Jazmina: переводы

→Gabbe, the most beautiful and the most perfectly mannered angel at Sword & Cross, was standing on Luce’s porch in a pink mohair sweater dress. Her blond hair was a gorgeous frenzy of braids, pinned up into little swirls on top of her head. Her skin had a soft, lovely shimmer - not unlike Francesca’s. She held a bouquet of white gladiolas in one hand and a frosty white plastic ice cream tub in the other.

→She perched on the sagging couch and lifted a slat of the window blind. Outside, a red-and-white taxi was idling in front of the house, coughing exhaust into the cold fall air. The windows were tinted, but the passenger could be only one person.

→Luckily, the morning had passed without incident; after giving her dad the longest, tightest hug she’d ever given someone, she’d mentioned that she had a few friends without places to go for the holiday.

→Arriane and Shelby stopped arguing over which guy was Luce’s soul mate. They looked at her silently and nodded. She felt it before she even saw her reflection in the mirror: The heavy weight of melancholy, one she hadn’t even known she was shouldering, had lifted from her body.

→She’d been seeking a cheap transformation when she first got out to California. Now she realized that the only worthwhile way to make a change was to earn a real one. Dying her hair black wasn’t the answer either - she knew she wasn’t there yet - but at least it was a step in the right direction.

→It was bittersweet, and beautiful, and Luce couldn’t figure out what any of it meant. Only that she didn’t want to hide anymore - not from herself, or from her parents; not from Daniel, or even from those who sought to harm her.

→Luce tuned them out, focusing instead on the warm water and the strange confluence of things flowing over her head, into her scalp, and down the drain: Shelby’s stubby fingers had helped with Luce’s first dye job, back when Luce thought that was the only way to start afresh. Arriane’s first act of friendship toward Luce had been the command to chop off her black hair, to make her look like Luce. Now their hands worked through Luce’s scalp in the same bathroom where Penn had rinsed her clean of the meat loaf Molly had dumped on her head her first day at Sword & Cross.

→"If you two were going to be that obvious about it, why didn’t you guys come down in your Team Daniel and Team Miles T-shirts?"

→"I guess Daniel will be pleased," Arriane said in her coyest leading-question tone of voice. "Not that you’re doing this for Daniel. Are you?"

→Neither Arriane nor Shelby had questioned Luce about her sudden need for a change. She’d been grateful for that. Now she saw they’d only been waiting for her to be in a vulnerable half-dyed position to begin their inquisition.

→Luce’s head was upside down in the sink in the girls’ bathroom down the hall from the Sword & Cross cafeteria. Shelby carried in the last two slices of cheese pizza stacked on a paper plate for Luce. Arriane held out a bottle of cheap black hair dye - the best Roland could do on such short notice, but not a bad match for Luce’s natural color.

→Luce inhaled a jagged breath, and tears sprang to her eyes. She’d left Sword & Cross before there’d been time to bury Penn, but Daniel had taken care of everything. It was the first time in several days that her heart ached for him. Because he had known, better than she would have known herself, exactly how Penn’s tombstone should read. Luce knelt down on the grass, her tears flowing freely now, her hands combing the grass uselessly.

→A sparse layer of dull green grass had grown up and around Penn’s grave, so it didn’t look so jarringly new, compared to the centuries-old graves surrounding it. A bouquet of fresh lilies lay in front of the simple gray tombstone, which Luce stooped down to read:

→The last time Luce had seen this cemetery, it had been coated in a thick felt of dust. The aftermath of every angel battle, Daniel had told her. Luce didn’t know whether the wind had carried the dust away by now, or whether angel dust just disappeared over time, but the cemetery seemed to be back to its neglected old self. Still ringed by an ever-advancing forest of kudzu-strangled live oaks. Still barren and depleted under the no-color sky. Only, there was something missing, something vital Luce couldn’t put her finger on, but that still made her feel lonely.

→In the far east corner of the cemetery, next to her father’s plot, Penn’s grave was modest but neat.

→"I’ll catch up with you guys," Luce said. "There’s something I need to do first."

→"Don’t worry." Arriane stood next to Luce. "This place is like a reject revolving door. People come and go all the time because of some parole issue, crazy parents, whatever. Randy’s off tonight. No one else gives a damn. If anyone gives you a second look - just give ‘em a third one. Or send them over to me." She made a fist. "You ready to get out of here?" She pointed at the others already following Roland out the door.

→The mention of pizza was enough to shake Miles and Shelby out of their comas, but Luce was taking longer to adjust. It wasn’t that weird for her room to still be empty. Counting on her fingers, she realized she’d been gone from this place less than three weeks. It felt like so much longer, like every day had been a month, and it was impossible for Luce to imagine Sword & Cross without any of the people - or angels, or demons - who had made up her life here.

→Roland had been leaning against the diving board, rubbing his temples, the Announcer shards quivering at his feet. Now he stood up and began to take charge. "Miles, you’re going to bunk up with me in my old room. And Luce, your room’s still empty. We’ll roll in a cot for Shelby. Let’s all drop our bags and meet back at my room. I’ll use the old black-market network to order a pizza."

→When Roland let her go, the echoing waterfall trickled to a drip, and a whiff of chlorine filled her nose. A diving board. A familiar one, under a lofty arched ceiling lined with broken stained-glass panels. The sun had passed over the high windows, but its light still cast faint colored prisms onto the surface of an Olympic-size pool. Along the walls, candles flickered in stone recesses, throwing off a dim, useless light. She’d recognize this church-gymnasium anywhere.