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Angel

by Shi Y, Arizona, USA, Age 16

Angel met me with a lie. She came up to me one day while I was eating lunch in the park and asked me if my name was John Wilkins, and if we had been in the same high school photography class together. I laughed and said no, no, not me. She asked if she could sit down.

She was good company that day, so when she offered her number I took it and even called. “Hi John,” she had said when she lifted the receiver.
“No, no,” I replied. “It’s Tom.”

I saw her again and again, and then we dated and then we didn’t. I don’t know why it didn’t work out. Truth is I can’t even remember the difference between ‘on’ and ‘off’. She was just there, a pillar supporting my own existence, something permanent that had always been there and always would be. Except she wasn’t; sometimes she was the ocean, absorbing me like sand, pushing and churning me all the way up. Sometimes she was the bubble wrap you see everywhere at Christmas, pop, pop, popping at the most inopportune moment. Sometimes she was a third slice of cake at a birthday party, enjoyed then, regretted later. Sometimes she was just gone.

Like the day I came home to find her missing, the house overly intact from lack of use. I was disturbed but in a back-of-the-mind kind of way, so I watched The Secret Life of Paris Hilton and pretended she was there.
I didn’t move until she came back the next afternoon and changed the channel. “I was watching that,” I said. She didn’t reply. “I’ve been watching that all night,” I said. “Since you’ve been gone.”

“Oh,” she said.
I closed my eyes and imagined us as we’d appear in a film at that moment. She was cold and apathetic, staring at the TV while I sat beside her listlessly. I looked hungry.
“Do I look hungry?” I asked.
She glanced at me. “No.”
“Oh.” I paused. “I thought I looked hungry.”
“Are you hungry?” She shot me an odd look.
“Yeah,” I answered. “Yeah, I really am. But there’s nothing to eat here.”
“Did you look in the fridge?”
“No.”
“Well, then, why don’t you go do that?”
“Because it will be empty,” I said.
“It wasn’t when I left yesterday,” she replied. “So unless you ate everything in it last night—”
“I didn’t.”
“Oh, okay.” Silence. “Do you want me to make you something?”
“No,” I said. “We don’t have any food,” I added.
“Look, Tom, I don’t know what’s going on with you, but when I left yesterday I know there was food in the house. So if you don’t want to eat that’s your own damn fault.”
I didn’t reply right away. She was glaring at me, her eyes reflecting the exasperation in her voice. I grabbed the remote and flipped the T.V. back to Days of Our Lives. “Empty houses have empty fridges,” I said.
“Is that what this is about?” Angel snapped. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her divine rays of anger refracting around the room chaotically. “God, Tom!” She shrieked. “Why don’t you just ask me where I went? Huh?”
“No, that’s okay,” I declined graciously. “I’m too hungry to care right now. Maybe later, when we get some food.”
“I’m leaving,” she seethed, jaw clenched, eyes hissing.
“Could you bring back a pizza this time?” I smiled at her politely in the reflection of the screen.

She ignored me, storming out and slamming the door in a vicious fit of frustration. I began laughing then. “She must not have seen the smile,” I whispered to myself between breaths. “Boy!” I commented wittily. “She sure has a vendetta against that door!” I laughed very loudly and for very long, until I began to feel light-headed and queasy, and even for a little bit after that. I pushed on selflessly, forcing each guffaw to burst mightily from the depths of my stomach. I know she was peering through the window the whole time watching me.

That was the game we played, and I remember I won that round. She brought back the pizza and a case of beer less than an hour later, and then we had sex in the living room, right along with Brooke and Ridge on The Bold and the Beautiful. But that was then, and now she’s gone for good, and so is the T.V.