01 Unearthly

by Cynthia Hand

  “I’m sorry,” he says earnestly. “I was dumb. I was stupid. I was an idiot.”

  I have to admit, he does look adorable standing there all moony-eyed telling me how stupid he is. Not fair.

  I sigh.

  “How long have you been sitting here?” I ask.

  “Not long,” he says. “Like three hours.” He points to the mug. “The free refills made it only seem like two.”

  I refuse to smile at his joke and push past him into the house, where my mom suddenly jumps up from the couch and heads for her office without a word. For that I’m grateful.

  “Come in,” I call to him, as it’s clear he’s not going to go away any time soon.

  He follows me into the kitchen.

  “Okay,” I say. “Here’s the deal. We will not discuss prom, ever, ever again.”

  His eyes flash with relief. I grab his mug and put it next to the sink. I take a moment to steady myself against the counter.

  “Let’s start over,” I say, my back to him.

  That’d be nice, I think, to start over. No visions, no expectations, no humiliation. Just boy meets girl. Him and me.

  “Okay.”

  “I’m Clara.” I turn to face him and hold out my hand.

  The corner of his mouth lifts in a suppressed smile. “I’m Christian,” he murmurs, taking my hand in his and squeezing it gently.

  “Nice to meet you, Christian,” I say like he’s a normal guy. Like when I close my eyes I don’t see him standing in the middle of a forest fire. Like him touching me right now doesn’t send a pang of yearning and recognition rippling through me.

  “Totally.”

  We go back out to the front porch. I make more tea and get a blanket for him and a blanket for me and we sit on the front step, looking at the diamond-studded sky.

  “Stars were never this bright in California,” he says.

  I was thinking the same thing.

  By the time my mom comes out of her office and politely (and ecstatically, I think) informs us that it’s late and it’s a school night and Christian had better get himself home, I know so much more about him. I know that he lives with his uncle, who owns the Bank of Jackson Hole and a couple of real estate offices in town. Where his parents are, he doesn’t really go into, although I get the distinct impression that they’re dead, and have been for a long time. He’s super attached to their housekeeper, Marta, who’s been around since he was ten years old. He loves Mexican food, and skiing of course, and playing the guitar.

  “Enough about me,” he says after a while. “Let’s talk about you. Why did you come here?” he asks.

  “Oh, uh—” I search my brain for my rehearsed answer. “My mom. She wanted to get out of California, move somewhere that’s not so crowded, get some fresh air. She thought it’d be good for us.”

  “And was it? Good for you, I mean?”

  “Sort of. I mean, school hasn’t exactly been easy, trying to make friends and all that.” I blush and glance away, wondering if he’s thinking about the nickname Hot Bozo that’s so popular among his buddies. “But I like it. . . . I feel like I belong here.”

  “I know what that’s like,” he says.

  “What?”

  Now it’s his turn to look embarrassed. “I just mean, when I moved here, it was hard for a while. I didn’t fit in.”

  “Weren’t you, like, five?”

  “Yeah, I was five, but even then. This is a weird place to move to, on a lot of levels, especially from California. I remember that first snowstorm—I thought the sky was falling down.”

  I laugh and shift slightly, and our shoulders touch. Zap. Even through our clothes. I move away. Business, Clara, business, I tell myself. Don’t lose it over this guy now. I clear my throat lightly.

  “But you feel like you belong now, right?”

  He nods. “Yeah, of course. There’s no doubt in my mind that this is where I belong.”

  Then he tells me that he’s thinking about going to New York for the summer, on some kind of business school internship for high school students.

  “I’m not stoked at the idea of the internship, but summer in New York City sounds like an adventure,” he says. “I’ll probably go.”

  “All summer?” I ask, a little stricken. But the fire, I want to say. You can’t go.

  “My uncle,” he says, and then he’s quiet for a moment. “He wants me to get a business degree and take over at the bank someday. He’s got expectations, you know, things he thinks I should do to prepare myself and all that mumbo jumbo. I don’t know what I want to do.”

  “I get that,” I say, thinking he doesn’t know the half of it. “My mom’s like that, always expecting so much out of me. She’s always saying that I have a purpose in life, something I was born to do, and that I just need to figure out what it is. No pressure there, right? I’m afraid of letting her down.”

  “Well,” he says, turning to me and smiling in a way that makes my heart speed up. “Sounds like we’re both in trouble.”

  The remaining weeks of school fly past in a blur. Christian calls me every few days, and we make small talk. He sits next to me in class and cracks jokes all period. A couple of times he even eats lunch at my table, which totally wigs out the Invisibles. In the space of a week the entire school is speculating over whether or not we’re a red-hot item.

  I’m wondering that myself.

  “Told you,” says Angela when I talk to her about it. “I’m never wrong, C.”

  “That’s comforting. Can you focus, please? I still don’t know anything about the fire. I don’t know why he would be there that day. I don’t know where it happens. I thought if I got to know him better, I’d find out, but—”

  “You’ve got time. Just enjoy the company,” she says.

  Wendy, on the other hand, is barely masking her disapproval over the whole Christian thing. But then she never liked the idea.

  “I told you,” she says primly. “Christian’s like a god. And gods don’t make good boyfriends.”

  “If you’re about to try to sell me on Tucker again, save it. Although it was nice of him to drive me home from prom.”

  “Hey, I’m on your side. I’ll cheer for you and Christian if that’s what you want me to do.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “Even if I think it’s a big mistake.”

  Great friends I have.

  I’m confused by Christian suddenly coming on so strong. Just when I decide to keep it strictly professional between us, angel business only, he seems totally into me in a way that makes my head spin. But he doesn’t ask me out. He doesn’t touch me. I tell myself that I shouldn’t care whether or not he does.

  “Silver Avalanche coming up the driveway,” calls Jeffrey from upstairs.

  “What are you, security?” I call back.

  “Something like that.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up.”

  I’m standing on the porch when Christian pulls up to the house. “Hey, stranger,” I say.

  He smiles. “Hey.”

  “Fancy meeting you here.”

  “I wanted to say good-bye,” he says. “I’m being shipped off to New York tomorrow.” He makes his trip to New York sound like boarding school.

  “Ah, come on, you get to have adventure in the Big Apple. My dad lives in New York, you know, but I’ve only been there once. He had to work the whole time, so I sat on the couch and watched TV for a week.”

  “Your dad? You’ve never mentioned him before.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s not much to mention.”

  He shrugs. “Same thing with my dad.”

  A touchy subject, I can tell. I wonder if my face gets like that too when I talk about my dad, like I’m totally fine, I couldn’t care less that my parent doesn’t really give a crap about me.

  I pretend to pout. “This sucks. School’s only been out for two days, and everybody’s bailing,” I whine. “You, Wendy, Angela, even my mom. She’s going back to California for business ne
xt week. I feel like the only rat dumb enough to stay on this sinking ship.”

  “Sorry,” Christian says. “I’ll text you, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  His cell phone rings in his pocket. He sighs. He doesn’t answer. Instead he takes a step toward me, closing the distance between us. It feels like the vision. It feels like he’s going to take my hand.

  “Clara,” he says, my name sounding different somehow when it passes through his lips. “I’ll miss you.”

  You will? I think.

  “Bluebell coming up the driveway!” comes Jeffrey’s voice from an upstairs window.

  “Thank you!” I shout back.

  “Who’s that? Your brother?” asks Christian.

  “Yeah. He’s apparently a watchdog.”

  “Who’s Bluebell?”

  “Uh—” Tucker’s rusty blue truck pulls up behind Christian’s Avalanche. Wendy gets out. Her expression is clouded, like she’s confused to find me here with Christian. Still, she tries to smile.

  “Hi, Christian,” she says.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “I wanted to stop by,” she says. “Tucker’s driving me up to the airport.”

  “Today? I thought it wasn’t until tomorrow,” I say in dismay. “I haven’t wrapped your send-off present. Wait here.” I run into the house and return with the iPod Shuffle I got her. I hand it over. “I couldn’t really figure out what you’d need on a veterinary internship, unless it’s extra socks. But they’ll let you listen to music while you work, right?”

  She looks more shocked than I was going for, her smile still a little forced. “Clara,” she says. “This is too . . .”

  “I already put some songs on it that you’ll like. And I found the score for The Horse Whisperer. I know you have that movie practically memorized.”

  She stares at the iPod for a minute, then folds her fingers around it. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Tucker taps the horn. She turns to me apologetically. “I don’t have any time, sorry. I’ve got to go.”

  We hug. “I am going to miss you so much,” I whisper.

  “There’s a pay phone at the general store. I’ll call you,” she says.

  “You’d better. I’m feeling majorly abandoned here.”

  Tucker sticks his head out the window. “Sorry, sis, but we have to take off now. Can’t miss your plane.”

  “All right, all right.” Wendy hugs me one last time, then dashes for the truck.

  “Hey, Chris,” Tucker says out the window to Christian.

  Christian smiles. “How’s it going, Friar Tuck?”

  Tucker doesn’t look particularly amused. “You’re blocking me,” he says. “I could go around, but I don’t want to mess up their grass.”

  “Yeah, no problem.” Christian looks at me. “I should get going too.”

  “Oh, well, you can stay for a minute, can’t you?” I ask, trying not to sound like I’m pleading.

  “No, I really have to go,” he says.

  He hugs me, and for the first few seconds it’s awkward, like we don’t know where to put our hands, but then the familiar magnetic force takes over and our bodies fit together perfectly. I rest my head on his shoulder and close my eyes, which keeps the business part of my brain temporarily disabled.

  Tucker revs the engine. I pull back abruptly. “Okay, so call me.”

  “I’ll be back the first week of August,” he tells me. “And then we’ll hang out more, okay?”

  “Sounds like a plan.” I hope there aren’t any, oh I don’t know, forest fires before he gets back. But there can’t be, can there? The fire can’t take place unless he’s there, right? Is it possible to miss my purpose because my subject won’t cooperate?

  “Bye, Clara,” says Christian. He nods at Tucker and walks back to the Avalanche, which roars to life and makes Bluebell look even rustier and shabbier. I wave as both trucks pull out and disappear into the woods, leaving me in a literal cloud of dust. I sigh. I think about how Christian’s good-bye seemed so final.

  A few days later I help Angela pack for Italy, where she spends every summer with her mom’s family.

  “Think of it as a time-out,” Angela says as I mope around her bedroom.

  “A time-out? I’m not two, you know.”

  “A time to reflect. A time to learn how to fly, for crap’s sake, and try for glory and find out all the other cool stuff you can do.”

  I sigh and throw a pair of socks into her suitcase.

  “I’m not like you, Ange. I can’t do what you can do.”

  “You don’t know what you can do,” she says matter-of-factly. “You won’t know until you try.”

  I change the subject by lifting up a black silk nightdress that she’s laid out with her other clothes.

  “What’s this for?” I ask, gawking at her.

  She snatches the fabric from my hand and stuffs it at the bottom of her suitcase, her face expressionless.

  “Is there a sexy Italian boy you never told me about?” I ask.

  She doesn’t answer, but her pale cheeks take on a rosy glow.

  I gasp. “There is a sexy Italian boy I don’t know about!”

  “I have to get to bed early tonight. Long flight tomorrow.”

  “Giovanni. Alberto. Marcello,” I say, trying out all the Italian names I can think of, watching her face for a reaction.

  “Shut it.”

  “Does your mom know?”

  “No.” She grabs my hand and pulls me down to sit on the bed. “And you can’t tell her, all right? She would freak.”

  “Why would I say anything to your mom? It’s not like we hang out.”

  This is big. Angela is usually all talk when it comes to boys, nothing serious. I picture her with a dark-haired Italian boy, darting hand in hand down a narrow street in Rome, kissing under archways. I’m instantly wildly jealous.

  “Just don’t, okay?” She squeezes my hand hard. “Promise me, you won’t tell anybody.”

  “I promise,” I say. I think she’s being a tad melodramatic.

  She refuses to say anything more about it, closes up tighter than a clam. I help her pack the rest of her things. She’s leaving really early in the morning, driving to Idaho Falls to catch her first flight at some ungodly hour, so I’ll have to say good-bye tonight. At the doorway to the theater, we hug tightly.

  “I’m going to miss you most of all,” I tell her.

  “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ll be back before you know it. And I’ll have tons of new information for us to chew on.”

  “Okay.”

  “Keep sharp.” She mock punches me in the arm. “Learn to fly, already.”

  “I will,” I sniffle.

  It’s going to be a very lonely summer.

  The next night I drive to Teton National Park after dinner. I park the car at Jenny Lake. It’s a small, quiet lake, surrounded by trees, the mountains towering over it. For a while I stand on the shore as the setting sun glimmers on the water before it drops beneath the horizon. I watch a white pelican glide over the lake. It dives into the water and comes up with a fish. It’s beautiful.

  When it’s dark, I start to hike.

  The quiet is unbelievable. It’s like there’s no one else on earth. I try to relax and breathe in the cold, pine-scented air deeply, letting it fill me. I want everything in my life to fall away and simply enjoy the strength of my muscles as I climb. I go up and up, out of the tree line, closer to that big, open sky. I climb until I’m warm, and then I look for a good place to stop. I find a perch on the side of the mountain where the earth drops away. The map calls this spot Inspiration Point. It sounds like a good place for my experiment.

  I climb out onto the perch and look down. It’s a long drop. I see the lake reflecting the moon.

  “Let’s do this,” I whisper. I stretch my arms. I summon and stretch my wings. I look down again. Big mistake.

  But I’m going to fly if it kills me. I have to fly. I’ve
seen it in the vision.

  “Gotta be light,” I say, rubbing my hands together. “No big deal. Light.”

  I take another deep breath. I think of the pelican I saw over the lake. The way the air just seemed to carry it. I spread my wings.

  And I jump.

  I drop like a rock. The air rushes my face, sucks the breath out of my lungs so that I can’t even scream. The trees reach up for me. I try to brace for impact, although I have no idea how exactly one is supposed to brace for impact. I haven’t really thought the whole thing through, I realize a tad too late. Even if the fall miraculously doesn’t kill me, I could land on the rocks below and break my legs, and nobody knows I’m out here, nobody will find me.

  Just jump off the mountain, I scold myself. What a great idea, Clara!

  But then my wings catch and open. My body wrenches down like a skydiver’s when the parachute finally deploys. I wobble awkwardly in the air, trying to get my balance. My wings strain to bear my weight, but they hold me. I sweep out and away from Inspiration Point, carried by the wind.

  “I’m flying,” I whisper. I suddenly feel so incredibly light, relieved that I’m not going to die, high on adrenaline and the pure thrill of feeling the cold air holding me, lifting me. It’s the best feeling of my life, bar none. “I’m flying!”

  Of course, I’m not flying so much as coasting over the treetops like a hang glider or a freakishly large flying squirrel. I think the birds in the area are dying laughing watching me try not to crash. So I’m not a natural, not some beautiful angelic being winging my way heavenward. But I haven’t died yet, which I consider a plus.

  I push down with my wings once, trying to go higher. Instead I swoop farther downward over the trees until my feet nearly brush the top branches. I try to remember a single thing I’ve learned in all those hours in aerodynamics class, but I can’t translate any of that stuff about planes—lift, thrust, drag—to what my wings are doing in this moment. Flying in real life isn’t a mathematical equation. Anytime I try to change direction I overdo it and careen around wildly in the air and my life flashes before my eyes before I get it all under control again. The best I can do for now is to flap every now and then and angle my wings to keep me in the air.