| Ashley |
Polly rested her chin on her cushioned forearms, shielded from the biting cold by an enormous jacket. The young girl’s enigmatic, stunning hazel-brown eyes widened in wonderment.
Feeling Polly’s gaze on her, Ame stopped balancing on the stone wall she was trying to tight-rope walk across, pivoting around. She smiled to herself and knelt down. “Penny for your thoughts?”
After pondering a moment, Polly cocked her head. “Well, I know you’re -my- guardian angel, but only -I- can see your wings?”
Ame’s smile grew considerably at that, her wings flapping accordingly. “Yeah. I think your parents have been wondering why you keep staring at me.” The angel held out a gloved hand to Polly, warmth filling her chest as the younger girl’s face beamed up at her, taking the offered hand. Struggling to hoist her up, Ame’s wings strained to prevent the two from falling. They collapsed onto the wall ledge in a fit of giggles.
“Wow…” Polly finally murmured, drawing her knees up to her chest, admiring the view from up high. She looked at Ame, grinning. Her grin faded considerably when the angel stood up again, a battle of melancholy and remembrance immediately waging war over her expression as she also took in scenery. “It’s a beautiful lake…”
Ame squeezed her eyes tightly shut, white-knuckling her long scarf to will away an unwanted surge of emotions. “It is…I’ve never been here before.”
A wind picked up and brushed against their cheeks; its bitter chill had thankfully lost its sting. In the distance, the trees lined against the lakeshore like crystal-covered candelabras, and the water shimmered in the winter sun.
Cloudless blue sky stretched on for endless miles. Polly absently played with her shoes. “Do you like it here…?”
“In Grayslake?” Ame elaborated, weighing her answer carefully. A thoughtful furrow creased her brow, which Polly noticed right away. “Yeah, I do,” she decided, hands stuffed into coat pockets. The wind blew again, just enough to play with her hair.
“You seem so sad whenever you come here. Like you don’t want to be here…but you don’t want to leave.”
“I do?” Ame forced out an innocent laugh, embarrassed. “I don’t mean to look sad. I’m fine, really. Grayslake means seeing -you-.”
“Aside from the fact that you’re my guardian angel, and that you -have to- has -nothing- to do with it, right?”
“You better have been teasing!”
Polly squealed when Ame tackled her and started to tickle her mercilessly, squirming and stuttering out a gleeful, “s-s-too-op!” After their laughter subsided, Ame quelled her attacks. “You said that to distract me…”
“I may not know why you’re sad, but I don’t like to see you sad,” the girl said simply.
Wings folding up against her back, Ame crouched low. She took off a glove, kept herself upright with one hand braced against the cool stone. The angel noticeably jumped when Polly wrapped her arms around her guardian’s shoulders. “…Haven’t you ever wondered why…?”
“Why I have cancer?”
Ame willed back tears, reaching behind and gripping one of Polly’s arms in a desperate hold. “Yes. Haven‘t you wondered why it happened? Why you? Why you can‘t do anything about it? Why you had no choice?”
Polly wrapped her arms tighter and hugged Ame close, smelling the heady fragrance in her hair. She pressed her nose there, could feel Ame’s body tremble, her wings quiver. “Yes. But then I let go.”
Let it go… “How could you let that go…”
“Because if I waste the rest of my life wondering and asking why, being bitter, then I’ll never give myself time to let go of the hurt and wait for healing. Wait for what could happen next. If I stayed resentful I would only hurt myself more than my sickness ever could.”
Tears pricked Ame’s eyes.
“There’s someone here in Grayslake, isn’t there…”
Ame sniffed and rubbed her eyes furiously. “Some guardian angel I am…crying because I messed up with some guy. And here you are…here you are. I’m so damn selfish, aren’t I?”
The younger girl rubbed Ame’s feathered pinions soothingly, and it seemed to calm her down finally, before Polly shook her head.
“Yes I am! I’m selfish. All I did was get angry and I hate it. I -hate- it that I was so immature. Now I’m just like those girls that guys breakup with and get psycho and paranoid and hopeless. And you, you‘re sick and you‘re so amazing and-”
“What I’ve learned from high school is when a girl is mean after a breakup, she just wants him back, but she's scared she'll get hurt and set themselves up, like they -know- that the guy’s gone forever.” A gentle, ungloved hand wiped a stray tear on Ame’s face. “You were really scared, weren’t you?”
Ame hugged herself, staring unseeingly at the placid, frozen lake. “Yeah…I was scared because he was the only guy that never used me. I thought if I lost him forever then it would happen all over again.” She bit her lip hard enough to bleed. “It has.”
“Don’t think that. If you do, then it’ll happen. But if you let go of what‘s making you feel helpless, then it‘ll be ok.”
“I think you and I need to switch roles,” Ame chuckled wearily, feeling like a complete mess. “We were supposed to have fun today…argh, I’m a horrible guardian, let alone an angel.”
Polly lifted up Ame’s arm and settled in her lap, gloves forgotten. “No you’re not. And even if you were, you’d make a perfectly normal human being. And a good friend. And what’s better is, you’re -my- friend.”
“I think that makes being a guardian angel very much worth it.” Ame took in a deep breath and rested her chin atop Polly’s head. Damn, she’d done it again. Messed things up. “You wanna go anywhere?”
“No,” Polly smiled and nestled against Ame comfortably, content on going nowhere as she watched a chunk of ice float listlessly across the water. “I have a feeling that coming here was one of your ways to try and let go.”
Ame smiled as well, relaxing and rubbing her face. “Yeah. I think it’s helping you too.”
