Angela was feeling painfully lonely in the ring of bushes where Robert had left her, and the blossoms of rapture withered away fast too. Who screamed? And why now? If it was something stupid, or only some ballyhoo, I swear I’ll kill the person. She shivered in the evening breeze and looked up at the sky. She found the stars cheerlessly shivering at their usual places, their incessant glimmer was only occasionally disturbed by the flashes of the lights of airplanes sweeping by.

Suddenly, she heard another scream, even more terrible than the one before. It made her shake all over. She swiftly put her clothes to rights and slipped through the thinner part of the hedge, where Robert had broken through moments before, and started to run with all her strength. The sobbing became louder, then it was mixed with loud, desperate talk. Clatters, running water, crying. She opened the branches of the thuja before her. A mini-skirted girl was kneeling on the path, wailing. Black mascara had melted from her eyelids and was trickling down her skin, drawing a latticework of lines. In her anguish, she had smudged her lipstick as well. She kept shaking the body sprawled on the ground. Robert stood beside her, soaking wet. He was trying to tug the sobbing girlfriend away from the lifeless boy but she stubbornly stayed in place. Finally, with a strong tug, he managed to wrench her away so that he could begin to resuscitate the boy. The glass French windows to the terrace were flung open and Réka dashed through them like an express train. She gave a brief update, gasping for air.

‘The ambulance will be here soon. But they said it might take ten minutes. Let’s try to revive him in the meantime. I told them we have a lifesaver here.’ She looked at Robert, but her brother was already busy doing chest compressions, rhythmically pushing down on the boy’s breastbone and leaving off now every so often to blow air into the boy’s nose. His efforts were accompanied by astounded silence. He felt the vein on the boy’s neck several times but had to accept, in bitter disappointment, that there was still no sign of life.

‘He hasn’t had a pulse for over five minutes!’ he roared. ‘He won’t survive, for fuck’s sake!’

Even more sobs shook the girl who was now kneeling beside him. Her friend tried to hold her compassionately but she pushed the arms away angrily.

‘How come you didn’t notice? You should’ve paid more attention to each other! He’ll die, or he’s dead already!’ she screamed.

Angela stood there in shock. She appeared to be unnoticed in the mounting panic. She wanted to draw nearer to her love, who, in his panic, was accelerating the rate of his compressions, but she did not dare to step out from among the bushes yet: she did not want to disturb Robert in his apparently futile efforts.

‘What’ll happen now, for fuck’s sake? What’ll happen?’ he shouted in a near trance, while still pushing the boy’s chest.

He looked at the others in desperation. The girlfriend of the dead boy freed herself from the arms of the boy holding her and almost fell on her dead love. She hugged the cooling body tightly. Some of the others jumped in to her to peel her off.

 ‘Let her.’ Robert waved them away. ‘She can’t cause more trouble than there is already.’

Life flew away on her dainty wings, and her inevitable travelling companion Death was already shuffling by. Angela’s eyes grew wet as well, but suddenly she felt divinely inspired and heat flowed over her skin.

‘Listen to me, Angela,’ she heard from somewhere far behind her.

She looked around but saw only darkness. Scared, she took a step forward towards the light.

‘Listen!’ came the voice again. She did not know where it was coming from but it filled her mind.

‘Angela, don’t be afraid. You can save that boy. Just go there and lie on him.’

‘What? Who are you and why should I lie on him?’ she asked, staring into the darkness.

‘It’s me. Do you remember?’

‘No, I don’t, sorry. Are you in my year?’

Angela sighed, and her breath made something flicker with a silver shimmer. She stretched out her arm but grasped only air, so she stepped back among the bushes. She breathed out again, more strongly this time, and the rays of the moon outlined a pale shape among the thujas.

‘Do as you’re told,’ the voice urged her.

Golden smoke was billowing towards the sky.

‘Unbelievable. Is it really you? Impossible! Or am I dreaming?’

‘No, you aren’t, but hurry up. Don’t keep a soul waiting between two worlds.’

An invisible force squeezed her chest, her muscles were tickling as in her childhood, but she thought she was going mad. This … this is crazy. Lie on a dead body? Can’t I simply touch it? How stupid!

‘Act now!’ she heard.

But there’s nothing to lose. She was trying to convince herself. There’s a corpse lying on the pavement. I couldn’t give everyone a bigger shock than that.

‘Angela, start now!’ said the shape swirling in silver smoke.

She stopped wavering, stepped out from behind the thujas and joined the others. She cautiously touched the shoulder of the lad in her way. He looked her up and down, and his mouth was left agape. Angela’s dress was enveloped in a fine, gauzy, turquoise-blue halo. The boy kept staring at her speechlessly, finding her, with her fair hair down, an unearthly smile on her lips, looking as untouched and splendid as a precious stone from a treasure-chest in the wreckage of a ship resting on the seabed. She was looking at him, though not into his eyes, exactly, but beyond them, into the distance.

‘Let me through.’

The lad could not conceal his astonishment but stepped aside. Angela’s glow suddenly expired. She knelt down beside the dead body and grasped the hand of Robert, who was still desperately struggling.

‘You can’t do any more to save him. Let somebody else help.’

Angela held out her fists in front of Robert and loosened them a little. A rainbow-like glow filtered through her fingers.

Robert scrambled to his feet, shook his head, tenderly took the girl’s hands and unfolded her fingers. The phosphorescent light grew stronger. Some people around them leaned over to see this heavenly wonder, and there were murmurs above Angela’s head.

‘Do you still remember what I told you about when my dog was run over?’ she asked Robert with a serious look.

‘I’m trying to believe you, Angie, but I might just be hallucinating. Look, I can’t do anything anyway. It’s your go, he can’t get any worse. He’s dead.’

The dead boy’s girlfriend’s sobbing became even louder.

‘Do you trust me?’ Angela asked Robert.

‘I think I do.’

‘Then please help: don’t let anybody too near.’

Robert nodded in confusion and stared at the girl, but he had to blink. Angela drew a deep breath and pressed herself closely to the motionless, cooling body of the boy, which was as white as a sheet. She pressed her legs to his legs, her arms to his arms and her head to his head.

‘Good God, she wants to make love to him! She’s gone mad. Get her off him right now! Get off him, you drunken bitch!’ shouted a girl in a denim dress stepping out of the crowd jostling behind them. She grabbed Angela’s arm to jerk her off the helpless body. Before Robert could intervene, however, the girl, jerked her own hand away as quickly as she had reached in.

‘Bloody hell, she’s hot. What on earth’s going on?’

‘Get off her, let her be. I know what she’s doing!’ Robert shouted, and pushed the girl roughly back among the others.

‘You stay there, OK? If you try to come here again, the ambulance will take you away too,’ he ordered. There was an almost otherworldly expression on his face.

‘She’s stupid,’ the girl answered disdainfully, and looked at one of the boys. ‘And if you let her stay there, you’re stupid too. Can’t you see what she’s doing?’

No one moved. The faces of those standing at the front were caressed by a mild breeze. Angela’s body was floating in a cloud of steam.

‘You’re all crazy!’ the girl in the denim dress insisted.

‘What’s this, some stupid Voodoo sorcery?’ said another teenager, emboldened by the girl’s invective. This set off a general grumbling.

‘Shut your mouths!’ Robert shouted. ‘She’s just trying to help. Can you come up with anything else right now apart from the number of the ambulance?’ he asked the joking lad. ‘And you lot, are you all doctors?’

The noise subsided and the rebellious girl’s next words stuck in her throat. The air become increasingly hot; some of the crowd quietly backed off, kicking over beer bottles, while others inquisitively pushed themselves forward in their stead.

‘This is simply fantastic. Who is she?’ somebody stammered.

Angela’s whole body was shaking; soft blue and green lights fluttered on her skin. The warmth of one body entered the other and the life force of one raised the other from the dead. There was so much excess energy at this tiny point in space that Angela’s thin cotton top burst into flames on her back and her stylish white trousers began to turn brown. Robert covered her instantly with a blanket to smother the fire. He was afraid to pour water on her in case it affected this hair-raising treatment. A putrid smell began to spread.

‘The blanket’s going to catch fire too!’ the girl in the denim dress hollered resentfully.

Robert carefully removed the blanket as soon as the fire died down. Instead of flames, shafts of light were now sparkling on Angela’s shredded clothes. Robert was taken aback as a sparkling bridge of light shot from her shaking head to the sky and then faded.

‘It’s like a, like a …’

‘Like a rainbow,’ Robert finished the sentence of the girl in the denim dress, who, in her shock, could not say anything else.

The legs of the boy lying on the ground jerked strongly. Angela drew her face away from his: her eyelids were still shut and quivering. The boy’s legs jerked again and his hands clenched into fists too as if he had been given an electric shock. The spasms came faster and faster. His soul reluctantly returned to its earlier living quarters. It was longing to travel towards the great light.

As the boy began to come round, Angela opened her eyes. The boy gave a huge cough, almost hitting the heads of those leaning towards him with the mighty jet of water he spewed out. He opened his bloodshot eyes and yelled. The girl in the denim dress laughed hysterically.

‘Welcome back to the land of the living,’ Angela whispered to the resuscitated boy, who, in his fright, did not even know who was talking to him. His saviour stood and picked up the remains of the blanket. She stumbled to a chair in exhaustion and sat down. The boy sat up; he still did not understand how he had got there. His shirt was coming off his chest in flakes and his trousers were covered in palm-size burnt holes. He looked around, then at the remnants of his clothes, and said in a rasping voice,

‘Did you shoot fireworks at me?’

Everybody laughed.

‘And now you’re laughing at me? So that bright light wasn’t just a dream? Wait a minute, assholes. Gimme a firework: I’ll return the favour. I’ll scorch you, you swine!’ While raging like this, he noticed his girlfriend clasping his legs. ‘Christie, why are you crying? Have they hurt you too? Right, enough!’ He sprang up with eyes flashing bolts of lightning.

‘Johnny, my dear Johnnie, stop!’ His girlfriend grabbed his arm. ‘You’re still alive! You are fucking alive.’ She was still blubbering and had smudged the remains of her make-up over her face. She hugged him idiotically.

‘What do you mean I’m still alive?’ he asked but nobody answered; the only sound was the murmur of the pump that cycled the water in the pool. Robert was also musing, dumbfounded; reality and his imagination had blurred. He stepped to Angela quickly, gently embraced her and kissed her on the forehead.

‘I love you, Angie!’

‘I love you too, my Robert,’ she whispered and clutched her lover’s neck. ‘I’m feeling very cold.’

‘I’ll take you inside to get you warm, until then, here’s another blanket, take it,’ he said and covered her with blanked covered in conspicuous stains.

‘It was a miracle,’ the girl in the denim dress wailed, walking up to Robert. ‘Please forgive me for making a scene, but, you know …’

But Robert did not reply, he just measured her up wearily. The wind brought the sound of an ambulance siren but nobody paid it any heed. They kept caressing and touching the shivering lad, whose skin was so hot that he needed no blanket.

‘I’m thirsty.’ He turned to his girlfriend, but two others ran for mineral water at the same time. ‘What happened to me? Why are you all looking at me like that? What’s happened to my clothes? Is this some sort of joke? Are you screwing with me? Say something, for God’s sake.’

‘To keep it short, you were so drunk you fell into the pool and died. Angela saved you. That’s what’s happened, darling,’ his girlfriend answered him with a reproachful look. It was not obvious whether her tears now were of shock or sudden happiness. ‘Now drink, you little asshole,’ she tapped her lover’s forehead playfully.

The siren of the arriving ambulance sounded from nearby, covering their talk. Doors slammed, paramedics in vests with reflective stripes appeared. Excited conversations ensued; questions flashed in the air like late-summer lightning. Everybody was confused. All the ambulance personnel could make out from the answers shouted above each other was that some girl had revived the boy in the tattered clothes. They asked for no more details, just ushered him onto the stretcher and hurried towards the ambulance with him. His girlfriend followed at the double. They were not to be separated. The ambulance doctor in a flaming red coat scratched the crown of his balding head and turned to Robert.

‘So, was it you who gave CPR to the injured person?’

‘Yes,’ he answered with a smile, ‘but my technique was useless.’

‘I know, I know. The girl laid down on him and the guy came back to life. Have you been taking drugs?’

‘No, we haven’t,’ Robert replied. ‘But that’s what happened. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. And anyway, how else to explain all the burnt clothes?’

‘I think you should drop the questions, son. If someone is drunk, or is using drugs, and then lights up … in a word, he is capable of anything. Shouldn’t we take her in for a check-up too?’ He turned towards Angela.

‘No. Nothing’s wrong with her,’ Robert answered with a long face. ‘And she didn’t use drugs either, she only drank a few glasses of champagne.’

‘I see. So, what did she do with him? I mean with the lad.’

‘Let’s just say she warmed him up. I think it doesn’t really matter what really happened, you wouldn’t believe it,’ Robert said.

The doctor considered the burnt patches marring the trousers of the boy lying on the stretcher and only remarked, ‘He certainly didn’t catch cold.’

They put the stretcher into the ambulance, slammed the door shut and disappeared as fast as they had come.

Robert took his miracle-worker love into the house and they shut themselves in a room. Nobody disturbed them all night. Talking about nothing but the event of the evening, the other teenagers spread around the house and set to cleaning up the mess. Discussions about what had actually happened continued until the morning. They were waiting impatiently for Angela to reappear – some even banged on their door to ask about her ‘miracle-working powers’, but he sent everybody away. The girl was slumbering naked on her lover’s chest and Robert, deeply touched, was guarding the angel of his dreams. Neither of them even suspected that the real actor of the miracle had hidden in the shade of the bushes for a while, then returned to the eternal light.

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