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summer
ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, Ariel leaves her at school with the same green, torment look.
The periwinkle hoarfrost is gone in what for Eve feels forever.
He barely sleeps nowadays, and when he does, he usually wakes up screaming in the middle of unknown nightmares, with Eve's name or Michael's hanging randomly from his voice. Eve is there every night for him, but Ariel refuses accepting her help and sends her back to her room with harsher words. You're not supposed to see me like this, is what he says. But if Eve already loves him, what makes him possibly think that she won't accept every part of him?
Ariel's terrible appearance is noticed by others too, no matter the good effort he makes to fake daily smiles and pretend everything is perfect. The Nuns from school speak in whispers to each other every time Eve enters into a classroom or when she meets with Ariel in his car during the fall of afternoon. He's not the right one to take care of her, they surely are thinking. She deserves a better home.
Ariel is right. They are rotten too.
And she's tired of it. Tired of seeing Ariel's growing little and little broken every day; tired of the whispers that try to pull her apart from the man she adores so much. Eve is tired of reading newspapers and searching in articles to see if the Langdon boy is still out there provoking misfortunes where he stands; she's tired of her life dancing only around him as if he was mere sun kissed and she was destined to burn as a modern Icarus in his front.
She's tired of how rotten is the world, and even more tired of how she's supposed to save them all when she only cares about Ariel.
But even with all those feelings scratching her skin, Eve is a coward, and just as such, it takes her an entire week to find the enough courage to do something worthy.
It's all more about a series of coincidences, in fact; but even the biggest coward on Earth will follow them no matter how scared he was—though Eve is certainly even scarier of what will happen if she doesn't do it. A coward, as it has been said. And there's no little trace of bravery on admitting it.
It's Wednesday again when everything starts. Ariel's green eyes sink into darkness, and his hands don't stop trembling against the steering wheel the entire road to school. "I won't talk to anybody today" Eve mutters after noticing that Ariel won't give her the usual advice of take care of yourself. "I'll be good."
Ariel only nods. "I know you will, Eve."
He's leaving no longer after that. Sun plays a cruel game to her sight once she steeps in the door, sending a glance to Ariel's direction; rays are passing against the clouds, making the sunlight act as the sketch of a pair of wings in the back of Ariel's seat. Eve never forgets he was an angel, though Ariel seems to do it daily, avoiding every question that comes up to the topic.
