keep an eye on Nash’s progress. “That one! He always falls in love with whatever is new and sparkly. Oh! I don’t mean to imply that it’s nothing to do with you. I guess that sounded sort of rude.”
“Not at all,” I said. “I can’t shake him off.”
“He’s going to end up going from one job to another, a succession of wives and too many children,” Kishi said knowingly. “I’ve seen guys like him plenty of times. They mean well, but they can’t be happy with what they have. Always the grass is greener on the other side of the fence and you must think I’m rambling.”
“I take it plenty of times means to the tune of centuries?” I asked. Adriel’s car pulled out of the lot and I watched it go sadly.
“I carry my age well. Ooh, you just shielded a little.” Kishi followed my gaze to the car driving away.
“He’s put himself in a lot of danger by catching me, and I think he’s sorry that he did it deep down. It changed the tapestry,” I said.
Bursting into laughter, Kishi said, “Sweetie, I want you to imagine a haystack that goes ten thousand miles into the air and is wider than the whole of Europe. Do you have that it in your head? Good. Find the needle.”
“But-”
“No buts. Find the needle in that haystack. That’s your thread in the tapestry. The chances of it running into an anchor in a meaningful way are as miniscule as the chances of you finding the needle. That’s exactly what I told Adriel. I know he’s worried, but I don’t think it’s worth it.” She tapped the angel on the dashboard, which shook its head to agree with her.
I checked out the windows and spotted Nash taking his own sweet time to get to his car. It looked like he was hoping I might come out so we could chat more. “If the risk is so small, do you ever step in and change things?”
“No,” Kishi said. “But then again, no one’s fallen off a cliff right in front of me either. I’ve managed to live two hundred years without that happening as I fly around at night. All I’ve done is scare the pants off some fishermen.” She beamed to see the keys in the ignition. “I love this time! Being stuck in a female body before women’s rights really blew. Drina and I hated corsets and how funny that they’ve come back in vogue. Well, you won’t catch one on us. Our internal organs are still pushing back into their proper places . . . wow, is that the time? Where does it go?” She craned her neck to see Nash finally getting into his car.
“I’m sorry if I’m making you late for something,” I said.
“Oh, Drina’s used to me being late.” She waved her hand dismissively at the clock. “I have an apartment near school for the nights I finish up too late to dr
ive here, and a big project for one of my classes kept me there for the last week. But I don’t have classes tomorrow and I do have a trunk full of laundry and random schoolwork and house projects, so I’m taking her out to the movies and dinner tonight and she’ll put me back in order tomorrow. I’ll talk to Adriel, and trust me, he’s not sorry that he caught you. Please don’t think that! This must remind him too much of why he fell, and he’s never dealt that well with it . . .” Her eyes narrowed. “And you’re shielding a question from me right this moment, something you want to ask but fear is rude. Out with it, I doubt very much that you’ll offend me.”
I blushed to be found out. “Did you kill your charge? Like Cadmon did?”
“Oh, no,” Kishi said offhandedly. Nash’s car pulled out with agonizing slowness and drove down the mostly empty row of the parking lot. “Mine was an accident in Revolutionary times. We guide our guarded souls, we save them from disaster should it arise, but we do not control their actions. They lead their lives as the tapestry shows they should, but now and then, there is a splitter. Did Adriel tell you anything about those?”
“No.”
“As was woven already, my guarded soul was to make a certain decision. It was not one that required my presence, so naturally I wasn’t there. However, in what was being woven, he made the opposite decision. That is a very rare occurrence. For you, as a small thread, a matter like picking one college over another, for instance, makes little difference to the overall tapestry. To you it makes a big difference, yes, but to everyone? Of course not. But as an anchor, the opposite decision yanked millions of other threads off course. What you read in your history class today, Jessa, would have been entirely different had the world gone as it should. That’s a splitter.”
The more I knew about their lives as angels, the less I liked it. “How is that your fault? How can anyone justify punishing you for that?”
Earth/Sky (Earth/Sky Trilogy) Page 12
