My Mother Called me Angel: Chapter 1

Chapter One:
My Hero

My mother called me Angel. She had taken care of me well, fed me, loved me, gave me shelter and kept me safe from the hunters. When they came one night, she hid me in a tree just outside the window and let them kill her. They bombed the house, convinced that I was somewhere inside of it. But thanks to my mother's careful thinking, I had survived.
         I grew up in the wild, my mother's spirit watching over me, keeping me from harm. When I got older, I tried to be responsible, to find a way to stay alive, but I didn't want to keep running. I wanted a normal life. And more than ever, I wanted to go to school. So I enrolled myself. Now you might be wondering why I didn't have a normal life. My mother called me Angel. She had the right to. I'm someone everyone wants to hunt down. My mother said that my teeth and bones are made of a material that everyone wants to get their hands on--ivory. That the yellow marrow in my bones isn't yellow marrow. It's solid gold. She said that I stood for the emotions of the world, so teardrops run through my blood veins, along with my blood, of course. And my mother called me Angel because of my wings. Huge wings. White angel's wings that match my curly blonde hair.
         Anyway, I enrolled myself in school. I even made a friend, Cody Willoubey. What I like about school is that nobody knows that I am an angel being stalked by physicopaths. And so far, no hunters have hurt me there.

"That would be 762.386246," Cody answered. How did he know what 11.953 multiplied by 63.782 was? Was he hiding a calculator?
         "Yes, Cody. Very good," Mrs. Gekko said, amazed that Cody had gotten the answer so quickly. "Now that brings us to--" at that moment, the bell rang. "Dismissed," Mrs. Gekko reported, letting us go without any homework, which was rare.
         As I walked out, Cody followed me. "Hey, Angel," he greeted me, sounding slightly nervous. Before I could ask what was wrong, he asked me something I hadn't expected to hear. "Do you want to go to the school dance with me next week?" Well that caught me off-gaurd. I didn't have any dress clothes. I didn't even have a home, for that matter. I lived in a tree! But I said yes anyway.
         After school I went to Kohl's to buy some fancy clothes for the dance. As I started down the escalator, I spotted a tall man with a short beard and a gun. Undoubtably a hunter. I hated to make a scene in a public place but I had to. Even though I was on the third floor of the store, I hopped onto the railing and jumped off. I dropped three stories down and didn't get a scratch on me. I landed on my feet and just kept on running. See, I have ivory bones, golden marrow, wings, teardrop blood and, yes, I'm almost invincible. Dropping the dress, I raced out the doors and, as soon as I was out of sight, unfurled my wings and ricocheted into the sky.
         Breathing hard, I recalled the events inside the store. There had been more hunters than ever before. Dozens. The most I had ever seen at once was five. This was at least twenty-five. That meant that more and more people knew about me. Great. A gunshot from below interrupted my thoughts. I hoped it was just a normal hunter that wasn't hunting angels. Yeah right. A second later, pain erupted in my left foot. I had to fly farther, had to escape the hunter, but the pain was overwhelming, and I didn't make it far. I fluttered down, landing in a crumpled ball in the middle of someone's yard.
         I closed my eyes for a moment, focusing on the pain, when I heard a voice. "What the heck?" it said. Call me crazy, but it sounded vaugley familiar. "Are you OK?" the voice asked. "Angel?"
         "Cody?" I groaned. I had landed in Cody's yard.
         My date. My hero.