Garden

The angel takes the girl by the hand and draws her toward him, staring deeply into her eyes and smiling at what he sees. He turns and begins to walk forward, leading her deeper into his beautiful garden, shimmering in the afternoon light. The girl never takes her eyes off him. His body bare, thin but muscular.

They stop as they reach a bench in the middle of the garden. It is clean granite, surrounded by the most beautiful flowers the girl has ever seen. They hang suspended from the fences, the trees, across the bushes and climb over every surface. She is mesmerized. He speaks,

“Come. Sit on this bench with me, Claire.” His voice rings in the girl’s ears like bells. She closes her eyes and sighs.

When she opens them again, he is sitting on the bench and looking at her with the smallest of smiles, waiting. She sits. But she is stiff from anxiety. It hurts to look at him, though she cannot stop. She stares forward until the corner of her eye catches an orange curl. She turns to him.

“Why are you afraid of me, Claire? I love you. Do you not love me?” The angel asks. His eyes look sad. She begins to cry.

“Of course, I love you,” she squeaks out, “but I don’t understand why you love me. I’m nothing, you are an angel.” The girl continues to cry. She is so confused, her heart beats uncontrollably.

“My dear Claire,” whispers the angel, “you are everything.” He takes her hand once more and stands to lead her somewhere else in the garden. As they walk, she is amazed by the beauty in every direction. “Like Eden,” the girl whispers in awe.

“It is not Eden,” says the angel. The girl hears anger in his voice, but it fades quickly. She forgets it as they approach a blue pond. “Come, Claire. Look into this pond and see how lovely you are.”

The girl kneels beside the pond and leans over the blue water. But she is afraid of her own reflection and squeezes her eyes shut. The angel kneels beside her and places his hands on her shoulders, “Claire, my darling, you must look. Open your eyes,” he whispers closely to her ear.

The girl slowly opens her eyes and peers into the water. She gasps at what she sees. Her hair is thick and black, a wave of silk. Her face is her face, but her cheeks are full and rosy. Her lashes are long and black and shield eyes clear and blue. She reaches up to touch. The girl cries again.

●

Claire hesitates to get out of bed when her alarm sounds. Her heart is heavy from the day and night before. She knows what she will face at school today. The taunting, the insinuating comments. But Claire gets up anyway. What is the point in trying to avoid one’s fate?

The bus comes right on time and Claire shuffles to the backseat. She remembers the happiness she felt when the angel told her that he loved her, but she is not the girl in the dream. He loves that pretty version of me, not this waif on the bus. Claire avoids thinking of her dream.

The bus stops every few minutes to pick up the next kid. Soon, it turns into the small neighborhood where Eren lives. Claire sinks down into her seat as he walks out of the house and onto the bus. She didn’t even notice when he passed the open seat up front and continued down the lane towards where she sat.

“Hey.”

Claire sits up, startled. Eren stands there with his eyes down, but says, “Can I sit here?”

Claire just nods and looks away from his face. She scoots closer to the window. She can hear whispers. Her face reddens. What is he doing?

They ride in silence. But as they get close to the school, Eren slips a note in Claire’s hand. She stares at it, not sure whether to open it or not. His leg shakes rapidly. The bus stops. Eren jumps up and leaves Claire staring out of the window.

Claire walks to homeroom in a daze, the note clenched in her fist. As she sits in her seat, she slowly unfurls her hand.

Claire reads the note once, twice, three more times. She crinkles the paper back up and shoves it into her bookbag. Face hot, Claire stares ahead and tries to listen to the teacher, but keeps losing focus. Her mind only comes back to her surroundings when Andrew starts throwing paper balls at her. Claire shoots him a disgusted face, but he only laughs. Claire doesn’t care.

Meet me in the greenhouse after school – EB.

●

When the door to the greenhouse opens, Claire’s heart speeds up and she feels blood rush in her ears. Her mind still couldn’t understand why he would want to meet her here, or at all. But I came…and now he is here, too. He seemed nervous, his eyes were downcast and his hand was fidgety. Claire walked from her spot by the ferns to meet him.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

Eren stared at his shoes, biting his lip. Claire wasn’t sure what to do, so she turned to the plant next to her and started running her hand over the leaves.

He sighs, and then asks, “You like me, right?” Claire stops fidgeting with the leaves and looks at him, unsure why he would ask her a question everyone knew the answer to. She replied, “Yeah,” and went back to her leaves.

They stood in silence like this for a few minutes. When Claire finally felt the nerve to ask why they were here, Eren moved his body next to hers. Before the blood could even rush to her face, his hand was cupping her cheek and turning her face up to his. It was much quicker and softer than she had imagined so many times before. His lips just as chapped, his breath just as shallow. Are you nervous, too?

When he pulled away, he looked down for just a moment while Claire stared at his wrinkled brow.

“I wanted my first kiss to be with someone that really cared about me. That might sound stupid, I don’t know. And I thought maybe you would want yours to be me, too.”

Eren turned his eyes back up to meet Claire’s. His hand never leaving her face, “Say something,” he pleaded.

But Claire didn’t know what to say, her heart felt like it might burst. She knew how red her cheeks must be now, how shocked her eyes must seem. So, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, “I’ve played this moment over in my head a thousand times. You’d think I’d be able to speak,” Claire chuckles at herself for saying this to him. Is this real? She starts to laugh and opens her eyes. Eren is staring at her, but then he starts to laugh, too. And then they are both laughing uncontrollably.

When they finally calm down, they just smile at each other and their little secret. Eren plucks a marigold and presses it into Claire’s hand.

●

Claire missed the bus that afternoon. As she walked home, remembering, she smiled and giggled. She forgot about Andrew and his taunting. She forgot about the angel and his eyes. She forgot to dream of other places and other worlds besides this place that now felt perfect. Eren’s warmth, his carelessness, and his daring was all that consumed her thoughts. Did he really kiss me? Claire replayed that moment over and over, step by step.

When Eren had to leave for soccer practice, he had pressed the yellow flower into her palm and then gripped her hand. As they stood by the door, he said he wanted to meet her like this again. He said he had to stay after school for practice every other day and that he would be waiting here for her on Friday. Claire only nodded.

When Claire got home, she was still smiling like a child. Grinning and laughing to herself. She was so focused on her happiness that she didn’t note the car out front. Nor did she notice that the door was already unlocked. Claire had been lucky to never be witness to her mom’s work before, but that’s because she had always been so careful to avoid what she knew she didn’t want to know. If Claire had any thought to what happened in this house while she was at school, it could never compare to what she saw when she pushed open the door.

Claire never realized how bruised her mom’s skin was. Never saw the cuts or the round burns before. The man stood over her mom. She was on her knees, hands tied behind her back. It may have been seconds or even minutes before they noticed her standing there. Claire is too stunned to leave, too sad to cry. The man yells at her mother and hits her for leaving the door unlocked. When he starts towards Claire, she finally defrosts and runs down the steps, towards the tree line.

●

The girl didn’t remember falling asleep in the cemetery garden, but when she awoke in the flowerbed by the angel’s feet, relief overcame her.

“Claire, you seem frightened. Is everything alright?” The angel asks. His hands are gripping her shoulders, his eyes full of concern. The girl pushes herself up and forward, falling into the angel’s arms. She shakes from sobs while he strokes her fine hair. They stay like this until the girl stops her shaking.

“Angel, I saw something horrible. Why didn’t I know how badly my mom was hurt? Why didn’t I stay to help her?” The girl crumples into herself, hugging her knees and rocking back and forth.

“My sweet Claire, how could you have known?” Says the angel, his voice like honey, dripping in pity, “You are nothing but a victim of her diseased existence. Cry no longer, you are here in paradise with me, your angel.”

The girl looks up to meet his eyes. They are a storm, pleading for her to forget the sorrow. She does as she is told and rises to stand next to him. The angel takes her hand and leads her to their pond. They sit in the grass, so lush it was like sitting upon a pillow. The girl leans her head on his shoulder.

“You have something else to tell me, don’t you, Claire?” The angel takes hold of her chin and turns her face towards his so he can look in her eyes. The girl stammers because now she is nervous. “Angel, a boy kissed me today.”

As soon as the words leave her lips, the angel’s eyes begin to glow. No longer a pretty violet, they grow almost black. His perfect lips tremble and a tear slides down his round cheek.

“Why have you done such a thing?”

The girl stammers, taken aback by his sadness, “H-he didn’t ask me, angel, he just did it.”

“But you allowed it. And it made you happy, do you deny this?”

“No, angel, I do not deny it. I have loved him since I was a child.”

“Well, you are no longer a child, Claire.”

●

Claire woke up stiff and cold. Her body was curled tightly around the feet of the statue. As she slowly began to remember her dream, she felt fresh tears pool behind her eyes. Will he abandon me now? Now that I’ve betrayed him? Claire lets the tears flow freely as she stands and starts the slow walk back home. The sun has only barely begun to rise so she thinks she may even get back home before the bus comes. Along the way, she drops a wilted flower on the path. The yellow now turned to brown.