Dark Hope: Book One of the Archangel Prophecies

Dark Hope: Chapter 6

Mom being who she was, I wasn't allowed to sleep for long. It was not a good afternoon. My entire body was black and blue from my fall, and every step I took was a painful reminder of each rock and shrub I'd bounced against. A slight heat rash had wrapped around my torso and arms where Michael had carried me last night, and the skin where he'd held my hand was shiny. I realized with a start that the rash on my wrist had been from his touch, too, rather than my fall against the curb during my ill-fated run. 

What was worse, I couldn't baby myself—not if I wanted to keep my injuries hidden from my mom. I was on edge, nerves taut. I needed to escape Mom's watchful gaze and questions and sort things out on my own, so I took myself out for another run around the neighborhood. 

I paused briefly at the top of the cul-de-sac, remembering Michael's warnings and words about the "bird attacks," but shook it off, desperately in need of the release. 

I tried not to think too much about everything that had happened. Instead, I tried to empty out my mind, leaving no room for anything but the run itself. 

The aftermath of last night's storms lay all around me in the street. Fallen tree limbs and brush littered the asphalt. The creek that wound through the neighborhood was about to burst its banks; the rain had been much fiercer here. It was at once familiar and alien, as if the secrets I'd discovered had altered nature itself; as if the things I didn't know still threatened me from the shadows. My body protested as I forced it to move. But the air was crisp and clean, even if the day was gray, so I pushed my fears and pain aside and concentrated again on the rise and fall of my knees, the rebound of my feet off the pavement. I soon fell into the rhythms and footfalls of my run, finding comfort in their sameness and letting the stiffness work its way out of my body. 

I leaned into the curve as I entered the undeveloped section of my neighborhood and felt a familiar tingle—the tingle of being watched. This time, though, I wasn't afraid. I stumbled to a stop and bent over to catch my breath before I turned, a smile on my lips, to greet Michael. 

The smile froze on my face as my father stepped from the woods. 

Irritation and disappointment surged through my body, quickly chased by guilt. When was the last time I'd even thought about my father, let alone seen him? I thought. Only to blame him for a valentine he didn't even send. 

"I hope you don't mind that I came here, Hope." He was holding his hat in his hands, looking almost penitent as he came closer to the road. He stopped at its very edge, his big hands twisting the hat. 

"How did you know I would even be here?" I asked, suspiciously. 

"I didn't know. But I figured that your mother would let you run outside and that if I came here, eventually I would see you." 

I stared at him, stunned. Back near the trees I could see the hood of his beat-up car where he had parked it near one of the utility boxes. I cursed myself for failing to notice it earlier. 

"You've been coming up here and lurking around in the woods, just in case I decide to go for a run?" 

He nodded and then pursed his lips, as if the oddness of what he'd admitted had only just occurred to him. "It hasn't been that often. Just every now and then. On days when I thought you might not be in school." He looked down at his shoes and seemed to brace himself for my rejection. 

In our times we would have called him a prophet. Michael's words came back to me and I suddenly felt small. After all, if my father was guilty of anything, it was of being overprotective. And maybe it wasn't really fair to blame him for everything that had happened to me in Alabama. From the time I'd been a little girl, parents had carefully steered their children away from me, almost unconsciously, as if a force field surrounded me and made it impossible for them to get close. I learned to recognize the look as they drew their kids to the other side of the playground, a mix of unabashed gawking, lurid supposition ("Are you sure she wasn't hurt?"), and schadenfreude. I'd had no best friend. I missed out on the My Pretty Princess birthday parties, had no one to braid my hair and whisper secrets and giggle about boys with me. I lived my meager existence, suffering the normal outrages of transitioning to middle school and high school like every other teen, I suppose, but with the extra burden of being an outcast—a status based on nothing more than parents' fears that somehow, if their kids got too close to me, something bad would happen to them, too.