ghost

[shesepankh]

Kindergarten teacher Renée Higgenbotham Swan (36) was killed in a car crash one mile from her residence in Phoenix, AZ, January 9, 2005. She is survived by her daughter Isabella (16). Her service will be held at -

Bella has the entire obituary pasted into a page of one of her compilation notebooks but tends not to re-read past the first lines. It's repellent. The concept of obituaries is repellent. The funeral is over. Renée's vibrant brief life has been summed up over the course of a paragraph, and is also over.

Bella pretends to sleep on the plane. Her neighbor is talkative and she doesn't want to say shut up, my mom just died, because - what if it doesn't work? What if this news doesn't have the power to bludgeon everyone else into stunned silence the way it does Bella?

Charlie collects her. Charlie hugs her. Charlie doesn't make her talk. Good wonderful understanding quiet Charlie does not say a word. He takes her home. Her room's where she left it last August.

It's raining.

Bella stays home, moving in, moping, for a day, and then she shows up at school, gray-faced and withdrawn. First class is English. Okay, whatever.

The teacher wants her to introduce herself. Bella wants to yank on the skinny end of his tie until he regrets making her.

She stands at the front of the room and says that her name is Bella Swan and she's moved here to live with her dad. The teacher makes an impatient go on gesture and she stands there for a moment before robotically saying the same thing she produced at the beginning of the year in her old school in Phoenix when they were doing go-around-the-room-and-share-facts. "I'm one of those people who actually likes Shakespeare."

He lets her sit down.

She sits.

Comments

[sundayfish]

Charlie hangs up.

He's there in four minutes lights on but siren quiet.

[castmyown]

And there is Darren, with an unconscious, winged Bella.

"Hi. Um. I'm not lying," he says, when Charlie is out of the car.

He is very obviously not lying.

[sundayfish]

Charlie makes a shooing gesture indicating that Darren should back off as he goes to his daughter to check her out. "What happened?"

[castmyown]

He shoos.

"That is kind of a long story. Um. She had a magic awakening thing and I noticed because I am magic so I went to investigate, she was fine, she had blacked out but had woken up when I got there, I was making sure she got home okay because blackouts are not normal, and then it happened again and I don't know what to do."

[sundayfish]

"Blackouts aren't normal but wings are?" inquires Charlie, tugging gently on a wing. It's pretty attached.

[castmyown]

"Yes."

He demonstrates. Look, he has wings, too.

"... Um. Do you mind if I call my dad? He is probably worried by now, and um - he knows about the magic thing and he is better equipped to explain it right now."

[sundayfish]

"Yeah," says Charlie. "That sounds like a swell idea. Get in the passenger seat, call him, get him to come to my house. I'm not taking her to a hospital like this."

[castmyown]

"Yeah, that's smart," says Darren. Wings go away, into the passenger seat he goes (with a seatbelt), and he calls his dad.

"Hi. Um. Bella blacked out and I freaked out and told her dad. No, no, at least I think he doesn't?" He glances at Charlie nervously. "No, she's kind of obviously got wings and we were on the side of the road. Yeah. Now you see why I am freaking out. Help?"

He asks Charlie, "What's your address? Dad's going to come over, and explain things."

[sundayfish]

Charlie rattles off his address, opens the back door of the police cruiser, and gently hauls Bella into it. Her wings spill off the bench onto the floor. He tucks in her feet, looks briefly at the seatbelts, and determines that it's not worth trying. He shuts the door and gets in the driver's seat. Lights on, siren off.

He drives home.

[castmyown]

Darren repeats the address. "Yeah. Thank you, dad, love you too. Thanks. Um, tact is a thing we need and my sister has none. Yes, I know. She can yell at me later but we should not have Mr. Swan's introduction to - things being through me freaking out over his daughter and her being angry at me for freaking out and calling him. Yeah. Tell her I said sorry. Bye."

Then he hangs up.

[sundayfish]

"Bella going to be able to - make the wings come and go, like you? When she's awake?" asks Charlie.

[castmyown]

"Yeah, there are other things to it, too but she can't do any of them while she's unconscious. I can't do anything about it, she has to be the one to do it."

[sundayfish]

"Right. Be difficult otherwise, s'pose. Why does she have 'em now?"

[castmyown]

"Because she just had her turning and she's got absolutely no practice with any of her new - abilities. So sometimes they slip."

[sundayfish]

"And how'd the turning thing happen?"

[castmyown]

"Because she picked up the right medallion for her and she turned out to have um - a sphinx in her ancestry."

[sundayfish]

"In her ancestry."

[castmyown]

Darren is very interested in his lap. "Er, yeah. Um. Pretending to be human."

[sundayfish]

"Can you tell which side of the family?"

[castmyown]

"Not unless I went and got another separate medallion of the right type and tested it on you."

[sundayfish]

"Mm. But it's not normal for magic wingy things to pass out, you're sure?"

Here's the house. He parks. He gets a shock blanket out of the trunk, wraps Bella wings and all in it, and hauls her out of the car.

[castmyown]

"Quite, my sister and I are - magic wingy things and neither of us did."

Darren will help with carrying her if he can and it's not in Charlie's way.

[sundayfish]

Charlie manages to get the door open without Darren's help. He deposits Bella with exquisite gentleness on the couch. He points Darren to a chair. He closes the door. He sits at the chair nearest the Bella's-head-end of the sofa and adjusts the blanket so it's not over her face.

[castmyown]

Darren sits in the chair. He is not really up to talking, right now, but he keeps giving Bella worried glances, every now and then.

Within ten minutes, the doorbell rings.

[sundayfish]

Charlie gets up to answer it.

"You Darren's father?"