by Cynthia Hand
“Nope. False alarm.”
He sets right to fixing me up. He cleans the cut with water, smears on a bit of ointment, then smoothes a bandage over it carefully. I’m relieved when the cut’s covered by the bandage and he finally has to stop staring at it.
“Thanks,” I tell him.
“What’s going on with you, Clara?” His eyes when he looks up at me are fierce, full of so much hurt and accusation that it takes my breath away.
“What—what do you mean?” I stammer.
“I mean,” he starts. “I don’t know what I mean. I just . . . You’re just . . .”
And then he doesn’t say anything else.
Insert the biggest, most awkward silence in the history of big awkward silences. I stare at him. I’m suddenly exhausted by all the lies I’ve told him. He’s my friend, and I lie to him every day. He deserves better. I wish I could tell him then, more than anything I’ve ever wanted. I wish I could stand in front of him and truly be myself and tell him everything. But it’s against the rules. And these aren’t rules you break lightly. I don’t know what the consequences would be if I told.
“I’m just me,” I say softly.
He scoffs. He picks up the dish towel and holds it up, a bit of white terry with my incredibly bright red blood soaked into the middle of it. “At least now I know you can bleed,” he says. “That’s something, I guess. You’re not completely invincible, are you?”
“Oh right,” I retort as sarcastically as I can manage. “What, did you think I was Supergirl? Vulnerable only to Kryptonite?”
“I don’t know what I think.” He’s managed to tear his gaze away from the dish towel and is now looking at me again. “You’re not . . . normal, Clara. You try to pretend you are. But you’re not. You talked to a grizzly bear, and it obeyed you. Birds follow you like a Disney cartoon, or haven’t you noticed? And for a while after you came back from Idaho Falls, Wendy thought you were on the run from someone or something. You’re good at everything you try. You ride a horse like you were born in the saddle, you ski perfect parallel turns your first time on the hill, you apparently speak fluent French and Korean and who knows what else. Yesterday I noticed that your eyebrows kind of glitter in the sun. And there’s something about the way you move, something that’s beyond graceful, something that’s beyond human, even. It’s like you’re . . . something else.”
A violent shiver passes through me from head to foot. He really has put it all together. He just doesn’t know what it adds up to.
“And there couldn’t possibly be any rational explanation for all of that,” I say.
“Considering your brother, the best I’ve been able to come up with is that maybe your family’s part of some kind of secret government experiment, some kind of genetically altered animal-friendly superhumans,” he says. “And you’re in hiding.”
I snort. It would be funny if the truth wasn’t so much weirder. “You sound crazy, you know that?”
Another silence for the record books. Then he sighs.
“I know. It’s crazy. I feel like—” He stops himself. He suddenly looks so miserable that my heart aches for him.
I hate my life.
“It’s okay, Tuck,” I say gently. “We’ve had kind of a crazy day.”
I reach to touch his shoulder but he shakes his head. He’s about to say something else when the screen door opens and Mr. and Mrs. Avery enter the house, talking loudly because they know they’re interrupting us. Mrs. Avery spots the pile of bandages and ointment on the counter.
“Uh-oh. Someone have an accident?”
“I cut myself,” I say quickly, avoiding Tucker’s eyes. “Tucker was teaching me how to clean out the fish, and I got careless. I’m okay, though.”
“Good,” says Mrs. Avery.
“That’s a nice fish,” Mr. Avery says, peering down in the sink where I dropped the big rainbow trout. “You catch that today?”
“Tucker did, yesterday. Today he caught the one over there.” I gesture to the open cooler. Mr. Avery looks at it and gives a low whistle of appreciation.
“Good eating tonight.”
“You sure that’s what you want for your birthday dinner?” asks Mrs. Avery. “I can make anything you like.”
“It’s your birthday!” I gasp.
“Didn’t he tell you?” laughs Mr. Avery. “Seventeen years old today. He’s almost a man.”
“Thanks, Pop,” mutters Tucker.
“Don’t mention it, son.”
“I would have gotten you something,” I say softly.
“You did. You gave me my life today. Guess what?” he says to his parents, louder than his usual gruff speech. “Today we ran into a mama grizzly with two cubs up at the ridge off Colter Bay, and Clara sang to it to make it go away.”
Mr. and Mrs. Avery stare at me, aghast.
“You sang to it?” Mrs. Avery repeats.
“Her singing is that bad,” said Tucker, and they all laugh. They think he’s joking. I smile weakly.
“Yep,” I agree. “My singing is that bad.”
After Mrs. Avery fries up the fish for dinner, there’s cake and ice cream and a few presents. Most of the gifts are for Tucker’s prize rodeo horse, Midas, which I think is a funny name for a horse. Mr. Avery brags about the way Tucker and Midas can pick a single cow out of a herd.
“Most horses that compete are trained by professionals and cost well over forty grand,” he says. “But not Midas. Tucker raised and trained him from a colt.”
“I’m impressed.”
Tucker looks restless. He rubs the back of his neck, a gesture I know means he’s wildly uncomfortable with the way the conversation’s going.
“I wish I could have seen you compete,” I say. “I bet that’s something to behold.”
“You’ll have to catch him this year,” says Mr. Avery.
“I know!” I exclaim. I drop my chin into my hand as I lean on the kitchen table and grin at Tucker. I know I’m making it worse, teasing him. But maybe if I just act normal everything will go back to the way it was.
“Let’s go out to the barn and show Midas the new bridle,” Tucker says.
With that he whisks me out of the house to the safety of the barn. The horse comes to the front of his stall the moment we go in, ears cocked forward expectantly. He’s a beautiful, shiny chestnut color with large, knowing brown eyes. Tucker strokes under his chin. Then he puts on the new bridle his parents gave him.
“You should have told me it was your birthday,” I say.
“I was going to. But then we were almost eaten by a grizzly.”
“Oh, right. What about Wendy?” I ask.
“What about her?”
“It’s her birthday, too. I’m the worst friend ever. I should have sent her something. Did you exchange gifts?”
“Not yet.” He turns toward me. “But she gave me the perfect gift.”
The way he’s looking at me sends butterflies into my stomach. “What?”
“You.”
I don’t know what to say. This summer hasn’t turned out at all the way I’d planned. I’m not supposed to be standing in the middle of a barn with a blue-eyed cowboy who’s looking at me like he’s about to kiss me. I shouldn’t be wanting him to kiss me.
“What are we doing?” I ask.
“Carrots . . .”
“Don’t call me that,” I say shakily. “That’s not me.”
“What do you mean?”
“An hour ago you thought I was some kind of freak.”
He tugs a hand through his hair in agitation and then looks directly into my eyes.
“I didn’t ever think you were a freak. I think . . . I thought you were magic or something. I thought that you were too perfect to be real.”
I so want to show him, to fly to the top of the hayloft and smile down on him, to tell him everything. I want him to know the real me.
“I know I said some stupid things today. But I like you, Clara,” he says. “I really like you.”
It might be the first time he’s actually said my name.
He sees the hesitation in my eyes. “It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything. I just wanted you to know.”
“No,” I say. He’s a distraction. I have a purpose, a duty. I’m not here for him. “Tuck, I can’t. I have to—”
His expression clouds.
“Tell me this isn’t about Christian Prescott,” he says. “Tell me you’re over that guy.”
I feel a flash of anger at how condescending he sounds, like I’m some silly girl with a crush.
“You don’t know everything about me,” I say, trying to rein in my temper.
“Come here.” His voice is so warm and rough-edged that it sends a shiver down my spine.
“No.”
“I don’t think you really want to be with Christian Prescott,” he says.
“Like you know what I want.”
“I do. I know you. He’s not your type.”
I stare helplessly down at my hands, afraid to look at him. “Oh, and I suppose you’re my type, right?”
“I suppose I am,” he says, and he’s crossing the distance between us and taking my face in his hands before I can even think to stop him.
“Tuck, please,” I manage in a quivery voice.
“You like me, Clara,” he says. “I know you do.”
If only I could laugh at him. If only I could laugh and pull away and tell him how stupid and wrong he is.
“Try to tell me you don’t,” he murmurs, so close his breath is on my face. I look up into his eyes and see the beckoning heat in them. I can’t think. His lips are too close to mine and his hands are drawing me closer.
“Tuck,” I breathe, and then he kisses me.
I’ve been kissed before. But nothing like this. He kisses me with surprising tenderness, for all of his gutsy talk. Still cupping my face, he gently brushes his lips against mine, slowly, like he’s memorizing what I feel like. My eyes close. My head swims with his smell, grass and sunshine and musky cologne. He kisses me again, a little more firmly, and then he pulls back to look down into my face.
I so don’t want it to be over. All other thoughts vanish from my brain. I open my eyes.
“Again,” I whisper.
The corner of his mouth lifts, and then I kiss him. Not so gently this time. His hands drop from my face and grab at my waist and pull me to him. A small soft groan escapes him, and that noise makes me feel absolutely crazy. I lose it. I wind my hands around his neck and kiss him without holding anything back. I can feel his heart thundering like mine, his breath coming faster, his arms tightening around me.
And then I can feel what he feels. He’s waited such a long time for this moment. He loves how I feel in his arms. He loves the smell of my hair. He loves the way I looked at him just now, flushed and wanting more from him. He loves the color of my lips and now the taste of my mouth is making his knees feel weak and he doesn’t want to seem weak in front of me. So he draws back, and his breath comes out in a rush. His arms drop away from me.
I open my eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
He can’t speak. His face has gone pale beneath his golden skin. And then I realize that it’s too bright in there, too bright for the shady dark of the barn, and the light’s coming from me, radiating off me in waves.
I’m in glory. Tucker stares at me in shock. I can feel his shock. He can see everything now in all this light, glowing out through my clothes so I might as well be standing naked in front of him. I inhale sharply. Part of me twists painfully at the look of terror in his eyes, and just like that, the light goes out. His presence in my mind fades away as the barn darkens.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I watch the color slowly come back into his face.
“I don’t know what . . . ,” he tries, and then stops himself.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“What are you?”
I flinch.
“I’m Clara.” My name, at least, has not changed. I take a step toward him, put my hand out to touch his face. He shies away. Then he grabs my hand, the one with the cut. I gasp as he jerks the bandage away.
The wound is completely healed. There isn’t even a scar. We both peer down at my palm. Then Tucker’s hand falls away.
“I knew it,” he says.
I’m flooded with a strange mix of panic and relief. There’s no explaining this away. I’ll have to tell him. “Tuck—”
“What are you?” he demands again. He staggers back a few steps.
“It’s complicated.”
“No.” He shakes his head suddenly. His face is still so pale, greenish like he’s about to throw up. He keeps backing away from me, and then he’s at the door of the barn and he turns and runs toward the house.
All I can do is watch him go. I feel disconnected from myself, shaky with the shock of what’s happened. I don’t have a ride home. And Tucker could be in the house getting a shotgun for all I know. So I run. I stumble toward the woods at the back of the ranch, grateful for the cover of the trees. It’s starting to get dark. Once I’m a little ways in, my wings snap out without me even having to summon them. I fly carelessly, getting completely lost before I can sense the way home, instantly soaked by clouds and so cold I’m shivering hard enough to make my teeth chatter, tear-blinded and half panicked.
I cry as I wing my way home. I cry and cry. It feels like the tears will never stop.
Mom discovers me in my room sobbing into my pillow a few hours later. I’m scratched and scraped and tear-streaked, but what she says when she sees me is “What happened to your hair?”
“What?” I’m desperately trying to get it together so I can decide how much I’ll tell her about the whole Tucker thing.
“It’s back to its natural color. The red is completely gone.”
“Oh. I brought the glory. It must have zapped the color right out.”
“You attained glory?” she says, her blue eyes wide.
“Yeah.”
“Oh, my darling. No wonder you’re upset. It’s such an overwhelming experience.”
She doesn’t know the half of it.
“Rest now.” She presses a kiss to my temple. “You can tell me more about it in the morning.”
When she’s gone I send a frantic email to Angela: Emergency, I write, hardly able to make my fingers and brain work well enough together to get out a simple message. Call me ASAP.
There’s no one to talk to. No one to tell. And already I miss him.
I give in to the need to hear his voice and call Tucker on my cell. He answers on the first ring. For a minute neither of us speaks.
“Leave me alone,” he says, and then he hangs up.
Chapter 17
Just Call Me Angel
Three days pass, three agonizing days where I don’t call him again or try to see him, reliving the kiss until I think I’ll go bonkers and tear all my feathers out by the handful. I keep telling myself this is all for the best. Okay, so not the best, since I’ve essentially revealed myself to a human and I don’t even know what the punishment for that will be, if anybody ever finds out. But maybe it’s for the best that Tucker rejected me. So he knows there’s something weird about me, sure. Can he prove it? No. Will anybody believe him? Probably not. It doesn’t seem likely that he’d even tell anyone. If he did, I could deny it all. We could go back to the way things were before, him accusing me of stuff and me pretending like I don’t have a clue what he’s talking about.
Right.
I’m not that good a liar, even when I’m lying to myself. I wish Angela would call me back and I could ask her what to do.
As if the daytime wasn’t bad enough, I dream about him. Every night for three nights in a row. I can’t get out of that moment when I was in his head, feeling what he felt, hearing his thoughts as he kissed me. I can feel him loving me. And it kills me, that moment when I feel his love shift into fear.
The third morning I wake up with tears st
reaming down my face, and when I stare up at the ceiling, wallowing in my misery, a thought occurs to me.
He loves me. Inside his head, his every thought and reaction was born of love, love inside and out, crazy, irrational (and sure, a bit lustful) love. He loves me, and that’s also what terrified him when he saw me all lit up like a Christmas tree. He doesn’t know what I am, but he loves me.
I sit up. Maybe I should have figured this out a long time ago. I shouldn’t have needed to read his heart in order to see it. But when I felt all that love rising up in him, I didn’t know I was inside his head. I didn’t notice that the feelings weren’t mine. And why is that?
Easy.
It’s all me, the human part, the angel part. I love Tucker Avery.
Talk about revelation.
So that’s why I’m waiting now outside the Crazy River Rafting Company, sitting on the sidewalk outside of his workplace like some creepy stalker ex-girlfriend, waiting for him to come out so I can ambush him with love. Only he doesn’t come out of the building. I wait for more than an hour past when he usually gets off, and nobody comes out but a blond woman who I assume is the secretary.
“Can I help you?” she asks.
“I don’t think so.”
She hesitates, not quite sure how to interpret my answer. “You waiting for someone?”
“Tucker.”
She smiles. She likes Tucker. Everybody in their right mind likes Tucker.
“He’s still on the river,” she says. “His raft overturned, nothing serious, but they’ll all be in a bit late. You want me to walkie him, tell him you’re here?”
“No,” I say quickly. “I’ll wait.”
Every few minutes I check my watch, and every time a truck drives by I hold my breath. A few times I decide that this is all a very bad idea and get up to leave. But I can never make myself get into my car. If anything, I just have to see him.
Finally a big red truck pulls into the parking lot towing an open trailer loaded with rafts. Tucker’s sitting in the passenger seat, talking with the older guy I met before who led the rafting trips. Tucker called him Murphy, although I don’t know if that’s his first or last name. When they announced the rules of the raft that time he took me down the river with him, he’d called them Murphy’s laws.
