Falling (The Falling Angels Saga) (2 page)

“I don’t think you want to be here right now,” she said in a low, urgent tone, as she dragged me away from the lockers.

“Why? What’s up? What’s gotten into you?” I asked, as I allowed her to pull me along.

“It’s not me something’s gotten into. It’s you.”

She continued dragging me down the hall and through the double doors leading out onto the quad. As we slammed through, an uneasiness erupted in my belly, coming on quickly like a flash flood. Maudrina was not the kind of person to overreact to things, unless you included the week she discovered watermelon lip gloss. She rubbed on so much gloss that week I thought her lips would break out in a fruit rash. I knew this was nothing like that.

“What do you mean it’s me?” I said, finally digging in my heels and forcing us to a stop.

“Your dark side showed up at school yesterday. This time, she was here all day,” she said. She was staring at me with worried eyes.

“What do you mean my dark side showed up yesterday? Yesterday was Sunday. There was no school yesterday. Have you been drinking?” I pushed a smile onto my lips. It did nothing to calm the uneasiness swirling in my belly.

“Sorry, Megan. Yesterday was Monday. Today’s Tuesday.”

“If this is some kind of joke, I don’t get it,” I said, rummaging in my purse for my phone. Pulling it out, I hit the button brightening the screen. “For your information, Miss Lost Weekend, today is…
Tuesday
?” The date flashed onto the screen, and my arms and legs went numb. “How can that… be?” I stammered, staring down at my phone as if it were an alien from another planet. “How can that be?” I repeated, my voice dipping in wonder.

I started banging my phone against my hand, but the date didn’t change. I’d somehow lost an entire day. I tried back-tracking my thoughts and could remember yesterday, Sunday, clear as a bell. Me, Suze, and Tony had gone to the farmers market in the morning where we bought farm fresh eggs, orange juice, and assorted veggies. We came home, and Tony made us the most delicious omelet that we ate with our plates on our laps because there was no room for them on our cluttered up dining room table.
That
was the yesterday I remembered.

I could feel my legs turning to spaghetti. I grabbed onto Maudrina for support.

“It’s okay,” she said, as she led me to one of the stone benches across the quad and gingerly sat me down.

The first bell sounded. It was hollow and distant, as if coming through a dream. Maudrina sat next to me on the stone bench and took both my hands in hers. Her hands felt extremely warm, which probably meant mine were freezing cold.

“You were gone all day yesterday, Sweetie. And I’m afraid the other you was here, the dark you, and she created quite a mess.”

I slipped quietly into my seat and Mr. Percival didn’t bat an eye. That was good news. He had easy eyes and an easy disposition, and his lack of concern over my being late meant he wasn’t going to give me a tardy for entering his class after the second bell.

I opened my book to the section he was lecturing on. Fortunately, I’d read ahead so the concepts weren’t knew to me. I possessed the ability to retain most of what I read, even if I read it quickly.

As Mr. Percival warbled on about random variables, my thoughts wandered to the random variables in my own life. A random variable is a variable whose value is subject to variations due to chance. For instance, it was chance that the dark me showed up yesterday instead of one day last week before the announcement for nominations for junior class officers had been made. If the dark me had shown up last week, she couldn’t have thrown her (my) hat into the ring to run for the office of Junior Class President.
Ugh!
But the dark me didn’t show up last week, she showed up yesterday, just in time to ruin my life.

While Mr. Percival explained the use of probability in random variables, I considered the probability of having a trouble free semester—zero. There was zero chance I could put all my troubles behind me and enjoy my first semester of junior year. I was starting to hate Statistics.

Tran and Jenny were both seated in the front, practically side-by-side where Mr. Percival couldn’t miss when their hands went waving into the air—which was often. They both kept glancing back at me, shooting sly grins and nodding at me like a couple of bobbleheads. Twice, while Mr. Percival’s back was turned, Tran shot a triumphant fist in the air while beaming at me.

I hadn’t upset the members of the G.U. mathletes on what I was now calling my
dark day
. I guess I should accept that as a good thing because, from what Maudrina had relayed to me, I’d upset just about everyone else who mattered.

The Poplarati mattered. They’d been grooming Orlando Duckett as their choice for senior class president, and my pal, Ashley Scott, for junior class president. Since the Poplarati only threw their considerable weight behind one candidate in each class, that candidate usually won, as the school marched in lock-step with the cool kids.

This year, a second member of the Poplarati had decided to run against Ashley. The newest and most unlikely member of the Poplarati—me. Of course,
I
hadn’t decided to run. I don’t like running for anything. I don’t even run for the bus. Yet yesterday my dark side had decided to throw a little turmoil into my life by announcing in assembly that I was nominating myself for junior class president.

“You can’t nominate yourself,” announced Bethany-with-the-perfect-teeth at the nominating assembly. That’s when several of the uncoolest kids on campus came to my rescue, nominating me, and then seconding that nomination, thereby revoking my coolness card for all eternity.

I stared at Maudrina horrified as she relayed the story to me. “Why didn’t you stop me?”

“I tried. I said ‘Megan, what are you doing?’ And you said, ‘Fixing things.’”

“Fixing things? What did I mean by that?
Fixing things?”

“I don’t know. You had a look about you I’d never seen before.” Her voice dipped secretively.

“A look?” I asked in a tone that sounded like I was starting to whine. It felt as though my life were disintegrating before my eyes.

“I can’t describe it. Something like anger. Like you were angry at the whole world and it was payback time. It radiated off of you, and I was afraid if I questioned you anymore, you’d jump down my throat.” The expression on her face softened. “That’s how I knew you were back this morning. The look was gone. You were you.” When she stopped talking a thin smile appeared on her lips, yet through the smile I noticed she was staring at me with
pity-eyes
. I’d gone through the pity-eyed stare much of last semester. I wasn’t happy to see it back for a return visit.

I knew the look she was speaking of. I’d seen it myself one afternoon in the bathroom mirror of The Insominacs’ Café, right after I’d sent my shift supervisor, Carly Sanchez, fleeing from the café and into early retirement.

I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. If Satan could read minds, he was down there in hell laughing himself into a conniption fit over my latest predicament.
Did I dare think I’d gotten my life back and under control?
I’m sure he figured, by the time he was through trampling over my life like a rampaging pig through a vegetable garden, I’d be begging him to take me to hell.

When the bell rang, ending class, I already had my books packed up and ready to go. I jumped from my seat, hauled up my bag, and escaped out the back door before Tran and Jenny could come over and start patting me on the back like I was their new pal. I wasn’t their new pal. We were all mathletes together, but that was the extent of our relationship.

I exited the room and pushed my way down the hall, through hordes of freshmen and sophomores stumbling through the halls as they adjusted to a new school. I wound my way to the far end of the school where I ducked into a stairwell, away from anyone I knew. I needed to get my thoughts together before I continued on to second period French. Ashley Scott was in second period French, and I was certain she was going to have lots of questions for me. I needed to have a strategy worked out by the time I saw her.

I realized as I entered the little-used stairwell that I knew the place far better than I should have. This had been my rendezvous stairwell with Guy.

Guy.

I’d been very good at burying my thoughts of my fallen angel beneath the ocean of work, school, and other activities that cluttered my mind. So good I’d convinced myself his return wasn’t really that important to me.
He’ll be back when he’s ready
, I told myself. But now that I was here, once again in our kissing stairwell, long-repressed memories of Guy came surging in, as if my mind were suddenly at high tide.
Guy
. His name whispered in my ears, and nothing else mattered—not school, or my popularity, or the clutter in our living room, or even the threat of a life with Satan. Nothing.

Guy would know what to do. He’d know how to fix the problems that had sprung up in my life like crabgrass. I’d been assured he was going to return to me, which had kept me from falling to pieces over the long, hot summer. But when? When? I squeezed back a tear because I didn’t have time to cry. I had three minutes to come up with a satisfactory excuse as to why I’d crossed Ashley Scott by running against her in the school election.

The door swished open behind me, and a student entered the stairwell. Rushing footsteps stopped short, and I heard a hitch in the person’s breathing.

“Megan Barnett?” It was a girl’s voice, soft yet laced with a sense of awe.

“Hi,” I said, turning, putting on my happy face and sucking back whatever moisture remained in my eyes. The girl was tall, about six feet, and pencil thin. I’d never seen her before. She reminded me of a character out of a Tim Burton animated movie, all lines and angles. “Yes, I’m Megan Barnett,” I said, a plastic smile glued to my lips. She had to be a lower classman, possibly a sophomore, although I thought she was a freshman because she had that little-girl-lost look about her that freshman often had.

“I have a message for you,” she said, her voice dropping several octaves. Her eyes got all mysterious. The eyes were large and unblinking, peeking out from sockets set deep in skin that was pale and fragile looking, as if she were the one girl in all of Arizona who didn’t get much sun.

“A message from who?” I asked.

“You can win,” she said, letting out a breath as if she was relieved to be getting it off her chest. Her teeth were yellow. I mean,
yellow
. This girl was obviously not too chummy with her toothbrush. She pushed past me and started running up the stairs.

I was so stunned by the girl and her message I stood there for several seconds, letting the experience sink in as the girl got away, “Wait!” I hollered up the stairs after her. “Who gave you that message? Was it Ashley Scott?” I took a few steps up, craned my neck to look up for her between the landings.

Her footsteps continued moving away. She called something down to me but I couldn’t hear.

I started up after her. “Who?” I called raising my voice.

She called down louder. It sounded as though she said “Ibwa.”

A few seconds later I heard an upstairs door swish open and closed. The girl was gone.

I stopped moving and hit the replay button in my mind again and again. Each time I replayed what I thought she’d said it came out the same.
Ibwa.
I knew my ears had to be deceiving me, and yet goose flesh began slowly rising along my arms as a chill snaked up my spine. It was a name from my past, a name no girl attending GU should ever know, the name of a demon straight from hell. “Ibwa,” I mumbled softly.

I got to class moments before the second bell. Ashley Scott and Heather McNamara were standing by my seat. They were both wearing skirts short enough to get them the attention they desired, but not so short as to get them expelled. Ashley had on a puffy shouldered jean jacket that reminded me of something out of
The Breakfast Club
. I thought to myself
who brought back the eighties?
But then I realized that if the Poplararti were wearing shoulder pads, it meant I was running a step or two behind the fashion train.

“Hi, ladies,” I said, dropping my bag onto my seat. I added a little cheer to my voice hoping to throw them off, yet from the look in their eyes that wasn’t going to happen.

“Bonjour, ladies, take your seats
tout de suite
!” called Miss Martin, our French teacher, bustling into the room hot on my heels, disrupting the moment.

“Don’t run off after class,” Ashley said in a low tone, thick with warning. “We need to talk.”

“Of course. No problem,” I replied with my third false smile of the day, and it wasn’t even nine o’clock. “I’ll be right here,” I said, my voice trilling like a bird, and plopped down in my seat, pretending to dig in my bag for my book.

They started away, then Heather came back. “I don’t know who you think you are,” she said with enough snake venom to kill a horse.

“Umm… Megan Barnett,” I replied, still with cheer I wasn’t feeling. I was going for the dumb approach.

She shot me a glare that suggested I wasn’t as funny as I thought I was, and moved to her seat. The arrival of the mystery girl in the stairwell had robbed me of my time to come up with a strategy to appease Ashley. I needed to come up with one during class.

Brrng!

I swear, that had to be the fastest period in history. I knew the bells had to be off because it felt as though we’d just sat down. But Ms. Martin wasn’t signaling for us to stay in our seats. Everyone was gathering their books, and when I looked up, Ashley Scott and Heather McNamara were moving toward me.

“Outside,” said Ashley, without stopping, or even throwing me a glance. She and Heather exited the room.