Angel Eyes (4 page)
Here in the classroom his demeanor is more formal, more stoic. He keeps his face on the blackboard until the lesson is over. He ignores the girls flipping their hair and sneaking glances at him from the front row. He ignores the posturing football players.
And he ignores me.
The bell rings, catching me unprepared. Most everyone is packed up already, but I’m still staring at an open calculus book.
The new kid, Jake, slides from his seat and reties his shoe. “That was cool this morning. The dancing.” His voice has a boyish scratch to it. I can’t help but think he’s been laughing too much. He snatches my glove from the floor and places it on the desk in front of me. “You’re good.”
I close my book. “You—yeah.”
There were words there. I swear there were. He chews his lip. Just like he did outside the studio.
“It’s rude to stare,” I blurt. “Your mom told you that, right?”
His face changes. It’s sadder somehow.
“I’ve heard it around. And I didn’t mean to stare. Right place, right time, I guess.” He stands and throws his bag over his shoulder. “You’ve got skills.”
He’s mocking me, I’m sure of it. I mean, jungle dance doesn’t exactly scream “mad skills.” I’ve got a comeback. Something about monkeys and boys. It’s just . . . stuck. Frozen on the tip of my tongue.
With a slight tilting of his head he walks out the door, and I’m left chewing on the icicle of another thing unsaid.
Learning to speak again is now priority one.
It’s a minute before I realize my hands are shaking. So severely this time it takes a good thirty seconds to pull my gloves back in place.
If I could stay embarrassed all day, I might just thaw.
But this biting cold is well deserved, so I blink away the tear offering me its salty consolation. I flip up my hood—a shield against prying eyes—and make my way across the rime-freckled quad.
I don’t think about the new kid.
I don’t.
The rest of my classes are uneventful: literature, government, French. Advanced photography is the only class I’ve actually chosen, and my steps fall faster as I make my way there. It’s been forever since I’ve been in an actual darkroom.
Austen—my school in the city—doesn’t offer a traditional photography class. Instead they offer digital imaging, which focuses primarily on photo manipulation using computer software. No need for film. No need for a darkroom. Just digital cameras and a Mac lab. And while I enjoyed that class as well, there’s just something about manually processing and developing film that’s fully immersive. You touch it and see it. You smell it, for goodness’ sake. There’s an ebb and flow—a rhythm. Like dance, I guess. Maybe that’s why I like it so much.
Admittedly, it’s a dying art form. And while a jump into the modern world is exactly what our little town needs, I’m glad I’ll be long gone before traditional photography vanishes from Stratus High.
I duck into the darkroom, catching a wink from the photo teacher as I go.
Mr. Burns is an eccentric old man and does not run a formal classroom setting. Once a week he lectures on a technique or piece of equipment, and on Tuesdays he holds a class-wide critique. Everyone submits a photo and everyone has a vote. There are award ribbons and everything. During the rest of the week, we’re free to work on whatever projects we have going.
The darkroom is small, and though there are only two other students in the room with me, it feels crowded. This doesn’t help the claustrophobic tendencies I’ve developed, but John Mayer croons from the radio in the corner and it’s warmer than the outer classroom.
I drop my stuff at the corner station and set to work developing the film in my camera bag. Without a darkroom at my disposal, I’ve been hoarding it. Half a dozen rolls tumble out when I unzip the front flap, but I don’t mind. It gives me something to focus on.
The mindless repetition is cathartic. Even my numb fingers cooperate while crammed inside the black bag. I slam the small container on its end to release the filmstrip and wrap it around the reel carefully to avoid leaving fingerprints. My fingers move quickly as I come up with a plan for the next couple days. Today the focus will be getting all this film developed and hung to dry. Since I’ve just returned, I’ll bow out of the critique tomorrow and sort through the strips, make contact sheets, and see if I have anything here to work with.
I place the reel in the canister and unzip the bag while my thoughts wander. I think about the general solitude I’ve been granted by the other students. By now, the last period of the day, I’m pretty much ignored. My chill must be contagious, because the girl next to me in government actually shivered when she brushed my arm.
I’m glad this room is dark. If my hands do shake, I don’t have to try too hard to hide them. But Mr. Burns must have turned the heater on, because for the third time today, I’m warm. Relieved to be free of the chill, I slide out of my sweater.
I feel a little more normal this way: Without the gloves, without the parka and the sweater. Just a long-sleeved white T-shirt over faded blue jeans.
My thoughts continue to wander. With some effort I pull them away from three weeks ago, away from the city. There are other things to think about. Other people. People from here. People with no connection at all to that place.
People like Kaylee. It’s strange I don’t have a single class with her. I want that fact to disappoint me, but I don’t feel much about it at all.
And there’s the new kid.
Jake.
Where did he come from, anyway? Did the teacher say?
I turn to grab the developing solution from the table behind me. Alone with my thoughts, I slam into someone, the metal canister in my hand smacking the person hard in the stomach.
“Oh, I’m . . .”
I am sorry, and I should tell him so. But I don’t. I’m distracted by the hand holding my wrist.
It belongs to Jake. My stalker, apparently.
“Hey,” he says. He steadies both my wrist and the canister against his chest. His heart pounds evenly against my hand, and mine speeds up.
It seems I’m destined to make a fool of myself in front of this guy.
“I didn’t realize we had this class together,” he says.
“I . . . me either,” I stutter. “I didn’t know either.”
He smiles. Up close it’s crooked, mischievous, and I think of that Pink song, the one about the pills and the morphine. I think how dangerous attraction is. How dangerous it was for
her
.
I take a step back and then realize he’s still holding my wrist. I try to gather my thoughts and put together a coherent sentence, but nothing occurs to me. The door opens behind Jake, and Mr. Burns comes in.
“Jake, can I bother you for a second? I need some help bringing in the new enlarger.”
“Sure, Mr. Burns.” His eyes are still on my face, that lopsided grin mocking me, and it’s a second or two before he releases my wrist and follows the teacher from the room.
“Elle, could you hold the inner door open for us? Grace has the door out here.”
Between the darkroom and the classroom is a short hallway with heavy doors at each end. This area has no light at all and serves as a transition space protecting the darkroom from the white light of the classroom.
“Of course . . .” I run the canister back to my workstation and hurry back through the door to wait for them. I arrive just as Jake and Mr. Burns come through the first door. The bright light from the classroom beyond allows me to see them scooting past Grace, a redhead I’ve known since kindergarten. She’s holding the classroom door open, and as Jake passes her, she fakes a swoon only I can see.
Grace is being friendly. I should wink and swoon back, and we can giggle like girlfriends. But for some reason her attraction to Jake irritates me.
Mr. Burns and Jake stop.
“Hey again,” Jake says.
He’s standing so close.
I clear my throat.
“Okay, Grace. We’re through. Go ahead and close that door,” Mr. Burns says.
“Have fun, Brielle.” Her door shuts, and we’re engulfed in darkness. It’s for the briefest of moments, but I’m thankful Mr. Burns is here. I don’t trust myself alone with this stranger. Who knows what I’ll say. What I’ll do.
Fumbling, I open the darkroom door, and they squeeze past me, Jake first, carrying his side of the enlarger with ease, and then tiny Mr. Burns, huffing with the strain of it. They place the enlarger in its new home, secure some cords, and plug things in. Mr. Burns thanks Jake and scoots out the door, cursing quietly under his breath and rubbing his shoulder. The two other students using the darkroom crack up at something I’ve missed and file past me into the classroom.
We’re alone now: Jake and I. And that doesn’t bode well for me. I could do an Irish jig or maybe run into him again?
Decisions.
But Jake sets up on the opposite side of the room, his head hunched over the enlarger, his back to me. Which is just fine. Preferable, actually. I have a ton of film to develop, and I can do that all the way over here. On this side of the room.
When Grace bounces through the door, my hands are trapped in the black bag, but I force a smile in her direction. She winks back at me and hops up on the counter next to Jake, all energy and charm.
“Hey,” he says, looking up. “It’s Faith, right?”
“Grace. Grace Middleton, silly. We have Spanish together.”
Jake straightens up. “That’s right.”
Grace giggles and leans into him, brushing his bicep with her plastic fingernails.
Oh gag. I turn back to my station.
Grace has always been a flirt. It’s never bothered me before, and there’s no reason it should bother me now. Especially since she’s keeping the stalker occupied. Still, she goes on and on, being all cute, chatting him up. Her verbal pawing fills the room, and I stare longingly at the radio in the corner.
As soon as my hands are free of the bag, I tromp over to it and crank the volume up.
Grace casts me a disparaging look, but I ignore her and melt into my work.
No one needs to listen to this.
A
n invisible form sniffs the air.
Despair.
A favorite of his. It smells of salt and rust. Of tears and corrosion.
Damien flies low, his eyes pinched against the light. He can’t open them completely here. Not anymore. The light of this realm—of the Celestial—burns and singes. His fallen form is not as impenetrable as it once was.
Still, he’d suffer a thousand burns to feel the freedom of flight.
He soars over cow pastures, over farms rotting in the dampness of late autumn. He regards them all with distaste. Everything about this world and the humans who inhabit it disgusts him.
Except pain.
Fear.
Their duty lies with darkness and its Prince. As does his. And they draw him, a gigantic moth to the flame of human desperation.
The town ahead comes into view. Small, like the others he’s scouted, but the name is familiar and he can’t place it. Dozens of small cities, townships, and communities skirt Portland, a city he’s haunted for so many years. And while he’s not ready to abandon all he’s accomplished there, he needs a new base of operations. A new home to destroy.
That idiot boy and his girlfriend ruined so much.
He allows himself a long, luxurious blink as he soars through the Celestial sky. What he wouldn’t give to have his sight fully restored.
Though he was created for immortality, his Celestial eyes won’t heal any more. Not completely. He traces their weakness back to the days of Elisha. Back to Dothan.
An ancient loss, but one with lingering consequences.
The prophet and his child-of-a-servant had been traveling alone. They camped in the open, on a much-used road. Just a tent. No soldiers, no weapons. If this was just any prophet, Damien might not have bothered, might have passed the man by. But this was Elisha. And Elisha carried a grace in his hands. He healed. He did miraculous things. Things that stifled darkness.
And every attempt to corrupt him had failed.