Hannah Holborn

Gabriel stands at the side of the sofa,

clutching a pair of silver angel wings. He wills Celine to wake up. Her damp hair plastered to her forehead is darker than the dry tips, making her look like a scary stranger. Air rips in and out of her open mouth. Gabriel keeps the wings between them, and they crumple as he leans down to place his ear against her chest.

The summer before, his dad caught one of the rabbits nibbling grass on the hospital lawn. For one whole hour, he let Gabe hold it on his lap, wrapped in a stolen hospital towel that it pooped all over. When the nurse came to warn them visitation hours were over, his dad unwrapped the rabbit and held the squirming creature against the side of Gabriel’s head. “Hear how fast that fucker’s beating?” he said. Gabriel listened to the animal’s racing heart even though its claws were raking his cheek.

“That’s why bunnies, addicts, and schizophrenics croak young,” his father said. “Fear fucks with our hearts.”

Elvis snorts in the bedroom. Celine’s new boyfriend has black sideburns and wears shirts with rhinestones and sparkly fringes. He sounds okay when he sings songs about hound dogs and people loving him tender, but he isn’t a gentle giant like Celine promised. Already he’s put holes in the walls, and bruises on their bodies.

The burl clock above the kitchen door says five thirty-five. He is supposed to be in his classroom with the other kids by ten to six. He’s the angel in the nativity scene who gets to say, “I bring you glad tidings of great joy.” Gabriel doesn’t usually make it to after school events, but this time Miss Granger made him promise he would come. She said the class can’t put on a nativity scene without the head angel and he wants to believe her.

He sets the wings on the table at the opposite end from Celine’s used needle and tourniquet. Then he jostles her shoulder. Her arm slips off her stomach to hang limp down the side of the sofa. “It’s time to go,” he says.

She chokes on phlegm, but doesn’t wake.

Gabriel walks to the living room window. He presses his palm flat against the glass. Their street doesn’t have lamps so he can only see the snow when the wind slams it against the window, making the glass shudder. His boots are where he left them after school, upside-down on the radiator. The chunks of ice have melted, but the felt liners are still wet. He pulls them on, and feels the warm water soak into his dry socks. He puts on his coat next, and cinches up the drawstring of the hood. It hardly ever snows in Fenny, so Celine refuses to buy him gloves or a hat.

His boots leave a trail of footprints on the carpet as he crosses to the apartment’s only bedroom where Elvis is sprawled on Gabriel’s small bed. Celine’s boyfriend has a pink Cadillac parked in the underground garage. “You sleeping?” Gabriel asks.

The giant opens one eye. “Oh, man. Why d’ya wake me up? I was dreaming about a room full of lesbian strippers.”

“I have to go to school.”

Elvis rolls onto his stomach. “So go.”

“It’s snowing.”

“Take a snow day.”

When Gabriel returns to the living room, Celine hasn’t moved, but her breathing is faster. He can’t wait for the drugs to wear off, so he finds a garbage bag under the kitchen sink. As he fits the wings into the bag, one of the silver pipe cleaners his mother glued to an edge comes loose.