Beyond the Broken Angel

CHAPTER ONE

— early days —

July 14th, 2007

Giselle, age 10

"MAMA, I MET a boy today," Giselle Saunders revealed at her Great Aunt Hester's dinner table. "A cute boy," she emphasized. "He looks like Troy!"

"Who's Troy?" Great Aunt Hester asked, her posh, British accent reminding Giselle of the Harry Potter movie she watched on the plane ride over. She directed this question towards Giselle's mother.

She did that a lot, Giselle had begun to realize. The old woman always asked the adults questions about the young girl, and never Giselle herself.

"Troy Bolton," Maxine Saunders clarified, "he's a boy in a movie that Giselle likes to watch." She smiled at her daughter. "Apparently my daughter is already boy crazy at the ripe age of ten."

"Yeah," George Saunders said with a shake of his head, "and apparently she wants to stress her father out."

"How am I stressing you out?" Giselle questioned her father.

"You'll understand when you have a daughter of your own," was all he said before diving into his roast beef.

"So who was this boy you met?" Maxine asked.

"He said his name was William, but to call him Will. And he's fifteen!" she said excitedly. "A high schooler! I've never met a high schooler! Now I can go home and tell everyone in my class that I got a high school friend on my trip to England. And that he looks like Troy Bolton. Well, kinda. His hair is darker and his eyes are green, but other than that, he looks just like him."

"Where did you meet this boy?" her father asked, his tone riddled with suspicion. "And what did you do when you were with him?"

"I met him in the woods next to his house. He came to check on me because I fell out of this big ol' tree I was climbing," she told her family. She kept out the part where she didn't remember falling, just waking up to a handsome boy shaking her and asking if she was okay.

She also made the decision to leave the strange insects and snails and the creepy birds out of her story as well.

"I asked him if he had seen High School Musical, which he says he hasn't ever heard of, and then he told me my accent was weird, so I told him his accent was weirder. He had to run off when his Mama called him, but he called her Mum instead of Mom." She remembered him telling her to wait for him so he could walk her safely back home, but she must've fallen asleep because all she remembered was waking up again and him never returning.

"So he was British?" Maxine inquired.

Giselle nodded. "Yes ma'am. He said I'm the second American he's met. Apparently his aunt is American too, but she's from Florida." She looked to her Dad. "Do you think she knows where your cousin went?"

The fork in Great Aunt Hester's hand clattered to her porcelain plate unceremoniously. "If you will excuse me, I will be retiring to my room now," she said as she lifted from her seat.

"Was it because I talked about your cousin?" she asked her father once Hester was out of earshot.

"My cousin Selene is her daughter, honey. No parent wants to be reminded of their child leaving them and never returning."

Giselle nodded, pressing her fork into her mashed potatoes repeatedly to create a lattice design. "Well, I won't do that to you."

"You better not," Maxine warned, "or I'd hunt you down and ground you forever."