Dark Angel; The Chosen; Soulmate (9 page)

(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 clear 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 midsentence. 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—overcrowdedness. 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.

“You know, there are other rumors going around about you. That you and Davey-boy have something going behind Tanya's back. That you meet secretly in the mornings and…” Daryl shrugged, pushing back frosted hair with a hand dripping with rings.

Gillian felt jolted awake. “So?”

“So you really should do something about it. Rumors spread fast, and they grow. I know. You want to either deny them, or”—Daryl's lips quirked in a smile—“disarm them.”

(Oh, yeah? And just how do I do that?)

(Shut up and listen to her, kid. This is one smart cookie.)

“If there're parts that are true, it's usually best to admit those in public. That takes some of the punch out. And it's
always
helpful to track down the person starting the rumors—if you can.”

(Tell her you know that. And that you're going to see Tanya after school.)

(
Tanya?
You mean—?)

(Just tell her.)

Somehow Gillian gathered herself enough to repeat Angel's words.

Daryl the Rich Girl looked at her with a new expression of
respect. “You're sharper than I thought. Maybe you didn't need my help after all.”

“No,” Gillian said without Angel's prompting. “I'm always glad for help. It's—it's a rough world.”

“Isn't it, though?” Daryl said and raised already arched eyebrows.

(So it was Tanya who spread that stuff about my mom.) Gillian almost stumbled as she trudged out of art class. She was tired and bewildered. Somehow, she'd have thought Tanya was above that.

(She had help. It takes a really efficient system to get a rumor to peak circulation that fast. But she was the instigator. Turn left here.)

(Where am I going?)

(You're gonna catch her coming out of marketing education. She's alone in there right now. The teacher asked to see her after class, then unexpectedly had to run to the bathroom.)

Gillian felt distantly amused. She sensed Angel's hand in these arrangements.

And when she poked her head inside the marketing ed room, she saw that Tanya was indeed alone. The tall girl was standing by a cloudy green blackboard.

“Tanya, we need to talk.”

Tanya's shoulders stiffened. Then she ran a hand across her already perfect dark hair and turned. She looked more like a future executive than ever, with her face set in cool lines and
her exotic gray eyes running over Gillian in appraisal. Without Angel, Gillian would have dried up and withered away under that scrutiny.

Tanya said one word. “Talk.”

What followed was more like a play than a conversation for Gillian. She repeated what Angel whispered to her, but she never had any idea what was coming. The only way to survive was to give herself up completely to his direction.

“Look, I know you're upset with me, Tanya. But I'd like to deal with this with a little maturity, okay?” She followed Angel's instructions over to a desk and brushed absent fingers over its imitation-wood top. “I don't think there's any need for us to act like children.”

“And
I
don't think I know what you're talking about.”

“Oh, really?” Gillian turned and looked Tanya in the face. “I think you know exactly what I'm talking about.” (Angel, I feel just like one of those people in a soap opera—)

“Well, you're wrong. And, as a matter of fact, I happen to be busy—”

“I'm talking about the rumors, Tanya. I'm talking about the stories about my mom. And I'm talking about David.”

Tanya stood perfectly still. For a moment she seemed surprised that Gillian was taking such a direct approach. Then her gray eyes hardened with the clear light of battle.

“All right, let's talk about David,” she said in a pleasant voice, moving tigerishly toward Gillian. “I don't know about
any rumors, but I'd like to hear what you and David were doing this morning. Care to tell me?”

(Angel, she's actually
enjoying
this. Look at her! And she's
bigger
than me.)

(Trust me, kid.)

“We weren't doing anything,” Gillian said. She had to tip her chin up to look Tanya in the face. Then she looked aside and shook her head. “All right. I'll be honest about that. I like David, Tanya. I have ever since he moved in. He's good and he's noble and he's honest and he's sweet. But that doesn't mean I want to take him away from you. In fact, it's just the opposite.”

She turned and walked away, looking into the distance. “I think David deserves the best. And I know he really cares about you. And
that's
what happened this morning—he told me you guys had made a promise to each other. So you see, you've got no reason to be suspicious.”

Tanya's eyes were glittering. “Don't try to pull that. All this…” She waved a hand to indicate Gillian's dress and hair. “In one day you turn from Little Miss Invisible to
this
. And you start prancing around the school like you own it. You can't pretend you're not trying to get him.”

“Tanya, the way I dress has nothing at all to do with David.” Gillian told the lie calmly, facing the chalk-misted blackboard again. “It's just—something I needed to do. I was—tired of being invisible,” She turned her head slightly, not enough to
see Tanya. “But that's beside the point. The real issue here is what's best for David. And I think
you're
best for him—as long as you treat him fairly.”

“And what is
that
supposed to mean?” Tanya was losing her legendary cool. She sounded venomous, almost shrill.