“Are
He leans against the windowsill. “I’ve never done that before,” he says. “Had something like that. . dumped directly into my head. It’s a lot.”
“Try living it.”
“And your mom is sure you’re safe here? She doesn’t think it would be safer to—”
“Flee? Run screaming for the hills? Go into the witness protection program? Nope. Mom says it won’t do us any good. Plus the house is on hallowed ground.” He nods like that nugget of information is no surprise. Of course my house is on hallowed ground. Aren’t all the good houses?
“I wish I could have been there for you,” he says. “Helped you.” He means it. And it’s nice. But I’m crabby. I’m tired. I’m not in the mood for nice.
“I should go,” he says.
“You really should.”
“I am sorry about what happened at the dance,” he says. “I don’t want you to think that I’m that kind of guy.”
He thinks I’m mad at him about that. Like I’m still thinking about that.
“What kind of guy?”
“Who’d move in on another guy’s girlfriend.”
“I don’t. Think you’re that kind of guy. So it’s okay, really.”
“I do want us to be friends, Clara. I like you. I’d like you even if it weren’t for all the duty stuff. I wanted you to know that.”
Seriously, I am way too tired to be having this conversation. “We are friends. And right now I have to tell you, as your friend, go home, Christian. Because I really need this day to be over now.”
He summons his wings and goes. I shut the window. And even though I’m exhausted, and the last thing I want to think about is the dance and my purpose and how all arrows still seem to be pointing at him being at the center of it, now that he’s gone I feel lonely, as lonely as I’ve ever felt.
I hate these freaking stairs in the woods. I hate how well I know them, how I’ve got every inch of them memorized, the cracks, the grooves in the cement, the dark green moss like velvet pushing its way out. I hate the rough scrape they make under my feet. I hate the rail I cling to. If I had a choice right now, I’d take a jackhammer to these stairs, shatter them to pieces, take the pieces one by one and drop them at the bottom of Jackson Lake.
I’d bulldoze this entire cemetery.
I’d burn this black dress I’m wearing. I’d chuck Mom’s nice shoes in the garbage.
But I can’t. I’m in the dream, and in the dream the one in control is future-Clara, who hardly feels her feet moving. She wears her numbness like a cloak around her, hiding, weighing her down so each step forward is an effort. She thinks that she should cry. But she can’t. She wants to let go of Christian’s hand, but she doesn’t. It’s like we’re both paralyzed, incapable, in this moment, of any kind of action other than walking, always with the freaking walking, always up, to the spot where the people are gathering.
To the hole in the ground.
To death. My mother’s death. And there’s a Black Wing on the fringes of my mind, grieving, out-of-his-mind grieving, a gaping hole in his heart.
Mom wasn’t joking about it like being grounded, that next week. Every morning Billy drives us to school. She always acts casual, like it’s no biggie, but she’s hyperalert.
I made a case for quitting school altogether, spending the time with Mom, but she wouldn’t hear of it. “What would Stanford say?” she jokes.
“You have cancer. I’m pretty sure they’d understand,” I reply. A solid argument.
No go. Mom has this thing about normalcy. Acting like everything’s fine for as long as you can. It’s annoying, because since when have we ever been normal? It feels pointless to pretend otherwise. But she’s adamant. Normal kids go to school. So to school we will go.
I want my life back. I want to go to the Garter and hang out with Angela. I want to have dinner at the Averys on Sunday nights, smooch Tucker on the back porch. That’s what normal people do, right? See their friends? Their boyfriends? Plus I want to fly. Sometimes I feel the presence of my wings like they’re itching to stretch themselves out in the wide-open sky, aching to feel the wind carry me.
“That sucks,” Angela says at lunch on Thursday, four days post-crash. She takes a huge bite of a green apple and chews it noisily. “But you did get attacked by a Black Wing, Clara.
Better safe than sorry.”
“I feel safe
She gives me her no-nonsense, snap-out-of-it look. “Okay, better safe than dead.”
“Good point.”
“God, I wish I could have been there,” she exclaims, so loudly that two people passing by pause like, what’s gotten into Angela Zerbino? She glares at them and they move on.
“You have all the fun without me,” she whines more quietly.
“It wasn’t fun. Trust me.”
“I bet it was a rush. All that adrenaline pumping. Nerves firing.”
