The A-Word (6 page)

He withdrew his hand. Took a long sip of his drink.

“I’m Casey,” my brother said. We were still standing in the entryway.

“I’m aware.” Bo swallowed, then met my brother’s gaze. “Been aware, in fact. Although I take it the awareness hasn’t been mutual.” Here he cut his eyes to Amber.

I figured they were going to have it out. He was obviously pissed that we hadn’t known about him.

“Bo,” Amber began, sounding anxious and peevish all at once, but Casey cut her off.

“You gonna invite us in, or we gonna stand out here for eternity?”

Here’s the thing: I knew he didn’t mean it to be funny. But it was. I couldn’t help myself. I chuckled.

Bo Shivers tilted his head. His eyes went dark, then crinkled at the edges, and then he was laughing, a full-out belly laugh. He stepped aside, gesturing with the glass of Jack for us to enter.

“You got a nice place here,” I told him. Our mutual sense of humor had made me bold.

“Eternity has allowed me time to decorate,” he observed dryly.

So, he was smart and clever. In addition to being rich. I liked smart and clever. Even in an old guy. Or maybe not that old. I was finding it hard to tell. And the loft kicked ass. Not that I was an expert on interior design, but I knew what I liked. Dark wood floors all polished and shiny. Shelves of books positioned here and there. Bo was quite the reader, it seemed. On the walls, what walls existed, there were paintings—real ones, not poster art from Big Lots or the ones from that store they opened in the mall around Christmas when people found themselves inspired to purchase pictures of Marilyn Monroe or Jim Morrison or other dead celebrities. Fancy grey stone on the kitchen counter that I could see from here because it was mostly all one huge open space. A wall of windows that looked over downtown.

We followed Bo toward the couches over by the windows. I could see now that one was actually a glass door. It led out to a balcony that skirted the entire side of the loft.

I knew people lived like this. I had just never experienced that life close-up.

Off to the right, a set of panels partially blocked what must be his sleeping nook. I could make out a big bed against one of the few walls and a plush-looking comforter. A smallish painting of a woman’s face, done in chalk or watercolor or some such hung on the wall above the bed.

“So,” Bo Shivers said, whipping my attention back to him. We settled on the squishy leather sofas. “To what do I owe this visit?”

“We’ve got some questions,” my brother said. “About this whole grounding business.” He was out of sorts, I could tell. Nervous. Sitting on the edge of the sofa, hands clasped on his knees, like he was ready to take off.
Could he?
I wondered suddenly. Could he fly again like he did that day last Christmas to save my life? Or did it just look like that because I knew he was tired of all this endless waiting for something to change, even now, sitting way up high here with all this pretty stuff around us.

Casey went on and on: prattling about losing his earthly flight—and wasn’t that unfair, and had it happened to anyone else, and if so what had that angel done about it? Amber put in her two cents about her Spidey sense and how she thought something was coming and was Bo maybe having the same feelings … which it seemed to me he kind of was, although between Amber and my brother it’s not like he was getting too many words in. Or maybe he was staying quiet and watching on purpose. Probably that was it.

Except me, I was still remembering. I saw those wings of Casey’s in my mind’s eye: all white and fully unfurled and so magnificent that they hurt my eyes with their glory even as I was tumbling to my doom. He had leapt without thinking,
caught me in his arms, and hauled me to safety. He had known what would happen, but he hadn’t hesitated. Just like that night when he’d rushed me to the hospital and crashed our beat-up Prius. Just like that moment when everything in our world changed.

I came back fast
, he’d told me.
I came back for you
.

Now he was hanging out at football games watching all the things he could never really have again, his wing nubs hiding—retracted and unused.

Here is what happened then: I looked up, or maybe I was looking up all the time. But now I focused back in from all my remembering. And Bo Shivers was watching me, eyes neutral and dark as night. Something crawled up my spine and back down. For a moment it was like what happened when Casey laid a hand on my shoulder. I’d feel all calm and peaceful until he lifted it away and the worry seeped back in, all the more intense for its brief absence. But it was different. More like Bo Shivers trying to mine through to my soul or something, which I know sounds all dramatic, but that’s how it felt. An itch so deep inside me that I was never going to reach it. I stared back.

“Take a picture,” I told him. “It’ll last longer.”

“Jenna!” Amber squawked.

Bo didn’t so much as blink. “I apologize if my honesty is startling. I don’t find that lying gets us anywhere, do you?” Which was strange since he hadn’t said anything to me that I could take for truth
or
lie.

His brows drew into a slight frown. I felt momentarily in the dark, like an eclipse of the sun. Was he doing that? It was possible, I knew. I was still categorizing what Casey and Amber could and couldn’t do, but this was something new. Something intense.

At which point Mr. Bo Shivers set his drink on the coffee table, rose to his feet, and strode over to the glass door. He opened it, stepped out on the balcony. He walked steadily, posture perfect. If the Jack had made him drunk, there was no sign. The wind had picked up outside, and I could hear it. Everything in the loft wavered in the sudden breeze. Goosebumps raised on my arms.

With that, Bo Shivers walked to the railing, slung one long leg over it and then the other, graceful as a gymnast, and jumped.

Time froze.

The breath stopped in my body as he fell out of sight—arms stretched wide, palms up. Like a yoga position. Like falling was a meditation.

No. Not that. More like useless wings.

“Holy shit!” my brother said. Amber tore to the balcony.

I sat where I was, mouth gaping, stomach clenching, heart beating like a hummingbird on crack.

Then I heard the sound of ice clinking into a glass and then something being poured in the kitchen.

All three of us whipped around.

“I have a little problem with a death wish,” said Bo Shivers, solid and in one piece. He strode from the kitchen with a freshly poured glass of Jack. “I apologize for that, too.”

My heart was still lodged in my throat, but I managed, “Thought you didn’t lie.” I didn’t know if I was angry or relieved or both.

“What the hell?” was Casey’s response. “Can I do that, too?” He sounded simultaneously hopeful and flummoxed. Did falling count as flying?

“No,” Amber said, banging the balcony door behind her.

“You could try,” said Bo pleasantly, swirling his drink.
“Our dear Amber has lost her sense of whimsy. Maybe that’s why she kept Jenna Samuels a secret.”

“What’s your problem, anyway?” I blurted, annoyed I found him so fascinating. Was this how Mags felt when she got all swoony around my brother, even though he was the last person she would normally go goofy about? That she wasn’t sure if the emotion actually belonged to her?

I didn’t expect Bo to answer, but he did. And I didn’t expect to hear any truth. But I think I did.

“The problem, my dear,” he said slowly, “is that Amber and your brother and I have something in common. We’re all stuck here against our will. I just like to experiment with it, is all. So far, I have found no way to beat the system. But I am ever hopeful.”

Did this mean he jumped off balconies on the hour? Or worse? How long had he been doing this? Weeks? Years? Longer? I tried to formulate the right way to pose the question. But what came out of my mouth cut a different way.

“You save someone too?” I asked.

Bo Shivers shrugged and took a long sip of whiskey. He did not meet my eyes.

I took that as a possible yes.

A
fter that, I expected the angel contingent to remove me from the discussion, but Bo said, “I really am sorry if I scared you.”

“Didn’t scare me,” I told him. I folded my legs on the leather couch, trying to look calm and collected, like I was lounging at home. I flashed him a toothy grin. Did he know that my heart was bumping against my uvula? (For the vocabulary-challenged, your uvula is that little punching bag in the back of your throat.) “Guess you’re closer to Management up here,” I added. Like Casey and his “waiting-for-eternity” comment, I hadn’t meant it to be funny, but I guess it was.

Bo smirked, even though something serious fluttered behind his eyes. “I like you, Jenna Samuels.”

I didn’t respond. I had not yet formed my opinion of Bo Shivers other than that he was a person who could walk off balconies and be none the worse for it and who, when he used both my names to refer to me, made it sound pleasant. He also could have hid the truth that his former self was dead
and gone, like Amber had for so long, and pretended whatever he wanted. But he hadn’t. He might turn out to be the world’s biggest liar. Maybe he already was, and more, too. Bo was not, I suspected, always a nice guy. But I had heard one important truth, even if it was the only truth he ever told: he was trapped here, just like Casey and Amber. Which meant that whatever he’d done, Management wasn’t moving him forward. But most of all, I knew he was sad. I could smell it and taste it—like the juices from an overripe peach that’s crossed into rotten. Sadness lay shallow under his skin, crisscrossing him like those scars on his hands.

Who had he saved? Why had he done it? Where was that person now?

He could say what he wanted. I’d always know it was there. Did I know this because I’d spent almost a year hanging out with two angels? Maybe. Or maybe it was all those years of it being just me and Casey while our parents drifted for one reason or another. Maybe I was just the type who could feel things like that. Either way, I was as sure of it as I was sure of the outfit that Amber had given me this morning. It was the best damn signature look yet. If Ryan Sloboda ever actually asked me out, I would wear it for him. Knock him out of his boots.

Jenna Samuels
, he would say,
I am your love slave for life
.

Or at least ask me to Homecoming. He might even kiss me. And I might even kiss him back. If he was lucky.

This was what I was thinking here among my personal team of angels. Mags would have been proud. But I listened to them so that eventually I could write it all down. That way I could remember. If there was one thing I’d learned from all this, it was that memory is a precious thing.

Here is the short version:

Bo sipped his whiskey and occasionally got up to pace. He did not seem the nervous type, but he didn’t like to be still. We had that in common. Only I didn’t know if he’d mind me walking around the loft or if it would look like snooping. So I stayed put.

Amber and Casey did, too. Casey sat at the edge of his seat, hands on his knees. Occasionally he glanced over at me like if he didn’t, I might do something crazy. Somewhere in between all the fidgeting and pacing and Jack-sipping, the following was established:

“Meaning what?” I finally piped up. “You like to jump off roofs?”

“Meaning I can tell when something’s coming,” he said. A hint of a smile curved the corners of his mouth. “Things shift and I feel it.”

“We
know
something’s coming,” my brother groused. “We told you that when we walked in here.”

A breeze whipped up in the room even though Amber had
shut the door to the balcony. The muscles in Bo’s arms tensed, then rippled, veins rising. My first thought: he must work out a lot. My second thought: he was causing the wind. My third thought: he knew way more than he was saying and he was trying to pass it off like he was playing games. My fourth thought: Why?

“You told me what you think you know,” Bo said. “If you knew it all, you wouldn’t be here. You and Ms. Velasco are quite the team.”

“They are,” I snapped even though no way was it true.

Bo’s brow furrowed, even though the hint of the smile remained. The wind settled, but not all the way. “You know that Oak View is up and running again?” It was a statement more than a question. He walked to the windows again and placed his hand on the balcony door, swigging Jack with the other.

Again, something flickered in his eye.

“I put a Google alert on it,” Casey said, meaning Oak View. “On Renfroe, too.” I know he must have thought this would sound proactive. Mostly, its sounded geeky.