"Did you give Steve the chewing-out he deserves?" I ask Marco as Luca and I get back to the lounge after all our classes are over for the day.
Marco looks up and sighs as Luca sits next to him on the couch. "No. I haven't seen him all day, actually."
Luca chuckles. "He knows what's coming to him, doesn't he?"
"Yeah, that's why I haven't seen him, I bet," Marco laughs. "He's trying to avoid me."
"I'm sure if we go to your room right now, he'll be cowering in the closet," Luca says. "Alex, aren't you gonna sit with us?"
"Would if I could, dude, but I gotta go," I say, pointing behind me at the door to the boys' dorms.
"Wait, what time's your date again?"
Marco smiles at me, making me feel a bit embarrassed. "Another blind date, huh? I don't know why you keep doing that, Snow. Fool you once, shame on your demon brother. Fool you twenty times-"
"Ten," I correct him. "That's how many girls my brother's tried to set me up with."
"You sure it's only been ten?" Luca asks. "I think it's been at least fifteen by now."
"Trust me," I say, rubbing my eyes, "I've kept count of all the failures. It's been ten, and tonight will be number eleven."
Luca shakes his head. "You don't have a lot of faith in this one, do you?"
"Not really, no."
"But you still don't have to leave just yet, right?" Luca asks again. "These dates of yours are usually not till five or six, right?"
"I know, but as long as I got a couple hours to kill, I figure I should hit the pool. Before my bloody gills close up, you know?" I ask, glad as always for an opportunity to use the Hellish swear I picked up from Gabe. (Apparently, on Earth, there's a huge demonic ex-pat community in the UK, which is how "bloody" developed its reputation as a British expression.)
There's another possible reason for your sleep problems, Luca thinks, keeping it low to try and make sure Marco doesn't hear it. Out loud, he asks, "How long's it been since you went to the pool again?"
"Not since last weekend at least," I say. "You guys wanna come with?"
They both shake their heads, as I expect; angels usually don't like to swim. At least we have no trouble floating, because our bodies are less dense than those of demons or humans, but our wings are a bit of a hindrance in the water. Not at all hydrodynamic. Plus, they take forever to dry out. I, however, tend to feel a little more at home in the water. It's just one of the many things that makes me different from the others here at Balthazar, right down to the genetic level.
"Fair enough," I say. "Be back later."
I make my way through the crowded lounge and down the hall to my room. There, I go into the very far back of the closet and pull out the plastic bag containing my towel and trunks, which I stuff into my backpack. Then, I change as quickly as I can into regular teenage threads - plaid flannel shirt over a Pink Floyd tee, gray jeans, well-aged black sneakers. When I'm done, I open the window, crouch on the sill, and jump out, spreading my wings through the slits in the backs of my shirts. I go back to close the window from the outside (I'll have to hope that Luca doesn't lock me out), and take off again, flying down over the steep mountainside to the town in the valley below.
It's a one-of-a-kind experience, flight. Especially on a nice day. The clouds that covered us this morning have mostly faded, revealing a shiny, pearly-white sky. It's bracingly cold, but I'm wrapped up in double layers, so it doesn't affect me too much. Plus, it feels a bit more exhilarating when it's cold. The air isn't so solid in all the wrong ways, and it's easier to cut through. It feels like tiny knives nicking me, that sort of "hurts-so-good" feeling. Normally, I like to fly only as far as the entrance to the school and walk the rest of the way, but today I feel the need to wake myself up a bit more, so I soar over the rooftops, skimming them with the toes of my Vans.
Finally, I touch down at the entrance to the Bridge. I gaze up at the large, ungainly-looking building, which arcs out over Coldfire Creek itself before embedding itself into the rock face on the other side. With its stack of boxy structures, it almost looks like the Ponte Vecchio in Florence.
I fold my wings up and hand my ID to the guy at the security checkpoint. He slides it through a modified credit-card scanner, consults his computer screen, then nods his approval as he returns my ID. The glass door next to the checkpoint opens, allowing me to climb the spiral staircase leading into the heart of the Bridge.
The Bridge is kinda like a combination of a community center and a shopping mall. Most of the restaurants and stores in town are here, and all the indoor parks-and-rec-type facilities, like the library, the yoga classes, and yes, the pool. To my delight, when I reach the top floor, I see a long hallway nearly devoid of any presence, be it angelic or demonic. That's the real reason why it's called the Bridge - not only because it's a literal one, but because it also includes a portal between Heaven and Hell. There are thousands of other Bridges, each connecting two of the three known dimensions, and all serving as neutral ground.
I glance up at the long skylight which spans the length of the top floor and watch as the sheer cliff that forms the southern bank of Coldfire Creek - at least, in Heaven - approaches. Soon, I pass through to the other side, and now the cliff is behind me, while above and ahead of me is an unbroken view of Hell's fiery red sky. From here, right on the boundary, I can almost see Gabe's school, Castledown Academy, perched on a mountainside to the south, looking so bizarrely identical to Balthazar Academy on the other side of the Bridge.
I enter the pool room and find it nearly deserted, except for two girls. One, a black girl practicing her backstroke, I recognize as Kelly Jackson, a girl whom Gabe dated for a month or so in freshman year. Before they fell apart, she was the only date he's ever brought home to meet Mom. Their breakup was tearful and messy - Gabe was so devastated over it for weeks afterwards - but they've since become friends again.
The other girl is another friend from Gabe's and Kelly's circle - Fionna Lee. The first time I met her - while paying Gabe a visit at Castledown - I'd been molting, like so many of my freshman-year classmates at that time. It's one of the more annoying aspects of angelic puberty, along with painful growth spurts and mood swings. I'd been struck by how pretty she was, and even more surprised when she tried to hug me hello. Trust me to respond by losing half a dozen primary feathers out the back of my shirt right there. She practically died laughing, adding to my mortification. I see her pretty often still - usually either at Castledown or here at the pool - and she still remembers this moment all too well, if the nickname she's always reserved for me is anything to go by. It's a major reason why my stomach likes to tie itself in knots whenever I see her.
Today, Fionna sits in a plastic chair at poolside, reading a book. It's a popular Hellish title - Cinder. Gabe loves that book and its sequels to death, but I've never been able to get into it myself for whatever reason. By the time I change into my trunks, Kelly is already done and has left for the girls' locker room, while Fionna continues to sit by herself and read.
Hoping she hasn't seen me - the longer I go without her trying to engage me in conversation or me trying to engage her in a war of wit, the better - I look at the rows of targets placed high on the wall at one end of the room. Choosing one of them, I reach down into the chlorinated water, concentrating on my elemental power until I feel the familiar buzz. It feels like there's a bunch of electrified wires floating in the water around my hands, waiting to be shaped and controlled by my thoughts.
I pull up a sphere of water, about six inches in diameter, and lob it across the room, but completely miss my intended target. In my head, I hear a little buzzer noise as I mentally punish myself, and wonder what just happened. I'm not a perfect shot, but I at least manage to hit the right target every time. Maybe my concentration's a little off today. Wouldn't surprise me.
I gather up another ball of water and line up another shot, but while it's airborne, a blast of orange fire hits the water ball, causing it to explode in a huge cloud of steam.
"What the hell?" I curse, looking around to see where the fire could have come from. The only other person in the room is Fionna, which makes sense because I've seen her doing fire elemental tricks before. But she's still reading her book. What gives? I try another shot, only for it to be vaporized again. This time, I actually catch her putting down her book long enough to shoot a fireball from her hand.
"All right, what's your problem?" I growl.
Fionna closes her book and places it inside her satchel. "Your aim sucks," she says in her husky voice. "Hello?" she yells, snapping her fingers in my general direction after a few seconds of non-response from me. "I said, 'Your aim sucks!' And besides, I was bored. Happy?"
I glower at her. "Couldn't wait to get me all hot and bothered, could you?"
Fionna snickers, her brown eyes glittering as she flashes a mischievous smile, then she picks up her satchel. "I don't wanna fight with you, Feathers." Yep, there we go - I knew she'd slip her pet name for me in there somewhere. "It'd be too much of a shame to kick your pretty little ass."
She looks up as the locker room door opens and Kelly emerges, then she turns on her heel and sets off. However, she stops just short of the door. "If I turn around and see you checking me out..."
"I'm not afraid of you," I challenge her. "But I don't wanna fight you. It'd be too much of a shame to kick your pretty little ass."
Fionna turns around, meeting my defiant glare with one of her own. "Touché." She and her friend finally leave me alone.
God, Fionna has a way of infuriating me sometimes. I like to see her because she's good-looking - her eyes, her smile, her curves for days. But when I do see her, she goes out of her way to piss me off and drive me up the wall. That's Gabe's job.
I spend another hour or so in the pool before finally getting out. My hands and feet are wrinkled beyond wrinkled, and I've burned so many calories practicing my elemental that I feel like I'm on the point of passing out. I stop at my locker and look at my reflection in the mirror inside the door, thinking about a number of things.
For one thing, the fact that I seem to like putting mirrors inside doors.
For another, my continued shock at how much different my body looks compared to my first day in this town, over two years ago. I've grown about eight inches taller since then, and I actually have muscle to speak of now - although, as Gabe jokingly tells me, I'm still nobody's stud muffin.
There is, however, one distinct detail about my body that I have to hide from others: the small scars on my upper arm. Two rows of half-inch cuts - one with ten, the other still incomplete with six. They shine a bright white when the light hits them at the right angle, but unless you're looking for them, they're really hard to spot.
When I was thirteen, after I'd cut myself and made the first of these scars, I made it a habit to never be shirtless for longer than ten seconds, to minimize the chance that anyone could see them. (That, plus the fact that back then, I was pretty self-conscious about my gangly, barely-pubescent bod.) Eventually, in January of freshman year, Luca spotted my scars by accident in the locker room after gym class. He at least had the good sense to not bring them up until we were safely closed off in our dorm room. Nevertheless, I immediately said, in a would-be casual voice, "I dunno what you're talking about, dude."
He let it go for the moment, but then several weeks later, in March, Luca grabbed my arm as I was putting on my uniform shirt. "Don't deny it again, Alex," he'd said, pointing to the scars - of which I'd had fifteen at that point. "I'm your friend, and I wanna know what's going on. Just trust me."
My friend? I'd thought. Nobody had ever called me a friend before. So, based on that alone, I trusted Luca, and opened up. I told him how Gabe and I used to be outcasts back home in the Bay Area, because of our not-so-conventional family. We only have our mom raising us - single parents are pretty rare in Heaven - and because we're hybrids, we were considered different, and therefore easy targets. One day, we'd just...snapped. But we quickly came up with a way to control ourselves, because while we've not been able to entirely purge our desire to cut, we've channeled it so that it's not so much about numbing the pain as supporting each other.
Because Luca's home life has been pretty sheltered compared to mine, I probably taught him a few things he'd never heard of before. He sure looked freaked when I finished my story, and I half-expected him to change roommates ASAP.
A year and a half later, though, we're still roommates and best friends.
I'd be surprised, though, if there weren't more young angels like myself engaging in self-harm. We're under a lot of pressure to be moral examples for humans and demons to follow, as they keep telling us in school (not that they ever would, of course), and I know I can't be the only one who's ever cracked. Cutting only compounds the situation, because it's considered selfish, and therefore shameful. I sure as hell don't wanna admit to it. Not every angel is as understanding as Luca.
After I shower and change, I return to school to drop my swim stuff off down the laundry chute (Luca hasn't locked me out, thankfully). With forty-five minutes until my date, when I get back to the Bridge, I decide to stop at Smythe and Darknell Books. At the café, I order a mocha from Mrs. Smythe, then spend a while browsing the YA shelves in the bookstore itself.
I peruse one of Darren Shan's Zom-B books, but I don't really retain much information from it - I'm so wired that I blow through the roughly 160-page book in ten minutes.
Out of curiosity, I take another look at Cinder, and realize that perhaps it isn't as bad as I had previously thought. It's actually really cool, and after reading fifty pages of post-apocalyptic cyberpunk fairytale adventures (I sometimes forget how great Hellish writers' imaginations can be), I'm officially hooked. But then my watch alarm beeps. It's quarter to five, so I need to get to Three Guys Pizza Pies right away.
I carry the book up to the checkstand and buy it. The tanned, curved-nosed girl at the cash register - Jeanne Darknell, the college-age daughter of one of the co-owners - examines the cover, her lips moving as she reads the fancy silver lettering and gazes at the bright red slipper worn by this book's cyborg heroine. "You know, I've never seen any boys reading this book," she says.
"My brother really likes it," I say.
"How much have you read so far?" I open the book up to the page I left off on. "Hmm. Have fun, then. There's three more after this, plus a spin-off with Queen Levana."
"Who's that?" I ask.
Jeanne laughs and says, "Spoilers," in a musical voice worthy of River Song.
"Thanks," I say, tucking the book under my arm.
I set off for Three Guys, which is located on the Hell side of the Bridge (the bookstore is on the Heaven side), and place my order. It's the same as usual - a large pie with sausage, tomatoes, and basil. I sit at one of the tables in the dining room, waiting for the pizza and my blind date to arrive. Five o'clock comes and goes and the pizza gets to my table, but no demon girl. Figures - demons like to be fashionably late.
In the meantime, I open my new book and continue reading. Soon, I come across the Levana character Jeanne told me about - she's this book's equivalent of the Evil Queen, but she's a witch who lives on the Moon and looks down on the disease-riddled, war-torn Earth far below.
"Okay, now you're just trolling, Feathers."
I nearly drop the book in surprise as I see my date sitting on the other side of the table, one eyebrow cocked at me. Even if she hadn't used that dumb nickname, I would've had no problem figuring out who she was.
I groan. If anyone's trolling, it's Gabe. Nobody else could successfully get me to date Fionna.