by Cynthia Hand
Joke’s on me, I guess.
But Christian and I were kind of assigned to each other. He’s not interested in me because of my devastating good looks or my winning personality. He wants me because he’s been told to want me. I feel things for him because he’s like this big mystery to me, and because I’ve been told to want him, and not by just my mother but by the higher powers, the people upstairs, the Big Guy. Plus Christian’s hot, and he always seems to know the right thing to say and he gets me.
Joke’s really on me.
And why—this is what I can’t understand—do the people upstairs care about who I love when I’m seventeen years old? Tucker is my choice. My heart, making its own decisions.
I suddenly feel the urge to cry, the biggest surge of sorrow I’ve felt in a long time, and I think, God, will you just leave me alone?
“Everybody okay?” Wendy says, nervously, from the backseat.
“Peachy,” I say.
And then Tucker says, “What’s that?”
I stomp on the brakes and we screech to a stop.
Someone’s standing in the middle of the road. Waiting for us, it seems. A tall man wearing a long leather coat. A man with coal-black hair. Even from fifty yards away, I know who is it. I can feel it.
Not my sorrow, then.
Samjeeza’s.
We’re toast.
“Clara, who is that?” Tucker asks.
“Bad news,” I mutter. “Everybody buckled in?”
I don’t wait for an answer. I don’t know what to do, so I go with my gut. I slowly take my foot off the brake, and move it to the gas. Then I floor it.
We pick up speed fast, but at the same time we are in slow motion, creeping along in some alternate time as I clutch the steering wheel and focus on Samjeeza. This car, I figure, is my only weapon. Maybe if I knock him into next week with it, we’ll be able to get away, somehow. It’s our only chance.
Tucker starts to yell and clutch at the seat. My head gets cloudy with sorrow, but I push through. The beam from the headlights falls on the angel in the road, his eyes glowing like an animal’s catching the light, and in that last crazy moment, as the car bears down on him, I think I see him smile.
For a second everything is black. There’s white dust floating around my head, from the air bags, I think. Beside me, Tucker suddenly comes to, inhales deeply. I can’t see him too well in the dark, but there’s a bright silver web of cracked glass on the passenger window. He groans.
“Tucker?” I whisper.
He lifts a shaky hand to his head, touches it gingerly, then looks at his fingers. His blood looks like spilled ink against the sudden whiteness of his skin. He moves his jaw back and forth, like someone punched him.
“Tucker?” I hear the note of panic in my voice, almost like a sob.
“What the heck were you thinking?”
“I’m sorry, Tuck. I—”
“Man, those air bags really hit you, don’t they?” he says. “How about you? You hurt?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Wendy?” he calls.
I crane my head around so I can look toward the backseat, but all I can see from this angle is a bit of her long hair in front of her face. Tucker starts wrenching on the door, trying to get out, to go to her, but it’s partly crushed and refuses to open. I try my door—same problem. I close my eyes, try to clear my head of the fuzzy cobwebs that are collected there.
Do this, I tell myself.
I grasp the door handle firmly and pull it, then press my shoulder into the door and push as hard as I can. There’s a pop, then metal shrieking, giving way, and suddenly the door comes completely off its hinges. It falls to the ground. I unbuckle my seat belt and slide out, hurry to the other side of the car, pull the door smoothly off for Tucker, throw it into the weeds at the side of the road. He stares up at me for a second, his mouth slightly open. He’s never seen me do anything like that before.
I’ve never seen me do anything like that before either.
I hold out my hand. He grabs it, and I pull him out of the car. He moves straight back to Wendy’s door, which opens easily. He tries to pull her out, but something’s keeping her there.
“Her seat belt,” I say.
He curses, still dazed, and fumbles around for the latch, then lifts her out. She doesn’t make a sound as he carries her to the side of the road, lays her gently on the gravel at the shoulder. He takes off his tuxedo jacket and slips it beneath her head and back.
“Wake up, Wendy,” he orders her, but nothing happens. I kneel down next to him and watch the rise and fall of her chest. I listen for the beating of her heart, slow and steady, the most welcome sound in the world.
“She’s breathing,” I tell Tucker. “Her pulse is strong.”
He bows his head in relief. “We have to call 9-1-1. Right now. Where’s your phone?”
Back to the car I go. It’s totaled, the whole front end completely mangled like I hit a telephone pole at eighty. No sign of the angel. Maybe he poofed himself back to hell. I go back to the driver’s side and start digging around in the mess for the small black clutch with my phone in it. I can’t find it anywhere. This feels so surreal, like it’s not even really happening, a bad dream.
“I don’t know where it is,” I cry. “I know I had it when we left.”
“Clara,” Tucker says slowly.
“Just give me a minute. I know it’s here.”
“Clara,” he says again.
Something in his voice stops me. It sounds like it did that day in the mountains when we hiked to see the sunrise, when the grizzly bear came out of the brush. Don’t run, Tucker had said, exactly that way. I move like molasses back out of the car, straighten up, look toward his voice, and freeze.
Samjeeza is standing next to Tucker. There’s not a scratch on him. My car looks like it’s been through a compactor, but here he is, smiling slightly, his posture all casual, like he and Tucker are merely hanging out at the side of the road. He’s holding my cell phone.
“Hello, little bird,” he says. “Good to see you again.”
That name sends a jolt of fear and revulsion straight to the pit of my stomach. My entire body starts to tremble.
“You hit me with your car,” he observes. “Is this your boyfriend?”
He turns to Tucker as if he wants to shake his hand, but Tucker looks away, at the ground, at the car, anywhere but into the angel’s burning amber eyes. His hands clench into fists.
Samjeeza gives a short laugh. “He’s considering whether or not he should hit me. After you struck me with your car, he still thinks that maybe he should fight me.” He shakes his head. The motion has that strange blur to it, like there are really two of him, one laid on top of the other, a human body, and some other creature. I’d almost forgotten about that. “Humans,” he says with cheerful amusement.
I swallow so hard it hurts my throat. I refuse to look at Wendy lying there. I can’t look at Tucker, either; I can’t be afraid for him right now. I have to be strong. Find a way to get us all out of this. “What do you want?” I ask, fighting to keep my voice steady.
“An excellent question, one I’ve asked myself for a very long time. I was angry with you, little Quartarius, since you . . .” He turns his head and lifts his hair to show me his ear, which even in the dark looks misshapen. It’s growing back, I realize. I pulled it off last summer, when I had the glory in my hands, and all this time he’s been growing it back.
“I didn’t try to . . . ,” I say. “I didn’t mean . . .”
He waves his hand at me dismissively, turns back. “Of course you did. But it’s not worth getting upset over.”
“Why are you here?” I ask. “Let’s just skip to that part, okay? If you’re going to destroy me, do it already.”
“Oh no,” he says, like the idea offends him, like the last time I saw him he didn’t try to do exactly that. “I want to talk to you. I’ve been watching you, and you seem unhappy, my dear. Conflicted. I wondered if
I could help.”
“You don’t want to help me.”
“Oh, but I do,” he says. “I’ve found you very interesting, fascinating even, ever since I first came upon you. There’s something your mother’s hiding about you, I think.”
“She told me all about you,” I say.
His eyebrows lift. “All about me? Really. Well, that’s a good story, but not so relevant to you. What interests me more is what you’re expected to do. Your purpose. Your visions. Your dreams.”
“My purpose doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
He shakes his head. “Or is it something else?” I feel him prodding around in my brain. “She hasn’t told you,” he says, disappointed. “I would feel it on you if you knew.”
The dumb thing is, I’m curious. I want to know what he’s talking about, and of course he knows that, which is why he’s smiling, and now I’m playing right into his hands because I’m thinking about what he’s saying instead of how to get us away from him.
I can’t help it. “She hasn’t told me what?” I ask.
He holds out my phone. “Let’s ask her.”
Do something! I need to come up with a strategy, bring the glory, which feels impossible with the heavy cloak of his sorrow around me. The cobwebs in my head won’t go away, his sorrow clouding everything.
Think.
“Is this some kind of plan to take me hostage? Because I’m sure Mom will think that’s super romantic.”
His expression darkens. “Don’t make me do something I’ll regret,” he says, and steps closer to Tucker.
I meet Tucker’s eyes. He swallows, a jerk of his Adam’s apple. He’s scared. Samjeeza’s going to kill him, I think. This is why he’s not in the cemetery. It would be so easy for Samjeeza—it would only take a moment, a flick of his wrist. Why am I so stupid? Why didn’t I see this? All those months I spent trying to think of how to protect him, then dismissing it all when I found out about my mom, and now it comes to this.
I wish I could tell him I’m sorry to have drawn him into my insane life.
“Go on, call her,” Samjeeza says.
I nod, then walk toward him to take the phone, one step and then another. I try to block the sorrow as I suddenly reach that invisible radius around him, this bubble made of pain. Tears burn my eyes. I blink them back. Keep walking. Stand right in front of him and look him in the eye.
Samjeeza puts the phone in my hand.
I press the number two. It rings for a long time, so long I think it’s going to go to voice mail, but then I hear Mom’s voice.
“Clara?” I know by the sound of her voice that she knows something’s wrong.
“Mom . . .” For a moment I can’t make my throat work to form the words, the words that will bring her here to Samjeeza and who knows what kind of fate. “Samjeeza’s here.”
“Are you sure?” she asks.
I feel Samjeeza’s eyes on me, his presence in my head poking around, not pushing me, exactly, but trying to read me or listen in or something. “He’s standing right here.”
Silence on the other end. Then she asks, “Where are you?”
“I don’t know.” I glance around, disoriented. I can’t remember where we are, and all I see are dark fields, telephone poles stretching out into the distance.
“Coltman Road,” Tucker says under his breath.
I tell her. “I crashed the car,” I say, because some stupid part of my brain needs to confess just how much I’ve screwed up.
“Clara, listen to me now,” she whispers. She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “You know I can’t come to you.”
I did know that. Still, shock reverberates through me. I know she’s too weak to fly, too weak to even walk upstairs without getting winded, but in my heart, some tiny part of me believed she would come anyway, in spite of everything.
“What does she say?” asks Samjeeza, stepping close to me, his mouth almost against my ear. He’s excited. He thinks she’s going to rescue me, like last time. The idea pleases him so much, seeing my mother again, looking at her face, hearing her voice. He is practically dancing around with anticipation. He has a plan now, something that will redeem him with the others, a plan that will keep my mother with him forever. In hell.
Only she’s not coming.
I think now is the part where we’re officially screwed.
“What does she say?” Samjeeza asks again, his mind pressing down on mine, trying to find the information himself. I push back against him and find it surprisingly easy this time to keep him out of my thoughts. I’m stronger, mentally, than last time. I can force him out. Which is good, considering that now I have to lie.
“She’s on her way.”
“Be brave, my darling,” Mom says to me then. “Remember what I said about fighting him with your heart and your mind. You’re stronger than you think. I love you.”
“Okay.” I hang up the phone. Samjeeza holds out his hand, and I try to contain my trembling as I put the phone back into it.
“Now we wait,” he says. He nods like a nervous schoolboy, smiles. “I’ve never been very good at waiting.”
Panic rises like a fluttering bird in my chest, but I squash it back down.
Stall for time, I think. Figure out a way to get him away from Tucker and Wendy so you can bring the glory.
“We need to call an ambulance for my friend.” I gesture to Wendy, laid out at Tucker’s feet like a rag doll in a black velvet dress. My dress. My responsibility.
Samjeeza glances down at my phone, closes his fingers around it possessively. “I don’t think so.”
I swallow. “She’s hurt. She needs help. It won’t matter to you, anyway. We—or you and me and Mom, I mean—could be gone long before the paramedics arrive.”
“Please,” Tucker asks, and there’s no mistaking the genuine plea in his voice. “She’s my sister. She could be dying. Please, sir.”
Maybe it’s the “sir” that gets him. The sorrow around me pulses, and in it I feel a glimmer of something human, compassion maybe. Something conflicted. He glances down at my phone again, opens it. His eyes scan over the buttons, but he doesn’t seem to know which one to push. He doesn’t know how to use a cell phone, I realize.
“I’ll do it,” I tell him. “You can watch me. I’ll only dial 9-1-1. If I do anything else, you can crush me or whatever it is that you do.”
He smiles. “But if I crush you I won’t get what I came here for, will I? How about this? You call, and if you try any funny business, I’ll crush him.”
He cocks his head to indicate Tucker. A cold ripple of fear washes over me. “Okay,” I whisper.
“Make it quick,” he says.
He hands me the phone. I dial, hold it to my ear with a shaky hand.
“9-1-1, what is your emergency?” a woman answers.
“There’s been—” I clear my throat and start again. “There’s been a car accident on Coltman Road. Please send an ambulance.”
She asks for my name. I can’t tell her that, because then, when the paramedics arrive, they’ll expect to find me here, and I won’t be here. But maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe I’ll be too dead to care by then. “I, uh— I’m—” I stammer.
Samjeeza holds out his hand. I’ve done what I said I would do. I called. I give the phone back to him. The operator’s still talking, asking questions, wanting to know the extent of the injuries.
“Hello,” Samjeeza says, his voice solemn, but there’s something else in his eyes.
“Hello?” I hear the lady say faintly. “Who is this?”
“I’ve just come upon the scene. Terrible, terrible accident. I’m afraid the girl’s unconscious now. And a young man. They look like they’re dressed for a dance. Please hurry. They’re both badly injured.”
He closes the phone.
Both badly injured.
“But my mom—”
“She isn’t coming,” he says, his eyes so knowing. He sounds truly disappointed. “I’ll just have to be sati
sfied with you.”
He starts to turn toward Tucker.
I look into Tucker’s face, his stormy blue eyes comprehending what Samjeeza means to do. Accepting it. Bracing for it.
Time grinds to a halt.
I have to bring the glory. This is the moment I’ve been practicing all year for. Now.
I look at Tucker but I don’t feel anything but my heart beating, so slowly it’s like a low thump every five seconds, and I can feel the blood it’s pumping through my body, to my lungs, in and out, filling me with strength, with life, and then with a sense of myself and something more than just my body. Something more than human. My spirit. My soul.
Light explodes around me. I turn toward Samjeeza and at the same moment, slowed down twenty times, it seems, he looks at my face and knows what I’m up to. He flares with rage, but doesn’t have time to act on it. He moves with unearthly speed away, out of reach of the glory.
I take a deep breath, let it out slow, feeling the light tingling at my fingertips, shining out of my body, my hair gleaming with it, my chest filling with warmth. A feeling of calm settles over me. I turn again to Tucker. He lifts a hand to shield his eyes from my light. I take his other hand in mine. It feels cool, clammy, against my almost feverish skin. He flinches at my touch, then forces himself to relax, lowers his hand, squints at me like he’s trying really hard to look at the sun. Unshed tears in his eyes. And fear.
I reach up and put my finger against the cut on his head, watch as the light caresses him, the skin knitting itself back together, until there’s no trace of the wound.
“It’s okay,” I whisper.
A laugh pierces my tranquility. Samjeeza, a safe distance away, laughing.
“I keep underestimating you,” he says almost admiringly. “You are a tough little bird.”
“Go away.”
He laughs again. “I want to find out what happens next, don’t you?”
“Go. Away.”
“You can’t hold that forever, you know.”
He said something like that to my mom, that day in the woods. She brought the glory and he said, You can’t hold that forever, and she said, I can hold it long enough.
