Locked (The Heaven's Gate Trilogy) (6 page)

But just what did Michael
see when he looked at me?  Was it even possible that he could be as intrigued
with me as I was with him?  Cautiously, almost afraid of what my appraisal
would reveal, I set my brush aside and took a hard look at myself in the
mirror.

I gathered the excess
fabric of my old-fashioned nightgown in a ball in my fist, pulling it behind me
to reveal the body that had been swallowed up by billowing folds.  I had the
long, lean line of a runner.  I turned sideways and saw the slight rise of my
breasts, the way my waist cut in over delicate hips.  I knew my thighs were
strong and muscular from my hours of pounding the treadmill.  Thunder thighs, I
thought, grimacing.  I let my fist open and the gown swirled about me again,
hiding my body away. 

I turned forward and
examined my face, leaning in to get close to the mirror.  My eyes were a deep
chocolate brown and almond shaped; they would have given me an almost exotic
look if it hadn’t been for the liberal sprinkling of freckles over my high
cheekbones.  My skin was pale and looked even more so when framed by my long,
straight brown hair, which shielded me like a curtain from the unwelcome looks
of strangers.

I ran my fingers through
my hair and swept it over my shoulders.  Sighing, I gathered it up in one hand
and turned around, taking a mirror in my other hand.

My Mark.

If I hadn’t hated it, if
it hadn’t symbolized everything that was wrong in my life, I would have thought
it beautiful.  It seemed to blossom from the base of my skull, the delicate
teal markings spreading out like tendrils.  I let my hair fall and traced my
finger along the Mark, wondering again what it meant.

“It marks me as a misfit,
that’s all,” I sighed to myself, drawing my hair back around me.

I shook my head.  There
was nothing in the mirror that could explain why someone like Michael Boyd had
taken an interest in me today.

“Better not to get your
hopes up.  He’s probably just being nice to you because he felt sorry for you,”
I said like a mantra.  But still, in the last moments before sleep stole over
me, my thoughts returned to Michael, and I fell asleep with a grin on my face.

Chapter 2 – Brand New Friend

I soon settled into the
comforting anonymity of the large suburban high school.  Even after the “new girl”
smell had worn off me, Michael stayed close.  I guess since our lockers were
right next to each other, we had almost every class together and were both new,
it was only natural that we should become friends.  But the delight and
surprise I felt every morning when the bus disgorged me and I found him
standing on the sidewalk, waiting for me, remained strong.

I knew he didn’t like me
romantically.  Why would he?  I was plain at best, skinny and not even remotely
stylish.  So when I started noticing the popular girls circling him, I figured
my days were numbered.  The worst were the cheerleaders.  They were hardly
subtle, but I was impressed by their ingenuity.  It had all started with
Jessica Smythe, the Varsity Basketball Cheer Captain.

“Whoopsie!” she’d giggled
when she “fell” off the stepladder as she was hanging banners cheering on the
basketball team, ingeniously landing right in Michael’s arms. 

“Oh, Michael,” she
drawled, fanning herself dramatically, then throwing her arms around his
shoulders, “you make me feel so tiny when you’ve got me in your arms like
this.”

“Maybe you should eat
more,” Michael said, oblivious to her flirtation.  He peeled her arms off of
his neck and unceremoniously dumped her back on the floor.  She stumbled
backwards, taken off guard.  “Take a tip from Hope, here, she can really pack
it in,” he said, tilting his head toward me.

A titter ran through the
crowd that had quickly assembled to watch the scene.  I blushed, horrified that
he’d commented on my eating habits.  Jessica’s mouth hung open in astonishment
as Michael resumed walking. 

“C’mon, Hope,” he called
behind him. 

I ran to catch up,
looking over my shoulder at the astonished Jessica whom he’d left alone in the
middle of the crowd.  She screwed up her face like a spoiled child and stuck
her tongue out at me.

Her failure was like a
gauntlet thrown to the entire cheerleading squad.  Our universe of classes
didn’t overlap much, so they had to squeeze their efforts into the periods
between classes and before and after school, and lunch.  But that didn’t stop
them from making the most of their meager opportunities.  Sometimes I was
witness to their efforts, sometimes I just heard about them second-hand. 

It started with the
predictable “meet cute” bumps in the hallway but rapidly escalated when their
efforts proved to no avail.  One time, they bullied the Dunwoody Wildcat mascot
into giving up his post. 

“Miii-chael,” one
overly-made-up blonde wheedled Michael over our lunch table, holding the
oversized, tiger-like head of the mascot’s costume on one jutted hip and
pouting while the entire squad backed her up, bouncing bowed and be-ribboned
ponytails up and down in unison.  “We need your help!  We can’t play this
Friday without our mascot -- it’s a tradition!”

Michael took the costume
from the cheerleader, who looked down at me with a derisive look of triumph. 
Michael tossed the head in the air as if it were no heavier than a softball and
looked down the table. 

“Hey, you,” he called to
one spectacularly unathletic freshman. The geeky boy looked up from his lunch
tray, surprised.

“Do you want to be the
Wildcat this Friday?”  The geeky boy shook his head excitedly, pushing up his
glasses.

“Great!  Here you go,”
Michael said, tossing the head to the boy, who promptly fell off of his seat with
the effort of catching it.

“Problem solved,” Michael
said, re-taking his chair.  “Ladies,” he dismissed them as they shrieked with
horror and swarmed around the boy, trying to reclaim the costume.  I stole a
glance at Michael.  He seemed oblivious to the commotion he’d just caused.

On Valentine’s Day, the
entire squad decorated his locker with pink, red and lacy white hearts,
spraying the entire thing with so much perfume that we had to wheeze our way
through the locker bay.  But it didn’t stop there.  The cheerleading squad had
sold singing “Cupid-Grams” for charity – a few dollars got you candy, a
Valentine and a singing telegram, delivered to your true love in class.  So
every hour, a scantily clad cheerleader dressed as Cupid or Venus serenaded an
amused Michael, delivering professions of love from one of her teammates.  By
the end of the day, the Cupids had gotten increasingly hostile as Michael
refused to let them sit in his lap or give him a kiss.  In our last class, after
finding Michael unresponsive, the frustrated messenger had simply dug around in
her fake bag of arrows and slapped the other Valentines down on everyone’s
desk, forgoing any singing.  As she pulled the last letter out, her eyes
narrowed.

“Who would send you a Valentine?”
she said acidly as she looked at me, holding the envelope between her fingers
as if it were a piece of used tissue or a dead mouse.              “Here.”  She
let it flutter down to my desk and turned on her heel to stomp out of the room,
forgetting to give me my candy or a song.

I looked at the red
envelope.  “Hope Carmichael, period 6, Mrs. Mormon,” was written in flawless
cursive script across the front.  I traced the silver ink and realized I didn’t
know what Michael’s handwriting looked like.

My heart was thumping.  I
shot Michael a look, but couldn’t catch his eye. The class was resuming its
conjugations so quickly, I shoved the envelope into my back pocket, saving it
for later.

It was burning a hole in
my pocket the entire walk to our lockers and out to Michael’s Charger.  We were
unusually quiet during the ride home.  I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I saw
Michael darting me curious glances, his eyes deep as the sky as he watched me.

When he stopped in my
driveway, he reached across my lap to open the door.  I held my breath, every
inch of skin tingling with the awareness of how close he was.  He paused with
one hand on the handle, fixing me with a deep gaze.  His eyes seemed to
sparkle, shifting between different shades of blue as if they were waves dancing
in the sun.

“Aren’t you going to open
your Valentine?”

I drew a shaky breath and
forced a laugh.  “Oh, I’m sure it’s nothing.  Probably a mistake.”

He arched one eyebrow and
grinned, a deep dimple puckering his chin.  “Um-hmm.  A mistake.  Whatever, Carmichael.”

Only then did he lift the
latch, allowing me to flee from his car.

I placed the red envelope
on my nightstand, where it tempted me throughout the night as I went through
the forced march of environmental science, math, literature and social studies
homework.  Only after I’d packed up my books and gotten into my pajamas did I
allow myself to pick it up.

I sat cross-legged on my
bed and drew a deep breath as I stared at it, lying in my lap.  Finally, I took
it in my hand and ran one trembling finger along the script before flipping the
envelope over to break the seal.  I slid out the card -- an old-fashioned, lacy
heart embossed with roses in shades of cream and pink – and read the verse that
had been hand-lettered on the front: 

I will keep you as the apple of the
eye,

hide you under the shadow of my
wings.

I flipped over the card. 
There was no signature, nothing at all.  I felt my brows knitting together as I
puzzled over the simple lines.  They were familiar – but from where?  And what
did they mean?

I reached under my bed,
pulling out my old Bible, and flipped quickly to
Psalms
.  I trailed a
finger across the page until I found the verses I sought:

Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of
thy wings,

From the wicked that oppress me, from my deadly enemies, who
compass me about,

They are inclosed in their own fat: with their mouth they
speak proudly.

They have now compassed us in our steps: they have set their
eyes bowing down to the earth;

Like as a lion that is greedy of his prey, and as it were a
young lion lurking in secret places.

I stared at the page,
bewildered.  My secret admirer had sent me Bible verses.  But he’d altered it,
turning it from a plea to a promise of protection.  Protection from what?  The
only thing I seemed to need protection from was over-zealous cheerleaders.

Was it a warning?  My
mind raced.  If so, whoever had written it had expected me to recognize the
verse and go to the Bible to discover the rest.  But who at my school would
even know I would be familiar enough with the Bible to pluck this verse out, to
recognize it and find the words that came after it? 

Nobody
, the little voice in my head
reasoned. 
Whoever wrote your card probably saw the quote out of context and
simply copied it out, no greater meaning intended.

But that still left the
question of who had sent the card.  Could it have been Michael?

I blushed, almost ashamed
to admit to myself how much I had wanted it to be from him. But why would he
send me a Valentine, especially one so weird?  No, it couldn’t have been from
Michael. 

Then, I felt all the
blood drain from my face as a more likely culprit occurred to me:  my dad.  How
had he managed to infiltrate the cheerleader’s Cupid sale and send me a card? 
Anger and embarrassment rushed through me at the thought of him, despite all my
attempts, insinuating himself into my new life.

How stupid I was, I
thought, crumpling the delicate card in my fist.  I threw it across the room,
disgusted at my own gullibility.  Of course it had been Dad.  Who else had the
bad habit of tossing Bible verses around to embarrass me?  Swallowing my
disappointment, I turned off my light and curled up in a little ball in my bed,
savoring my misery.

I did the math in my
head.  A little over two months until my birthday.  Then I’d be sixteen. 
Sixteen
and never been kissed,
I thought bitterly.  Kissed?  I’d never so much as
held hands with anybody.  I punched my pillow.  Well, at least Michael doesn’t
seem to like those cheerleaders, I consoled myself.  Having to hang out with
them would be unbearable.  With that last thought to cheer me, I drifted off to
sleep.

*****

The next day, Michael
kept sending me meaningful looks, which I deliberately ignored.  How could I
explain my dad, and the crazy note he’d sent?  Better to just avoid the whole
topic.  I managed to avoid a direct conversation during passing time and
classes, but once we were at lunch, I couldn’t hold him off.

“So, Hope, who was your
card from?” he demanded as he steered me toward our usual table, choosing seats
well removed from the rest of the crowd.

I did my best to look
uninterested and shrugged.  “I dunno.  It wasn’t signed,” I said, pushing my
mashed potatoes around on my tray.

“Secret admirer, eh?”
Michael grinned.  “C’mon, what did it say?”  He seemed way too interested in my
love life.  I looked at him again with suspicion.  Could I have been wrong? 
Could it have been him after all?