You Are So Not a Fallen Angel

Chapter 6

Chapter 6:

The midmorning sunlight streaming through the gap in the curtains and falling across my face woke me up to a beautiful summer day. I kept my eyes shut and wiggled further beneath the duvet, savouring that golden moment between sleep and full awareness. A rapping sounding and a smile crept across my face.

“I’m coming, Lorris,” I murmured, rolling over. “I’m coming.”

I pushed the duvet back and got to my feet. I felt as if I was enveloped in a warm glow as I shuffled towards the window.

“Eliza, are you getting –“ My mother pushed the door open and dispelled all feeling of well-being with a crash. She stepped into the room and stopped dead. “What happened to your room?!”

  I turned around and cast an eye on my surroundings. At first glance, it didn’t seem too bad; the room was, as usual, slightly messy, with books stacked haphazardly by the bed and clothes tossed across a chair. My makeup was spread out across the top of the dresser, but there was nothing truly horrifying. That is, until I dropped my eyes to the floor and noticed the dirty footprints staining the cream and gold, custom-made carpet.

“I can explain-“ I started to say, then decided I couldn’t. “I have no idea how those got there.”

My mother crossed her arms and stared at me, slowly arching one eyebrow.

“Really, I don’t,” I said, looking around with a look of what I hoped was puzzlement on my face.

“Right,” she said, eyeing me from head to toe and raising the other eyebrow. I glanced at myself and realized I was still wearing The Dress, which had not been improved by being slept in, used for crawling through windows and slept in again. There was also dirt clinging to my feet and ankles.

“Go and have a shower, for goodness sake,” my mother ordered, turning on her heel and stalking back down the stairs. I breathed a sigh of relief and collapsed onto my bed. I didn’t want to have to explain I had spent half the night flying through the air with a mysterious stranger. I’m not sure she would’ve understood. I wasn’t sure I understood. I would have liked to say I had been dreaming, but where had the dirt come from?

I went to the window and pulled it open. I stuck my head out and looked down. Well, there was the answer to one question. Lorris hadn’t been floating outside my window like a creepy vampire. He had simply been standing on the roof to the rear extension, four feet below my window. I must have been too sleepy to realize that last night. So, I hadn’t been in any real danger when he had pulled from the ledge. And the grand leap into his arm had hardly been a great leap of faith.

I backed away, feeling stupid. Some of the things I had said to him were coming back, and I could feel my face turning red from delayed embarrassment. Had I really called him “my angel”? He must have been laughing his head off.

I stripped off The Dress and screwed it up in a ball and tossed in the bottom of my cupboard, never wanting to see it again. Then I went to the bathroom and took a very long shower.

Once I was squeaky clean again and dressed in shorts and a tee-shirt, I went to the back garden and walked around it, looking up at the rear of the house. The rear extension was stuck to the back of the house, added by my parents a couple of years ago when they decided nine bedrooms and six bathrooms were not enough and they really needed more. It was two storeys high, and the roof was tiled and sloped gently. You could easily stand on it without too much danger of slipping off. The main question was how to get onto it. The easiest way would be to climb down from one of the third storey window. Someone very agile might have able to shimmy up the house, but the walls were stone and quite smooth. There weren’t many footholds. There were a few strands of ivy, but they were far too small and weak to support the weight of a man all the way to the top of the house. There was a large oak tree in the back garden, whose highest branched were on the level of the second floor roof, but it was quite a long from the house, and it was a long jump from one to the other. So unless Lorris had sneaked into my house (and I would have put it past him) and climbed through a window, I didn’t see how he could’ve been outside my window.