She lets me yell. I throw my tantrum while she looks down at the floor with an almost embarrassed expression and waits for me to finish. Then, after I’m done, she says, “I love you, Clara. And I do care about Tucker, as much as I know you won’t believe that. I do care about your happiness. But I care about your safety first. That has always been my first priority.”
“This isn’t about my safety,” I say bitterly. “This is about you getting to control my life.
How am I not safe around Tucker? Seriously, how?”
“Because you’re not the only thing out there in the night!” she exclaims. “When I woke up and you weren’t here. . ” Her eyes close. Her jaw tightens. “You will stay in this house. And you will see Tucker, under supervision, when I think it’s allowable for you to do so.” She gets up to leave.
“But he’s dying,” I blurt out.
She stops, her hand on the doorknob. “What?”
“I’ve been having a dream — a vision, I think — of Aspen Hill Cemetery. It’s a funeral.
And Tucker’s never there, Mom.”
“Sweetie,” Mom says. “Just because he’s not there doesn’t mean—”
“Nothing else makes sense,” I say. “If it was someone else who died, Tucker would be there. He’d be there for me. Nothing could keep him away. That’s who he is. He’d be there.” She makes a noise in the back of her throat and crosses over to me. I let her hug me, breathing in her perfume, trying to take comfort in her warmth, her solid, steady presence, but I can’t. She doesn’t seem that warm to me right now, or solid, or strong.
“I won’t let it happen,” I whisper. I pull away. “What I need to know is how I can stop it, only I don’t know how it’s going to happen so I don’t know what to do. Tucker’s going to die!”
“Yes, he is,” she says matter-of-factly. “He’s mortal, Clara. He will die. More than a hundred people on this earth die every minute, and someday he will be one of them.”
“But it’s Tucker, Mom.”
I’m on the verge of tears again.
“You really love him,” she muses.
“I really love him.”
“And he loves you.”
“He does. I know he does. I’ve felt it.”
She takes my hand. “Then nothing can ever truly separate you, not even death. Love binds you,” she says. “Clara. . I need to tell you—”
But I can’t let her talk me into placidly accepting Tucker’s death. So I say, “Love didn’t exactly bind you and Dad together, did it?”
She sighs.
I’m sorry I said it. I try to think of some way to make her understand. “What I mean is, sometimes people do get separated, Mom. For good. I don’t want that to happen to me and Tucker.”
“You stubborn, stubborn girl,” she says under her breath. She gets up and goes to my door.
Stops. Turns back toward me. “Have you told him?”
“What?”
“About the dream, or what you think it means,” she says. “Because ultimately, you don’t know what it means, Clara. It’s not fair to put that on him unless you know for sure. It can be a terrible thing to know you’re going to die.”
“I thought you said that we’re all going to die.”
“Yes. Sooner or later,” she says.
“No,” I admit. “I haven’t told him.”
“Good. Don’t.” She tries to smile but doesn’t quite manage it. “Have a good day at school.
Be home before dinner. We have more to talk about. There’s more I want to say.”
“Fine.”
After she goes I throw myself down on my bed, suddenly exhausted.
Sooner or later, she said. And she would know, I guess. At her age, most of the people she’s known have grown old and died. Like the thing with the San Francisco earthquake. There was a news story she cut out of the paper a few months ago about how the last survivor of the earthquake had died. Which makes her the last true survivor.
She’s right. Sooner or later Tucker is going to die.
Later, I think. I need to make sure it’s later.
Angela catches me by the cafeteria door at lunchtime.
“Angel Club,” she whispers. “Right after school, don’t be late.”
“Oh come on.” I am so not in the mood for Angela’s endless Q and A, her intensity, her wild theories. I’m tired. “I’ve got other stuff too, you know.”
“We have a new development.”
“How new? We just spent the weekend together.”
“It’s important, okay!” she screeches, which totally startles me. Angela’s not a screecher.
