She Speaks to Angels (2 page)

“
Tommy?” the quarterback shouted in question, and then I heard a loud
thud.
His nose pressed up against the glass. “Tommy Bachelor?” The dread in his voice shot through my veins and brought back the day Mom told me about Dad’s fatal heart attack. I had just turned sixteen and was supposed to have a sweet sixteen party. Dad made the arrangements for a limo to drive my friends and me to the local dance club. I had gone to the hospital instead and cried all night.

What the hell just happened?

I leapt from my chair and darted toward the window to stand behind the broad-shouldered linebacker just as Mrs. Engstrom, at a remarkable sixty years old, managed to squeeze between the two large athletes.

“
I saw him fall!” a student in the back shouted, his forefinger pointing to the window.

“
Is he dead?” a female voice questioned from somewhere in the middle.

“
Couldn’t be!” The linebacker nudged the quarterback. “Could it?”

“
Someone do something!” A shriek sounded from behind me.

As all these questions and statements circled, my eyes focused on a lump on the school ground. Crimson color washed around him as he lay face-down. I couldn’t be sure if it was him, but the body wore a green turtleneck, and I had seen Tommy in something similar before heading to my locker this morning.

Buttons on phones clicked, texting. Someone finally called the front office as Mrs. Engstrom panicked. Maybe it was the female student from the middle of the room.

“
This is Mrs. Engstrom’s class...we just saw someone fall from the rooftop. YES! He is there now on the ground outside!” The shrieking voice shot goose bumps up and down my arms.

Mrs. Engstrom drew away from the window and appeared to be in shock.

“
Never in thirty years of teaching.” She shook her head as if she just couldn’t believe what she saw. But I had my doubts. I heard the rumors...the rumors of students jumping from the rooftop of the school years before I attended. Mrs. Engstrom had only started teaching at Millennium High several years ago. She wouldn’t know that the school, the city, had its fair share of suicides and suspicious deaths. Wherever she had taught for the past twenty-seven years must have been fairly tame compared to this.

A tap on my shoulder from behind spun me around on the ball of my foot, and my dazed eyes met his. Dark as night, his eyes searched my face for expression. What he searched for I couldn’t be sure, but I felt pulled to him like a magnet.

“
Are you alright?” Dameon asked, his thick brows arched over his thinly black-penciled inner eyelids. If not for the obvious tweezing at the center, his two brows could easily be mistaken for a unibrow. He reminded me of a referee controlling a game, making sure every player was fine, not rattled.

“
I...I...” I didn’t know what I felt. I didn’t know Tommy that well. He played with the football team. Not a star, but a good player. But rumors circulated that he didn’t have his mind on the game anymore, that he was distracted. He and I never bonded over the course of my two and half years at Millennium High. In fact, I would bet he didn’t even know I existed. I only knew of him because Jennifer dragged me to the football games and she kind of had an unspoken crush on him. I’m sure he didn’t know she existed either, but that never stopped her.

Shivers rushed through my bones like cold water hitting me as I realized that was the first time Dameon had touched me. I stayed in that moment for a minute longer before returning to the classroom. A mixture of shock and adrenaline. I didn’t know if I should feel guilty for feeling anything other than dread in that moment, but I had waited for three months to connect with Dameon, and took what I could get.

“
He seemed unstable.” Dameon whispered behind me, and his unchecked comment jerked the quarterback around with an intense twist of his lips and nose. The sight made me step back.

“
What did you say?” As the red football jacket moved closer and closer, I felt Dameon step in front of me. His black leather red-striped jacket became my world. I couldn’t see either of their faces, could only hear their heated words, but I did see Dameon shrug with his first retort.

“
Unstable,” Dameon repeated. Not mean spirited, not even in rebuttal. Just as a stated, unattached fact.

“
You didn’t even know him!” The quarterback inched closer and his stitched name over the right pocket came into view: Clark. “You’ve been here...what a couple months? You don’t know what you’re talking about, kid!” Clark clasped both hands on Dameon’s shoulders and pushed him; but Dameon, whose stature matched Clark’s in height and width, didn’t react. Dameon just let Clark push him, though I heard a distinct hiss. From where I was I couldn’t be completely sure.

I stumbled backward during the feud, trying to get out of Dameon’s way, and stepped on Mrs. Engstrom’s toes.

“
Now, boys,” she wobbled between the two of them. “This is no time for arguing. We have a death to deal with.” Her voice grew scratchy as she waved her hands. “Sit, sit. Everyone return to your seats. I’m sure Principal Patty will address this matter over the intercom shortly. Until then, S-I-T.” The eyes over her beet-red face met with Clark’s, and the quarterback retreated from the window with the linebacker at his side.

I felt panicked and my body shook. Curiosity spun my mind in circles and then to my Journalism class. I whispered aloud without even realizing what I’d said. “This would make a great newspaper story.”

Dameon turned, his owl-eyes catching me and his hand slapping me on my back. “Come on.” As he plodded to his chair, the array of stunned, aggravated, grieving students hit their seats and his hand broke away from me, allowing me to return to my desk. I wondered why Dameon paid me such attention. I guess death and shock did that to people? Chatter permeated the room.

I couldn’t believe what just happened. No one could. Another suicide to add to the growing list of suicides at this school, and though there had been prior deaths, I had never actually witnessed one myself. I typed into my cell as fast as I could. Thoughts escaped my mind quicker than my fingers could push the miniature buttons. My first text went out to Jennifer and then to Molly. Jennifer had to hear from me first. This news would crush her and she would need me to be strong.

Jennifer,

Did u hear? Tommy Bachelor fell from the rooftop and landed on the ground outside English class. OMG! We’re all stunned! I’m so sorry. Here for u if u need me.

Ali

As I watched out the window from my desk, a ray of sunlight danced over the sparkling glass and a crowd of administrators surrounded the body. Principal Patty’s voice sounded over the intercom. “Because of an emergency regarding a student, we will be canceling classes for and the rest of the week.” Sirens sounded in the distance and came closer with each second. Police surrounded the body as my NOOK slowly faded back to black.

Ignorance

“
Ignorance
is bliss,” Molly replied at the park picnic park table. “Better if we don’t push our noses into someone else’s business.”

I fidgeted with my galoshes until I finally curled one leg under the other. “Tommy died for a reason. Doesn’t that reason bother you?” A gust of wind blew past and tousled my hair.

“
How would we ever know the reasons? We can’t read his mind,” Molly retorted as she fixed her favorite avocado-colored scarf, which draped on her neck, a scarf that accented the green in her irises. A scarf her mom knitted for her when they couldn’t afford a heater in the house.

Sniffling, Jennifer desperately wanted to join the conversation, but couldn’t speak without shaking and bawling. She tended to her wool mittens instead. Red-eyed and disheveled, she reminded me of an old rag doll. Dressed in heavy beige coats, knit hats and boots, the three of us stayed relatively warm in the 30-degree weather. We were well acclimated, since we were all born and raised in New City.

“
There has to be something we can find. He was popular, for heaven’s sake,” I insisted as Molly stared at me incredulously. “Girls loved him. Teachers adored him. Doesn’t make any sense.” I shook my head.

“
Why? His best friends don’t even know why. Why does anyone do it?” Molly plopped her hand down on the picnic table, the hand holding the fanning paint brush. Dabbing her ocean blue canvas with specs of white, she created a snowy effect. “Maybe he just couldn’t take the pressure of being popular anymore.” When she rolled her eyes, I knew what Molly was thinking. She didn’t like the so-called jocks. Suicide or not, she didn’t want to give them any more of her time. But I didn’t want to let it go, couldn’t let it go. Something about it nagged me.

“
Because...people just don’t go killing themselves for no good reason.”

“
If you care so much, maybe you should write something up for the school paper.” Molly tilted her head to me, and I lit up like a neon light. “You know...like one of those in-memory pieces.”

I had thought of it before. I could satiate my persistent curiosity and complete an assignment all in one. Every writer needed a muse, and Tommy would be mine. A muse from the grave.

“
We could work on it together...like Bonnie and Clyde.” I grinned as a snowflake dropped from the pines above and lit on my long lashes.

Tightening the hug-grip around her chest, Jennifer sniffed one last time before raising her gaze.

“
Wait, wait, wait...first of all Clyde was a guy,” Molly interjected, “and I’m not going to be the guy in this scenario. More like Rizzoli and Isles. And second, I am n-o-t going to be a part of this.”

“
Why not? Could be intriguing. Today is Wednesday and we don’t have to be back at school until Monday. What else are we going to do?” I rationalized.

“
I’ll do it.” Jennifer interrupted, the sound of her voice almost foreign at this point in the conversation. We both jerked our heads in her direction. Wiping her nose with the back of her coat sleeve she held a sneeze and repeated more firmly. “I’ll do it.” Her big brown eyes widened as her lips tensed.

“
You will? Why?” Molly cocked a brow and spun her body around on the bench to face Jennifer better. Her fingers inched across the table and found Jennifer’s mittened hands. “You don’t have to do this just because...” she didn’t want to say it aloud, but Molly had a way about her. Truth, whether crass or not, always popped out of her uncontrolled mouth. “...
You liked him.”

Blushing, Jennifer tilted back and the freckles on her cheeks almost faded away. “I am going to do this because Ali is right. Tommy was not the sort to commit suicide. He had everything going for him. With his death this makes...” she paused in thought counting on her fingers, recollecting the names listed in the morning paper, “five deaths from Millennium High in seven years!”

“
Don’t forget Emily,” I reminded them, and they each wrinkled their foreheads in confusion. “The girl who was found dead in Central Park. She went to the school too...and just because she didn’t die on school grounds doesn’t make her death any less odd.”

“
Something is going on at this school, and I’ll be damned if I’m just going to sit and do nothing.” Jennifer got her mojo back, a newfound task of investigation motivating her out of her misery.

“
Well damn, if you two are going to go at this then...” Molly raked her fingers through her shoulder length cut and sighed, “then I might as well do it too.”

Jennifer and I both turned at the same time and grinned.

“
What else am I going to do until Monday without the two of you?” Molly reasoned.

“
It’s settled then. We are officially the unofficial team investigating this suicide,” I added as another gust of wind brushed through the park, brushing over Molly and Jennifer.

“
Don’t get too excited.” Molly pushed herself off the bench, brushed her hands against her jeans and stood beside me. “I’m only doing this to avoid being appallingly bored.”

I stood with one hand still on the picnic table. “Good enough reason for me.”

“
Where do we start?” Jennifer tied her red locks into a bun and then returned the knit hat to her head. A few loose strands escaped as color returned to her face. She began to look more alive and less like a rag doll or the living dead.

Looking over my shoulder, I stared at the school in the distance and pointed. “There.”

“
Are you kidding me?” Molly gawked. “The school is locked up. We will be breaking and entering.” Turning her head to Jennifer she finished, “Surely
you
can understand the insanity of this proposal,” she stared at the girl-in-mourning. “Your father is a lawyer. What kind of time can we serve for this crime?” she asked with sarcasm in her tone.

“
We are not going to get caught.” I encouraged them. “Besides, this is our only lead.”

“
Lead?” Molly scuffed with hands to hips. “What do you plan on finding at the school anyway?”

“
Tommy’s locker.” I planted my feet firmly on the dried leaves and the two stood silently as strange wisps of fog swirled past our ankles; a thick and silvery-grey kind of mist. Tucking her paint brush and canvas into her satchel, Molly shoved the knapsack over her shoulder as Jennifer led us to her Sedan parked at the curb. The only one of us with a car, she came in handy.

Keeping the speed limit, she drove for five minutes and then headed into the lot across the street from Millennium High. With the parking lot vacant of cars, her red sedan stood out like a sore thumb, but we either drove or we walked for twenty minutes, and Jennifer wanted to make sure we had a quick get-away vehicle. Across the street we saw an arrangement of police officers circling outside the English classroom. The room set toward the front of the building a few rooms down from the main office. Police cars were parked in the office parking lot, and I kept my eye on one cop in particular, Samuel Maney.