Dark Angel, page 6
part #4 of Night World Series
All boys.
She recognized Bruce Faber, who she'd always thought of as Bruce the Athlete, with his tawny hair and his blue-gray eyes and his tall football build. Normally he looked as if he were acknowledging the applause of a crowd. Just now he
looked as if he were graciously extending an invitation to Gillian.
And Macon Kingsley, who she called Macon the Wallet because he was so rich. His hair was brown and styled, his eyes hooded, and there was something cruel to the sensual droop of his mouth. But he wore a Rolex and had a new sports car and right now he was looking at Gillian as if he'd pay a lot of money for her.
And Cory Zablinski-who was Cory the Party Guy because he constantly seemed to be arranging, going to, or just recovering from parties. Cory was wiry and hyper, with foxy brown hair and darting fox-colored eyes. He had more personality than looks, but he was always in the middle of things, and at this moment he was waving madly at Gillian.
Even Amy's new boyfriend Eugene, who didn't have looks or personality in Gillian's opinion, was wiggling his fingers eagerly.
David had his hand up, too, despite Tanya's cold expression. He looked polite and stubborn. Gillian wondered if he'd told Tanya he was just trying to help a poor junior out.
(Pick . . . Macon.) The ghostly voice in Gillian's ear was thoughtful.
(Macon? I thought maybe Cory.) She couldn't pick David, of course, not with Tanya looking daggers at her. And she felt uncomfortable about picking Bruce for the same reason-his girlfriend Amanda Spengler was sitting right beside him.
Cory was friendly and, well, accessible. Macon, on the other hand, was vaguely creepy.
This time the voice in her head was patient. (Have I ever steered you wrong? Macon.)
(Cory's the one who always knows about parties. . . .) But Gillian was already moving toward Macon. The most important thing in life, she was discovering quickly, was to trust Angel absolutely.
"Thanks," she said softly to Macon as she perched on an empty stool behind him. She repeated after Angel: "I'll bet you take good notes. You seem like a good observer."
Macon the Wallet barely inclined his head. She noticed that his hooded eyes were moss green, an unusual, almost disturbing color.
But he was nice to her all period. He promised to have his father's secretary photocopy the thick sheaf of biology notes in his spiral-bound notebook. He lent her a highlighter. And he kept looking at her as if she were some interesting piece of art.
That wasn't all. Cory the Party Guy dropped a ball of paper on the lab table as he walked past to get rid of his gum in the trash can. When Gillian unfolded it she found a Hershey's kiss and a questionnaire: R U new? Do U like music? What's yr phone #? And Bruce the Athlete tried to catch her eye whenever she glanced in his direction.
A warm and heady glow was starting somewhere inside Gillian.
But the most amazing part was yet to come. Mr. Leveret, pacing in the front, asked for somebody to review the five kingdoms used to categorize living things.
(Raise your hand, kid.) (But I don't remember-) (Trust me.)
Gillian's hand went up. The warm feeling had changed to a sense of dread. She never answered questions in class. She almost hoped Mr. Leveret wouldn't see her, but he spotted her right away and nodded. "Gillian?"
(Now just say after me. . . .) The soft voice in her head went on.
"Okay, the five classes would be, from most advanced to most primitive, Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Protista . . . and Eugene." Gillian ticked them off on her fingers and glanced sideways at Eugene as she finished.
(But that's not nice. I mean-) She never got to what she meant. The entire class was roaring with laughter. Even Mr. Leveret rolled his eyes at the ceiling and shook his head tolerantly.
They thought she was hysterical. Witty. One of those types who could break up a whole classroom. (But Eugene-) (Look at him.) Eugene was blushing pink, ducking his head.
Grinning. He didn't look embarrassed or hurt; he actually looked pleased at the attention.
It's still wrong, a tiny voice that wasn't Angel's seemed to whisper. But it was drowned out by the laughter and the rising warmth inside Gillian. She'd never felt so accepted, so included. She had the feeling that now people would laugh whenever she said something even marginally funny. Because they wanted to laugh; they wanted to be pleased by her-and to please her.
(Rule One, dragonfly. A beautiful girl can tease any guy and make him like it. No matter what the joke is. Am I right or am I right?)
(Angel, you're always right.) She meant it with all her heart. She had never imagined that guardian angels could be like this, but she was glad beyond words that they were and that she had one on her side.
At break the miracles continued. Instead of hurrying out the door as she normally did, she found herself walking slowly and lingering in the hall. She couldn't help it, both Macon and Cory were in front of her, talking to her.
"I can have the notes ready for you this weekend," Macon the Wallet was saying. "Maybe I should drop them by your house." His heavy-lidded eyes seemed to bore into her and the sensual droop to his mouth became more pronounced.
"No, I've got a better idea," Cory was saying, almost dancing around the two of them. "Mac, m'man, don't you think it's about time you had
another party? I mean, it's been weeks, and you've got that big house. . . . How about Saturday, and I'll round up a keg and we can all get to know Jill better." He gestured expansively.
"Good idea," Bruce the Athlete said cheerfully from behind Gillian. "I'm free Saturday. What about you-Jill?" He draped a casual arm around her shoulder.
"Ask me Friday," Gillian said with a smile, repeating the whispered words in her mind. She shrugged off the arm on her own volition. Bruce belonged to Amanda.
A party for me, Gillian thought dazedly. All she'd wanted was to get invited to a party given by these kids-she'd never imagined being the focus of one. She felt a stinging in her nose and eyes and a sort of desperation in her stomach. Things were happening almost too fast.
Other people were gathering around curiously. Incredibly, she was at the center of a crowd and everyone seemed to be either talking to her or about her.
"Hey, are you new?"
"That's Gillian Lennox. She's been here for years."
"I never saw her before."
"You just never noticed her before,"
"Hey, Jill, how come you lost your biology book?"
"Didn't you hear? She fell in a creek trying to save some kid. Almost drowned."
"I heard David Blackburn pulled her out and had to give her artificial respiration."
"1 heard they were parked on Hillcrest Road
this morning."
It was intoxicating, exhilarating. And it wasn't just guys who were gathered around her. She would have thought that the girls would be jealous, spiteful, that they'd glare at her or even all walk away from her in one mass snub.
But there was Kimberlee Cherry, Kim the Gymnast, the bubbly, sparkly little dynamo with her sun-blond curls and her baby-blue eyes. She was laughing and chattering. And there was Steffi Lockhart the Singer, with her cafe au lait skin and her soulful amber eyes, waving an expressive hand and beaming.
Even Amanda the Cheerleader, Bruce Faber's girlfriend, was in the group. She was flashing her healthy, wide smile and tossing her shiny brown hair, her fresh face glowing.
Gillian understood suddenly. The girls couldn't hate her, or couldn't show it if they did. Because Gillian had status, the instant and unassailable status that came from being beautiful and having guys fall all over themselves for her. She was a rising star, a force, a power to be reckoned with. And any girl who snubbed her was risking a nick in her own popularity if Gillian should decide to retaliate. They were afraid not to be nice to her.
It was dizzying, all right. Gillian felt as beautiful
as an angel and as dangerous as a serpent. She was riding on waves of energy and adulation.
But then she saw something that made her feel as if she had suddenly stepped off a cliff.
Tanya had David by the arm and they were walking away down the hall.
CHAPTER 8
Gillian stood perfectly still and watched David disappear around a corner.
(It's not time for the plan yet, kid. Now buck up. A cheery face is worth diamonds.)
Gillian tried to put on a cheery face.
The strange day continued. In each class, Gillian appealed to the teacher for a new book. In each class, she was bombarded with offers of notes and other help. And through it all Angel whispered in her ear, always suggesting just the right thing to say to each person. He was witty, irreverent, occasionally cutting-and so was Gillian.
She had an advantage, she realized. Since nobody had ever noticed her before, it was almost like being a new girl. She could be anything she wanted to be, present herself as anyone, and be believed.
(Like Cinderella at the ball. The mystery princess.) Angel's voice was amused but tender.
In journalism class, Gillian found herself beside Daryl Novak, a languid girl with sloe eyes and drooping contemptuous lashes. Daryl the Rich Girl, Daryl the World-weary World Traveler. She talked to Gillian as if Gillian knew all about Paris and Rome and California.
At lunch, Gillian hesitated as she walked into the cafeteria. Usually she sat with Amy in an obscure corner at the back. But recently Eugene had been sitting with Amy, and up front she could see a group that included Amanda the Cheerleader, Kim the Gymnast, and others from The Clique. David and Tanya were at the edge. (Do I sit with them? Nobody asked me.) (Not with them, my little rutabaga. But near them. Sit at the end of that table just beside them. Don't look at them as you walk by. Look at your lunch. Start eating it.)
Gillian had never eaten her lunch alone before-or at least not in a public place. On days Amy was absent, if she couldn't find one of the few other juniors she felt comfortable with, she snuck into the library and ate there.
In the old days she would have felt horribly exposed, but now she wasn't really alone; she had Angel cracking jokes in her ear. And she had a new confidence. She could almost see herself eating, calm and indifferent to stares, thoughtful to the point of being dreamy. She tried to make her movements a little languid, like Daryl the Rich Girl's.
(And I hope Amy doesn't think I'm snubbing her. I mean, it's not as if she's back there alone. She's got Eugene.)
(Yeah. We're gonna have to talk about Amy sometime, kid. But right now you're being paged. Smile and be gracious.)
"Jill! Earth to Jill!"
"Hey, Jill, c'mon over."
They wanted her. She was moving her lunch over to their table, and she wasn't spilling anything and she wasn't falling as she slid in. She was little and graceful, thistledown light in her movements, and they were surging around her to form a warm and friendly bulwark.
And she wasn't afraid of them. That was the most wonderful thing of all. These kids who'd seemed to her like stars in some TV show about teenagers, were real people who got crumbs on themselves and made jokes she could understand.
Gillian had always wondered what they found so funny when they were laughing together. But now she knew it was just the heady atmosphere, the knowledge that they were special. It made it easy to laugh at everything. She knew David, sitting quietly there with Tanya, could see her laughing.
She could hear other voices occasionally, from people on the fringes of her group, people on the outside looking in. Mostly bright chatter and murmurs of admiration. She thought she heard her name mentioned. . . . And then she focused on the words. "I heard her mom's a drunk." They sounded horribly loud and dear to Gillian, standing out against the background noise. She could feel her whole skin tingling with shock and she lost track of the story Kim the Gymnast was telling.
(Angel-who said that? Was it about me-my mom?) She didn't dare look behind her.
"-started drinking a few years ago and having these hallucinations-"
This time the voice was so loud that it cut through the banter of Gillian's group. Kim stopped in mid-sentence. Bruce the Athlete's smile faltered. An awkward silence fell.
Gillian felt a wave of anger that made her dizzy. (Who said that? I'll kill them-)
(Calm down! Calm down. That's not the way to handle it at all.) (But-)
(I said, calm down. Look at your lunch. No, at your lunch. Now say-and make your voice absolutely cool-"I really hate rumors, don't you? I don't know what kind of people start them.")
Gillian breathed twice and obeyed, although her
voice wasn't absolutely cool. It had a little tremor.
"I don't know either," a new voice said. Gillian
glanced up to see that David was on his feet, his
face hard as he surveyed the table behind her as
if looking for the person who'd spoken. "But I think they're pretty sick and they should get a life."
There was the cold glint in his eyes that had given him his reputation as a tough guy. Gillian felt as if a hand had steadied her. Gratitude rushed through her-and a longing that made her bite down on her lip.
"I hate rumors, too," J.Z. Oberlin said in her absent voice. J. Z. the Model was the one who looked like a Calvin Klein ad, breathlessly sexy and rather blank, but right now she seemed oddly focused. "Somebody was putting around the rumor last year that I tried to kill myself. I never did find out who started it." Her hazy blue-green eyes were narrowed.
And then everyone was talking about rumors, and people who spread rumors, and what scum they were. The group was rallying around Gillian.
But it was David who stood up for me first, she thought.
She had just looked over at him, trying to catch his eye, when she heard the tinkling noise.
It was almost musical, but the kind of sound that draws attention immediately in a cafeteria. Somebody had broken a glass. Gillian, along with everyone else, glanced around to see who'd done it.
She couldn't see anybody. No one had the right expression of dismay, no one was focused on anything definite. Everybody was looking around in search mode.
Then she heard it again, and two people standing near the cafeteria doors looked down and then up.
Above the doors, far above, was a semi-circular window in the red brick. As Gillian stared at the window she realized that light was reflecting off it oddly, almost prismatically. There seemed to be crazy rainbows in the glass. . . .
And something was sparkling down, falling like a few specks of snow. It hit the ground and tinkled, and the people by the door stared at it on the cafeteria floor. They looked puzzled.
Realization flashed on Gillian. She was on her feet, but the only words that she could find were, "Oh, my God!"
"Get out! It's all going to go! Get out of there!" It was David, waving at the people under the window. He was running toward them, which was stupid, Gillian thought numbly, her heart seeming to stop.
Other people were shouting. Cory and Amanda and Bruce-and Tanya. Kim the Gymnast was shrieking. And then the window was going, chunks of it falling almost poetically, raining and crumbling, shining and crashing. It fell and fell and fell. Gillian felt as if she were watching an avalanche in slow motion.
At last it was over, and the window was just an arch-shaped hole with jagged teeth clinging to the
edges. Glass had flown and bounced and skittered all over the cafeteria, where it lay like hailstones. And people from tables amazingly distant were examining cuts from ricocheting bits.
But nobody had been directly underneath, and nobody seemed seriously hurt.
(Thanks to David.) Gillian was still numb, but now with relief. (He got them all out of the way in time. Oh, God, he isn't hurt, is he?)
(He's fine. And what makes you think he did it all alone? Maybe I had some part. I can do that, you know-put it into people's heads to do things. And they never even know I'm doing it.) Angel's voice sounded almost-well-piqued.
(Huh? You did that? Well, that was really nice of you.) Gillian was watching David across the room, watching Tanya examine his arm, nod, shrug, look around.
He's not hurt. Thank heaven. Gillian felt so relieved it was almost painful.
It was then that it occurred to her to wonder what had happened.
That window-before the glass fell it had looked just like the mirror in her bathroom. Evenly shattered from side to side, spidery cracks over every inch of the surface.
The bathroom mirror had cracked while Tanya was being catty about Gillian's room. Now Gillian remembered the last thing she'd wanted to ask Angel last night. It had been about how the mirror came to do that.
This window ... it had started falling a few minutes after someone insulted Gillian's mother. Nobody had heard it actually break, but it couldn't have happened too long ago.
The small hairs on the back of Gillian's neck stirred and she felt a fluttering inside.
It couldn't be. Angel hadn't even appeared to her yet. . . .
But he'd said he was always with her. . . . An angel wouldn't destroy things. . . . But Angel was a different kind of angel. (Ah, excuse me. Hello? Do you want to share some thoughts with me?)
(Angel!) For the first time since his soft voice had sounded in her ear, Gillian felt a sense of- over-crowdedness. Of her own lack of privacy. The uneasy fluttering inside her increased. (Angel, I was just-just wondering . . .) And then the silent words burst out. (Angel, you wouldn't-would you? You didn't do those things for my sake- "break the mirror and that window-?)
A pause. And then, in her head, riotous laughter. Genuine laughter. Angel was whooping. Finally, the sounds died to mental hiccups. (Me?) Gillian was embarrassed. (I shouldn't have asked. It was just so weird. . . .)
(Yeah, wasn't it.) This time Angel sounded grimly amused. (Well, never mind; you're already late for class. The bell rang five minutes ago.) Gillian coasted through her last two classes in a
daze. So much had happened today-she felt as if she'd led a full life between waking up and now.
But the day wasn't over yet.
In her last class, studio art, she once again found herself talking to Daryl the Rich Girl. Daryl was the only one of that crowd that took art or journalism. And in the last minutes before school ended, she regarded Gillian from under drooping eyelashes.
