"Angels don't have a gender. So what they gonna look like?"
Lani Garver leaned back in the seat on the bus and picked up a thick book, leafing through the pages very carefully with graceful hands. Ancient brown eyes skimmed the words, blinking occasionally and drawing attention to long eyelashes, and a pensive frown occasionally crossed the too-young face.
Two girls across the aisle in the bus giggled, looking at the face and wondering if what they were looking at was a boy or a girl. Even an adult or two looked, but not for long.
A group of kids far away were whispering to one another.
Occasionally, upon stumbling across a tricky passage, Lani would run a finger through layered brown hair, letting it fall back across the big brown eyes in a manner that didn't alleviate the two girls' curiousity one bit.
Two stops before Lani's, one of the of the little kids ran up, a boy of about ten years old, Lani guessed.
"'Scuse me."
Lani looked up and smiled.
"Yes?"
The kid frowned.
"Are you a boy? 'Cause me'n my friend have a bet going, and I'm going to win five dollars if you aren't."
Lani made an apologetic face.
"Oh! Well, congratulations to you," Lani said. "I'm not a boy. But sorry to your friend."
"Yes!... Sorry to bug you." The ending part was added in after a small pause, a last-ditch effort to be polite. It wasn't the sort of thing that bothered Lani, though, and that showed through an easy, friendly smile.
"No problem."
The boy ran back and his friend grudgingly handed over the promised five dollars, and the girls across the aisle blushed a furious red. The adults stared a little bit, and Lani only continued to read, a wider smile on the pretty face.
I always thought that if Claire and Macy had asked, "are you a boy?" his answer would have been exactly the same- "Oh! No, sorry, I'm not." I guess he added "a girl" onto the end of that but whatever.
I wonder if there's anyone out there who thinks Lani died.