Hallowed u-2

by Cynthia Hand

  “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 soothe 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.”

  “Okay, Sensei, let’s go,” she cracks.

  They both close their eyes. I lean forward, watching, waiting for the glow to start, trying to contain my envy that it’s Angela up there and not me. But nothing happens. They just stand there like they’re suspended in time.

  “None of that in here!” comes a voice from the lobby. Anna must be afraid to come in.

  Angela and Christian drop hands, open their eyes. For a minute Angela looks disappointed, but then a mischievous smile spreads across he
r face.

  “That was so hot,” she says. She turns to look at me with one eyebrow arched. “Right, Clara?”

  “Uh—”

  “I think you wanted to tell me something, too,” she purrs to Christian, totally faking and he knows it. I remember how she told me once that she and Christian played spin the bottle in ninth grade and she thought kissing him was like kissing a brother.

  “Oh yes,” he replies without inflection, “that was pretty hot, Ange. You’re like my dream girl. I always wanted to tell you that.”

  “None of that in here!” Anna Zerbino calls again.

  We all bust up laughing.

  A loud noise wakes me in the middle of the night. For a minute I lie in bed, listening, not sure what’s happening. I feel like I’ve just woken up from a bad dream. I glance at the alarm clock. It’s four in the morning. The house is absolutely quiet. I close my eyes.

  Something crashes. I sit up in bed. The best weapon I can come up with this time is a can of hair spray, like that will do any good if Samjeeza’s here.

  Note to self: buy some nunchucks or something.

  Another crash reverberates through the house, then a loud curse, the sound of breaking glass.

  The noise is coming from Jeffrey’s room.

  I throw on my robe and hurry down the hall. There’s another loud bang. He’s going to wake Mom up if he hasn’t already. I open his door.

  “What are you doing?” I call into the dark, irritated.

  I flip on the light.

  Jeffrey is standing in the middle of the room with his wings out, dressed in just his jeans.

  He yells in surprise as the light goes on, then swings around with his hand in front of his eyes like I’ve blinded him. His wings catch a stack of books on his desk, which crash to the floor. He’s soaking wet, his hair clinging to his face, a pool forming under him on the hardwood. And he’s laughing.

  “I can’t remember how to retract my wings,” he says, which he obviously finds hilarious.

  I look beyond him to the open window, where the blinds are all twisted up and dangling from one side.

  “Did you just get home?” I ask.

  “No,” he says, grinning. “I went to bed early. I’ve been here all night.” He takes a step toward me and stumbles. I catch him by the arm to steady him. That’s when he laughs into my face and I get the full, nasty brunt of his breath.

  “You’re drunk,” I whisper in amazement.

  “At least I didn’t drive,” he says.

  This is bad.

  I stand there for a minute, hanging on to him, trying to get my brain to function at four in the morning. I could go get Mom, assuming she isn’t already on her way up the stairs to find out what the racket is about. If she still has the strength to make it up the stairs. I don’t even know what she’ll do or, worse, what this might do to her. This is way beyond any kind of punishment she’s ever had to dole out. This is like grounded-for-a-year kind of behavior.

  He’s still laughing like he finds this whole situation incredibly funny. I grab him by the ear. He yelps, but he can’t really fight me off. I drag him over to his bed and push him down on it, face-first. Then I tackle his wings, trying to fold them, press them down to rest against his back. I wish there was some magic word in Angelic that would instantly retract them— fold yourself!

  comes to mind — but at least if I can get them to fold up he won’t do any more damage.

  Jeffrey says something into the pillow.

  “I can’t hear you, moron,” I reply.

  He turns his head. “Leave me alone.”

  “Whatever,” I mutter, still trying to get his wings lined up. “Where’s your shirt? And how did you get all wet?”

  That’s when I notice his gray feathers. The wings are lighter than when I saw them the night of the fire. Then they were a dark gray, I hoped from soot. My wings were covered that night too, but it washed off, mostly. Jeffrey’s wings are still gray. Dove gray, I would call it. And there are a couple of feathers on the back of one wing that are the color of tar.

  “Your feathers. .” I lean in closer to look at them.

  He chooses that moment to remember how to retract his wings. I fall on him clumsily, then scramble off. He laughs.

  “You are in such deep trouble,” I say furiously.

  He rolls over on his back and looks at me with an expression that’s so mean it literally sends shivers down my spine. It’s like he hates me.

  “What, you’re going to tell Mom?”

  “I should,” I stammer.

  “Go ahead,” he snarls. “It’s not like you never sneak out. Tell Mom. I dare you. See what happens.”

  He sits up. He’s still glaring like any minute he’s going to lunge at me. I take a few steps back.

  “All you ever do is think about yourself,” he says. “Your vision. Your dumb dreams.

  Your stupid boyfriend.”

  “That’s not true,” I say shakily.

  “You’re not the only one who’s important here, you know. You’re not the only one with a purpose.”

  “I know—”

  “Just leave me alone.” He smiles, a hard, ironic baring of his teeth. “Leave me the hell alone.”

  I get out of his room. I fight the urge to scream. I want to run downstairs and wake up Mom and get her to fix it. Fix him. Instead I go to the linen closet. I get a towel. Then I go back to Jeffrey’s room and throw the towel at him. It hits him in the chest. He looks up at me, startled.

  “I know your life is crap,” I tell him. “It’s not exactly a picnic being me either.” My heart is pounding, but I try to look cool and collected. “I won’t tell Mom this time. But I swear, Jeffrey, if you don’t pull yourself together, you’ll be sorry. You pull anything like this again, Mom will be the last thing you have to worry about.”

  Then I march out of his room before he can see me cry.

  Chapter 13

  Go Out with a Bang

  “You look lovely, Clara,” Billy says when I come into Mom’s bedroom in my prom dress.

  Just for her sake I do a twirl, the layers of my red silk ball gown ballooning around my legs. The dress is a little extreme. Plus it cost a small fortune, but when Angela, Billy, and I saw it in the mall in Idaho Falls last week, it kind of called to me. Wear me, it said. Then Billy said something like what the heck, it’s your last formal dance of high school, go out with a bang. The theme of prom this year is Paradise Found — yep, organized by seniors who were forced to read Paradise Lost with Mr. Phibbs this year. My favorite book of all time.

  It’s either this or a fig leaf.

  I tried not to fixate on that spot in front of the GNC where I first felt Samjeeza’s gaze on me. I used to find it mildly funny that I saw a Black Wing at the mall. I tried to picture him shopping, drifting through the bookshelves of Barnes & Noble with the latest Dan Brown novel, in Macy’s fingering the ties, perusing the underwear, because even angels need underwear if they’re going to walk among us, right? I remember laughing about it with Angela, and when I think about that now, how we could joke about it, I think, man, we were dumb. We knew Black Wings were terrifying and powerful, we knew Mom’s face went sheet white that day in the mall, we were scared too, but we had no idea. So I tried not to look at where he stood and I tried not to remember the way his voice rasped into my ear telling me not to be afraid. The way he thought of me as something he could take. And almost did.

  The other off thing about this mall trip was that this time, Mom wasn’t there. She sent Billy. It feels like Billy is already stepping in for Mom, always in the house these days, cracking Mom-style jokes, taking me shopping, and now it’s Billy and not Mom who helps me fix my hair for prom. It’s Billy who tells me how lovely I am, while Mom lays back against the pillows, watching with tired eyes.

  “Doesn’t she look amazing, Mags?” Billy prompts when Mom doesn’t say anything.

  “Red’s your color, Clara.”

  “Yes,” Mom agrees faintly. “Y
ou’re beautiful.”

  “Trust me, Tucker’s jaw is going to drop when he sees you,” Billy says, ushering me out of the room so Mom can rest. “He’s going to feel like a millionaire with you on his arm.”

  “I’m arm candy, is that what you’re saying?”

  “Tonight, yes,” Billy says. “Own it.”

  I have to go pick Tucker up, since this year he’s rideless — the old ranch car finally kicked the bucket. Wendy’s riding with us too, since Jason Lovett’s car broke down two days ago, so she agreed to meet him there. Not the most romantic arrangement for any of us, but I’m sure we’ll make it work.