“As far as I know. Mom always says it’s the one thing I was put on this earth to do.”
“So what happens if you don’t do it?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“And what happens after you complete it? You go on to live a normal, happy life?”
“I don’t know,” I say again. Some expert I’m turning out to be. “Mom won’t tell me any of that.”
“What’s yours?” she asks, still writing.
She looks up when I don’t say anything. “Oh, is it supposed to be a secret?”
“I don’t know. It’s just personal.”
“It’s okay,” she says. “You don’t have to tell me.”
But I
“It’s about Christian Prescott.”
She puts her pencil down, her face so surprised I almost laugh.
“Christian Prescott?” she repeats like I’m about to hit her with the punch line to a very silly joke.
“I see a forest fire, and then I see Christian standing in the trees. I think I’m supposed to save him.”
“Wow.”
“I know.”
She’s quiet for a minute.
“That’s why you moved here?” she asks finally.
“Yep. I saw Christian’s truck in my vision, and I read the license plate, so that’s how we knew to come here.”
“Wow.”
“You can stop saying that.”
“When is it supposed to happen?”
“I wish I knew. Sometime during fire season is all I know.”
“No wonder you’re so obsessed with him.”
“Ange!”
“Oh, come on. You eye-hump him all through British History. I thought you were just enraptured, the way everyone else at school seems to be. I’m happy to find out that you have a good reason.”
“Okay, enough angel talk,” I say, getting up and heading for the door. I’m sure I’m beet red by this point. “Our lasagna’s getting cold.”
“But you didn’t ask me about my purpose,” she says.
I stop.
“You know your purpose?”
“Well, I didn’t know until now that it was my purpose. But I’ve been having the same daydream thing, over and over again, for like three years.”
“What is it? If you don’t mind me asking.”
She looks serious all of a sudden.
“No, it’s fine,” she says. “There’s a big courtyard, and I’m walking through it fast, almost running, like I’m late. There are lots of people around, people with backpacks and cups of coffee, so I think it’s like a college campus or something. It’s midmorning. I run up a set of stone steps, and at the top is a man in a gray suit. I put my hand on his shoulder, and he turns.”
She stops talking, staring off into the darkened theater like right now she’s seeing it play out in her mind.
“And?” I prompt.
She glances over at me uncomfortably.
“I don’t know. I think I’m supposed to deliver a message to him. There are words, there are things I am supposed to say, but I never can remember them.”
“They’ll come to you, when the time is right,” I say.
I sound just like my mom.
What’s comforting about Angela, I think as I get ready for bed that night, is that she reminds me that I’m not alone. Maybe I shouldn’t feel alone, anyway, since I have Mom and Jeffrey, but I do, like I’m the only person in the world who has to face this divine purpose. Now I’m not. And Angela, in spite of her know-it-all nature, doesn’t know what her purpose means any more than I do, and no amount of research or theorizing can help her. She simply has to wait for the answers. It makes me feel better, knowing that. Like I suck a smidge less.
“Hey, you,” says Mom, poking her head in my room. “Did you have a good time with Angela?” Her face is carefully neutral, the way it always is whenever the topic of Angela comes up.
