"To put it sort of loosely."
"It"s just up to me?"
"That"s right." He tilted his head slightly. "You might want to think your life over at this point."
Gillian blinked. Then she took a few steps away from him and stared across th e supernaturally green gra.s.s. She tried to think about her life.
If you"d asked me this morning if I wanted to stay alive, there would have be en no question. But now . . .
Now it felt a little like being rejected. As if she weren"t good enough. And b esides, seeing that she"d come this far ... did she really want to go back?
It"s not as if I were anybody special there. Not smart like Amy, a straight A student. Not brave. Not talented.
Well, what else is there? What would I be going back to?
Her mom-drinking every day, asleep by the time Gillian got home. Her dad a nd the constant arguments. The loneliness she knew she"d be facing now tha t Amy had a boyfriend. The longing for things she could never have, like D avid Blackburn with his quizzical smile. Like popularity and love and acce ptance. Like having people think she was interesting and-and mature.
Come on. There"s got to be something good back there.
"Cup Noodles?" the guy"s voice said.
Gillian turned toward him. "Huh?"
"You like those. Especially on a cold day when you come inside. Cats. The way babies smell. Cinnamon toast with lots of b.u.t.ter, like your mom used t o make it when she still got up in the morning. Bad monster movies."
Gillian choked. She"d never told anyone about most of those things. "How d o you know all that?"
He smiled. He really had an extraordinary smile. "Eh, we see a lot up here."
Then he sobered. "And don"t you want to see more? Of life, I mean. Isn"t th ere anything left for you to do?"
Everything was left for her to do. She"d never accomplished anything worth while.
But I didn"t have much time, a small wimpy voice inside her protested. To be quashed immediately by a stern, steady voice. You think that"s an exc use? n.o.body knows how much time they"ve got. You had plenty of minutes, a nd you wasted most of them.
"Then don"t you think you"d better go back and try again?" the guy said, hi a gentle, prodding voice. "See if you can do a better job?"
Yes. All at once, Gillian was filled with the same burning she"d felt when s he got out of the creek. A sense of revelation and of purpose. She could do that. She could change completely, turn her life in a whole new direction.
Besides, there were her parents to consider. No matter how bad things were between them now, it could only make it worse if their daughter suddenly died. They"d blame each other. And Amy would get one of her guilt complexe s for not waiting to drive Gillian home from school. . . .
The thought brought a little grim satisfaction. Gillian tried to quell it. She h ad the feeling the guy was listening.
But she did have a new perspective on life. A sudden feeling that it was terr ibly precious, and that the worst thing you could do was waste it.
She looked at the guy. "I want to go back."
He nodded. Gave the smile again. "I thought maybe you would." His voice w as so warm now. There was a quality in it that was like-what? Pure love?
Infinite understanding?
A tone that was to sound what perfect light was to vision.
He held out a hand. "Time to go, Gillian," he said gently. His eyes were the deepest violet imaginable.
Gillian hesitated just an instant, then reached toward him.
She never actually touched his hand, not in a physical way. Just as her fing ers seemed about to meet his, she felt a tingling shock and there was a flas h. Then he was gone and Gillian had several odd impressions all at once.
The first was of being . . . unfixed. Detached from her surroundings. A fallin g feeling.
The second was of something coming at her.
It was coming very fast from some direction she couldn"t point to. A place t hat wasn"t defined by up or down or left or right. And it felt huge and winged, the way a hawk"s sha dow must feel to a mouse.
Gillian had a wild impulse to duck.
But it wasn"t necessary. She was moving herself, falling away. Rushing bac kward through the tunnel, leaving the meadow-and whatever was coming at he r-behind. The huge thing had only registered for an instant on her senses, and now, whizzing back through the darkness, she forgot about it.
Later, she would realize what a mistake this had been.
For now, time seemed compressed. She was alone in the tunnel, being pulled down like water down a drain. She tried to look between her feet to see w here she was going, and saw something like a deep well beneath her.
At the bottom of the well was a circle of light, like the view backwards thro ugh a telescope. And in the circle, very tiny, was a girl"s body lying on the snow.
My body, Gillian thought-and then, before she had time to feel any emotion, the bottom of the well was rushing up toward her. The tiny body was bigger and bigger. She felt a tugging pressure. She was being sucked into it-too fast.
Way too fast. She had no control. She fit perfectly in the body, like a hand s lipping into a mitten, but the jolt knocked her out.
Oooh . . . something hurts.
Gillian opened her eyes-or tried to. It was as hard as doing a chin-up. On the second or third attempt she managed to get them open a crack. Whiteness everywhere. Dazzling. Blinding. Where . . . ? Is it snow? What am I doing lying down in the snow? Images came to her. The creek. Icy water. Clim bing out. Falling. Being so cold . . .
After that. . . she couldn"t remember. But now she knew what hurt. Everythin g. I can"t move.
Her muscles were clenched tight as steel. But she knew she couldn"t stay here.
If she did, she"d . . .
Memory burst through her. I died already.
Strangely, the realization gave her strength. She actually managed to sit up.
As she did, she heard a cracking sound. Her clothes were glazed with solid i ce.
Somehow she got to her feet. She shouldn"t have been able to do it. Her bod y had been cold enough to shut down earlier, and since then she"d been lyin g in the snow. By all the laws of nature, she should be frozen now.
But she was standing. She could even shuffle a step forward.
Only to realize she had no idea which way to go.
She still didn"t know where the road was.
Worse, it would be getting dark soon. When that happened, she wouldn"t even be able to see her own tracks. She could walk in circles in the woods until her body gave out a gain.
"See that white oak tree? Go around it to the right."
The voice was behind her left ear. Gillian turned that way as sharply as he r rigid muscles would allow, even though she knew she wouldn"t see anything .
She recognized the voice. But it was so much warmer and gentler now.
"You came back with me."
"Sure." Once again the voice was filled with that impossible warmth, that pe rfect love. "You don"t think I"d just leave you to wander around until you f roze again, do you? Now head for that tree, kid."
After that came a long time of stumbling and staggering, over branches, arou nd trees, on and on. It seemed to last forever, but always there was the voi ce in Gillian"s ear, guiding her, encouraging her. It kept her moving when s he thought she couldn"t possibly go another step.
And then, at last, the voice said, "Just up this ridge and you"ll find the road."In a dreamlike state, Gillian climbed the ridge.
And there it was. The road. In the last light before darkness, Gillian could s ee it meandering down a hill.
But it was still almost a mile to her house, and she couldn"t go any farther.
"You don"t have to," the voice said gently. "Look up the road."
Gillian saw headlights.
"Now just get in the middle of the road and wave."
Gillian stumbled out and waved like a mechanical doll. The headlights were coming, blinding her. Then she realized that they were slowing.
"We did it," she gasped, dimly aware that she was speaking out loud. "They"
re stopping!"
"Of course they"re stopping. You did a great job. You"ll be all right now."
There was no mistaking the note of finality.
The car was stopped now. The driver"s side door was opening. Gillian could se e a dark figure beyond the glare of the headlights. But in that instant what she felt was distress.
"Wait, don"t leave me. I don"t even know who you are-"
For a brief moment, she was once again enfolded by love and understanding .
"Just call me Angel."
Then the voice was gone, and all Gillian could feel was anguish.
"What are you doing out-Hey, are you okay?" The new voice broke through Gi llian"s emptiness. She had been standing rigidly in the headlights; now sh e blinked and tried to focus on the figure coming toward her.
"G.o.d, of course you"re not okay. Look at you. You"re Gillian, aren"t you? Yo u live on my street."
It was David Blackburn.
The knowledge surged through her like a shock, and it drove all the strange hallucinations she"d been having out of her mind.
It really was David, as close as he"d ever been to her.
Dark hair. A lean face that still had traces of a summer tan. Cheekbones to di e for and eyes to drown in. A certain elegance of carriage. And that half-frie ndly, half-quizzical smile. . . .
Except that he wasn"t smiling now. He looked shocked and worried.
Gillian couldn"t get a single word out. She just stared at him from under the i cy curtain of her hair.
"What hap-No, never mind. We"ve got to get you warm."
At school he was thought of as a tough guy, an independent rebel. But, now, without any hesitation, the tough guy scooped her up in his arms.
Confusion flashed through Gillian, then embarra.s.sment-but underneath it al l was something much stronger. An odd bedrock sense of safety. David was w arm and solid and she knew instinctively that she could trust him. She could stop fighting now and relax.
"Put this on ... watch your head . . . here, use this for your hair." David was somehow getting everything done at once without hurrying. Capable and ki nd. Gillian found herself inside the car, wrapped in his sheepskin jacket, w ith an old towel around her shoulders. Heat blasted from the vents as David gunned the engine.
It was wonderful to be able to rest without being afraid it would kill her. B liss not to be surrounded by cold, even if the hot air didn"t seem to warm he r. The worn beige interior of the Mustang seemed like paradise.
And David-well, no, he didn"t look like an angel. More like a knight, especi ally the kind who went out in disguise and rescued people.
Gillian was beginning to feel very fuzzy.
"I thought I"d take a dip," she said, between chattering teeth. She was shiver ing again.
"What?"
"You asked what happened. I was a little hot, so I jumped in the creek."
He laughed out loud. "Huh. You"re brave." Then he glanced at her sideways with keen eyes and added, "What really happened?"
He thinks I"m brave! A glow better than the heated air enveloped Gillian.
"I slipped," she said. "I went into the woods, and when I got to the creek-"
Suddenly, she remembered why she"d gone into the woods. She"d forgotten it since the fall had put her own life in danger, but now she seemed to hear th at faint, pathetic cry all over again.
"Oh, my G.o.d," she said, struggling to sit upright. "Stop the car."