by Cynthia Hand
“When he touched me I could feel him thinking about you. Well, first he was thinking about me. But after you showed up, he was completely distracted by you. I saw you, in his mind. You looked different. You had short brown hair and”—I stop myself from mentioning the cigarette—“a lot of lipstick. He’s definitely obsessed with you and your lipstick.”
Her hand rises like she wants to touch her neck where, if she was a normal person, there might still be bruises from Samjeeza choking her. “Lucky me,” she says.
I shudder, remembering the feeling of his cold hands moving underneath my shirt.
“If you hadn’t shown up when you did, he would have . . .” I can’t finish the sentence.
She frowns. “Rape is not a Black Wing’s style. They prefer seduction. They want to win you over to their side.”
“What about Angela’s mom?” I point out. “She was raped.”
“Yes, so she says.”
“You think that’s not true?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”
“Well, I think Samjeeza was planning on it with me,” I tell her. “He didn’t exactly try to charm me.”
“He was behaving strangely that day,” she says. “The way he talked, all melodrama and clichés, like he was playing a part. It wasn’t like him. It was as if he was trying to prove something.”
“But nobody was watching him but us.”
“Somebody was,” she says cryptically. “Somebody always is.”
Oh. I guess she means God. Always watching. Gulp.
Her mouth twists into a pained line. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
“Me too.”
“Anyway,” she says like she’s relieved to be changing the subject, “I thought we could go into town for some ice cream, maybe do some shopping.”
“Can’t,” I tell her. “I’m supposed to go fishing with Tucker this afternoon.”
She tries to hide her disappointment. “Oh.”
“I’ve hardly had a chance to see him lately, because he got a job at Flat Creek Saddle Shop and he’s been working all these hours. . . .”
“No, I understand,” she says. “You should go be with him.”
I wonder if she cares about Tucker at all now. If she still disapproves.
“Maybe we can do something this weekend?”
“Sure,” she agrees. “I would love that.”
“Okay.”
Then there’s nothing to do but turn the key in the ignition, put the car in gear, and drive home.
There’s something magical about the way my head fits into the crook of Tucker’s neck. I lie there, breathe in his scent, which is a delightful mix of earth and hay and his own brand of man smell and aftershave, a touch of bug spray thrown in there, and for a minute all my worries evaporate. It’s just him and me, the lull of the water gently rocking the boat, particles of dust floating around in the warm air. I don’t know what heaven’s like, aside from the sense of brightness that Mom described for me once, but if I got to choose my heaven, this would be it. On the lake with Tucker. I’ll take the mosquitoes and everything.
“I so needed this,” I say, which comes out almost as a yawn.
I feel him smile against my hair. “Me too. Your hair smells like wind, did you know that?”
Yep, me and Tucker, smelling each other.
I tip my head up to kiss him. It starts out as something sweet, slow and lazy as the afternoon sun, but it heats up fast. We pull apart for a second and our breath mingles, and I twist around so I am practically lying on top of him, our legs tangling. He reaches up to take my head in his hand and kisses me again, then does this half groan, half laugh that drives me crazy and drops his hand down to my hip and tugs me closer. I slide my fingers under the collar of his shirt, along the solid breadth of his chest, where I can feel the hammering of his heart. I love him, I think. In that moment I know, if I tried, I would be capable of glory.
He breaks away.
“Okay,” he gasps.
“You still think you’ll get struck by lightning if we . . . you know?” I tease, arching an eyebrow at him and pinning him with my most seductive (I think) look.
He gives me a kind of tortured, bemused smile. “When I was a kid my mom used to tell me that if I had sex before I was married, my . . . junk would turn black and fall off.”
That gets a startled laugh out of me. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, and I believed her, too.”
“So you’re not going to have sex before you’re married? What if you don’t get married until you’re thirty?”
He sighs. “I don’t know. I just love you. I don’t want to mess anything up.”
This doesn’t make sense to me, but I nod. “So we’ll be good.”
“Right.”
“Because you’re scared.”
“Hey!”
“Okay,” I say with a sigh. “Even though that’s not much fun.”
He startles me by flipping me over, pressing me gently back into the blanket at the bottom of the boat. “You don’t think this is fun?” he challenges, and then he kisses me until my insides turn to mush and my head goes all fuzzy.
Much, much later, we actually attempt to fish. I find that I still suck at it. And I still like that I suck at it. And Tucker is still some kind of fish whisperer.
“There now,” he says softly as he carefully removes the hook from the lip of a gleaming cutthroat trout. “You be smarter next time.”
He lowers it back into the water, where it darts away in a flash of green and silver. He looks up at me and grins wickedly. “Want to make out with me now?” he asks, holding up his fish-slimed hands.
“Um, tempting, but no,” I answer quickly. “I think we better be good, don’t you think?”
“That’s really funny,” he says, then starts re-tying his fishing line, “. . . so-ho-ho-ho funny.” A cloud moves over the sun, and suddenly it’s colder. Quieter. Even the birds stop singing. A shiver passes through me.
“Want my shirt?” Tucker asks, always the gentleman.
“I’m okay. I’m working on becoming immune to cold.”
He laughs. “Good luck with that. We probably won’t get any more days like this, warm enough to fish out here.” He threads some bait onto his line and casts again. Almost immediately he has a bite. The same fish.
“You deserve to be on a dinner plate,” he tells the cutthroat, but releases him again anyway. “Go! Find your destiny. Stay away from the shiny hook-type things.”
This reminds me, for some crazy reason, of my talk with the school counselor.
“So, all this work you’re doing lately—” I start.
“Don’t remind me.”
“It’s to buy a new horse?”
“And a new truck, eventually, and by new I mean used, and by used I mean probably on its last legs, since that’s all I’ll be able to swing.”
“You’re not saving for college?” I ask.
Bad question. His eyes stay focused on his fishing pole, which he quickly unties and disassembles. “Nope,” he says with forced lightness. “After I graduate, I’ll stay on the ranch. Dad hurt his knee this spring, and we can’t afford to hire more help, so I thought I’d stick around.”
“Oh,” is all I can think to say to that. “Did you have to go visit Ms. Baxter?”
“Yeah,” he says with a scoff. “She got me set up for some talks with Northern Arizona University next week. I guess I’ll probably go off to school in a year or two, because that’s what’s expected of me.”
“What would you study? In college, if you go?”
“Agriculture, probably. Maybe forestry,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Forestry?”
“To be a ranger.”
I picture him in the green ranger uniform, wearing one of those hats like Smokey the Bear. Which is totally hot.
“Hey, it’s getting late. Ready to go in?” he asks.
“Sure.” I reel in my line and stick my p
ole with Tucker’s at the bottom of the boat. He starts the motor, and in a few minutes we’re gliding over the water toward the dock. Neither of us says anything, but he suddenly sighs. He slows the boat to a crawl, then stops us. We’re right in the middle of the lake, the motor idling, the sun sinking behind the mountains.
“I don’t want to leave,” he says after a minute.
I look up at him, startled. “You don’t want to leave?”
He gestures around, at the towering blue mountains behind us, the gray heron skimming the water, the glimmers of the sinking sun on the lake. “This is it for me. This is what I want.”
I realize that he’s not talking about today, the lake, this moment. He’s talking about his future.
“I might go to college, but I’m going to end up back here,” he says. “I’ll live and die here.”
He looks at me like he’s daring me to challenge him. Instead I scoot across the boat to him and circle my arms around his neck. “I get it,” I whisper.
He relaxes. “What about you? What do you want to do?”
“I don’t want to leave, either. I want to stay here. With you.”
That night as I’m drifting off to sleep, my cell phone rings. At first I ignore it, let it go to voice mail, because I want to get into my dream and figure out who’s dead. But then it rings again. And again. Whoever it is won’t take no for an answer. Which makes me think it’s—
“Okay, Ange, this better be good, because it’s late and—”
“It’s Stanford!” She laughs, a wild happy laugh that I’ve never heard from her before. “I’m going to Stanford, C. It was the trees—you were so brilliant to suggest I look at the trees.”
“Wow. Big league. That’s great, Ange.”
“I know, right? I mean, I was prepared for it to be anything, even if it was this dinky school that nobody’s ever heard of, because it’s my purpose and that’s more important, but Stanford’s like a school I’d kill to go to even without my purpose. So it’s perfect.”
“I’m happy for you.” At least I’m trying to be. I grew up near Stanford. It still feels like home.
“And there’s something else,” she says.
I brace myself for even more jolting news, like she already has a full-ride scholarship, or that a real-live angel, an Intangere, dropped off with a note for her, carefully detailing her purpose and everything she’s supposed to do at Stanford, a memo from heaven.
“Okay. What?” I ask when she doesn’t come out and tell me.
“I want you to go too.”
“Huh? When?”
“For college, silly. I’m going to Stanford, and I want you to be there with me.”
Three a.m. No possibility of sleep. I’ve been thrashing in my blankets all night, unable to quiet all the crazy thoughts bouncing around my head. My mother being friends with a fallen angel. College plans. Christian. Purposes that last a hundred years. A flood that kills all the angel-bloods on earth. Angela wanting me to go to Stanford with her. Tucker staying here, always and forever. Ms. Baxter all hopeful and sweet and completely annoying. And somebody dying, let’s not forget. Somebody. And I still have no clue who.
Finally I get up and go downstairs. I’m surprised to find Mom sitting at the kitchen counter with a shawl wrapped around her shoulders, her hands circling a cup of tea like she’s using it for warmth. She glances up and smiles.
“Insomniacs of the world unite,” she says. “Want some tea?”
“Sure.”
I find the pot on the counter and pour myself a cup, locate cream and sugar, then stand there absently stirring it for way too long, until Mom asks, “What’s up?”
“Nothing,” I answer. “The usual. Oh—and Angela’s going to Stanford.”
Her eyebrows lift. “Stanford. Impressive.”
“Well, she hasn’t even applied yet, but she thinks her purpose is going to happen there.”
“I see.”
“She wants me to go with her.” I laugh. “Like I could ever get into Stanford, right?”
“I don’t see why not,” she says with a frown. “You’re an excellent student.”
“Come on. It takes more than that, Mom. I know I have good grades, but for a school like that it takes . . . being president of the debate team or building houses for the homeless in Guatemala or acing my SATs. I hardly paid attention to my SATs. I haven’t done anything since I came to Wyoming.” I meet her eyes. “I was so obsessed with my purpose I hardly noticed anything else.”
She drinks her tea. Then she says, “Pity party over?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Good. Not good to wallow for too long. It’s bad for the complexion.”
I make a face at her.
“You do have one big advantage when it comes to Stanford,” she says.
“Oh yeah? What?”
“Your grandmother went there, and she happens to donate a large sum of money to the university every year.”
I stare at her. My grandmother. I don’t have a grandmother. Mom’s mother died in childbirth back in like 1890.
“You mean Dad’s mom?” I’ve never heard anything about Dad’s mom. Neither of my parents have ever said much about their families.
“No,” Mom says with a small, knowing smile. “I mean me. In 1967 I graduated from Stanford with a degree in history. My name back then was Margot Whitfield. That, according to the official records, anyway, is your grandmother.”
“Margot Whitfield,” I repeat.
“That’s me.”
I shake my head incredulously. “You know, sometimes I feel like I don’t know you at all.”
“You don’t,” she admits easily, which catches me off guard. “When you’ve been around as long as I have, you’ve lived several different lives, and each one of them is, in some ways, like a different person. A different version of yourself. Margot Whitfield is a stranger to you.”
My thoughts shoot straight to Samjeeza and the way he calls my mom Meg, the image of her he carries around in his head, this smirking girl with cropped brown hair. Definitely a stranger.
“So what was she like, this Margot Whitfield?” I ask. “Nice name, by the way. Margot.”
“She was a free spirit,” Mom says. “A bit of a hippie, I’m afraid.”
My brain instantly conjures an image of my mom in one of those flowy polyester dresses with the tiny sunglasses and daisies in her hair, swaying to the music at Woodstock, protesting the war.
“So did you do a lot of drugs?”
“No,” she says a bit defensively. “I had my rebellious stage, Clara. But it definitely wasn’t the sixties. More like the twenties.”
“Then why were you a hippie, if you weren’t rebelling?”
She hesitates. “I had a hard time with the conformity of the fifties.”
“What was your name in the fifties?”
“Marge,” she says with a laugh. “But I was never the fifties-housewife type.”
“Because you weren’t married.”
“Right.” She’d told me this. Early on I’d been nervous that maybe, given her age, she’d already been married a few times and had lots of kids out there, but she assured me this wasn’t the case.
“Did you ever almost get married?” Now this, I’ve never asked her. But she’s been pretty forthcoming recently, so I try my luck.
She closes her eyes for a minute, takes a deep breath. “Yes.”
“When?”
She looks at me. “In the fifties. Now back to Margot Whitfield, please.”
I nod. “So you’re a Stanford alum. How many times have you been to college, anyway?”
“Let’s see,” she says, obviously relieved to be off the fifties and back to a time she’s comfortable with. “Four. I studied nursing, history, international relations, and computer programming.”
I let that sink in for a minute. “International relations?”
“I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
“Don’t tell
me you were a spy?”
She smiles blandly.
“So that’s why you keep telling me to relax about the college thing. I don’t have to pick a single career. When you’re going to live hundreds of years, you have time to be everything that interests you.”
“When you live a long life,” she says, “you can do a lot of things. You have time. But if you want to go to Stanford with Angela, I think that might be great fun.”
“I’ll think about it,” I say. But if I go with Angela, Tucker and I are going to be separated. We’re going to have to do the long-distance thing, and that does not sound like great fun to me.
I crawl back to bed around four, completely exhausted by this point, hoping to grab a couple hours of sleep before tomorrow begins. But I’m instantly sucked into the cemetery dream, which is not at all restful. For a few seconds I fight it, completely disoriented, stumbling as I make my way up the hill. I try to slow my breathing, remind myself that I actually want to be here, try to calm the immediate desperation and panic I feel to figure out who is going to die. Look around, I tell myself. See who’s not here. Who should be here, and isn’t.
I spot Jeffrey, same as usual. I say his name. He doesn’t look at me, says, Let’s get this over with, like he does every time. I want to ask him, Who is it? But my lips won’t form the words. I am locked into what future-Clara is doing at this moment, which is walking, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other, and wishing she could cry. If I could just flipping cry, she thinks—I think—then maybe the ache wouldn’t be so bad.
All I can do is stay along for the ride and observe. Now that I know this is a cemetery, that this is a funeral procession, it seems so obvious. Everybody’s wearing dark clothes. I notice gravestones scattered around under the trees. I try to pay attention to more than the grief raging in my head.
It’s spring, I quickly figure out. The leaves on the trees, the grass, are new green. The air has that fresh-washed smell that comes after a spring rain, where you can still detect a hint of snow. There are the beginnings of wildflowers on the hillside.
It’s going to happen in the spring.
I can clearly make out Angela walking way off to the side, wearing a long violet dress. There’s Mr. Phibbs, my English teacher. Come to think of it, I recognize several people from school, maybe because school is the only place in Jackson where I know anybody. I see Mrs. Lowell, the school secretary, and her redheaded daughter, Allison. Kimber Lane, Jeffrey’s girlfriend. Ava Peters. Wendy, walking next to her parents, clutching a white rose to her chest. I see a flash of her face, which is paler than usual, her blue eyes all red and puffy. She doesn’t have a problem crying.
