Angel of Death by Ferguson Alane

Author:Ferguson, Alane [Ferguson, Alane]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: PENGUIN group
Published: 2011-04-16T09:15:28+00:00

Chapter Ten

“SO WE CAN go out after school for a bite to eat,” Kyle said. “If you want.”

Cameryn’s heart brimmed as she nodded. They were walking up the stairs of her venerable old school, the place where she had spent so much of her life both learning and marking time. This Monday morning, though, the building looked different somehow. The brick, which she’d once thought resembled yellowed teeth, now seemed warm, butter-colored. The windows sparkled in the sunrise, reflecting sheets of gold, and the mountain made a perfect backdrop to the school as if holding the building in the cup of its hand.

“I bet a few people are going to be surprised at the two of us,” Kyle said.

Nodding, she looked up at him. “Yeah. I mean, it’s— we’ve—been awfully fast.”

“Good thing I like speed,” he answered, and smiled. His arm draped around her as he tucked her into his side. The blue-and-white letterman jacket, trimmed with academic pins, anchored her; if not for that weight, she felt as though she might float up beyond the rim of pine and straight into the cold November sky. She felt that light, that free.

Kyle stopped and pointed at the flagpole near the front office. “Look! They lowered the flag to half-mast. That’s got to be for Brad.”

“It’s our first day back since he died.”

“Yeah. It’s going to be a rough day. I’m glad I’ve got you,” he said, squeezing her tight.

“Me, too.”

And there it was again—the pang that rose up to drown out her joy. The spasm of guilt. Guilt because she felt so happy when so many bad things marched in formation beside her. Fifty miles away, her teacher’s body lay on the funeral home’s steel tabletop, prepped and ready for embalming. While Cameryn snuggled beneath Kyle’s arm, Mr. Oakes’s body would be propped on an incline table to ensure the proper drainage. She knew what came next: Blood from his body would leach out into the Durango sewer system, to be replaced inside Mr. Oakes with a fleshy-pink formaldehyde pumped through tubes inserted at six points: his femoral arteries, the axillaries in his arms, and the carotids in his neck. Cavity-fluid preservative would be poured onto his organs, still left in the garbage bag, and his insides, bag and all, would be sewn into his remains with crude stitches. Mr. Oakes’s jaw would be wired shut. All this would happen to what was left of her teacher while Cameryn was filled with a kind of euphoria that told her no matter what, she was alive and Kyle liked her. It wasn’t right, but she couldn’t help the positive energy radiating from her.

Her enthusiasm hadn’t gone unnoticed.

Yesterday morning, while kneeling at St. Patrick’s, she’d seen parishioners around her bent with grief. As the priest chanted a prayer for Mr. Oakes, Cameryn’s mind was somewhere else. It replayed her kiss in the cemetery and how it had ended with Kyle pulling her to her feet, her neck craning back as he kissed her again and again until she’d told him it was time to go.

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