Hallowed

“Okay then,” Angela says finally. “I think this meeting is adjourned.” It’s almost dark when I leave the theater. Storm clouds are brewing overhead, churning like a grumbling stomach. I guess I should be grateful for the rain, since the storm put out the fires, which in the end probably saved people’s lives and homes. It’s only weather, I remind myself, but sometimes I wonder if this particular weather’s been sent to bother me personally, a punishment, maybe, for not doing my job, for failing at my purpose, or some other sort of ominous sign.

I try for a quick, casual good-bye to Christian at the corner, but he puts his hand on my arm.

“I still want to talk to you,” he says in a low voice.

“I have to go,” I manage. “My mom will be wondering where I am. Call me, okay? Or I’ll call you. One of us should definitely call the other.”

“Right.” His hand drops away. “I’ll call you.”

“I gotta run. I’m late.”

And then I’m off in the opposite direction.

Coward, says the nagging voice inside my head. You should talk to him. Find out what he has to say.

What if he says we belong together?

Well, then you’ll have to deal with that. But at least you won’t be running away.

I think it’s more of a brisk walk.

Whatever.

I’m having an argument with myself. And I’m losing.

So not a good sign.

Chapter 3 Other People’s Secrets

Mom comes out of her office the moment she hears me step through the front door.

“Hey,” she says. “How was school?”

“Everybody talked about my hair, but it was fine.”

“We could try to dye it again,” she suggests.

I shrug. “It must mean something, right? God wants me to be blond this year.”

“Right,” she says. “You want a cookie, blondie?”

“Do birds fly?” I scamper after her into the kitchen, where, sure enough, I smell something wonderful baking in the oven. “Chocolate chip?”

“Of course.” The buzzer goes off, and she puts on an oven mitt, takes the sheet of cookies out of the oven, and sets it on the counter. I pull up a stool on the other side of her and sit. It feels so normal it’s weird, after what’s happened, all the drama and fight-for-your-life stuff and serious soul-searching, and now. . cookies.

The night of the fire I came home assuming we’d have this big tell-all, and everything would be out in the open now that the stuff from my vision had happened. But when I got home, Mom was asleep, asleep on the most important night of my life, and I didn’t wake her, didn’t blame her because we were both, at the time, so literally fried, and she’d been attacked, almost died and all. But still. It wasn’t exactly how I thought my purpose would go.

It’s not like we haven’t talked. We have, although mostly it was a debriefing of what’s already happened. No new information. No revelations. No explanations. At one point I asked,

“So what happens now?” and she said, “I don’t know, honey,” and that was it. I would have pressed her about it, but she kept getting this look on her face, this bleak expression, her eyes so full of pain and sadness, like she’s so incredibly disappointed in me and how my purpose turned out. Of course she would never come right out and say that, never tell me that I’ve screwed up everything, that she thought I would be better than that, that she thought I’d make the right choices when my time came, that I’d prove myself worthy to be called an angel-blood. But the look says it all.

“So,” she says as we wait for the cookies to cool. “I thought you’d be home a while ago.

Did you go to see Tucker?”

And already I need to make a big decision: to tell her about Angel Club, or not tell her.

Okay. So I think about how the first thing out of Angela’s mouth when it came to rules was not to tell anybody, especially the adults, and then I think about the way Christian refused, just like that, said that he tells his uncle everything.

Mom and I used to have that. Used to. Now I have no desire to share this stuff with her, not about Angel Club, not about the weird recurring dream I’ve been having, not about how I feel about what happened the day of the fire or what my true purpose might have been. I don’t want to get into it right now.

So I don’t.

“I was at the Pink Garter,” I say. “With Angela.”

Not technically a lie.

I brace myself for her to tell me that Angela, while full of good intentions, is going to get us all in deep trouble someday. She knows that any time spent with Angela is time spent talking about angel-bloods and Angela’s many theories.

Instead she says, “Oh, that’s nice,” and uses a spatula to slide the cookies onto a wire rack on the counter. I steal one.