“But it does happen.”
“We’ll figure it out together.” She hugs me closer and smoothes the hair away from my face the way she used to when I had nightmares as a kid.
“Right now you should rest.”
I’ve never felt more awake in my life, but I stretch out on her bed and let her pull the covers over us. She puts her arm around me. She’s warm, radiating heat like she’s been standing in sunshine, even in the middle of the night. I inhale her smell: rosewater and vanilla, an old lady’s perfume. It always makes me feel safe.
When I close my eyes, I can still see the boy. Standing there waiting. For me. Which seems more important than the sadness or the possibility of dying some gruesome fiery death. He’s waiting for me.
I wake to the sound of rain and a soft gray light seeping through the blinds. I find Mom standing at the kitchen stove scraping scrambled eggs into a serving bowl, already dressed and ready for work like any other day, her long, auburn hair still wet from the shower. She’s humming to herself. She seems happy.
“Morning,” I announce.
She turns, puts down the spatula, and crosses the linoleum to give me a quick hug.
Her smile is proud, like that time I won the district spelling bee in third grade: proud, but like she never expected anything less.
“How are you doing this morning? Hanging in there?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“What’s going on?” my brother, Jeffrey, says from the doorway.
We turn to look at him. He’s leaning against the doorjamb, still rumpled with sleep and smelly and grumpy as usual. He’s never been what you might call a morning person. He stares at us. A flicker of fear crosses his face, like he’s bracing for horrible news, like someone we know has died.
“Your sister has received her purpose.” Mom smiles again, but it’s less jubilant than before. A cautious smile.
He looks me up and down like he’ll be able to find evidence of the divine somewhere on my body. “You had a vision?”
“Yeah. About a forest fire.” I shut my eyes and see it all again: the hillside crowded with pine trees, the orange sky, the smoke rolling past. “And a boy.”
“How do you know it wasn’t just a dream?”
“Because I wasn’t asleep.”
“So what does it mean?” he asks. All this angel-related information is new to him.
He’s still in that time when the supernatural stuff can be exciting and cool. I envy him that.
“I don’t know,” I tell him. “That’s what I’ve got to find out.”
I have the vision again two days later. I’m in the middle of jogging laps around the outside edge of the Mountain View High School gymnasium, and suddenly it hits me, just like that. The world as I know it — California, Mountain View, the gym — promptly vanishes. I’m in the forest. I can actually
And then I almost crash into a cheerleader.
“Watch it, dorkina!” she says.
I stagger to one side to let her pass. Breathing hard, I lean against the folded-up bleachers and try to get the vision back. But it’s like trying to return to a dream after you’re fully awake. It’s gone.
Crap. No one’s ever called me a dorkina before. Derivative of dork. Not good.
“No stopping,” calls Mrs. Schwartz, the PE teacher. “We want to get an accurate record of how fast you can run a mile. That means you, Clara.”
She must have been a drill sergeant in another life.
“If you don’t make it in less than ten minutes you’ll have to run it again next week,”
she hollers.
I start running. I try to focus on the task at hand as I swoop around the next corner, keeping my pace quick to make up some of the time I’ve lost. But my mind wanders back to the vision. The shapes of the trees. The forest floor under my feet strewn with rocks and pine needles. The boy standing there with his back to me as he watches the fire approach. My suddenly so-very-rapidly-beating heart.
“Last lap, Clara,” says Mrs. Schwartz.
I speed up.
Why is he there? I wonder, not closing my eyes but still seeing his image like it’s burned onto my retinas. Will he be surprised to see me? My mind races with questions, but underneath them all there is only one:
At that point I blow past Mrs. Schwartz, sprinting hard.
“Good, Clara!” she calls. And then, a minute later, “That can’t be right.”
Slowing to a walk, I circle back to find out my time.
“Did I get it under ten minutes?”
“I clocked you at five forty-eight.” She sounds truly shocked. She looks at me like she’s having visions too, of me on the track team.
Whoops. I wasn’t paying attention, wasn’t holding back. I’m going to catch some major flack if Mom finds out.