No Place For Angels
an excerpt

After the show I waited patiently and assured Jenn that Lara would come back out to sign. She did, and the older man announced it, as patronizing to us as he had been to the elephant kids and as he was to Lara. I liked him all the less for it. We were already sitting close to where the line was forming, so we got good spots and talked a little with the other in the line. A couple of boys behind us were being wholly inappropriate and I did my best to ignore them. On the stage Lara took pictures with little kids and signed autographs. She talked to what looked like old friends and hugged fans and smiled a lot.

She was, I decided, a goddess. Absolutely. She was perfect without a doubt and could do no wrong. With this thought in mind, I walked up the stairs to talk to her. Jenn did not come with me, and for a split second I felt horribly exposed. I had no backup plan and I still had nothing to say.

I told her some nonsense. She smiled. I handed her my CDs and asked if she would sign them, and she smiled again and said that of course she would. Then the odd thing happened. I found myself standing, CDs in hand, looking at myself. I hesitated and tried to assess this sudden change in viewpoint. I was standing, I decided, in Lara’s point of view. Which had to mean, if I wanted to be logical, that the sloppy, slightly silly looking girl in front of me had to be Lara, standing in my point of view.

I grappled with this for a moment. No one, I decided, could know. I wasn’t sure what had just happened, but it was between Lara and I, and no one could know. This was going to right itself, I was sure. I just had to figure out what was going on.

“Whats your name?” I asked in Lara’s voice. It was a logical question, something she would surely have asked, but then I mentally smacked myself. How was she supposed to know what my name was? She could make one up, but Jenn was within earshot and questions would be asked. This had clearly occurred to her too. She opened her mouth to speak, and we switched again.

“Christine.” I said in my own voice.

She nodded, looking a little shaken, and asked me questions quietly while she signed. Was I interested in music? Well, I had been, but I wasn’t very good. How old was I? Fourteen years old, but I would be fifteen soon. Well, then I shouldn’t be giving up on music just yet. She handed the CDs back to me and stood next to me to smile for the camera. I must have looked ridiculous next to her, a frightened, rumpled looking girl next to a beautiful goddess I had just violated in some incomprehensible way that I sincerely hoped wasn’t going to happen again.

She pressed her fingers into my back in what I assumed was a kind gesture. I was slouching and I straightened up. Her fingers slipped and touched skin, and I felt dizzy for a moment. A thought came unbidden and strong into my mind; a series of very serious vows of protection and questions about my loyalty, and would I, if it came down to it, be willing to give up my life for her, and do this for no one else, and be forever bound, etc. There was a girl standing, watching us, that I hadn’t seen before, and that no one else seemed to notice. Of course, I thought. Of course. I was tired, I had never been this long without sleep. I was imagining things now. But of course I would protect her, and give my life for her, and all that other bullshit, of course.

Lara untangled her hand from my shirt and let me go. I thanked her and bounced off the stage and started out of the theater. Jenn came with me. When I turned to look back the group of boys was approaching Lara. She wasn’t looking at them. She stared after me for a moment, flashed a grin at Jess, and then frowned at me, for what felt like a very long second. Then she turned to the boys and I turned away.

Jenn and I walked in silence up the hill and out of the park. After a while I told her some of what Lara had said and asked me.

“Whatever you said to her,” Jenn told me, “You really had her attention.”

I fell asleep, hungry and tired, in the car. The whole way back I could have sworn I heard Lara, singing, but when I woke up to the car pulling into the gravel driveway of my grandfather’s house I told myself I had been imagining things. Just dreaming, I said, and I put the oddities of the morning out of my mind.