CHAPTER 12
Michael

He had found the article about her in the abandoned newspaper on the kitchen table in his fourth foster home. The headline had read; NINE-YEAR-OLD GIRL MIRACULOUSLY BEATS INCURABLE CANCER. But it had been the photo of that nine-year-old, not the sensational heading, which had pulled him in.

Her hair had been really short, similar to an army cut, but her brave and proud smile had transfixed him. He had cut the article out and placed it under his pillow. He would pull it out every night before going to sleep, reading the article over and over again.

The doctors had given Maria DeLuca a maximum of five weeks left to live and the girls' parents were distraught.

"We were prepared to lose her, any day," Amy DeLuca accounts. "I couldn't sleep; I was constantly checking on her to see if she was breathing."

The parents paint a picture of how, in a way, they had already lost their little girl.

"Her personality had changed," Robert DeLuca explains. "Weird things were coming out of her mouth."

Personality changes can be a devastating symptom of brain tumors. The girl also suffered seizures in the final stages of the disease, eventually being almost completely paralyzed on the left side of her body.

The article went on to describe what the parents had to go through, how their daughter's illness eventually had ruined their relationship but how they had stayed together for the sake of Maria. The punch line came at the last third of the article, as the reporter narrated the remarkable story of how Maria woke up one day with the paralysis gone and her personality seemingly restored to that of a healthy nine-year-old.

The article finished off with how specialists were left speechless without being able to offer a plausible explanation to account for the girl's full recovery. It was not up to the doctors to put the Miracle-stamp on the case, but the reporter wasn't afraid to use that label. Maria DeLuca lived because of a miracle.

It wasn't even necessarily the inexplicable nature of the girl's changed destiny, but rather the short sentence in the middle of the article that had captured Michael's interest.

It was shortly after the farewell visit of one of Maria's classmates that Maria had ostensibly recovered.

At the time of the article, Michael Guerin (at the time: Michael Dwight) had just started to realize that he was not like other children. If he thought about something hard enough and added some anger, it would blow up. Like a small bomb. He had managed to make lamps explode as well as pillows and even scrunched up a bully's bicycle like it was made of paper.

So upon the discovery of the article, Michael had been certain that Maria DeLuca's recovery wasn't miraculous. There was someone out there, just like him, that had helped this girl. Because even though he had never told anyone, he remembered waking up in a chamber filled with goo, pulling an organic tube of some kind out of his throat, pushing out through a membrane to end up naked on the floor of a desert cave, like a newborn foal. Before leaving the cave, he had seen two other chambers, which had been empty. He had been the last one out, but not the only one.

This had given Michael hope. In a world he didn't understand and where he felt utterly different, the sign of someone like him out there was a relief. Right then, Maria DeLuca had been his only clue.

It would be years before he could follow up on that trail. Stuck in the foster care system, he eventually ended up in a foster home that he quite liked, at the age of fifteen. The young mother seemed to understand him and he found himself in the unfamiliar situation of not wanting to disappoint her. So he cleaned up, became a good kid, started to get good grades at school. About eleven months after he had moved in and five months after he had taken their surname, Guerin, the mother got stomach cancer. The cancer was malignant and quick. With the fading news article still under his pillow, Michael attempted to save the woman he had grown to love, but whatever had helped Maria DeLuca was not part of Michael's repertoire.

Instead, he had to watch the only person he had ever acknowledge as family die.

He had never been very close to the husband. The husband spent a lot of time at work and Michael were never able to really get to know him. After the loss of his wife, the man fell into a pattern of drinking which he had been a slave to for many years before meeting his wife. He lost his job, he became abusive towards Michael, and Michael began spending nights away from home. Michael was getting older and had no interest in going back to the orphanage at that point. Being unemployed, the husband required the monetary contribution the state provided for letting Michael stay with them to support his drinking habits. So he let Michael stay.

It was with the help of a teacher that Michael got the support and information on how to apply for emancipation. The state granted him a right to his own life just shortly after his seventeenth birthday. Just two days after that, Michael had moved to Boston, the article about Maria DeLuca in the back of his pocket.

He turned over in their double bed and put his arm in the dip of her waist, pulling her back up against his chest. A soft moan of satisfaction left her lips and he kissed her temple.

He had greatly disliked (hate is a very strong word) Maria DeLuca when he had first met her. She had been very different from the soft-looking happy girl in the photo in the newspaper that had etched itself onto the retina of his memory. After their first meeting, he would have been happy never to see her again (and the feeling was mutual), but his ulterior motive of finding Maria's possible savior had forced him to stick around.

Maria would have said that it was meant to be. According to Michael, there was no way it was meant to be. Nothing that was 'meant to be' could be so frustratingly difficult.

During the 'Introduction to Maria DeLuca'-phase, Michael was sure he was being tested - or punished - for something. Maria was everything about the human race that Michael had tried so hard to avoid. She was challenging, loud and physical (really, did she have to touch him all the time?). Her whole being brimmed with emotions and, God, did they overflow over and over again. Michael often questioned her self-control. Did she really have any? She could yell at him one second and cry in happiness the next. There was no question why she had gone by the nickname of Hurricane DeLuca in her high school.

But slowly, through the ups and downs, through the yelling, the fighting and the crying, through the laughter, the hugs and the smiles, Michael had started to stumble and eventually fall. And when he fell, he fell hard.

Now, almost six years later, he couldn't remember a life when he hadn't loved Maria DeLuca. Even though they fought about every third hour and made up every fourth hour of every single day, he would fiercely protect her with his life. Even though she continuously challenged his thoughts, his remarks and his ideas, her intelligence and the same emotional whirl that had once annoyed him, kept him alive.

The mobile phone on his nightstand vibrated and Maria moaned again. This time in annoyance.

"Leave us alone," she mumbled.

Michael unhinged his arm from Maria's waist, rolled over on his back and pressed the 'Answer'-button. "Speak."

"Hi," no introduction was needed, he would recognize Isabel's voice anywhere.

"Hey," he replied. He still hadn't forgiven her for bringing a stranger along on their shopping trip, even though said stranger had assisted in finding him a very good anniversary present which had earned him a very nice night with his beloved.

"Let me speak, okay?" Isabel requested. Apparently she could tell that Michael was still a bit miffed about the Tess-incident.

"You have the floor," Michael sighed.

"I'm sorry for bringing Tess," Michael remained silent, so Isabel continued, "But she was in desperate need for company and I thought she could help with the gift. And she did, didn't she? Did Maria like it?"

"Don't do that," Michael said. "Don't try to turn this into a positive thing." Even though the gift had been genius.

"Right," Isabel breathed. "Sorry. I guess, I just wanted to ask you about Tess."

Michael sighed and the left side of the bed moved as Maria rolled onto her stomach, curling up along his left side. Her full lips placed a morning kiss on his jawbone and he managed a smile in her direction before returning his attention to Isabel. "What do you want to know?"

"What do you know about her?"

Michael twirl a strand of Maria's long blond hair between his fingers and his replies were chipped. "Not much."

"Was she a friend of yours?"

Michael snorted. "Hardly."

"Why the cold shoulder yesterday? She was just trying to be friends."

"I don't trust her," Michael felt Maria's eyes on him as he continued, "She was the Great Manipulator at the orphanage. She could make people do anything for her."

"That was a long time ago; you were kids. Most people do a lot of things they are not proud of when they're kids."

"Sure," Michael said. "I just don't trust her. She was playing you."

Maria was tracing his pectorals with her index finger and Michael knew that she was listening intently to his side of the conversation. Maybe she could even hear Isabel on the other side of the line.

Isabel laughed. "No, she wasn't. I'm not stupid, Michael."

"I'm not saying you are," Michael said simply, seriously, "I'm just saying that she's really good at what she does."

There was a a pause, and Michael suspected he might have hurt her feelings. But it was the truth and Michael was usually, if not always, telling it like it was.

"And you don't think it was a coincidence that she came to see me?"

"I don't believe in coincidence."

"But she knows my boss, it's not that odd that our paths would cross."

"Maybe knowing your boss is a coincidence, but hooking up with you… I'm not so sure that's all it's set out to be."

"So what do you think she's after? If she's 'conspiring', as you're trying to claim?"

She was making fun of him, thinking he was being dramatic.

Michael sighed, getting annoyed that he was never taken seriously. "I have no idea. Maybe she's an agent, trying to fish for information."

"She didn't ask a single conspicuous questi-"

"Of course she didn't," Michael snapped, "I told you; she's smart. She wouldn't show her cards that early in the process."

"Oh come on," Isabel said, catching onto his annoyance. "You think everything is a conspiracy. Maybe not everyone that is trying to be friends with us is out to get us. Maybe no one knows about us. Maybe no one suspects us. Shouldn't someone have locked us up by now, if that was the case?"

"Maybe that's what Ms. Harding is about to do," Michael's tone was acidic.

"Oh shut up," Isabel sighed, obviously fed up with the conversation. "For future reference, I would like you to respect my friends, okay? Don't treat them like shit. You have no idea how embarrassed I was at your behavior."

"Come on, Iz-" Michael tried. He was feeling the regret creeping up on him. He had been pissed at her that day, sure, and he had been looking for some type of pay-back, but he never meant to hurt her.

"Next time, keep your opinions to yourself!"

"Isabel…" But the line had been disconnected.

Michael sighed in frustration and placed the phone back on the night stand.

"Wow, that went well," Maria voiced.

Michael looked down at his girlfriend, tensing at the fight he was almost certain would come. Girls always had each other's backs and even if he had been unsure that Maria had heard Isabel's normal speaking voice on the other side of the line, he was certain that Isabel's yelling voice hadn't gone undetected. And there was no way Maria was siding with Michael on this.

"Don't start," Michael sighed, looking up at the ceiling.

"Michael," Maria said softly, beckoning his attention. When she had it, she continued, "This obviously doesn't concern me-"

"Right," Michael concurred and watched Maria's eyes narrow in mild annoyance at being interrupted.

"But… even though I trust your instincts implicitly, you should really try and treat your sister better."

"She's not my sister," Michael mumbled stubbornly.

Maria gave him a look spelling Really? Are you really going down that road?

"I know," Michael agreed, kissing the top of her head. "I know. I'm an ass-"

"Michael, no," Maria said gently, scooting up his naked body, ignoring the shivers that raced through her own at the friction, and lined up her face with his. "You're not an ass. You're just stubborn as hell."

"I'm trying to protect her," Michael said defensively.

Maria captured his lower lip between her teeth and gently tugged on it, before answering, noting his eyes turn darker, "I know. But try and be a bit more smooth about it."

"This Theresa- Tess Harding. She's not a nice person," Michael objected. "What I really wanted to do was to forbid Isabel from ever talking to her again. Not doing that was me being a nice guy."

Maria laughed lightly. "You big lovable idiot."

If it hadn't been for the pure love in her voice, he might have been insulted. Instead he kissed the lips that were now very close to his. "I love you."

His sincere tone cooled her laughter. "I love you too."

Catching her lips with his, he used his arms to pull her up the full length of his body, positioned so that she was straddling his waist. Her hair flowed down around her face, the ends tickling his chest as she looked down at him.

"Can we stop talking about Isabel now?" Michael asked.

"Sure," Maria smiled and leaned down to start a trail of kisses down the center of his chest.

"Thank you," Michael murmured.