Earth/Sky (Earth/Sky Trilogy) (19 page)

The bandage smelled vaguely of that bizarre
scent Zakia called a perfume. I entered the ingredients I recalled into the search engine, wondering if some company would come up in response. The first hits were recipes for rosemary pork chops and beef tenderloin with a balsamic reduction. Beneath those was a link to an article on natural food preservatives. I clicked on it and ate while it loaded.

On the page, the list started with
rosemary. Using rosemary extract was a very old-fashioned method of preserving food, made by the distillation of rosemary leaves. It preserved the color of a food by preventing oxidation.

Underneath
rosemary extract was vinegar, which contained acetic acid. It was the acid that killed microbes and hampered spoilage. Sugar inhibited the growth of bacteria and microorganisms by drawing out its water; salt had been used since ancient times to preserve meat. Like sugar, it also dehydrated bacteria and protected from molds and yeasts. Picking at my brain, I searched the other items from that note in the crushed box. Each one landed me on some variation of the same information. Prevents spoilage. Resists molds and moisture. Anti-fungal. Anti-bacterial. Anti-yeast. Promotes preservation.

These were not the makings of a perfume, and I read a list of those ingredients to make sure.
What in the world were they trying to keep from spoiling in the shop? But the note had said to inject it into a vein once a week, making it sound like this was a medication for a person. Yet I really didn’t think anyone was about to inject an ampoule full of preservatives into their body unless . . .

I
stopped eating my eggs and went very cold, thinking of mental derangements and weird serial killers who kept bodies after death for gross reasons. Every freakish bit of news I’d ever read flashed through my mind. The shop could just be a cover for whatever craziness was actually being done there. But why use all of these old, rustic means of preserving something when better synthetic ones existed now? Perhaps the substance in the ampoules was something used to make illegal drugs, yet Lotus was twelve years old! She couldn’t be involved in that.

I shook myself and returned to rationality.
The strangeness of Jaden and Zakia, the lack of pictures, people only ever seeing one at a time . . . that was indeed bizarre. But I wouldn’t ever believe that something evil was going on. I’d never gotten a creepy feeling from Zakia and if there were missing people or unsolved murders in this area, I would have known. Spooner was Spooner, a backwards, two-bit town about twenty years behind or more in technology. It wasn’t a crime capitol, and no matter what happened here, I couldn’t believe that someone as sweet as Zakia was involved. And no one, not even a fallen angel I trusted implicitly, would convince me that Zakia didn’t have a soul.

So the explanation was something else, something
likely very innocent, and it wasn’t my business. I wasn’t going to let my imagination run away with me, especially when I was home alone and would be until tomorrow evening. It just sounded like a great way to talk my mind into nightmares.

Still, I wondered.

Chapter Eight: The Wings

“Jessa!”

Gritting my teeth, I forced a smile to Nash. I didn’t know how many ways I could indicate that I wasn’t interested before he got the message. My fear that he was a guy who took the pestering approach to wear a girl down was spot-on. I could barely walk from one class to another without him appearing to escort me there. It was really getting on my nerves.

Here he was again
on Monday, popping up as I traveled from fourth period to the cafeteria to ask if I wanted to hang out in the Hubbard’s parking lot to watch him and some friends do skateboard tricks after school. Feeling like I was back in junior high, I said, “No thanks.”

“And then we were figuring we’d hit Forks and Spooners for their shakes.
Have you been there?” he went on obliviously. “They’re really good. I always get the chocolate. The barbecue ribs are awesome, too. And they’ve got deer rumps hanging on the wall over some of the booths. It’s hysterical.”

“I’ve got plans after school,” I lied.
Plans
were just driving home as fast as possible and hiding in the house while ignoring the phone. Hearing titters of laughter, I turned to find the source and stopped dead in my tracks as Nash bent down to tie his shoe. Cadmon was standing barefoot on the concrete, searching the faces of the people around him in confusion.

All he had on was
dark blue sweatpants, just like in the fairy rings. It looked like he’d walked through sprinklers, because dashes of water were on his pants and narrow chest. Considerably shorter than everyone else, students were laughing at the odd picture he made. That annoyed me. He looked like a lost child and people were making fun when they should have asked if he needed help. They pressed on to the cafeteria and left him there. Only a curious teacher came forward and said, “Honey, where are your clothes?”

Cadmon shrank away from the woman, his eyes wide with fright.
Ditching Nash, I rushed over the concrete and called, “Cadmon!”

When he
saw me, the fear turned into a smile. “Adriel?”

“You’re looking for Adriel?” I asked.

“Adriel,” he breathed, and wound his olive arms around my waist.

“Do you know him?” the teacher asked.

“He’s the younger brother of a student here. I’ll find him.” Worried he was going to break out with his wings right here on campus, I whispered as the teacher walked away, “Keep your wings hidden, okay? We’ll find Adriel.”

Reappearing at my side, Nash asked a little competitively,
“Who’s this?”

“Cadmon Graystone,” I said
shortly. He was twelve years old, for God’s sake, or at least he looked like it. Nash’s eyes widened, clearly reviewing all of the rumors he had ever heard about the boy. Cadmon and I walked together to the cafeteria, where at the doorway I strained to see past the sea of humanity to our table. Adriel was there, but facing away from the door. He didn’t hear me call his name.

Bending down, I said, “Cadmon, he’s on the other side of the room.
Do you want to come with me or wait here?”

“
I fell,” Cadmon said in a very soft voice.

“I know,” I said.
I guessed he was coming with me, since when I stepped in, he came along still glued to my side. Bellowing, “Excuse me!” to guys who were standing around in the middle of the aisle for no reason, I pushed through until we were at the back table.

“Adriel!” Cadmon cried
in happiness. Adriel jerked around and leaped up in shock to see his little brother. Everyone at the table looked up with surprise at the half-naked boy. London muffled a laugh when Savannah nudged her with a shake of her head.

“We should go outside,” I said pointedly.
Taking one of my hands in his wet one, Cadmon extended his other hand to Adriel. We walked out that way with Cadmon between us, leaving Nash to look irritated. People pointed and whispered, with a boy shouting gleefully, “New dress code!” and whipping off his shirt to groans and shrieks about his hairy chest.

Once hidden around the building, Adriel crouched down and
clutched Cadmon’s upper arms. “Cadmon, what are you doing here? You didn’t show anyone your-”

“He didn’t,” I h
astened to say. “He just wanted to find you.”

Adriel
sank back and relaxed. “Okay. Does Drina know where-”

“I fell,” Cadmon said.
“And you fell. Adriel, why are you here at school?”

Smiling a little, Adriel looked up to me.
“This is good. Progress. He’s starting to notice the world around him.”

“Did you do this?
After you went home with Drina?” I asked.

“Yeah.
I started to be curious about where Kishi was going during the day. She said I was like a puppy tagging along at her heels. I don’t really remember it that well.” Adriel gestured to the campus. “Cadmon, this is a school. I come here to learn and to see people. Do you want to look around with us?”

“We should dry him off first,” I said.
Going into the girls’ restroom, I helped myself to a thick stack of paper towels. Adriel called out to his brother to stop, but Cadmon came in behind me, not understanding the symbol for girls. Since no one else was in there, I dried him off and ushered him back out. Once Adriel’s sweatshirt was hanging down loosely over his chest, Cadmon took our hands again and we showed him around.

A classroom door was open with no one inside, so we let him peek.
He cocked his head and I wondered what it was like in his head. “This must be very strange to you, Cadmon.”

“Kishi?” he called hopefully to the empty desks.

“Kishi goes to a different school,” Adriel explained.

“Taurin?”

“He’s at work.”

“Jessa?”
It was a joke, since I was beside him. He laughed and broke away from us to explore the room. Pounding his hands on the whiteboard as he ran along it, he turned to examine a desk in the front row.

“You have a knack for finding my brother,” Adriel said.

“He just appears,” I said. “It’s nothing to do with me.”

We watched him run his finger along the bar connecting a desk to a chair.
Then he ducked underneath the desktop and wriggled into the seat. There he sat, tapping his hands on the wood like it was a drum. For the briefest moment, an echo of that celestial music caught all three of us. Adriel and I came back to ourselves at once, but Cadmon looked out into space. Suddenly absent from himself, he stopped tapping and listened to the quiet.

“It must be nice to see him come out
of his shell,” I said.

“One day
, I hope he’ll be a good friend to me,” Adriel said. “It’s a gift every time a fallen angel joins us, whether they stay or not. They are the few who understand.”

Cadmon began to weep with deep, heart-wrenching sobs that wracked his small frame.
I went into the room and pulled him from the desk into my arms, wanting to weep with him even if I only felt a fraction of what he did. Adriel dialed nine on the classroom phone and then his home number to tell Drina that he was bringing Cadmon back. She hadn’t even known he was gone, since the last time she checked on him, he had been asleep in his room. As that was less than twenty minutes ago, he must have flown part of the way to the high school.

“Come on, sweetie,” I whispered to Cadmon, who walked with us through the
school and the parking lot to Adriel’s car. I settled him into the seat and did his seatbelt while he looked glassily into space. “Goodbye, Cadmon.”

As I closed the door, I heard a very faint, “Goodbye, Jessa.”
Then I went to my mail truck to eat my lunch, unable to deal with Nash.

I didn’t expect Adriel to return for sixth period, and he didn’t.
Sadly the project of the day was meant for two, so I was paired with another student in the class. His name was Luke Stamson, a reedy junior with dark hair and horrific acne. The assignment was to describe each other physically in two paragraphs and then read them out loud.

Almost instantly, the mood in the class plummeted.
None of us looked like supermodels, nor did we want our flaws to be the focus of the period. A girl in the middle of the classroom called over Mr. Rogers because she wanted her cup size left off the description. The guy she was paired with snickered childishly and Mr. Rogers announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ll leave things like chests and butts off it, all right? I shouldn’t have to tell that to people of your age.”

It was an assignment sure t
o backfire and divide the class. Girls argued about being described as pimply and a fat boy at the table in front of me said defensively to the guy who was his partner, “Come on, don’t be such a dick. I’m not a walrus.” Another boy was explaining acidly that the scar extending up from his lip to his nostril was from surgery to repair a cleft lip, not a harelip.

I made my description of Luke as bland and inoffensive as possible.
He wasn’t particularly good-looking, but that didn’t need to be part of my paragraphs. Describing him as six feet tall even though he clearly wasn’t and not mentioning his acne, I wrote about the clothes he had on and that he had a nice smile and black-framed glasses. I didn’t want an A so badly on this assignment that I was going to hurt his feelings and make an enemy like many of the other students were doing. The fat boy got up, swung his backpack over his shoulder, and stalked out of the classroom. His partner giggled to himself. A girl cried to her partner, “Don’t call me a hunchback! That’s really offensive. It’s just scoliosis, okay?”

“People,” Mr. Rogers chided while the class fell apart.
“Let’s be mature here.”

“Because harelip is
rude
,” the boy with the scar roared to the girl beside him. “I can’t believe you wrote two whole paragraphs about a small scar!” He jerked the paper out from under her hand, balled it up, and threw it in the trash. She shouted for the teacher.

If Nash got here early to walk me to my locker, he was going to see me sitting with Luke and be suspicious.
I had to put a stop to this, be direct where hints were failing. Even if he’d been as handsome as Adriel, he’d lost his chance the second he leaned down the first day of school and belched in my ear. I didn’t think I had high standards for romance, expecting jewels and fancy dinners and rides in private jets, but the bar was still way over Nash’s head.

“I’m not six feet
tall,” Luke said quietly when we traded papers.

“You look pretty close,” I lied.
He had done the same as me, an inoffensive essay that described my hair color, eye color, and clothes. The girl with scoliosis claimed the restroom pass beside the whiteboard and left.

Mr. Rogers asked for volunteers to read their descriptions and
only four hands went up. Even the more cruel students had gleaned that the eviscerations of their partners made them vulnerable to having their own descriptions read out loud for everyone’s entertainment. The jerk in front of me read his about the overweight boy who walked out. Some people laughed, but I didn’t. When the four people who were willing to read had finished, Mr. Rogers pleaded for more. Then he threatened when no hands went up, and eventually decided it might be fun if he read them out loud and all of us guessed whom the essay was talking about. We passed them to the front, where he read out two more and looked annoyed when almost no one ventured a guess. The girl came back with the restroom pass, her eyes red and puffy.

When the bell rang, I was relieved to go.
I escaped the room and headed for my locker, collecting Savannah along the way since hers was near mine. Cars piled up in the parking lot, everyone aiming for the exit and honking to encourage the people at the outlet to move faster. Boys chortled and sprayed each other with water bottles on the grass. If I’d closed my eyes, the noise and honking could have been Bellangame High.

“That’s so awful!” Savannah
said about Mr. Rogers’ assignment. Her hand went up to her nose and shielded it. “God, I know what my partner would have fixated on. I was going to take creative writing in the spring, but now I think I’ll take art.”

Nash came around
the corner to my locker and smiled winningly. “I won’t take no for an answer.” He held up his hand at me. “No, no, no, Jessa, that’s all you say, and you’re going to miss out on
life
because you’re still saying no. Come on, we’re going out. Let’s have some fun!” Savannah looked on with jealousy.

“Nash!” I said in exasperation, but a voice overrode mine to say, “Sorry, not today, Nash, she’s going out with me.”

Adriel was behind us, offering his arm. I shut my locker door and took it without a second thought. We walked away with Nash and Savannah staring after us. The silver car was at the curb just outside of the school. Opening the door for me, Adriel shut it after I climbed inside.

The car whisked us away from campus.
I didn’t care where we were going or when I’d be back for my mail truck; I was happy to be with him. “You missed a horrific creative writing class.”

“I tried to come back, but Cadmon kept following.
He thinks that he should be at school,” Adriel said.