“You okay?” Tucker asks quietly.
I haven’t told him about hell. Or the Black Wing. Because Mom says that when you know about Black Wings you’re more likely to draw their attention, however that works.
I haven’t told him about a lot of things.
“I’m fine. I’m just. .” What? What am I? Hopelessly confused? Completely screwed up?
Eternally doomed?
I go with: “Cold.”
He hugs me, rubs his hands up and down my arms, trying to warm me. For a second I see that worried, slightly offended look he gets when he knows I’m not telling him the entire truth, but I stretch up and give him another kiss, a soft one, at the corner of his mouth.
“Let’s never break up again, okay?” I tell him. “I don’t think I could handle it.” His eyes soften. “It’s a deal. No more breaking up. Come on,” he says, taking my hand and leading me back to where my car is parked at the edge of the burned clearing. He opens my door for me, then runs around to the passenger side and gets in. He grins. “Let’s get the heck out of here.”
I love that he says heck.
I’ve totally had enough of hell.
It’s a different girl this year, sitting in the silver Prius in the parking lot of Jackson Hole High School on her first day of class. First off, this girl’s a blonde: long, wavy gold hair with subtle tints of red. She wears her hair in a tight ponytail at the base of her neck, and on top of that she’s crammed a gray fedora, which she hopes will come off as cool and vintage and will take some of the attention away from her hair. She looks sun-kissed — not tan exactly, but with a very definite glow. But it’s not the hair or the skin that I don’t quite recognize as my own when I peer into the rearview mirror. It’s the eyes. In those large blue-gray eyes is a brand-new knowledge of good and evil. I look older. Wiser. I hope that’s true.
I get out of the car. Overhead the sky is gray. Still raining. Still cold. I can’t help but scan the clouds, search around inside my own consciousness for any hint of sorrow that could mean there’s a bad angel lurking, even though Mom said Samjeeza’s unlikely to come after us right away. I injured him, and apparently it takes a while for Black Wings to heal, something to do with the way time works in hell. A day is a thousand years, a thousand years a day, something like that. I don’t pretend to understand it. I’m just glad we don’t have to hightail it out of Jackson and leave my entire life behind. At least for the time being.
No bad-angel vibes, so I look around the parking lot hoping to see Tucker, but he’s not here yet. Nothing left to do but head inside. I straighten the fedora one last time and start for the door.
My senior year awaits.
“Clara!” calls a familiar voice before I even make it three steps. “Wait up.” I turn to see Christian Prescott climbing out of his brand-new pickup truck. This one is black, huge, glinting silver at the wheels, the words MAXIMUM DUTY stamped onto the back.
The old truck, the silver Avalanche that used to be permanently parked on the edges of my visions, burned up in the forest too. That was not a good day to be a truck.
I wait as he jogs over to me. Just looking at him makes me feel weird, nervous, like I’m losing my balance. The last time I saw him was five nights ago when we were standing on my front porch, both of us drenched with rain and smeared with soot, trying to work up the nerve to go inside. We had so much craziness to figure out, but we never ended up doing it, which, I confess, is not Christian’s fault. He did call. A lot, those first couple days. But whenever I saw his name light up on my phone, part of me always froze, the proverbial deer in the headlights, and I wouldn’t pick up. By the time I finally did, we didn’t seem to know what to say to each other. It all boiled down to: “So, you didn’t need me to save you.” “Nope. And you didn’t need me to save you.” And we laughed awkwardly as if this whole purpose thing was some kind of a prank, and then we both fell silent, because really what is there to say? I’m sorry, I blew it, it looks like I messed up your divine purpose? My bad?
“Hi,” he says now, sounding out of breath.
“Hi.”
“Nice hat,” he says, but his eyes go straight to my hair, like every time he sees me with the correct hair color it confirms that I’m the girl from his visions.
“Thanks,” I manage. “I’m going for incognito here.”
He frowns. “Incognito?”
“You know. The hair.”
“Oh.” His hand lifts like he’s going to touch the obnoxious strand of hair that’s already sprung loose from my ponytail, but instead closes into a fist, drops. “Why don’t you just dye it again?”
“I’ve tried.” I take a step back, tuck the runaway strand behind my ear. “The color won’t take anymore. Don’t ask me why.”
“Mysterious,” he says, and the corner of his mouth quirks up into a tiny smile that would have melted my heart to butter last year. He’s hot. He knows he’s hot. I’m taken. He knows I’m taken, and yet here he goes smiling and stuff. This irritates me. I try not to think about the dream I keep having this week, the way that Christian seems to be the only thing in the entire dream that keeps me from completely losing my mind. I try not to think about the words
I don’t want to belong to Christian Prescott.
The smile fades, his eyes going serious again. He looks like he wants to say something.
“So, see you around,” I say, maybe a little too brightly, and start off toward the building.
“Clara—” He trots along after me. “Hey, wait. I was thinking that maybe we could sit together at lunch?”
I stop and stare at him.
“Or not,” he says with that laugh/exhale thing he does. My heart kicks into high gear. I’m not interested in
