dark brown instead of Angela’s amber color, and she has deep wrinkles around her mouth that make her look older than her body suggests. She reminds me of a Gypsy in one of those old movies.
“I’m Clara Gardner,” I say nervously. “I’m doing a project with Angela for school.”
She nods. I notice that she’s wearing a large gold cross around her neck, the kind that has the body of Jesus draped across it.
“You can wait back here,” she says. “She won’t be long.”
I follow her through an archway into the theater itself. It’s pitch-black. I hear her moving off to one side; then a pool of light appears on the stage.
“Have a seat anywhere,” she says.
Once my eyes adjust, I see that the theater is filled with round tables covered in white tablecloths. I wander over to the nearest one and sit down.
“When do you think Angela might get here?” I ask, but the woman is gone.
I’ve been waiting for maybe five minutes, completely creeped out by this point, when Angela comes bursting through a side door.
“Wow, sorry,” she says. “Orchestra went late.”
“What do you play?”
“Violin.”
It’s easy to imagine her with a violin tucked under her chin, sawing away on some mournful Romanian tune.
“Do you live here?” I ask.
“Yep. In an apartment upstairs.”
“Just your mom and you?”
She looks at her hands. “Yes,” she says. “Just my mom and me.”
“I don’t live with my dad either,” I say. “Just my mom and brother.”
She looks back and kind of examines me for a couple seconds. “Why did you move here?” she asks. She sits down in the chair across from mine and stares at me with solemn honey-colored eyes. “I assume that you didn’t actually burn your old school to the ground.”
“Excuse me?” I say.
She looks at me sympathetically. “That’s the rumor going around today. You mean you didn’t know that your family had to flee California because of your delinquent behavior?”
I’d laugh if I wasn’t so horrified.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “It will blow over. Kay’s rumors always do. I’m impressed by how quickly you were able to get on her bad side.”
“Uh, thanks,” I say, smirking. “And, my obvious delinquency aside, we moved because of my mom. She was getting sick of California. She loves the mountains, and she decided she wanted to raise us somewhere where we couldn’t always see the air we breathed, you know?”
She smiles at my joke, but it’s just to be polite. A pity smile.
Another long silence.
“Okay, so enough with the chitchat,” I say restlessly. “Let’s talk about our project. I was thinking about the reign of Queen Elizabeth. We could talk about what it was like to be a woman, even a woman with a lot of power, back in the day. A female empowerment kind of project.” For some reason I think this will be right up Angela’s alley.
“Actually,” she says. “I had another idea.”
“Okay. Shoot.”
“I thought we could do a presentation on the Angels of Mons.”
I almost choke. If I’d been drinking water I would have sprayed it all over the table.
“What are the Angels of Mons?” I ask.
“It’s a story from World War I. There was this big battle between the Germans and the British, who were badly outnumbered but won. After it was over there was a rumor going around about these phantom men who appeared to help the British. The mysterious men shot at the Germans with bows and arrows. One version said that the men were standing between the two armies, shining with a kind of unearthly light.”
“Interesting,” I manage.
“It was a hoax, of course. Some writer made it up and it got out of hand. It’s like an early version of UFOs, a crazy story that kept getting told again and again.”
“Okay,” I say, taking a breath. “Sounds like you have it covered.”
I can just picture the look on Mom’s face when I tell her that I’m going to do a project on angels for British History.
“I thought it would be interesting for the class,” says Angela. “A specific moment in time, like Mr. Erikson suggested. I also think we can relate it to today.”
My mind races, trying to think up a tactful way to turn down her idea.
