Chapter 1 - The Voice in the Gym
The brightly lighted corridor was nearly empty as the clock ticked toward the beginning of the last period of the school day. Light flooded the hallway from slender, transverse windows above the lockers lining the inside of the building's outer wall and reflected off the peach-colored paint. As the few students not yet in their middle-school classrooms hustled toward their doors, three boys, EZ, Li-cha, and Bob, lingered by their adjacent lockers. Bob was the tallest—close to six feet, with short brown hair and built like a basketball player. Li-cha was compact—only 5'5" tall and slender with honey-colored skin and a sharply defined Asian face. EZ was taller than Li-cha and shorter than Bob. His blond hair was close on the sides and longer on the top, spiked with a reasonable amount of product. He looked like the star soccer player he was: lithe muscle below the waist and slender, though defined, above.
They were idly talking, a conversation punctuated with laughter among friends who knew almost everything important about each other as they stood facing their open lockers. A member of the girls' JV swimming team wandered past them toward her classroom with an unstudied, sensual gait, and two of the boys leaned back toward the corridor, turning their heads to follow the retreating swimmer with their eyes. Li-cha slammed his locker door closed and gently slapped EZ on the back of the head.
"Why do you always do that?"
EZ answered, "You know it's not lust—just aesthetic appreciation. I can't help it." Then to reassure his boyfriend, EZ kissed him on the cheek and, remembering the Hidden Cameras show they had attended, ran his hand lovingly over the chest of Li-cha's "Music Is My Boyfriend" tight, pale-blue T-shirt.
Bob, who had also admired the girl, rolled his eyes and said, "Get a room, will ya?"
The buzzer sounded through the hallway speakers, and the boys slammed the remaining open locker doors shut as they dashed off to explain why they were tardy to class. When EZ took his seat in his Algebra II class, the teacher, without turning from the whiteboard, said, "Good afternoon, Mr. Thorne. So good of you to join us. See me after class, please." Then she returned to working through a complex quadratic equation. EZ knew how to solve the problem, and instead of paying close attention, turned his mind to the afternoon soccer practice. Being a small forward had advantages, but when he tangled with larger defenders, they often tackled him rather than the ball when they couldn't stop him. A penalty wasn't as expensive as a goal.
When the buzzer signaling the end of class sounded, EZ dutifully waited for the room to empty before approaching the bench. Ms. Georgiou, by then sitting at her desk, looked at EZ, who finally broke the silence. "Sorry about being late. I had to use the facilities."
"Ingenious, Mr. Thorne. I expected better of you. If you weren't an excellent student, I'd have you in detention. Don't let it happen again."
"Yes, ma'am."
EZ stood waiting until the teacher said, "Don't you have practice?"
* * * * *
In the locker room EZ tried not to be obvious in his appraisal of his teammates as they stripped and changed. Everyone knew he was gay/bi, and he didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable. If any of the other guys on the team didn't like his orientation, none of them were obvious about their aversion. That fact made the conflicts on the pitch fairly straightforward: battles for adolescent athletic dominance. EZ was among the first out of the locker room and onto the pitch, where he began to run laps around the infield. From the far side of the track, he watched as others walked from the gym and began the same ritual, finally ending with sprints.
Within twenty minutes EZ and the rest of the team finished the warm up and began drills. Most of the afternoon's drills involved dribbling the ball past defenders and shooting on goal. On the last drill, EZ passed all the defenders except Lucian. EZ wasn't surprised that Lucian was coming for him; the taller boy was a great defender, though too arrogant for EZ's taste. What did surprise EZ was the intense, fiery look in Lucian's dark eyes, almost as if the coming conflict was personal. Lucian came from EZ's left and tackled him, tangling their legs after kicking EZ on his right shin and dumping both of them in a heap on the pitch. The kick was poorly disguised as an effort to steal the ball. Pain shot from mid-shin down EZ's right leg into his ankle.
Lucian popped up with a tight smile on his face while EZ rolled onto his left side and held his right leg, bent at the knee, hands cupping his shin over what would soon be a deep bruise and a hematoma. Two other forwards ran over and knelt at EZ's side, trying to see how badly their fallen comrade was injured. Lucian watched the fallen boy and his attendants for a few moments and then announced, "You are too small for this game."
EZ heard the comment as the pain in his leg began to diminish slightly. He wanted to tell Lucian to go fuck himself, but finally answered, "I guess since you can't match me in skill, the only way you can win is by fouling me, you fucking idiot."
Lucian started to reach toward EZ, still on the pitch, but the coach's voice stopped him. "Lucian, get over here—now!"
"Remember the pain, Ezekiel," Lucian said as he turned to follow the coach's direction. EZ hadn't heard his given name in so long that it sounded strange coming from Lucian. No one called him by that name anymore. He told the other forwards gathered around him that he was okay and gingerly stood. Weight on his right leg caused the pain to flare, and he tried to walk it off. After he chewed Lucian out for a few minutes, the coach trotted over and asked EZ if he was all right.
"What is with that guy? You're not going to have anyone left on offense if he keeps that shit up."
"You both play hard; he gets carried away."
"That was deliberate; he wasn't carried away."
"EZ, don't be a pussy. He doesn't play you any harder than our opponents do."
For an instant, EZ reacted to the word as if it were some homophobic slur, but then relaxed because he knew the coach was supportive of gay kids at the school even if he wasn't exactly PC. "I'm going to go in and ice this down."
* * * * *
The cavernous locker room was empty as EZ hobbled in and went to the freezer to make an icepack. As he settled on a bench in the physio area and placed the towel-wrapped icepack on his shin, he fumed about the altercation. At least football season was over and he didn't have to put up with the comments of the Neanderthals on the football team. When he had first met Lucian, before he got to know him, he'd had a crush on him. Now, while he still admired the body, nothing of the original attraction remained.
EZ wished that the facility had recliners so he could elevate his leg while resting his back against something. Finally, he dragged a bench and placed it perpendicular to a wall. Leaning against the wall, he closed his eyes and, with his right leg atop the bench, let the ice work on the swelling.
EZ had drifted into a pleasant fantasy involving Li-cha performing enthusiastic and acrobatic erotic acts with him when a slight rumbling sound and a high-pitched, small voice interrupted his little internal porn drama, startling him. "You are the one?"
EZ's eyes shot open, and he placed his hands over the lump at his crotch. Beside the bench, he found a kid who looked three or maybe four years old. "The one? Who are you and where are your parents?"
The boy, dressed in long pants and a T-shirt, answered, "I am Verchiel." The boy pronounced his name Ver-chee-el with the "ch" in the name spoken as if he were clearing his throat, sort of a guttural "k" sound.
"How'd you get in here?"
The child looked at EZ as if he were stupid. "How does anyone get anywhere?" the boy asked looking toward a door.
"You're not supposed to be in here."
The child stood still and looked directly at EZ. "I am here for you."
The banging of the exterior door to the locker room distracted EZ, and his teammates began to stream in from practice. He looked quickly back to the boy but found no one where the child had been standing. The other members of the team were walking past EZ on their way to the showers. "Hey! There's some little kid in here. I was just talking to him."
After a couple of minutes, a towel-wrapped body walked over to EZ and said, "You get hit in the head? There's no kid anywhere in here."
EZ dumped the remaining ice from his pack into a sink and threw the towel into a hamper before limping off to shower and get changed. The rest of the afternoon was unremarkable. He met Li-cha outside the gym, and they waited only a few minutes until Dr. Thorne picked them up. In the back seat, EZ told Li-cha — most of his friends called him just Li — about his encounters with both Lucian on the pitch and with the child in the locker room.
"How can a guy with a body like that be such an asshole?"
"I never noticed his body." EZ almost made it through the statement before starting to laugh.
"Oh, sure. You're not dead, and you're not subtle about looking. Where do you think the kid went?"
"I don't know. He was strange, and he didn't seem to be lost. He had a weird name—Verchiel." EZ made the slight gagging sound for the "ch."
EZ's father who had been occasionally looking at his son and Li-cha reflected in the rearview mirror, warmed by their familiarity with one another, overheard the name. "That's an unusual name."
EZ asked his father, "You know it? What kind of name is it?"
Dr. Thorne hesitated a beat before answering, "Angelic."
"What?"
Dr. Thorne almost began his reply by mentioning Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, who had decided the hierarchy of heavenly creatures in the Fourth or Fifth Century, but instead simply stated, "Verchiel is the name of one of the choir of Powers in the Christian religion. Supposedly, they are a group of angels created to be absolutely loyal to God and are His warriors. They are the bearers of conscience and the keepers of history. I don't think it's a very popular name, but the name, Hershel, is derived from Verchial."
EZ and Li-cha looked at each other in surprise until Dr. Thorne added, "You know that there are no such things as angels?"
"Yeah, Dad. I think I get that."
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