Hallowed

“No,” Mom says with a small, knowing smile. “I mean me. In 1967 I graduated from Stanford with a degree in history. My name back then was Margot Whitfield. That, according to the official records, anyway, is your grandmother.”

“Margot Whitfield,” I repeat.

“That’s me.”

I shake my head incredulously. “You know, sometimes I feel like I don’t know you at all.”

“You don’t,” she admits easily, which catches me off guard. “When you’ve been around as long as I have, you’ve lived several different lives, and each one of them is, in some ways, like a different person. A different version of yourself. Margot Whitfield is a stranger to you.” My thoughts shoot straight to Samjeeza and the way he calls my mom Meg, the image of her he carries around in his head, this smirking girl with cropped brown hair. Definitely a stranger.

“So what was she like, this Margot Whitfield?” I ask. “Nice name, by the way. Margot.”

“She was a free spirit,” Mom says. “A bit of a hippie, I’m afraid.” My brain instantly conjures an image of my mom in one of those flowy polyester dresses with the tiny sunglasses and daisies in her hair, swaying to the music at Woodstock, protesting the war.

“So did you do a lot of drugs?”

“No,” she says a bit defensively. “I had my rebellious stage, Clara. But it definitely wasn’t the sixties. More like the twenties.”

“Then why were you a hippie, if you weren’t rebelling?”

She hesitates. “I had a hard time with the conformity of the fifties.”

“What was your name in the fifties?”

“Marge,” she says with a laugh. “But I was never the fifties-housewife type.”

“Because you weren’t married.”

“Right.” She’d told me this. Early on I’d been nervous that maybe, given her age, she’d already been married a few times and had lots of kids out there, but she assured me this wasn’t the case.

“Did you ever almost get married?” Now this, I’ve never asked her. But she’s been pretty forthcoming recently, so I try my luck.

She closes her eyes for a minute, takes a deep breath. “Yes.”

“When?”

She looks at me. “In the fifties. Now back to Margot Whitfield, please.” I nod. “So you’re a Stanford alum. How many times have you been to college, anyway?”

“Let’s see,” she says, obviously relieved to be off the fifties and back to a time she’s comfortable with. “Four. I studied nursing, history, international relations, and computer programming.”

I let that sink in for a minute. “International relations?”

“I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

“Don’t tell me you were a spy?”

She smiles blandly.

“So that’s why you keep telling me to relax about the college thing. I don’t have to pick a single career. When you’re going to live hundreds of years, you have time to be everything that interests you.”

“When you live a long life,” she says, “you can do a lot of things. You have time. But if you want to go to Stanford with Angela, I think that might be great fun.”

“I’ll think about it,” I say. But if I go with Angela, Tucker and I are going to be separated.

We’re going to have to do the long-distance thing, and that does not sound like great fun to me.

I crawl back to bed around four, completely exhausted by this point, hoping to grab a couple hours of sleep before tomorrow begins. But I’m instantly sucked into the cemetery dream, which is not at all restful. For a few seconds I fight it, completely disoriented, stumbling as I make my way up the hill. I try to slow my breathing, remind myself that I actually want to be here, try to calm the immediate desperation and panic I feel to figure out who is going to die.

Look around, I tell myself. See who’s not here. Who should be here, and isn’t.

I spot Jeffrey, same as usual. I say his name. He doesn’t look at me, says, Let’s get this over with, like he does every time. I want to ask him, Who is it? But my lips won’t form the words. I am locked into what future-Clara is doing at this moment, which is walking, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other, and wishing she could cry. If I could just flipping cry, she thinks — I think —then maybe the ache wouldn’t be so bad.

All I can do is stay along for the ride and observe. Now that I know this is a cemetery, that this is a funeral procession, it seems so obvious. Everybody’s wearing dark clothes. I notice gravestones scattered around under the trees. I try to pay attention to more than the grief raging in my head.

It’s spring, I quickly figure out. The leaves on the trees, the grass, are new green. The air has that fresh- washed smell that comes after a spring rain, where you can still detect a hint of snow. There are the beginnings of wildflowers on the hillside.

It’s going to happen in the spring.

I can clearly make out Angela walking way off to the side, wearing a long violet dress.

There’s Mr. Phibbs, my English teacher. Come to think of it, I recognize several people from school, maybe because school is the only place in Jackson where I know anybody. I see Mrs.

Lowell, the school secretary, and her redheaded daughter, Allison. Kimber Lane, Jeffrey’s girlfriend. Ava Peters. Wendy, walking next to her parents, clutching a white rose to her chest. I see a flash of her face, which is