Pandora knocked on the think oak bathroom door and yelled, “Angel? Are you almost done in there? C’mon, I need to take a shower.” It had been a little over a week since the girl had joined the school, and as icy as she had been, the students had taken to her, and her to them. The door slowly opened and the girl stepped out with a towel wrapped around her body, and another one around her hair.
“It’s all yours. Oh, wait,” she said and then turned around to grab her metallic blue brush. Lawson lay draped across her bed with a book open. The Vampire Lestat. “I love that book!” Angel squealed. “It’s a classic, a true classic. Where did you find it?”
Lawson sat up and rested the book on her nightstand. “I found it in the library. You should check it out, Ms. Cassidy has a really good collection,” she said, and then frowned. “When did you read it? Living in another dimension?” she trailed off.
“Tankorum-Orn-Sumpta brought me books from Earth, and kept me stimulated with outside entertainment. Music, newspapers. Stuff like that. It was one of my requests. It was probably one of the stupidest things he ever did, just made me want to see Earth more.”
“Oh.”
Pandora came up behind Angel and rested her hand on her shoulder.
"Angel?” she asked.
“Yeah? Is there something on my face?”
“Uh, no. Is that a tattoo?”
Angel was taken by her question, and she looked down suddenly to discover that her towel had slipped a little, revealing the mark on the upper part of her right breast. She ran her slender fingers over the black crescent moon shape, and looked her friend in the eye. “Yes.”
“Really?” Lawson chimed in. She stood next to Pandora to look at it.
Angel mentally cursed herself for being so careless. “It’s really not that big of a deal, guys,” she said and turned around so she could adjust the towel properly.
Pandora, being nosy as ever said, “No, but we’re bored. So how’d you get it?”
“Where are my cigarettes?”
“You better not let Ms. Ferguson catch you doing that shit in the house, you know she doesn’t like anyone doing it in here, much less outside,” Lawson said.
“I know.”
“Sooooo, how’d you get it?” Pandora repeated nosily.
Angel was sifting through her thing in her dresser. “Damnit! Where are my gotdamn cigarettes!?” she said frustrated.
“Do you not want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“You do or you don’t?”
“I don’t, Pandora.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re forgiven.”
“Yay!”
Angel hesitated for a moment, and then said, “I thought you were in dire need of a shower.”
“Do I smell?”
“No. Not now, anyway.”
Lawson walked back over to the bed and laid down again as Pandora playfully scowled at Angel who just smiled. Suddenly, I pack of Marlboros flew through the air and hit the toweled girl in the back of the head. “Hey!” she squealed as she bent down to pick them up.
“They were on the floor. Guess what?”
“Huh?”
“Smoking kills.”
“Oh my God! Are you kidding?!”
“Well, don’t come crying to me when you have emmmmmmphhhhhyseeeeeeeema,” she said, drawing out the sounds.
Angel put a cigarette to her mouth, lit it, and inhaled. “Not with my metabolism, girl.” She opened her dresser drawers and started to get dressed.
“Oh, the whole perfect thing, right?” Pandora asked from across the room.
“You got it. You’re so smart,” she said, as she slipped on a bra.
“I know.”
“Modest much?” Angel asked. But she didn’t hear the replies. She looked up into the mirror, and noticed the tattoo. A sober look spread across her pretty features. The tattoo was like a brand, a symbol that she belonged to the Crimson Dawn dimension. It was almost a source of her dark powers, which had long since lain dormant inside of her. She’d renounced everything that had to do with the Crimson Dawn. But it wasn’t like she could travel through shadows, like her mother. Angel’s abilities were much more sinister.
“Earth to Angel? Hello, girl. Stop zoning and get dressed,” Lawson said, her voice lightly tainted with an African accent. She’d lived a little over two years in Africa, at her mother’s request, and had never dropped the syntax. “We have class in five minutes.”