Lightening used to scare me. Storms in general weren’t scary. I didn’t even mind the loud rumble of thunder. But as soon as I saw lightening I’d freak.
Mary may have had something to do with my initial fear. She used to tell me when I was really young that it was fire breaking loose from hell and the demons were trying to blame the angels for it. Mary had never liked me. Ever since my dad had married her mother when I was five and she was nine when they got married. She’d always had a grudge against me. Looking back it was probably because her father had been shot when she was six and she didn’t want a replacement. But it’s not like I was over joyed about the marriage either. At least her mother had a reason for remarrying. My dad had just gotten bored with mum and me.
I still saw dad, every other weekend until I was eight, when my mum had to move overseas to take care of her sister and I had to go live with them all permanently. I hated living with Mary, her mother Allison and my dad. But I loved living with Mary’s brother, Brandon. From the way they acted he was like a shadow on the wall.
I liked Brandon a lot, not like I was in love with him like Allison and Mary seemed to think, but as a close friend. He was quiet and easy to talk to and he never judged you. He wore all black and got told of constantly by their mother.
I think it was because he wore all black. It wasn’t a ‘happy’ colour in her head but he looked best in black. Colour just wouldn’t suit him.
I think people labelled him a lot, he had a hard time in school. He was unbelievably smart and got top grades but never bragged about it. Not like his sister, who would drone on forever if she got anything close to a B+. She was such a show off.
It was Brandon who got me over my fear of lightening. He asked me once what scared me so much about it and I’d told him what Mary had said. So he took me up to the attic during a storm, sat me on his lap and told me that there were no demons, only angels. Not angels that had wings and harps, but ones that walk around on earth and give happiness to the people around them. He’d hugged me and whispered that I was an angel.
Even if he hadn’t told me that. Even if I had never wished that he was my brother and not Mary’s. Even if none of that had happened, I would have been devastated when he died.
I don’t think Mary, or her mother or my dad ever understood why he did it. He didn’t leave a note, just swallowed twenty anti-depressants in a row and lay down on his bed. I was the one who found him. What haunted me most was that he had a smile on his face. A faint, almost unnoticeable smile. He was happier in death then he ever was in life.
I didn’t speak at the funeral. I don’t even really remember it. All I do remember was the clash of white roses and black clothes.
I should have said something. Mentioned that time when I’d swung so high on the swing set that I’d fallen off and broken my arm and the way he’d tickled me and told me stories all the way home to keep my mind off the pain. Or the time he was the only one (besides mum) who’d come to my first solo ballet recital, even though he hated crowds and the colour pink and just the thought of tutus. But something kept my mouth shut through the whole service and I didn’t speak a word. Not one word. Not just after he died, or at the funeral, or in the car on the way home, or even for weeks after. I never made a sound. I couldn’t even cry. I thought I could at least do that for him, but no. I hated myself so much for it. I used to stand in front of the bathroom mirror and glare at myself. I felt like it was a disrespect to him.
And then one day I was sitting in my favourite tree and I decided to jump. I’m not exactly sure what I wanted to get out of it but I jumped and fell. I didn’t break anything, I was just a bit shaken up. I lay there feeling the few small bruises forming under my skin and then it happened. I let go of something I didn’t even know I had been holding on to and I cried and didn’t stop crying. Then Dulcie found me. Dulcie had been Brandon’s best friend and, I suspected his girlfriend.
“Hey Angel.” She said.
I sniffed.
Brandon called me that. I told him that I hated the name Angelina and he’d started calling me Angel. He said it suited me more anyway.
“Are you okay?” She asked, squinting through the growing darkness.
“I fell.” I whimpered and started sobbing again.
“Evidently.” Dulcie replied, looking up at the tree. She bent down and gently took my arm and pulled me to my feet. She carefully brushed me off and straightened my clothing.
I remember the first time I met her, a year ago when I was nine. Her look has scared me at first but she was really sweet Brandon had assured me.
She’d been standing outside a shopping centre with Brandon. She’d had a cigarette and had been blowing smoke at passers by. She’d looked so pissed off and I hadn’t wanted to go meet her but then Brandon saw me and waved me over and I’d had to.
Dulcie was a Goth. or at least, some people called her one. She wore spider web tights and long coats and collars originally bought for the family Terrier.
I’d never really heard Brandon talk about her but I knew they were very close. I didn’t know she even knew my nickname.
“I fell out of the tree.” I tried to explain. I felt pathetic, standing there, my clothes muddy and my hair crumpled, pointing at the tree.
“I noticed.” She said nodding. I got the feeling that this was amusing her. “But I get the feeling that you didn’t just fall out of the tree.”
“What do you mean?” My head was thumping from the fall and I wasn’t up for the cryptic language she was using.
“I think when Brandon left you took an emotional fall.”
“He didn’t leave. It’s not like he’s on holiday. He’s dead.” I growled at her. I’d been numb for so long and now suddenly I was more emotional then ever.
“He’s not dead.” She smiled. Like she knew something I didn’t.
“Yes, he is.” I insisted.
“No, he’s not gone cos we’re not.”
Great, just great. I’m standing here with a nutcase. She’s gone mental trying to cope with the lose of Brandon, or maybe she was always like this.
“We are all made up of the people around us. You’ll understand someday.” She smiled again and I heard my father’s car pull up in the driveway. “Hmm, parents. Not really my scene.” She murmured “C-ya Angel.” With that she turned and walked off.
“Angelina, look at yourself!” Allison exclaimed as she got out of the car. “What did you do?”
“I fell.” I said matter-of-factly, my eyes straying in the direction Dulcie had gone in.
“Where’s Mary honey?” Dad asked in his ‘I-Can’t-do-this-right-now’ voice.
“Inside.” I answered “On the phone to Arron.”
Arron was Mary’s boyfriend. I find him amusing. He doesn’t try to be. When he talks to Dad he swallows a lot and calls him ‘Sir’. I find it funny.
Allison let out a frustrated sigh.
“That girl…” She hissed.
“She’s not to blame.” Dad cut in “Angelina knows not to go out of her sight.”
Right, I thought bitterly, It’s all my fault.
“Anyway, clean up and get changed.” Allison told me briskly. “We’re going to the Thomason’s for dinner.”
My frown deepened at that. The Thomason’s were one of the rich, posh families that Allison loved to associate with. Their kids, Stephanie (16), Andrea (12) and Dean (9), went to Mary’s school and mine. They seemed to like Mary but they acted like they despised me. I think it was because I was friends with Brandon. As soon as I thought of him my eyes welled up with fresh tears. When we went to the Thomason’s Brandon and me would hide behind some trees in the back yard and eat lollies and chocolate chip cookies that Brandon smuggled in. No one knew where we would go and no one cared.
I didn’t bother to fill my pockets with the yummy bite sized cookies we had. It wouldn’t have been the same.
“Wear something NICE.” Allison trilled up the stairs as I went to get ready.
Nice. I don’t own ‘nice’ clothes. Everything I own is baby blue and violet and very simple. I threw all my clothes on to the bed and sorted through them. I decided I had nothing to wear that Allison would approve of. Not that I really cared about what my stepmother thought, I was just sick of her looking at me like I was degrading the family by being alive.
That was how she had looked at Brandon.
“Well, what do I do now?” I asked Albert, my hermit crab. Albert understood. Allison hated him too. He was a gift from Brandon. He’d given Albert, already named, to me for my ninth birthday. I’d been so amazed when he had taken the shell out of its cage and put it on the floor. It had shuffled around a bit then started climbing up the curtains.
Allison had come in at that point, seen something crawling up her curtain, screamed and fainted. Brandon had picked up Albert, put him in his cage, picked that up, taken my hand and we’d both stepped over Allison and raced back upstairs.
“Angelina.” Mary cut into my memories “We’re going soon.” She snapped, surveying me, Albert and my room with distaste. “Put the shell away and get ready.” She looked at me evenly and swept off.
I put Albert back and, without even thinking, walked down the hall to Brandon’s room.
Allison had left it exactly how it was when I’d found him, except the small packet of medication had been taken to the hospital in the ambulance with him. The sheets were still crumpled from where he’d lain down and from when they’d move him onto the ambulance bed.
His room was painted smoky grey with black window and doorframes. It had a huge floor to ceiling built in wardrobe along one wall. His bed was under the one window and his desk off to one side with his computer and favourite books. It even smelled of him.
A poster of some insane Goth band grinning into the camera hung over the desk, along with a few photos of him and Dulcie and him and me.
I stood there for a long time. Breathing in the stale air that he had taken his last breath from. I stared at the photos. In all of them we were hugging, or holding hands, or leaning on each other. But in only one he was smiling. It was taken on the day of one of my ballet recitals, the last one he went to before he’d…
I shook my head, making my long chestnut hair ripple. I wanted to take the photo of us but I didn’t feel I had the right. But I knew it wasn’t photo I had come in here for. I walked over to the wardrobe and took out a long sleeved black top and a pair of plain black jeans. I put them on in slow motion, or at least it felt like it, then I took the can of black hair spray and gave myself five black streaks. When I’d finished I put everything back and went and lay down on his bed, where he had died and I still lived.
Allison screamed.
“Angelina, why are you dressed like that?” My father asked, standing in the doorway. His face was taut with the tension around him. I sat up and looked at him, and Mary and Allison. They all looked very sad. Not sad as in depressed, sad as in pathetic. I got off the bed and remembered I was dressed in Brandon’s clothes. I must have fallen asleep. Allison sobbed melodramatically and Mary tried to comfort her.
I was suddenly filled with an unending anger.
“I felt like it.” I snapped.
“She’s going to end up just like Brandon!” Allison wailed warningly.
“Since when was that a bad thing? Brandon was the only good thing in this family!” I spat at her.
Mary glared at me but dropped her gaze when I looked back.
“Angelina, honey, you know that’s not what she meant. Allison is just worried about you.” Dad tried to explain.
“No she’s not. She’s just worried about what her posh assed friends will think. A freak for a sun and a freak for a step daughter!”
Allison seemed to gather herself after I said that and sat up regally.
“Mary, will you please take Angelina” (Angel, I corrected in my head) “to the bathroom, change her clothes and wash that….gunk out of here hair.” Allison managed to get out through clenched teeth. Mary obeyed, grabbing my forearm and yanking me down the hall. I was changed into a long sleeved lilac top, my faded blue jeans and white high top sneakers, then dragged into the bathroom where Mary undid my hair and forced my head under the tap.
“I can’t believe you did that.” She hissed, scrubbing furiously at my scalp until it felt raw.
I didn’t reply, but when I stood I deliberately flicked my long wet hair in her face.
“Well?” Mary ripped a brush through the knots and tangles with a painful brush stroke but I refused to flinch.
“What?” I asked innocently, squinting my eyes shut as she yanked at a particularly large tangle. She began to braid my hair, deliberately tugging at it.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” She tied the end of the plait and pulled me around to face her.
“Nothing.” I said calmly. “All I did was dress in Brandon’s memory. It was for him and I seem to be the only one who cares that he’s…gone.”
“He’s not gone. He’s dead, and I DO care!” Mary sobbed. I’d never seen her cry, not even at the funeral. I felt awkward. “You don’t know what it’s like. You came in here and were instantly friends with Brandon. You were closer to him then I ever was. It felt like you were the real family and I was the intruder.”
“That’s all I am to you, aren’t I? The intruder.” I felt suddenly indignant about her choice of words.
“Well, you are.” She growled through her tears.
My awkward feelings vanished and she went hurtling back up to the top of my hit list.
“This is probably why Brandon didn’t like you.” I said evenly. I was filled with a calm hot anger. I washed my hands and splashed my face. I reached for the towel and dried my face before I turned around to her “You’re such a bitch.”
Mary stared at me, stunned, then slapped me hard across the face, leaving a red handprint on my cheek. I gasped, raising my own hand to my stinging cheek. Mary didn’t even apologise. She just turned and left the bathroom silently.
When I went downstairs Mary was waiting with Dad and Allison.
“Okay, let’s go.” Dad said cheerily.
“What happened to your cheek?” Allison asked coldly. I looked over at Mary who was staring blankly out the window.
“Some of the dye dripped onto my cheek. I had to scrub it off.” I lied.
“Oh, okay. Let’s go then.” Allison grabbed my arm and pulled me outside to the car.
“Angelina!” Allison bellowed from downstairs. “You have a visitor!”
I rolled off my bed and pulled on some clothes.
“I’ll be right down.” I muttered. I knew she couldn’t hear me but I could never get my voice to the same wall penetrating pitch that she could.
“Angel.” Dulcie greeted me as I walked into the kitchen. She was sitting at the table with an empty juice glass beside her.
Oh god, I thought, she’s had to stay in the same room with Allison alone for more then five minutes. Even I couldn’t deal with that and I lived with her.
“Dulcie, Hi.” I stammered. Allison glared at me, as if asking with her eyes why I associated with people like this. I ignored her and found myself in an unexpected hug from my ‘visitor’.
“It’s nice to see you looking better then last time.” She said, winking at me like I was in on some huge secret.
“Yea, last time I was a bit shaken up from…everything.” I felt really self-conscious talking under Allison’s steady glare. “Why don’t we go for a walk.” I suggested. I could feel my stepmother’s eyes on me as I closed the kitchen door behind us.
“So, how’ve you been?” Dulcie asked after a few moments of silence.
“Okay.” I answered quietly.
She looked at me sideways and suddenly I was pouring out the whole story, the clothes, the fight, Mary, everything.
Dulcie didn’t say anything until she seemed sure I had finished. For a minute she just stared at the ground as we walked. I felt even more self-conscious now and my cheeks felt very warm. I thought of that old saying about wanting the ground to open up and swallow you. I never got that feeling until now. I had to resist the urge to drop to the ground and claw at the grass and scream “OPEN UP!”
But instead I focused my gaze on the cracks in the sidewalk and imagined what it would feel like to be small enough to fall into one.
“Why didn’t you tell your parents when she slapped you?” She finally asked me.
“I don’t know!” I wailed.
“Was it because you wanted to be slapped out of it?”
It made sense. I had wanted to snap out of it. I had wanted to shake myself until I felt better, Mary had just gotten there first.
“Yea, I guess.” I mumbled. The revelation left me feeling at bit lost. Dulcie seemed to tell that I understood her.
“Well, you’re home safe so I guess I’m gonna cruise.” She hugged me again on my doorstep and walked off.
“I hope you’re not going to associate with people like that again.” Allison’s voice snapped behind me. I whipped around and stared at her. We stood there a long time, just glaring at each other until I finally said clearly “Allison, open your eyes.”
Three years, I thought dismally, throwing my books into my locker carelessly and shutting it with a bang. Three years since Brandon died.
I was in my first year at high school. Mary was in her last.
We still didn’t get along.
Dulcie was twenty now. I didn’t see her anymore, last I heard she’d stormed out of her best friend’s funeral and hadn’t been seen since. I could just see her, sinking into the shadows as if she were darkness itself.
I have friends, guys and girls who have older siblings who had been friends with Brandon.
Built in friends. I thought to myself with a wry smile.
At that moment Josh loped up. He and I had been sort-of friends when we were younger but when we hit high school we’d become best friends.
“Hey Angel.” Josh said with a goofy grin.
“Hi,” I replied, looking at my watch. I had a meeting with the school counsellor in ten minutes. I was going to pick up my records so I could hand them in at my new school. Today was my last day here. The whole family was going to move across town but only I was moving schools. I was looking forward to being at a different school then Mary.
“Feel up to a game of cards?” Josh continued, oblivious to my distraction.
I shook my head.
“Please?” Josh wheedled “I’ll even let you win.”
That was a joke, seeing as I beat him in every card game we ever play. I liked playing with him though, mostly because he always comes up with some hilarious excuse about why he lost. I think the funniest one was when he’d told me he was really tired from staying up all night keeping his insomniac ferrets from rioting out of boredom.
“Please Angel?” Josh’s voice snapped me back into reality.
“I don’t think so” I insisted “See you later.”
Before he could reply I turned and walked off down the hall.
‘Esther Donovan’ the writing on the door read ‘School Counsellor’
I groaned. In other words, a shrink.
Allison and Dad had talked with my teachers and they’d all agreed that they were worried about me. Ha. What a joke. They weren’t worried. I was just giving them all bad images. The day any of them were really worried about me I’d shoot myself.
I sighed, preparing myself to knock on the door. I knew what would happen. I’d try to keep things moving on quickly. Get the file, small chitchat, say you have to go. But I knew she’d try to get out my records and discuss them with me. I knew what they’d say.
Divorced parents, workaholic father, stepmonster (okay, stepmother), stepsister…dead brother.
“Damn it.” I growled to myself “I don’t want to do this!”
“Do what?”
I turned around and saw a guy standing in the doorway. He was dressed all in black and for a brief second I thought it was Brandon but then reality set in and I realised it was just a guy in black.
“I don’t want to go see the counsellor.” I explained.
“I know how that feels.”
“Well, here goes.” I knocked and a creaky voice told me to come in. “Wish me luck.” I asked the guy. He put his hands together in mock prayer and smiled.
“Good luck.”
I opened the door and walked in.
“Hello dear.” The counsellor greeted me. She had to be at least seventy, not empathise required, with grey wisps of hair. She smelled like insect repellent.
“Hi. I’m here for my files, I need them for the new school.” I tried not to mutter because then I’d have to repeat myself and then I’d have to stay an extra second in the office.
“Oh yes, of course.” She hobbled around, reminding me of that old fairy tale about the witch and the gingerbread house. But she couldn’t be eating children, children eaters aren’t skeletal thin and she is. Not that I’ve met many children eaters if you don’t count the stepmonster but I know they wouldn’t look like her.
I stopped thinking abruptly and realised she was waiting for an answer.
“Err, pardon?”
“Where are you moving to?”
“Oh, Parklands. I’ve heard it’s a great school.” I told her. I wished desperately that she’d just find the file so I could leave.
“Yes, I’ve heard many nice things about it.”
Nice. There’s that word again. I thought to myself, remembering the incident three years earlier, when Mary had slapped me after Allison told me to wear ‘nice’ clothes. I looked down at my graffitied blue jeans, Doc Martens and faded purple top and made a vow never to use that word again. Then I realised I’d just missed another question.
“Pardon?”
“I was just wondering if you wanted to use this opportunity to your advantage and sit down and have a chat?” The way she was staring at me gave me the creeps.
“Umm.” I looked at my watch as if I really did want to but didn’t have the time and sighed. “I’d love to but I’ve got a lot to do…”
Oh yea, returning library books and cleaning out my locker will take forever.
“Oh well, perhaps another time.” She smiled and handed me my file. I felt like jumping up and down.
“Yea, that’d be…nice.”
“But I’ll miss you!” Josh whined. I was standing in front of my locker, clasping my file in one hand and trying to get my padlock open with the other.
“I’ll miss you to, but look at it this way, we won’t be at the same school but I’m moving just down the road from you. We’ll see each other without the teachers and pop quizzes.”
He nodded sadly and reached over, clicking the padlock open for me. I smiled at him gratefully and swung my bag off my shoulder and started heaving textbooks, note pads and huge wads of rubbish into it. When I’d finished I pried the photo of me and Brandon, the one of us hugging and smiling, from the inside of my locker door and slipped it into my diary.
“I’d better go. I promised Dad I’ll be outside when he drives up.”
“I’ll walk with you.” He told me, helping me haul my bag out to the front gate. “Do you want me to come over tonight and help you finish packing?”
“Okay. I don’t have much left to pack but Allison put me in charge of packing Brandon’s room.”
“Oh, okay. Are you sure you don’t want to do that alone?”
“Nah. I want some help and the rest of the family’s useless.”
We stood at side by side for awhile not saying anything. Best friends don’t need words all the time.
“There’s my dad.” I said, pointing out the families white Commodore. I hugged Josh and got in the car.
I sat in Brandon’s room. Josh wasn’t going to arrive for another hour but I’d decided to start with out him. I started by untacking the posters and photos and folding up all the bedding.
Allison hadn’t been in this room since that day Mary slapped Mary and me refused to even look at it as she walked past down the hall.
As I packed all the shelves of books an envelope slipped out from between two of his favourites and fluttered to the floor. It had my name on it in Brandon’s neat cursive writing.
I opened the letter and read it:
Dear Angel,
I’m sorry that I wasn’t brave enough to give this to you in person. And I’m sorry that I’m not staying to see you on your first day of high school, or your appearance in the Australian Ballet Company. But I’ll be there with you, I promise. I don’t know when you’ll find this but I hope you forgive me for everything I left you with. Just know that my only regret is that I’m leaving you behind. But Angel, I know you’re asking yourself why I couldn’t hold on just for you. My answer is; People live their lives for others. People hang on for others. I let go for myself.
My life was a long black tunnel to death, and you were the light at the end.
My sweet Angel, I love you.
Your Guardian soul Brandon.
“Angel?” I hadn’t heard Josh come in, “Are you okay?”
I looked at the letter lying unfolded in my lap. I thought about Brandon and the last time I’d seen him. He’d hugged me so long and so tight that I thought he might never let me go. And he hadn’t, not really. Even as I sat there talking to Josh I felt his arms around me, forever protecting me. I suddenly wasn’t as afraid as I used to be, cos me and Josh and Albert and even Brandon were all going to be there for each other. Brandon had let go for himself and I was going was going to hold on for myself too.
“Josh.” He looked up from counting out cards
“Yea?”
“What are you gonna be when you grow up?” He grinned insanely and winked at me.
“Don’t be silly. I’m not going to grow up.” He told me.
And I believed him.
So that’s how it ended. Brandon was my guardian and I was his angel, and this is our story.