what the light revealed - chapter 13

this chapter hurts my heart lol

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

THIRTEEN

The next day, I told my parents that I wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t go to school. 

In reality, I did feel a bit under the weather, but not nearly enough to miss school. I just didn’t have it in me to have a class with Chandler yet after what had happened. He’d sent me multiple texts, all asking if I was okay, but I ignored them all. I figured he’d be safer from consequence if we didn’t discuss it ever again. I’d only ever missed two days of school in my life—this being the second. Eme and my father were quite suspicious of it.

“Dad told me to give you this,” said Emediong. She entered my room suddenly, still dressed in her school uniform. She went to my nightstand and set down a large bowl of pepper soup and rice. I laughed to myself. This was my dad’s classic passive-aggressive way of showing that he cared. Step 1: Invalidate the problem, Step 2: Treat the problem anyway. Barring the psychology lesson, I was happy to have food. 

“Are you really sick, Ida? You never get sick,” Eme asked with crossed arms. 

“Am I not allowed to get sick just because it's rare?” I retorted, beginning to eat.

She narrowed her eyes at me, and for a moment I had to take notice of how alike we looked. We had our mother’s cat-like eyes and button nose, and our father’s full lips and dimples. Even our skin was the same shade of mahogany. “I didn’t say that… It's just weird. I thought you must’ve been doing pretty bad, that’s all,” she mumbled.

“Aw, you worried about me? Thanks, sis.” I grinned while chewing.

“Gross,” she scoffed. “Who’s that?” I looked where she was pointing in horror before I controlled my expression. She’d spotted my drawing of Tatsuya, the one I’d done for homework. I wanted to slap myself for leaving the sketchbook open. 

“Just a drawing, it's for a class.” 

I swallowed as she held it in her hands, looking at it closer. “It's so realistic—even the eyes— is this someone you know?”

Frustratingly, Emediong had the intuition of a wise elder. Her name meant ‘blessed’, so it only made sense to add that to the list of things she was already good at. I could almost see her mind churning with theories. I laughed obnoxiously loud, hoping to get her off my tail. “No way, why would you say that?” 

She set the drawing down on my desk again and faced me with a clever expression. “You’re a bad liar. My guess is that this guy is your crush and you’re avoiding school because he rejected you.” 

Hearing her say the first part was a given, knowing her. The second part made me choke on my food. She panicked and came over to pat my back until I stopped coughing. “So am I right?” She continued, raising her brows in expectation. Lord… can I catch a break from anywhere?

“No. Get out. Thanks for the food.” I pointed to the door. 

“I know which way the door is,” She sneered as she walked out, shutting it behind her. 

Note to self: Never get sick again.

That day, Alicia blew up my phone with texts and calls, worried about me as a good friend should be, but I found everything an annoyance. Because the more she worried about me, the more I had to lie to her. The only person I could truly talk to was Tatsuya, and he was still at HQ, filing my paperwork and whatever else needed to be settled. 

His story came to mind again and I wanted to weep. Orphaned at ten, and became a demon hunter the same year, driven only by revenge. He never had a chance to be a kid. At the very least, as a child, I had family and Ali around me. He had no one. That had to be why he clung so closely to Beacons, the one group of people he could finally call his own. 

And even then, we were being exterminated, too.

I sat with that thought for a while. Then came another—Why aren’t any demons targeting me right now? I was laid in bed, vulnerable as a fresh spring chicken, and yet my bracelet didn’t light up, nor did my throat prickle in alarm. I couldn’t understand how they planned their attacks. Both times so far were when Tatsuya happened to be with me. Was it because they were trying to take us out at the same time? Or were they just not very bright? Either way, I was thankful that there seemed to be a time when it was safe for me to rest. 

Pondering this, I allowed myself to drift into a nap.

☀

My mother shook me gently, calling for me to wake. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and looked at her. She became the most attentive person in the world when I was sick. She’d make bitter home remedies, anoint my head with oil, and attempt to call down every angel in existence through fervent prayer. As a child, I found it annoying that she only showed so much care when she knew something was wrong. Now, I watched the worry in her eyes as she took my temperature, and imagined how much more stressed she would be when she’d find out all that I was going through. The clock’s hands signaled to 4:00 pm, and I realized that I didn’t nap, I had slept all day. 

“99.5 degrees. What did you do yesterday?” She put a cold hand to my forehead.

“Went to school… and um, work.” I rolled to my side, not wanting to lie to her face. 

There were no news reports, no camera footage, no phone calls, nothing about the demon attack at Humphries High the day before. I figured that HQ would have the power to cover everything up, but it was like nothing had even happened, and that scared me as much as it brought me comfort. I ran my hands over my arms, still in disbelief that they were healed and not even a scar was left. The one variable was Chandler, he saw everything. That couldn’t be done away with too, could it? The thought gave me chills.

Grace sighed. “You do have a fever, but it's very mild. You even went to school with a stomach virus one time. Are you okay?”

Tatsuya was the last person to ask me that. I wasn’t okay then, and I surely wasn’t okay now. The hard questions I had for her burned in my chest, wanting to jump out of my mouth; and I found that somewhere within the past 24 hours, I’d lost the ability to hold them down any longer. If I could survive a demon attack, I could at least know why I had to live this way. 

It was time. 

“Mom… there’s something I’ve wanted to talk to you about.”

She scooted closer to me on the bed. “Okay, what is it?”

I gathered up the bravery to face her again, releasing a breath from the pit of my stomach. “When I was born, did you notice any strange occurrences?”

She scoffed as if my question was nonsense, but she also averted my gaze. “What would be strange about you being born? You’re no different from any other child.”

“But… I am, mom. You know that.” I pleaded to her with my eyes alone. The charade fell from her face, and reality set in the wrinkles around her dark brown eyes. She released a deep breath of her own and asked, “Why now? 

I shook my head indignantly. “It's not about that, I want to know the truth. Where did my ability come from… and…” my voice trailed off, I didn’t want to give too much away. She held my hand. Probably for her as much as it was for me. Whatever she was about to say would be painful, but I expected it to be. 

“Early in my pregnancy with you, I started to have awful nightmares. Night after night it was the same dream. Sleep paralysis demons would appear in my room and hold me down, warning me to… to get rid of you, or else.”

My heart began to throb in my chest.

She met my eyes with fire. “Of course, I didn’t want to. You were my first child. We had planned for you. But the dreams scared the daylights out of me, and when I told your father about them he… he worried. When I’d scream in the night it woke him up, and after months of this, he wanted to put a stop to it. He thought we were cursed and advised that maybe for our sanity, we’d have to do what they asked.”

 Cursed.

So the target wasn’t placed on me as a baby, it was placed on me from conception. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was why my father never seemed as involved with me as he did with my sister. The truth was, I was never meant to be born. They went through hell to bring me to this world, and I wasn’t even a good student. It all made sense. My chest felt like it was stuffed with tissues, and I had to focus on my breathing. I wanted to say something but didn’t have any words.

She continued despite my pained silence, determined to get everything out. “I prayed for a plan, and there I realized that if I wanted to bring you into this world, I had to outsmart the enemy. I scheduled an appointment for an abortion with my cousin who worked at the clinic. When I got there, I told her of the situation, and she helped me fake it. I was able to get papers that showed it was done.”

Tatsuya was right, they did think I was dead all these years. I couldn’t believe my ears. My mother was always intelligent and quick-witted, but to be able to outsmart the Underworld made me see her in a completely different light. 

 “When the demons came to torment me that night, I hid my growing stomach and showed them the documents, and they never bothered me again. To be extra safe, I got a doula and midwife, and had you at home instead of at a hospital, so that you didn’t have any government records. I waited until you started Pre-K to register you for anything. That’s one of the reasons why I never even let you leave the house growing up. I wanted them to think you didn’t exist, or that you were—”

“Adopted.” 

She nodded, caressing my hand with her thumb. “I know this is very hard to hear, but you’re right. You should hear it, and it could even keep you safe.” I scoffed. My mother’s effort was commendable, but I now knew that nothing could’ve kept me safe forever. A curse is a curse.

“When I first saw you using your abilities, you were about seven. Do you remember?”

I nodded. My dad had hurt his back at work one day and kept grabbing at it. When I saw him in so much pain, I went up to him and tried to massage it myself, and then the Light covered my hand and healed him. He spun around, and when he saw me with a glowing hand he yelped in fear. My mother yelped, too. I looked at her now, remembering how their reactions made me feel like a monster. That day was the same day I decided I’d never use it again.

 She pursed her lips. “Your ability is beautiful, but the evil forces that wanted you dead are powerful. If I didn’t fake those papers...” She shivered. 

She caressed my face, and I wanted to move away from her touch, but I knew that if I did, she would know something had happened. My aversion would seem unjustified, and would probably break her heart. To her, this was a painful retelling. To me, this was a secret that should’ve never been kept from me—and if I’d never asked, she would’ve never told me. 

“So now that you know, please continue to heed my advice. You never know what could happen if you heal the wrong person. Hide it.”

I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Overwhelmed wasn’t enough to describe how I felt. More than anything, I wanted her to leave. I needed to be alone.

“My head hurts, mom, I’d like to rest.” 

She nodded, cupping my cheek. Her sudden affection was only making it worse. We barely ever hugged or said ‘I love yous’ for all these years, yet it was now that I knew the truth, that she showed that she could do it, she just didn’t. 

In this house, my ability was still taboo, and everything I was had to be beaten down even now that I knew the truth. I didn’t know what to do. It felt wrong to blame her for anything, but I still so desperately wanted to point a finger. One could say it was all the Underworld’s fault, but they owed me nothing—I had no emotional connection to them. They could kill me without remorse, but what about those who killed me with their silence? Those who expected me to do the exact same things as my sister, knowing that I had a spiritual guillotine above my head? Those who taught me to hide rather than fight back? 

“I love you,” she said, stabbing me one last time. I kept quiet, terrified of whatever my heart and soul would say to such a thing. She finished with that, leaving me to stare at the wall.

☀

At work that evening, I reveled in getting some time away from home. Before she left, Ms. Sheila had asked me why I called off work the day prior, to which I mumbled something about school. Lindsay, who was older than me and in college, chided me about not giving her a heads-up. Apparently, she had to stack a display of tissue rolls by herself. How awful to have to stack things with no help. If only I could relate…

Now alone, I took control of the radio to play some lo-fi music for studying. Regardless of whether or not I’d be alive for it, the history exam was still impending. I played my recording of Chandler’s lecture, but could barely get two minutes into listening to his voice before the memories overcame me like a flood. How could I ever face him again? At best he’d act indifferent, at worst he’d worry about me and ask me how I was holding up, and if one more person asked me that question I’d lose my mind. 

I paused the recording and let my head fall back, staring at the mildewed ceiling. Everyone on earth knows life isn’t fair, but being born into a world where I wasn’t allowed to exist was a whole new level of suffocating. I had thought these thoughts a thousand times since the day of the first attack, but they still wouldn’t stop hurting. Everything I thought I would experience in my life with ease, now had to have an asterisk by it—just in case. Maybe I’d graduate, maybe I’d get to travel the world, maybe I’d get married… This sort of life forces a person to be bitter, whether they want to be or not.

I covered my face with my hands and leaned on the counter, and then the door chimed. 

I moved my index finger to see who’d walked in, but when my vision focused, I stood up straight, eyes wide. It was a woman, no older than her late 20s. She had a warm, tawny complexion and dark, round eyes that focused on me. She wore the demon hunter cloak and had a sword sheathed on her back. She wasn’t the same woman I saw the day prior, but she also wore a pin that said Head Officer. I swallowed, wondering what someone like her was here to see me about. 

“Idara Essien?” She inquired.

“Yes?” I nodded, shoving away my self-pity and replacing it with feigned bravery. I was getting better at that. She put her right hand over her chest and bowed to me. She was so… professional.

“I am Anjali Kumar, head officer, Agent #2475. You’ve been requested at HQ.” Her expression was as benign as could be, this was routine for her.

“Requested? I’m kinda tied up at the moment,” I stuttered, gesturing to the store we were in.

“We’ll take care of that, pack your things and follow me.” Without another word, she marched outside. I shrugged and did as she said, it’s not like I was in any state for working or studying anyway. I wasn’t sure when I would be again. 

Outside, she stuck to the shadows and stopped in front of the storage room door. “Agent 0779 requested your presence at the training grounds. Do you know who that is?”

“Yeah, it’s Tatsu,” I replied. Upon saying his name I realized that I missed him, even though I’d seen him a day prior. Maybe it was all the stress of the day, but I wanted to see him so badly I could’ve cried. I needed to talk to someone that understood. 

A subtle expression of shock finally settled in her eyes. “Tatsu? You have a nickname for a Commander?

“He’s a Commander?” I almost yelled. My eyes threatened to pop out of my head. I guess it made sense since he’d been on the job for eight years but… a Commander? Didn’t that mean he had authority? Status? People looking up to him? 

She sighed and pulled out her finder, placing her finger on the teleportation button. “When you get there, you’ll be in the lobby. Take the fifth elevator on your right to the third floor to get to the training grounds, then turn left at the fork and go to platform 7.” 

“Fifth… elevator?” 

But it was too late. In a moment, we were both enveloped in white, and the scenery of the Shell station was gone with a flash.