Chapter 1
Late again


We were standing on a cloud as he embraced me, his eyes were soothing, neither one of us spoke, and he ran his fingers through my ebony hair as he enclosed us with his wings, wait… his wings were feathered. I screamed and broke the deafening silence that had enveloped us just a moment ago. I moved as though I was under water as I ran, I leaped into the air and spread my wings as I heard him calling my name over and over, Angela, Angela……..
“Angela, Angela!” my brother wailed.
Now I was awake, and I was awake in a cold sweat. My twin brother holding my shoulder and staring at me. His wing muscles tense.
“Jeez! Were you having a bad dream or something because you were thrashing around and screaming ‘NO! NO! NO!’ Repeatedly. Do you have a temperature?”
“Jake, I don’t care. It was just a dream.” I bunched my sheets over myself.
“You better have a good excuse to be late to class again.”
“You rigged my clock again didn’t you?” but by the time he said anything I had kicked him out of my room. I jumped into my clothes, my usual top and jeans, stuffed my books into my backpack, and leaped out the window. The moonlight shone through my wings, giving me an eerie look. When I got there, everyone was anxiously waiting for the bell to start the night classes. Maya saw me, and her jaw hit the ground.
“Y-you’re early for the first time since grade school.” She stuttered in mild shock.
“Jake rigged my clock.”
“Oh.”
When Jake finally got there, he was already looking for a place to hide. He knows that when he does something to get me mad, I get even and then some. He hates when I am mad at him. However, because Maya does not like it when I embarrass Jake and myself by yelling at him, she clamped my wings at the sockets and then wrenched me to the side so I couldn’t move. Fifteen minutes later, the bronze bell trolled. The students filed into their homerooms. Before my first teacher started class, he introduced a new student. I assumed that he was going to be a kid that skipped up a grade. He turned out to be a student from the day classes. The day classes? Only the Risen attended the day classes, the other Fallen like me, Maya and my brother attended the night classes. Why did he have to be here? I hate the Risen, all Fallen hate the Risen, we have always hated them. It’s like a hereditary thing. However, I wasn’t so sure I hated him when I saw him. I recognized him, he was from my dream; why was this person here? I never saw him anywhere in real life. I almost looked away when I locked eyes with him; they were a bright shade of electric blue and they were soothing. They were just as I had imagined them the day before. Although all angels are beautiful, he was handsome even by angel standards. His white gold hair and the pearl feathers of his wings, though he was handsome, he was out of place among us. Like finding a golden orb among dark amethysts. This was even more reason for the class to hate him, why didn’t I? Then I realized that if he’s going to be in our class, he would have to sit somewhere. I looked around frantically for the empty seats and the only seat left was on my right. I buried my face in my hands and prayed that he could sit somewhere else. After what seemed like hours, I uncovered my face and almost screamed. He was still there! He had just sat down and the teacher started class, I took notes without really listening to him. I was really paying attention to the new guy. When he started taking notes, he wrote with his left hand. So during the entire class for an hour, his arm and my own were pressed together and I could feel bolts of electricity run through my entire body. After class, Maya asked me if I felt okay.
“You’ve been kind of, irritable since class. As soon as you touched that new, person, your face turned pink. However, nobody but me noticed. I’m worried about you.” She was glaring at him from across the hall.
“I-I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.” I managed to say.
“If you say so, Angela.”
Later, when the night was ending the teacher dismissed us. I flew with Maya until she turned to land on her roof. A few blocks later, skipping eating for the day turned out to be a bad idea. I up stroked and down stroked, but I couldn’t do it fast enough. I dropped down as if I was falling through water. Then before I hit the ground, someone caught me. I weakly looked up to see who it was, him again? Was he following me the whole time? I wanted to kick and scream and get away from him, instead I hung there like a rag doll. When I found the strength to scream, he stopped me with a gentle and musical voice that made me involuntarily relax. He said,
“Where do you live?” in his very low tenor.
I didn’t answer him.
“What is your address?”
“29805.” Should I have said that?
“Interesting.”
“What?”
“I live across the street from you.”
No way! This was still part of my dream! It had to be! I closed my eyes tightly and counted to fifty. I cracked open one eye and gave up trying to find a logical explanation to this whole ordeal. This was stranger than anything that anyone on the entire planet had ever been through. Stranger than the roadways, that had no apparent use. When we finally got to my house, he set me down with extreme care as to not cut my wings. I stood up shakily and faced him. The sun was rising behind him and illuminated his body. Causing him to look as though he were made of the morning rays of the sun behind him. I melted on the inside. Why me? Of the millions of angels this could happen to, why me? He was smiling and I decided to speak and get him to leave.
“y-you should go.” His gentle smile vanished and was replaced by a worried expression.
“What? Why?”
“I-I don’t want you to be caught standing on our roof.” His smile returned and he left for across the street. I watched him land on his roof and climb in side his window. Then I did the same. I went over my notes of the ancient scripts of the prophets without really reading them. I turned on my computer and began to research about angels, which was stupid because I am an angel. Turns out that people thought that we weren’t real until thousands of years ago, because we descended from the heavens or came up from the underworld and became mortal. I also found that the so-called devils weren’t real. They were just angels that were born in the underworld and ended up staying there. My whole family is directly descended from the main branch of those angels. Humph. I thought that people were fake. I snuck some food up to my room and ate a whole weeks worth. I fell asleep with the sun streaming in through the window.