He grins. “True, though I can still feel them there. They itch. I don’t know how to get them back, but I’ll figure it out.” He points to an old wooden ladder propped up against the side of the house, hidden in the shadows.
I nod, unsure if I should go up after him. I lean against the hood of the truck instead, waiting until I either decide to join him or he comes down.
Now that I know where he is, I’m starting to get pissed off at myself for being worried about him. Why the fuck should I care what he does or where he goes? Why should I be worried about who he talks to or if he ends up in a goddamn ditch? I shake my head, trying to clear my mind before it overwhelms me.
“So,” I say.
He waits.
Say it! “You’re an angel.” Still sounds ridiculous.
He nods once.
“And you fell from outer space.”
He chuckles. “If you say so.”
“And you crashed in Roseland.”
“I didn’t crash,” he growls, sounding offended. “I was pulled.”
I wave him off. “Right, my bad. You fell because I called you, right?” “Yes.”
“How? How did I call you?”
“You prayed,” Cal says. “Your prayers were getting louder and louder, and at the
river, you almost split the sky. I had no choice but to come.” Immediate guilt. “I forced you here?” I say in a small voice, even as my mind shrieks that this whole conversation is ludicrous.
“No,” he says immediately, standing like he’s going to jump off the roof and come toward me. I shake my head again and cross my arms against the cold. He looks unsure, but he crouches back down, the shadows from the trees covering most of him. “You didn’t force anything, Benji. You might have hurried up the timetable, but I chose to come.”
“What do you mean ‘hurried’?”
“You went to the river,” he says with a frown. “I told you to stay away, but you went anyway.”
Sharp pain, behind my eyes, like a brain freeze. It’s cold. “But… that was just a dream.”
He shakes his head. “Nothing about that place is a dream, Benji. The river can hurt you.”
I could so easily drown, I had thought.
“I crossed it to get to you,” I blurt out without meaning to, noticing how he flinches at my words.
“I know,” he says quietly. “I know what happened when you reached the middle. I could hear your thoughts then. They were the last thing I heard before everything went black. You thought about drowning. It was a test. One I never would have agreed to had I known it would happen. I would rather have watched you from far away for the rest of your life than see you cross the river.” By the end of his declaration, his mouth has curled up in a snarl, his shoulders tensing, and though his voice never rises, I can still hear the anger behind his words.
A billion questions float across my mind, and I can’t seem to pick out the ones that should be asked first, the ones that are the most important. There’s too many ideas, too many grandiose thoughts, and they jumble together into an incoherent mess. “What’s Heaven like?” I finally ask, not sure why that question comes the easiest.
He looks at me funny. “I don’t know,” he says. “I’ve never been.” “What? But… you’re an angel.”
“Yes, but Heaven is for mortals, for humans. I am not one.”
“Oh.” What do you say to that? I’m sorry? “What’s God like?”
“Never met him, though word is he’s a control freak.”
I narrow my eyes. “Are you making fun of me?” He chuckles. “Kind of. Only the upper echelons get an audience with him. I’m pretty far down on the totem pole.”
“Why?”