Hush, Hush

Chapter 30

A door opened and closed. I waited to hear footsteps approach, but the only sound came from the ticking of a clock: a rhythmic, steady pounding through the silence.

The sound began to fade, winding down. I wondered if I would hear it stop completely. I suddenly feared that moment, unsure of what came after.

A much more vibrant sound eclipsed the clock. It was a reassuring, ethereal sound, a melodic dance on air. Wings, I thought. Coming to take me away.

I held my breath, waiting, waiting, waiting. And then the clock began to go in reverse. Instead of slowing, the beat became more certain. A spiral-like liquid formed inside me, coiling deeper and deeper. I felt myself pulled into the current. I was sliding down through myself, into a dark, warm place.

My eyes flickered open to familiar oak paneling on the sloped ceiling above me. My bedroom. A sense of reassurance flooded over me, and then I remembered where I'd been. In the gym with Jules.

A shiver slid over my skin.

"Patch?" I said, my voice hoarse from disuse. I tried to sit up, then gave a muffled cry. Something was wrong with my body. Every muscle, bone, cell was sore. I felt like one giant bruise.

There was movement near the doorway. Patch leaned against the doorjamb. His mouthed was pressed tight and lacked its usual twinge of humor. His eyes held more depth than I'd ever seen before. They were sharpened by a protective edge.

"That was a good fight back in the gym," he said. "But I think you could benefit from a few more boxing lessons."

On a wave, everything came back to me. Tears rolled up from deep inside me. "What happened? Where is Jules? How did I get here?" My voice cracked with panic. "I threw myself off the rafter."

"That took a lot of courage." Patch's voice turned husky, and he stepped all the way inside my bedroom. He closed the door behind him, and I knew it was his way of trying to lock out all the bad. He was putting a divide between me and everything that had happened.

He walked over and sat on the bed beside me. "What else do you remember?"

I tried to piece my memories together, working backward. I remembered the beating wings I'd heard shortly after I flung myself off the rafter. Without any doubt, I knew I'd died. I knew an angel had come to carry my soul away.

"I'm dead, aren't I?" I said quietly, reeling with fright. "Am I a ghost?"

"When you jumped, the sacrifice killed Jules. Technically, when you came back, he should have too. But since he didn't have a soul, he had nothing to revive his body."

"I came back?" I said, hoping I wasn't filling myself with false hope.

"I didn't accept your sacrifice. I turned it down."

I felt a small Oh form at my mouth, but it never quite made it past my lips. "Are you saying you gave up getting a human body for me?"

He lifted my bandaged hand. Underneath all the gauze, my knuckles throbbed from punching Jules. Patch kissed each finger, taking his time, keeping his eyes glued to mine. "What good is a body if I can't have you?"

Heavier teardrops rolled down my cheeks, and Patch pulled me to him, tucking my head against his chest. Very slowly the panic edged away, and I knew it was all over. I was going to be all right.

Suddenly I pulled away. If Patch had turned down the sacrifice, then-

"You saved my life. Turn around," I ordered solemnly.

Patch gave a sly smile and indulged my request. I tucked his T-shirt up to his shoulders. His back was smooth, defined muscle. The scars were gone.

"You can't see my wings," he said. "They're made of spiritual matter."

"You're a guardian angel now." I was still too much in awe to wrap my mind around it, but at the same time I felt amazement, curiosity… happiness.

"I'm your guardian angel," he said.

"I get my very own guardian angel? What, exactly, is your job description?"

"Guard your body." His smile tipped higher. "I take my job seriously, which means I'm going to need to get acquainted with the subject matter on a personal level."

My stomach went all fluttery. "Does this mean you can feel now?"

Patch watched me in silence for a moment. "No, but it does mean I'm not blacklisted."

Downstairs, I heard the quiet rumble of the garage door gliding open.

"My mom!" I gasped. I found the clock on the nightstand. It was just after two in the morning. "They must have opened the bridge.

How does this whole guardian angel business work? Am I the only person who can see you? I mean, are you invisible to everyone else?"

Patch stared at me like he hoped I wasn't serious.

"You're not invisible?" I squeaked. "You have to get out of here!" I made a movement to push Patch off the bed but was cut short by a searing jab in my ribs. "She'll kill me if she finds you in here. Can you climb trees? Tell me you can climb a tree!"

Patch grinned. "I can fly."

Oh. Right. Well, okay.

"The police and fire department were here earlier," Patch said. "The master bedroom will need to be gutted, but they stopped the fire from spreading. The police will be back. They're going to have a few questions. If I had to guess, they already tried reaching you on the cell you called 911 on."

"Jules took it."

He nodded. "I figured. I don't care what you tell the police, but I'd appreciate it if you left me out of it." He slid my bedroom window open. "Last thing. Vee got to the police in time. Paramedics saved Elliot. He's in the hospital, but he'll be all right."

Down the hall, at the bottom of the stairs, I heard the house door shut. My mom was inside.

"Nora?" she called. She tossed her purse and keys on the entry table. Her high heels clicked across the wood floors, almost at a running pace. "Nora! There's police tape on the front door! What is going on?"

I looked to the window. Patch was gone, but a single black feather was pressed to the outer pane, held in place by last night's rain. Or angel magic.

Downstairs, my mom flicked on the hall light, a faint ray of it stretching all the way under the crack at the bottom of my door. I held my breath and counted seconds, assuming I had about two more before-

She shrieked. "Nora! What happened to the banister!

Good thing she hadn't seen her bedroom yet.

The sky was a perfect, rinsed blue. The sun was just starting to fan out across the horizon. It was Monday, a brand-new day, the horrors of the past twenty-four hours far behind. I had five hours of sleep under my belt, and other than the all-over body pain that came from being sucked into death, then spat back out, I felt remarkably refreshed. I didn't want to hang a black cloud over the moment by reminding myself that the police were expected to arrive any minute to take my statement on the night's events. I still hadn't made up my mind what I was going to tell them.

I padded to the bathroom in my nightshirt-mentally blocking the question of how I'd changed into it, since I'd presumably been wearing clothes when Patch brought me home-and sped through my morning routine. I splashed cold water on my face, scrubbed my teeth, and tamed my hair back into a rubber band. In my bedroom, I pulled on a clean shirt, clean jeans.

I called Vee.

"How are you doing?" I asked.

"Good. How are you?"

"Good."

Silence.

"Okay," Vee said in a rush, "I am still totally freaked out. You?"

"Totally."

"Patch called me in the middle of the night. He said Jules roughed you up pretty bad, but that you were okay."

"Really? Patch called you?"

"He called from the Jeep. He said you were asleep in the backseat and he was driving you home. He said he just happened to be driving past the high school when he heard a scream. He said he found you in the gym, but that you'd fainted from pain. The next thing he knew, he looked up and saw Jules jump off the rafter. He said Jules must have snapped, a side effect from all the burdensome guilt he felt over terrorizing you."

I didn't realize I was holding my breath until I let go of it. Obviously, Patch had manipulated a few details.

"You know I'm not buying it," Vee continued. "You know I think Patch killed Jules."

In Vee's position, I'd probably think similarly. I said, "What do the police think?"

'Turn on the TV. There's live coverage right now, Channel Five. They're saying Jules broke into the school and jumped. They're ruling it a tragic teen suicide. They're asking people with information to call the hotline listed at the bottom of the screen."

"What did you tell the police when you first called it in?"

"I was scared. I didn't want to get busted for B and E. So I called in anonymously from a pay phone."

"Well," I said at last, "if the police are ruling it a suicide, I guess that's what happened. After all, this is modern-day America. We have the benefit of forensics."

"You're keeping something from me," said Vee. "What really happened after I left?"

This is where it got stick). Vee was my best friend, and we lived by the motto No Secrets. But some things are just impossible to explain. The fact that Patch was a fallen-turned-guardian angel topped the list. Directly below it was the fact that I'd jumped off a rafter and died, but was still alive today.

"I remember Jules cornering me in the gym," I said. "He told me all the pain and fear he was going to inflict. After that, the details get hazy."

"Is it too late to apologize?" Vee said, sounding more sincere than she had in our whole friendship. "You were right about Jules and Elliot."

"Apology accepted."

"We should go to the mall," she said. "I feel this overwhelming need to buy shoes. Lots of them. What we need is some good old-fashioned shoe-shopping therapy."

The doorbell rang, and I glanced at the clock. "I have to give the police my statement about what happened last night, but I'll call you after that."

"Last night?" Vee's tone shot up with panic. "They know you were at the school? You didn't give them my name, did you?"

"Actually, something happened earlier in the night." Something named Dabria. "I'll call you soon," I said, hanging up before I had to lie my way through another explanation.

Limping down the hall, I'd made it as far as the top of the stairs when I saw who my mom had invited inside.

Detectives Basso and Holstijic.

She led them into the living room, and although Detective Holstijic collapsed onto the sofa, Detective Basso remained standing. He had his back to me, but a step creaked halfway through my descent, and he turned around.

"Nora Grey," he said in his tough cop voice. "We meet again."

My mom blinked. "You've met before?"

"Your daughter has an exciting life. Seems like we're here every week."

My mom aimed a questioning glance at me and I shrugged, clueless, as if to guess, Cop humor?

"Why don't you have a seat, Nora, and tell us what happened," Detective Holstijic said.

I lowered myself into one of the plush armchairs opposite the sofa. "Just before nine last night I was in the kitchen drinking a glass of chocolate milk when Miss Greene, my school psychologist-appeared."

"She just walked into your house?" Detective Basso asked.

"She told me I had something she wanted, and that's when I ran upstairs and locked myself in the master bedroom."

"Back up," said Detective Basso. "What was this thing she wanted?"

"She didn't say. But she did mention she's not a real psychologist. She said she was using the job to spy on students." I divided a glance among everyone. "She's crazy, right?"

The detectives shared a look.

"I'll run her name, see what I can find," Detective Holstijic said, pulling himself back to his feet.

"Let me get this straight," Detective Basso said to me. "She accused you of stealing something that belonged to her, but she never said what?"

Another sticky question. "She was hysterical. I only understood half of what she was saying. I ran and locked myself inside the master bedroom, but she broke down the door. I was hiding inside the flue of the fireplace, and she said she'd burn the house down room by room to find me. Then she started a fire. Right there in the middle of the room."

"How did she start the fire?" my mom asked.

"I couldn't see. I was in the flue."

"This is crazy," Detective Basso said, shaking his head. "I've never seen anything like this."

"Is she going to come back?" my mom asked the detectives, coming over to stand behind me and placing her hands protectively on my shoulders. "Is Nora safe?"

"Might want to see about getting a security system installed." Detective Basso opened his wallet and held out a card to Mom. "I vouch for these guys. Tell them I sent you, and they'll give you a discount."

A few hours after the detectives left, the doorbell rang again.

"That must be the alarm system company," Mom said, meeting me in the hall. "I called, and they said they'd send a guy out today. I can't stand the thought of sleeping here without some kind of protection until they find Miss Greene and lock her away. Didn't the school even bother to check her references?" She opened the door, and Patch stood on the porch. He wore faded Levi's and a snug white T-shirt, and he held a toolbox in his left hand.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Grey."

"Patch." I couldn't quite nail my mom's tone. Surprise mixed with discomfiture. "Are you here to see Nora?"

Patch smiled. "I'm here to spec your house for a new alarm system."

"I thought you had a different job," said Mom. "I thought you bussed tables at the Borderline."

"I got a new job." Patch locked eyes with me, and I warmed in a lot of places. In fact, I was dangerously close to feverish. "Outside?" he asked me.

I followed him out to his motorcycle.

"We still have a lot to talk about," I said.

"Talk?" He shook his head, his eyes full of desire. Kiss, he whispered to my thoughts.

It wasn't a question, but a warning. He grinned when I didn't protest, and lowered his mouth toward mine. The first touch was just that-a touch. A teasing, tempting softness. I licked my lips and Patch's grin deepened.

"More?" he asked.

I curled my hands into his hair, pulling him closer. "More."