Her hold was like a vise around my waist as we headed for the car. She told me to close my eyes and spoke words of encouragement, but I knew they were just as much of a lie as the calm was. I’d looked over her shoulder. I’d seen what she saw. The splinter in the sky was now circular, the clouds around it swirling like an angry tornado.
With a loud crack, the wind restarted. It picked us up and threw us to the side. Mom lost her footing and we crashed to the ground. But she didn’t give up. Crawling on her knees, she fought the windstorm with all her strength. We were almost to the car, her hand straining for the door handle, when she stopped. I heard soft gasps as she disentangled my limbs and tried to shove me under the car. I focused on the tears staining her cheeks, on her hair falling over her face, on her eyes wide with heart-wrenching fear. The last word she uttered was no more than a whisper.
“Hide,” she said, a microsecond before she was ripped away.
I’d been cleaving on to her shirt and was jerked forward with the force. I tripped and fell, the space where she once stood so completely empty. So void of human existence.
The winds screamed around me when I crawled to my knees and looked up to search for her. But a beast stood before me instead. A monster as tall as a tree. He had thick black scales that glistened in the sun. Claws as long as my legs. Teeth as sharp as a snake’s fangs. He studied me for a solid minute, and my hands curled into fists. My jaw welded together as I fought the sting of dirt and hair whipping into my eyes.
Then the strangest thing happened. He dematerialized. He became fog, like a dark, glittering mist, and I breathed him in. His essence was hot and acidic. It burned my throat as I swallowed him, scorched my lungs as I inhaled until he was no longer, and we were one.
And then I understood.
“No!”
We turned and saw a man I didn’t recognize running toward us. A sight we found most curious.
“No!” he yelled over the wind, skidding to a stop beside us, falling to his knees. He had pale brown hair and pale blue eyes and skin the color of chalk. And he seemed quite unpleasant. “No,” he said through clenched teeth, “I summoned you, dammit. Not her.”
He was screaming in our face and we didn’t like it. We looked over, found a stick, and decided to stab him. With a lightning-quick thrust, we sank the piece of wood into his abdomen. Part of us was surprised at how easily the stick penetrated the material of his shirt, the muscles of his abdominal wall. The other part was pleased.
The dark spirits no longer rushed past us. If they got close, they would turn suddenly and head in a different direction, like fish in an aquarium. We watched as the gate in the sky closed with a wave of our hand. We watched as the wind died down and the countryside settled into complacency. We watched as the man staggered away from us, his eyes wide with fear and disbelief.
Then we lay down and slept. And while we slept, we forgot.
No, I forgot.
For ten years, I buried that memory—the last memory I had of my parents—until a chain of events so unfathomable, so unbelievable, brought it crashing through the surface of my consciousness. And with it, the knowledge of what I’d done.
I’d led my parents to their own deaths. I’d pointed the way. Begged them to go. How would I make amends? How would I ever learn to live with what I’d done?
And how would I ever find my way back to normal?
FUZZY EDGES
“Is this class ever going to end?”
My best friend, Brooklyn, draped her upper body across her desk in a dramatic reenactment of Desdemona’s death in Othello. She buried her face in a tangle of arms and long black hair for effect. It was quite moving. And while I appreciated her freedom to express her misgivings about the most boring class since multicelled organisms first crawled onto dry land, I wondered about her timing.
“Miss Prather,” our Government teacher, Mr. Gonzales, said, his voice like a sharp crack in the silence of study time.
Brooklyn jerked upright in surprise. She glanced around as our classmates snickered, either politely into their hands or more rudely outright.
“Is there something you’d like to share with the class?”
She turned toward Mr. Gonzales and asked, “Did I say that out loud?”
The class erupted in laughter as Mr. G’s mouth formed a long narrow line across his face. Miraculously, the bell rang and Brooklyn couldn’t scramble out of her seat fast enough. She practically sprinted from the room. I followed at a slower pace, smiling meekly as I walked past Mr. G’s desk.
Brooklyn stood waiting for me in the hall, her face still frozen in surprise.
“That was funny,” I said, tugging her alongside me. She fell in line as we wound through the crush of students, fighting our way to PE. I wasn’t sure why. I didn’t particularly enjoy having my many faults and numerous shortcomings put on display for all to see, so why I would fight to get there was beyond me.
“No, really.” She tucked an arm through mine. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”
I couldn’t help but smile despite the weight on my chest, a weight that seemed endless. “Which is why that was funny.”
I did that a lot lately. Smiled. It was easier than explaining why I wasn’t.
“You don’t get it,” she said. “This is exactly what I’ve been talking about. Everything is weird ever since … you know.”
I did know. Ever since Jared Kovach came to town. Ever since he’d saved my life after a huge green delivery truck slammed into me. Ever since we’d found out he was the Angel of Death and had been sent not to save my life but to take it. To tweak the timing. To take me sooner than nature—or a huge green delivery truck—had intended.