“Ugh! What does that even mean?”
“Well, Michael was telling him about redemption, about how good is going to triumph over evil in the end, all that stuff.”
“So now he’s okay with it? He’s going to get thrown out of Eden but everything’s great because someday, thousands of years after he dies, the side of good is going to win out?”
“Clara, I think you’re taking this a tad too seriously. It’s only a poem. It’s art. It’s supposed to make you think, is all.”
“Well, right now it’s making me think that my physics homework looks really super fun and I should get to it.” I close the offending book and slide it away from me.
“But Mr. Phibbs said you had to turn in that rewrite tomorrow. No more dragging your feet, he said.”
“Yep, and I’m probably going to get a D on that paper too, whether I study or not. I swear, he’s trying to torture me.”
Wendy looks concerned. “It will probably be on the AP test.”
I sigh. “I don’t want to think about the AP test. Or college. Or my stupendously bright future. I want to live in the now, I’ve decided.”
She closes her book and looks at me with this ultra let’s-be-serious expression.
“You should be excited, Clara. You applied to all these awesome schools. You have a great chance at getting in to at least one of them. Not everybody has that.”
She’s nervous. Our acceptance letters should be coming this week. She’s already gone to the post office like three times since Monday.
“Okay, okay, color me excited,” I say to placate her. “Woo-hoo! So. Excited.”
She gets out her chemistry book, apparently done talking. I open up my physics book. We study. Suddenly she sighs.
“It’s just . . . Tucker’s the same way,” she says. “My parents kept trying to talk him into college, but he wasn’t even a little bit interested. He didn’t apply to a single school. Not even University of Wyoming, as a backup.”
“He wants to stay here,” I say.
“Do you?” Wendy asks.
“Do I what?”
“Do you want to stay here? Because Tucker does? Because I think that’s romantic and everything, Clara, but don’t—” She stops, tugs at the end of her braid in an agitated way, trying to decide if she’s going to go ahead and say this to me. “Don’t give up your life for a guy,” she says then firmly. “Not even a great guy. Not even Tucker.”
I don’t know what to say. “Wendy—”
“I’m going to break up with Jason,” she adds. “And I like him. A lot. But when it’s time to leave for school, I’ll have to cut him loose.”
“He’s not a fish, Wen,” I point out. “What if Jason doesn’t want to be cut loose? What if he wants to try the long-distance thing?”
She shakes her head. “He’ll be in Boston, or New York, or one of those fancy schools he applied to. I’ll be in Washington, hopefully. It wouldn’t work. But that’s being a grown-up. You have to think about the future.”
I want to remind her that we’re not grown-ups yet, we’re only seventeen. We shouldn’t have to think about the future. Besides, my future, the one I see almost every night when I close my eyes, is a cemetery. An incredible, staggering loss. What happens after that, my life after that day, is like a videotape that’s been deleted: gray and static. Yes, I will probably go to college. I might make new friends, go to parties, and end up thinking that life is okay. But right now I’m trapped inside a single sunny day on a hillside.
“Are you okay?” Wendy asks. “I’m sorry. I don’t have the right to lecture you. I know you’re having a hard time, what with your mom and everything.”
“It’s okay,” I try to reassure her, shake the bad feelings off, ignore the pity I’m starting to feel from her.
“Hey, I have an idea,” I say to change the subject. “Let’s go check the post office.”
“It’s different than what I thought it would be,” Wendy says as we walk along the boardwalk in downtown Jackson.
I hold the door open for her as we duck into the post office. “What is?”
“You and Tucker. I thought you were so perfect for each other, you’d balance each other out, your yin to his yang, something like that, and I thought he’d be so happy all the time, but—” She chews on her bottom lip for a minute. “Sometimes you’re so intense, so focused on each other that you don’t even seem to notice anything else. Like, um, me.”
“Sorry, Wendy,” I say. “You’re still my bestie, you know that, right?”
“Darn straight,” she says. “But boyfriend trumps best friend, is all I’m saying. Although I guess I’m guilty of that too.”
She’s right. I haven’t seen nearly as much of Wendy this year, partially because, when I have free time, I tend to spend it with Tucker or at Angel Club and partially because Wendy is with Jason a lot. That’s to be expected, like she said; when a girl gets a boyfriend she doesn’t spend as much time with her girlfriends. I always thought that was dumb, but that didn’t stop us from doing it when it happened. I also hang out less with Wendy because there’s a lot that she doesn’t know now, that she can’t know, and I’d rather stay away than constantly lie to her. Last year I could pretend, at least most of the time, that I was normal. This year I can’t.
We separate to check our mailboxes. In ours is the usual junk, bills, grocery store ads, but then, at the bottom, a fat envelope. I swallow hard. Stanford University.
Wendy appears by my side, her face white under her tan, blue eyes wide. She holds up an envelope. WSU. This is it. Her dream school. Her future. Her life. She tries to smile but it comes out as more of a wince. Her eyes drop to the envelope in my hand, and she gasps.
“Should we . . . wait until we get home?” she asks, her voice almost a squeak.
“No. Definitely not. Let’s open them. Get it over with.”
She doesn’t have to be told twice. She tears right into her envelope, takes one look at the top page, then presses her hand over her mouth. “Oh,” she says.
“What? What? You got in, right?”
There’s a shimmer of tears in her eyes. “There is a God,” she says. “I got in!”
We hug and jump around and squeal like little girls for a few minutes, then settle down.
“Now you,” she says.
I open it carefully. Pull the papers out. A brochure for the on-campus housing drops out, floats down to the floor. Wendy and I stare at it.
“Clara,” she breathes. “You got in too.”
I read the first line of the first page—Dear Clara, we are pleased to inform you—then try to work up a smile that matches Wendy’s, although what’s moving through my head in this moment is something different than excitement, something different from elation or happiness, like a combination of incredulity and dread. But this is a good thing, I tell myself. I could go home to California. I could actually attend Stanford University, and study anything I want, and build a new life for myself.
“I got in,” I whisper in disbelief.
Wendy’s arm comes around my shoulders. “This is amazing,” she says. “And trust me. Tucker’s going to be so happy for you.”
“So that’s it,” Angela says matter-of-factly later when I show up for Angel Club. “You’re going.”
“Not necessarily.” I’m back to my usual position on the stage at the Pink Garter, back to glory practice, because that’s all I can think to do in the dreamy sort of daze I’ve been in since this afternoon.
Angela puts down her pen and gives me her best you-absolute-moron stare. “Clara Gardner. You got accepted to Stanford. You got a scholarship, even. Don’t tell me you’re not going.”
The money thing is the new bone of contention with her. Here I am, Miss Moneybags, Mom’s been loaded since the Second World War, investing in things like, say computers back when one computer took up an entire room, and I get a scholarship. Not a huge one, granted, and one that’s alumni-related, because of my “grandmother,” but more tha
n I need, all the same. And Angela (of course she was accepted) is going to have to scrimp and save and stretch and take loans to make tuition. She got scholarships too, because she’s like, Super Student, but not a full ride.
I should feel guilty about my indecision, but I don’t. I don’t have room for fresh guilt in the massive clutter of conflicting emotions in my head. What I’m turning over, what’s been on my mind ever since earlier in the post office when I saw the Stanford logo on the envelope, is that I don’t have to go. I’m formulating a different plan. A new and improved plan. A great one.
“Maybe I won’t go to college this year,” I say as casually as I can manage. “I might take a year or two off.”
“To do what?” she sputters.
“I’d stay here. Then I’d get to stick around while Jeffrey finishes high school. I’d get a job.”
“What, like working in a gift shop? Selling fudge on the boardwalk? Waitressing?”
“Sure, why not?”
“You’re an angel-blood, that’s why not. You’re supposed to be doing something special with your life.”
I shrug. There are other angel-bloods in Jackson, and they work regular jobs. Besides, I like this plan. It feels right. I can stay here in Jackson. I can make sure Jeffrey’s okay. It’s a good plan, one where I don’t have to leave my house or my family (or at least, what will be left of it, after Mom goes), and I can build myself a nice, normal life.
Angela shakes her head, gold eyes narrowing. “This is about Tucker.”
“No.” I glare at her. But I confess that part did cross my mind.
“Oh my God, you’re going to throw Stanford away so you can stay with Tucker,” Angela says in disgust.
“Lay off, Angela,” Christian says suddenly. He’s been in his usual spot at one of the far tables, doing his homework while this whole conversation was going on. “It’s Clara’s life. She can do what she wants.”
“Yeah, what he said.” I shoot Christian a grateful smile. “Anyway,” I say to Angela, “you only want me to go to Stanford so you won’t have to be out there by yourself and face your purpose alone.”
She looks down, smoothes the tablecloth like she’s taking a momentary rest before she’s going to jump up and punch me in the nose. I brace myself.
“Okay, so maybe that’s true,” she admits then, which surprises me. “You’re my best friend, Clara, and you’re right. I don’t want to go alone.”
“Ange, I’m sure you’ll be fine. You’re the most advanced, most knowledgeable, most capable angel-blood the world has seen in a thousand years. If anyone is going to totally kick butt at fulfilling her purpose, it’s you.”
“I know,” she says, with a pleased smile. “It’s not that. It’s . . .” She pauses, looks up at me with serious catlike eyes. “I know you go to Stanford, C. Because I’ve seen you there.”
“What?”
“In my vision. I’ve seen you.”
I spend the next fifteen minutes standing on the stage, trying to concentrate on bringing the glory, trying to ground myself, but all I can think about is how unfair it is that my future keeps getting plotted out for me. First by my own visions. Now by Angela’s.
“Okay, I can’t take it anymore,” Christian says (again suddenly, since he’s never much of a talker at Angel Club), slamming his textbook closed. I open my eyes.
“Huh?”
“I can’t stand to watch you, like, fake meditate like that.” He jogs up the steps onto the stage and crosses swiftly toward me. “Let me help you.”
My heartbeat picks up. “What, you know how to call the glory?”
“See, that’s exactly what you’ve got wrong. You think it’s like calling something, like glory is out here”—he gestures into the empty black space around us—“instead of in here.” He lays a hand on his chest, takes a deep breath. “It’s inside you, Clara. It’s part of you, and it will come out naturally if you stop standing in your own way.”
I’m embarrassed but intrigued. “You can do it?”
He shrugs. “I’ve been learning.”
He holds out his hand. I stare at it, his fingers extended, beckoning, and I instantly flash back to my vision, the moment when we take hands under the trees as the fire roars down the mountain. Then I remember my dream, where holding his hand is what brings me back to myself when I think I’m going to float away on a cloud of misery. I put my hand in his.
Heat zings through me. He holds my hand carefully but casually, not squeezing or stroking his thumb over my knuckles the way he did in my forest-fire vision, that move that used to drive me crazy thinking about what it might mean.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks.
Blood rushes to my face. “What?”
“When you try for glory, what do you think about?”
“Oh. Well . . .” Most of the time I try to think about Tucker, about how I love him, which only really worked for me that one time in the forest, but it worked then, when it really counted. “I . . . I think about times when I was happy.”
“Okay, forget that.” He grabs my other hand, turns me so we’re standing facing each other in the middle of the stage, palm to palm. I see Angela lean forward to watch us, her head resting in one hand, the other poised to write in her notebook.
“Don’t look at her,” Christian says. “Don’t think about her, or the past, or anything else.”
“All right . . .”
“Just be here,” he says softly. His eyes are gorgeous under the stage lights, amber flecks shooting out sparks. “Be in the present.”
Let go of everything else, he urges in my mind. Just be here. With me.
I stare at him, allow myself to focus on his face in a way I typically avoid, tracing the angles of his cheekbones, the lines of his mouth, the sweep of his dark eyelashes and the curve of his brow, the shape of the shoulders that I memorized so long ago. I don’t think. I let myself look at him. Then the heat from our joined hands moves up my body, settles into my chest as I let myself fall into his eyes.
I feel what he feels. Certainty, always so much certainty with Christian, no matter what he said about the absence-of-certainty thing before. He knows himself. He knows what he wants. I see myself from his point of view, understand my beauty through his eyes, my hair a messy golden halo around my face, the contrast of pale skin and pink lips and cheeks so striking, the stormy luminous eyes that right now seem blue, like a deep pool of blue you could slip into. It’s like he’s laughing inside, so pleased with himself, because I am glowing, the light in me pushing through, we’re glowing together, light breaking at where our hands come together, his own hair starting to shine now, a radiance rising around us.
He wants to tell me something. He wants to open himself up completely, let me see everything, let me know everything about him, rules be damned. . . . Suddenly we’re walking together in the cemetery, the sun warm on our backs, and he’s holding my hand, leading me. I feel so strong in this moment, strong and alive and full of energy.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God!” screams a voice.
Christian and I spring back from each other. The light around us dissipates. For a moment I’m completely blinded in the sudden transition from light to dark, but as my eyes adjust, I see Angela’s mom standing in the aisle staring at us. She brings a hand up to her mouth, her face ashen. Angela jumps up and goes to her, barely getting to her in time to catch her as she falls to her knees.
“Mom, it’s okay,” Angela says, tugging her back to her feet. “They were just trying something.”
“None of that in here,” Anna whispers, her dark eyes boring into me with such intensity it makes me avoid looking at her. “None of that in here, I told you.”
“We won’t. I promise. You need to go upstairs and lie down,” Angela says.
Anna nods, and Angela puts an arm around her shoulders and practically drags her out of the theater. We listen to their footsteps on the stairs leading to their apartment, Anna still talking, Angela trying to sooth
e her. The creak of the door. Then silence.
Christian and I glance at each other, then away.
“Well, it worked,” I say, just to say something. “We did it.”
“Yes, we did,” Christian says. He wipes at the sheen of sweat on his forehead.
“You were going to tell me something,” I say.
He frowns. “Now who’s reading minds?”
“It was my empathy. I could feel what you felt. You wanted to tell me something.”
This totally freaks him out, for some reason. He jumps down to the floor, goes to the table where he left his homework, and starts to gather it up. I follow him and put my hand on his shoulder. He stiffens. I feel like I should apologize for something, for reading him the way I did, or for bringing it up when Angela is so close and might hear.
“Christian, I . . .”
Angela bursts back into the room, her face wild with excitement.
“Holy awesome! I can’t believe how bright it was, I mean, wow. Did you see my mom? She, like, dropped. Her face was all pasty. I’ve never seen her like that. She’s okay now, though. I gave her some water, and she just, like, shook it off. She’s fine.”
“Glory terrifies humans,” I remind her, trying to remain serious, but it’s hard not to get swept up by her enthusiasm. It was awesome. And it’s like the magic’s still in the air, floating around with the motes of dust and absorbed by the velvet curtains. I don’t want to let it go.
“Yeah, I think we’ve learned that’s true, haven’t we? Let’s do it again. Try it with me, this time,” Angela insists to Christian.
“I don’t think I could.”
“Come on, I want to learn. Pretty please!” she begs.
He drops his head, sighs, giving in. “All right. We can try.”
This ought to be good. I sit in Angela’s chair as the two of them march back up to the stage, take hands, concentrate.
“Be in the present,” Christian says again. “That’s the key. Not the present, like what you’re thinking about now, but apart from your thoughts. This is going to be hard for you, because you overthink everything. Just remember that you are not your thoughts.”