Heavenly Creatures
CHAPTER 4: Friday

It’s a fact of life that life rarely cooperates with our wishes. I felt an existential dread in the pit of my stomach as Friday approached way too quickly. I saw Sun on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the more I saw of him, the more unsettled I felt.

Was Sun a robot or an alien? I’m exaggerating, of course, but Sun gave me strange vibes. Usually, I could get a sense of who someone was. Not with Sun. He drew a complete blank.

And that frightened me.

You know how humans are afraid of the unknown? To be honest, I was rarely afraid. Even when young, I would walk around our big house at night with the lights turned off to get water. I’d scared my parents this way. But I’d rarely felt much myself. I just figured, if something popped out, I could handle it.

Which was why Sun was freaking me out so much. I sensed something different about him, and it made me feel, for the first time, like I didn’t have everything under control.

I didn’t like the feeling.

I felt vindicated by the following scene, which I came upon while walking home on Friday.

“What am I supposed to do?” a male voice hissed.

I slowed my steps on the bridge and looked down, curious. There was Sun, gesturing wildly.

“I don’t get it!” he exclaimed.

I kept walking, but at a crawl now, trying to make out who he was talking to.

“Are you kidding me?” Sun crossed his arms and scowled at the air in front of him. “You’re just a stupid old man!”

My eyebrows shot up to my hairline. Well, well, well. Sun was just as weird as I suspected! Wait ’til I told Ana about this.

Except, something happened in the next moment that shattered all my conclusions about Sun and left me questioning my own sanity. Sᴇaʀch Thᴇ ꜰindNʘvel.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

So translucent I could barely see him, an old man floated in front of Sun. He had a long, platinum white beard that other old men would probably envy if they could see it. I couldn’t hear what the old man said, but I could hear Sun’s reply.

“Good riddance!”

And before Sun could uncross his arms, the old man had vanished in a flash of light. The reflection stayed in my eyes for a few seconds, and I could see little sunspots dancing across several roofs before disappearing.

I gaped like an idiotic fish before realizing that Sun could now potentially see me if he just looked up. That lit a fire under me, and I ran all the way home, not stopping until I was safe in my own bedroom.

What had just happened?

I paced the room, clutching my head. My racing thoughts landed on an inconvenient truth: Sun was coming over at seven.

“Tara!” Mom called from the kitchen. “Are you doing your homework?”

“Yes, mom!” I shouted back, deciding to take her advice and focus on homework, then dinner. One step at a time. No big deal.

Knock, knock. The sound of the doorknob pulled me out of my reverie. I’d been staring at the same problem since coming back to my room after dinner.

I opened the door to find Sun with his hand raised.

“We have a doorbell,” I said. My instinct was to become sarcastic when feeling threatened.

“I know,” Sun said, not taking the bait. “I just like knocking on wood.”

“Thinking something bad is going to happen?” I asked.

“One can never be too careful,” Sun said.

I stepped aside to let him in without further comment. It seemed that I was not going to be the winner of this battle of wits. Sun looked around my home, his eyes like benevolent lasers, if there could be such a thing.

“You have a nice home,” he said, smiling at me. Despite everything, I smiled back. His smile was that infectious. “Lead the way.”

I led Sun into my father’s study, which had recently been renovated. “This is where we can get the most privacy,” I explained.

Sun sprawled in my father’s armchair, grinning. “Well, should we get started?”

I sat across from him, shaking my head. “Make yourself at home,” I said, although clearly, Sun already had. Sun kept grinning, as if he knew what I was thinking. Irked, I added, “You’re lucky I don’t kick you out.”

“What do you mean?” Sun asked. “I belong in this chair.”

“Well, I hope you’re better than astronomy than me, sensei,” I said.

“I’m passable, young grasshopper,” Sun said, an enigmatic smile on his face. The scene from the bridge came back to me like a splash of cold water, and I hurriedly took out my astronomy packet.

“Something wrong?” Sun asked. Calm as a lake at sunrise.

I shook my head. “No, no.”

“You’re not scared of me, are you?” Sun asked.

I whipped my head up to look at him. “Scared? Ha!” But the first word came out a squeak. I cleared my throat.

Sun leaned forward, which made me lean back even though the desk was wide enough to put a distance between us. His next words were barely a whisper.

“Dragons don’t get scared, do they?”

And for the first time in my life, I fainted.

“Tara?” Sun caught me before I dropped to the floor or hit my head on the table. “Oh shoot, I didn’t mean to wake you.”

I wanted to ask Sun what he meant when I was standing right there, but I realized that I wasn’t in my own body. I tried to look at myself but couldn’t. I was just a floating point of awareness in space.

Have you ever seen the picture of The Scream? That would have been me—if I had had a body to scream with.

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