September Rain

20

  -Avery

  The day I first saw Angel was the day of her accident. We didn't talk until the day with the kittens, but I first saw her on the day she was liberated from her psycho birth mother by way of a wreck.

  There were large birds in a grouping of trees and I used to like to watch birds. I was standing at that bend in the road, watching and thinking how the long-necked fowl might be some kind of crane. They looked rare, I thought, because I had never seen birds like that in the area. The cranes were drinking from the puddles between the drying trees. I can't remember if it had been raining or if someone had just watered, but I know there were puddles everywhere.

  I didn't know anymore about what caused the accident than Angel did-beyond the obvious fact that the mother never used her brakes. In fact, she sped up as the car neared the bend in the road. Angel's mother was way beyond fucked. Had to be, to take her daughter, set her into a car without a seatbelt, and then decide to keep going straight when the road curved just as easy as choosing tea over coffee.

  But I did like to watch birds. The way they fly and loop through the air, I used to think it was beautiful. Now that I am caged, I'm sure of it.

  When I think about it, I think that birds live mysterious lives. They do the strangest things. A million of them used to gather inside of one, tiny tree in the high school parking lot. They'd sit there, singing their songs and sounding so happy. When they flew away, they'd do it with such uniform grace.

  Flying always fascinated me.

  I also used to watch the birds playing in the sprinklers at the schoolyard. They'd soar from the crowded tree in the parking lot in small groups and make for the showering spray. They'd start out so high up, then dive down into the fountains shooting from the sprinklers. And then, go back up and loop back down again. Each bird moved according to what the others did. It was if they had no single path, but all shared it-a hundred tiny birds moving as one entity.

  Sometimes, when I looked outside my bedroom window at night, I would wonder where the birds were and what they were doing. I wanted to know if they were happy and chirping, or if they were nesting somewhere, oblivious to my wonderings. I wanted to be one of those birds looping up and down, to be capable of taking the things that I needed and float back up into the sky. Far, far away from everything below.

  +++

  "Thank you for doing this, Avery." Angel squirmed in her chair.

  We were seated in the long corridor at Carlisle's rinky-dink County Hospital. There was a long reflective panel that stretched along the wall. As I stared at it, I could hardly believe that I was there.

  "You know I'm always here for you." I said, even though I felt like leaving and never looking back.

  With a deep breath, I patted Angels' shoulder, stood up, and turned into the heavy door that was the entrance into Doctor Williams waiting area. Her office door was open so, I kept going and took a seat on a thinly padded seat set before the doctors' desk. Adjusting myself in the chair, I set my hands gently onto the smooth wooden ends of each arm. Despite the lacking impression, the seat felt plush.

  Doctor Williams gracefully sank into her fluffy leather chair, resting her elbows on the arms, her palms touching.

  She was a nice looking lady, I thought. I had seen my share of psychiatrists, but this was my first lady shrink. And she was the first decent looking one. Doctor Williams had smooth cocoa skin with totally invisible pores and a cute, round nose, and these thick lips she painted a deep red. It accented the natural flush of her cheeks. Her dark rimmed glasses slipped down of her nose. She pressed them back with two fingers.

  The doctor was quietly staring. The hollow sound of her desk drawer rolling open filled the small chamber. A file folder, dictionary thick, plunked onto her desk.

  "Avery?"

  "That's my name." I crossed my legs, going for nonchalant and failing. The heel of my red flat disembarked, flopping like a slipper on my hanging toes.

  "I would like to talk to you about Angel."

  "That's why I'm here." I leaned down and tucked the shoe back on my foot, noticing an old-fashioned pocket-watch on the doctors' desk. It was the kind I'd seen in old Westerns, round and gold attached to a long chain.

  "How long have you been with her?"

  The exact amount of time was pointless. I shook my head. "Since the beginning."

  "The beginning of what?"

  "Our friendship." I thought over the answer and almost chuckled. Almost. "If that had a beginning. It seems like we've always been friends."

  "Angel has told me that the first time she saw you . . . was . . ." she thumbed through some papers in the folder, "the day her mother died."

  "Sounds right."

  "And what is your relationship with her now?"

  My brows tugged together at her very basic question. What had Angel told her about me? "I'm her best friend. I take care of her. She has her foster-mother, but it's not the same. Deanna hasn't known her as long. I'm who she comes to when she needs to vent. I keep her secrets." Why the hell was I telling this woman anything about me?

  The smooth skin of the doctors' brow began to furrow before consciously going flat and I reminded myself to watch my words as the low call of sea birds cawed from speakers somewhere behind me.

  "What kind of secrets?"

  "If I told you, I wouldn't be very trustworthy, would I?"

  The doctors' legs, visible beneath the open desk, uncrossed as she leaned forward. "I'm not asking for gory details. Those are right here." She displayed the open file. "What I'm hoping to get from you is more general. I'd like to know if she's safe-if you're worried about her. She didn't attend her final anger management class and I'm supposed to report it. I have cause for concern."

  "Maybe you should ask Angel."

  "I did."

  I nodded. "Good. Why did she miss her class?"

  "She said she didn't."

  "Maybe she was there, but forgot to sign in. She forgets stuff sometimes."

  "A lot of times." Doctor Williams raised a hand to grasp the point of her chin. "Were you with her at all in this past month?"

  "I am always with her. Metaphorically."

  The gleam in her eye said that she knew I was messing with her. The doctors' dark hands fumbled, feeling around the file folder and scrambling, searching for-as it turned out-a pen. Hasty scribbles began flooding the topmost page on her left.

  "I have been talking with Angel about you."

  My resting hands balled up into fists, clenching over my lap. "And what did she say about me?"

  "Angel spoke very highly of you. When she was actually talking, that is."

  Was this a thing with all shrinks? Did they go to school for nearly a decade just to learn how to answer a question while giving as little information as possible? If that was all they could do, then every teenager on the planet could be a shrink.

  Her palms unlocked to twist her forearms across her chest. "Avery, I am going to come right out and say this: I don't think you're a very good influence on Angel."

  I sighed. "Well, fuck you very much."

  It was nothing new, this you-are-no-good gag. Most people actually felt that way. I, myself, felt that way most times. It was not just with Angel. It was with everyone I came into contact with. And it was no secret to me as to why others would think that.

  We were very close, Angel and me. Maybe, when we first met, the relationship was need based, but the friendship evolved. It had become symbiotic. Out of that interdependence, our needs were met. It was beneficial for both of us, but very few people understood it. Jake didn't. He barely even acknowledged me, except when he wanted something. But he was a guy and guys were dicks most of the time, so I didn't care.

  Doctor Williams, to her credit, didn't miss a beat. "And what is it that you do for Angel, aside from keeping her secrets?"

  "Give her advice, help her with homework, make sure she eats her vegetables," I hoped I sounded as condescending as was intended.

/>   "Like a mother would?"

  I cleared my throat. "Hell no."

  "I have a few more questions, if that's alright."

  "I will certainly help in any way that I can." My sarcasm was so thick, it sounded sincere.

  "I appreciate your being forthcoming, Avery. Angel is always very careful about what she says to me."

  I shivered inside, wondering over what she'd just revealed-if Angel had been telling the truth when she said she didn't talk about me anymore-or if the doctor was just trying to get a reaction. But psychiatrists weren't supposed to lie, were they? Maybe I'd brought it on myself with that 'metaphorical' remark.

  I wasn't sure how to respond, so I didn't.

  "Angel has told me that you have always been very good to her."

  This woman is ignorant, I thought, but answered, "I try, but under the circumstances . . ."

  "Which circumstances?

  "Any and all things inconceivable; I try to protect her from it."

  "How do you protect her? From what?"

  I wanted to spit at her; at the entire line of questioning. It was ridiculous and obvious to anyone who really knew Angel. "From her life-from circumstances beyond her control, from the assholes that live in this world-the dicks that attend her school. I'm sure you've heard of them, Doctor. I'm sure, as a psychiatrist, you have seen your fair share of assholes that make it their business to go around inflicting pain.

  "They leave these indelible marks on her life without even asking. Angel is more scarred, more susceptible, than anyone I know. She needs protection and what use are you-or me-if we don't give it to her?"

  Doctor Williams leaned in, searching me with a keen gaze. I stilled.

  "Perhaps we've gotten off track." Doctor Williams softened, leaning back placidly into her chair. "I've summoned you here to specifically discuss your relationship with Angel."

  I smiled wanly at the oddity in her tone.

  Doctor Williams nodded. "Are you aware that I consider the relationship toxic?"

  Before my mind could conjure a way to make her sorry for what she said, I took to my feet and walked out the door, through the hallway, down the stairs, out the lobby and into the street.

  The way I had always tried to look at mine and Angels' relationship was like this: we all have problems. I had a lot of problems. A shit-ton. But that didn't mean I wanted to be defined by those problems, so I kept them to myself.

  I never told anyone how I ate too much. Way too much. So much that I felt like my stomach lining may tear. I'd go through bouts where I could eat so much, so often, that I'd start to feel comfortable with being over-full. I wouldn't notice right away, but then my body would do this betraying thing: it would start to think that just because I didn't feel over-full that I must be hungry and then, I'd keep eating.

  After a while of everyday feeling so full that I could bust, my stomach would stretch. Around the time my jeans were feeling too tight, I'd start to feel sick from all the food and then decide to make myself throw up because the fullness was tiring and overwhelming and I only wanted to feel better.

  That pattern would carry on for a while: eat too much and throw up. Then, I would actually start losing the weight I gained and I'd feel better about myself. So I'd keep going. More and more often. And then, maybe, people would start noticing that I was losing weight, and some of them might say that I did it too quickly. No one would actually say it directly or out loud. But I knew what they were thinking.

  Well, no one except Ms. Traynor, my PE teacher who thought of herself as an amateur nutritionist. Her sun bleached lips would purse as she scrutinized me. "You look like you've lost weight." And then I knew for sure I was losing too much. So I'd make myself stop. But I couldn't stop eating. I had to live. And so the cycle would always repeat.

  I never wanted anyone looking at me like I was a walking eating disorder. I didn't need that judgment or it's 'do you know what your problem is?' I lived in my body-I knew what the problems were. Once, it got to a point where I was so hyperaware of my yo-yo weight, I couldn't let anyone see me eat. I still have trouble with that shit.

  I didn't need anyone trying to define me by my issues, so I've always kept them to myself.

  Did that damned doctor even hear herself? I'm no good for Angel-did she not realize that Angel was already broken by the time I came along?

  She was shattered, like glass. Like the windshield she flew through when the car went off the road. She lost her mom and her home in one morning with the cranes and the dying trees on the side of the road. She had no one left, no one to take care of her. I knew what that felt like, and so I became the mother-figure in her life. I didn't do it on purpose. I just took care of her in the only way I knew how. It's not like I hid my issues from her.

  Well, maybe I did, but she knew about them. If she paid any attention at all, she knew.

  "Don't sweat the small stuff," was the motto I tried to continually beat into her, though I had miles to go before I could walk that shit out myself. Because I knew that the small stuff is what destroys a person. Only with Angel, nothing was ever small. Even the littlest things were mountains in her mind. She would sweat everything and the more her troubles piled up, the more I felt the need to drive them away because just watching Angel try to deal with stress was painful.

  I've always thought the world of Angel, but she's weak. Weakness could be a good thing, I guess. Angel was a good person. A really good person-but she was also a perpetual victim of her position in life. Other people were always doing shit to her and I was always running interference, always trying to make sure they didn't get away with it. I had to make time to check on her in between classes. But that was okay, some people weren't fighters.

  Being peaceable shouldn't mean a person deserves testing at every turn. That's why the world needed more people like me. Not all like me, but some parts might be okay, under the right circumstances.

  I never got the bullying thing. So what if I did it sometimes? I only gave shit to people who deserved it.

  It was not okay to pick on someone who was as sweet and vulnerable as Angel. Or anyone so small. It wasn't right to make fun of someone because they didn't have a home, or parents, or new clothes at the beginning of the school year. It was not okay to hurt a person just to make yourself feel better.

  I saw that shit happen to Angel all the time. When something like that pouncing in the girls' bathroom happened to someone that was so exposed and unprepared, what kind of friend would that make me if I just let it happen?

  Rosa Dominguez was lucky the campus fuzz found us so fast. She was lucky I never laid eyes on her again, because if I had, a broken shoulder would have been the least of her troubles.

  If I'm being completely honest, sometimes, when I'm watching TV-one of the lame teenage dramas that always seems to be playing, I compare myself to the people in those shows. Sometimes, I think maybe I was never very good at being a friend. But I kept trying and that should count for something.

  So, when people like Doctor Williams tried to tell me I was no good for Angel, I could look at what I did for my friend and know that they were at least a little bit wrong. Angel was good and having her made me a better person.

  Even standing here-in this prison where they turn us into refuse-I would do it all over again, suffer any consequence in defense of my friend.

  And still, she goes out of her way to ignore me.

  But it doesn't matter.

  One need not observe human behavior for long to learn that we require companionship. Some more so than others.

  Not that it matters.

  I'm not an actual person. I'm a ghost. So it doesn't matter.

  It will never matter.

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