Earth/Sky (Earth/Sky Trilogy)

by Macaulay C. Hunter

  Earth/Sky

  by Macaulay C. Hunter

  Copyright 2013 Macaulay C. Hunter

  Cover by Nicole Roberts

  High Praise for Earth/Sky from Top Reviewers

  It’s okay, I guess. – Rafe Swale, journalist for West Rhaelas Times

  Do you like your IQ? Do you want it to stay right where it is? You must not, since you’re holding a copy of this book. Might as well set those spare points on fire rather than turn the page. – Saxon St. Gillesbury, book reviewer for Skorungur News

  This is the book everyone loves to hate. But I hate how much I love it! Earth/Sky is about a girl who meets the perfect guy . . . two times over. – Claudia Hunstan, editor of Ashdown High Express

  If this is the kind of guy that girls want, I’m doomed. – Noah Jespen, chief-of-staff of the Wexley-Excalibur Preparatory School Newspaper

  ZOMG!!! The main character whines all the way from the first page to the last one without pausing for a breath!!! Usually people are telling ME to shut up, but I have to pass it along in this situation. SHUT UP, JESSA!!! – Belladonna Cranbrook Delacroix van Ostrand, president of Fab-Fab-Fabulous Fabulosity Magazine

  I don’t understand the fascination with supernatural boyfriends, and Earth/Sky does nothing to clarify. Jessa Bright is a spoiled, shallow, sanctimonious, self-centered little twit who falls in love with a zombie and a fallen angel, and even more inexplicably, they fall in love with her. And that’s it? Their wings are different colors? FAIL. – Giovanna Shevan, Bresque College student who reads through lectures

  Please don’t make me write the sequel. – Macaulay C. Hunter, author of Earth/Sky

  For Saxon, who hated it

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One: The Mistake

  Chapter Two: The Boy

  Chapter Three: The Party

  Chapter Four: The Miracle

  Chapter Five: The Angel

  Chapter Six: The Visit

  Chapter Seven: The Gap

  Chapter Eight: The Wings

  Chapter Nine: The Family

  Chapter Ten: The Bridges

  Chapter Eleven: The Rippers

  Chapter Twelve: The Move

  Chapter Thirteen: The Wait

  Chapter Fourteen: The Capture

  Chapter Fifteen: The Darkness

  Chapter Sixteen: The Battle

  Chapter Seventeen: The Celebration

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Other Titles by Macaulay C. Hunter

  Find Macaulay C. Hunter Online

  Chapter One: The Mistake

  It was the trip of a lifetime, for everyone but me.

  My parents were ridden with anxiety about leaving. I was just as anxious about them staying. They’d looked like Christmas to get the call that they won the cruise, two hundred ports in fifty countries spanning six continents, and it lasted nine months total. It was the second longest cruise in the world and something our family could never, ever have afforded on its own. Mom and Dad had thrown their names in the hat at work, two of literally tens of thousands of employees at the phone company all hoping for a reason to leave their cubicles. Dad’s name was plucked out. The pair of tickets was theirs, no refunds and no delays, take it or leave it.

  I watched their faces fall as the euphoria was replaced by the stacks of dishes in the sink, the bills on the coffee table, and me. Of course they couldn’t take it! But they had to, I insisted, and they were. It didn’t occur to me while the disappointed shakes turned to incredulous nods that I wouldn’t be staying in Los Angeles. It wasn’t much in my opinion, getting myself to school in the morning and running the laundry machine. All of the bills could be put on automatic pay through the bank. I was seventeen years old, and I’d stayed home on my own many times while they took trips for work. But nine months was too long and before I could scream in protest, arrangements were made for me to stay with Grandpa Jack in Spooner.

  Even if Spooner, California had had a port, the most thorough cruise in the world would not have planned a stop there. They wouldn’t have been able to find it anyway, just like people on the freeway could never find the single Spooner off-ramp because locals kept removing the sign. Tucked away deep in the redwoods of northern California, the sunlight that filtered down through the trees to a valley of mobile homes and paint-peeled stores was never enough to dissipate the gloom. Having gone there twice on visits long ago, I hadn’t been impressed. I was an L.A. girl through and through, sun and sand and shorts, with blonde streaks through my dark hair from so much time spent outside.

  They hugged me at the airport, all three of us feeding off each other’s anxiety. Mom touched my cheek and said, “Are you really okay with this, Jessa?”

  “I think so?” I said, but it came out a question. “I mean, yeah, it’ll be fine.”

  They had to go. You didn’t turn that kind of opportunity down. I just wished I’d realized more quickly that it meant I’d be in Spooner for my senior year of high school. God, my mouth always outpaced my brain! It was a constant problem, the first going at warp speed and the second ambling along behind. But it was too late now for regrets, so I broke up our group hug and tried to smile like practically a year in Spooner, California was just as thrilling as taking a cruise around the world.

  They walked me as far as they could up the security line and then we waved. Dad called, “Oh, honey? There’s no cell service in Spooner, just so you know. Bye!”

  “What?” I called, thinking that I must have heard him wrong. He waved again and they walked out the sliding doors to the hot sun beating down. Mom had told me to tie a sweatshirt around my waist for when we landed, but I wasn’t about to walk around like that. Why stop there? Why not socks with sandals, too? I might have to live in Spooner, but I didn’t have to look like one of its natives.

  It seemed like no sooner was the flight taking off from Los Angeles than it landed in San Francisco. Everyone disembarked and I stood there uncertainly, looking for the way to baggage claim. People moved around me until I spotted a sign, which I followed.

  Grandpa Jack was waiting at the baggage claim, shuffling in agitation from side to side and jingling coins in his pockets. He looked like a grayer, thinner, and whiskered edition of my barrel-chested, black-haired, and somewhat portly father. I’d only seen my grandfather a handful of times, and exchanged less than a handful of words. Every year he sent a card for my birthday at the end of October, with only Grandpa Jack written under the salutations, and every year I sent a card for his birthday with only Jessa written there, too.

  Strange people and strange places made Grandpa Jack nervous, so the tiny population of Spooner worked for him. He drove all about it as the mailman. His personal vehicle was a refurbished mail truck, and I wish I’d thought of that as well before encouraging my parents to go.

  Other than a grunt of hello at the baggage claim, he was quiet on the drive north. His hands were tight on the steering wheel until we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. To have that chaos of humanity and architecture in the rearview window relaxed him a bit. He sank back in the seat and said, “Nice flight?”

  “Yeah,” I said. It was disconcerting to have him driving on my right side rather than my left. Casting about for conversation, I added, “Dad said there’s no wireless service in Spooner?”

  “Voted down six times,” Grandpa Jack said.

  Great. Nine months without a cell phone? This place was like something out of the nineteenth century. Overcome with regret at my impulsiveness, I sank back into my own seat and looked out the window to mist rushing down a hill of green trees. Sometimes decisions that looked so selfless on the surface reached back to bite you hard. But turning down a trip th
at cost a quarter million dollars was insane! For God’s sake, we were a coupon-clipping family. The only reason my clothes were the best was because I hunted through every consignment store in a twenty-mile radius from our house. My wardrobe might always be a season out of date, but my taste was impeccable.

  It went without saying that Spooner wasn’t going to have much in the way of clothes, or shopping in general. What teenagers did for fun there I had no idea, except dream of getting away. How old had I been the last time we visited? Seven? There was a theater at least, but it was a dinky place with movies as out of date as my closet. The downtown strip was really just that, one strip of a road with stores, and concentric circles of tiny homes and doublewides around it. Roads in Spooner rarely went straight. Nine months in this purgatory was going to earn me some mighty powerful karma. That was how I should think of this sacrifice.

  “I got you a scooter,” Grandpa Jack said abruptly. “Ride north a few miles on Jacobo Road, you start getting some spotty cell service. Ride south and you get some, but you have to go farther.”

  “What kind of scooter?” I asked.

  “The kind that scoots.”

  And that was the end of that conversation. The car rolled around hills and through cities for over an hour. Desperate to enjoy the last of my cell phone service, I surfed the Internet, played games, and texted friends from my old high school. When I ran out of things to do, I looked at cat pictures and played random videos. This had been the most idiotic decision of my life. My eyes welled up with tears to think of how my friends were shopping for school, and getting together for a few last beach parties before the academic grind began. I blinked hard, not wanting to cry in front of a guy I hardly knew. Maybe it wasn’t too late to call this off.

  Out the windows in the second hour of the drive, it looked like we were leaving civilization entirely behind. Twisted valley oaks and billboards rose over the freeway as it weaved through the hills. The billboards were advertising for one of the only two industries this far north, namely casinos. The other was lumber. The restaurants probably served things like corn pone, whatever that was, and had raccoon tail hats in their gift shops.

  “You can drive this truck here to the high school on rainy days,” Grandpa Jack offered after our long silence.

  There wasn’t anything embarrassing about driving a mail truck to school! “Okay.” I’d carpooled all last year with my friend Downy, who owned a spanking new red Incredula. It might not have been mine, but it was definitely the car to be seen coming out of upon arrival at Bellangame High. “Is the high school big?”

  “Big enough.”

  “How many students?”

  “Enough to fill it.” A tiny smile played on his lips. He was enjoying this aggravation, but I wasn’t. I looked stonily out the window with my cell phone clutched in my hand. A veritable mountain of lumber was piled in a yard aside the freeway, and beyond it was a billboard assuring me that I’d be a winner at Big Spin Casino. Right now I was feeling like a pretty big loser.

  Snappishly, I said, “Aren’t you going to ask me anything? Like about my life?”

  “Could say the same.”

  “You deliver mail all day. There’s nothing to ask.”

  He harrumphed. “They in your backpack or your suitcase?”

  “They what?”

  “Your manners. Figured you packed them somewhere.”

  Last night, Dad had reminded me that his father was big on manners. But I didn’t think that I was being any ruder than Grandpa Jack. He should have been more excited about a visit from a granddaughter he hardly knew. I didn’t expect presents or bouquets or parades, but at least a show of happiness! I was the only grandchild he had. That should be special to him.

  Nine months. By the time my family reconstituted back home, I’d be spitting watermelon seeds through my front teeth and announcing I could tell a turn in weather by the aching of my joints. And my parents would be sporting European accents and showing off pictures of archeological wonders that I no longer had the brain cells to appreciate.

  The mail truck pulled off the freeway and rattled over the overpass to a road that wound up into a dark, dappled green. The canopy of trees choked out the light. It grew cool and I pulled at my sleeves to gain another half-inch of warmth. The bars were dying one by one on my cell phone, and then it read No Service.

  “Here we are,” Grandpa Jack said at the outskirts of Spooner, and sighed away the last of the tension in his body. I caught it and looked out in anxiety.

  Spooner. Not a thing had changed in the ten years since I’d been here. Open sheds with corrugated metal roofs covered in dead leaves, dogs barking furiously in kennels, splintered fences with missing slats, piles of junk in the yards and tarps over woodpiles . . . even the patches of grass seemed to have frozen in time for my return. This place was going to be home. One property was so trashed that the wave of garbage coming around the side of the dilapidated house extended all the way through the yard to the sidewalk, and off it to pool in the street. A shirtless kid in a loaded diaper wailed on the porch, without a sign of adult supervision in sight.

  The houses were better tended the farther we penetrated into the city. I moved my phone around futilely, unable to accept that it no longer worked. Grandpa Jack pointed out the window when we turned onto Jacobo and said, “Got a new restaurant. Forks and Spooners.”

  Swallowing a groan at the stupid name, I said, “Is it any good?”

  “Never eaten there.”

  That reminded me of a more pressing concern. “Is there a Hawthorne Market anywhere around?”

  “No, just a Chancy like they got everywhere. Oh, and the Neat Eats up a-ways on this road, that’s where the tourists and hippies go.” Grandpa Jack motioned when we passed it, a tiny store that I scanned for anything resembling natural. A man with a giant red dreadlock on the crown of his head was coming out the door. He was wearing his pajamas in public. Looking over the bins of produce, Grandpa Jack said, “Too expensive, that much for an apple.”

  “That’s because it’s organic,” I explained. “The pesticides that big agriculture uses on the apples at Chancy are really bad for you.”

  “Hasn’t killed me yet.” He waved at a couple walking a big dog. The man shouted, “Hey, Jack!”

  “It doesn’t kill you right away,” I argued. “It makes you sick over time and chops a few years off the end of your life.”

  Grandpa Jack pulled off Jacobo to a curling residential road. “Those years aren’t the ones worth keeping anyway. So I’ll just buy my apples cheap from Chancy and let the pesticides give my pipes a good clean-out.”

  I didn’t think that I’d ever heard anything more disgusting. Very soon, we pulled up the driveway to his rickety blue house. Nothing had changed here either, in the yard or inside.

  Every step squeaked and groaned up the narrow staircase as we carried my belongings to the second story. Mounted on the wall were fiberglass fish replicas. When Grandpa Jack passed the last one at the mercifully carpeted landing, it waggled its tail and disco music played. I didn’t realize anyone actually bought those things from novelty stores. I also didn’t understand what was that funny about them.

  The bedroom was small, just as all of the rooms in this house were. Clots of green leaves pressed against the window beyond the twin bed. There was a desk and chair, and the dresser was within the closet since there wasn’t enough room for it to be anywhere else. Setting down the suitcase, Grandpa Jack said, “I’ll let you get settled then. Maybe we could try out Forks and Spooners tomorrow for dinner.” He closed the door on the way out. The disco music started up a second time as Grandpa Jack went down the stairs. Oh God, what had I done?

  In reflex, I looked at my phone to find the menu and reviews of Forks and Spooners online. No service. This was going to make me crazy. Who in their right mind had a vendetta against cell phones? Dad’s last text on the drive had relayed another warning I wished that I’d known earlier: the Internet was by dial-up, it was slo
w as molasses, and I shouldn’t use it too much because Grandpa Jack didn’t have another line.

  I unpacked. The dusty hangers in the closet were made of plain wire. After wiping them off with some toilet paper from the bathroom, I hung up my shirts. It hadn’t occurred to me to pack hangers of all things. My cell phone wasn’t good for much now but I could still make a shopping list. Hangers. Plastic sets for my regular clothes, satin-covered padded ones for delicates, wooden for my jackets and some with lock bars for my jeans. I didn’t believe in folding them into a dresser drawer. But there was no choice for now, since the weight of them bent the flimsy bottom wire of the hangers I had. The dresser drawers were empty, but I had to wipe those down, too. This room hadn’t been inhabited for a very long time, if ever.

  On the empty shelf of the nightstand, I slid in my yearbooks from Bellangame. Folded in the top pocket of my suitcase was the purple and gold school banner, and that I hung over the bed from two nails already there. Combing out the fringe with my fingers until it was perfect, I settled back on the foot of the bed and looked up to it. This tiny room was still so bare! It swallowed up my possessions somehow, so that even the clothes visible in the closet looked paltry, their vibrant colors dulled despite the little strains of light coming through the window.

  Where did a person buy hangers around here? I needed to get some school supplies as well. Again I looked at my phone, and then I moaned and flopped over onto the single pillow. That should go on the list under school supplies, one or two more pillows, and a desk lamp.

  I was going to have to ask Grandpa Jack where to go shopping, or else wander around Jacobo and figure it out for myself. School started the day after tomorrow, so I didn’t have time to procrastinate. And where was the high school? How irritating to have to ask rather than solve the matter for myself in five seconds on my phone!