18

—

For her wildlife presentation, Lindsay dressed up in a ruffled white top. Nicola could almost see rays of excitement beaming off her. She looked like a person who had just won the lottery. A person who knew some important secret she was bursting to tell.

Her title page came up on the screen: Angels. The picture was vaguely familiar to Nicola. A stained-glass angel holding a scroll.

The golden-haired angel from the window at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church.

“Huh?” someone said. Probably Gavin Heinrichs or Margo Tamm.

Appearance, Food, Habitat, Life Cycle and Communication were the categories Ms. Phibbs had assigned.

Lindsay flipped quickly through a series of slides. Snow angels. Cupids from valentine cards. A statue on a gravestone. But most of the pictures were paintings and sculptures showing angels. Babies and adults, male and female. Some were dressed colorfully, with gold pointed hats. Others were all in white. One held a dove, another a sword. Some had halos, but each halo was different — a sort of plate stuck to the back of the head, or spiky rays, or an aura of light.

“So, Appearance,” Lindsay said. “I just showed you so many different ways angels might appear, but the truth is that they don’t actually have bodies.”

“Huh?” Again.

“They take on other forms, like human or animal. Something we’ll recognize. So how can you tell a person from an angel? Because they give off a sweet perfume. But people might wear perfume and aftershave, right? So how do you tell? Because they glow!”

Lindsay clicked on another slide. A gold X-ray of an angel, an angel made entirely of light.

Some kids were whispering to each other. From the left side of the room, scoffing laughter.

“Okay, Food,” Lindsay said. “This is easy!”

There was one sentence on the screen: They don’t eat!

“For Habitat, angels can live anywhere. They’re found all over the world, in every culture. But they prefer to be near people. Because they exist to help people.”

She clicked through a series of pictures that showed a country on a map, a photograph of the place, then an angel. Thailand. India. Canada. Italy. Russia.

As the whispers grew louder, Lindsay sped up. “Life Cycle. Easy again! They don’t die!” she read. “Communication. This is so amazing.”

They sing instead of speak.

From the left side of the room, Margo Tamm screeched like an opera singer.

Lindsay reddened, adding, “To communicate with humans, they leave signs that most of the time we don’t even notice. Because we’re not looking for them.”

She scrunched her nose so her glasses lifted, as though she was wondering whether to say the next thing.

“But the thing I like best about angels is that in so many of the pictures they look like they’re wearing wedding dresses.”

Her last slide showed a Christmas card angel in a long white gown.

“Thank you,” she said, taking a bow.

Ms. Phibbs, sitting at her desk, squeezed the bridge of her nose. “Lindsay? The assignment was about animals. You told me you were presenting on squirrels.”

“I was going to. I love squirrels! But yesterday I got these really interesting books on angels for a friend. I stayed up until eleven o’clock redoing everything.”

“But angels aren’t animals, are they?” Ms. Phibbs said. “They’re not even real.”

“Gavin did sasquatches.”

“Sasquatches are real!” Gavin Heinrichs bellowed.

Ms. Phibbs’ lips tightened and she crossed her arms. Nicola could see the lumpy place in the sleeve of her cardigan where she tucked her tissues. “Questions?”

Nicola put up her hand. “What kind of signs do they leave?”

“It could be like a word in a crossword puzzle.”

Inside Nicola a funny feeling started up. A fluttery, butterflies-in-the-tummy feeling.

“Do you have a source for that?” Ms. Phibbs asked Lindsay, because they were supposed to list where they found their facts.

“I used the Internet. And the two library books I took out for my friend.”

“Have you ever seen an angel?” asked Aleisha Durmaz, who sat on Lindsay’s side of the room.

“I think so,” Lindsay said. “I might have seen three of them. Maybe more. I wasn’t looking before. I didn’t know to look. You might have seen one, too. They’re really common, actually.”

“Lindsay, I’m going to stop you here,” Ms. Phibbs said. “We don’t discuss religion at school out of respect for other faiths.”

“But all religions have angels, Ms. Phibbs,” Lindsay said. “Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and Jews. I showed you some of them.”

“This is getting silly. You may sit down.”

Lindsay shuffled back to her desk with everyone staring at her instead of applauding like Ms. Phibbs had made them do for the other presenters. After a few minutes of not opening her math book, she raised her hand and asked to go to the bathroom. Ms. Phibbs said she could.

Lindsay was gone a long time. Eventually, Nicola put up her hand and asked to go, too. Ms. Phibbs seemed to have forgotten about Lindsay because she gave Nicola permission even though this year’s rule was that only one person could leave the room at a time.

Nicola looked for Lindsay in the bathrooms on all three floors of Queen Elizabeth Elementary, but didn’t find her.

* * *

When school was over, Nicola walked to the Sheldon Arms Apartments. Lindsay buzzed her in. Nicola climbed the stairs and found the apartment door open. She shed her boots and coat and went straight to Lindsay’s room, where two blue socks jutted from the Feel Better Box.

“Why did you leave school?” Nicola asked.

“Ms. Phibbs said my report wasn’t respectful, but she was the disrespectful one. It made me mad. I’m okay now, though. Come in.”

Nicola crawled into the box where the cologne smell was thick. She lay down next to Lindsay so they were squashed together.

“What did you mean about the crossword puzzle?”

Lindsay said, “Couldn’t it be a sign?”

“It was just a coincidence.”

“But remember that flowery smell at Shady Oaks? The good smell around Mr. Fitzpatrick and Mrs. Michaels and Mrs. Tanaka? A sweet perfume is a sign that an angel is nearby. I have a source for that. Do you want to see the books?”

Nicola felt that fluttering again. She closed her eyes. When she opened them, she was looking right at a ­picture of Irene taped above her head.

“That’s your mom,” she said.

Irene in a wedding dress. The picture was cut in half.

“Doesn’t she look beautiful?” Lindsay asked. “Doesn’t she look happy?”

“Where’s the other half of the picture?”

“They got divorced. Do you want to see the dress?” Lindsay asked.

Anything to get out of the box.

In the hall, Lindsay opened a cupboard and climbed the shelves of sheets and towels. She pulled down a white garbage bag and lifted out the dress.

“It’s really pretty,” Nicola said. And it was. The sleeves were puffed at the shoulders, the bodice stiff with tiny pearls.

“Can you think of anything else you only wear once? That’s why a wedding dress is so special. Because you only wear it once and no matter what happens after that, you’re always happy the day you wear it.” Lindsay rolled up the dress and stuffed it back in the bag.

Nicola asked, “Is your mom unhappy?”

“She was. Mostly she’s stressed now.”

They returned to Lindsay’s room. Nicola hesitated in the doorway.

“We don’t have to go back in the box,” Lindsay said. “I already feel better. I feel better because you came over.”

“Lindsay,” Nicola said. “You don’t really think there are angels at Shady Oaks.”

“That’s what Mr. Milton thinks. That’s what he was trying to tell me. And when June Bug put on her show? I felt like something really special happened and it wasn’t June Bug doing her tricks.”

“I felt it, too,” Nicola said.

“It was because they were there. Mrs. Michaels and Mr. Fitzpatrick and Mrs. Tanaka.”