“Did you tell Mom?” He looks a little green at the thought. Because if I told Mom, that’d be it for Jeffrey. No more wrestling, or baseball in the spring, or football in the fall or whatever he was dreaming up. He’d probably be grounded until college.
“No,” I say. “Although she’s bound to ask the right question herself, sooner or later.”
It’s kind of odd, come to think of it, that she hasn’t asked me already. Maybe her sources already told her that, too.
“Are you going to tell her?” he asks, so softly I can hardly hear him over the music.
His expression is truly pathetic, and where a few moments before anger surged through me, now I feel drained and sad.
“No. I just wanted to tell you. I don’t know why. I wanted you to know.”
“Thanks,” he says. He gives a short, humorless laugh. “I think.”
“Don’t mention it. I mean ever. Really.” I get up to leave.
“I feel like a cheater,” he says then. “All the ribbons and medals and trophies I won in California, they don’t mean anything. It’s like I was taking steroids, only I didn’t know it.”
I know exactly what he means. It’s why I dropped out of ballet, even though I loved it, and why I never picked it up again in Jackson. It felt dishonest, doing so easily, so naturally, what the others girls had to work so hard to accomplish. It was unfair, I thought, to take the attention away from them when I had such a huge advantage.
So I quit.
“But if I hold myself back, I feel like a fake,” says Jeffrey. “And that’s worse.”
“I know.”
“I won’t do it,” he says. I look into his dead-serious gray eyes. He swallows, but holds my gaze. “I won’t hold myself back. I won’t pretend to be less than I am.”
“Even if it puts us in danger?” I ask, glancing away.
“What danger? Angela Zerbino’s dangerous?”
That’s when I’m supposed to tell him about the Black Wings. There are bad angels now, angels that hunt us and sometimes kill us. There are shades of gray we didn’t know about before, and it’s something that I should tell him, something that he needs to know, but his eyes are pleading with me not to take any more away from him.
Mom told us that we’re special, but what kind of “gift” comes with a war between angels as the strings attached? Maybe I don’t want any more taken from me either.
Maybe I don’t want to be remarkable, don’t want to fly or speak some bizarre angel language or save the world one hot guy at a time. I just want to be human.
“Watch yourself, okay?” I tell to Jeffrey.
“I will.” Then adds, “Thanks. You’re all right sometimes, you know.”
“Remember that next time you’re dragging me out of bed at five in the morning,” I say wearily. “Tell Kimber I said hi, by the way.”
Then I escape to my room and lay in the dark turning the words
Chapter 8
Blue Square Girl
This morning the sun’s so bright it feels like I’m standing on a frozen cloud. I’m at the top of a run called Wide Open. It’s a double blue square— more difficult than green circle, but not black diamond level. I’m getting there. The valley below is so white and serene it’s hard to believe it’s the first week of March.
I readjust my goggles, slip my hands into my poles, and flex forward in my boots to test the bindings. All set. I launch myself down the mountain. The cold air whips the exposed part of my face, but I’m grinning like an idiot. It feels so good, the closest I can come to flying. I almost feel the presence of my wings in moments like these, even though they’re not there. There’s a section of moguls on one side of the run, and I try them out, lifting and dropping in and out of them. It makes me aware of the strength of my knees, my legs. I’m getting good at moguls. And powder, which is literally like pushing through cloud, sinking up to your knees in fluffy white snow that flies out behind you as you go. I like to hit the runs first thing in the morning after a new snow, so I can carve my own path through the fresh powder.
I’ve got it bad for skiing. Too bad the season’s almost over.
Wide Open deposits me at South Pass Traverse, a trail that cuts almost horizontally across the mountain. I straighten my skis and push off to gain momentum, cutting through the trees. There’s a bird singing back there somewhere, and when I pass by it stops. The trail opens up onto another groomed slope, Werner, one of my faves, and I stop at the edge. People are setting up giant slalom gates on the hill. Race today.
Which means that Christian will be here.
“What time’s the race?” I call to one of the guys setting up.
“High noon,” he calls back.
I check my watch. It’s a few minutes before eleven. I should go eat, then take the big quad chair up to the top of Werner and watch the race.
At the lodge I spot Tucker Avery having lunch with a girl. This is a new development.
I’ve spent almost every weekend this winter at Teton Village (yay Mom for not scoffing at the ridiculously expensive season pass) and almost every weekend I see Tucker sometime in the afternoon, after he’s done with his morning teaching on the bunny hill. But it’s not like I’m bumping into him all over the mountain. He’s more of a backcountry skier, off the groomed trails. I haven’t tried that kind of thing yet—
apparently it requires a partner so if something terrible happens to one of you the other can go for help. I’m
