Demon
Chapter 25

Jonathan

“So, what are you doing over spring break?” Gabe asks me. Natalie looks over at me to see how I answer.

I look up from the Lego spaceship that I’m building on Gabe’s bedroom floor. “Well, being bored out of my mind, obviously, without you guys here.”

Natalie laughs, and reaches over and pats my hand. “You’ve got Socks to keep you company!”

I am not looking forward to the break that starts tomorrow after school. They are going straight from school on their trip to New Mexico, and they’ll be gone the entire week that we’re on break. Ugh. Mom is super busy with work and school, so there’s no way for our family to go do anything interesting. I’ll just be hanging around the house with Dad, apparently.

Natalie says, “By the way, since we won’t be here tomorrow night, I want to ask you our Friday questions now.”

I shrug. “Fine.”

“How have you been feeling?”

Sigh. I know why she asks me this all the time, but sometimes it gets tiresome.

“I’m feeling fine.”

“Are you having any unexplained emotions?”

“No.”

“Have you felt like you want to hurt anybody?”

“Nope.”

“Feeling anything different at all?”

“No. Still feel normal, and like I am in control of myself.”

She smiles. “Thanks for being patient with this, Jonathan. I know it is getting old, but as long as your guardian angel is missing, we need to keep track of how you are doing.”

“I’m pretty sure he’s done with me. He would have come back by now if he was going to. I think I’m on my own. And that’s fine with me. I don’t want to have to fight off some demon.” Natalie told me she started calling my guardian angel Demon before he disappeared. That sounded scary at first, but I’m not scared any more. It’s been over three months. I feel totally normal again, I haven’t had any unexplained impulses, everything is fine. I wish Natalie would stop worrying about it.

She shrugs. “Well, just keep track of everything while we’re gone, then we’ll talk again next weekend when we get back.” She grins. “Maybe we’ll send you a postcard from Albuquerque!”

“Yippee!” I say, rolling my eyes.

Ron

“Ok, kids, have a good day at school, and we’ll be waiting right here when the bell rings this afternoon!”

The kids say goodbye and clamber out of the car, heading over to the playground on campus. I have a couple of errands to run on the way home. I have to pick up some trip snacks, and a couple of little games for them to play on the plane to keep them occupied. Then home to finish packing and getting ready to go.

It’s actually happening! I know she said yes months ago, but I still can hardly believe that we’re really doing it.

Brenda is planning to have lunch with Laura before we leave, last minute girl pep talk before the wedding, I guess. She would have invited Laura and Mike to come out for the wedding, but I guess Mike is too busy with work to take time off.

I pull into the grocery store parking lot. What snacks should I get? Hm. Cookies, obviously.

Laura

Mike’s at work, and Timothy is at school, so it’s just Brenda and I enjoying a quiet lunch together. Well, maybe not exactly quiet. There’s a lot of laughing going on.

She’s super excited about the wedding. I’ve demonstrated how she should fix her hair in an updo just right to look beautiful together with her dress, then took everything out and supervised while she recreated it. She wanted to make sure that she can do it all right herself on the day of the wedding.

It’s wonderful to spend time together. We haven’t had much of it lately, with her living at Ron’s now and so busy with everything.

While we’re sitting in the living room after lunch, one of the new neighbors walks past the window. Well, not that new, I guess, they’ve been there over a month.

Brenda pretends to hide behind a pillow. “Wouldn’t want him to know the landlady is here checking up on him. Awkward!”

More laughing.

“Seriously, though,” she says, “how’s it been? With them next door?”

“Um, fine,” I say, trying not to seem evasive. “Very weird for it not to be you guys. Timothy misses Natalie a lot. He used to wave goodnight to her sometimes out his window at bedtime.”

“Awww,” she says. “They still see each other all the time, though. Natalie seems okay with it. I think Timothy is too?”

“Yeah, he actually is.”

“How is Mike doing?” she asks.

“Okay,” I say, shrugging. “He’s even made friends with Jim and Ethan. Your tenants. He hangs out over there with them after dinner sometimes.”

Her eyebrows go up. “Really? I didn’t know that. That’s nice, I think?”

“He seems to like it. I guess it helps him relax after work. Although hanging around with more guys after being on a ship full of guys all day can’t be all that different.”

She laughs.

I really want to redirect the conversation, to get away from the topic I have to avoid. “So, do you want some make-up tips? For the wedding, to go with your fancy hairdo?”

“Yes, please!”

Good. Let’s move on to safer areas. I am filled with guilt over everything I’m not telling her. I had never really told her how much trouble Michael was having when he got back from deployment, how his nightmares were keeping him up all night. I had mentioned it a couple of times, but it was right when Gabe got hurt in December, and then they were all getting ready to move in with Ron full time, then she wasn’t here anymore. There just wasn’t a great time to give her a long description of what was going on, when we were alone without husbands or kids around so we could talk freely.

And now I am definitely keeping something else from her. I am so conflicted about what is going on with Mike. He’s gone next door pretty frequently in the evenings, and usually comes back with the smell of marijuana clinging to him. I hate that smell, and I am worried that he’s going to end up getting in trouble with the Navy in case he gets a random drug test sprung on him.

But, I can’t wish that he isn’t doing it. The transformation since it started happening is huge. We hadn’t had a single decent night of sleep in months, but then that first night after the guys moved in, it was like a miracle. He slept the whole night.

At first I hoped the pot was a one-time thing, but it’s obviously their favorite hobby. I have started to see a correlation between it and how well he sleeps. If more than a few days goes by, he starts getting jumpy and having nightmares again. After another visit to Jim and Ethan, he gets another couple of nights of good sleep. There is something about that stinky weed that is helping him.

And of course he is spending a lot of time over there rather than here at home with me. Sometimes I think he likes their company better than mine. I’m glad that he has friends that he’s enjoying, and I am profoundly relieved that the sleep thing is improving. But I miss him, and have these little twinges of resentment when he’s over there late into the night after I’ve put Timothy to bed. The situation is so fraught.

I hate it and I love it.

And I can’t say anything to Brenda about it. This is happening in her house. The house she is renting to these guys. They are breaking the rules, she could probably evict them for it, and the HOA might come down on her if they replace out what is going on in her rental.

But if I tell her, I’m narcing on my own husband. And furthermore it might end up taking away something that he has come to rely on for his peace of mind. And his health. I think that he’s gained back some of that weight he had lost. He is starting to lose that starved, haggard look he had. He’s filling out again, in all the right places. Starting to look like the gorgeous hunk that I married.

I’m wracked with guilt.

Brenda is my best friend and I’m hiding something important from her, in order to enable my husband to continue neglecting me and coming home all smelly. But it’s for his benefit.

It’s a very tangled situation.

So, I’ll stay quiet about it, and hope for the best.

Timothy

When the teacher tells us it’s time to get our lunches and go outside, I ask Natalie to bring her notebook with her. She looks at me curiously. We don’t normally bring notebooks to lunch, but I want to set her up for the new experiment.

“Ok,” she says, and pops back over to her desk to grab it, along with a pencil.

Gabe and Jonathan are already eating at our table. The four of us always sit in the same spot.

Natalie says, “So, what do you want my notebook for?”

“Well, this is our chance to expand our guardian communication experiment. You guys are going to fly to New Mexico. I checked on the map, and Albuquerque is about 600 miles away from San Diego. That’s way farther than we’ve checked before, to see if guardians can still hear each other. So I want to track it.”

“Oh!” she says, “what a great idea!” She hands me her notebook, and I flip to the back page, and write down some instructions for her.

“You’ll need to keep detailed notes. I’ll try too, but since my communication with Guardian isn’t as reliable, I want to make sure that you record everything that Angel is telling you about whether he can still hear our guardians.”

Jonathan snorts, and I look over at him. “Oh, sorry. I mean my guardian.”

We’ve told Jonathan the whole thing, about how our guardians learned how to use energy to talk to each other, and then how Demon started doing it to control him. I hadn’t considered whether discussing this experiment in front of Jonathan might make him feel left out, since he doesn’t have a guardian any more.

“Whatever,” he says. “I suppose it’ll be interesting to replace out.”

“Do you know what time your flight leaves?” I ask.

Gabe says, “I think at 5:30.”

“Okay. As soon as you are in the air, start having Angel track his ability to hear Guardian. I’ll start trying to listen to Guardian at 5:30, and hopefully I’ll be able to tell how the experiment is going. If not, I guess I’ll just have to wait for you to get back. So take a lot of notes.”

Gabe leans over the table to look at what I’m writing.

I check over what I’ve written in her notebook to see if I forgot anything. I’ve made a chart for her to fill in, with distances and the names of the Guardians. I want Angel to tell her if Guardian is still hearing all four of them. She’ll have to write in the times. I guess she won’t really know the distances, but she’ll at least be able to fill in the last one, when they arrive.

I hand her back the notebook. “Angel will help you with everything. He might even be able to track the distances. Do you have a watch you can wear to know the times?”

“Um, no. My Dad does but I hate to keep bothering him for the time.”

I think for a second, and take off my watch. “Ok, here, wear this. I won’t need it over spring break, we’re not really planning to go anywhere so I think I’ll just be at home.”

Natalie’s mouth falls open. “Are you sure? You love this watch!”

“Yes. Just take care of it, and use it to track the experiment times.”

“Thank you, Timothy. I’ll do my best!”