Outcast (9 page)

I changed quickly, and we were off in no time meandering toward home together. It was kind of nice to have someone to walk with. Not that I really felt unsafe walking home in the dark, it was just creepy walking along some of the dirt roads. So dark. People from the city didn’t always get how dark that could get.

But the way home from Lacy’s had a couple houses along the way, so it wasn’t pitch black. And there was a small crescent moon in the sky. You could actually see several feet in front of you as you went. Still, walking with Gabe felt good. A bit, and here was a confession that ached, like walking with Chris. Not that he and I ever had parties to walk home together from. Also we didn’t live together. Not that Gabe and I lived together. Not like that. It just felt comfortable, like we’d known each other forever, the way Chris and I had. And he made me feel safe. Also like Chris had. I willed the ache to go away, pushed it aside, and tried to focus on not falling in the dark instead.

He’d started to sing about five minutes in. I liked it. It was something I enjoyed doing too when I walked. But on my own. Not in front of everyone. I think the only person I’d ever sung in front of was Chris and only because he asked me to. He’d caught me singing as I walked home from school one day thinking I was alone. I had been super embarrassed, but he’d thought it was awesome.

Anyway, most people didn’t just tend to sing like that here. Well, not young people. Some of the older people in town would. And okay actually not that many of them either. Maybe I was just thinking of Etta Mae. She had this amazing throaty voice, kind of haunting, and she’d sing songs her grandparents had sung. “You sing ’em to remember,” she’d explained to me once. They’d send chills up my spine. But in a good way. You’d hear her coming. You’d watch her pass. You’d hear the music fade as she went on her way.

Sing ’em to remember.

Gabe was singing a different kind of song, though. He was singing a song that made me think of the movie
Grease
or something. A song I guess from when he was a teenager. I mean, he still was a teenager, but before, when he’d lived…before.

My baby has a bright blue Cadillac
She drives it so fast I think it could fly
And someday soon we’re gonna go to the moon
Aim that bright blue Cadillac right into the sky.

“Let’s take a short cut,” I said. Gabe stopped singing, and I hadn’t meant him to. He had a nice voice. Untrained, but on key as far as I could tell. Warm.

“Okay.”

I turned off the road and started to stomp my way into the brush. It wasn’t a thick forest or anything here, and off in the distance you could see downtown. Far off. But at night, of course, you couldn’t see all the brambles and stuff. So it was still a little tricky.

“You don’t know this short cut?” I asked him, as he followed close behind.

“Nope. But I don’t think I ever needed to get to your place before.” There was a pause. “Funny. Now that I think about it. I think I knew your grandaddy.”

I stopped and turned around. I couldn’t really look him in the eye, but I pretended to.

“You did?”

“He lived in your house, right?”

“Yes.”

“Last name, Fowler?”

“Yes.”

Gabe started to laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“He was below me in school. I’m older than your granddaddy.”

That was a seriously freaky thought.

“Were you friends?”

“Nah, he was much younger, and we came from different kinds of families. Where’s he now?”

“Dead. Both dead, my grandmother and grandfather. Not old age,” I always felt I needed to explain it. “Car accident. It’s one of the reasons we came back here.”

“You were a baby?”

“Never really knew them.”

Gabe was silent. So was I. It was kind of a huge revelation that he knew my grandfather. Though also a pretty obvious one. There were people in the town who might remember him. But they’d all be old now. He’d be old. If whatever had happened hadn’t. He’d be old.

I couldn’t see his face, like I already said, but I tried to anyway, to see if I could get a sense of what he was thinking. Something then caught my eye. Just beyond him, over his right shoulder. It was white or maybe not, but something light in the darkness. What it was reflecting was hard to say. I guess the sliver of a moon could have helped but…

“What’s that?”

Gabe turned around. We were both staring back out at the road.

“No idea.”

I guess I’ve always just been curious, probably again comes from my Daddy. I started to walk toward the strange something, passing Gabe. He grabbed my arm lightly as I went by, but I felt compelled to move on and shook off his grip.

“Riley,” he said, now forced into following me once more, “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. Mr. Tough Guy was nervous?

“Feels rotten, feels wrong,” he said.

I didn’t care. At the time it hadn’t occurred to me just how odd I was acting. But I remembered later and it spooked me. I’d never been drunk, so I’d never really known what it was like to have that kind of loss of self-control. But as I approached that white something, I felt it now. I’d started to do so not because I wanted to, but because I had to. I had no other choice.

We found ourselves back on the road, and I started to walk toward it. It became less of a something and more of a figure. A human shape. Someone was standing in the middle of the street. Staring at us. Or was his back to us? You couldn’t really see a face. I kept going and realized I’d started to jog, and Gabe’s footsteps were behind me. Keeping up with me.

And then I stopped.

And then I stared.

The someone stared in return.

I realized I was looking at its front, not its back. It was maybe twenty feet away, arms limp to the side, feet slightly apart, facing me direct on. It was wearing some kind of tunic, white or maybe not, trousers. No shoes. And covering its face was a white fabric, thin, but not sheer. The fabric wrapped lightly over the face and waved gently out behind it in a breeze that didn’t exist. All you could see was the imprint of a face, a bump for a nose, hollows for eyes.

And for all the world I couldn’t tell you what was lighting it. But I could see it all clear as day.

It didn’t move. It didn’t speak.

There was a violent pull at my elbow, and I was jerked back as Gabe thrust himself in front of me.

“Stay away from her!”

I started to feel cold. Which wasn’t right. Even though it was late at night, it stayed pretty warm this time of year. There was no reason I should be feeling like this. But a cold started to creep up through me, seep into me. Reach inside of me.

I felt Gabe take a step backward, pushing against me, forcing me to do the same.

So cold. Everything felt so cold.

“Run Riley,” I heard Gabe whisper.

“What?”

“Just run.”

He turned.

“Not without you,” I said.

“Obviously.”

He grabbed my hand, and we were running. But I felt so funny. Like I was in one of those dreams where you try to run but you can’t. Your legs are heavy, stuck in some invisible mud or something.

“I can’t,” I said and started to slow down.

Gabe didn’t stop, just kept running, practically dragging me along until I finally collapsed on the ground. This forced him to stop.

I looked up behind me, to see if we’d got away.

The figure had followed us, or at least so it seemed, as it was exactly the same distance away from us as back before we’d run for it. Still. There was no evidence that it had chased after us. It just was there.

“We can’t outrun it,” I said, my voice thin.

Gabe bent down. “You okay?”

“What does it want?”

“How would I know?”

I looked at Gabe as he helped me up. He looked just as freaked out as I felt.

“Are you cold?” I asked when I was on my feet.

“No.”

We turned and faced the figure.

It stood there. Doing nothing.

And then in a moment it was right in front of us, it was almost touching us. We both staggered backward, as if pushed by a wave or something. It stayed close. The thin cloth that covered its face moved slightly with its breath. Then it was standing several feet away from us again, as if it had been the whole time.

Then it was a few more feet away.

Then it was gone.

Not that it disappeared. Even though it had. But it wasn’t like it had vanished. It was almost like it had never been. Damn it’s frustrating trying to explain it all.

“What the hell was that?” asked Gabe.

I shook my head. Of course I had absolutely no idea, but I felt wrong. Exhausted, cold…and like I did know what the hell that was. “Let’s get home.”

We retraced our earlier steps back into the forest. He walked behind me, silently, and I trudged along, trying to get the blood flowing, trying to warm up.

“Was it an angel?” asked Gabe suddenly.

“No,” I replied. “Angels have wings.”

“So you’ve never seen something like that before?”

“No.”

“Just angels.”

“Just angels.”

Gabe went silent again. And I couldn’t help but feel a little angry. Whatever that thing was, it wasn’t human. It obviously had to have some paranormal connection with something. And Gabe had been an angel once, after all. Chances were he probably did know what that thing was. It was so frustrating that he apparently couldn’t remember anything.

“I hope you’re not lying to me, you know.” I pushed a branch up out of my face and let it fly out of my hand. It didn’t seem to get Gabe, though, or at least he didn’t respond to being hit by it.

“Lying?”

“I dunno, I find it hard to believe you just can’t remember anything about who you were or where you came from.”

“I told you the truth, sweetheart. I don’t remember a damn thing. Hell, I should be the one not trusting you with all the angel talk, but I do.”

I stopped and whipped around. “I don’t know what you’re playing at, I really don’t.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Like how trusting you are of me. And how you acted all flirty with me at the party and all protective tonight like I matter when we only just met. Maybe you’re just trying to get me to lower my guard or something, but I won’t. I know what you are.”

“Glad you do, sweetheart. One of us should.”

“It’s really hard to believe you’re not keeping things from me. What are you trying to do?”

“I ain’t trying to do nothing.” I scoffed. “Look, dollface. You say you saw me as an angel. You say you shot me, and then I turned into me. I was one thing, then I was me again. We figure out that it’s been fifty years since I was in highschool, and I haven’t aged a day. Ain’t all that crazy enough to maybe make you think other crazy things are possible? Like that maybe I really just don’t remember anything, and it ain’t a trick or nothing?”

“You were an angel.”

“Not saying I wasn’t. Just saying that considering everything else, maybe it ain’t so crazy that I don’t remember being one.”

I thought about it for a moment, then sighed. He made sense. Whether it was true or not was another thing, but he made sense.

I laughed.

“What’s so funny, sweetheart?”

I sighed again. “I was just thinking how what you said made sense. And then I was thinking how crazy everything that’s happened is, and how none of it should make any sense in the first place.”

“I don’t get it.”

“No, I know, my sense of humor, it’s ‘weird.’” I sighed again. “Come on, we’re almost home.”

We got back to the house a little after midnight. Late for a school night, but I think Mother was so happy that I was being sociable she didn’t really care. She’d waited up, of course. To make sure we were okay. And maybe because somehow she’d anticipated Gabe would be asking to stay over, and she wanted to make sure he was comfortable in his room. Which conveniently happened to be at the total opposite end of the house to mine. She wanted us to get on. Just not to get on, get on.

Lying awake, way too awake, I thought about everything, how bizarre my life had become in one week. I couldn’t decide which was weirder, being the minder of an angel with amnesia, or being suddenly interesting to the popular kids.

Most of all, though, I thought about Gabe. About how I knew I couldn’t trust him, and yet at the same time I did. About the special attention he gave me. About how that attention made me feel. I hated that feeling. Not because it was unpleasant—far from it—but because…well…Chris…

I flipped over onto my back in frustration. “This isn’t fair,” I said to no one in particular. I felt so stupid that I had even the smallest of feelings toward some guy I barely knew. I didn’t need him. I had Chris. I didn’t care what anybody said, Chris was still out there. Somewhere. “Why would I want Gabe anyway?”

He doesn’t belong to you, Riley.

I sat bolt upright in bed.

A voice inside my head but not my own.

I threw off my sheet and went to the window. There, just where Gabe had stood only a week ago, was a figure in white, but maybe not. I couldn’t shoot this one in the face. It wasn’t because my mother was home, or that I’d learned my lesson from the first time how much I really didn’t enjoy shooting things in the face.

No. It was because this thing, whatever it was, this thing terrified me more than even the Angel Gabe had. Somehow deep inside, I knew that this thing, if I tried to shoot it, would fight back.

And this thing. Would win.

School became odd.

First off, people decided they now wanted to talk to me, and by “people” I mean cheerleaders. I didn’t really get it, especially with the Lacy getting mad at me at her party thing, but maybe she’d forgotten. Or maybe, and this was what I was thinking was more likely, she wanted to keep me close in case I went off telling anybody about what she’d said. Sometimes she’d even invite me to eat with them at lunch. I didn’t really want to sit with them, but I didn’t mind enough to kick up a fuss. The stuff they talked about was a little inane, but the good thing was they were so busy competing with each other to talk that they didn’t seem to notice when I didn’t. Except Lacy. Who would always ask my opinion on something she knew I knew nothing about. Like clothes. It made me kind of sad, really. Now that I realized there was more going on with Lacy Green than I’d thought, it would’ve been nice to have had a real conversation. But she was more interested in keeping me in my place.

The second odd thing was that the morning after the party Gabe enrolled as a senior. He had no transcripts, I’d no idea how he did it, but he could convince anyone of anything it seemed. Like my mother, who he’d convinced over breakfast to let him stay in our place in exchange for not charging her and Daddy for doing work around the house. And here he was, suddenly a new student, walking around like he owned the place.

Everyone learned we were living together. The story we told was that after the party he’d been hired by my mother to take care of the place. It was true, just the wrong order. I think because of who I was and how I was, it was easy to convince them we weren’t hooking up or anything, despite the show at the pool. Besides, the girls were all too happy to accept that as truth without too much evidence.

The story of who he was and where he’d come from changed from person to person. He became this mystery, and that was enough of an excuse for a lack of specifics. He was also instantly popular and loved it. It wasn’t like he needed to work hard at it. He just had to walk down the hall and everyone loved him.

“Why did you come back to school? I thought you’d dropped out,” I’d asked him that first day.

“And miss out on all the fun?” He laughed and draped his arm over my shoulder. “Besides I’d miss you too much, sweetheart, with you gone all day.”

It was flattering and untrue. Sure he was adored by every girl in town, already had several dates lined up in that first day. And, okay, so he was having a good time, but I knew it wasn’t just about that. I saw the way he concentrated on his homework, sitting at the kitchen table until late, and I kind of thought that there was another motivation. Like he’d said in the shed, a second chance kind of thing.

My mother seemed to take a real shine to him, probably saw him as a lost puppy or something. She’d bought him a new set of clothes, never bothering to ask why he didn’t have any in the first place, including a vintage leather jacket for when the weather turned.

“You remind me of James Dean,” she said when she’d presented it to him.

“Well, gee, Mrs. Carver,” replied Gabe, “that’s swell. Thanks.” He stood up and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

My mother blushed and left the room, giving me a smile as she passed. I didn’t think she had a crush on him or anything like that. It was probably more like after years of dealing with a daughter who didn’t appreciate shopping or getting clothes as gifts, she finally had someone she could treat as her very own Ken doll.

He even spoke like a Ken doll probably would.

“Swell?” I asked sitting down next to him as he tried on the jacket.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing. It’s…neat-o.”

He laughed and then modeled the jacket for me. “How do I look, sweetheart?”

Hot. Fantastic. Totally James Dean.

“Like you.”

I worried that first weekend in October when Gabe met Daddy that things were going to be awkward. I wasn’t sure how much Mother had told him, whether he even approved of having this guy living with us. I also wondered what he was going to say if she mentioned that he’d supposedly hired Gabe to do the lawn work.

But, like everyone else, Daddy fell under Gabe’s spell instantly. And he even claimed to remember hiring Gabe, or at least to having had a conversation with Bill Rogers about needing help and assuming he’d sent us Gabe. I really hoped Daddy wouldn’t go and thank Bill for sending him our way. But he didn’t. He was too distracted hanging out with his new lodger and working on the house together.

Everyone in town got used to Gabe’s presence, at school, around town, out every weekend with different girls. Daddy even got him a part-time job working at Dwight’s Garage after school, feeling bad that now Gabe was working at the house for free.

Yup, everyone got used to him.

Everyone that is, except for me. For Mother he became like a long-lost nephew or something, for Daddy a new playmate. For the kids at school something to gossip about. But I, who knew what he was and where he was from, who had to put up with his quick winks that only I seemed to catch and those stupidly perfect arms and square jaw, I spent most of my days with my stomach in knots.

It didn’t help that he made himself at home really easily. Not that he was an unwelcome guest. Far from it. He cleaned up after himself, joked around with Mother, even did the dishes once in a while. He was just so at ease living with us, as if nothing about the situation was strange at all. And it confused me. He was so content it weirded me out. Sure, sometimes he’d overreact to things—like cellphones. He just couldn’t get over cellphones. And the Internet almost scared him. He didn’t much like surfing, preferring to do any research for schoolwork at the library. But other than that, he seemed perfectly comfortable living in a totally different century.

Almost too comfortable…

“Oh shit, sorry!” I closed my eyes automatically feeling my face turn crimson red. All I’d wanted to do was brush my teeth, I hadn’t thought of knocking.

“Hey, sweetheart, it’s safe to open your eyes. Besides it ain’t like you ain’t seen more…” I could hear the laughter in his voice.

Did he have to keep reminding me that I’d seen him naked? I opened my eyes and tried to not be totally distracted staring at Gabe with the towel wrapped around his waist. I also tried not to stare at that perfect torso still dripping wet from the shower, his hair slicked back, and those eyes twinkling brightly at my discomfort.

Of course, I should have knocked before walking right into the bathroom, but I kept getting the math wrong. I was so used to it usually just being me and Mother at home that the idea that anyone else could be in there was still so foreign to me.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered.

“I’m not,” he replied. “Need to be alone?”

“Just wanted to brush my teeth.” I cringed inwardly. Brushing teeth was really so not the image I wanted him to have of me.

“Well, I’ll get out of the way.” He moved from the sink and sat down on the toilet seat cover, grabbing a second towel and drying his hair with it.

I nodded and got out my toothbrush and toothpaste from the medicine cabinet. I really wasn’t that keen on him watching me lather up like a dog with rabies, but I didn’t want him to think his presence made me uncomfortable either. God, this was so not hot.

I brushed as fast as I could, spat as daintily as possible, and took a few hasty gulps of water.

“All yours,” I said with a smile.

“Thanks, sweetheart,” he said standing back up a little too close to me.

“Okay, well, um…” I backed away toward the door, “goodnight then.”

“Night.” He grinned.

I nodded. As casually as possible I slipped out through the door and gave him a little wave, which he returned with a slight shake of his head.