Dark Angel (12 page)

‘No, thanks. It’s better if I go alone.’ Eager to get to Grace, I half ran from the clubhouse.

‘Whoa!’ Radiant Cristal was walking across the car park with a young, fair-haired guy and Daniel. Dressed in five-inch heels and a floaty emerald-green dress with a plunging neckline, she stepped across my path. ‘Where’s the fire?’

‘Hi. Sorry, I have to go.’ I glanced at Daniel, smiled my apology and hurried on.

‘Daniel, since when did you have such a God-awful effect on a girl?’ Cristal wisecracked, making sure she drew the new guy into the joke. ‘All he did was invite her for coffee and see how she reacts!’

The besotted blond boy giggled more than the joke deserved.

‘It’s not that,’ I stammered then blundered on. ‘By the way, Cristal, Aaron’s in there with Holly and a group of buddies. I have to hurry – sorry!’ I reached my car, jumped in and turned the ignition. When I looked in my rearview mirror I saw the three of them laughing and joking in the clubhouse porch. What was so funny? Was it dumb-ass me they were laughing at? And wow, the glorious Cristal moved fast, dropping Aaron and moving on to her new guy in the space of a single day.

I stopped at the car park exit to wait for a gap in the traffic, looked in my mirror again and saw that Daniel had stepped down from the porch and was heading in my direction.

An unexpected tsunami of indecision crashed over me and I stalled the engine. Should I wait for Daniel? What did he plan to say to me? Would he ask me out on a date and would I drown in those blue eyes?

He drew closer. Hurriedly I turned the ignition, stepped on the gas and sped away.

Keeping my promise to Jude, I drove straight to Grace’s house and found the front door open and music drifting out. I recognized Zoran’s soaring voice, and his song ‘Come with Me’. There was only one car in the drive – Grace’s white Toyota.

I knocked and said hi, ventured inside, waited a full minute without a reply.

‘Grace?’ I called, crossing the hallway.

She appeared at last at the head of the stairs, gave a delighted gasp and ran down to greet me with a warm hug. ‘Cool, Tania, I’m so glad you’re here! Come upstairs. I’m in my room listening to music.’ She half sang, half hummed the words as I followed her – ‘Fly with me/ You’re stardust, you’re heavenly.’

‘So you’re OK?’ I checked, following her into her room, which was its usual mess – CD cases scattered across her pillow, school psychology books and laundry booby-trapping my progress across the floor.

‘Totally,’ she breezed. She fixed her hair in front of the vanity mirror in her bathroom. ‘Don’t you love this song?’

‘You missed school,’ I reminded her. Though she seemed more like her old self, I didn’t quite trust it.

‘Only a couple of days, no big deal. And before you say anything, I know what this is about – you’ve been talking with Jude.’

I paused. Grace was cheery and bright, like a little bird puffing out its chest and warbling its song, which should have been reassuring but somehow wasn’t.

‘You have!’ she trilled. ‘He’s so down about life in general, isn’t he?’

‘Who can blame him? He’s worried about you, says you won’t see him.’

She danced a couple of steps across the carpet then flopped down on the bed. ‘Jude makes everything such a big deal. You know how he is.’

I sat beside Grace and chose my words carefully. ‘I don’t actually see it that way. What I do know is that Jude is a really sweet, laid-back and positive guy and right now he’s hurting because of you.’

Up she sprang, dancing away. ‘He’ll be OK. He’ll move on.’

‘Does
he
know this?’ I asked sharply. ‘I just saw him at the tennis club and my impression was that he’s not OK and he’s desperately holding his breath, waiting for you to be normal with him again.’

‘OK, so I’ll spell it out next time I see him,’ she assured me, back to fixing her hair in the mirror. ‘I’ll tell him we’re through.’

‘So that’s it – no explanations, no thinking it over – you two are history?’ This was unreal. Grace humming and preening while she talked about the end of a two-year relationship.

‘Stuff happens,’ she shrugged. ‘Look at Holly and Aaron. No one turns a hair when they split.’

‘Because it happens all the time,’ I pointed out. ‘They fight, they split, they get back together. They fight again. Whereas you and Jude were so close. You’re even applying to the same college so you can be together next year.’

For a moment the reality of what I was saying got through to her and she fumbled with the hairbrush on her dressing table. Then she gave a final tap and put it down. ‘Plans change. I may not even go to college – who knows?’

‘OK … OK!’ I stood up and flexed the fingers of both hands then curled them into two fists. ‘So change the subject, talk to me about Zoran’s party. You told Jude you saw shooting stars.’

She smiled and turned towards me. ‘Really bright. They glowed green like the Northern Lights. It was beautiful.’

‘Which I didn’t see, and I was there,’ I contradicted coolly. ‘And what about the levitating thing? You’re not saying in the cold light of day that really happened?’

Grace took my hands and her eyes shone with excitement. There were spots of high colour in her pale cheeks. ‘Tania, you know it did and it was so cool! Ezra showed me and told me I could do it too and he was right.’

‘Ezra.’ I repeated the name softly. ‘Grace, this is scaring me. I already know there was something weird about the party – Holly and I talked about it a lot. For starters, there’s an eight-hour gap in my memory of that night, the same with Holly. And I think we all went a little crazy—’

‘I’m not crazy!’ She pushed me away so hard that I staggered backwards and overbalanced on to the bed. ‘Yes, the party was a big deal for me. It opened the door to choices I never dreamed of. I know now the human mind is capable of amazing things if only you open up to the possibilities.’

I shook my head. ‘Stop. Think what you’re saying.’

‘Whereas you and Holly, Jude, Aaron – you don’t even want to look at the fantastic opportunities. Well, that’s your choice; it’s down to you. But it’s no reason to stop others from moving on up to another level.’

‘That’s not what I’m doing. Stop, please.’ Grace’s manic energy took her to the open window. For a moment I thought she was going to step right out into thin air. ‘Come back. I’ll listen to what you’re saying.’

She turned away from the window, eyes still shining. ‘You should hear Ezra talk. He tells me stuff about the planets, how you can move them around with the power of sheer thought. And this brings about changes in the weather. If your head is clear of all its old negativities, you can control the wind, the rain, everything!’

‘Ezra believes this?’

She nodded. ‘And so do I. Tania, I saw him do it – out at Turner Lake. He made the clouds roll down from Black Rock and rain over the water. It was the best rain, so clean and pure. And then he sent it away again, down the valley, and the sun was shining and there was a perfect rainbow!’

‘I remember Ezra at the party,’ I said, keeping my voice under control while I desperately wondered how should deal with this. ‘His shaman costume, the dreamcatcher thing was stunning. I see the attraction.’

‘I’m not talking about appearances and surface stuff – this is spiritual.’ Once more Grace drifted around the room, humming Zoran’s music. Her eyes shone with the wonder of it all. ‘That’s what I mean by clearing your mind and opening yourself to new possibilities. You wouldn’t know about that, Tania, unless you were actually prepared to do it. The same with poor Jude.’

‘You have to talk to him.’ I needed help here so I took my phone from my pocket. ‘Let me call him for you.’

‘No!’ Her mood changed quickly to irritation. She snatched my phone and threw it to the floor. ‘Listen to me. You people don’t realize what they’re offering you – all this knowledge and power. I can’t really blame Jude for that because he wasn’t there, but you and Holly were, yet you still choose not to see it.’

‘Who are we talking about? Who’s “they”?’

‘
Them!
Ezra, Daniel, Cristal. And there are others who you didn’t see, living at the lodge. They’re all so beautiful on the outside because their spirits are pure – pure on the inside and incredibly beautiful on the outside, every one of them.’

‘How many?’

‘Twenty-five, thirty, including the musicians from Zoran’s band, plus Lewis and the medic who checked you were OK after you passed out. They’re all young, like us. And they believe in a wonderful life, living in harmony, worshipping in chapel and turning their backs on stuff that isn’t important – money, jobs, all the boring things.’

‘It’s a cult,’ I murmured, suddenly finding the word that fitted. ‘Zoran is the head of a weird sect.’

Grace threw me a patient, pitying glance. ‘It’s more than that, honestly. This is totally different.’

‘And how many times have you been there?’ I was shaking my head, not wanting to fall for what I was hearing, yet not totally closing the door on what Grace was describing. A tiny part of me – the part connected with my feelings for Daniel – even wished it was true.

‘Three times,’ she told me. ‘Each visit is more perfect than the last. I promise you, Tania, it’s heaven up there on Black Rock. You have to believe me.’

I didn’t, of course. But what I read next day in school made Grace seem either less crazy or more – couldn’t decide.

It was Shakespeare,
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
, and Leo Douglas was acting the part of Puck, coming to the place in the text where he drops flower juice on to Titania’s eyelids to make her fall in love with the next thing he sees. The small purple flower is called love-in-idleness.

‘The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid

Will make or man or woman madly dote

Upon the next live creature that it sees.’

Leo paused while the teacher explained the word ‘dote’. To dote = to love beyond reason. I looked at Jude, sitting beside me and he understood what my covert glance was saying. That’s it – that’s Grace we’re talking about. She madly dotes on Ezra.

According to Shakespeare, the fairy queen might fall in love with a lion, a bear, wolf … you name it.

‘And with the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes,

And make her full of hateful fantasies.’

A drug can do that in Shakespeare’s world, and maybe in modern-day America too.

The drama is about love and confusion. People elope by moonlight, they grow jealous. All you need to throw into the mix is a flower called love-in-idleness, smear it on the wrong person’s eyes and you get a whole lot of heartache. So I sat in class wondering was it a mind-altering drug after all? And was Grace being given a fresh dose every time she visited Black Eagle Lodge?

Grace missed school on Monday and again Tuesday, and you just had to look at Jude to see how much he was struggling.

‘She still won’t talk to you?’ I asked as a gang of us took the elevator from the car park into the mall after class. Orlando was there, along with Holly and Aaron holding hands (Cristal, please note), plus Leo and his girl, Tarsha.

‘I spoke with her mom after your visit on Sunday. They really want to take Grace to the Bitterroot Clinic to see James Morel. He’s a guy who specializes in bipolar disorder.’

‘But she won’t go?’

‘They think she’s manic. It’s the way she won’t sleep or eat or even sit still for more than thirty seconds, and she plays her music twenty-four seven. Then she dips right down, won’t even get out of bed. Mrs Montrose read up on the symptoms.’

‘Can that happen out of nowhere?’ I wanted to know. ‘Wouldn’t there be warning signs before the full-blown bipolar thing hits?’

‘I’m no expert,’ Jude confessed, lagging behind the others as Holly headed into a Starbucks. ‘Hey, Tania, if you don’t mind, I’m going to call a rain check.’

‘You don’t want a coffee?’

He shook his head. ‘I’m just not in the mood.’

‘But you’re cool?’ I checked, thinking that his breathing seemed fast and shallow. ‘You’ve got your inhaler?’

‘Yeah, I’m good. Tell the others I said bye.’ He smiled lifelessly and peeled off towards the exit.

‘Bye,’ I told him. I felt so sad for him as he walked off alone, head down and hands in pockets, that I almost had tears in my eyes.

‘Hey,’ Orlando whispered when I went into the coffee shop and he saw how down I looked. Finally forgetting to be jealous of my Europe trip, he said, ‘Come and sit here, Tania. Did I tell you lately how much I love you?’

Early summer and the mountain meadows are a riot of hot-red, rich-purple and golden flowers. The wind runs through the feathery grass, wave after green wave.

Orlando and I stayed until after dark and made love under a starry sky.

‘Come to Dallas with me,’ he murmured, his lips against my cheek, the full weight of his body on mine.

I heard aspen leaves rustle. The lake water lapped against the pebble shore.

‘How would that work?’ I whispered. I would have been happy never to have moved from that special place, with Orlando’s smooth, warm skin against mine and the moon looking down.

‘Forget Europe,’ he urged. ‘We’ll find an apartment close to the campus. You can paint, I can study.’

‘And we pay the bills how?’

‘We take jobs in a bar, in Walmart. You sell some paintings.’

‘Keep talking,’ I pleaded. I closed my eyes, held him and dreamed. He only had to whisper promises to rouse me to make love again – his husky voice, those honeyed words. Our bodies entwined.

But I didn’t give up on Europe. I never made that promise.

‘Art is more important to you than I am,’ Orlando complained. The school week was finished and we were sitting in my room with the TV playing an old romantic comedy in the background. ‘Rome and Leonardo da Vinci, Florence and Michelangelo.’

‘Why does it have to be one or the other?’

With an impatient flick of his hand he stopped me from stroking the back of his neck.

That flick felt like a major slap. ‘Honestly, Orlando – why are you making me choose?’

‘Because that’s life. Every step of the way we make choices.’

‘So you get to study in Dallas but I don’t get to travel. How is that fair?’