Luce … Lucifer … any relation?
Her handwriting was dark and angry and frenetic. Luce could see her high cheekbones rise up in a sneer. In a moment of hungry weakness, Luce started furiously scribbling an answer on the back of Molly’s note. That she had been named for Lucinda Williams, the greatest living female singer-songwriter whose almost-rained-out concert was the site of her parents’ first encounter. That after her mom slipped on a plastic cup, tumbled down a mudslide, and landed in her father’s arms, she hadn’t left those arms for twenty years. That her name stood for something romantic and what did muckle-mouthed Molly have to show for herself? And anyway, that if there was anyone in this entire school who came close to resembling Satan, it wasn’t the receiver of the note, it was the sender.
Her eyes drilled into the back of Molly’s newly scarlet-dyed pixie cut. Luce was ready to pelt her with the folded-up piece of paper and take her chances with Molly’s temper when Miss Sophia pulled her attention to the light box.
She had both hands raised over her head, palms up and cupping the air. As she lowered them, the shadows of her fingers on the wall looked miraculously like flailing arms and legs, like someone jumping off a bridge or out of a building. The sight was so bizarre, so dark and yet so well rendered, it unnerved Luce. She couldn’t turn away.
“For nine days and nine nights,” Miss Sophia said, “Satan and his angels fell, further and further from Heaven.”
Her words jogged something in Luce’s memory. She looked two rows over at Daniel, who met her eyes for half a second before burying his face in his notebook. But that second’s glance had been enough, and all at once it came back to her: the dream she’d had the night before.
It had been a revisionist history of her and Daniel at the lake. But in the dream, when Daniel said goodbye and dove back into the water, Luce had the courage to go after him. The water was warm, so comfortable that she hadn’t even felt wet, and schools of violet fish swarmed all around her. She was swimming as fast as she could, and at first she thought the fish were helping push her toward Daniel and the shore. But soon the masses of fish began to darken and cloud her vision, and she couldn’t see him anymore. The fish became shadowy and vicious-looking, and drew closer and closer till she couldn’t see anything, and she’d felt herself sinking, slipping away, down into the silty depths of the lake. It wasn’t a question of not being able to breathe, it was a question of never being able to rise back up. It was a question of losing Daniel forever.
Then, from below, Daniel had appeared, his arms spread out like sails. They scattered the shadow fish and enveloped Luce, and together the two of them soared back to the surface. They broke through the water, higher, higher, passing the rock and the magnolia tree where they’d left their shoes. A second later, they were so high Luce couldn’t even see the ground.
“And they landed,” Miss Sophia said, resting her hands on the podium, “in the blazing pits of Hell.”
Luce closed her eyes and exhaled. It had only been a dream. Unfortunately, this was her reality.
She sighed and rested her chin on her hands, remembering her forgotten response to Molly’s note. It was folded in her hands. It seemed stupid now and rash. Better not to answer, for Molly not to know she’d even affected Luce.
A paper airplane came to rest on her left forearm. She looked to the far left corner of the class, where Arriane sat holding an exaggerated winking pose.
I take it you’re not daydreaming about Satan. Where’d you and DG scurry off to Saturday afternoon?
Luce hadn’t had a chance to talk to Arriane alone all day. But how would Arriane have known that Luce went off with Daniel? While Miss Sophia busied herself with a shadow-puppet-focused representation of the nine circles of Hell, Luce watched Arriane sail another perfectly aimed plane at her desk.
So did Molly.
She reached up just in time to snag the plane between her slick black-painted fingernails, but Luce was not going to let her win this one. She snatched the plane back from Molly’s grip, ripping its wing loudly down the middle. Luce had exactly enough time to pocket the torn note before Miss Sophia whipped around.
“Lucinda and Molly,” she said, pursing her lips and steadying her hands on the podium. “I would hope whatever you two feel the need to discuss in a disrespectful passing of notes could be said before the entire class.”
Luce’s mind raced. If she didn’t come up with something fast, Molly would, and there was no telling how embarrassing that could be.
“M-Molly was just saying,” Luce stammered, “that she disagrees with your view of how Hell is broken down. She has her own ideas.”
“Well, Molly, if you have an alternate schema of the underworld, I’d certainly like to hear of it.”
“What the hell,” Molly muttered under her breath. She cleared her throat and stood up. “Well, you’ve described Lucifer’s mouth as the lowest place in the inferno, which is why all the traitors end up there. But for me,” she said, like she’d rehearsed the lines, “I think the most tortured place in Hell”—she took a long, sweeping look back at Luce—“should be reserved not for traitors, but for cowards. The weakest, most spineless losers. Because it seems to me that traitors? At least they made a choice. But cowards? They just run around biting their fingernails, totally afraid to do anything. Which is totally worse.” She coughed out, “Lucinda!” and cleared her throat. “But that’s just my opinion.” She sat down.
“Thank you, Molly,” Miss Sophia said carefully, “I’m sure we all feel very enlightened.”
Luce didn’t. She had stopped listening in the middle of Molly’s rant, when she felt an eerie, sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.
The shadows. She sensed them before she saw them, bubbling up like tar from the ground. A tentacle of darkness curled around her wrist, and Luce looked down in terror. It was trying to weasel its way into her pocket. It was going for Arriane’s paper plane. She hadn’t even read it yet! She stuffed her fist deep into her pocket and used two fingers and all her willpower to pinch the shadow out as hard as she could.
An amazing thing happened: The shadow recoiled, rearing back like an injured dog. It was the first time Luce had ever been able to do that.
Across the room, she met Arriane’s eye. Arriane’s head was cocked to the side and her mouth was hanging open.
The note—she must still be waiting for Luce to read the note.
Miss Sophia flicked off the light box. “I think my arthritis has had enough Hell for one night.” She chuckled, encouraging the brain-numbed students to chuckle with her. “If you’ll all reread the seven critical essays I’ve assigned on Paradise Lost, I think you’ll be more than prepared for tomorrow’s exam.”
As the other students rushed to pack up their bags and peel out of the room, Luce unfolded Arriane’s note:
Tell me he didn’t give you that lame “I’ve been burned before” bit.
Ouch. She definitely needed to talk to Arriane and find out exactly what she knew about Daniel. But first …
He was standing before her. His silver belt buckle shone at eye level. She took a deep breath and looked up at his face.