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Sarah wakes up before the rest of her foster family does. She tiptoes down the stairs of their apartment building, across the cracked concrete and to the abandoned lot next door. In the back, under the bushes, the angel is lying and watching her. Its eye is open a crack; its eyes are the color of Sarah’s, only they’re so much louder. If hazel was a thing you could feel. If you could hold it in your hands, if you could taste it.
Hello again, little bird, it says to her. Except it doesn’t say little bird, it says the image of a baby bird in a nest and also Sarah when she was taking her first steps and also a feeling of unimaginable love. That’s why Sarah is back: that love.
She’s holding half a sandwich in her hands that she stole from her foster mum’s fridge. “Do you need to eat?” she says. Her voice sounds so young. She’s seven, which is ancient, but she sounds like a baby bird and she hates it and she knows the angel knows and loves her for it and she hates that too, only she doesn’t.
No, says the angel. But I like it. Sarah crouches down next to the bushes gives it the sandwich. It props itself up on shaking forearms and eats it, delicately. Sarah waits until its attention is focused on the sandwich and then she looks at its wing. It still looks the way it did last time she was here: broken. A silver split on the ground. Roadkill. Looks wrong; Sarah looks away, back at the angel.
“When are you gonna be able to fly,” she says.
I don’t know, says the angel. Soon. Maybe. Maybe not soon. It flexes its wings. One of them moves.
“Does it hurt,” Sarah says, bouncing up and down on her feet with how much she doesn’t want it to hurt.
Yes, says the angel. Then it sees Sarah’s face and it reaches out fingers that shine; it brushes the fingers through Sarah’s hair, so just the edges of it pick up a dew-glow. Don’t worry, it says. I am very strong. This? No pain. I eat pain like this for breakfast.
“And my sandwich,” Sarah says, and the angel smiles a big happy smile at her.
Thank you, it says, for that.
Sarah ducks her head down and looks at her fingers. She picks away at the edges of her nails until the skin frays and bleeds and then she says: “But you’re gonna fly soon, yeah?”
Yes, says the angel. It rolls onto its side and its eyes reflect the sky. Soon.
“Where are you gonna go?” Sarah is trying to sound cool, adult, but she doesn’t think it works. Her voice shakes with need. The angel watches her.
Back, it says. All the way up. Past the clouds and past the sky and past the things that are past the sky and then I will be home again.
“Is it nice there.”
The angel hums. Like sandwiches, it says dreamily, only never stopping. Like the best part of a sandwich, the one with lots of mustard but not too much mustard. Its eyes suddenly jump from the sky back to Sarah, and they are knowing. Yes, Sarah, it says. It is very nice there.
“You should take me,” Sarah says, and then it’s out of her mouth and it’s real. Her chin goes up. She’s old, she’s seven and that’s old, that’s almost adult really. She makes herself go still. She doesn’t twitch at all. “I don’t want to be here,” she says. “And I gave you a sandwich, so you owe me.”
You know you can’t go, says the angel.
“No I don’t,” Sarah says. “You’re strong, you could take me.”
That isn’t why you can’t go.
“You think I wouldn’t fit,” Sarah says. Her stomach screams and claws at itself, desperate and lonely and furious. “I never fit, I never fit anywhere, they always give me up, you don’t get to give me up too. You’re under a bush! I’m not even good enough for you and you’re under a—” she has to stop because she’s crying, which is stupid, only babies cry.
Sarah, says the angel, and when it says Sarah’s name it sounds like the way a smile feels at the corner of her mouth. She knows the angel is going to say some nice soft thing about how Sarah is good enough, and Sarah will be loved someday, but it’ll just be a terrible kind way to say I’m leaving you behind and Sarah can’t stand it. The angel is breathing in and Sarah stands up and brings her foot down on the angel’s broken wing.
It screams. She does it again. She’s crying full-on, now, because she knows she’s ruined everything. Under her foot the bones of the angel have cracked. It let her touch them, last time, and under her fingertips they were hollow and lovely as windchimes. Sarah drags her sleeve across her face until the tears are gone, and then she turns on her heel and bolts.
Sarah, the angel says after her, the word like arms holding her. She can’t take it. She absolutely cannot bear it. She runs.
Sarah wakes up before the rest of her foster family does. She gets her foster mum’s bag and fills it up with everything she can find in the fridge and then she goes down the stairs of the apartment building, across the concrete, through the patchy grass in the abandoned lot that’s sown with broken bottles. She stops. She lets the bag go and it lolls onto its side, releases brown bananas and a loaf of bread into the grass.
“I’m sorry,” she says to the angel. “I didn’t mean to.”
A pale bright hand slides out from under the bush and grabs a banana. Sarah holds her breath, waiting to see if the banana’s bruises will vanish; they don’t, and the hand slides back under the bush.
You’re scared, says the angel.
“Yeah,” Sarah says, sitting down on the ground. “Don’t tell anyone.”
Promise, says the angel. Sarah tilts her head a little bit so she can see the secretive shine of its smile in the dirt.
“Hey,” she says, because she can’t say anything else, because all of it will choke her, because she wants the angel to open its mouth and say love again. “If you’re real, does that mean that – up there – there are—”
She swallows. She starts over. “Does that mean people have guardian angels? That those are real too?”
No, says the angel. That’s just a story. It reaches out and puts its hand on Sarah’s knee. Its hand is warm enough to be comforting and cool enough to be a relief. Sarah wants the angel to put it against her forehead, like in stories when kids are sick and their moms take care of them.
“Oh,” she says. “Great. Just wondering.”
The angel is quiet for a second. I think maybe you are mine, it says.
“What?”
My guardian angel. It gives her a little smile, soft like moonlight. Sarah has snot all over her face because she just keeps crying. The angel is so pretty. It shouldn’t need her. It shouldn’t even want to.
“Don’t leave,” she says.
Sarah, says the angel, only it doesn’t say that. It just says love. Love, love, love, big enough to eat the whole world. Sarah lies down on the ground, down in the dirt. This close to the angel she can see all the flecks in its eyes, hours on a clock that’s ticking down. She sniffles in a breath and watches the seconds go.
You’ll see me again, someday, the angel says. A long long time from now, I think.
“What if I don’t go – up there,” Sarah whispers. “What if I mess up.”
I’ll come find you anyways, the angel says, and it taps her on the nose. Even if you are the very worst. You gave me a sandwich, yes? I owe you.
“You promise,” Sarah says.
I promise, says the angel.
“Okay, then,” Sarah says. “That’s okay.” The angel brushes its knuckles under her each of her eyes, and then pulls its hand back. Sarah watches her tears on its skin, shining, until the morning light takes them and they’re gone.