The bigwigs upstairs, apparently, thought I couldn’t handle the adult versions anymore.
Conway Marlowe was in the fifth grade and had just discovered that girls didn’t actually have cooties, which was why, on this fine spring afternoon, he’d ditched his bratty kid brother at the bus stop after school to walk Megan Baxter to her front door.
Please don’t let her hate me, he prayed. Not to God, per se, but in a vocal, projecting thought that was the reason he’d been assigned a guardian angel in the first place.
“Just don’t push her in the mud,” I muttered, stepping over a brown puddle in the middle of the sidewalk as I trailed behind him.
My problem wasn’t that I couldn’t do the job. Humans are easily persuaded with the right tactics, and really, most of them prefer to take the route we’d like them too—the one where they don’t wind up dead. My problem—the problem that got me stuck on playground watch—was that I just don’t care. People are boring. I was certainly boring. Up until the last bit, anyway. It certainly wasn’t my fault that I had four times as many deaths under my watch as any other guardian angel.
All the toe stubbings and noggin bumpings, all the broken bones and broken hearts, those moments that are interesting are few and far between. Humans can barely pay attention to themselves, and I’m supposed to pay attention every moment of every day? Every street crossed could mean death—that was mistake number one. Honestly, I thought he’d seen the bus coming. And as for number two, who doesn’t expect there to be sharks in the ocean? I couldn’t just tell her to stop swimming if she wants to every damn day.
Kids, though, kids tended to be easier. Most of them had two parents also looking out for them too, not to mention teachers and neighbors and all of that. So for kids we’re just backup.
“So, uh, what did you pick for your history project?” Conway asked Megan.
Megan looked thrilled to have been asked, and puffed out her chest as she said, “Well, I wanted to write about the feminist movement and its affect on fashion through the twentieth century, but Mr. Idsman said that was too broad a topic so I chose the 19th amendment instead.”
“Know it all,” I said.
“Oh,” said Conway, deflating a bit.
“Run home while you still can,” I advised him.
Conway didn’t get it, though. It wasn’t that Megan wasn’t a great girl. It’s just that Conway didn’t really function at her level.
“What was the nineteenth one again?”
The only Amendments he knew were the first and the second—his father loved to rant about them all the time. He knew a bit about the fifth from watching The Client, but mostly he’d just fantasized about the bitchy lawyer adopting him.
“Don’t you pay attention?” Megan rolled her eyes and, like a mother telling her spawn not to put straws up their nose for the gazillionth time, she said, “It gave women the right to vote.”
“Oh yeah,” said Conway, while he thought, who the heck wants to vote, anyway?
“Well? What about you?” Megan folded her arms.
Conway sputtered a minute. I knew for a fact that he hadn’t thought about it. “The Apollo missions.”
Oh, he was good.
Megan was also impressed.
“All of them?”
“Um, yeah,” he said. “Well, maybe just eleven. No, twelve. Twelve is my favorite. I’m not sure yet.”
Megan nodded. She sighed loudly. “It’s too bad we con only do American history,” she said. “Otherwise you could write about Yuri Gagarin or Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova.”
“Huh?”
“The first male and female astronauts in space,” said Megan. She had a smile beaming across her face, and her chin was held high. “They were Russian.”
“Oh,” said Conway. His eyebrows pulled together, confused. “Then aren’t they cosmonauts?”
“Right, cosmonauts,” said Megan.
Meghan smiled happily and gazed at Conway, probably impressed that he might actually know useless crap as well. Conway blushed.
The snot-nosed wisacre unlocked her door with a key around her neck and stepped into the threshold.
“Thank you for walking me to my door, Conway. Good luck on your paper.” As she slipped inside she added, “I’ll see you tomorrow in class!”
The door clicked shut after a soft swoosh and a breath of breeze blew against Conway’s hair and face. He stood watching the door for a full three minutes afterwards.
“She’s got you, hasn’t she? Don’t choke, buck-o.”
Most people only ask for help when they think they need help, and when they think they need help it’s not usually for something we can help or even hope to change. The whole job’s pointless. A guardian angel only has the power of coercion. Our presence is like a voice that carries over into awareness from a dream. What can we do about dead family and sorrow, or divorces and depression? We can whisper in their ears at night that it will be okay, it will fade, it will pass, they will meet again…with no guarantee that our charges will hear us listen or listen. We’re band-aids over sucking chest wounds. We’re ineffectual for the real problems people have.
Being in the G.A. Department not only bored me into a stupor rivaled only by watching eight hours of soap operas, but I didn’t even see how I could change anything for the better. So why bother? If people listen to you once, they’ll just make the same, and different, mistakes a few minutes down the road.
For a dull, clumsy mortal Conway was pretty easy. All he ever asked for was his dad to love him the way the guy loved Conway’s little brother Leander. Well, half-brother. I have absolutely no power over that, so all I have to do was ignore most of Conway’s life. If the Powers That Be Assholes had any sense Conway’s pops and stepmonster would have Don’t-Be-A-Douchebag angels hanging over their shoulders to tell them not to love one kid more than the other, and “emotional abuse is still abuse” and “don’t neglect, scorn or hate your twelve-year-old son, dipshit.”
But the Great Big Narcissists That Be don’t care. They just want us to think they do.
When Conway asked for something I could actually help him with it was crap like please don’t let me forget this (and all I had to do was write it on my arm and remind him in the morning) or should I wear my red shirt or green shirt (and that was a no-brainer because I loved red, and it happened to go nicely with his dark hair and light skin).
Simple.
He trudged home from Megan’s, three blocks to his road and then another quarter mile down the street. The three story grey Victorian house with vines and tall windows always looked ominous walking up to it. It looked dark, like light didn’t quite reach it. The house was truly creepy and if I hadn’t known for a fact that there weren’t any ghosts in residence I would have said there was no way it wasn’t haunted.
My last guardee, a hefty forty-something with dyed blond hair and skin tanned with lotion named Margory, had lived in a haunted house. The ghost loved to hide the cutlery. Though, in hindsight, it might’ve been trying to keep the cutlery from Marge. It threw a bit of a fit when she killed herself with a steak knife. It might also have been her late husband. I never asked.
I’d tried with her. I told her every night that life was worth it. I’d tried to tell her that she had a lot going for her. But telling someone life was awesome never really works unless you actually believe it yourself. I hoped she was more content wherever it is people go. I never got to go there when I bit the dust—they recruited me straight away, the opportunistic bastards.
Conway had the whole third floor of the house to himself, unless they had guests. He lived in one of two bedrooms, with a full bathroom across the hall. The ‘rent’s master bedroom, complete with a jacuzzi tub, took up half the second floor with Leander’s room next to it.
When I was first assigned to Conway I had no idea why. But the comparison between his and Leander’s rooms was a pretty good hint.
Leander had a small flatscreen TV with a DVR, DVD player, Wii, PS3 and X-Box. While he had only one or two books his book cases overflowed with violent movies and video games. R.C. vehicles lay busted on shelf tops and on the floor, as well as piled on a desk with a new 13-inch Macbook Pro. He had a closet and dresser stuffed with new clothes with brand names, spankin’ new sheets with characters from the newest Japanese animation craze aimed at boys, a dirty fishtank with three unhappy fish and another with a tarantula. Leander’s was a room to be envied. I sure as hell did. If I could have I’d have moved in there and played G.T.A. For days.
But I was stuck with Conway. Poor, forgotten, boring Conway with his plain, dull room full of used books about all the people he’d rather be and maps of all the places he’d rather live and not a single expensive toy.
After any typical school day Conway got off the bus with Leander and they walked home, with Leander bragging about his school day or being overly critical of Conway.
He’d say, “I hate your hair. Mine’s not gonna look like that when old like you, is it?”
Or: “How come you always wear that ugly red shirt?”
And: “Dad said he’s gonna get me a Nintendo DS with Pokemon and you can’t use it!”
Conway would respond with a vacant “It won’t”, or “Because”, and “Okay”.
Then Leander, with all the pomp of a fat king, would say “Good” or “Doofus”.
If I could have I’d have beaned the kid, the way my older sister had me. I wanted Conway to get angry, for once, and smack him upside the head. Knock in some sense. But stupid, meek, way-too-nice little Conway never did. Never even raised his voice at his half-brother.
On a typical day they’d reach the house after a few minutes walk from the bus stop. Leander would saunter off to watch whatever flashy, super-powered cartoon was on TV and Conway would head up the stairs to his room. The flight up to the third floor creaked, and Conway was often yelled at for it. He tried his best to avoid the creaky parts but the creaky parts were pretty much the whole thing. Once he was up in his room I ignored him. His step momster’s thought are much more amusing, if I can manage to hear them. They are almost always along very dirty lines and have a cocktail part feel to them, like clinking glass and hoity conversation. Endless entertainment.
Today, however, Conway’s step mother—Leander’s mom—met Conway at the door.
She latched onto his jacket lapel and yanked him inside the house.
Leander’s mother is a casebook embodiment of the seven deadly sins. She’s most often slothful and gluttonous, lazing about on the sofa all day long and calling on Conway or Conway’s father to wait on her. She is envious, and spends much of her time peering through the curtains at neighbor’s houses and cars and lives while thinking, quite loudly: why doesn’t my garden ever look like that? And: How does she never gain a single pound? She eats like a whale! And: I wish John hadFranks’ body. I should tell him to go for more runs. Most of her envy is curtailed by her bloated, pompous pride. She might envy her neighbor’s husbands, houses and cars, but she lives to show hers off. It was her lust that got her involved with John at first (not that I’d consider a healthy bit of that sinful), but it was her greed that brought her into a marriage with Conway’s father. I’m sure she loves John and Leander as much as someone like her can—in the same way she loves anything that is hers. Which would be why she can’t stand Conway, the one thing in the house that isn’t.
And why today, well, today she was wrath.
She pounced on Conway like a lion onto some cute baby animal, ravenous for fresh blood and turmoil. The door hadn’t slammed shut before she was yelling at him.
“You just love to ruin my good days, don’t you Conway? Sixteen and Pregnant was on. And now I’ve missed it. Do you know why, Conway? Is there enough sense in your empty head to know why?”
She paused as though waiting for an answer but Conway was an expert at momsters. He said nothing. The momster sneered at him.
“You always have been slow. I’m surprised they still let you in classes with all the normal kids. Leander walked home from the bus stop. Alone. While you were off with your little girlfriend anything could have happened to him!”
As she spoke she towered over Conway. She had her long index finger with a perfectly manicured, crimson nail pointed, and she jabbed it at him to puncuate each sentence.
Conway looked away from her.
“Don’t ignore me,” she snarled. “Explain yourself!”
Conway shrugged and took a step back from her.
“That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to say for yourself?” Her eyes looked like firecrackers bursting in a closed fist. A speck of spittle dotted her chin.
“No, it’s not,” I said. “Tell her what-for, Conway.” I hoped some of my roiling aggravation would be injected into him with my words. “Stand up for yourself.”
Leander’s mom looked ready to shed her human skin for her true, demonic self.
“You abandoned your own brother for some floozy down the street. Your brother. My son. You know what kinds of freaks are out there, just waiting for their chance! Just like your mother—”
I said, “Ohoh, no you didn’t.”
“Don’t,” said Conway.
“Your mother,” the step momster continued, “Who abandoned her own children and—”
“Shut up,” Conway said.
“What did you just say to me?”
Conway did the smart thing and said nothing. Leander’s mother was angry, that was for sure, but she was also enjoying this. I could feel it. She got some thrill from it, from having this sort of power over someone. Conway, though, he’s smarter than me. He stayed quiet. I didn’t want him to be smart. I wanted him to stop letting her get away with this douchebaggery. I wanted him to snap.
“Answer me!”
“My mom’s not—”
“Not what, a criminal? A whore?”
Conway clenched his fist.
“Oh, the little boy wants to hit a woman, does he? You think you can raise you hand at me? I knew it. You’re the same garbage she is. Ready to follow in your footsteps. You’re a danger to Leander, to me, I should make John send you away before you hurt anyone!”
“Fight back! Don’t just take this!”
Conway bit his lip and glared up at her. His eyes brimmed with tears and hate.
“Go to your room,” she said. “Don’t bother coming down for dinner.”
Hands on her hips, she stared at him and silently dared him to make a move.
“You should spike her tequila with arsenic.”
The tendons in Conway’s little, stubby hands stood out as he clenched them into fists.
“Shit,” I said. Damage control time. “I mean, forgive and forget, Conway. And you’ve got some homework to do.”
Conway backed down and I’m positive it wasn’t because of any urging from me. He unclenched his fists and dropped his gaze to the floor. He turned away from the step momster and headed for the stairs. His feet were like anchors, and even I could feel the effort it took for him to take each one. The first flight of stairs was the hardest for him.
Leander stood in his doorway, his expression vicious and bratty. He smiled, stuck out his tongue and made a “NYAH!” sound before shutting his door.
My ten-year-old charge sighed.
“What are you waiting for! Get to your room now!” The step-momster still watched Conway from the bottom of the stairs like a hawk watches a field mouse. Her yell spurred him onward and upward.
He spent the rest of the day in his room, playing a little blue handheld game he’d taken from Leander’s room once he was sure his brother had gotten a newer model. Leander would never miss it. He didn’t start his report. Around seven the faintest waftings of Italian food drifted up to his room. His stomach growled loudly. He waited until the house was silent with sleep hours later, and while he waited he wrote the first sentence of his paper: In 1961 President JFK said we would go to the moon before the end of the decade.
It was scribbled in sloppy cursive in his notebook. Conway loved cursive. I think he liked the way everything connected when he wrote in it. But it made it really hard to read what he wrote in his diary with his clumsy child hands.
When everyone else had gone to bed he crept downstairs and made himself a bowl of cereal, making sure to clean everything up and even put his dishes away, then he went to sleep as well.
Most days weren’t like that. What I mean to say is, the emotional abuse tended to be more subtle, most of the time. He didn’t usually interact as much with Leander’s mother. His dad didn’t seem to care much for him, but he wasn’t mean about it. Sometimes they were like most other family’s I’d seen. There must have been love, I guess, but most of the love somehow managed to avoid Conway.
And whenever the stepmomster made her threats about sending him away, I wondered why that was any threat at all. To me it seemed Conway would be better off somewhere else.
But that’s not my jurisdiction. Nothing I could do about any of that.
Conway slept in a single bed with Teenege Mutant Ninja Turtles sheets. Like every other time he was boring while he slept.
I watched Leander sleep.
I wondered how different Conway would be if he’d had the same mother as his half-brother. Would he be as self-involved and big-mouthed? Would he be happy and emotionally unscathed? Would he have even been assigned a guardian angel? God knows I never got one. Probably should have, considering how that went, but them’s the brakes that God never gets checked even after they start to grind.
Jerk.
“One day your brother will leave this place,” I told Leander. “One day he’ll get out, he’ll leave you all behind, and he’ll be happy. He’ll be great. And you’ll always be the same little snot you are now.”
Leander didn’t react. His breathing stayed even, loud and steady. His quilt was large and plush, and he was just a lump underneath it.
***
John always woke up first, and left first. Conway liked to sleep in until just before he had to leave. No one woke him up earlier or got on his case to get ready—the only reason Leander’s mother even cared whether or not he went to school was so he would walk Leander to the bus stop and back.
Conway’s fifth grade teacher droned on about the rock cycle and multiplication and all that useless crap I hadn’t even thought about since back when I was in the fifth grade myself. Mr. Idsman was an old, half-bald flagpole of a man with pants held up by red striped suspenders and showing four inches of sock. He drew a diagram of the rock cycle on the board and the marker stained his fingers. He itched his nose and got blue all over it, and most of the class tried to stifle their laughter.
Conway wasn’t paying attention.
He focused on the back of Megan’s head. I rolled my eyes. At least he wasn’t planning to cut off her ponytail or kick mud at her at recess.
“Just ask her on a date already,” I told him. I sat on the desk of the kid next to him.
Either Conway was particularly easy to manipulate or he had the idea himself, because he tore a slip of paper from his notebook and wrote a note.
Megan, he wrote,
He folded the note. Megan sat diagonally in front of him to the right.
I saw him hesitate, the folded paper in his hands. I could hear his heart pounding, his thoughts racing. He thought she’d reject him, that the note would be read aloud in class, that one of the bullies would get ahold of it, that anyone would notice.
“Just do it, already.”
He waited until right before the bell when school would be out. Then Conway tossed the note right onto Megan’s notebook. She jumped, and turned to look at him. He shrugged, but with a stupid grin on his face. Megan brought the note below her desk and read it, before scribbling an answer and tossing it back.
Yea!
She’d even added a stupid little heart. Conway was thrilled. I was impressed he didn’t even find the heart icky, that he would have the guts to ask her at all.
“You are going to be such a ladies man, aren’t you?”
My job was going to get really challenging once he turned sixteen. Challenging and awkward.
Then the bell rang and freed the children from their red-brick cells.
***
The park near Megan and Conways houses was named Two River park, and it did not have two rivers—or even two cricks. It had one lake with one stream and hardly ever any people in it. There was a playground and a lot of open space with a few groves of trees around it.
It was a pretty park, with the misfortune of existing in neighborhoods of people who seem to dislike the outdoors.
So most of the time there were just kids in the park, largely unsupervised, doing all sorts of kid things that adults would frown upon.
Like going on a date.
Despite all the planning Conway had done in his head all day long Conway (and I) had forgotten one important detail. Leander.
While nothing much might come of Conway neglecting to walk his brother home one day, two days in a row might actually lead to Conway’s father doing something about it, and that was not something Conway wanted to happen. I might have thought being sent away to boarding school or another relative might be better for him, Conway dreaded it. He thought of military school, where the older brother of one of his classmates was sent to and never seen again. Or so he’d been told. I was fairly sure the kid was still just at military school.
Conway met up with Megan on the bus. Unfortunately, Conway also met up with Leander on the bus.
“Mom’s gonna be pissed,” said Leander.
“Your mom doesn’t have to know,” said Conway.
“‘Course she does.”
“C’mon, Lee,” said Conway. Breakin’ out the nicknames already. Kid’s getting desperate. “Can’t we just make this a secret? Between brothers, you and me.”
“Why would I want a secret with you. You’re stupid.”
“Why does it matter if your mom finds out, Conway? We’re just going to the park,” said Megan.
“I wish, kid,” I said. I sat next to her in her seat, while Conway and Leander were across from them. I hated the bus. Elementary kids are loud in that screechy monkey sort of way. Not that all adults have learned that they can control the volumes of their voices, but kids are many times worse. I don’t even have ears or a brain and I had a headache.
Conway blushed. The amount of will he put out wishing for Megan to never learn about his step momster was palpable.
“Sorry, kiddo. Not much I can do about that. Just don’t tell her, okay?”
“Mom doesn’t like it when I walk home by myself,” said Leander. “She says the predators will get me. I told her there aren’t any bears or mountain lions around here, but she doesn’t listen. So I have to walk home with Conway, every day, even though I hate him.”
Megan frowned. “I’m sure you don’t hate your brother,” she said.
“Of course I do.” Leander crossed his arms and Conway rubbed his face with his hand, like his dad does every time he’s disappointed in him or frustrated. I’m sure Conway wasn’t mimicking John on purpose.
“Tell you what, Leander,” said Megan. “You come with us to the park, and you can play on the playground and everything, and I’ll give you this bag of M&M’s I saved from lunch.” She held up the brown bag, and Leander’s eyes lit up. He held out his hand. I’m surprised he kept himself from yelling “gimme gimme.”
“Not so fast,” said Conway, grabbing the M&M’s before Leander could. “You gotta promise not to tell your mom, okay?”
“Ugh, fine,” Leander said. Conway handed over the candy and grinned at Megan.
“Thanks,” he said, quiet enough that Leander couldn’t hear.
“No problem,” said Megan. “But you owe me a new bag of M&M’s!”
The bus pulled up to Megan’s stop. Conway grabbed Leander and followed her off.
Leander trailed behind Megan and Conway, eating his candies one at a time. Very aware of his brother’s presence, Conway and Megan didn’t say much until they got to the park. Leander did most of the talking for them.
“I bet this weekend mom takes me ice skating and not you and we’ll get chilidogs. With malts.”
“Good for you,” Conway answered. Megan looked at Leander crossly. I didn’t have to listen to her thoughts to know she was wondering how in the world any kid was that bratty. (But I listened anyway.) Megan was an only child. She didn’t know what it was like to have siblings, so maybe she’d write it off as just what siblings did. Conway, she’d noticed, didn’t seem that bothered by it. So it had to be normal, right?
Megan decided she was overreacting.
She also decided she didn’t like Leander much.
“Well,” she said, “I don’t really like chilidogs. They make people smell like pigs.”
Leander frowned at her at the same time Conway smiled.
I decided I liked Megan very much.
“Go play on the playground, Leander,” said Conway.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t wanna.”
“Oh, come on. You’ve got your candy. Just go swing or something!”
“I wanna go home and play Master Wizard 9000.”
The embarrassment Conway felt rolled off of him in waves. I felt embarrassed for him, too. He dug into his bag for his blue handheld game and shoved it into Leander’s hands.
“Hey! This is mine!”
“So go play it.”
“But it’s old. I already beat it.”
“So beat it again. We’re gonna walk around the lake.” He turned to Megan. “Is that okay?”
“Yeah,” she said. “We’ll be back soon, okay Leander? Next time we’ll get together on a weekend so you don’t have to come.”
“Whatever,” said Leander.
They left their backpacks under the slide and told Leander to keep an eye on them.
The only other people in the park were a homeless man on a bench across the lake and a woman jogging. The day was icy and cold and there weren’t any hills to sled down, and the lake wasn’t frozen all the way yet. What a depressing day in a depressing park. I thought about giving Conway some privacy but no way was I gonna just stand there while Leander played the stupid game and Conway went off to do who knows what. Probably nothing. I don’t think Conway really knew what all the adult stuff was. He just liked Megan and wanted to spend time with her. It was all very cute in a vomiterific sort of way.
What was surprising, to both Conway and I, was how much he and Megan had in common.
Specifically, they both loved space.
“I might want to be an astronomer,” said Megan. “But maybe an astronaut. I don’t know. I want to go to Mars, and be the first person there.”
“Wow, that would be so cool! I always wanted to see Jupiter up close. But I think it’s too far away.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty far. Have you seen the Science Museum’s scale model of the solar system? It’s across the whole building. And the earth is only, like, the size of a penny. Maybe smaller. We should go next weekend. I’ll ask my mom to take us. Then we can see the new planetarium show on comets!”
“That would be awesome!”
Megan took that opportunity to grab ahold of Conway’s mittened hand with her own. For a minute I thought he’d have a heart attack, but he kept his cool.
“You should learn more about the cosmonauts though,” said Megan. “They were really cool. They put the first everything in space, pretty much. NASA lagged behind them in the space race pretty much right up until the moon landings.”
“Sure,” he said. I bet if she told him to go shove snow down his shirt right then he would have.
“My dog’s name is Laika. You know who Laika was, right? She was the first animal in space. She died, though. That’s what I don’t like much about the Soviet part of the space race. They killed too many things.
“Apollo 12 was cool, but my favorite was 17. It’s too bad they cancelled the rest. I think we should go back, but my dad says it’s pointless and there’s enough to do right here on earth. Really I just don’t think he gets it.
“I mean, it’s space. What’s cooler than that? I want to go—oh my god, Conway, is that your brother?”
Megan yanked her hand out of Conway’s and pointed across the lake.
Conway, who had been trying to build up the courage to kiss Megan on the cheek when she stopped talking, even though he really liked when she talked. She was so smart. She must have been the smartest girl in the whole grade, he thought. I mostly just wanted her to shut up because honestly, does she ever breath? The whole time I’d wanted to tell her it takes two people to have a conversation. Conway, though, he’s not that great at conversation, so maybe the fact that Megan talked enough for the two of them was fine.
So Conway, still fixating on the best way to peck her on the cheek, was slow to look over, but when he did he took off running.
“Conway!” Megan yelled after him. I could run faster than Conway, so I was already ahead of him, and Megan trailed behind both of us.
I stopped at the edge of the ice. Leander was out forty feet from the shore. His leg had broken through, leaving him stuck and struggling. The ice around him was cracking. He was crying and waving his arms at Conway, who paused at the edge next to me.
“Don’t move, Leander!” He yelled.
“I didn’t do anything wrong!” Leander cried, his teeth chattering. “I just wanted to practice skating!”
“Don’t move!” Conway yelled again. But Leander didn’t stop struggling, and Megan screamed when Leander broke through even more. He managed to stay on the edge of the ice, but he was through past his hips and screaming even harder.
Conway grabbed Megan’s arm. “Go get help,” he told her. She took off at a sprint.
Conway looked back out to Leander.
“You better not be thinking of doing what I know you’re thinking of doing,” I said.
Leander splashed around. He’d never stay above the surface long enough for help to get him. Even if he stopped panicking , Leander couldn’t swim. He’d be sucked under and they wouldn’t find him again until spring.
Conway knew it, I knew it.
“At least you wont have to worry about him ever again.”
I’m a terrible person. I’m a terrible person and a terrible guardian angel and I’m going to lose another one.
“Don’t you dare go out there,” I said in his ear. I put as much will into it as I could. “Don’t go out there Conway. You don’t have to, okay?”
I was lucky I couldn’t be held accountable. Thank God for free will. They couldn’t blame me for this, could they? I was going to be blamed for this.
Crap.
Conway lifted a foot.
“Just wait for help to come!”
He took a deep breath and a step out onto the ice. It crackled like gravel under his foot.
I reached out to snatch the back of his coat but passed through it and tripped forward onto the ice behind him.
“Conway, stop!” I pulled deeper into my coercive power than ever before. He staggered and slipped but did not stop. He controlled his slide to carry him on his feet toward the hole where Leander floundered. I ran after him.
“He isn’t worth it! He’s not!”
Conway muttered to himself, or to Leander, a constant litany that was disrupting my power.
“It’s okay,” he said, calm and controlled. He projected the words through his thoughts to me, like any other plea I was supposed to help him with. “I’m coming. You’ll be okay. I can do this.”
“No you can’t, Conway! You can’t do this! Leave him! Help is on the way!”
Was help on the way? I didn’t know if Megan had been able to get help. I didn’t know if they could save Leander even if they showed up. But could Conway help?
Or would there just be two bodies to drag from the lake?
One more to my tally?
This wasn’t what was supposed to happen—this wasn’t why he’d prayed for help. What could I do? This wasn’t one of those times when a simple “look both ways” or “watch out for that alligator” would suffice. I bit my lip and followed Conway.
Leander had gotten out forty feet before he’d fallen through, and he was half COnway’s size. But Conway had it covered. He got halfway out before he stooped down and used his elbows and knees to scoot forward, spreading out his weight.
“You’ve got it, Conway,” I said. “Almost there….”
I went ahead and stood at the hole. Leander was through to his shoulders. He had ahold of the ice but he was soaked. He tried to pull himself up but the ice kept breaking around him when he’d put weight on it. His skin was already a polished glacier-blue and whenever he gulped in air he’d get water as well.
Conway got to five feet from the hole, lying down and spreading out, and he pulled off his mittens and coat. He held one of the sleeves, wrapped it around his hand, then tossed the rest out as a sort of rope.
“Grab on! I’ll pull you out!”
Leander reached for it but his purple-blue fingers couldn’t hold onto it.
“Wrap it around your hand,” I told him, but he didn’t listen. I whirled to Conway. “Tell him!”
Conway inched forward. “Leander! Leander, you have to twist it around your hand!”
Leander didn’t listen to him, either, and continued to splash and fumble with the sleeve.
“I’m going to tie it to you, okay?”
Conway reached forward and grabbed the sleeve, and as he did so Leander’s hand shot out and took hold of Conway’s wrist. I leapt forward and stomped through Leander’s arm. “Let him go, you cretin, let him go! He’s trying to save you!”
Conway, though, was calm. He gently but quickly slipped from Leander’s grasp and said, again, “I’m going to tie this to your wrist, Leander. Hold still for me, okay?”
He took hold of Leander’s arm and tied a double knot around his brother’s wrist, anchored by the wide part of Leander’s hand where it met his wrist. Then Conway eased backwards and started to pull him out.
I didn’t notice it until I felt Conway’s explosion of fear, and even then I couldn’t see it until the ice around him sink. We both froze. I hopped backwards as the ice crumbled around him and tipped him sideways into the water. He almost got sucked under but he got one arm hooked on the still-solid edge of ice.
I dropped to my hands and knees at the edge and watched a sputtering Conway shove away chunks of ice while still holding onto the coat that tethered him to Leander. He cleared the shards of ice around the edge next to him, then pulled on the sleeve until his brother was next to him at the edge and told him to hang onto it.
I paced next to them. “Where are they? How long does it take to get help?” I cursed Megan under my breath.
Conway grabbed the back of Leander’s coat. Using his legs to kick and not put more weight on the ice he heaved Leander onto the ice a bit.
I bent down, crawled over to Leander and said, “No more swimming, kiddo, time to come out now.”
As Leander scrambled with his arms Conway dunked under the water, got a hold of Leander’s knees, and shoved him up as well as he could. It took two more tries but Leander was able to crawl onto the ice without it breaking. Then he scrambled away from the hole and stumbled to his feet, Conway’s coat still tied to his wrist.
In the water Conway didn’t struggle the way his brother had. He clung to the edge and went still.
“C-c-conwu-way?” Leander stood, hunched, shivering and sopping, and unsure what to do. His teeth chattered together, framed by his blue lips, and his skin matched the white of the ice.
“Go to the shore, Leander,” said Conway.
“Go,” I whispered in Leander’s ear. He took one step backwards, then another, then he turned and dashed to the very edge before whipping back around and standing with his toes just edging the shore of the ice.
“You’re doing great,” I told Conway. “It’ll be okay.” All I wanted to do was reach out and pull him out, actually help him. What the hell use was I if I couldn’t do anything to change things, to really help? I refused to be nothing more than a glorified cheerleader.
“Take off your coat, Leander!” yelled Conway. He fisted his hands and his skin was the color of the blue-grey sky. He scissor-kicked his legs as hard as he could and used the momentum to try to get out of the water. But the ice caved again, and again, and Leander—dripping in just his t-shirt and soggy jeans, stiffening in the cold, —was crying on the shore and toeing the line between shore and ice.
Conway was back to muttering, “It’ll be okay, I’ll be fine, I’m fine, I can—”
He kicked with all his might. Like a lumpy seal he crawled out of the lake onto his stomach, dragging his hips out, then his legs—then the ice refused to hold him.
“No!”
The ice caved, collapsing into the lake. He slipped under the water with hardly a struggle or a splash.
A trail of bubbles danced up through the murky water.
I clenched my fist, felt my breath wedge in my throat, and waited for him to resurface.
And waited, and waited.
Leander was screeching from the shore like a maniacal coyote, yelling, “Conway!” over and over and I wanted to deck him.
I watched the trail of bubbles dwindle, then disappear.
Then I jumped in after him, not leaving so much as a ripple.
Conway drifted away from the opening in the ice, not as deep as I’d thought. He was conscious, and obviously holding his breath, and I asked, “What the Hell do you think you’re doing?”
I told him, “You can’t give up now, idiot child! Coward! Swim!”
He looked up as if he had heard me, really heard me. He peered through the water at me through glazed eyes like he hadn’t slept in years. Our eyes met, and looking into his eyes I saw him, his life, his future—
I saw high school, paint-chipped lockers and easy girls and inklings of love and wisps of smoke.
I saw an open, crack-webbed road, a rusted sound from a rusted car and a displacement, a coastline, a city, towers of light.
I saw John’s face, older, angry as usual, in the middle of an argument I can’t hear.
I saw tattered apartments and squeaky-chaired college lecture halls and pencils and tests and hand-quaking coffee nights.
I saw alcohol dazes and hungover mornings and greasy breakfasts.
I saw faces, freckles and noses and eyes and scars and ears and lips and wrinkles, and faces, some staying longer than others, a strobe-light montage.
I saw aging and grass growing, and graves and cradles, a rumbling of voices and a paper-cut-cleaving of growing up and loss.
He would get out. He had to get out. That was the future, wasn’t it? The future had to happen. This future had to happen. He would come back up, and they would pull him out, and he would laugh and tell Leander he was never getting near water ever again not even the shower, and he’d promise his dad he was never ever letting Leander out of his sight again ever, and he would finally kiss Megan’s cheek.
And I saw it all fade. I saw it fade like a cloud over the sun, a star in the rising dawn, a trail of bubbles slipping from his mouth and dancing toward the light.
This job was forced on me against my will. I didn’t want it. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anyone who was alive while I wasn’t. I didn’t flinch at the bus, or at the blood and the gore. I’d seen it all before. It meant nothing to me.
Why should I care? No one else had cared enough to give me a guardian angel.
I’d been left on my own to make my own mistakes and die. Die slow and painful and they never even found my body. Why didn’t I get a guardian angel? An angel to tell me don’t trust him. Don’t listen to him. He doesn’t love you. Run.
I never got my future. I never got to grow old. Never got to go to college or have kids or get married and get a career.
All I got was a week thinking I’d found love and a death I wouldn’t wish on anyone and a swamp grave somewhere no one would ever look, and a cold case about a missing teenaged girl who’s considered a probable runaway.
Even when I was alive no one thought I had a future.
He would get that future. Conway would get his future.
Then it hit me. An epiphany. Why I’d been assigned this probationary job, this mundane social service.
It was Conway, yeah, but it was me too. I was supposed to care. But fuck caring if about anything if it would do jack shit to help Conway. I wasn’t supposed to make Conway do anything. Maybe Conway wasn’t even supposed to live. But I wouldn’t let them make me care just to have him die.
So I decided to effect.
It had been done before, angels affecting the world. It couldn’t be that hard, could it? Shernihaza had effected the world so much he brought a couple kids into it, which is apparently evil, but it’s not like I was going to do that.
I kicked my feet and flew through the water to him. I reached out to him and willed my hand to touch him, willed my hand solid.
It went right through him.
I tried again, to the same outcome. As I became more desperate and idea came to me. I shouldn’t be solid. I wasn’t solid. I kept thinking I had to be solid and alive to do anything in this world. But I wasn’t alive. I would never be alive again. But Conway was alive.
Willing my hand to touch Conway, but not for my arm to be solid, I reached for him again.
My fingers closed around his tiny, cold arm.
I pulled him to me and swam for the light above us, the hole in the ice. I hoped he’d be okay. I hoped, for the first time in ages, maybe for the first time since I’d been alive myself.
“You’re gonna be fine,” I said. “You fucking better be fine.”
Conway’s head lolled against my chest. He looked up at me, eyes glazed, and then we broke the surface.
I’d hoped for a gasp of breath, a job well done, but there was nothing. Conway didn’t even sputter. I tried to shove him out of the lake onto the ice but his shirt snagged on the edge. I shoved harder. I got his top half onto the ice. It didn’t break. And then there were people, rescue workers, firemen, and I noticed the trucks and the round-about lights and the sirens. And just like that they’d pulled him all of the way out, off the ice. I tread water, leaning my arms over the ice to stay afloat. I stayed like that until the ambulance pulled away, Conway and Leander inside. Megan sat at a picnic table next to a police officer and her mother, with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She was crying. A lot, actually. I climbed out of the water and walked ashore.
And there was nothing sinister and nothing to investigate so the police went away, and Megan went home, and I was alone in the park.
Maybe it was some sort of ghost pain, phantom pain of the life that was amputated from my soul when I died, but I could feel adrenaline pumping through me. My hands and knees jittered and my stomach was boxing with my heart.
I sat at the picnic bench Megan had vacated. The sound of wings, like a flock of sparrows, was the only warning I got that he was there.
A man stood next to me. I still think of them as men, but they are not-men at the same time. He was tall, and dark skinned with black hair, and with a glow like white phosphorescence.
“Hello Gabriel,” I said.
With a voice like the hum of power-lines in the rain or the foreshadowing of an earthquake he said,
“Good afternoon, Clara.”
“I’m guessing you’re not here to give me a medal.”
“You’re being reassigned,” said Gabriel.
“What a surprise,” I said. “I refuse.”
“You don’t really have a choice in the matter.”
I smirked and crossed my arms. “What, free will only applies to the living?”
“You know you broke the rules.”
“So it’s all well and good for Maria and Azariah, but for Conway and Clara it’s against the rules?
What about Gemma? Haven’t you had some fun conversations with the living over the years?”
“Actions are judged individually, you know that.”
“So send me to Hell.”
The Messenger sighs. “No one is angry with you,” he said. “You did what you thought was right. But now we feel you’d be better suited to a different task.”
I frowned at him and bit my lip. “I’m not being assigned someone else to watch over?”
“We feel you’d enjoy the change.”
“Oh, we do, do we? We and what army?”
“Just come into the office tomorrow.”
“I’m needed here.”
“This assignment is over,” said Gabriel. “Conway does not need you anymore.”
And then I knew my mind was made up. I was all set to say “we’ll see,” and just not show up. But I knew, right then, how wrong Gabriel was.
“No,” I said. “I quit. I’m staying here.”
Gabriel started his inhuman stare at me.
“You’re wrong. Conway does need me,” I said. “Almost dying isn’t going to magically make his life better. You assigned me to him for a reason. Just because you don’t want me here doesn’t change that.”
“We can give him a new guardian.”
I laughed. “You think I trust you yahoos to do that? Where was my guardian when I needed one? What about anyone else who ever needed one? No. I’m here, and I am staying here.”
I didn’t wait for him to reply. I focused on Conway and appeared at the hospital. Finding Conway’s room was harder than it would have been if I could actually asked anyone where it was, but I found it eventually. There were two beds in this particular room, one with Leander and one with Conway, both wrapped in blankets. The stepmomster was there, and John, who looked haggard and stressed, and I wondered how much of that was for Leander and how much of it was for Conway. I thought, now you care? And not for the first time in my life I was a hypocrite.
Conway was conscious but woozy, his thoughts fuzzy and bloated but there.
“I just wanted to practice my skating,” Leander told his mom, who held his hand, sitting the a chair next to him. “I wanted to go to the rink. And I’d already beaten my game! I was bored.”
“It’s okay, honey,” said the stepmomster. “You didn’t do anything bad, okay? We can go skating next weekend.”
“Don’t wanna anymore,” said Leander.
“Is the woman okay?” asked Conway.
John furrowed his brow. “Who?”
“The woman,” said Conway. “The one that got me out of the lake. Is she okay, too?”
I smiled. Felt happy. This sure changes things. No wonder Gabriel showed up. I could be in deep, deep shit. But I was smiling.
“Son,” said John. “There wasn’t a woman. The firemen pulled you out after you’d floated back up. It was a miracle you weren’t carried away by a current.”
“It wasn’t a miracle,” Conway insisted. “It was a woman. They didn’t find her? She could still be trapped in the lake! You have to go tell them!”
“Conway, calm down,” said John. “Get some rest. It’s been—it’s been a long day.”
He opened his mouth to argue but I stepped into the room and his eyes lit up. He smiled and almost spoke, but I stopped him with a finger to my lips. He got the hint.
His eyes bulged when I crossed the room and no one else noticed. I touched his hand with mine, not solid this time, but he could feel it.
“It’s okay,” I told him. “You did great, you’re amazing. Everything’s okay.”
We’d talk later. Set up some ground rules. This was new territory, for the both of us.
But now I knew where I stood.
I knew that life wasn’t going to magically get better for Conway after all the novelty of being a hero wore off for him and his family. People don’t drastically change so easily, and it would only be a matter of time before the stepmomster blamed him. But now he’d have me, and I still probably couldn’t do much, but I’d do what I can. I’d see to it that he lived to be an old man, or he’d die trying.
It wasn’t much, but it was something.
We’d manage.
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