Voice of an Angel
Padma's Point of View
In little more than half an hour, Lavender and I will be friends again. We'll hop on the train and it'll all go back to being our little secret, our beautiful secret, a summer experiment, and one likely to be repeated on every holiday from now until the end of our days.
We won't separate; I can't leave her. We'll just be more private, more reserved. I won't be able to kiss her again until Yule, when everyone else leaves for home.
Lavender is getting ready; holding the brush in her hand, softly she erases what the night before had created, the tangles in her chestnut hair.
She pauses, eyes sharp with pain, a tangle. She reaches into the discreet black bag, and a layer of powdery makeup soon hides her face, so beautiful and precious to me.
Why? I wonder to myself. How is it to be that an angel hides her face? Does a saint bury his cross? Did Merlin sheath his wand?
She hides her beauty, her grace behind the peach powder because it hides us. It hides the lipstick left wet on my cheek, the smell of ancient books left lingering on her clothes, hides our fingers, soaked black with ink from love letters long past. It hides everything, covering it with a past that never was.
No one ever believes a lesbian in disguise. No one ever believes the most popular girl in school dreams of more than just a boy with the face of Apollo; she wants Athena. She loves me. She tells me this, everyday, whispering with the voice of an angel, the voice of my angel.