Immortal City

CHAPTER TEN

Maddy woke before her alarm went off. She had tossed and turned all night. In her half-conscious mind, the strange images of the frozen diner played over and over like some kind of surreal nightmare. And he was there as well, in the back room with her. She saw his pale blue eyes, his cruelly perfect features. Again and again, she relived him manipulating her. He was probably dying with laughter inside while he made up the whole story. He was making fun of her, and she fell for it. She must have looked so foolish to him. Yet under it all was a tiny voice, a lone note of discord in the chorus of her thoughts: it was the hope that what had happened between them in the back room — and what she had felt — was real. When she couldn’t lie in bed any longer, she pulled a shirt from a stack of laundry, dressed, and went downstairs.

Outside, the morning was soft and gray, the Angel City sign barely visible on the misty hillside. Uncle Kevin sat at the kitchen table in his robe, reading the AC Times. When he looked up at her, his eyes were tired. His face, Maddy thought, had changed. It was lined with worry and looked somehow older.

“Morning,” she said quietly.

“Morning. Why are you up so early?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” Maddy said, sitting on a step at the base of the stairs.

Kevin nodded. “Me neither.”

He stood and took down a mug from the cupboard.

He poured her coffee, then took two slices of bread from a bag on the counter.

“Toast?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

Kevin placed butter and strawberry jam on the table.

Maddy shuffled over the faded linoleum of the kitchen and sat down. She drew her legs up to her chest and rested her chin on her knees. He poured her a glass of OJ — they always had the generic store brand from concentrate, but Maddy thought it tasted pretty good. She picked at the toast Kevin set in front of her.

“I’m really sorry about last night,” she said at last.

“It wasn’t your fault, Maddy,” Kevin said, his voice gruffer than usual.

“Well, I’m sorry I let things get as far as I did. Even though he asked for an application—” she said, then stopped herself. It was so embarrassing to think about in their little kitchen in the daylight. Interviewing the world’s most famous Angel for a part-time position at Kevin’s Diner. And the way he had. . bewitched her. The way he had made her believe there was something between them. Stupid, stupid girl.

“I just should have been more careful,” she muttered, and took a vicious bite of her toast. “Are you sure you don’t need help with the cleanup?”

Kevin shook his head. “No, it’s really not that bad,” he said. “Just some broken plates and glasses; we’ll be open for lunch.”

“Okay,” she said, not quite meeting his eyes. She let the guilt wash over her.

She walked to school with her head down and her hood up, as usual. She waded through the usual crowds, not looking up until she got to school. When she did, she was surprised to see a curious pair of eyes staring back at her. A girl from calc, Maddy thought her name was Lucy, had been watching her. Maddy quickly looked away, hiding herself behind a curtain of hair until the girl had passed. It was odd.

Maddy turned and saw a pair of guys, sophomores, looking at her too. Their gaze was curious, intent. Something was different.

As she approached her locker, she could already see Gwen there, waiting impatiently for her. Her eyes looked like they were about to bug out of their sockets.

“Hey,” Maddy said as she approached.

“You little bitch!” Gwen exclaimed, holding her phone out. On the screen, to Maddy’s shock, was a picture taken in Kevin’s Diner. A picture from last night. There was Maddy standing just behind Jackson Godspeed, looking terrified, in her waitress uniform. Ew. The headline under the photo read in all caps:

“JACKSON GODSPEED TRASHES DINER”

Maddy could feel the hot blood rushing into her cheeks as she read the blog’s embellished detailing of the previous night.

“You’re on every Angel blog,” Gwen said excitedly.

“Now, I want details and they better be juicy!”

Maddy hazarded a glance down the hall. More intrus-ive eyes stared back. Assessing. Prying. Even the cheerlead-ers were looking at her. Everybody knew. She opened her locker and tried to use the door as a shield for her face.

“Nothing really happened,” she said as she pulled her books out.

“What?!” Gwen shrieked. “Why don’t you want to talk about it? This is my chance to, like, live vicariously through you!”

Maddy squirmed. “He came in, sat at a booth—”

“Which booth?!”

“I don’t know. He ordered—”

“What did he order?!”

“I can’t remember. Then some people came in, and he left. That’s it.”

“Okay, tell me exactly what he said to you.”

Maddy thought about the lies. “Nothing. He didn’t say anything.”

“He must have said something.”

“I think he said, ‘Can I get the check?’”

“Can I get the check?!” Gwen exclaimed in astonishment. Maddy watched her melt as she pictured it. “‘Hey, it’s Jackson Godspeed,’” she said in her lowest male voice, “‘Can I. . get the check?’ Maddy! ” she screamed. A few people nearby turned to look.

“So you really didn’t know it was him?” Gwen asked incredulously.

“No, like I told you. I don’t follow that stuff.”

“Okay, but you must have known he was an Angel,” she pressed. “I mean, wasn’t he impossibly, amazingly fine?”

Maddy’s mind flickered to back to Jackson’s divine features and the electricity that seemed to pass between them when they touched.

“I promise,” she said, making her tone apathetic, “he was nothing special.”

The bell buzzed. Gwen looked unfulfilled. “Okay, you can tell me the rest at lunch!”

“I have lunch detention,” Maddy reminded her. Gwen frowned.

“Want me to try and bring you something from the cafeteria?”

Maddy smiled, grateful. “Sure.”

A ping went off and Gwen was looking at a blog alert on her BlackBerry again. She crinkled her nose. “Ew,” she said. Maddy looked over her shoulder and saw a picture of a man with a wild, dark beard and short hair. His eyes were black and intense, almost — the thought occurred to her un-bidden — infernal. The blog headline read: HDF leader William Beaubourg releases new video, threatens Angels.

“Those guys are such losers,” Gwen said. “Why do the Angel blogs ever even mention them?”

Maddy’s classes crawled by. In AP History she sat in the last row, hoping it would make it harder for her classmates to stare at her. Somehow, they managed. At least Mr. Rankin didn’t call on her again. He had learned his lesson. In English she asked questions about Hamlet to which she already knew the answers to pad her participation grade. In Spanish she listened to the whir of the overhead projector fan. Finally, the lunch bell rang.

She reported to the administration office and was taken by the assistant principal, Mr. Leihew, to an empty classroom.

“No visitors,” he said, sounding sort of apologetic about the whole situation. “But you’re free to study, of course. I’ll check back in on you in a few minutes.” Maddy thanked him and he left. She fished a stack of college applications out of her bag and paged through to an essay prompt.

Please describe what you consider to be the most difficult moment of your life. Maddy groaned. She heard the click of the door opening. Mr. Leihew must really not trust her, she thought. When she looked up, her heart nearly stopped in her chest. It wasn’t Mr. Leihew.

It was Jackson Godspeed.

He stood there in an untucked white collared shirt rolled up at the sleeves, designer jeans, and tie. Even dressed casually, he looked like he had just stepped off the cover of a magazine. Maddy was a statue of a girl in a desk.

She couldn’t make sense of him in this place. Jackson Godspeed and Angel City High — they were like puzzle pieces that wouldn’t fit together in her mind.

“Hi,” Jacks said, closing the door quietly behind him.

“You,” Maddy hissed in disbelief. It came out harsher than she expected. It was almost hateful. “What are you doing here?!”

“I wanted to talk to you,” he said, smiling. He came into the room, and it was as if the dusty, cramped classroom could hardly contain him. He took a seat in the desk next to Maddy and she could feel it again, that same feeling she had felt as she walked him to the booth at the diner. It was like his presence was radiating off him. It made it hard to think.

Jacks cleared his throat. “I just wanted to apologize for what happened at the diner last night. And,” he said, hesitating, “I wanted to. . thank you for helping me. I’ve never really needed anyone’s help before. It was a new experience.”

Maddy felt the anger and embarrassment of the previous night welling up inside her, mixing and twisting with the shock of the moment.

“Got any more stories for me today?” she almost sneered at him. “Want to tell me about how you need a job?

About how you’re trying to raise money for college? About how your dad—” A sudden lump in her throat cut off her words. She swallowed it down hard. “About how your dad died too?!”

Jacks’s expression registered surprise, as if some expectation had not been met.

“Look, Maddy,” he said, and it was a cruel thrill to hear him say her name, “I never meant to hurt you. There was a situation. I didn’t think things were going to happen. . the way they did.”

“Well, you thought wrong, didn’t you?” Maddy snapped. Jacks’s face twisted in frustration.

“Hey, nobody’s perfect—”

“Well, you’re supposed to be!” She glared.

Jacks opened his mouth to speak, then stopped. “I. .you’re impossible!” he finally blurted, getting to his feet.

“Good!” Maddy said, rising out of her desk. “I hope I go down as the one disappointment in your life.”

Jacks stopped on his way to the door, as if to consider the words, then turned.

“I just came over here to tell you I’m sorry,” he said, fighting to keep his tone composed. Even when she was angry, Maddy looked so pretty to him — and he was startled at himself for even thinking it.

“Well, you should have saved yourself the trouble,”

Maddy said defiantly. “Please just leave me alone.”

She could see the incredulity wash over his face like a black wave.

Just then, Maddy heard the squeak of the turning doorknob.

“Oh my God,” she breathed, her head snapping to the door. Mr. Leihew must be coming to check up on her.

“You can’t be in here—” she gasped, but it was too late. The knob turned, the door opened.

Gwen’s head peered around the door.

“Maddy? You alone?” she whispered.

Maddy looked around the room. Jacks was gone. Her heart was still racing, but she tried her best to make her voice sound calm.

“Y-yeah,” she stammered.

“Can I come in?” Maddy nodded unsteadily. Gwen pushed the door open with her foot and came in holding a tray of food.

“Well, I know you’re, like, not supposed to have visitors, but this is detention, not prison.”

“Thanks,” Maddy said unsteadily.

“Were you talking to someone?” she asked. “I could have sworn I heard a voice.” Maddy rubbed her sweaty palms against the legs of her jeans.

“Not. . that I know of,” she said.

Gwen talked while Maddy ate with shaking hands.

She went on about how she had talked to Jordan Richardson in the lunch line, her new crush and ideal Homecoming date, then said something about how he was going to be at Ethan’s party. Maddy tried to listen as Gwen went on and on, but her head was still spinning from Jacks’s unan-nounced — and unwelcome — visit. She could still sense him lingering in the room as she sat there.

Walking home, things felt different. Suddenly she couldn’t help feeling the Angel Stars under her feet. She couldn’t not see the tourist shops and the billboards and the faces of the Angels. As much as she tried, she couldn’t erase those piercing pale blue eyes from her mind.

She was so angry.

For once she welcomed her evening shift at the diner; she was looking forward to it, even. Anything to be distracted from her wandering thoughts. She had just rounded the corner to her street when she stopped dead in her tracks.

She blinked, not sure if what she was seeing could be real.

There was a line outside of Kevin’s Diner. There had never been a line. Even on Sundays, there was no waiting to be seated. This was maybe a hundred people, and not regulars, either. These were hipsters with tattoos and piercings, suburbanites, tourists, and preppy Beverly Hills types.

Maddy hustled up the sidewalk and slipped in the back door.

“What did I tell you?” Kevin yelled from behind the fryer as she came in. “It’s finally happened. Our luck is changing! I called in extra help.” Maddy smiled as convincingly as she could, then disappeared into the bathroom to change.

The diner was alive with talk about Jackson. Maddy couldn’t avoid it as she ran between tables, scribbling orders and dropping off armfuls of food. Everyone wanted to know about last night. Girls wanted to know how he looked in person. Even ANN on the Magnavox was drowned out by the frenzy of conversation. If Maddy had been looking for a distraction, this was the opposite.

“Is this where he sat?” a girl asked at one point, pointing to a booth. Her mother hovered in the background.

“No.” Maddy sighed. “It was over there.”

“Great!” The girl beamed. “Would you mind taking a picture of me in it?” Maddy did as she was asked. Everywhere she looked, people bathed in the afterglow of Jacks’s presence.

After a few hours they had cleared the line, but the dining room was still packed. Maddy barely heard the jingle of the front door over the din. She looked up.

Ethan stood there in ripped jeans, a T-shirt, and Rainbow flip-flops. Maddy hadn’t seen him since he’d gotten her phone number at school the morning before. He gave a quick scan of the full dining room, not seeing her, then went over and grabbed a seat at the counter. Not knowing exactly why she was doing it, Maddy glanced at her reflection in the window and straightened her ponytail as she approached.

“Hi,” she said shyly.

“Hey, Maddy!” he said, looking thrilled to see her.

“You haven’t been here in a while. Do you need a menu?”

“Actually,” Ethan said, his eyes on hers, “I heard what happened. I have to meet Kyle and Tyler in a bit, but I was driving by and just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Maddy was surprised and a little touched.

“I’m fine. Thanks for asking.”

“Great, that’s good to hear. I just. . I don’t know. I was worried.” He smiled.

“You can’t come in here and not order anything,”

Maddy said, pulling out her notepad. She found she didn’t want to see him go. “How about it?”

“I love the food here,” Ethan admitted. “But really, I’m not hungry.”

“How about a cup of coffee on the house?”

“Sure,” he agreed. “That sounds awesome.”

She went back and pulled a mug from the rack, then filled it with steaming coffee. Ethan was nice. And, she had to admit, nice-looking, too. They got along. Both quiet, but neither shy. Still, she wasn’t ready for him to think that she liked him-liked him. She’d have to be careful. She grabbed a bowl of creamers and headed back to where he sat.

“Free cup of joe; I like this place,” Ethan said as he took the mug and sipped from it. “Big night, huh?”

“Tell me about it,” Maddy said, resting her hip on the counter.

“To be honest,” Ethan said, looking around at the excited faces of the dining room, “I just don’t know why people care so much.”

Maddy looked at him, interested. “I thought I was the only one. Well, aside from people like Tyler, who are against it as like a political thing.”

Ethan shrugged. “I mean, I’m not trying to make a statement or anything, I just think we are who we are, and they are who they are. Why worship them?”

A reporter was standing at the hill of the famous Getty Center art museum, Beverly Hills sprawling far below him.

He was eagerly reporting on a new save. Spectacular Angelcam footage played on screen: a Guardian ripped open the cockpit door of a plummeting helicopter, its rotors seized up in midair, and pulled out the owner-pilot. They climbed to safety just before the copter smashed into the uninhabited hillside above the Santa Monica Freeway, incinerating into flames. The Guardian flew his Protection to safety at the gleaming white Getty Center at the top the hill, where a fleet of ambulances screamed to meet them. Firefighters rushed to extinguish the roaring fire in the hillside scrub. The Angel was now giving interviews on the open white marble plaza of the museum, his shirt hanging in shreds around him, exposing his perfectly sculpted upper torso, his wings still extended. A plume of smoke rose in the distance. Fans circled all around, screaming and taking pictures. The patrons in the diner all watched, hypnotized by footage of the save.

Some were already logging on to SaveTube on their phones to rewatch the clip and find any other footage. Ethan wore a frustrated expression.

“When you see these people saved by Angels, do you sometimes not think about the Angel or the Protection? I mean, do you ever think about the other people? People that maybe got hurt. People that maybe got killed. Do they deserve to be saved any less?”

He looked up from his mug right into Maddy’s eyes.

She gazed at Ethan, sensing the invitation of the moment, but stood silent, tongue-tied. After another second, Ethan’s face broke out into a smile. “Sorry. I guess I’ve been hanging around Tyler too much.”

“It would be easier to ignore them — the Angels, I mean,” Maddy said, thinking of Jackson and picking her words carefully, “if everyone didn’t talk about them all the time.”

“Seriously. I’m so glad you feel the same way,” Ethan said, still looking at her. Was he blushing? “What I mean is, I knew we had a lot in common.”

Now it was Maddy’s turn to blush. Sensing her dis-comfort, Ethan got up.

“Well, I gotta get going. Thanks again for the coffee.”

“Anytime,” Maddy managed to say, and took the mug from him.

“The other reason I came by was to say I really hope you can make it to my party,” he said very softly, leaning forward so she could hear him over the noise of the customers. With that he turned and left.

Maddy watched him until he disappeared from sight. Maybe she’d be able to forget Jackson Godspeed after all.

When Kevin’s finally closed, Maddy had nearly run herself off her feet. Worse, her nerves were raw. Kevin sat in the office, adding up receipts at the till.

“Biggest weekday night. . ever,” he said, typing in figures on his calculator. He looked up at her over the rim of his glasses. “Or any night, for that matter.”

“Sleep tight, Kevin,” she said as she passed him. Despite everything, she was glad he was happy. She walked out the back of the restaurant and up the adjoining yard to the house. It was an unusually clear night in Angel City, with a light, crisp autumn breeze. She went straight up to her room, peeled out of her uniform, and threw on an old shirt, a lace-trimmed tee from Anthropologie she’d found with tags still on at Goodwill. By now she’d worn it into the ground. Her best pair of jeans were finally dry from the wash and she laid them over the back of her desk chair, along with her gray hoodie. She didn’t often have the chance to get new clothes, so she took good care of the things she did get so they lasted longer — even if a lot of the time they came from Target. She ran a washcloth over her face in the bathroom and fell into bed, utterly exhausted. Outside her window the Angel City sign glowed, casting its pale fingers of light into the dark room.

She tried to just go to sleep and not think, but the thoughts came anyway. They gathered like storm clouds in the emotional tumult of her mind. Jackson coming into school and the feel of his presence in the dusty classroom.

The evening shift in the diner and the incessant talk of him.

That conversation in the back room that her mind kept returning to, and what she had felt.

Then there was Ethan, with his easy way about him and how comfortable he made her feel. Why couldn’t she let him in? He was nothing but nice to her. Why was she so self-destructive when it came to friendships, keeping everyone out except Gwen? Thinking about her conversation with Ethan, she realized something: it was the only time tonight she had forgotten about Jacks. Well, she would never see Jackson Godspeed again. And she was happy about that, she thought. After an hour of staring at the ceiling, she finally felt her mind slipping into unconsciousness.