Students whispered about the strange fires they had seen in the sky on Saturday. A boy in the back said authoritatively that it was a military exercise. The article in the paper hadn’t known what to make of it. Since no one had been injured or killed, and no properties damaged or destroyed, it was a rather small article. The students behind me were blaming fireworks, which weren’t allowed in the Spooner area due to risk of sparking a forest fire. Class began and I was so joyful to be sitting there, even with the passing in of homework that I didn’t have completed. My mind hadn’t been on my studies over the weekend. But to be here and not hiding in some dark, grim compound!
All of the Coopers had been very nice to me, even if Lotus was somewhat reserved. She did let me borrow some of her paperbacks, since I didn’t feel safe outside and there wasn’t much to do indoors. We’d had lunch together on Sunday, and she made reference to the angelic belief that she lacked a soul. That she found insulting, feeling she was the same person before the attack as she was afterwards. I didn’t ask for details, although I was extremely curious. Our friendship was too precarious for that. Nor did I ask Zakia, who visited the house for a shower and to raid the fridge. We had watched sitcoms together for hours throughout the afternoon, passing a bowl of popcorn back and forth between us. His only mention of their background was that I couldn’t catch it from sharing food, so not to freak out on him. It was awful how the two were almost braced for me to treat them like lepers of olden days.
Adriel came over to check on me Sunday evening, with the report that neither the Kreelings nor the Graystones had spotted hide or hair or feather of the Rippers. That was good to hear. Every day they weren’t seen around, it seemed safer to assume that they had moved on to some new home.
I looked out the window during Mr. Rogers’ lecture, searching the skies for a racing streak of smoke. The morning passed without event, Adriel escorting me from class to class and sitting at my side all through lunch. The talk at the table naturally concerned the fictitious Jeffrey. Nash was full of protective pique and promised to watch for the fellow. I downplayed it a little, not wanting the boys to dog me around the school. Most likely, Jeffrey had given up. He had to go to his own school and couldn’t spend all of his time driving around this area in hopes that he might spot me. I was going to be cautious, but not neurotic. And in case they ran into my grandfather, I warned, don’t bring any of this up. He was so upset about the situation, and it wasn’t good for old people to have shocks.
That appeared to cover all of the bases, except for the boys asking Adriel why he hadn’t just pounded the guy in Seataw. Savannah leaped to his defense. If he had slugged Jeffrey, who acted weird at the picnic tables but not aggressive, it was Adriel who would have gotten arrested. Seeing Nash shrug at this, Savannah said, “You can’t just walk around hitting people who give you the creeps! They have to do something first.”
“I still would have hit him,” Nash said. “Adriel is just too much of a pacifist. I mean, honestly, can you see Adriel hitting anyone for anything?”
We sat there in the growing tension. Nash grasped that he had gone too far, since he was carefully not meeting Adriel’s direct gaze. Easton said, “Dude, I bet Adriel would have hit him, had he done something.”
“I knew a girl who had a stalker,” London said a little competitively, so I turned my attention to her and demanded to hear all about it. The story took up the rest of the lunch period, and then I was off to computers. It was horrifically hot, and there was a line at every water fountain. I would have rather gone thirsty, since the water to come out was always lukewarm.
Some kids had had a foodfight outside. Trash and spilled food were everywhere. Kitts caught up at the door to the classroom. She wanted a blow-by-blow of her own about the events in Seataw, which I related in whispers as Ms. Crane stalked around in search of typing felonies.
In sixth period, I exposed myself to swine flu again and sat beside Adriel in comfort at his presence. “Have you heard anything from your family today?”
Adriel nodded. “I used the pay phone on a restroom break last class to check up with Taurin. He hasn’t seen anything, and the Kreelings report the same.”
“Good,” I said. “How is Drina?”
“She’s okay. Her feathers are starting to grow back. She’ll be flying soon. How are you getting back to the Coopers . . . you shielded.”
“Zakia is driving me, since he works here in the afternoon. I’ll just hang out in the library until he’s done,” I said. Adriel’s eyes burned. “Don’t start.”
“Keep him calm, and get away the second he acts strangely.”
“You’ve told me this,” I said testily.
“And I’ll keep telling you. I’m not going to lose you ag-” He cut himself off.
“I’m not her,” I said. “I look like her, but I’m not Annabeth.”
His shoulders sagged. “I know. I’m just worried.”
Fiddling with the controls to start a movie, Mr. Rogers said, “You know, when I ask for your attention, I’m not just speaking to the people in the front row. I’m sure whatever movie or piece of gossip that you’re discussing can wait for the bell.”
I no longer lived such a little life. And why did it matter if we talked while he was just setting up a movie? Settling back in my seat and closing my mouth, I watched the clips and listened to his comments on characterizations between them. The room was too warm even with fans going.
Zakia went back and forth outside, cleaning up the food tossed willy-nilly about the concrete. His expression was placid, although I would have been furious if it had been my job to do that. Dumped popcorn, squashed sandwiches, spilled soda cans, decimated fruit cups, the only people who should have been cleaning it were the very ones who had thought to throw it. Sometimes high school felt like advanced kindergarten for taller kids. Zakia got everything back in order crumb by crumb, working without cease in the blistering heat.
I didn’t have a very good vantage of the sky from where I was sitting. The little I could see stayed clear. Class ended and we packed up to go, with disdain radiating from Adriel out the window in Zakia’s direction. Zipping up my backpack, I said, “Stop it.”
“I’ll walk you to the locker and the library, okay? Then I’m going to take a watch and spell Kishi-”
“She’s missing her classes for this?” I asked in dismay.
Adriel’s eyes were somber. “She doesn’t mind, and she’ll catch up. This is a much more serious situation than subjects she has eternity to study. What happened to Drina really angered her as well. She wants to be a part of this.” We walked out of the classroom and paused under the overhang to look up. Nothing suspicious was going on; all of the mischief happening at this school was contained to its students, two of who were engaged in stuffing popcorn down each other’s shirts. I guessed the silver lining in this was the job security for Zakia, who leaned on his broom and rolled his eyes to see the popcorn kernels hitting the concrete.
Once my locker was visited and we were outside the library, Adriel kissed me and walked away. I sat down at a carrel to get through some homework. Soon Zakia tapped on the window and mouthed ready to go? I joined him outside. “I hate your job, Zakia.”
He laughed. “It has its days. I got here just as the war broke out and knew I’d be cleaning up the battlefield. So, let’s blow this joint. The only thing I saw flying through the air today was a pudding cup.”
With a grimace, I walked beside him to an old station wagon in the parking lot. A flower and note were pressed under the windshield wiper. He retrieved them both and climbed into the driver’s side as I put my things in the back. Skimming the note, he slid it into the center console. Curious about it, I said, “Who was that from?”
He put the flower into the cupholder. “A sympathy note about the mess from Kitts.”
“She likes you,” I teased.
“She’s going to go to college and forget all about me,” Zakia said. “I told her that on Saturday when we dro
ve up to Seataw. She doesn’t think so, but she will.”
“Have you left a lot of broken hearts behind you?”
“Well, look at me,” he said, drawing his hand down his body. I broke into laughter at his pretend show of conceit. “Won’t you be a little broken up when you go back to Bellangame?”
“I’ll cry into my pillow every night,” I said.
“That’s what I like to hear.” He started the car and scanned the sky. “Nope. No bad angels or pudding cups. We’re safe to go.”
I turned on the rattling air conditioner since it was so hot, both for myself and for him. If temperature affected his stability in some way, I didn’t want to find out while he was driving me somewhere. After I turned a vent to blow his way, he said, “It’s okay.”
“Are you sure? It’s really, really hot.”
“I’m sure. Whatever the Kreelings or those fallen angels told you about our kind, take it with a grain of salt. Kreolos are trained to look for problems, and angels are stupid.”
Turning the vent back to myself, I said, “They are not!”
“Yes, they are. They think we have no souls, just because they can’t see them. That’s like a blind person believing the world doesn’t exist since he can’t see it. You know the world is there. It’s his problem, not yours. I’m the same person I always was, but now I’m here to torture girls with what they can’t have for infinity. Angels are stupid creatures.”
“I haven’t found them to be stupid.”
“That doesn’t change it,” Zakia said casually, which annoyed me. “They flinch away from anything that doesn’t provide a peepshow into the soul and figure it must be evil. But I was born a thread of their tapestry like every other life on this earth. They might not like to think it, yet I was.”
“It’s not peeping,” I said in defense of them. “They can’t help what they see when they look at humans.”
“No, but they can help their reaction to it. I didn’t stop being human when I became this way. Do you get that? Some things about my body changed, yet I didn’t change.” He was growing excited and I wondered if I should be afraid. Seeing the slight worry on my face, he said, “I’m not going to change! Is that what they told you? I can be passionate or angry or hot without my internal chemistry going wonky. If any of that caused me to change, the Kreelings would have taken me out long ago.”
I squeezed his arm. “It’s hard for me to know what to think, Zakia. They treat you like a ticking time bomb; you believe you’re fine. I don’t have enough information to know who is right between you.”
“You should trust me,” Zakia said. “I know who and what I am.”
I checked the skies, but the tree cover was getting in the way. If I were having trouble seeing them, should Rippers indeed be out there scouting, they would have equal trouble seeing me. We drove down to the Gap and he laughed to see a new sign posted on one of the sleazy dance bars. “Thirty-six big jugs and two tiny ones. Could they be any more crude?”
“I bet they could be,” I said. “How do you stand living here?”
“Oh, it doesn’t bother me. People tend to keep to themselves in the Gap, which is why I can live here longer and get away with it. Lotus and I will move away in a few years and then come back in fifty or sixty when it’s unlikely anyone will remember us.” Waving to the family store though no one was looking out, Zakia turned onto the road that led to the lane of Coopers and Kreelings.
“Is Lotus truly your sister? Biologically speaking,” I said.
“Yes, she is. We did have a lot of siblings back when we were fully human, a pack of brothers older than I was, and a lot of sisters both older and younger than me. They’re all dead now except for Mercy, and she’s an old, old woman in an assisted living center. Most of her brain is gone to dementia, and it’s the first time she’s allowed either Lotus or me to see her. She thought the Kreelings should have killed us straightaway.”
I thought that was horrible. “Your own sister thought that?”
“She had reason. This is the first time anyone has managed the condition. But now she gets a big smile on her wrinkled face when we walk in. Sometimes she thinks that she’s a little girl again, since we look so young. She’ll try to braid Lotus’ hair like she once did. They were born just eleven months apart and the spitting image of each other. People mistook them for identical twins all the time.” The station wagon turned onto the lane. Busy with clearing the land around the destroyed bunker, Silea looked up. I nodded, and she returned it solemnly.
Zakia pulled into the driveway and parked the car. “Of course, no one would confuse them now. Mercy’s not going to live much longer, a few months at most. She’s over a hundred years old and sleeps most of the time. Her body is shutting down.”
“That’s sad. Like the last piece of your personal history going,” I said.
“Not really when we were estranged for most of her life. I hope that she goes peacefully, but we don’t have much common history for me to miss. Her children all grew into very nice people though, and so did her grandchildren and great-grandchildren and beyond. I’ve been much closer with all of them.”
Thankfully, the house was air-conditioned. I shucked my backpack behind the sofa and went directly to the kitchen. Their eating habits weren’t much better than Grandpa Jack’s, but right now I was going to take advantage of it and make a bowl of ice cream. Zakia flopped onto the sofa. A big hand came over the side and felt blindly at the table. “Hey, where is the remote?”
“It’s mine,” I said, having snagged it along the way.
His head popped up with an adorable smile. “Jessa! You know you want to watch the sports channel with me.”
“Nope.” I had no idea what was on, but I definitely didn’t want to watch sports. “Don’t you have a television in your shed?”
“A very little one,” Zakia said pathetically.
There wasn’t anything on the regular channels and even less of interest on cable, so we ended up streaming a movie and eating giant bowls of ice cream. I jumped, hearing a thump on the roof, and Zakia said, “That’s just a branch. It does that all the time.”
Setting my empty bowl on the coffee table, I rose from the sofa. There was nothing in the sky as I drew the curtains closed and locked the front door. Once I sat down, it occurred to me that the back door was likely unlocked. For a second time, I got up to take care of it. “Zakia, have you ever run into Rippers before?”
“No, these are my first. I’d heard of them, that’s all, just from having to live near Kreelings. I used to live by Radeo’s father, and I remember him catching a Ripper once in his career.”
“Don’t stop there!” I yelped when he trailed off. The door had two locks, a latch at waist level and a snap overhead. I stretched to reach it.
He swallowed a bite of ice cream. “That one wasn’t too hard to take down since she didn’t move very frequently.” His bowl hit the table with a clunk and he searched the coffee table and cushions, obviously looking for the remote to change the movie to sports. I held it up while walking to the kitchen. Groaning, Zakia sank back into the sofa. “I never saw that Ripper; she was headed for the caves before I even got home from errands that day. But she was stupid even for a fallen angel. The smarter ones move fast, or they stay in the same place but rip humans from far away. This one was sticking to her home and ripping local people.”
I checked the latch and shut the curtains in the kitchen window, blotting out most of the light in the room. “That’s so creepy.”
“She was creepy, Tomo said once he was back from the caves. She’d stalk a super dangerous intersection of that community. There were accidents there all the time, like clockwork most Friday and Saturday nights, and every holiday guaranteed. People nailing each other, or driving off the road into trees . . . Angels can sense a death coming, like an alarm a few seconds before it occurs. So she would swoop in and grab whoever took her fancy, usually men on motorcycles since they were easiest.”
I came
back to the sofa. He had put his feet on my cushion so I knocked them off and sat down. “What then?”
“Then she’d take them home, give them palatial rooms to live in, beat them half to death the first time they tried to escape, and beat the rest of them to death if they tried a second time. After that, she dumped the bodies locally, too. Just stupid.”
“Or just over confident that no one was hunting her,” I said.
“The whole way to the caves, she tried to convince Tomo to live with her of his own volition. It worked out perfectly in her head. He could have whatever he wanted as long as he never left her property, and she had a new boyfriend. Win-win!”
“That’s crazy!”
“I miss Tomo. He was a cool dude. Radeo is just a pale shadow of his old man.”
“What happened to Tomo?”
“Sometimes you catch the ugly. Sometimes the ugly catches you.” Zakia stretched out lazily and propped his feet on the coffee table. “He was retired, and stationed at a cold spot. That’s what a place like this is, not much going on for kreolos hunters. Their old ones, young ones, wounded ones, ones starting families, they get put in cold spots. Silea’s too young, Radeo has a back injury, and the other two got pregnant. They lost the baby, she was stillborn, but they’re trying for another one so they decided to stay here. Anyway, Tomo was assigned to a cold spot for his retirement. A zombie, a real zombie, not someone like me, was reported in a nearby area. He decided to have a look while the Council diddled about whom to send. Tomo went out like a true hunter. The zombie took a bite out of him; Tomo blasted his head apart; and then Tomo blasted his own head apart. He didn’t freak out about Lotus and me-”
“Why didn’t he just take the medication?” I asked in appall. “He didn’t have to die.”
“He didn’t want to live forever. He was old and battered. He’d seen and done everything he wanted to do. The last thing he wanted was to spend eternity with a Kreeling babysitter when he used to be Kreeling himself. But Radeo’s not so discerning. Since we have the potential to turn into what killed his father, he thinks we are what killed his father. Everyone has the potential to be a killer. That’s a little too complicated for Radeo. Maybe Silea won’t be such a fool, but it remains to be seen.”
Earth/Sky (Earth/Sky Trilogy) Page 26
