Tag: Her Guardian

It’s funny how ideas evolve. When I first had the idea that this is based on, the twist wasn’t even a twist. It only occurred to me a good twenty years after I first had the idea that Gabe wouldn’t explain his true nature to Dorothy from the outset. Now, I think it’s a fun reveal, though I’m not sure if it will really play out well as a full story – there’s obviously a big change in what kind of story you’re telling if you spend an extended amount of time believing it’s one kind of story and then it turns out to be a different kind. But me, I like things that transform into other things; I was brought up on a diet of kids shows about dudes who used magic swords to turn into Conan knock-offs and trucks that turned into robots. So, let’s see how it goes.

---

“Sorry, what?” Gabe asked. He glanced at the clock.

“Edgy. Distracted. I said you were edgy and distracted. Like the way you got distracted just now, ten seconds ago,” Dorothy said. “If you don’t want to help me study, you can just… I take that back. I need you to help me study.”

“Yes. Right. Sorry. Trigonometry. The cosine of the arcsine of x is the square root of one minus x squared,” He said. He looked at the clock again.

“Yes,” Dorothy said, “Except that it’s history. Are you okay?”

“Sorry,” Gabe said again. “Sorry. I… Can’t really explain.”

“Complicated?” she asked.

He didn’t answer, instead engaging in some kind of staring contest with the clock. “It’s okay,” Dorothy finally said. “Believe it or not I’m getting used to you. I know you’ll keep me out of trouble. Stay on the straight and narrow. Don’t break the rules. Don’t mess up the universe.”

Gabe looked down at her with a start, as though seeing her for the first time. “Don’t break…” he started. His face fell. With a faraway look, he quietly said, “There is no who we are but what we do. There is no us but what we choose.”

Dorothy dropped her pencil. “What was that? Where did you- That was me.”

Ignoring the question, he said, “I’ve been teaching you the wrong thing.”

She stood up, confrontational. “I wrote that. Part of it. Only it’s not done yet. How did you know that?”

“I’ve been keeping you out of trouble,” Gabe said. “I should’ve been helping you choose what trouble to get in. I need to get into some trouble right now.” He snapped back into focus. “You need to call emergency services. Right now.”

“What?”

“There’s been a car crash on route 170, near mile marker 24.”

“How did you- When?”

He looked at the clock. “About four minutes from now. You don’t have to tell them that part.” He reached into his pocket and took out a small gray square. Dorothy had seen it before, but only in brief glances; he’d always made a point not to call attention to it.

“How do you know? She braced for his usual “It’s complicated.”

She didn’t get it. “The same way I know about your poem,” he said. “I’ve read it.” He opened up the square like a compact and poked at it intensely.

Dorothy didn’t understand. “They have poems that haven’t been written yet in heaven?”

He looked up from the object in his hand, surprised. “Heaven? Oh. Oh! No. Look, when I told you I was your guardian angel, I didn’t mean it literally.”

He looked back at the clock. Not a lot of time, but he gave her a second anyway. “I’m from the future. About a hundred years. I am going to get in a lot of trouble for telling you this. Might not get see you again. But this rule is worth breaking. You need to make that call, and you need to make it right now.”

“But-” Dorothy tried.

Gabe tapped on the device in his hand, and then, quite unexpectedly, he put his hands on her shoulders. She looked at his hands in disbelief, then poked him with one finger, verifying that he was tangible. “Where I come from, you finished that poem. You finished it, and you called it Mile Marker 24. After the place where your stepsister died in a car accident. Make the call.”

He picked up her phone and put it in her hand. Reflexively, she took it and fumbled, trying to dial. “You can-” she tried

“Yeah,” Gabe said. “Not supposed to, but I can. I have to go. I don’t know if I can help, but I’ve got to try. If I…” He didn’t know how to finish.

Dorothy had glanced down at her phone as the call connected. Her eyes flicked back up just in time to catch the edge of a flash as Gabe vanished.

I was surprised to find I had another piece of this in my head. It’s… Still not great, I think. But I’m trying a new thing where I go ahead and write things instead of agonizing over them in my head for thirty years. So here.

---

Wind.
One branch bends.
Unbroken.
Another breaks.
Falls.
But remains
Itself.

Dorothy crumpled the paper and threw it in the trash. Then she took it out again and carefully flattened it. She sighed.

“Knock-knock.”

She looked around, surprised. “Gabe?” she said to the empty room.

He stepped through the closed door. “How did-” she tried. “What did-” she tried again. Every question she wanted to ask felt stupid in light of the material reality of him. Or unreality, as the case may be.

“How did it go?” he asked. “The audition. That was yesterday, right?”

She wasn’t done with trying to interrogate him, but she let him distract her anyway. “Understudy,” she said. “Just as much work but less scary. They cast Anna, though. Rebecca Gibbs. I guess it turns out she always wanted to be an actress? She’s not ant good at it, but she’s popular.”

“Congratulations, I think,” he said. He seemed slightly distracted, looking around her room with a curiosity Dorothy couldn’t quite parse. He walked over to the window and looked out. “Nice view,” he said. “I like the tree.”

“Why did you knock?” she asked.

He looked down at her desk. “I thought it might make you uncomfortable if I just bamfed into existence in your bedroom,” he said.

She blanched at the thought. “So you can just do that, show up here whenever you want? What if I was naked?”

He blushed impressively. “I wouldn’t. We have… There’s procedures. Your privacy and autonomy are completely protected. Mostly. As much as we can. It’s complicated. And mysterious. Sorry. Did you write this?”

He was looking at the poem. Suddenly self-conscious, she reached through him to snatch it off the table, crumpled it again, and threw it in the can. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

“I came to check on you. Make sure everything worked out okay. I know I got you in some hot water the other day. That was careless of me.”

She looked away. “Anna still thinks I’m weird, but I’m not sure if that’s a bad thing. And then there’s her friends.”

“Oh?” Gabe asked with a tone of surprise that wasn’t entirely convincing.

Dorothy rolled her eyes. “Don’t play dumb. Someone brought a six-pack. And they got caught. It would’ve been pretty bad for me and Anna if we’d been there. You knew.” It wasn’t a question.

“It’s complicated,” he said. “Nothing’s set in stone, but some things have more wiggle-room than others.”

“How?” she asked. “And why me? What’s it to you?”

“It’s…” he struggled.

“Complicated?”

He sighed and started pacing. “Thing is, most people’s lives just sort of work themselves out. There’s nature and nurture and genetics and free will and externalities and internalities and a million little nudges and mostly it all just balances out and people sort of tumble into the space the world has made for them, and that’s fine. It’s like… Skiing.”

“Skiing?” Dorothy asked, lost.

“When you’re halfway down the mountain, maybe technically you could change your mind and go somewhere other than the bottom, but it would be a lot of work, and you’d probably fail, and besides, the bottom was where you meant to go in the first place.”

This did not help Dorothy make sense of what he was saying.

“But anyway. There’s a flow and most people just go with it. But some people more sort of… Don’t. They’re slippery. It’s like skiing and… Actually that metaphor doesn’t go anywhere. The point is that you’re different. You’re… Slippery.”

“Why?”

Gabe shrugged. “Don’t know. It’s complicated. And this time I mean that it’s so complicated that I don’t understand it either. Some times those million little nudges line up just so, and instead of you falling into the space the world left for you, the world falls into the space you left for it.”

She shook her head. “What is this, some kind of Campbell thing? I’m the chosen one and I have a great destiny to fulfill?”

He raised his hands defensively. “No, nothing like that. Kinda the opposite. You don’t have a destiny. You’re a free agent. That’s why I’m here. When a person could do anything, there’s some incentive to make sure they do the right thing.”

“What does that mean?” Dorothy asked. “What kind of incentive? What’s the right thing, and why does anyone care about me? I’m nobody.”

Gabe took a quick, sharp breath. “You’re not nobody. You could do so much. You could change the world. So…” he looked around uncomfortably. “Do a good job at it, maybe?”

“How?”

He smiled. “Just keep doing what you’re doing. You’re a good person. You just need the occasional nudge to make sure you don’t forget that.”

The smart speaker chimed out a dinner bell. “This isn’t the end of this conversation,” Dorothy said.

“I didn’t imagine it would be,” Gabe said with a smile. “Have fun. Live your life. Learn your lines. You’ve got this. And if you don’t, I’ve got your back. In a vague and mysterious sort of way.”

He stuck one hand in his pocket and gave her a jaunty wave with the other one, then popped out of existence. Dorothy waved her hand through the space he’d occupied. This was going to take a lot of getting used to. With a deep sigh, she headed downstairs to dinner.

Ten seconds after the door closed behind her, Gabe winked back into existence. With a guilty glance over his shoulder, he stepped to the wastepaper basket, reached down, and very carefully picked up the crumpled poem.

This is a piece of a plot bunny that has been bouncing around my head for about thirty years and I am finally willing to commit a bit of to written form. You’d think it would be less clunky after all those years, but I guess if I could make it flow quite right, I would’ve written it down a lot sooner. It’s mostly inspired by High Concept Sit-Coms, so I tried to keep it shallow and, despite tremendous mental pressure, avoid profanity.

---

“Will you please trust me on this? Don’t go. It’s a bad idea.”

“Why would I trust you?” Dorothy asked. “I’ve known you for all of ten minutes. She’s family. Technically.”

“Yeah, but which of us seems more inherently trustworthy?” Gabe flashed an exaggerated smile.

“Well what do you have against it? We’re just going out to have some fun. You’re acting like they’re plotting some kind of heist. Do you-” she shook her head. “Do you know something?”

“I can’t tell you that,” Gabe said. “But I would really like it if you trusted me. Trust is important, don’t you think?”

“But this is weird. You know that, right? That what you’re asking is weird? I’m being asked to hang out with, ahem, The Cool Kids, and you, who I don’t know from Adam, is telling me assassinate my social life for mysterious undisclosed reasons and–” Dorothy felt the sudden weight of unwanted attention and looked around. “Why are people looking at me?”

Gabe glanced around, nonplussed. “Oh,” he said. “You didn’t realize. Sorry. I thought you did. They think you’re talking to yourself.”

“What?”

“Yeah, they can’t see me.”

She set her water bottle down. “What are you talking about?”

A guilty expression spread across Gabe’s face. “Okay. This isn’t going well. I can’t actually explain, but I can show you.” He paused and held up his hands in a warding gesture. “You should brace yourself so you don’t overreact.”

He held out his hand in front of him, then slowly moved it toward where she’d set her bottle on the table. He extended one finger toward it as if to push it over. Then, in a slow, smooth motion, passed his finger straight through the bottle.

Whatever bracing Dorothy had done wasn’t sufficient. She let out a little yelp, drawing even more unwanted attention before she could stifle herself. Through clenched teeth, she whispered, “You’re a ghost?”

“I’m not a ghost.”

“Then I’m crazy.”

“You’re not crazy. I can prove that. Maybe. But, um…” he nodded over her shoulder.

Anna. Dorothy hadn’t thought there was still a “worse” things could get. “Oh. Um. Hi?” she tried.

“I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt,” Anna said. “But ‘my step-sister is a schizo,’ isn’t a good look for me.”

With a sour expression, Gabe said, “Ooh. Ableist much?” He stood up and walked over to Anna. “Don’t get me wrong, you’re really hot. But that’s not a good look.”

“I.. Uh…” Dorothy struggled.

“Drama club,” Gabe said.

“Drama club,” Dorothy repeated, surprised.

“Drama club?” Anna parroted.

Gabe walked through Anna and another table of students and pointed at a poster on the wall, too far away for Dorothy to read. “Audition,” he called out. “Thursday.”

Having no other choice, Dorothy decided to run with it. “Drama club,” she said again. “There’s an audition Thursday. I… I thought I’d try out. I was practicing.”

Anna’s eyes narrowed, suspiciously. “You? Drama club? Isn’t that a little ESFP for you?”

“I’m… Broadening my horizons.”

“What’s it for? The audition?”

“Our Town,” Gabe shouted. “Be right back.”

Dorothy glanced over just in time to see him futz with something in his hand, then he simply vanished. Anna looked her up and down, lingering on her pinafore. “Okay, fine, I find that broadly plausible. Show me.”

“Excuse me?”

“Show me what you were practicing.”

“Why?”

Anna rolled her eyes. “Just do it. Let me see how big of a fool you’re going to make out of yourself, so I can decide whether or not to disown you.”

“Um…” Dorothy stammered.

Just then, Gabe reappeared behind Anna, walked through her, and held up a script. “Eyes here,” he said. “Forget everyone else, just look at the script, don’t think about the extent to which your entire social existence is in existential peril.”

It was more than she could process, so she did as she was told. “​I can’t,” she read. “I can’t go on. It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another. I didn’t realize.”

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, opened them. “So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back – up the hill – to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look…”

A hush fell around her as she recited Emily’s goodbyes to Grover’s Corners, but Dorothy stayed focused on the paper in front of her and didn’t notice. Even Anna seemed hypnotized by her delivery, though Dorothy couldn’t see it with Gabe between them. “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it-every, every minute?” she finished.

“No,” Gabe said, filling in the corresponding part, “The saints and poets maybe. They do, some.”

“I’m ready to go back.”

When Gabe lowered the script page, Dorothy finally noticed that every eye in the cafeteria seemed to be on her. She blushed and reflexively brought her hand up to her face. “What?”

“Wow,” Anna mumbled. She struggled for a second and had to physically shake herself to recompose. With exaggerated nonchalance, she said, “Yeah, that’s passable I guess. I, uh. Tell you what, I’ll go with you. It’ll look good for college, right? Wait. Thursday? Crap. Never mind. I’ll take care of it. I got to go find Jimmy.” She turned and stalked away.

The rest of the room slowly returned to normal business and Dorothy turned back to the lunch table and sat back down, befuddled by what had just happened. “What was that?” she whispered through clenched teeth.

“They liked it. You impressed them. You really don’t appreciate how gifted you are,” Gabe said. “You’ve got a power in your words. Someday, they’ll be your own words, but Thornton Wilder will do for a start.”

Dorothy pieced it together. “Thursday,” she whispered. “You committed me to something Thursday. Anna too. So we can’t-”

“There,” Gabe said, smugly. “See? No social assassination required. I got your back.”

“What are you?”

He cringed. “Really can’t explain. If it helps, just think of me as your guardian angel.”