Pulse of Heroes (14 page)

“She was picking up things that don't belong
to her, and then had the nerve to try and photograph that vase over
there,” Elliot said, pointing towards the niche.

“I'm sorry,” Michelle said, her voice
shaking. “I just wanted to compare it to something I have at
home.”

Elliot laughed out loud. “You, have something
like that at home?”

Michelle felt her cheeks burning. “Yes, no,
it’s this little thing,” she said while illustrating the shape of
the glass disk with her fingers. Elliot looked at Michelle
quizzing, but Michelle read his expression to mean disbelief, so
she gave up on the disk and tried to save whatever face she still
had. “It’s not like I was going to touch it or steal it, and that’s
the absolute truth. I’m telling the truth,” she said, pleading at
Mr. Meyers. She then mumbled quietly but still loud enough so they
could all hear, “unlike some people around here.”

“What are you talking about?” Elliot asked,
“Are you trying to suggest that I’m lying about something?”

“No, yes, I mean, you haven’t been totally
honest either,” Michelle answered, too fearful to look at his face.
Elliot looked disappointed. He shook his head.

Kahl looked the most confused out of any of
them. He looked at Elliot, then back to Michelle. “Do you two, know
one another?” he asked. Both Elliot and Michelle answered at one
time, Michelle answering ‘yes’ and Elliot saying ‘no’. Then they
each backtracked their answers, with Michelle saying ‘no’ and
Elliot answering ‘yes’.

After that, nobody said anything for quite
some time. It was so quiet that Michelle felt that she would
suffocate under the sheer weight of the atmosphere unless somebody
broke the silence. Just then, they all heard the front door shut
and the four of them turned to watch as Xander appeared coming down
the hallway. The expression on his face did nothing to hide his
alarm and confusion at seeing all of them quietly staring back at
him. Mr. Meyers knew who Xander was, and realized that he had to
take control and salvage the situation. Michelle was his employee,
and she was representing his business. She was behaving erratically
and unprofessionally. He walked over to Michelle, put his hands on
her shoulders and quietly asked her to go wait for him in the van.
Michelle fought to hold back her tears. She felt so embarrassed,
belittled, ashamed. How could things have gotten so out of control
so quickly? How could she be so stupid to do the things she does?
Michelle bent down to pick up her broken cell phone. She glanced up
at Elliot, but he looked away. He hated her, she thought. She was
hopeless, and most likely fired from her first job as well.

Xander didn't say anything as Michelle headed
down the hall towards the door, he just quietly stepped out of the
way to let her pass by. He wondered if he should feel sorry for the
girl and maybe walk her out, but then decided to focus his
attention on Elliot, who’s eyes were glowing like blue fire, his
thoughts millions of miles away.

Michelle walked down the long hallway and
considered that she might be having a nightmare, a horrible dream.
If only she would wake up and have none of this be true. She was
obviously fired she thought, she had nothing left to lose. And with
that thought in mind her naturally stubborn streak refused to let
her walk away quietly in defeat. She knew her intentions, and she
knew she was telling the truth. “I’m not lying! And he knows it!”
she shouted back at them, realizing that if by some miracle she
hadn’t lost her job already, she surely would after that. With a
shred of dignity salvaged, she pulled the door shut behind her.

Michelle felt as crushed as her cell phone.
When she got home that evening she ran upstairs to her room and
locked the door behind her. She had held herself together even
after being told that she was dismissed from her position. She
apologized profusely, and told Mr. Meyers that she completely
understood, and would do the same if she were in his shoes. Mr.
Meyers looked at her sympathetically and said that she needed to
learn not to let her personal relationships influence the way she
conducted herself at work. Michelle tried to explain that she
didn't have a relationship with Elliot, but he just smiled and told
her that at his age he was an expert in relationships. After all,
he had been married for 37 years. He even offered to give her
another chance; perhaps she could come back in the summer. Michelle
thanked him, and in a very discreet manner asked him not to tell
her father. The last thing she wanted her parents to know was that
she had any involvement with the students at the new school. They
would be upset and her mom would freak out, guaranteed.

With the bedroom door locked, Michelle leaned
back against it, took a few deep breaths, and then burst out
crying. She heard her parents run up the stairs and she tried to
quiet down her sobs, but it was no use. She heard her mom knocking
quietly on the door, asking if she was okay. Her father's voice
sounded equally distressed when he told her that if she needed to
talk they could talk about anything. “I'm okay,” is what Michelle
tried to say, but instead it sounded like “I'm oh oh k k eyy”. She
was practically heaving, that's how loud she was crying. “I, I just
need some, time alone.” Her parents gave her the privacy she
needed, although her father didn't seem convinced that that was the
best thing to do. He had never heard his daughter cry like that; it
scared him. But Michelle's mom knew better. She recognized those
cries. Those were the pangs of the heart, the kind that only a girl
could experience. She also knew that somewhere in-between the
weeping and the gasping, a boy’s name hung onto every tear.

When Michelle woke up it was to the sound of
her alarm clock beeping. She didn't want to open her eyes. If she
did, she would have to face another day, and she didn't want to.
All she wanted was to hide beneath her blankets. She wanted to hide
from herself. The alarm clock kept on beeping and even Crumb was
sitting up alert, his face mere inches away from hers, with his
long whiskers tickling her nose. Michelle eventually opened her
eyes to tiny little slits and immediately saw large kitty eyes
staring right back at her. She had no choice but to smile. There he
was, her little friend who she didn't need to speak to or explain
anything to. He was with her no matter what she felt like. She
gathered Crumb up against her chest and turned the alarm off.
Michelle felt awful, not just emotionally but also physically. Her
rib cage was tight and her throat felt raw. She skipped breakfast
just like she had dinner the night before, and managed to leave the
house without anyone noticing her. She was too embarrassed to face
her parents after crying like that. But she also didn't know what
to tell them, as she herself still wasn't sure what exactly had
happened.

School life didn't feel real for Michelle
anymore. There she was in US History class talking about the Boston
Tea Party and worrying about remembering all the important names
and dates when in fact none of that mattered anymore. That was
history, practically fantasy, and she was pretending to care. Yet
somewhere out in the real world there was a person who could appear
out of thin air, walk up walls, and had eyes that glowed like the
ocean currents.

During recess, Michelle actually asked to be
left alone. It took Samantha less than a second to recognize that
Michelle had been crying. Michelle's eyes were bloodshot. It made
Samantha feel sad, that her friend shut her out rather than confide
in her.

By Friday afternoon, Michelle had no choice
but to tell her parents that she was taking a ‘break’ from work.
She eluded her mother’s gaze when asked if this so-called ‘break’
was a personal choice. Michelle was no fool; she knew that her
mother knew that she had been fired. She also knew that her mother
knew that she knew, but had chosen to let it slide. Michelle was
grateful for that.

“Mom, it wasn't anything real bad,” Michelle
said quietly. “I can go back this summer if I want.” That was a
good enough answer for her mother. She trusted her; she knew that
she had raised Michelle well enough. Michelle was 17 now, and she
was going to let her work out her own problems.

“Michelle, if you ever need to talk about
this or anything else, you know you can come to me, always,” her
mom said.

Michelle gave her a tired smile, “Yes, I know
mom. I just need to figure out things for me.”

Although Michelle spent most of the weekend
studying and listening to music upstairs in her room, it seemed
that everything reminded her of what had happened on Tuesday. She
was doing her Italian homework and remembered the books written in
Italian that she had leafed through at the Hekademos. She was
studying the US states from a map and thought about the old-looking
map that hung in a glass frame on the hallway wall next to the
office. Some stupid 80’s song on the radio talked about “secrets
that you keep”, and she thought about Elliot. It was driving her
crazy. When she couldn't take it anymore, she went downstairs to
ask her mother if she needed help with anything. Michelle needed to
keep her mind occupied or else it wandered to places where she
didn't want it to go, and every time it did it kept hurting her
again and again.

Michelle helped her mom with the regular
housekeeping and then went outside and helped her dad clear some of
the mulch and dead leaves that had collected in and around the
gutters. Later on, she helped her mom fold laundry in her parents’
bedroom. Michelle stayed pretty quiet while her mom talked about
maybe taking a trip to Hungary that summer, if they could afford it
of course. Michelle had never been there, and although she was of
Hungarian descent through her mother's side, she had never thought
much about it. Several times a year they would get a Christmas card
or a letter from her great aunt, and even the odd phone call once
in a while, but that was pretty much the extent of her connection
with the ‘old country’.

While they were discussing the subject, her
mother happened to be folding a pair of Michelle's jeans. When she
shook them out, something fell out of the pocket and rolled across
the floor. Both Michelle and her mom followed the item with their
eyes and watched it spin and eventually settle by the wall. Shoot,
Michelle thought; she immediately knew what it was and went after
it. “Mom, I completely forgot about this. One of the Christmas
ornaments broke while I was hanging it and I threw the other pieces
away. I kept this little piece because I thought it was really
pretty. I hope you don't mind.”

To Michelle's relief, her mom didn't seem
upset or disturbed. She took the little disk between her fingers
and smiled. “This old thing?” she said, while looking at it up
against the sunlight that was coming through the window. “I found
it years ago when we first bought this house. I found it in the
backyard, no not the backyard, in the woods behind it. At first I
thought it was a gemstone and I took it to a couple of jewelry
stores, but to my disappointment they told me that it was just
glass. I thought it was pretty and I had this great idea about
making homemade ornaments, and I used it on that one, the only one
I ever made. I wasn’t too gifted with three-dimensional forms.
Here,” her mother said, handing the disc back to Michelle, “it's
yours if you want it.” Michelle was about to put the glass disk
back in her pocket because the last thing she wanted to do was look
at it. It reminded her of everything she was trying to forget. But
her mother stopped her.

“Maybe you shouldn't carry it in your pocket.
I think I recall that at one point somebody told me they thought it
looked like ancient glass, Roman glass to be exact, but I doubt
that very much. Anyway, it's up to you.”

Back upstairs in her room, after Michelle put
her clean laundry away she sat on her bed and examined the little
glass disk more closely. She wasn't sure if she was glad or sad
that it was back in her possession. It did however look strikingly
similar to the material that the vase was made out of. Her memory
had served her right. Michelle wished that she had succeeded in
taking a photo of the vase that day, but the screen on her phone
was now completely dead. If there was a photo in the cell’s memory,
she had no way to view it. Great, she thought, there she was
thinking about the whole thing all over again. The more time she
spent looking at the disc, the angrier she got. She was angry at
Elliot. Angry that he had accused her of doing something bad,
something malicious. And it was entirely his fault that she had
lost her job. His actions were completely rude and uncalled for,
especially in light of the fact that she had kept her word when he
had asked her not to tell anyone about their previous meeting. He
had made her look like a complete fool, like a liar or a thief,
without any means to defend herself.

After a while, Michelle was fuming. She just
didn't care anymore. Who cares what he thought about her; he was a
complete jerk, good-looking or not. Michelle got up from her bed
and went to her desk. She was looking for something, opening every
drawer and shuffling items from one place to another. With great
satisfaction she found what she was looking for. An envelope. She
sat down at her desk, wrapped the little blue disk in a sheet of
binder paper and inserted it into the envelope. She had no problem
remembering the address. After all, he lived on the same street as
she did: #84 Argos Vela Way, Willow’s Creek, California. That's all
she wrote on the envelope, using a thick black marker.

Although it was mid-March, it rained that
entire week. Every day after school Michelle sat at her desk in her
room with the intention of doing her homework, but she spent most
of the time just staring at the different patterns the raindrops
created on her window, and wondering if Elliot ever received the
glass disk she sent. She battled herself inside her mind, ordering
herself to stop thinking about him because she didn't care. She
tried to convince herself again and again that it was just
curiosity, nothing more.