Gabriel

by C. L. Stone

  The Academy

  The Ghost Bird Series

  Meeting Sang: Gabriel

  ♥

  Book One – Alternate Opening

  The Boys’ Version

  ♥

  Written by C. L. Stone

  Published by

  Arcato Publishing

  Published by Arcato Publishing

  Copyright © 2019 C. L. Stone

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Gabriel | 1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  Also By C. L. Stone

  Gabriel

  1

  Gabriel Coleman spread-eagled himself on the worn carpet in the living room. He slid his cell phone across the floor, out of reach.

  He didn’t want to look at it anymore.

  Closing his eyes, he willed himself to forget it happened at all.

  “Ghnnnnn,” he croaked out. He’d gotten up and dressed, but one look at some text messages and he was ready to crawl back into bed.

  Across the room, where the counter split the space between kitchen and living areas, Pam pulled away from the pantry and waddled over. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked, her voice thick and scratchy, a tone she only had before she’d had her first coffee in the morning. She nudged Gabriel in the elbow with a toe. “You sick?”

  “No,” Gabriel said, without opening his eyes.

  “You stay up too late again?”

  “No.”

  She’d paused for a moment, so long that Gabriel thought she moved back into the kitchen, until she was nudging at him with her toe again. “You dying?”

  “N...Yes. I’m dying.” He waved off her foot. “Get your feet off of me.”

  She left him and for a moment, it was too quiet. She hadn’t gone back to the kitchen.

  He opened his eyes just enough to see her picking up his cell phone.

  He lunged at her, but the closest thing for him to reach was her foot. He clasped to her ankle. “Give it back.”

  “I was just picking it up,” she said. She dropped the phone, and it collided hard with his chest. “What’s wrong with you?”

  Of anyone in existence, she was the last one he’d tell. “Up late, up early. That’s all.”

  She was still in her bathrobe, blond hair a mess of ponytail on top of her head. She caught a loose lock of hair to tug behind her ear. “Why are you up early anyway?”

  He flipped around and did a push up off the ground to get back up on his knees. He rolled his head back and looked at the ceiling. He pushed his fists against his thighs, the movement doing little to relieve the feeling of annoyance building up at all the questions. “I don’t even know anymore.” That was a lie, too. He knew why. Victor would be here any minute. He wasn’t even sure why, actually. There was something they’d do today, for the Academy. Or in prep in case the Academy asked them to do something.

  Pam moved away from him, back to the kitchen. She’d putter around for a while, making coffee, looking at her phone. The hair salon she worked at opened at nine, but she wasn’t up this early for that.

  Another boyfriend had to get up early for work. She changed her sleep schedule for them.

  Gabriel lifted himself up. Normally, he waited inside, but today, he didn’t really feel like being around whenever what’s-his-name-this-time got up; More questions, a lot of awkward feelings mutually shared at seeing the other one in the house.

  He’d rather face the mosquitos and the junkyard kids next door for a while.

  This morning, it was only Justin out. The four-year-old husky boy that cursed worse than even Gabriel. He was trying to pull a plastic slide out from underneath a mountain of other toys the others had put together yesterday.

  Gabriel walked over to the edge of the Coleman’s lot, their lawn mowed down smoothly. The next-door lot, the one with all the kids, was always overgrown. Usually, the father attacked it with a weedwhacker once a month. It was the only way to get around all the toys. “What are you doing?” Gabriel said after a minute.

  Justin tugged at the bottom of the slide. “Need it.” He yanked hard at the thing, but the plastic was slick, his hands small, and he fell back on his butt. “Bitch.” He kicked at it from his downed position.

  Gabriel stood by, unsure if he should help him. Justin was a brute of a kid. He wouldn’t be surprised if he used the slide to harass or do some damage to one of his siblings.

  After a minute, Justin gave up on the slide, looking at the collection of other items around it. “Are you watching us today?”

  “Can’t,” Gabriel said. “I’m waiting for someone to pick me up so I can go.”

  “You never do anymore.”

  “I’m busy. Where’s the others?”

  “Watching wrestling,” he said. He kicked the stuff that was sitting on the slide, trying to topple them. “I’ve already seen this one.”

  That was when the silver BMW drove up. Victor.

  “Gotta go,” Gabriel said. He started to walk away, paused and then quickly went over by Justin, enclosed two hands on the end of the slide, and yanked it hard enough to pop it out of the toy mountain. A bike positioned at the top of the mountain toppled to the grass near his feet, catching him in the leg. It was going to leave a bruise. The slide was free though.

  Gabriel passed it to Justin. “Don’t let me hear you gave someone a concussion with this thing,” he said.

  Justin grabbed it, yanking it from his hands. “I’m not. I’m not a wrestler today.” The boy waddled off, dragging the slide behind him around to the other side of the trailer and out of view.

  Victor rolled down the window on his car. “Something going on?”

  “No,” Gabriel said. He went to the car, got into the passenger seat and settled in, putting on his seatbelt. “Dumb kids doing stupid shit.”

  Victor smirked and rolled his window up before throwing the BMW into reverse to turn around. “Yeah, we all did dumb things.”

  2

  It took a minute with Victor turning the car around before Gabriel really looked at him. “What’s with the jeans?” Gabriel asked.

  “Don’t ask,” Victor said. “I was going for the usual, but my mother...”

  “Maybe you should untuck that shirt. Hide the fact that you’re wearing thousand-dollar jeans.”

  “The places we go, no one is going to know any different. They look like jeans.”

  “Are you shitting me? Anyone with half a brain could tell they’re designer. The brand’s scrawled on your ass, practically.”

  Victor released a frustrated sigh. “What’s with you?”

  Gabriel grumbled a little. He didn’t mean to sound so dour, but he still wasn’t over feeling bad today.

  Victor tuned in nearly instantly. “What happened this morning?” he asked. “Pam getting to you?”

  “No,” Gabriel said, rolling his head back and looking out the side window as Victor drove them out of the trailer park and onto the pot-holed lane back toward the highway. “I got out of there before anything stupid happened this morning.”

  “So, what’s with you?” Victor asked. “You haven’t done anything with your hair. You aren’t rambling on about...” He paused. “Did you talk to her?”

  Gabriel slumped lower into the seat but used his fingers to comb through his hair. Not that it really mattered. “I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about it.”

  “You asked her, didn’t you?”

  Gabriel regretted telling him before. They spent so much time together in t
he car lately that it was hard to not start talking about these things. There was a new part time girl working at Pam’s hair salon. He’d talked to her a few times, got her number. Gabriel sucked in a big breath and held it in his lungs for a minute. He needed to get over it. It wasn’t like he’d expected a different answer. “She said she just started dating someone else and wanted to see where it went.”

  Victor smoothed his hand along the steering wheel, shaking his head. “That’s hard,” he said. “I’m sorry. But it wasn’t a no. That’s something, isn’t it?”

  Gabriel didn’t say anything. He didn’t want anyone to be sorry for him. It wasn’t like he knew the girl that long. He just asked if she’d want to go on a date. She never even gave him a chance. Why’d she give him her number if she wasn’t that interested?

  Seemed to be his luck, actually. He asked out a number of girls lately, and they all pretty much said similar things.

  Seeing someone else.

  Don’t really see him as more than a friend.

  “There’ll be another one,” Victor said after Gabriel didn’t respond.

  “I don’t know,” Gabriel said. “It’s not like girls are exactly throwing themselves at me. Unlike someone I know...” He threw a side glance at Victor. Victor had girls nearly every week trying to be sweet to him to get asked out.

  Victor did an eyeroll but he blushed at the same time. “They don’t want me,” he said. “They don’t even know me.”

  “They give you a shot. Do you give them a chance to know you?”

  “Next time, I’ll introduce you to one,” he said. Victor had a look that could make it seem like he was judging you very critically, usually reserved for snobs or for new people until he got to know them. “They don’t even look at me. They’re looking for a wallet. Or they think I’ll help make them Instagram famous.”

  Gabriel wasn’t sure that was the worst problem to have, but he knew what Victor was talking about. He’d seen it on occasion, usually going to one of Victor’s piano concerts. Sometimes, even mothers would push their daughters onto him, trying to sneakily set up dates. The girls asked for selfies with Victor, hugging on him, suggesting they’re good friends to their followers. They didn’t really care to talk to him, just about what his face could do for them.

  “Not like we’re good to date,” Gabriel said. “One phone call or text, and we’re out the door on some emergency. Only we can’t ever explain what it is. Just some lies...”

  Victor turned the car off the highway, heading further into downtown. He paused the car at a red light. “It’s not that bad.”

  “From what I hear, it’s bad. Made some of the councils discuss options.”

  “I think we’re just stretched thin,” Victor said. “We need more people now. It’s not like a few years ago when just a handful of people make a difference. Population increased, that created a greater need for more people. Especially when they expanded globally...”

  Gabriel rolled his head back onto the headrest. “I suppose we should be grateful. I’m trying to be, but in a way it kind of shows how hard we have to work. Maybe too much if we have to keep making excuses.”

  Victor turned down a road that led to the hospital. The building loomed several stories high, the glass around the outside nearly blinding as the sun was coming up just over the city skyline and reflecting off of it. It made it hard to look directly at it. In the evening, it was the same thing, only on the opposite side.

  Gabriel blinked up at it. He’d been here hundreds of times now that Sean worked here, but he couldn’t remember why they were there today. He wished he’d known or he’d worn something a bit more appropriate, not the bright green tank and casual jeans. Not to mention the rings he wore, and the brighter ear studs he had in today. He might have toned down the look he was going for a tad. “Something going on?” he asked. “Are we here to bully the doc to go home and get some sleep again?”

  “No,” Victor said, and he parked the BMW not far from a side entrance. He turned the engine off. From the back seat he pulled out a couple of envelopes, the tops torn open already. “A few of us got some invitations for a job. But I don’t think we can do it right now. We’re here to tell Mr. Blackbourne about it.”

  Gabriel eyeballed the envelopes. “What? Letters? I didn’t get one.”

  Victor had the door open and paused. He looked at the envelopes in his hands. “I thought all of us got one. Maybe it was just a few. We’ll have to check with Mr. Blackbourne.”

  “Couldn’t call him?”

  “Not this time. They sent letters, so this must be top secret. We’re trying to handle it delicately.”

  Gabriel got out, shutting the door and heading to the sidewalk to follow it to the hospital entrance. He brushed back some of the locks he’d been growing out away from his face. “You could do that hacky thing and build some sort of secret network. We wouldn’t need to do this.”

  “Every network is hackable,” Victor said. “Which is why we don’t use the one we have now except in rare occasions and usually coded. It’s less noticeable. Sometimes analog is the best way.”

  The hospital wasn’t too busy this morning, at least in the side hallway that was a good distance away from the emergency room entrance. Some janitors were starting to wheel out cleaning carts, a few people from administration were starting to show up, security was doing a slow walk-through down corridors, checking office areas.

  They wound their way around the maze of corridors and took an elevator to the floor where they’d find Dr. Green’s office. It was still hard to think of him as a doctor, and Mr. Blackbourne often insisted they call him that when they spoke to him now. Not that Gabriel wouldn’t want to call him Doc anyway. He’d earned the title, with long hours in school and then internships.

  Sean Green was inside, and leaned heavily on an elbow against the wide desk. A stack of folders was on one side, a computer blaring into his left, making the shadows on his face all the longer. He stared, but his green eyes were still, barely blinking. Was he napping with his eyes open? He’d put his doctor’s coat aside, and he’d undone his necktie and unbuttoned the first two buttons on his white shirt.

  He had crazy hair, the sandy-colored mess nearly all sticking up. It was hard not to make a quip at him for the state of it, but given his tired expression, Gabriel bit the thought back.

  “Someone needs sleep,” Victor said. He rapped his knuckles on the desk to get Sean to pick his head up from looking at the computer and face them. “Are you still here on Earth?”

  Sean stretched his arms over his head, and his bones made cracking sounds along his body as he moved. “No idea,” he said in his typical cheerful tone but a touch lower and grumblier.

  “Where’s Mr. Blackbourne?” Gabriel asked.

  “He’s off doing some of my rounds,” he said. He yawned big and spoke through it. “Just checking to make sure everyone is still alive.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  He checked the time on the computer. “Thirty-six hours. Four more to go.”

  Victor push a palm to his own forehead. “Please tell me you can call Dr. Roberts or someone else and just go home.”

  “He’s been here since before I got here.” Dr. Green picked himself up out of his chair. He stretched his arms over his head and did side stretches. “We need more interns, and we’re short-staffed as it is. They didn’t get enough of us Academy people into medical school soon enough. Not enough to be a fully up-and-running hospital without non-Academy people working here.”

  “We’re all short-staffed with the hospital,” Gabriel said. “There’s less of us now to do the day to day work.”

  “But we needed this place,” Dr. Green said. “You don’t know how hard it was before not having just one building that we could secure. And now it’s in front of everyone’s faces and no one suspects anything. Listen to me talking about it and not worrying about who overhears. We could never do that within the city without cutting someone’s security fe
ed and taking so many risks...”

  There were footsteps coming down the hall, and they all turned to look in time as Mr. Blackbourne made an appearance, carrying an iPad. He was pristine in his gray knit suit, crisp white shirt and maroon tie. The suit combination that he had dozens of so he could not have to think about what to wear every day. Gabriel had been tempted to slip in other colors, a sort of mix and match, even if only the color of the tie, but Mr. Blackbourne insisted on being uniformed similarly when possible. With a thousand decisions to make a day, what to wear was one he didn’t want to have to think about.

  He circled around Victor and Gabriel to pass it to Dr. Green. “Everyone is just fine and sleeping. The nurses are doing a fine job.” He wedged himself between Dr. Green and the desk, nudging him to move. “Go sleep. I’ll monitor for the last few hours.”

  “If I sleep, I’ll be worse off if I have to wake up quickly,” Dr. Green said.

  “I didn’t say I’d call on you first,” Mr. Blackbourne said. “And don’t sleep in here, go to the cot room.”

  “You can’t tell me what to...” He didn’t quite finish, starting a large yawn instead and trailing off.

  “You can lecture me on the importance of earning your full doctorate and paying your dues later.”

  “If Dr. Roberts catches me...”

  “He’s not going to. He went to sleep in his office three hours ago. I did his rounds, too. The nurses can handle it. I’ll wake you if there’s any significant changes that need to be addressed.”

  Dr. Green grumbled and headed out the door.

  Mr. Blackbourne leaned over the desk at first, checking on what Dr. Green had been reviewing. He sat down in the chair, taking the iPad, and comparing its screen to what he was looking at on the computer.

  “Should you be doing his rounds?” Gabriel asked. “Isn’t there some ethics thing?”

  Victor elbowed him. “He’s basically been through medical school himself at this point.” He turned to Mr. Blackbourne. “You should have just completed the classes alongside Dr. Green. You could have been a doctor, too. You helped him study, and now come to the hospital enough to be an intern.”