Abithica (38 page)

There they were, coming right up the escalator Sydney had used and yep, Lane had his arm around her, just like Shae thought he would, and… and she was Bithaca all right, ‘cause there was the pink stuff all around her. Oh geez! It was coming true. Her angel was back. Bithaca was almost as tall as Lane this time. It was the B gates escalator after all.

Shae took off at a run.

“They’re coming! They’re coming, they’re coming, Father Gabe, they’re coming! Lane’s coming and he’s with
her.
Over there.”

Uh oh, that look on Father Gabe’s face… oh, no! He’s not going to kneel right here in the airport and pray, is he? Sure looks like it. That’s gonna be so totally embarrassing! Nope, guess he’s not, but he’s standing up and looking real odd, like he’s trying to figure out something really, really complicated. Faith’s getting up, too. Will Bithaca recognize Faith? Will she recognize her? Will she recognize
anyone?
She’s helping
Annie
now, not Sydney, so maybe everything’s different for her.

Will she remember the letter she wrote, or going to the movie, or anything? Lane’s holding Abbi’s hand, but she looks like she wants to turn around and run. Uh, oh—they’re headed in her direction.

Please remember me. Please, please, PLEASE!

Bithica was looking right at her! This she knew because she’d turned around and checked first to see if anybody was behind her. There wasn’t, so did that mean she
did
remember her? Oh, boy, look at those big, brown eyes, even prettier than Ashley Tisdale’s in
High School Musical
. No wonder Lane had his arm around her before.

“Shae!” she hollered. “Come over here and let me look at you up close. Bring me one of those special, great big hugs of yours. I look different, but—”

Shae didn’t have to be asked twice. She quickly closed the distance and sank into Bithica’s arms. “You may look different, but you’re the same angel who wrote my letter, I can tell.”

“Oh, yes. Yes, I certainly am. Big hug! Mmmmmm! How did you know it was me?”

Shae eased back a little so she could see Abbi’s face, but not enough to break the contact. “Because you glow pink. What’s it like for an angel to ride in a plane? Were you scared? Did you see my mom? Did you tell her what you promised? Why did it take so long for you to come back? Where have you been? Why do you look so different? Did Annie like you right away? Does switching bodies hurt? Do you talk to Father Gabe when you’re in Heaven? Do you hear him when he prays? You smell like cotton candy. Did you—”

“Whoa, Shae. Slow down.” It was Lane. “Did you forget you weren’t supposed to ask lots of questions?”

Bithaca was looking at her and smiling, but her smile was a little sad, too.

“Shae, you have no idea how… how much I’ve missed you!” she said. “Do I get another hug?”

* * *

Brace yourself, girl—this is it. You can’t back out now, not with a hug like that, and not with Shae hanging onto your skirt. So you smell like cotton candy? What an imagination! Father Gabe’s coming this way. Maybe now you’ll discover how he tracked you to Seattle. At least you might get some clue about who you are, if he knows as much as Lane thinks he does. Now tell it the way it is. No more lying.

Nobody else was saying anything, not even Lane. They all seemed to be waiting for Father Gabe to break the ice. He came forward with both hands out, palms up. “Your friend Marge called you Annie. May I do the same, and at the same time introduce myself? I’m—”

“You’re Father Gabriel Smith, of course,” I interrupted. “We first met that day when Shae stood up and talked about my letter to her. I’d stolen Sydney’s body and her life back then, and now I’ve stolen someone else’s. I don’t even know who she is. Annie is a name my friend Marge gave me. You might as well know that I’m as uptight about all this now as I was then. The truth is I’m petrified! If Marge wasn’t the amazing woman she is, I wouldn’t even be here. I wouldn’t have had the guts.”

“But now you’re ‘petrified’ for completely different reasons, my dear.” Father Gabe glanced at Lane, who’d stopped a couple paces behind me. “Surely you must have guessed that your unusual… shall I say ability… is every bit as unsettling to us here, especially to me. I confess to being quite unprepared for what I am already calling a miraculous gift. I’ve spoken to Lane about it.”

“Yes, so he told me, but you didn’t seem that unprepared when you came searching for me in Seattle. That just about blew my mind. Just how did you know I’d… that I’d go from here to there?”

“It wasn’t entirely by chance. I was so intrigued by your letter to Shae that I contacted as many of my fellow priests and laymen friends as—”

“Lane says you’re convinced I’m an angel, but angels don’t go around jumping in and out of bodies, do they? I never know who my next victim is going to be, or where. Would you have looked in New Jersey? That was where I was before I ended up here in Tucson.”

That stopped him. I suddenly felt sorry I’d interrupted, and angry at myself. Why was I being so abrasive? I wasn’t given long to wonder, as Sydney came right past him and gave me a bear hug. Shae still hadn’t let go of my skirt, so my mini-rant was momentarily put on hold while I absorbed their combined emotion. Then I saw Faith standing all by herself next to a group of seats. She looked almost forlorn, like someone lost or forgotten. More emotion flooded my senses.

Father Gabe was still standing at arm’s length, waiting. Finally he suggested the very thing I was thinking—that we all should join Faith. There were enough empty seats over there, and we wouldn’t be right in the middle of airport bustle. It was only then that Lane took my hand again. He was smiling.

“Maybe it’s time you told us your story… Annie… at least the parts you know. Then we can all hear what Father Gabe has to say about it, all of us including Shae. You may be surprised at what you hear.”

I wasn’t sure how he meant that, but at this point I knew I couldn’t run away any more. They might as well hear everything, even if they didn’t believe it. They thought I was an angel? Ha! I just wouldn’t tell them about my wicked, lustful side. I was pretty sure Sydney wouldn’t bring it up, since she’d had a taste or two of it as my host. But first there was Faith.

I didn’t wait for the introduction thing, although Father Gabe and Lane looked like they were about to do the honors. I just walked right up and hugged her.

“I know I look completely different, Faith, but inside I’m the same as I was the day you told me about Steven, at Gillie’s.” I released her and stepped back a few inches. “That’s right, I’ve jumped from Sydney into another girl’s body and taken over her life. Annie is the name I’m using now… I have no idea who I really am… but I’ll tell you all about that in a few minutes. How is Steven?”

Father Gabe cleared his throat and Lane chuckled. It was Sydney who supplied the answer.

“Oh, Steven is last month’s news,” she said, somewhat scornfully. “It’s Bradley now, and ‘he’s the one’!”

I glanced quickly back at Faith, who shrugged and smiled, sheepishly showing a dimple I’d never noticed before.

“What can I say?” she said. “You should have seen him, sitting there all debonair in his three-piece suit and flip flops. It was like he was made for me.”

“And Steven?”

“Oh, he saw it coming. He was there, you know, at the restaurant with me when I first saw Bradley across the room. Steven saw the way I kept looking at those bright green flip flops, then very politely excused himself from the dinner table to give me some space. Always the gentleman, before leaving, he made sure I had a ride home. We’re just friends now. He’s over it.”

“Actually, he’s heartbroken,” Sydney interjected. “He’s hoping she changes her mind.”

Faith held up a hand. “Enough about me. I want to hear Annie’s story.” She turned and set the example by immediately taking a seat.

Shae was still clinging to my skirt. “I get to sit next to you,” she said, dragging me toward the center seat in a bunch of five. There were three empty ones opposite, facing the windows. Once we all began sitting down, people sitting in the two closest seats got up and left, so we had the ideal setup—for an airport. I wished we were somewhere quiet so I could at least think without the constant airport announcements blaring over our heads, but then I didn’t really have to think that much. They wanted to hear my story. I knew it by heart, and it was very short. Shae snuggled up to me—which was pretty hard because of the armrest between us—and Lane sat on my other side. Father Gabe sat directly opposite me, between Sydney and Faith. He no longer seemed hesitant. In fact, he was leaning forward as if to catch every word I might say.

They waited.

“For as long as I can remember,” I began, “which is not very long, I’ve switched in and out of bodies. I can only recall that part of it. The details get hazy really quickly, and then they’re gone forever. I only know that… I only know that I’m not like any of you, as much as I hunger to be. Something about this time is different, because here you all are, and here Sydney is, and now I’m in another body instead of hers, and…” I couldn’t help the tears that started pouring out. “And I can remember all of you a lot better than ever before, and I’m not even sure what happened… why this time is any different. Oh, God, I am so terribly miserable, not knowing where I’m going next, or when, or why. Sorry, I can’t hold the tears back. Do you… Faith, do you have any…” I gestured, pretending to dab my eyes, by way of meaning.

Faith had tissues in her purse. She handed the packet to me, barely leaving her seat to reach my hand.

“I went from here… from you, Sydney… into the person you see. I don’t know who she is… was… not a name, no connections, nothing. She was brought to a hospital in Seattle in pretty bad shape, I think from drugs and exposure, and it was there that I realized I’d switched. I just floated around in space somewhere for a few days, but other than waking up and seeing a different date on the calendar, I didn’t know anything, okay? It’s really hard to describe, but you wake up and nothing works except your mind. Nothing connects. It’s like some kind of really bad dream. That’s what it was like with you, Faith. I switched into Sydney right in the middle of dinner, and that’s why I couldn’t function and fell into my food. Poof, her switch was turned off and mine was turned on, but I had to connect with my new arms and legs and all that. It’s like waking up disoriented in a totally strange place and not knowing how you got there.

“But it was different that day in Gillie’s, and it’s different now, because I went and let my emotional guard down, and… and I fell in… I fell in love with someone, someone I didn’t want to hurt.” I turned to Shae. “And I fell in love with you, too, Shae.”

That did it! Blubberworks city! I couldn’t say another word. Father Gabe saved me. He leaned even farther forward, sitting at the very edge of his seat.

“Do you know
why
I think you’re an angel, Annie? Have you ever thought about it, other than rejecting the idea?”

I shook my head, reaching for another tissue. Half of the pack was already wadded up in my hand.

“When you left your many hosts, were their lives improved? Can you remember that much?” He smiled warmly. “Take Sydney, for example—what her life was like before you arrived and what it is now. I knew her before you took over.”

“Amen,” Sydney interjected.

“Yeah, but… but I was miserable and in the end I was in love with Lane, and I was angry about what I was… about not knowing what
that
was, and about never being able to… don’t you see?” I protested. Lane wrapped his arms around me as Father Gabe went on.

“And yet, despite all your pain and all those human emotions, you were still bracing yourself to continue switching hosts, knowing you could be doing it forever. Doubt and rejection are two distinctly different actions, you see. You never rejected a thing, certainly not your blessed state… even if you can’t sense that part of you right now. The missing element is time, in the human sense.”

“Time?”

“Yes. How long is a human lifetime for an angel? Take a guess.” He was smiling.

“I don’t know. Pretty short, I suppose. But I still don’t know why you keep calling me an angel. I’m anything but.”

“Your letter to Shae. As soon as I saw it, I recognized the cursive writing as angelic script. I couldn’t read it, but I contacted my superiors and was put in touch with someone who could, a scholar. He read the letter to me aloud, and said it was signed with the name Abithica. Everything he read made sense. It sounded exactly like a letter to a young girl, explaining to her why there would be a two week delay in seeing her. The letter mentioned a terribly contagious disease, he said, and yet he was told nothing about the letter’s origin before he read it.”

“So
that’s
why I keep hearing that name? I’m supposedly this Abithica?”

“Yes. Now we humans don’t have that many solid clues to angels and their relationships with us, but we do know that they have free will… actually something even higher than free will as we know the term. In your case, it would appear that you and God have an arrangement where your guidance for some of us takes the form of actually steering us. To do that, you ‘switch into your host,’ in a manner of speaking, and, once the task is done, you leave and go on to the next one needing guidance, and so on. It’s your job, in a way. Now it’s entirely possible that you have no way of knowing when your task is finished, but God knows.”