Goldeline by Jimmy Cajoleas (i read books txt) 📕

like a warm coat, like sadness and pain might swallow me whole. It’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.

Gruff grabs my hand and the music starts and we get to dancing. My dress floats and whirls around me, and I spin so the hem never touches the ground. This is a bandit night at its best: the glow and the warmth of the camp in the dark woods, the light of the fire and us singing and dancing and hollering around it, the people songs and the nighttime songs and our laughter all mixing together into something new and hopeful, a kind of promise, or maybe a wish. An owl hushes us from the trees up where I can’t see any owl but I know it’s there watching me. I wonder what the owl thinks of us. I wonder what Momma would think of me, dancing and all dressed up, her own daughter a bandit?

I hope she wouldn’t be too mad at me. I hope she’d see me and smile.

Soon I’m laughing as hard as the rest of them. We dance and we twirl and I’ve never felt like this, never felt so pretty in my whole life. All the boys are out clapping and dancing and singing, and me and Gruff are the stars. Everyone is watching us spin around the campfire, us ghosts and legends, the ones all the Townies are so scared of. It feels wonderful to be a ghost, to be as pretty as Momma, as white-haired, lovely and dancing before a fire. It’s a good time, when there aren’t many. I bet this is what Moon Haven is like all the time, how it is in my dreams. It’s all I want for forever. But I can’t stay. I got to get back to Tommy. What if he’s scared? He’s just a kid. He doesn’t know anything. And I left him out there in the woods all alone.

I tell Gruff I got to pee and sneak off to the tree line. Dunce is dozing by his tent with a whole bowlful of beans, and I take it without him even noticing. Keeping a close eye out for one-eyed Pugh, who hates me, who could ruin everything, I sneak my way out of the camp and run as fast as I can all the way back to the tree where I left Tommy.

When I get there, Tommy’s curled up like a pup, whimpering.

“I couldn’t scrounge up much,” I say, “but I got you some real nice beans.”

“I thought you left me,” he says. “I thought you weren’t coming back tonight. I thought I was going to get all eat up by wolves.”

“There aren’t any wolves here, stupid,” I say. “Maybe some coyotes, but they won’t do anything except ruffle you up a bit. Nope, worst you got to worry about eating you up is mosquitoes.”

“You don’t talk much like an angel,” he says.

“Well how the heck are angels supposed to talk?” I ask.

“I don’t know. Not like that.”

“You ever met an angel before?”

“Nope.”

“Then shut up about it. I’m an angel and I say whatever I want,” I say. “Anyway, are you going to eat these beans or what?”

I hand him the bowl and he sniffs it.

“Smells like something died in there.”

“That’s a heck of a thing to say, Tommy. You know this grub here is a gift from God, right? Like the Book says, ‘If you refuse the gifts of the Lord, you refuse the Lord as well.’ You refusing the Lord, Tommy?”

“No, ma’am,” he says, and he gets to eating.

“That’s what I thought,” I say, but I’m smiling. Ma’am!

“Can I ask you a question?” he says.

“Shoot.”

“Why are you wearing my momma’s dress? It was her favorite thing, and Aunt Barbara wanted to keep it.”

I forgot about the dress. I look down and it’s all dirty and torn from the path. It hardly even looks like the same pretty thing I had earlier.

“God told me to wear it.”

“Why’d he do that?”

“I don’t know. He’s God. He can say whatever He wants and you just got to do it anyway.”

“I guess.”

Tommy starts to crying again. I can’t blame him. I cried for a whole year after my momma died. I still do sometimes, when I know Gruff isn’t watching me and there’s no one around.

“Hold up a minute,” I say. “I’ll be right back.”

“Don’t leave me,” he says.

“Be brave for a little bit, okay?”

See, right by this spot there’s a bunch of blackberry bushes. Sometimes I come up and sit in the tree and read my book and eat fistfuls of blackberries all day. I pick some and run them back to Tommy. He takes one and eats it and smiles a little bit.

“Good, huh?”

“I was scared you were going to leave me again.”

“I’m not going to leave you, all right? I’m your angel. I’m here to protect you. For now, anyways.”

“I thought angels stuck with the same person forever,” he said.

“Think we’ve established you know squat about angels,” I say.

A lightning bug dangles its glow over my face and hushes. I cup it softly in my hands.

“Hey, Tommy, watch this.”

I pray a silent prayer to it: please don’t hate me for this, lightning bug, I just got to borrow your light. I squish it in my palms and bury my face in the goo. When I look up Tommy screams.

“You’re glowing!”

“I know! Watch!” I catch another one and smear its light over Tommy’s cheeks. He rubs them and a snatch of glow sticks to his finger. Then he darts off into the dark.

“Tommy? Wait, this isn’t funny. Where’d you go?”

I chase after him but I can’t see him. He jumps out from behind a tree. He doesn’t scare me but I fake a yell.

“Ha! I gotcha.”

I chase him and he chases me and pretty soon we’re cackling and screaming, our faces glowing like stars. Tommy trips over a tree limb and I tackle him and we both fall down laughing, which pretty quick turns