Heroes of the Orange Skies

Part 3

On Tuesday, Louis has just turned in an application at the froyo place a couple blocks over from his and Zayn’s apartment. He wonders, if he gets the job, if he gets free froyo. That’s really the only reason he would ever consider working at a place that had giant pink circles painted onto the walls, in what he supposes is meant to be a cheerful and froyo-y vibe. It gives Louis a headache.

He’s near the small restaurant where he and Niall had picked up their shwarmas the other day, where Niall’s story about Massive Tits had occurred. Sometimes, Louis likes to go back to places he’s written something, see if he still feels the same way. Sometimes he remembers the place but not the words he wrote, and when he looks at it again, at the faded black of his signature, he’s reminded of why he wrote it, and it’s like rediscovering pieces of him that he’d thought he lost. Louis thinks there might be thousands of different Louis Tomlinsons all over the city, immortalized in the four or five words written on a grimy bathroom stall door. It’s kind of why he does it, if he’s being honest with himself. If he can’t succeed as a single Louis Tomlinson, maybe if there’s more of him, he’ll have more of a chance. Or something.

He slips away to the bathroom while waiting for his falafel, and goes to the same stall he was in the week before, where he wrote wish I was an angel.

Under his words, there’s a new note. It’s not a phone number, or a game of tic tac toe, or a pair of boobs. It’s another note.

Maybe you are and you just don’t know it, says the wall. There’s some sort of symbol underneath it, like the person has attempted a signature of their own. After staring at it for a few minutes, Louis decides it’s a bird in flight. Kind of looks like a squashed m. But there it is, shiny black like it’s fresh and Louis whips his head around in the small enclosed space as if he expects the mysterious bird writer to be standing right next to him. There’s nobody there, of course. That would be silly.

Of course, what’s sillier is that someone has responded to one of Louis’s notes. Maybe you are and you just don’t know it. No one has ever responded to what he writes. It sort of makes him feel like someone is watching him, and a shiver crawls down his spine. He doesn’t know if he likes it or not.

Louis eats his falafel on a bench in the park and watches the mothers walk their strollers by, the teenagers with their carefree lives and their expensive rollerblades, the college students with the bags under the eyes and arms.

So, maybe Louis’s an angel.