Angel

Angel

Jamie Canosa

©Jamie Canosa
2014

Cover Design: KKeeton Designs
Cover ©Jamie Canosa 2014

All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Exceptions are reviewers who may quote short excerpts for review.

All Rights Reserved
USA

One

If I had to choose a way to die, and asleep in my bed of old age wasn’t an option, I think I’d choose drowning. It sounds awful, but I don’t think it would be. There’s a quiet to being under the water. A stillness you can’t find anywhere else. Perfect peace as the world just fades away. It doesn’t seem like such a bad way to go.

Breaking the surface, I sucked in oxygen, feeding my deprived lungs. The campus pool was usually deserted first thing in the morning, which made it my favorite time to swim. There was no comparison between the still water of the heated, indoor pool and the ocean. The rhythmic whoosh of waves breaking overhead, currents twisting and turning, tides pushing and pulling. The ocean is alive. It’s a challenge for those
willing to accept the dangers that come along with it. An adventure. One I used to thrive in.

But that was then. Now, I’d learned the value of peace. The blessing of that elusive stillness. Ironically enough, underwater felt like the only place I could catch my breath.

The slap of my hands on the cold tile echoed through the cavernous space as I lifted myself from the water. A navy towel sat, folded, on the bleachers beside my shirt and sandals, which I used to scrub the chlorine from my hair.

A shower would have been nice, but if I didn’t stop by the library to pick up research materials for the paper I had due in Social Sciences, I’d never get around to actually writing the thing. My venture into the campus library the week before had been a bust. Picked clean. Which left me no choice but to swing by the local branch on my way home. Soggy trunks and all.

***

The librarian on duty was an older woman. If I had to guess, I’d say . . . late sixties? But, with her silvery hair tied back in a bun tight enough to stretch the sagging skin around her eyes and a serious stick up her ass, she may have been the most formidable person I’d ever met. Icicles
formed in her glacier blue eyes, aimed directly at me over the top of her half-moon glasses, as I trailed water droplets across the worn green carpeting.

I wasn’t planning to stick around long enough to make a puddle, but the reference section was a joke. Even with all
three
aisles fully stocked, there wasn’t much to choose from. Not that I knew
what
I was choosing, anyway.

Side effects of the ‘human condition’. That was the paper topic. And literally
all
I had to go on. Torturing students with incredibly vague paper topics for one’s own amusement, was that a side effect? No, probably not. But insanity had to be.

I scanned
book after book, seeking . . . inspiration. I was running out of time. I needed to make a damn decision and get things rolling. After sorting through a shelf and a half, it occurred to me that there was no rhyme or reason to the way things were organized. If I had any hope of leaving there with any sort of direction in mind, I was going to have to run it through the catalog.

A faint tapping led me to a dusty bank of computers in a dim corner behind the non-
fiction titles. Not many people used public computers anymore, but a pale, thin girl with mousey brown hair sat hunched over a keyboard, hammering away at the keys. Not a flattering description, but there was something about her that was . . . remarkable. I think it was her eyes. She had the most intense blue eyes I’d ever seen. Darting back-and-forth across the screen, it was more than just concentration I saw in them. There was fear and pain and sadness. But beneath all of that there was this light. This tiny flickering flame, fighting to stay lit.

I was a moth drawn to that flame, incapable of looking away. It made you want to reach out and shelter it. Coax it into something brighter just to see how beautiful it could become. Even at the risk of being burned.

She wore a long white sundress. A color that nearly blended with her porcelain skin. It seemed to glow in the light of the monitor.
She
seemed to glow. Like an angel.

I was looking at a
freaking angel.

She never lifted her gaze from the screen. Never looked around. Never made eye contact. I watched from the stacks as an older man settled at the machine beside her. Rather than
acknowledge him, she curled deeper into herself as though she were trying to disappear. But invisibility was only something one could accomplish if others allowed it, and I wasn’t ready to stop seeing her, yet.

She typed at a frantic pace, fingers flying over the keys, but I was too distracted by her eyes to really noti
ce. Eyes that widened unbearably huge as a commotion broke out near the front desk. Raised voices penetrated the hushed atmosphere like a bullet through glass, shattering the silence.

I watched her jab repeatedly at the Print button, nerves making her movements uncoordinated and jerky. When the old laser jet whirred to life, she scooted back from the desk and hurried over to where a stack of papers was piling up. Her fear became my fear. I felt it deep in my gut and I had to know . . . What made this angel so afraid?

So I followed her.

“Where the hell is she?” A woman was leaning heavily against the desk, getting in the librarian’s face. “Insisted I come pick her lazy ass up and now—”

“Mom. I’m here. I’m sorry, I—” The blue eyed girl came to a stop a solid three feet from her mother and seemed to realize that words weren’t going to do her any good.

The woman looked ready to breathe fire. And she might have if there had been an open flame in the general vicinity. I could smell the alcohol on her breath from across the small lobby.

“Well, it’s about damn time.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to miss the bus. I was—”

“Stop acting like a kicked puppy. You’re such a damn good actress. Always getting exactly what you want, aren’t you? What happened your highness, fall off that high horse of yours?”

“Mom, please, can we not do this here?” Anxious eyes bounced around the busy room, a fiery red blush creeping into her cheeks. “We can talk about it at home if—”

“Home? Is that where you want
me to take you? Why, yes, Your Majesty. Please, allow me to chauffer you home.”

The girl shrank under the weight of sarcasm, gnawing viciously at the lower lip trapped
between her merciless teeth. Obviously not a stranger to this type of treatment, she seemed more concerned with the growing audience beginning to take notice than the abuse being hurled at her. She looked mortified. As though
she
had anything to be ashamed of.

I felt my muscles strain and my hands roll into tight fists at my sides.

“Is this what was so important you had to waste my time to come out here?
Stupid
papers for some
stupid
class you’re too
stupid
to pass, anyway?” The woman reached for the stack of papers, but her aim was off. All she managed to do was knock them to the floor. With a frustrated kick that nearly landed her on her ass, she sent them fluttering across the carpet.

The girl scanned the scattered pages with dismay before bravely facing the irate woman behind the desk. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

The librarian from hell looked about two seconds from calling the cops. I couldn’t let that happen. That poor girl had enough to deal with already.

“Excuse me?”

A pair of angry eyes swung in my direction, intensified by the small glasses perched on her nose.

“Hi. Um . . . I was wondering if you could tell me where to find documentation on the effects of . . .” I was suddenly feeling inspired. “Addiction. On morality.”

“Mom,
please
.” The girl tugged on her mother’s arm only to have it ripped away from her. “Can we just go?”

“Get your ass in the car. You can sit in the back. I can’t stand to look at you. You make me sick.” Abandoning all of her hard work, the girl’s hair fell like a curtain, hiding those stunning eyes as she ducked her head
and scurried toward the door, her mother staggering along behind her. “I should have just left you here. You’re not worth the gas money I wasted coming to get your sorry ass.”

The door
fell shut behind them with a gust that sent several stray pages drifting across the floor, coming to rest at my feet. The sound of that terrible woman’s voice dug into my brain as I crouched to gather them all up. Who said things like that? In public? To their own daughter? Acid churned my stomach as I stacked the papers on the desk in case she had a chance to come back for them, and I realized the whole scene had made me physically ill.

“I’m sorry. Do you have a bathroom?”

The librarian nodded stiffly toward a door across from the seating area. “Through there.”

Several pairs of eyes that had abandoned their laptops, tablets, and phones long enough to take in some real world drama tracked
my progress. Evidently, inserting myself in the situation had made me someone worthy of interest. That was the problem with the world—
one
of the problems. Everyone spent so much damn time staring at a screen—myself included—that when real life was happening right in front of them, they acted like it wasn’t. Like other people weren’t people, but performers in a show for their entertainment. Socialization, compassion, empathy . . . They were becoming nothing more than words.

Cool water felt good against my
overheated skin. I was so angry it was making my blood boil.

. . . And frying my brain cells.
Shit!

My reflection stared back at me in disbelief. I just watched that girl go with that woman—that
clearly intoxicated
woman—to get in a
car
. We all did.

The muffled bang of the bathroom door against the pale blue wall sounded obnoxiously loud in the renewed stillness of the library. Everyone had gone back to their
gizmos and gadgets, going on with their lives without a second thought for Angel.

Damn
them—and me—if anything should happen to her.

The librarian tried to signal me as I blew past her, pointing to a pile of books stacked on her desk. I didn’t have time for that.

My car was parked in the second row, right where I’d left it, surrounded by nearly a dozen other vehicles. Everything from SUVs to motorcycles. But no Angel.

She was gone.

I’d found an
Angel
. And I’d let her get away.

Two

“He did
what
?” I shook my head at the phone in my hand as though it could somehow erase the words I’d just heard, like some kind of mental etch-a-sketch. It didn’t work. A woman’s irritated voice continued to babble down the line, affirming that I hadn’t heard her wrong the first time around. “Yes. Thank you for calling. I’ll be right there.”

Slamming the house phone back into its cradle, I snapped off the pot of water just beginning to boil and scowled at the uncooked noodles on the counter.

When it came to school, I’d been on Kiernan’s side from the start. All kids gripe about having to learn things they’ll never use in their lives. For most, it was probably true. For Kiernan, it was an indisputable fact. Unless they were discovering the cure to cancer in high school chem lab, there was no point. Not for him.

But Mom insisted. Said he needed to get out of the house. Be more social. ‘Act normal, feel normal’ practically became the woman’s mantra. And when she set her mind to something, there really was no stopping her.

But there was a fatal flaw in her logic. We
weren’t
normal. Kiernan wasn’t normal. And normal situations didn’t affect him in a normal way.

Normally
, it would be a parent going into the principal’s office to collect him for his suspension.
Normally
, he’d be taken home, chewed out, and sent to his room or something. But, as I said, we weren’t normal.

It wasn’t anger or even disappointment that had me squeezing my keys tight enough that their tiny metal teeth bit into
the palm of my hand in the hallway outside the office door. It was sickening dread.

When they first diagnosed Kiernan, they all talked at us using a lot of words, like
gliomas, astrocytoma, and
vascularization, which
meant absolutely nothing to me. They used other words, too. Words like tumor, inoperable . . . and
terminal
. Words I understood the meaning of, but were still completely foreign in correlation with my family. My little brother.

At first, they gave Kiernan two to three months to live.
Three months
. That’s 2,191 hours, 131,487 minutes, 7,889,238 seconds.

That’s all. Period. The end.

Then, they started him on a bunch of treatments and medications that must have been doing their job, because three months rolled into four, and then six, and ten. He got to celebrate another birthday, another Thanksgiving, another Christmas with us. And, the next thing we knew, a year had gone by. A year of sitting on pins and needles just waiting for the day I got that call. The one that would change my life forever.

Grateful and terrified for every single one of those 31,536,000 seconds.

Today was not going to be that day. That’s what I told myself as I stepped over the threshold. A plump woman with a poster reminding her to ‘dance in the rain’ was sitting behind a desk, sorting through a stack of papers.

“Hi. Um . . . I’m looking for Kiernan Parks?”

Her head snapped up and she frowned at me. An expression that wasn’t nearly as intimidating as she probably would have liked it to be. Maybe it was the poster. Or the kitten figurines. Or the pencil she was using with the bright yellow suns all over it. But the woman couldn’t pull off threatening if her life depended on it. I wondered how any of the students took her seriously.

“Your brother caus
ed quite the scene in the lunchroom today.”

“So I’ve heard.” And yet, I still couldn’t believe it. Getting into a fight with some jerk was more than just a right of teenaged male passage for my brother. It was dangerous. And he knew that. Kiernan wasn’t stupid. “Where is he?”

She nodded off to my left and I twisted, coming to a dead stop when I spotted Kiernan slumped in a chair against the wall. I should have been pissed. Or, hell, if our lives were anything close to ordinary, I should have been amused. The thought of Mom losing it over something my perfect little brother did, instead of me for a change, should have made me giddy. Instead, I felt like I was going to be sick.

Dark, purple bruises shadowed his jaw, his lower lip was split and crusted with dry blood, and he held a plastic baggie packed with ice against his left eye.

I immediately retracted my earlier thought. He was a bleeding moron.

***

“What in the hell were you thinking?”

Kiernan barged down the deserted hallways and plowed through the front doors with enough force to rattle the glass in its metal frame.

“I’m talking to you!” My lips were moving. I could feel them. And I could hear the words coming out. But Kiernan’s ears were firmly locked in the ‘off’ position.

He stormed across the visitor’s lot and threw open my passenger side door, slamming it behind him hard enough to make me cringe. She may not have been as shiny and new as his, but a ’67 Impala was a classic and she deserved to be treated with a little more respect than that.

“What is your problem?” I slid behind the wheel, but stopped short of putting the key in the ignition. We weren’t going anywhere until I got some answers. “Kiernan.”

“My
problem
? My problem is that they suspended me. They’re sending me
home
.” His teeth were grinding so hard it was a miracle he got the words out at all.

“For
fighting
.” It felt like stating the obvious, but Kiernan’s brain didn’t seem to be firing on all cylinders today. “What did you expect to happen?”

“That’s not the point.” He sank deeper into his seat, arms folded across his chest with his phone wrapped up tight in a white knuckled grip.

“Chill out, okay?” Stress wasn’t exactly good for him, either. “Take the day off. You know the suspension won’t last long once Mom gets ahold of them.”

“I don’t care how long it lasts. I have to be there
now
.”

“Why? What’s so damn important about being at school today?”

“Nothing.” He twisted to stare out the side window, effectively shutting me out. “Forget it.”

“Fine.” He wanted to stew in glorious teen angst, who was I to stop him? The car purred to life, warm vibrations stirring beneath me. “But
you’d better come up with some better answers before Mom hears about this.”

“She doesn’t know?” Something ridiculously close to hope shone in my brother’s eyes. As though she wouldn’t be clued in with one look at his face.

“Not yet.” Tires whirled smoothly over wet pavement. “Keep that ice on your face. Maybe you’ll look pretty again by the time they let you back in.”

Kiernan groaned when we parked in front of a four story, square brick building that looked like something any two-year-old with a bucket of Legos could build. His specialist’s office—our first stop in making sure testosterone fueled stupidity was the biggest problem of the day. I couldn’t blame him. If I’d been through half the things they’d put him through in the past year, I’d hate doctors, nurses, machines, medicines, and check-ups, too. But he’d brought this on himself. And it wasn’t exactly the highlight of my day, either.

I found a seat in the corner of the lobby and flipped through the pages of one magazine after another. Pictures of old men walking their dogs and full page shots of purple pills weren’t really doing it for me. Where was a
Sports Illustrated
when you needed one? Or maybe a
Playboy
?

Frustrated, I tossed my latest piece of gripping literature onto the growing pile beside me. Why did this have to take so damn long? It’s not like I didn’t have better things to do than sit around in that bland room with the hideous orange chairs. A bunch of sick, sad, miserable people waiting around with other sick, sad, miserable people for sick, sad, miserable news. Did a more depressing place on Earth exist?

If I’d brought my laptop at least I could have accomplished something. Or a nap certainly wouldn’t hurt. My eyes burned with exhaustion, the consequence of staying up past three in the morning to finish a paper the day it was due. Something I seemed destined to be doing again tonight.

Stretching my legs out in front of me, I tried to rest my heavy head, but the chair back didn’t even reach my shoulders. The smooth, narrow, rounded wood arm rests did nothing to support actual arm resting, either. If I ever got my hands on the idiot who designed that useless piece of furniture . . . Leaning forward, I planted
elbows on knees, and dropped my head into my hands. Not exactly the world’s most comfortable position, but it would do.

“Hey, you ready?” Kiernan slapped my shoulder and an impressive string of vulgar profanities ran through my head. Why hadn’t I shut my eyes twenty minutes earlier? Maybe we could have gotten out of there a little sooner.

“Yeah.” Checking my pockets for phone and keys, I stretched my aching back and stood. “The doc going to call with the results? Let us know if the stupid sector of your brain is lighting up like a Christmas tree today?”

Kiernan waited until I was half
way through the door before letting it go. “He said it would probably take an hour or two.”

Great.
More
waiting. “Why don’t we go pick up your car and then hit the diner for lunch?”

“I already ate lunch.” Kiernan strapped on his seatbelt and sat there, flipping his cellphone over and over in his hand.

“Well, I haven’t.” We were sitting in the same car, but Kiernan was a million miles away. “Hey, what’s going on with you?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you feeling okay?”

If looks could kill, the one Kiernan shot me would have resulted in a bloody mess. That was the number one taboo question with him. I knew that. And I understood it. But there were times when it needed to be asked. If for nothing more than my own peace of mind.

Of course, peace of mind only came with an answer. Something I did not get. Only the look of death and then he went right back to fiddling with his freaking phone.

“Got a call to make?”

“Yeah, actually, I do.”

“Well, don’t let me stop you.”

Despite the fact that I was practically bilingual in sarcasm, Kiernan wasn’t quite so fast at picking it up. “I don’t have her number.”

“
Kiernan!
”

“
What?
”

He could be so infuriating at times. “Would you just
talk
to me?”

“About what?”

“Gee, I don’t know. Maybe the guy who pummeled your face?”

“You should see
his
face.” There was a hint of pride in Kiernan’s voice and I had to work hard to crush a grin.

“Kier—”

“He was giving her a hard time, alright? This assclown at school was giving his girlfriend—
ex-
girlfriend—a really hard time. Said some awful things. He hurt her, Cal.”

A pair of frightened blue eyes came to mind. My nostrils flared and I felt my spine go rigid. Fighting over a girl was one thing, but fighting to defend one? How was I supposed to fault him for that? It was more than I’d done.

“She’s a sweet girl. She’s never hurt anyone. And all he does is put her down. He’s the worst kind of bully and when she finally stood up to him . . .” Kiernan’s face contorted, his eyes narrowing into slits and that vein that only bulged on his forehead when he was truly pissed popped out. “It’s
my
fault. I convinced her to breakup with him. I told her I’d—”

“Kier, stop. It sounds like you did that girl a favor.” One I wished I’d done for Angel.

“She’s not going to see it that way.” Kiernan’s head dropped back against the seat. “I made her a promise. I promised her I’d be there. That she wouldn’t have to face this alone. And now . . .”

“And now you’re here. With me.” His sudden epic love for education was starting make sense.

“I let him get to me and now I’m suspended. For who knows how long. And she’s all alone. Exactly like I promised her she wouldn’t be.”

“I’ll talk to Mom, tonight. We’ll call the school. Everything will work out, okay? I’m sure she can make it through one day on her own.”

Kiernan didn’t seem quite as convinced, but he let the matter drop. There was nothing more either one of us could do about it.

“How about lunch? Or
second
lunch?”

“Sure.” He frowned at his reflection in the blank screen of his phone and then shoved it in his pocket.

***

An hour later, I felt slightly nauseas watching Kiernan shovel food into his mouth. For someone who’d already eaten, he was certainly enjoying his burger and steak fries. The same could not be
said for my turkey wrap. Normally, I could pack it away with the best of them, but I couldn’t seem to find my appetite. Maybe it was the worms burrowing holes in the pit of my stomach.

Kiernan had this ability to turn things off that I envied. He could just not think about things. Or, at least, not worry about them. I guess when it comes down to shutting off your biggest fear or surrendering to it, you have to find a way. And once you can shut that out, the little things must become easy to ignore.