Bladed Wings (12 page)

              “Because of what I said?” Timothy asked.

              “That,” she said, “And because of something else.”

              “What?”

              “Nothing.”

              “You’re sure?”

              “Yeah.”

              “You know,” Timothy said as he stood slowly. “If you ever want to talk, I’m there for you. I mean that, it’s one in the morning and I’ll be there for you.”

              Jenny raised her eyes as if she just noticed something she didn’t quite understand, maybe something she couldn’t read or recognize, but she nodded and said, “I believe you.” Again he heard that sound, but he couldn’t hope there was something there.

              “Dude, I have a question for you, and I need your philosopher’s brain for this.”

              “Shoot comrade,” Jeremiah said, sitting up to the scent of learning something new. “Ask ye olde wise man for the wisdom for these ages and beyond.”

              “You’re not that smart.”

              “Prove it,” Jeremiah said, but instead of waiting for an answer, he went back to the first part of their conversation and asked, “So tell me, what’s your question?”

              “How do you know if you’re in love?”

              “You get scanned to determine if you’ve got the right kinds of blood flow and chemicals in your brain which cause love.”

              “Seriously.”

              “I’m serious. That’s a good way to tell.”

              “You really think it’s just chemicals? No soul, no heart, nothing else?” Timothy asked even though he might’ve agreed before dunking Cipher in a pool of holy water. “So there’s no choice? There’s no will involved?”

              “Only what you do about it, assuming free will exists at all.”

              “That’s kind of dark.”

              “A little,” Jeremiah agreed. “Why?”

              “I was talking to someone, and she didn’t know where love came from. I gave an answer, but I don’t know if it was a very good one.”

              “She?” Jeremiah perked. “Who is she? Someone who might live in a glorified dorm with a pretentiously chic name? Maybe she’s got a neighbor who stares at the sky in the hopes she’ll walk out of her room? That kind of she?”

              “Maybe.”

              “Peh,” Jeremiah laughed. “Remind me to teach you how to lie.” He shook his head for a few seconds until, “So she wanted to know? Like there are doubts.”

              “There could be.”

              “There are,” Jeremiah said. “And that’s not because you believe it. If she’s asking, it means there’s something really, really wrong in their relationship.”

              “Like what?”

              “I don’t know. What’d she ask?”

              “Just how you know if you’re in love.”

              “Like she can’t tell?” Jeremiah sounded suspicious.

              “She says she feels it but doesn’t know why. That kind of freaked her out.”

              “He’s drugging her?”

              “Jerk.”

              “If she can’t tell, it means there’s something in play that she doesn’t know about. Dosing is the first thing that makes sense.”

              “That’s not possible.”

              “Someone probably said that about date rape drugs.”

              “But she’s conscious,” Timothy said. “And I’m pretty sure there aren’t any drugs to make you feel like you’re in love.”

              “Not yet,” Jeremiah said. He shook his head since he didn’t like concessions, “But who knows? Maybe he’s a chemist who came up with something special. Maybe he’s one of those comic book super villains who builds robots and black holes in his basement.”

              “I doubt it,” Timothy said. “Besides, it’s not just chemistry. There’s more to emotions.”

              “Maybe not,” Jeremiah answered. “Play with chemicals and you get emotions. Smoke some pot, drop some E, and that proves me right. It changes how you feel. Look at it this way, do you pick the people you fall in love with?”

              “What do you mean?”

              “You like her. You liked her before you got to know her. It was just a question of how she looked. That’s all physical. None of that is choice or will or personality or anything else you want to call it.”

              “That’s funny. I wanted to know the same thing.”

              “Why you’re in love with her?”

              “I wouldn’t call it love.”

              “And you’d be lying,” Jeremiah said. “We know you’re in love because your attention hasn’t wavered in the last semester and a half we’ve been here. You know there’s something freaky about that, right? Like you’re twenty, dude. You should be out there making bets about how many chicks you can wake up with. Instead you’re busy mooning over this one neighbor girl. If that’s not love, I don’t know what else would be. Unless we want to go ahead and say you’ve graduated to stalker. But you don’t have a shrine to her somewhere, right?”

              “Just time, that’s all it takes to prove you’re in love?”

              “Right?” Jeremiah asked, still clinging to the stalker question.

              “No,” Timothy snapped back, “I don’t have a shrine. Now let’s focus on the time thing.”

              “Time seems like a good piece of evidence to prove it’s love rather something else.”

              “But it’s just physical?” That’s the question Timothy asked, but he thought about her soul. He was thinking about her angelic nature, the light and swirls of white and blue energy he saw around her. He had shadows. She had light, and he was in love with her. Timothy didn’t want to ask if he loved her because of her soul. Timothy needed his feelings to be more than the shape of her soul. He wanted to love her, wanted to love the way she saw the world, the way she thought and laughed and joked.

There was the other half of the worry clawing at Timothy’s thoughts. If there wasn’t a difference between Jenny and her soul, then was there a difference between Timothy and his soul?

              “Everything is systemic,” Jeremiah said. “And every system we figure out is flawed. Sure, you fell in love with her, and that part might just be neurons and synapses and a bunch of other words you’d need a psych major to translate. But right here, right now, every moment, you pick what you do about it. Believe in God and you get the problem of evil. Believe in free will and you get manipulation. Believe in love and you get chemistry. So pick.”

              “Just pick?”

              “Pick whatever makes you happy.” Jeremiah smirked, his eyes on Timothy. “It’s what everyone does, whether or not they’re willing to admit it.

Timothy opened his eyes to the sound of someone pounding their front door. Jeremiah shouted something rude before Timothy heard his roommate slam his bedroom door. That left Timothy to get up and answer it, though he didn’t know who would bug them at five thirty. Tuesday, it was Tuesday which meant he had classes and work. That made the next thirty minutes precious. They were a few more minutes where he got to sleep.

              Timothy wouldn’t have been grumpy if it was someone with an oversized novelty check for a million dollars. That was the only reason he could think of why he wouldn’t punch whoever was cruel enough to wake sleeping college students at five-freakin’-thirty.

              He saw another reason to be happy for a five thirty wakeup.

              “Hi,” Jenny said. “You’re looking good.” At first that was just the sarcasm of a morning person teasing someone who needed a couple hours of sunshine to find his mind. But then she saw him in the lamplight outside his door and she reached out, the back of her fingertips less than an inch from his cheek, “You look really good, actually.” It felt really good to hear until he realized she was talking about his bruises. A day or two and they were almost gone. Her fingertips touched his temple before Jenny remembered that might be rude and pulled her hand back.

              “Thanks,” Timothy wished there was some way he could get her to do that again.

              “I need your help,” Jenny said with one breath.

              Timothy scrunched his eyes, trying to wake all the way up, “Now? What time is it?”

              “I thought you were a morning person,” she teased.

              “Too early for sarcasm.”

              “Please, Timothy, I really need your help. Please, please, please,” she had her hands together, almost hopping with every please.

              “What do you need?”

              “Come out with me and Terrance tonight.”

              “I have class,” he said.

              “Skip it.” Maybe Jenny realized she sounded too abrupt, because she added, “Look, I know you have your life and you think I’m insane and this must seem really dumb, but I need someone else to watch us and you’re the one I trust.” If she didn’t have the soul of an angel, Timothy would’ve guessed she was a demon. No one should be so compelling without trying, but then he remembered that she didn’t know what her eyes and voice could do. If she ever figured it out, Jenny would’ve been a good bet for the girl most likely to take over the universe.

              “Okay. What time?”

              “Six?” she asked.

              “Sure.”

              “Thank you so much. You are awesome. The god of awesome. Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Jenny jumped up and ran back down the halls.

              “Who was it?” groaned Jeremiah from behind his bedroom door.

              “Jenny,” Timothy shouted back as he headed back for bed.

              “She’s Satan,” he called. “No one else would be cruel enough to wake us up this early.”

              Timothy hopped onto his mattress, rolled onto his back, and didn’t think about sleep. Eyes open, he thought there could be a chance. She could decide Terrance was a money-sucking jerk who didn’t know how to appreciate what he had. Jenny could realize her newfound friend would make an even better boyfriend. “Right,” Timothy mumbled, trying to be cynical and realistic, but he couldn’t manage because he still remembered the way she chattered thank you.

“Ready for another lecture?” someone asked outside the door to Atheism. The class before theirs wasn’t done yet, so the philosophy students clustered outside and choked this already narrow corridor of Mendocino Hall. Huddled against the walls, knees pulled up to their chests, students read through their books or chatted. Timothy should’ve been a good student and read some more, but the conversation tugged his attention away from his textbook.

              “Oh yeah,” someone else said. “She talks at us for a good seventy minutes and no one says anything. Nothing more exciting.”

              “You’ve gotta feel bad for her,” Amy said. “No one likes her.”

              “Because she’s incompetent.” That came from one of Timothy’s meaner classmates. He was a guy who wore a dress coat to class every day, someone with nothing to prove because he was already convinced he knew everything.

              “She’s not really bad,” someone tried to say. A couple glances in her direction and she backed down, “Fine, fine. Maybe she is that bad. But at least the readings are good.”

              Wrong place, wrong time, Timothy realized. He didn’t belong here. “Hey,” someone asked Timothy as he got up and headed down the hall, “Where’re you going?”

              “To learn something important,” he called back.

              Jeremiah couldn’t answer Timothy’s question. He still didn’t know if he loved Jenny because of her soul, because of some magical radiation that made her look special. Jeremiah would’ve said it didn’t matter, but Timothy needed to know. It probably wouldn’t signify anything, but he wanted to understand. He created shields and armor of shadow without trying. Maybe she could grab his heart without trying either. That would suck.

              So he had to know.

              Back in his car, Timothy gave up his great parking spot right outside Mendocino, and sped down the service street that passed the dorms and took him back to Fair Oaks. A few minutes later he got to the warehouse where Cordinox kept his band of demons.

              Timothy parked and jumped out, slamming his door as he shot ahead. His next door looked rusted, the paint broken and pealing. Timothy pushed through. The door wasn’t locked because a lock might have aroused suspicions. On the other side there wasn’t anything but dust and crates. They all looked like they housed stale cheese from the Forties. Timothy walked through the patterns of crates until he got to the warehouse’s corner. There sat Cordinox, typing something on his cell phone.

              “Ah, Timothy, it’s good to see you again,” Cordinox said with a glance up. “I was just ordering some books. It’s amazing how quickly humans have changed in this last century. Hundreds of years where the greatest discoveries were new kinds of potatoes, maybe the occasional engine, but now everything is data, digital and unseen. Kind of like us.”