Immortal City (13 page)

“Well, I know you’re, like, not supposed to have visitors, but this is detention, not prison.”

“Thanks,” Maddy said unsteadily.

“Were you talking to someone?” she asked. “I could have sworn I heard a voice.” Maddy rubbed her sweaty palms against the legs of her jeans.

“Not . . . that I know of,” she said.

Gwen talked while Maddy ate with shaking hands. She went on about how she had talked to Jordan Richardson in the lunch line, her new crush and ideal Homecoming date, then said something about how he was going to be at Ethan’s party. Maddy tried to listen as Gwen went on and on, but her head was still spinning from Jacks’s unannounced—and unwelcome—visit. She could still sense him lingering in the room as she sat there.

•   •   •

Walking home, things felt different. Suddenly she couldn’t help feeling the Angel Stars under her feet. She couldn’t
not
see the tourist shops and the billboards and the faces of the Angels. As much as she tried, she couldn’t erase those piercing pale blue eyes from her mind.

She was so angry.

For once she welcomed her evening shift at the diner; she was looking forward to it, even. Anything to be distracted from her wandering thoughts. She had just rounded the corner to her street when she stopped dead in her tracks. She blinked, not sure if what she was seeing could be real.

There was a line outside of Kevin’s Diner. There had never been a line. Even on Sundays, there was no waiting to be seated. This was maybe a hundred people, and not regulars, either. These were hipsters with tattoos and piercings, suburbanites, tourists, and preppy Beverly Hills types. Maddy hustled up the sidewalk and slipped in the back door.

“What did I tell you?” Kevin yelled from behind the fryer as she came in. “It’s finally happened. Our luck is changing! I called in extra help.” Maddy smiled as convincingly as she could, then disappeared into the bathroom to change.

The diner was alive with talk about Jackson. Maddy couldn’t avoid it as she ran between tables, scribbling orders and dropping off armfuls of food. Everyone wanted to know about last night. Girls wanted to know how he looked in person. Even ANN on the Magnavox was drowned out by the frenzy of conversation. If Maddy had been looking for a distraction, this was the opposite.

“Is this where he sat?” a girl asked at one point, pointing to a booth. Her mother hovered in the background.

“No.” Maddy sighed. “It was over there.”

“Great!” The girl beamed. “Would you mind taking a picture of me in it?” Maddy did as she was asked. Everywhere she looked, people bathed in the afterglow of Jacks’s presence.

After a few hours they had cleared the line, but the dining room was still packed. Maddy barely heard the jingle of the front door over the din. She looked up.

Ethan stood there in ripped jeans, a T-shirt, and Rainbow flip-flops. Maddy hadn’t seen him since he’d gotten her phone number at school the morning before. He gave a quick scan of the full dining room, not seeing her, then went over and grabbed a seat at the counter. Not knowing exactly why she was doing it, Maddy glanced at her reflection in the window and straightened her ponytail as she approached.

“Hi,” she said shyly.

“Hey, Maddy!” he said, looking thrilled to see her.

“You haven’t been here in a while. Do you need a menu?”

“Actually,” Ethan said, his eyes on hers, “I heard what happened. I have to meet Kyle and Tyler in a bit, but I was driving by and just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Maddy was surprised and a little touched.

“I’m fine. Thanks for asking.”

“Great, that’s good to hear. I just . . . I don’t know. I was worried.” He smiled.

“You can’t come in here and not order anything,” Maddy said, pulling out her notepad. She found she didn’t want to see him go. “How about it?”

“I love the food here,” Ethan admitted. “But really, I’m not hungry.”

“How about a cup of coffee on the house?”

“Sure,” he agreed. “That sounds awesome.”

She went back and pulled a mug from the rack, then filled it with steaming coffee. Ethan was nice. And, she had to admit, nice-looking, too. They got along. Both quiet, but neither shy. Still, she wasn’t ready for him to think that she
liked
him-liked him. She’d have to be careful. She grabbed a bowl of creamers and headed back to where he sat.

“Free cup of joe; I like this place,” Ethan said as he took the mug and sipped from it. “Big night, huh?”

“Tell me about it,” Maddy said, resting her hip on the counter.

“To be honest,” Ethan said, looking around at the excited faces of the dining room, “I just don’t know why people care so much.”

Maddy looked at him, interested. “I thought I was the only one. Well, aside from people like Tyler, who are against it as like a political thing.”

Ethan shrugged. “I mean, I’m not trying to make a statement or anything, I just think we are who we are, and they are who they are. Why worship them?”

A reporter was standing at the hill of the famous Getty Center art museum, Beverly Hills sprawling far below him. He was eagerly reporting on a new save. Spectacular Angelcam footage played on screen: a Guardian ripped open the cockpit door of a plummeting helicopter, its rotors seized up in midair, and pulled out the owner-pilot. They climbed to safety just before the copter smashed into the uninhabited hillside above the Santa Monica Freeway, incinerating into flames. The Guardian flew his Protection to safety at the gleaming white Getty Center at the top the hill, where a fleet of ambulances screamed to meet them. Firefighters rushed to extinguish the roaring fire in the hillside scrub. The Angel was now giving interviews on the open white marble plaza of the museum, his shirt hanging in shreds around him, exposing his perfectly sculpted upper torso, his wings still extended. A plume of smoke rose in the distance. Fans circled all around, screaming and taking pictures. The patrons in the diner all watched, hypnotized by footage of the save. Some were already logging on to SaveTube on their phones to rewatch the clip and find any other footage. Ethan wore a frustrated expression.

“When you see these people saved by Angels, do you sometimes not think about the Angel or the Protection? I mean, do you ever think about the other people? People that maybe got hurt. People that maybe got killed. Do they deserve to be saved any less?”

He looked up from his mug right into Maddy’s eyes. She gazed at Ethan, sensing the invitation of the moment, but stood silent, tongue-tied. After another second, Ethan’s face broke out into a smile. “Sorry. I guess I’ve been hanging around Tyler too much.”

“It would be easier to ignore them—the Angels, I mean,” Maddy said, thinking of Jackson and picking her words carefully, “if everyone didn’t
talk
about them all the time.”

“Seriously. I’m so glad you feel the same way,” Ethan said, still looking at her. Was he blushing? “What I mean is, I knew we had a lot in common.”

Now it was Maddy’s turn to blush. Sensing her discomfort, Ethan got up.

“Well, I gotta get going. Thanks again for the coffee.”

“Anytime,” Maddy managed to say, and took the mug from him.

“The other reason I came by was to say I really hope you can make it to my party,” he said very softly, leaning forward so she could hear him over the noise of the customers. With that he turned and left.

Maddy watched him until he disappeared from sight.

Maybe she’d be able to forget Jackson Godspeed after all.

•   •   •

When Kevin’s finally closed, Maddy had nearly run herself off her feet. Worse, her nerves were raw. Kevin sat in the office, adding up receipts at the till.

“Biggest weekday night . . . ever,” he said, typing in figures on his calculator. He looked up at her over the rim of his glasses. “Or any night, for that matter.”

“Sleep tight, Kevin,” she said as she passed him. Despite everything, she was glad he was happy. She walked out the back of the restaurant and up the adjoining yard to the house. It was an unusually clear night in Angel City, with a light, crisp autumn breeze. She went straight up to her room, peeled out of her uniform, and threw on an old shirt, a lace-trimmed tee from Anthropologie she’d found with tags still on at Goodwill. By now she’d worn it into the ground. Her best pair of jeans were finally dry from the wash and she laid them over the back of her desk chair, along with her gray hoodie. She didn’t often have the chance to get new clothes, so she took good care of the things she did get so they lasted longer—even if a lot of the time they came from Target. She ran a washcloth over her face in the bathroom and fell into bed, utterly exhausted. Outside her window the Angel City sign glowed, casting its pale fingers of light into the dark room.

She tried to just go to sleep and not think, but the thoughts came anyway. They gathered like storm clouds in the emotional tumult of her mind. Jackson coming into school and the feel of his presence in the dusty classroom. The evening shift in the diner and the incessant talk of him. That conversation in the back room that her mind kept returning to, and what she had felt.

Then there was Ethan, with his easy way about him and how comfortable he made her feel. Why couldn’t she let him in? He was nothing but nice to her. Why was she so self-destructive when it came to friendships, keeping everyone out except Gwen? Thinking about her conversation with Ethan, she realized something: it was the only time tonight she had forgotten about Jacks. Well, she would never see Jackson Godspeed again. And she was happy about that, she thought. After an hour of staring at the ceiling, she finally felt her mind slipping into unconsciousness.

J
ackson looked in the rearview mirror. His sharp blue eyes met him, filled with uncertainty. He wasn’t used to that look—and neither was the world. He was
Jackson Godspeed
, after all. He was confident. He was trained. Nothing could shake him. Or so he had thought.

Jacks tried that uncertainty on for size. It felt strange, like the stiff tuxedo he wore once a year at the gala black tie Angel charity event his mother put on. His iPhone beeped again and he turned it to silent. It’d been going off steadily for a couple hours, but he’d just been ignoring it. Knowing it couldn’t be her
.

That night Jacks had eaten a quick dinner at home, then left, telling his mom and Mark he was going out to meet Mitch. But instead of meeting up with his friend he’d driven out toward the Santa Monica Pier. Halfway there he had just parked. He’d needed to think. The occasional car crawled past sleepily on the dark residential street. Nobody around seemed to recognize him, and so no one bothered him.

The school—Jacks leaned his head on the steering wheel. He still couldn’t believe Maddy’s fury. He had gone there to apologize, and she wouldn’t even talk to him. Who did that? He was just trying to do the right thing.

•   •   •

After leaving Angel City High, Jacks raced across town to a press junket for the Guardian nominees at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Driving there after his jarring encounter with Maddy, Jacks felt like he was in a dream—everything was blurry and distant and muffled. His phone rang. It was Mark. He decided to take the call.

His stepfather was calling to let him know the ACPD had cleared him of any connection with Theodore Godson’s disappearance. They’d investigated Jacks’s alibi and decided his story checked out. His stepfather told him to get back to preparing for the Commissioning.

“Thanks, Mark,” Jacks said. He supposed he should’ve been more relieved. The last thing he needed was to get tied up in a potential murder investigation. But he wasn’t. As strange as it seemed, what had happened at the school with Maddy continued to weigh on him. “I’ve gotta go now; I’m pulling up to the junket. Think I’m late.”

“Sure thing, kiddo. Call me after,” his stepfather said.

Darcy was borderline panicked when Jacks arrived.
“Where have you been!?”
she whispered harshly under her breath as she whisked him toward the suite where he’d be giving interview after interview after interview. She looked ahead, flashing a thousand-watt smile at the journalists eagerly eyeing Jacks. “Well, our star is here!”

“Sorry, Darcy. I had some, uh, business to take care of,” Jacks whispered, thinking back to the Angel City High classroom.

“Jacks, this
is
your business!”
Darcy had responded under her breath. Jackson looked at all the photographers and journalists, hungry for their story. This time he blocked out that disconnected pang before it had a chance to reach his gut.

The interviews all pretty much went the same.
How do you feel about becoming the youngest Guardian ever? Who do you think your first Protections will be? Will you be getting a lottery Protection your first year? What does it mean for you to be a Guardian?
They’d all had to sign documents agreeing not to ask about the incident at the diner the night before, per Mark.

Jacks repetitively answered the questions as each interviewer came one by one into the suite. Occasionally, Jacks sipped from a water bottle. Even the most hardened reporters were starstruck in his presence, fumbling over their words and blushing. Jackson usually pretended not to notice, but this time he actually didn’t. After a while it was like he wasn’t even really answering the reporters himself, that instead he had drifted away and someone who looked like Jacks was taking questions.
Yes. No.
Very excited! Can’t wait for the responsibility. Just part of being a Guardian.
The click and whir of the shutters, the lights, the microphone attached to his shirt, recording his every syllable: it all began once again to seem unreal. His mind focused on what
had
seemed real that day: Maddy.