Angelic // Jerrie

Six

Jade didn't frighten me. In fact, this new information allured me to her even more. Of course, I had my doubts, but there was something about her I just couldn't shake. Maybe it was an angel thing? Although, I was not allured to Jesy when she showed up in my room.

I had so many questions to ask Jade, but I was afraid that I would sound intrusive, so I kept my mouth shut.

   A few nights later, when I was in bed ready to fall asleep, I heard Jade let out an ear-piercing scream. I scrambled out of my bed and rushed to the guest bedroom.

When I opened the door, I saw Jade scrunched up on the bed. Her face was sweaty contorted into an expression of extreme pain. I thought back to when Jesy said she would experience pain. Jade sat up when she saw me.

"Perrie! I need your help!" she shouted, and I frantically moved towards her. I watched as she sprouted her wings from her back. She was only wearing a bra on her torso, so the wings didn't rip anything. The very top of the wings had turned a dark shade of black. The feathers got lighter as you looked down the wings. The majority of her wings were still white which was a good sign. "My left wing, there's a single white feather in the black. I-I need you to remove it for me," she said and then bit down on her lip to stifle any cries.

"Will it hurt you?" I asked, and she nodded.

"But the pain won't stop until it's removed. Please, Perrie!" she pleaded. I located the white feather.

I ran it through my fingers a few times before I pulled as hard as I could. Jade let out a loud yelp, but then sighed of relief. She took the feather from my hand. How could such a little thing cause so much pain?

"It's how I know I'm fighting the darkness," she said, but her eyes never left the feather. "As I fight, these white feathers will appear and try to replace the black ones, but when they appear, the black feathers around it reject such a pure color. As you saw, the rejection is pretty painful." She sighed. "It's good to know the darkness isn't winning, though."

    I ran my fingers through her some of her feathers. It was the softest surface my hand had ever come into contact with.

"Your wings are beautiful." I said as I gazed at them. She nodded her head before opening her bed-side table's drawer and putting the feather in. I looked into the drawer and saw a couple other white feathers in there. "You've experienced this before?" I questioned.

She nodded, "Yeah, and I like keeping them. I like opening this drawer and seeing my fighting paying off. Sometimes I think about why I am even putting myself through the fighting, but then I can look at these feathers and they help me strive to be good.

This was the most painful experience by far, and I couldn't ask you to help before; you still didn't know what I was. When I had to do it myself, it was really hard for me to reach them."

"I'm sorry," I said barely above a whisper.

"What are you sorry for?" she chuckled.

"I don't know. You're in so much pain, and I hate seeing you suffer." I reached for her hand and squeezed it, but quickly removed it.

   She cleared her throat. "Get some sleep, Perrie," she mumbled, and I nodded and slumped back to my room.

   The next day Jade, Leigh-Anne, and I went to a bar. "I'm not drinking a single ounce of alcohol after what happened last time!" was the first words out of Leigh's mouth when we made it to the bar.

"I'm not drinking, either," I said as we sat down. Leigh sat on my left and Jade sat on my right. We spent a couple of hours talking.

"Perrie, today's your chance. You can set me up with Leigh-Anne," Jade whispered to me as Leigh got up to take a call.

I smirked and nodded. "When she comes back, I'm going to excuse myself to the bathroom. You take my seat, and then start talking to her. I bet you'll hit it off right away," I smiled.

She smiled back, and for the first time I actually thought about Jade and Leigh-Anne as a couple. It put an uneasy feeling in my stomach, and I didn't know why. The bad feeling did not go away. Why was I so bothered by this? My mind reeled for a possibility, but I couldn't come up with one.

Leigh came back moments later and began talking before I could excuse myself. "My mother butt-dialed me, and I called her back to make sure she was okay, and apparently she was napping. How can you butt-dial someone while napping?" she laughed.

"I don't know, Leigh," I laughed. "I'm going to go use the restroom," I said standing up from my seat and sent a wink in Jade's direction. A drunken man sat to the right of Jade, and when I began walking, I laughed to myself at what I overheard him say to Jade.

"Did it hurt?" the man drunkenly asked.

"Did what hurt?" Jade asked confused.

"When you fell from heaven."

This was irony at its finest.