Heavenly Creatures

It’s a fact of life that life rarely cooperates with our wishes. I felt an existential dread in the pit of my stomach as Friday approached way too quickly. I saw Sun on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the more I saw of him, the more unsettled I felt.

Was Sun a robot or an alien? I’m exaggerating, of course, but Sun gave me strange vibes. Usually, I could get a sense of who someone was. Not with Sun. He drew a complete blank.

And that frightened me.

You know how humans are afraid of the unknown? To be honest, I was rarely afraid. Even when young, I would walk around our big house at night with the lights turned off to get water. I’d scared my parents this way. But I’d rarely felt much myself. I just figured, if something popped out, I could handle it.

Which was why Sun was freaking me out so much. I sensed something different about him, and it made me feel, for the first time, like I didn’t have everything under control.

I didn’t like the feeling.

I felt vindicated by the following scene, which I came upon while walking home on Friday.

“What am I supposed to do?” a male voice hissed.

I slowed my steps on the bridge and looked down, curious. There was Sun, gesturing wildly.

“I don’t get it!” he exclaimed.

I kept walking, but at a crawl now, trying to make out who he was talking to.

“Are you kidding me?” Sun crossed his arms and scowled at the air in front of him. “You’re just a stupid old man!”

My eyebrows shot up to my hairline. Well, well, well. Sun was just as weird as I suspected! Wait ’til I told Ana about this.

Except, something happened in the next moment that shattered all my conclusions about Sun and left me questioning my own sanity.

So translucent I could barely see him, an old man floated in front of Sun. He had a long, platinum white beard that other old men would probably envy if they could see it. I couldn’t hear what the old man said, but I could hear Sun’s reply.

“Good riddance!”

And before Sun could uncross his arms, the old man had vanished in a flash of light. The reflection stayed in my eyes for a few seconds, and I could see little sunspots dancing across several roofs before disappearing.

I gaped like an idiotic fish before realizing that Sun could now potentially see me if he just looked up. That lit a fire under me, and I ran all the way home, not stopping until I was safe in my own bedroom.

What had just happened?

I paced the room, clutching my head. My racing thoughts landed on an inconvenient truth: Sun was coming over at seven.

“Tara!” Mom called from the kitchen. “Are you doing your homework?”

“Yes, mom!” I shouted back, deciding to take her advice and focus on homework, then dinner. One step at a time. No big deal.

Knock, knock. The sound of the doorknob pulled me out of my reverie. I’d been staring at the same problem since coming back to my room after dinner.

I opened the door to find Sun with his hand raised.

“We have a doorbell,” I said. My instinct was to become sarcastic when feeling threatened.

“I know,” Sun said, not taking the bait. “I just like knocking on wood.”

“Thinking something bad is going to happen?” I asked.

“One can never be too careful,” Sun said.

I stepped aside to let him in without further comment. It seemed that I was not going to be the winner of this battle of wits. Sun looked around my home, his eyes like benevolent lasers, if there could be such a thing.

“You have a nice home,” he said, smiling at me. Despite everything, I smiled back. His smile was that infectious. “Lead the way.”

I led Sun into my father’s study, which had recently been renovated. “This is where we can get the most privacy,” I explained.

Sun sprawled in my father’s armchair, grinning. “Well, should we get started?”

I sat across from him, shaking my head. “Make yourself at home,” I said, although clearly, Sun already had. Sun kept grinning, as if he knew what I was thinking. Irked, I added, “You’re lucky I don’t kick you out.”

“What do you mean?” Sun asked. “I belong in this chair.”

“Well, I hope you’re better than astronomy than me, sensei,” I said.

“I’m passable, young grasshopper,” Sun said, an enigmatic smile on his face. The scene from the bridge came back to me like a splash of cold water, and I hurriedly took out my astronomy packet.

“Something wrong?” Sun asked. Calm as a lake at sunrise.

I shook my head. “No, no.”

“You’re not scared of me, are you?” Sun asked.

I whipped my head up to look at him. “Scared? Ha!” But the first word came out a squeak. I cleared my throat.

Sun leaned forward, which made me lean back even though the desk was wide enough to put a distance between us. His next words were barely a whisper.

“Dragons don’t get scared, do they?”

And for the first time in my life, I fainted.

“Tara?” Sun caught me before I dropped to the floor or hit my head on the table. “Oh shoot, I didn’t mean to wake you.”

I wanted to ask Sun what he meant when I was standing right there, but I realized that I wasn’t in my own body. I tried to look at myself but couldn’t. I was just a floating point of awareness in space.

Have you ever seen the picture of The Scream? That would have been me—if I had had a body to scream with.