Becoming (2 page)

Wishing there was something in the room to
read besides
People
,
Ebony
or girly hair magazines
(couldn’t they have even one
Spin
or
Rolling Stone
?),
she drummed her fingers on her thigh under the smock and prayed for
a quick end.

“Of course I am,” Mrs. B said in her steady
and unhurried tone. She had been reading a new edition of
Southern Living
and paused to look up at Amber. They caught
gazes in the mirror and Mrs. B smiled. “My Little Star has a lot of
shine just waiting for the right polish.”

Amber felt the crinkle of her brow as she
puzzled over the words.

“Oh, yes…speaking of polish, I want to give
her a nice manicure and pedicure,” Lulu said. “My treat.”

“Why, isn’t that sweet of you, Lulu?”

Lord, would this ordeal never end? Amber had
never in her life wanted to be fluffed and pampered like other
females seemed to enjoy so much. It just seemed utterly
impractical. Between karate and playing the guitar, she kept her
nails short and unpolished. What good would a manicure do her? And
the last thing she intended to do was show off her long, skinny,
size-ten feet in some girly sandals. Sneakers had always been her
shoe of choice.

How had she ever allowed herself to be talked
into this? She was absolutely out of her mind for even thinking she
would be able to follow through with going to this pool party.

“Lulu, while you finish up with Amber, I have
a couple of errands to run,” Mrs. B said then, making Amber’s
throat tighten in unease. She set her magazine down and got to her
feet. “I’ll be back in a short while. Try to enjoy your time with
Lulu, Little Star.”

Rather than risk speaking, Amber merely
nodded and watched her walk out. It really wigged her out to be
essentially abandoned in such an anxiety-inducing environment. But
she knew that allowing herself to succumb to high levels of stress
right now was a very bad idea. If her life followed its typical
freakish pattern…well, with her eighteenth birthday soon
approaching, things could get very bad very quickly.

Sitting through an unwanted beauty
appointment would be the least of her problems.

“That’s a great woman right there,” Lulu said
as she got back to her feet and walked over to give Amber’s hair an
assessing look.

“Yeah,” Amber agreed. She checked her eyes in
the mirror, looking for any signs of a forthcoming incident, and
focused on controlling her breathing as her anxiety crested.

“She’ll sure miss you kids.”

Now Amber caught Lulu’s sharp gaze in the
mirror, temporarily forgetting about her other concerns. “Mrs. B
mentioned the trip to Alaska?”

She was referring to the long-awaited
graduation trip that she and Gabriel had been planning for the past
two years. Because she had always wanted to go to Alaska, Gabriel
had vowed to go with her if she passed her finals. In truth, with
as much as she hated school, his promise and dedication to their
shared goal was what had gotten her through her recently-finished
exams. There had been many times when the only thing that motivated
her during the school day was the sight of Gabriel holding his
hands up in the shape of a letter “A,” their silent signal to each
other symbolizing the trip.

The stylist waved Amber’s comment aside.
“‘Course Clara mentioned it. She’s very excited for y’all. But she
realizes this is simply the first step. You and Gabriel are headed
to college. You both have jobs and will probably want to find a
place of your own soon.”

That caused Amber a bit of a jolt. Lulu
hadn’t said “places of your own,” but the singular “place of your
own.” Did Mrs. B think that Amber and Gabriel would get a place
together because they were both going to attend Georgia State
University? Their plans hadn’t progressed that far yet.

She had to admit that the idea held great
appeal to her. She certainly hadn’t dwelled on what would happen
when college started in the fall. But there had been more than a
few moments when she had lain awake in her bedroom wondering what
she would do when Gabriel, who always made friends easily with his
natural affability and charm, inevitably got involved in college
activities that didn’t include her and their lives turned down
their separate paths. Those private thoughts always left an
unmistakable hole in her heart.

Of course, with her birthday approaching, she
knew there was every possibility that their parting of ways could
come even sooner than that.

Every three years since she’d been born, she
experienced what she had come to call an “incident.” The incidents,
being bizarre, unexplainable and just plain creepy, had resulted in
much upheaval in her life. And she admitted to herself that she was
worried—okay, terrified—that the next incident would be the one
that finally severed her relationship with Gabriel, the only friend
she’d ever had. Sure, he’d stuck with her after she experienced the
incident three years ago, but why remind him of her freakishness?
Thus, she was working very hard this year to try and prevent it by
keeping her stress under control.

“You kids have been with her so long, it’ll
be hard for the big goodbye,” Lulu continued, ignorant of Amber’s
racing thoughts. Seemingly satisfied with whatever she saw during
her examination of Amber’s hair, the stylist turned to study her
face. “You could use a facial.”

While her expression was probably not the
equivalent to utter horror, Amber was pretty sure it came close.
But Lulu got her way. Before Amber could argue, she was lying back
in a padded chair with cold goop covering her face and a ridiculous
cap on her head to keep the other goop on her hair contained. She
imagined if Gabriel saw her now that he would not only check her
pulse, but would howl with laughter that would make her want to
punch him in the head.

In an effort to keep her stress contained,
she closed her eyes and allowed the hum of the machines and the
senseless chatter to calm her. When she slipped into sleep, she
once again had The Dream.

She opened her eyes, and he was there. The
handsome male with dark hair and intense gray eyes. The one who
loved her.

Saraqael
.

The unusual and seemingly powerful name
floated through her mind…though Amber knew it wasn’t truly her mind
experiencing this encounter. This memory belonged to another.

He reached out and took her hand where it
rested on her sickbed. “Did the doctors have any news?” he
asked.

She shook her head. It took tremendous
effort. The battle against her rare genetic disease had been long
and arduous, and she was tired. So tired. But she made the effort
of bringing forth a smile for him. He had stood by her for more
than a year now, offering her support first through his position as
a deacon at the community church, and then as her friend.

For a long moment, he didn’t speak. He
simply stared at her. His emotion was obvious. Then he gently
brought her hand up. He brushed that hand with his lips before
holding it briefly against his cheek. It was as though he knew she
would have caressed that cheek if she had only possessed the
strength to do so. The tender action had tears flooding her
vision.

“
I love you more than it should be
possible to love another,” he said, his voice hoarse now as he
battled his grief. “You know that, right?”

She nodded and communicated with her eyes
what she was unable to speak.

“
I know you feel the same, my dearest
heart.” He gave her a brief smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“There are many things that I wish I had told you before. But now,
because I believe it is possible the truths I hold could save your
life, I would tell you everything.”

Her breathing quickened. Hope and fear of
the unknown had her blinking back more tears. She managed a nod.
She had to know.

So, holding her gaze, he spoke his first
truth…

“Amber?”

Blinking as The Dream faded, Amber looked up
and caught Lulu’s stare. The stylist was using a special puff to
remove the facial goop. Amber made a noise in her throat to
indicate she was awake.

But her heart drum-rolled in her chest as the
last words spoken in her sleep state echoed in her mind.

“
I am not human.”

Gabriel leaned under the hood of the 1984
Nissan 300ZX he shared with Amber and withdrew the dipstick from
the engine. Standing and holding it in the sunlight, he assessed
the level and color of the oil. Finding it satisfactory, he
reinserted the dipstick and moved on to changing the air filter,
idly wiping the sweat from his brow with the rag from his back
pocket.

He loved working on cars, especially this
one. He took great pride in the fact that he had turned the ZX into
a rather impressive machine after spending many long hours
refurbishing the rusty heap he and Amber had purchased two years
before. They had gone together to pick the new parts that would
make the car truly theirs, from the black leather bucket seats to
the beauty of a V-6 turbo engine. Now, complete with a spectacular
custom paint job, the car was a jewel.

Green Day’s “Welcome to Paradise” filled the
air, generated by a transistor radio that was older than he was.
The song was one of Amber’s favorites, and made him wonder where
she was as he removed the old air filter and tossed it into a
nearby trash can. She and Mrs. B should have been back from the
karate class by now. Normally, he would have gone with them, as he
helped Amber train for her tournaments and attended every one. But
Mrs. B had asked him to take care of the yard work today since he
and Amber would be at the pool party the next day.

He didn’t imagine they had gone shopping
since Amber hated that particular activity. He wondered if she had
an appointment with her DFCS worker and hadn’t told him about it.
The thought concerned him. Those appointments always caused her a
great deal of anxiety. She never admitted it and wouldn’t be happy
to know he was aware of it, but he knew her very, very well.

Ever since the day he met her nearly six
years ago, he’d felt an overwhelming need to look out for her. She
had a tough outer shell, but he knew the girl inside that shell was
terribly vulnerable. Years of bouncing from foster home to foster
home until she joined him at Mrs. B’s had left Amber scarred and
leery of forming emotional attachments. Outside of him, in point of
fact, she had no close friends at all. He supposed that was why, in
part, he did things like convince her to attend the end-of-the-year
pool party at Devon Brewer’s house with him when he knew she would
rather be just about anywhere else, alone.

As he secured the last of the four bolts to
the lid over the air filter housing, the sound of a vehicle turning
into the drive caught his attention. His mood lifted as he wiped
more sweat from his face and stepped out from under the hood,
expecting to see Mrs. B’s car.

Instead, the hot, early-June sun glinted on a
silver Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder convertible with the top down.
Gabriel’s smile faded as he stifled a groan. Michelle Moran.

Or, as Amber said, “Michelle Moron.” Michelle
had asked him out on a date earlier that year. He still regretted
having said yes. He could only chalk his lapse in judgment up to
the fact that she was the cheerleading captain and last year’s
Homecoming Queen, after all. That, and her long, brown hair
reminded him a bit of—

“Hi, Gabe!” she called as she shut the engine
off.

She was the only one who called him that. He
supposed she thought it made her special to use the nickname. He
knew it made Amber want to sew Michelle’s lips shut with fine
stitches, a thought that now made his own lips twitch in
amusement.

Having celebrated eighteen birthdays under
Mrs. B’s tutelage, he pushed aside his inherent qualms and turned
to his southern, hospitable upbringing. Walking over to her car, he
opened her door for her. “Hey, Michelle. How’s it going?”

“Oh, it’s goin’ perfect,” she said as she
stepped out of the car, lowering her sunglasses a bit to give him a
closer study with her dark eyes. “Especially now.”

“Uh-huh. Can I—” the words lodged in his
throat when she leaned in close as he shut her door, all but
pinning him against the side of her car. Her flowery perfume seemed
cloying and inappropriate in the humid heat. He cleared his throat.
“Uh, would you like to come on up to the porch and get out of the
sun?”

“Sure,” she said, not stepping back. “That’d
be nice. It’s awfully…
hot
. Ain’t it?”

He winced over the grammar, hearing Mrs. B
clucking her tongue in his head. As he was covered in sweat and
automotive grease, he figured a response was unnecessary. Of
course, he had also figured his condition would repel her out of
fear he would stain the white halter top she wore tied just beneath
her breasts. It didn’t. Indeed, she leaned a bit closer, giving him
a snapshot of her robust cleavage.

It was all he could do not to clear his
throat again. “Right. Well, the porch is that way.”

“I know,” she said. Then she finally stepped
back and sauntered up the porch steps, her rhinestone-covered
flip-flops clicking and her denim miniskirt riding up with each
step she took.

Turning from her, he sighed. Then he moved
over to the ZX and slowly lowered the hood, trying to figure out
how he could possibly get rid of her with the least amount of
drama. He suspected if Amber got home while Michelle was still
there that the sparks would fly, and he sure didn’t want to get
caught in the resulting explosion.

As Lulu continued with her persistent beauty
treatments, Amber considered the intensity of The Dream. It had
never progressed that far before. Nor had it ever been so vivid.
And that name…Saraqael. That was new, too. What in the world kind
of name was that?