I stretched as I woke, laying confortably in the warm early spring sunlight streaming through my window. For the first time in months I woke up smiling, and thought of the wonderful dream I'd had last night. I dreamed I had a guardian angel, and God, was he gorgeous! I couldn't wait to tell Marissa and Angel about it. They would absolutely die when they heard about my dream sent straight from heaven. I rolled out of bed, smiling at my own fancies. "Good dream?" asked a voice to my right. I looked and there was the guardian angel of my dreams, sitting in my desk chair in front of the computer and smiling that lopsided smile at me. "Oh my God. . . ." I trailed off, sure I was still dreaming. I pinched myself hard, and he laughed at me. "Oh, I assure you I'm quite real. I've been here since last night. Don't you remember? I dried your tears. it was kind of rude to faint on me." He laughed richly at the confused look on my face. He said, "Speaking of God, that's who sent me. Someone up there thinks you're really special." He came forward and took my hands. Lord, he looke even more handsome than he did last night, when I thought I was dreaming! He looked down at me and asked, "You don't have school today, do you?" My vocal cords were still frozen, so all I could do was shake my head. "Good," he said, "because you are getting out of this house today and you're going to spend the day with me." I could only stare at him in dumb incomprehension. He gave me a gentle shove towards the closet and told me to put some clothes on. His grin was positively wicked when he told me he'd try really hard not to peek while I changed. That finally broke the spell. I laughed and said, "From what you told me last night, you could just make yourself invisible and I wouldn't know if you were watching me change or not!"
"Yeah, but see, you have to trust me. After all, I'm your guardian angel. I have to be a little bit honorable and chivalrous or I wouldn't be here."
"True. I hope God wouldn't send a pervert to take advantage of, I mean, take care of, a poor, innocent girl like me."
He assumed mock surprise, and indignatly informed me, "I am not a pervert. At least, most of the time."
This cracked both of us up, and make my decision for me. I told him to leave and admonished him about no peeking. He made a face, and surrendered and vanished through the door. I began to get dressed and wondered what had happened to my mind. I must be crazy, to believe I was seeing a guy, albeit a gorgeous guy, as my guardian angel. Then all of a sudden I didn't care. I was more happy than I had been in months, so I decided my little fantasy couldn't hurt. Shrugging, I went and sat down at my vanity, and for the first time in weeks, began putting on makeup and fixing my hair.

I was so glad to be able to make her laugh today. From what I gathered, this morning was the first time in a long time that she had not been down just from getting out of bed. After she dressed, she went down to breakfast with her parents. They were more than a little surprised when they saw her good humor. When they commented on it, she just smiled at me and told them she'd had an exceptionally good dream. After she finished, she told her parents she was going out for a while, and would be back later. She grabbed a light coat out of the closet under the stairs and called goodbye to her parents. I led her out to a park, where we sat under the warm spring sunshine and talked.
I told her about my past, and the weird turn of events that led to my being her guardian angel. She started to cry when I told her how I died. She only stopped when I told her I had felt nothing. I decided I wasn't ever going to tell her about my trip back to Earth. We lay back to back, wathing the clouds drift by. It was then that I decided to ak her why she had taken her life.
"Well, it's a long story." she said quietly. "I really don't feel like talking about it."
"Mercedes, I can't help you if you won't open up to me," I said, propping myself up on an elbow so I could look at her. I watched her as she opened her mouth to say something, closed it, then began to speak.
"When I was younger, I was fat. Huge, even. The kids in school always used to make fun of me, you know how cruel children can be. When I started high school, I put myself on a strict diet, and I lost all the weight. But nothing had changed. Even though I looked better than I ever had, people still saw me as the little fat girl. But this time, the taunts were more cruel. Guys started to notice me more, but the girls, they were jealous because of how I looked. They started spreading rumors about me, saying that I was a slut, that I had all kinds of diseases. To stop that, I admitted I was a virgin. That didn't help, it just made things worse. They started calling me a lesbian, and a man-hater." She took a deep breath, and a few tears coursed their way down her cheeks as she collected her thoughts. I wanted to badly to touch her, to wipe away her tears, but I couldn't. I knew I shouldn't. After a moment, she went on with her story. "After that, it was like the last straw. I couldn't handle it anymore. I waited till a time when I knew both Mom and Dad would be working late, and came home and took this big carving knife out of the kitchen. I sharpened it and sharpened it, so it would be so sharp I couldn't feel the pain. When it seemed like it was sharp enough, I went into the bathroom, and kneeled over the tub. It was there that I did it. I remember I stood there and watched the life pour out of me, and then I blacked out. I woke up in a hospital room, with tubes in me everywhere, giving back the blood and fluids I had lost. Turns out Mom had got off work early, and came in the bathroom shortly after I lost conciousness. My parents were both there, crying. Marissa and Angel were there, too. That was something I had never thought about, was how my suicide would have affected the few people I did love, how much it would have hurt them. I was in counseling for 6 months. My parents thought it was all their fault, because they never saw it coming. For the longest time, they were afraid to let me out of their sight, in case I did something crazy like that again. I never realized just how much it would have hurt my parents and Marissa and Angel. All I could think of at the time was that I would be free, and that maybe, just maybe, all these mean people would be a little bit sorry. That it would be on their conscious for the rest of their lives, knowing they had killed someone. But things got better, slowly. I won't ever do anything like that again. But somethings still haven't changed. . . the taunts at school, the mean jokes. . . ."
She trailed off, staring up at the sky for a moment. She wipes absentmindedly at her face, and I took her hands in mine. "Do you hate me?" she asked softly.
"No, Mercedes, I don't hate you," I softly replied. Without a word she leans toward me, and I hug her, wanting to give her the comfort she so badly needed. We sat like that for a long while, while I stroked her hair and she cried. Suddenly, the thought popped into my head that if somebody walked by, they wouldn't see me, they would just see Mercedes slumped over in a strange position, crying. This cracked me up, and I started laughing out loud. Mercedes looked up at me questioningly, and I told her what I thought was so funny. She started laughing, too, and I helped her wipe the tears away. I got up, and pulled her to her feet.
For the rest of the day, we just walked around, talking. We have so much in common. We both like old movies and comedies. We also love to read, and we into an argument over who was the better writer. . .Stephen King, or Dean Koontz! However, I'm starting to worry. I shouldn't care so much for her so fast, but for some reason I can't help it. I feel so protective of her. Wehn she told me about those cruel people who had tormented her, I got so angry I wanted to make a pesonal call on each and every one of them. It was totally unlike me, because I usually spent my time in high school avoiding fights rather than trying to cause them! I had to try to distance myself from her somehow. But I don't know how, especially when she asked me to watch over her again tonight, to, as she put it, keep the nightmares away. How could I refuse? I'm her guardian angel. I'm supposed to be there for her and take care of her.But God help me, I think I like her too much. I can't get involved with her. It would only end in heartbreak and pain for both of us. But how can I stay away from her? How long can I act the part of a chaste older brother, and try to pretend I feel nothing when she touches me? Even though I'm dead, I'm only human,with all the frailities and imperfections it entails. But while I won't deny that part of what I feel is the cause of her heaven-sent looks, it seems each time I touch her, or she touches me, I feel something deep within me stir to life, something having nothing to do al all with sex. God! My thoughts about her are so confused, I'd need a guardian angel to figure them out! Anyway, I held her long into the night again, and felt that peculiar feeling in my heart. I left her early that morning, determined to put some distance between us. So I decided she would spend some time with her friends. She seemed a little disappointed, but it didn't take much convincing on my part before she readily accepted my idea. I didn't want to send her away, not just a day after showing myself to her, but I had to get away from her for just a little while. I was becoming attached too quickly.

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