Disclaimer: Doesn’t belong to me :( Anna belongs to Emily and Kara and I borrowed her memory to juice up the story.

Distribution: Put it where ever the hell you want, just tell me where.

***

I can’t really say for sure that Toni was an angel. She had looked like a normal girl, acted like one, had even said a few swear words. She couldn’t possibly have been a child of god.

I was thinking when I had first seen her. I did that a lot. Thought, I mean. Well, I mean, of course everyone thinks. But letting your mind take you places, into movies, TV, books, without even moving? Not many people did that.

I was lying down in the park, under my favorite tree when I saw her. Well, to be more exact, heard her. I had my eyes closed and I felt someone standing over me, like a presence. Then she just said, “The world doesn’t move on its own.”

I had been confused. When I opened my eyes, I saw a girl my age looking down. She had shiny brown hair that reflected the sun and these strangely beautiful hazel eyes. She had a heart-shaped face and her body was a little plump. Not fat, just healthy looking.

“Huh?”

“I said, the world doesn’t move on its own.”

“What do you mean?” I found it hard to look away from the eyes. They were a warm brown color, with little flecks of forest green around the pupil. They were framed by these amazingly long lashes that looked somewhat Cleopatrian.

She kneeled down by me and looked at me in the face, as if trying to figure out if I was kidding or not. “What have you done today?”

“What?”

“What have you done today? Just tell me everything you’ve done.”

I shook my head, still finding it hard to wake up from my bout of hard thinking. “I woke up, got dressed, ate breakfast, went to the Crashdown for a bite, then came here.”

She shook her head, truly disgusted. “Pathetic. So far today, I have hitch-hiked from Las Crusas, volunteered at the soup kitchen, where I struck up a very nice conversation with a guy with no face and have been to every store in this god-for-saken town and managed to get out without spending a dime.”

I shook my head one more time and looked at this girl hard. “I’m sorry, but what does this have to do with me?”

The girl leaned in, until her nose was touching mine and stared at me with those strange eyes. “This has everything to do with you.”

She stood up very suddenly, almost knocking me from my sitting position. She held out a hand for me. I just stared at it.

“You’re supposed to take the hand so I can help you up.” She said it very slowly, as if talking to a invalid.

“Who *are* you?”

“The name’s Toni. With an ‘i.’”

For some reason, I took this strange girl’s hand and let her pull me to my feet easily.

“Follow me,” she commanded brusquely, walking quickly in the direction of the woods. I ran to catch up with her.

“Well, Toni with an ‘i,’ where are you taking me?”

She stopped and looked at me, exasperated. “Alex, don’t you ever just shut up and follow?”

She continued to walk brusquely away from me. “Wait! How do you know my name?!”

Toni didn’t answer the question, but bombarded me with her own. “You got a family?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me about ‘em.” Although she looked straight ahead and was slightly in front of me, she managed to sound interested.

“What do you want me to say?”

“Tell me about ‘em.” she repeated it again, more urgently this time.

“Well, I live with both my parents. My dad’s an accountant.”

She barked out a loud, somewhat abrupt laugh. “An accountant! Figures.”

“What does that mean?”

“What about your mom?”

“A writer.”

“Fiction?”

“Yeah.”

She nodded in approval. “Much better.”

They were in the forest now, and the pines were looming over me, like in one of those cartoons that are supposed to scare little kids. It was kind of cold, but Toni in a Metallica T-shirt and jeans didn’t seem to mind. I wondered how she kept her face and hair so shiny, but her clothes so dirty. I didn’t really think it was the time to ask.

“Why don’t you tell me about your sister?”

“How’d you know I had a sister?”

“She died, right?”

“Anna.”

“Anna, that’s right. Tell me about her.”

“She died of Leukemia when she was eight.”

“No, no, no. Don’t tell me about the death,” she looked exasperated with me again. “I know all about death. Tell me about her life.”

For some strange reason, I found myself doing just that. “She was only a year younger than me. We were more like twins. She loved music, and she would make me play the piano all the time. She had long, brown hair and brown eyes. She was really smart for a kid, and really sensitive. She reminded me a lot of my friend Liz.”

Half way through his speech she had stopped and started looking at him very seriously, with her head tilted slightly to the side. But at the mention of Liz’s name, she perked up again and started ahead once more. “Ah, Liz! Tell me about her.”

“Liz has been my friend since the fifth grade. Me and her and Maria were always inseparable. She’s got one of those really big hearts, and is on the valedictorian-path.”

“Maria. Of course, the blonde haired pixie. Tell me about Maria.”

“Maria is a roller coaster with no end,” I laughed.

“So tell me about the others.”

“What others?”

“Max. Michael. And of course, the girl you love so deeply, Isabel.”

Now was the first time that the thought of Nasedo had entered my mind. How did this girl who I knew nothing about except her first name and that she had beautiful eyes, know so much about me? I stopped.

“Who are you?”

“The name’s Toni. With an-”

“Yeah, yeah, I know with an ‘i.’ How do you know me? How do you know about my life? And Anna? Not even Maria and Liz know about Anna.”

She gave me a long look, as if trying to figure out how to answer the question. “Alex, I know you live in fear. I know how that feels. But now you need to let go. If I was the enemy that you fear so much, then that thought would have entered your mind long ago. Think with your heart for once, not your brain. It’ll tell you.”

I sat for a minute. “I can’t.”

“Of course you can.” She came to me and pushed me down to the ground, then flopped across from me. “Now shush. And just listen.”

So I did. I could hear my heart beat.

“It’s talking to you.”

Thump, thump, thump.

“Listen harder.”

Thump, thump, thump.

Then I knew. I wasn’t quite how I knew, but I did. I opened my eyes with Toni staring with those strange eyes back at me. I licked my lips and opened my mouth. “So, Toni with an ‘i,’ where are you taking me?”

She smiled a smile that reminded me vaguely of Maria. “Honestly? I have no idea. No trail.”

She hopped up and looked around. She stood for a minute, then looked back at if nodding confirmation. “Yep, we’re lost. But the only thing we can do is keep moving.”

She held out her hand to me for the second time that day and pulled me up. I just stared at her with a look of complete disbelief on my face, all faith in my heart gone. “We’re lost?!”

“Don’t worry, Whitman. We just keep moving in one direction. There has to be a stop to the woods somewhere.”

“Are you crazy? This is a big forest. It could take days if we go in the wrong direction.”

She shrugged. “So we’ll go in the right direction.”

She closed her eyes, stuck out a pointed finger and proceeded to spin quickly around. She did this for a few seconds, and stopped very suddenly, stumbling into my arms. “That way!” and she started off in the direction her finger was pointing. I stared after her in amazement. She turned around and looked exasperated. She came marching back and grabbed my hand and pulled me along.

We marched in silence for a while. I watched Toni the whole time. Her head was spinning around in almost impossible directions, trying to take in everything around her. I also noticed that animals seemed to have quite a liking for her as well. Every once in a while a squirrel would come out nowhere and watch her curiously or a bird would fly up and land in her hand, until she gave its breast a stroke, then it would fly off, chirping happily.

She broke the silence quite suddenly. “Ooh!”

She ran over to a large rock, and out from behind it pulled a large snake. I jumped back, frightened. Snakes have never exactly been my favorite animal. And this one wasn’t exactly a small snake. This thing was a damn monster.

“What a pretty boy,” Toni cooed to the beast.

“Are you insane?! Put that thing down! It’ll bite you! Get it away from me!” I screamed at her. Let’s just say that it wasn’t one of my proudest moments.

“Don’t be such a baby. It’s a harmless king snake. Aren’t you? Yes you are too.”

Her baby talking to a snake the size of King Kong was just a little too much for my stomach to take. Disgust mixed with fear is not a good combination. So I threw up. On me. All over me.

Toni didn’t help my pride at all. She was laughing her head off. I glared at her and she came at me with the monster.

“I said get that thing away from me!”

“Come on, Alex. How do you think you’re going to get over your fear without facing it?”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

“Just hold the fucking snake, Whitman.” She was at the brink of tears for laughing so hard.

Now here was the weird thing: I trusted her. I didn’t even know her and I trusted her. I held out one trembling hand and she set the thing on my arm. It automatically wrapped itself around it and slowly traveled up my arm until it wrapped itself around my neck. Gently.

I don’t know what I was expecting. Slime, mostly. And coldness. But the snake’s skin was kind of warm, and dry. Smooth, but dry. I looked at Toni, amazed. She just looked back at me with a smug smile on her face, like saying ‘I told you so.’

“Not so bad, is it?”

“No.”

She took the king snake off my neck and laid it on its rock. She patted its head and continued into the woods. I followed, like I had been for the past two miles.

We eventually made it out of the forest. We did go in the right direction. I still had no idea where we were. Toni did.

“The train tracks!” she smiled at me with Maria’s smile and sat down next to the railway. I sat next to her.

“What are we waiting for?”

“Duh. The train.”

“Oh my god, please say you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking.”

She looked at me, smiling, then back at the tracks. “What’sa matter? You never hopped a train before?”

I stared at her, speechless, and not for the first time that day. “No. And we can’t. Not while it’s moving.”

She sighed at my ignorance. She pointed to an already stopped and deserted train a few hundred yards away. “This is a stop site. That train doesn’t run anymore. But it only takes a few minutes for a train to stop and get going again. It’ll take us to Caprock. We can hitch-hike to Roswell from there.”

I just stared. I had then come to the conclusion that I had been my suspicion all along. This girl was insane.

“Do you know how dangerous that is?! You can die. Or break your ankles. Or arms. Or something.”

She sighed again and shook her head. She didn’t have an answer to my concerns, just stared down the tracks.

It didn’t take long for the train to come. The sound was deafening, but Toni didn’t seed to mind. She just hopped onto the platform and held out a hand for me. I hesitated. “Come on, Alex. The train won’t wait forever.”

So I grabbed her hand and jumped on to the train. When it started, it was a little scary. The train was incredibly loud and the platform that we were sitting on was more than a little dirty. But after a little bit, it was kind of okay. The wind was blowing through my hair wildly and Toni showed me how to lean out over the ladder so it felt like you were flying.

Toni was strangely quiet. She seemed to be taking in the scenery more than anything. I had to admit, it was pretty cool. I felt like one of those modern day hobos that I saw on MTV.

The train stopped gently and Toni hopped off, pulling me down with her. We were standing in front of a tiny building, with a yellow roof and blue windowsills. I didn’t really have time to check it out. Toni pulled me urgently away.

“We can’t stick around. They’ll catch us.”

I just nodded and followed her. We went around the building to a semi-busy road. Toni stuck out her thumb and I followed her lead, sticking out mine. We stood there like that for a while, when a black sedan stopped and the old guy in it offered us ride. He was an alien nut, on his way to Roswell. Said he wanted to see the crashsite, maybe find some remains. I tried not to laugh.

It was only about a 20-minute ride from Caprock to Roswell. I asked him to drop me off at the Crashdown. I couldn’t wait for the others to meet Toni. I barely noticed that she didn’t talk throughout the whole car ride, or that the old guy didn’t really seem to talk to her.

He dropped me off in front of the restaurant, and I got out and turned around to help out Toni. To give her a hand. She was gone.

“Where the hell did she go?!”

“Who you talking about?” The old guy was looking at me like I was crazy. Yeah right, like I was the one that was crazy.

“My friend.”

“Who?”

“My friend. She was sitting right next to me.”

“I don’t know what the hell you talking about. You go home to your parents. You look like you could need some rest. “ Then he sped off. In the trail, there was a piece of paper. I would have dismissed it, but for some reason I was drawn to pick it up. It had writing on it in blue pen. It said, ‘You have five angels. You don’t need me. Just shut up and follow.’

So I can’t say for sure if Toni was an angel. She looked like a regular girl, acted like one, even said a few swear words. So how could she possibly be a child of god? But she was right about one thing. I do have five angels. I don’t need another one.

Back to Area 51 (Section II)