Strange Angels

the TV on mute, bandaging himself up. Go down and look. You’ll see. He’s there.

My heart knew otherwise. It pounded inside my ribcage, each pulse accompanied by a sick squeeze of pain inside my skull and a flip-flop of my stomach. I made it down the stairs like an old woman, holding on to the icy banister.

Silence like the heavy quilt wrapped around my shoulders.

There were boxes in the living room, and my orange beanbag chair. Dad’s camping chair sat at its usual precise angle to the television. The red eye of the cable box blinked, and I could almost hear it flicking on and off, it was so quiet.

Dad wasn’t in the kitchen. Dirty dishes still piled in the sink, and the house was cold. I shuffled out into the hall and punched the buttons to turn the heater on.

The heat pump soughed into life with a wump. It was so loud in the stillness I jumped, pulling Mom’s sunrise quilt closer around my shoulders. Then I walked slow dream-like down the hall and to the front door, unlocking both deadbolts and yanking it open.

The cold hit me like a hammer, stinging my eyes and robbing the breath from my lungs. The front yard lay under a sheet of white, bits of the broken picket fence buried under mounds of heavy wet snow. The driveway was a pristine carpet.

Dad’s truck was nowhere in sight. The entire neighborhood dozed under its cold, thick blanket.

I think that’s when I knew. I shut the door, locked both deadbolts, and went up the stairs at a stumbling run, my head pounding and my entire body jolted by each footstep. I banged down the hall and into the bathroom, where I slammed the door and started heaving over the toilet. I didn’t produce anything but bile, even though I retched so hard tears squirted hot out of my burning eyes. I stopped long enough to cry, my forehead against the cool white porcelain of the toilet, and then I had to pee so bad I nearly wet myself. While I was sitting on the toilet I had to retch again, so I bent over and tried my best to swallow whatever came up.

I don’t know how long it lasted. By the time it was over I could only think about one thing at a time.

He might come back, I told myself. What if he got stuck in the snow? It happens. He got stuck somewhere. Or something.

Except there wasn’t enough snow for him to get stuck in. The truck was heavy, and it had chains in a box under the passenger’s seat. Dad was too cautious to let something like weather get in the way of an operation. Or in the way of coming back to get me.

Then he called and you missed it because you were passed out.

That couldn’t be it either. He wouldn’t call; he would just come home. If he got fatigued or the mission went sideways, he would come and collect me and we’d blow town. It had happened before. Since he’d picked me up from the hospital when Gran died, he’d always come back for me. It was like sunrise, or the tide.

So something’s happened to him.

I rested my forehead on my knees, staring at my jeans rucked around my ankles. My underwear was white cotton, startling against the dark blue denim.

The practical part of me that got the laundry done and kept track of the boxes spoke up, in its calm, cool whisper. Did you hear me, Dru? Something’s happened to him.

“I know,” I whispered. It was the only sound other than the heater’s sighing. My heartbeat and my whisper were loud as thunder. My mouth tasted foul.

So something’s happened to him. Maybe he’ll come home.

Maybe he would. The best thing to do was wait. I was supposed to wait for him. If it had gone sideways, he would come get me and we’d pack and leave town ASAP. It was standard operating procedure. The old SOP, to be done ASAP, all CYA and BYOB. All the little paramilitary letters lined up in a row, a private language none of the kids at school had to know.

What if he doesn’t? Answer me that, Dru. What if he doesn’t?

That was what I was trying not to think. He’d always come home before, sometimes at dawn. He’d never been completely gone overnight, or left in the morning without leaving me a note. He called to check in. It was just what he did.

My forehead was fever-hot. So were my cheeks. My hair hung down in curling strings, dark brown with threads of gold, darker and stringier than Mom’s. I felt greasy all over, and the zit on my temple hurt along with the rest of me. My stomach rumbled. I was hungry.

I decided to get up. I couldn’t crouch on the toilet forever. Dad would come home; he would. I’d wait for him.

In the meantime, I’d take a shower. I’d clean up the house so I had something to do, and so when he came home he wouldn’t have to look at a mess. That would make everything all right. He might be wounded or tired when he came home, so I’d get out the first aid kit and make sure everything was ready for whatever had happened to him.

Yeah. Do that, Dru. That’ll make everything just about okay. Just ducky.

I wiped and stood up, stepped out of my jeans and panties, and dragged Mom’s quilt back into my bedroom. I grabbed fresh clothes and went back to the bathroom to clean myself up.

First a shower, then I’d clean up the kitchen. After that, the living room. I’d get out the first aid kit and restock it.

Yeah. That was what I’d do.

So I did it.

CHAPTER 4

It started snowing again late in the afternoon, big wet spinning flakes from a sky like smooth-beaten iron. I went outside to look at the driveway, shivering in Dad’s green Army sweater. I didn’t have much in the way of winter clothes; pretty much all my wardrobe was summer stuff since we’d spent so much time below the Mason-Dixon. We’d been down south for at least two years, between the Carolinas, Baton Rouge, Chattanooga, Atlanta, and Florida. If I tanned at all instead of burning, I might have looked even weirder up here with the goddamn polar bears.

I tilted my head back and looked up into infinity. Snow whirled out of the half-darkness, each flake bigger than a quarter and very wet. They stuck to my hair, still damp from the shower. Dad’s sweater was way too big for me, and I had the cuffs turned down so they covered my fists, clenching and releasing. I had to take a deep breath to uncurl my hands before I trudged back inside.

I’d already done three loads of laundry and cleaned up the kitchen. The heater was going; it was nice and warm. I was organizing the boxes in the living room, unpacking some and arranging things. I’d already gone through some of the ammo cache and organized the clips according to the guns they were for. Dad would be oiling the rifles soon—it was about that time of the month. Taking care of your gear is essential, especially when you’re after things that may or may not be able to mess with complex machinery and electronics. That’s why Dad didn’t carry a cell phone, they were like magnets for poltergeists and other things.

I tried not to think about it.

My stomach growled and I felt weird, like my head was full of rushing noise. I drank four glasses of tap water through the afternoon, sucking them down in between whatever I was doing, and that helped with everything except the roaring tornado between my ears.

Snowy light came through the windows; the blinds were pulled up. I could see a stretch of the front yard and the clogged street. Some cars had struggled by during the afternoon, none of them fishtailing, all of them wearing snow chains and rattling into their own driveways down the street.

None of them was Dad. I checked every time I heard the clattercrunch of chains or the sound of an engine. They all trundled past to their warm garages, ignoring our lonely house out at the end of the lane. Dad had picked this house because it was solid, but also because it stood apart from the others—which is more of a rarity than you’d think in the Midwest, since they have all that prairie space to shut out.

I was on my knees putting the last clips in the box when I heard something tapping in the kitchen.