The next morning, Allek awoke to knocking on his door. He rolled out of his twin-sized bed and dragged his feet the entire five steps to the door. After rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he checked the clock beside the door. It read 6:32 A.M.
“This is really ridiculous! Can’t I get a day to myself after‒”
“Good morning, Mr. Branch. You’ll be happy to know every single child belonging to IOTH Laboratories is present and accounted for, you’re very welcome. This child you ‘happened’ to run into last night is not in our records. I’ve also taken the liberty of speaking to the natives, and not a soul will admit she’s theirs. I hope you realize my father is going to kill me if we don’t get any answers out of this girl who, by the way, is still asking to see you.”
Dean Sing was standing outside Allek’s trailer, fists at her side, hair mussed, and makeup faded. She was absolutely livid, and the anger broiling in her was so strong she was shaking. “I was up all night poring over legal documents and found nothing on any ‘Trudy’. It’s your turn to do some research.”
Unable to say anything in the least bit charming to calm down his boss due to lack of sleep, Allek offered his hospitality. “You seem really stressed, would you like to come in? I can make us some coffee.”
The belligerent woman’s fingers twitched and curled. “Now is not the time for your bullshit, Allek. I want you to go through all of our passport documents today. I mean all of them. I want you to call up every single aircraft and ship passenger who left this island with an angel child and find out if any of them have gone missing.” Her finger was up in Allek’s face at this point.
“That’s stupid!” Allek protested. The last time he bothered to offer her help, she rejected his offer, and now she was asking for it? Rude! “We both know that the altitude phenomenon doesn’t work in reverse!” He yawned lazily and leaned over on the doorframe for support. As far as he knew, children that descended the mountain and lost all their powers did not regain them upon returning to the mountaintop. “...Does it?”
“If you find out, be sure to let your father know. Maybe then he can have some reason to speak to you for once. All the files I could scrounge are in the staff room on your desk, I suggest you begin your task early so that you can resume your weekly...vegetation cycle.”
Allek gawked. Dean Sing hated him, clearly, but she had never verbally attacked him in a personal way before. He didn’t know that she knew about the long expanse of time he had gone without speaking to his father. He had not so much as gotten a text from his father since the mandatory sterilization of every island resident, most likely because Dallas Branch knew the subject of conception made his son uncomfortable. Allek scrunched his nose at the dean. He knew she didn’t mean to hurt him. She was probably just tired.
“Your ‘house’ is disgusting, by the way. I wouldn’t chance setting even a toe in such a rickety dump. Enjoy your day, Mr. Branch.” Dean Sing swung around, nose in the air, and trudged up the sandy stairs leading to the mountain road around the back of Allek’s trailer.
Allek listened to the sound of her brand new imported Japanese car hum as she drove back uphill. The heavy feeling returned to his legs. He did not want to go back up to the labs during his weekend. He trudged heavily back inside to put on his sneakers, cursing that confounded child as he did so.
***
An angel girl with thick, wavy light brown hair, and her two angel friends made their way into the grounds' hospital where they had heard that a new angel recruit called 'Trudy' was being kept for monitoring and research.
It didn't take long for the three to find Trudy, since one of the three was a frequent hospital flier and knew the place like the back of his hand. The pink-haired angel girl was sitting in a wheelchair outside of her hospital room, with a look of anticipation on her pudgy little face. She had been interrogated by a strange woman all morning. She just wanted to speak to her daddy.
“Hi there, miss Trudy. It seems like we haven’t been introduced. My name’s Chelsea Huntington and these are my friends, Caspio and Merrily. Me and Caspio are ten and Merrily is seven. I’ve been here all my life and I love it here, it’s so nice. Everybody’s really nice to me.”
'Trudy' said nothing to Chelsea. She didn't know when Chelsea would stop speaking, anyway, with the way she just barraged her with random information. She just sat in her wheelchair, calmly examining the other girl with her large cerulean blue eyes.
“Don’t be shy. We won’t do anything to hurt you. In fact,” Chelsea bent over and put her hands on her knees so she would look a little less overbearing, “we wanted to know if we could talk. You know, make friends with each other. My best friend is Caspio. Maybe you can be best friends with Merrily.” She giggled and stepped aside so that the smaller angel girl behind her could step forward and speak to Trudy.
“Hi,” squeaked the younger girl. “I’m Merrily. Chelsea said you wooked like the same age as me so I came with her. I don’t have any friends yet." She put her hands behind her back and wobbled slightly to the right. Her shiny black-brown hair hung into her face and she could not keep eye contact with Trudy. "I’ve never been to the hospital. We never get sick, so I’m not used to it here. Caspio told me stowies about how scary it is here, though.” The young girl spoke as if a parent’s babying voice had rubbed off on her. Most of her r’s sounded like w’s. Although she seemed incredibly awkward, she could talk just as much as Chelsea could.
“Merrily,” hissed the taller, thinner angel boy across the hall. Trudy’s eyes shot up at him. He had skin as white as printer paper, and his markings and feathers were all gray. His hair, which hung down to his elbows, was chalky light lavender, and his eyes were golden. “What goes on in the hospital is private. That means only I get to know.” He sighed and smiled reluctantly at Trudy, though the silvery bags beneath his eyes made him look somewhat sad. “I’m Caspio LeBlanc.”
The three children surrounding her looked very hopeful for a response, but Trudy remained silent.
“Can you talk?” asked Merrily, tilting her head. “Sometimes, I get scared and I can’t find my voice. My teachers say that if I slow down it gets easier to talk.”
“Are we scaring you?” asked Chelsea. “Oh goodness, did I startle you by coming in here unexpected? I didn’t mean to, I promise.” She pouted and looked to Caspio to say something to make the situation better.
“D’you know what happened to you last night?” Caspio asked Trudy. “One of the teachers found you on the side of the road and brought you in. I dunno about you, but it hurts when we travel too far. We get fevers and stuff. Do you know what that is? To have a fever?”
Trudy looked only confused at what was being said to her. Chelsea began to look agitated, as if Caspio was not quite doing what she had expected of him.
“It means like...” Caspio rubbed his forehead and faked panting for a second. “It gets really hot. This one time I sleepwalked out to the parking lot and my feathers started falling out!”
Trudy’s black ear feathers bent back in fear. She did not want to lose them. They were much too cute on her.
“It was kinda scary.”
“You got a lot further down the mountain than he got, and you didn’t lose any feathers or anything!” Chelsea exclaimed. “I think you mighta got an extra or something. See how she has seven?” she pointed out Trudy’s odd number of ear feathers to her two friends. “We only have six.”
Trudy looked down. She didn’t know what to say. She had had seven feathers on her ears for as long as she could remember, and thought there was nothing special about it.
“Since you can’t remember how you got that far down, they’re gonna keep you here in the hospital, and you’re gonna be hangin' out with Caspio until they figure out some stuff about you.”
“He stays here on account of his nightmares,” Merrily added. She continued on without noticing that Caspio was glaring at her through his stringy pale bangs. “He keeps having night terrors of demons coming to kidnap us.” She held up her hands and made a ghost noise at Trudy.
This act caused Trudy to get up out of her wheelchair, walk over to Caspio and peer deeply into his eyes, as if in a trance. “They’re real,” she said.
“Nah, they’re just nightmares. Like it doesn’t really happen, just in my head is all,” Caspio insisted. “Or that’s what nurse Smithy keeps saying. Sometimes it kind of feels like they’re in my room, though.” He chuckled nervously.
Trudy stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him.
“Okay! That’s enough!” Chelsea shouted.
Caspio wriggled out of Trudy’s grasp. “Sorry Chels,” he said quietly. “You guys kept bringing it up, I didn’t know what else to say!”
“What you’re supposed to say, you silly thing!” she loudly whispered back at him. He crossed his arms and looked away. Chelsea’s face showed immediate regret of her choice of words. “...I’m sorry, Caspio,” she said, reaching out and putting her tiny naturally tan-pigmented hand on his.
Trudy took a mental note of how this angel girl seemed to have ownership of the angel boy before her. “I’m sorry,” she said, frowning at Chelsea. “Accident.”
“Gosh, it’s okay. Sometimes, y’know, I just let my feelings carry me away. It’s kinda funny sometimes, y’know...” Chelsea began to blush uncontrollably and did her best not to look at her best friend.
“I hear voiceeeees! What’s going on in here?” came a singsong voice from around the corner.
Dr. Chariot and the nurse that had tended to Trudy the night before came strolling into the hall where the children had gathered, hand-in-hand. Luke Smithy was the head nurse at IOTH, and he had met Mark Chariot in the hospital's shower room, where the latter was forced to take a shower to get accidentally spilled chemicals off of his skin. Safe to say, it was probably a steamy introduction. It was generally known around the hospital that the two were seeing each other. All four angel children straightened up to show their respect for the IOTH staff members.
“Hello, nurse Smithy.”
“How are you feeling, Caspio?” he responded, setting his free hand on Caspio’s shoulder. “Any better than last night?”
“A little,” Caspio said, nodding.
“I’m so happy to hear that,” nurse Smithy replied, smiling big at the angel boy.
Trudy, letting the conversation around her fly completely over her head, reached out and tugged on Dr. Chariot’s lab coat. “Where’s daddy?” she asked. “Please.”
“Aren’t you adorable,” Dr. Chariot said, leaning down and placing his hand on top of her head to ruffle her bright pink hair. “I can’t believe that mean old fart didn’t claim you as his own on sight. You are just a peach. Isn’t she a peach, Luke?”
“Oh yes, she’s so darn cute! Maybe when we retire, we’ll have enough to take her with us.”
“Ugh, guys, please,” interrupted Caspio. “You wanted us to talk to her and we did. She’s maybe said two things to us! I dunno what else you guys want us to do. She isn’t being a pest or anything, so why don’t you talk to her yourselves?”
The conversation continued to fly over Trudy's head.
“Probably been another week...” whispered nurse Smithy to his colleague, who nodded and frowned in disappointment at Caspio. “Alright. You guys get back to your dormitories. We’ll see what we can do about Trudy.”
The three angel children in unison said, “yes, nurse,” and headed down the hall the direction they had entered. All turned the same corner except for Caspio, who kept going straight, all the way to a room at the end of the hall, which he entered.
“You’ll have to excuse our poor manners, Trudy, but you’re going to have some very limited visiting time if you won’t cooperate,” nurse Smithy tsked. Maybe tonight we can bring back Caspio. You like him, right? He’s a special guy, you know.”
“You have to go back to your room, too, now,” Dr. Chariot added, nodding to nurse Smithy about something Trudy didn’t know was going on. “Maybe you’ll see your ‘daddy’ tonight...if you're good.” He winked at Trudy, who gasped in excitement and quickly ran into her room, shoving the wheelchair out of the way and pulling the door shut. She looked out at the doctor and nurse, who both burst into giggles at the sight of the excited child’s face pressed against the window.
***
The staff room was empty by the time Allek arrived. Dean Sing, the only staff member who usually bothered to stay in the staff room until all her work was complete, also fixed the shades so that the room was depressingly dark. Allek trudged in, angry at the world, and fell back with a creak and a thud onto his office chair. There was a stack of adoption papers on his desk, and a sticky note on the office phone beside his computer monitor that said “don’t forget to add the extension when you call - Dr. Sing”.
He lifted the first paper off the top of the stack and stared at it.
‘Arlene Ansolabehere, 11/09/2047, F, adopted out to Yolanda and Credence Ansolabehere on July 27th, 2051.’
The papers were in alphabetical order. Allek looked at the paper below Ansolabehere. Atkinson. Athens. Azalea. Bartlett. Barton. Bean. Bells. Bradley. Bryant. Canton. Crabtree...on and on several inches high, each page bringing a new name. Allek dragged his fingers down his face. He didn’t have time to shower earlier. He was greasy and disgusting. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his bandanna to wipe his face, then wrapped it around his head, so that his dangling short bangs would not filth his skin further. This was going to take all day, dean Sing had made sure of that.
He picked up the phone and dialed the Ansolabehere number.
“Hello, this is professor Allek Branch from Institution On The Hill, may I speak to Yolanda, please?”
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