by Cynthia Hand
“No. You stay,” she says, and I recognize the no-nonsense tone. This isn’t about her having to go to the bathroom. This is about her wanting me to be alone with Phen.
“Wait,” I say, but she’s already gone.
“Women,” Phen says with a laugh. “They always pick the most inopportune times to powder their noses.”
“Yeah, women are so dumb that way,” I say, irritated. I don’t like to be manipulated, even if I understand why she’s doing it. I should be nice, make small talk, try to get to know him. And he is likable, I’ll admit. Funny. Charming. I can see what Angela digs about him, and I know that this is important to her, that she wants me to approve of him, but I can’t help it, hypocritical or not. For some reason I can’t quite put my finger on, he makes me uncomfortable.
He smirks. This guy is a master at smirks. “You don’t try very hard to hide the fact that you don’t like me.”
I look away, embarrassed that it’s so obvious. “I like you, Phen.”
“Right,” he says sarcastically.
“Well, I want to like you, anyway.” That much is true.
“Why?” he asks. “Why do you care?”
“Because Angela cares.”
“Ah. I guess that makes you a good friend.”
“I guess.”
“So you’re trying to like me, but you can’t quite manage it,” he says with a laugh. “Why?”
“Because I don’t know what you are,” I answer. Might as well be honest.
He lifts his arms palms up, in a gesture that says, What you see is what you get.
“No,” I say. “You’re an angel.”
“Thank you for reminding me.”
“But you don’t act like an angel. You don’t feel like one. You don’t talk like one.”
“I see. Do you know many angels?” he asks.
Oh, crap. I do not want this conversation to become about me and the angels I know. The angel, singular. I turn away, watch the last wedge of the sun disappear behind the horizon. Below us in the square, the people are like tiny dark ants against the stone, milling around, and I suddenly feel so removed from them, like we’re different species, them and me, and I’m alone, watching them but unable to be part of their world.
“We’re not all alike, you know,” Phen says then. “Angels.”
“I get that. But you look like one of us, and you’re not. So I guess I don’t understand what you’re playing at, or what you want with Angela.”
I look up at him. All the humor is gone from his eyes. He rakes his fingers through his hair, then sighs heavily.
“I never fit in with the others,” he says after a thoughtful pause. “Never. The joyous ones with their optimism, their duties, their never-wavering faith in what He wanted. The Watchers who loved the humans so much it killed them to watch them die like pretty butterflies. The sad ones, who hated the humans for their free will, and hated Him for giving it to them. I don’t love or hate humans. I respect them. They shape themselves, in a way that we angels do not. They tell lies and sleep around and curse, and they try to define themselves so valiantly. Who am I? they keep asking. Why am I here?”
I don’t know what to say to this. That’s all I’ve really been asking myself for the past two years. Is that what makes me human, I wonder, that I keep asking this question?
“I think Angela is beautifully human, even if she is more than that. So are you. And yes, I’m an impostor. I make myself seem young and I pretend. It’s the only way I can feel anything.”
He sounds tired, sad. Maybe I’ve been overly judgmental about this whole thing, I think. I haven’t had an open mind, that’s for sure. But I still can’t read him. I can’t look into his heart and know whether his intentions are good or bad. So, almost without thinking, I turn and put my hand over his on the rail.
His eyes flash up to mine. His skin is cool, smooth, but hard, like touching a statue. He gives me a sorrowful smile.
“It takes a great deal of energy, being human, even if it’s only on the outside,” he says, and for a moment he lets me see the layer of him that’s under the surface: his spirit, a blurring like someone is smudging charcoal around him. His soul is gray. Cold. Almost colorless. I feel how weary he is with himself, how resigned that this existence is all that there will ever be for him, day after day after day, until the end of the world, and even then he doesn’t know what will happen or if anything will truly change.
“Humans fear death so much, but there is no death,” he whispers. “There is only the illusion of it. We can never cease to be. We must stay like this. Forever.”
Trust an angel to make eternity sound like a huge bummer.
“You should leave Angela alone,” I say then, firmly. Because Angela deserves someone good. Phen may not be evil. But he’s not good. She deserves someone who will be crazy about her for her, her zany intelligence and spurts of kindness, her little quirks. Not just for her “humanness.” She deserves someone real.
Phen pulls his hand away, smirks again, and the blurring around him stops, solidifies. He’s done showing me the truth.
“I tried to resist her,” he says. “Have you ever tried to say no to her?”
“You clearly didn’t try hard enough.”
“It’s a tad hypocritical,” he says, his voice harder, “you disapproving of me for pretending to be something I’m not.”
“Oh yeah? And why is that?”
“Because you’re not human either. But you want to be.”
My breath catches. It’s true. I’m more angel than human. But he can’t know that. Can he?
“I’m human,” I protest. I want to lie, tell him that I’m only a quarter angel, that my angel blood is so diluted that it hardly matters, that I’m a smidge away from being completely normal, but I’m afraid he’ll see right through me and that will only make things worse. I fortify the mental wall I’ve built between us. “I’m not pretending anything.”
“You’re a child pretending to sit at the grown-ups’ table,” he says.
“If I’m a child, then so is Angela,” I shoot back.
“Indeed.” He sighs like this place suddenly bores him, tugs his hand through his hair again. “We should go find her. It’s getting dark.”
ANGELA
The Vatican didn’t go well. I can see it all over Clara’s face when I get back from the bathroom. She doesn’t like Phen. She’ll never like him. She thinks he’s too good, too special, too angelic for me. I’m only a Dimidius, after all.
“Where does she get off, judging me?” I rant to him later, after I’ve snuck out and basically attacked him back at his flat. He strokes my hair, trying to pacify me, but I’m still mad. “I mean, it’s not like she’s so flawless.”
“She’s worried about you,” he says.
I glance up at him. “Don’t do that. Don’t act like you’re endangering me or something. I thought we were past that.”
“I’m an angel,” he says simply. “What we have isn’t normal. Clara wants something normal for you.”
“Well, I don’t want normal.” I snuggle down into his chest, press a kiss there. “I don’t know why she’s so fussy about it. She of all people should understand. Her mom married an angel, for heaven’s sake!”
I know the minute I say it that I’ve betrayed her.
Phen tenses, his hand freezing on my bare back. “What?”
I sit up and untangle myself, pull the sheet to cover me. “I shouldn’t have told you,” I say. “I didn’t mean to. Please, don’t . . .”
“No, I won’t,” he says softly, almost like he’s talking to himself. “It has nothing to do with you,” he says, and I’m not sure what he means by that. He looks at me sternly. “But you should be more careful. If the fallen knew, they would hunt her.”
“Okay.”
He pulls me back down to him. We lie there for a minute without talking.
“This is foolishness, Angela,” he says finally.
I close my eyes. “If this is
foolish, I don’t want to be wise.”
“I care about you, more than I could ever have expected,” he says. “And I’ve . . . enjoyed this.”
“Me too.”
“But I can’t love you. And you deserve love. Clara is right about that.”
I swallow down the lump in my throat. “I don’t need love right now,” I whisper. “Okay?”
“Okay,” he says, and then I kiss him, as if I can make it like this conversation never happened, like I can make everything but us go away. And, for a little while at least, it does.
When I get back to the house Nonna is sitting on the front step. Waiting. She stands up when she sees me.
“So. It is true. You’ve been with a boy. All night.”
I force myself to stay casual. “Did Clara tell you that?”
“I don’t need Clara to tell me what is plain,” she says. “You have defiled yourself.”
“Oh, Nonna, don’t be so dramatic.”
She bangs her cane against the cobblestone, hard. “Your mother does not send you here for this!”
“So why does she send me?” I shoot back. “To get rid of me for a few months, that’s why. So she can be alone without a kid to weigh her down. Right?”
“Of course not. She sends you so that you might learn history, and understand the world. So that you will learn about family.”
I don’t say anything.
“Today you and Clara will take a train to my sister in Florence. You will stay there for the rest of the summer. And you will not see this boy again.”
“He’s not a boy,” I say.
“I don’t care what he is,” Nonna says wearily. “You will go. Now get upstairs and pack.”
I want to refuse. I’m eighteen now, a grown woman. I make my own choices. But I don’t argue. When Phen said good-bye to me this morning there was a finality in his voice, like maybe he won’t be there if I go back again. I guess I always knew that our time together would be fleeting. Ephemeral. And if he doesn’t decide to call it off now, it’s not like going to Florence will stop us from being together.
“Fine,” I say softly. I slip past Nonna into the house. In the kitchen, Clara looks up at me from the table, then looks quickly away.
“Well played,” I tell her.
“I didn’t do anything. She has eyes, you know. She could see you weren’t here. I tried to cover, but—”
“You’re a crappy liar,” I fill in. Which is true. Clara couldn’t lie her way out of a paper bag.
“Sorry,” Clara murmurs. “But Ange, about Phen—”
“Don’t concern yourself with Phen,” I interrupt. “Now apparently I’ve got some packing to do.”
CLARA
Angela doesn’t speak to me for a solid week. I pass the time wandering around Florence alone, seeing the sights without her. I consider how hard it’s going to be come fall, when we have to head off for Stanford together. But I’m not sorry for what I said to Phen. Not really. I was protecting her, I tell myself. The only way I knew how.
It doesn’t matter though. By the end of the week, she’s sneaking out again. Out the window, this time. Phen must have followed us here.
I’m going to have to talk to her about it. About him.
Angela’s great-aunt, Betta, puts us to work making her mandatory Sunday night family dinner. I watch Angela while she’s chopping lettuce for the salad, and I can tell she’s barely here with me. She’s still with him. Her eyes are far away. I wonder if I looked like that, with Tucker. If it was so plain on my face.
She looks up, sees me staring at her, and her expression darkens.
“You’re judging me,” she says. “Again.”
I don’t know how to tell her what I think. My throat closes around the words I would say, about what I saw of Phen’s soul, what he said, what I said to him. It’s not what she wants to hear. Still, I should tell her. It might hurt, but it’s important for her to know what he’s really like. I glance out the window and spot Betta on the balcony hanging up sheets, humming to the radio, safely out of earshot.
“Ange, listen,” I begin, even though I have a feeling that she won’t.
“Don’t bother explaining,” she says before I can get another word out. “I know this thing with Phen won’t work. He and I both know it. We’ve been over it. Maybe that’s part of what drives me crazy about him. He’s forbidden fruit. I know we can’t be together.”
I let out a tiny sigh of relief. Thank God she’s being sensible. Finally.
“But that doesn’t change how I feel about him,” she says then, staring up at me with the paring knife still clutched in her hand. “He might not be my destiny, like what you have, but it doesn’t change the fact that I . . .” She looks embarrassed, wipes sweat off her forehead, and goes back to cutting up lettuce. “I guess I thought you’d understand.”
So much for sensible. She’s right, though. I’m the last person qualified to lecture someone else about affairs of the heart. I’m the poster girl for the it’s complicated relationship status on Facebook. I still dream about Tucker almost every night.
“I do understand,” I say. “But—”
“That’s why we agreed to keep it casual,” she says like she didn’t hear me. “It was temporary; we knew that. We’re just friends, really. That’s all.”
“Friends,” I repeat slowly.
“Yes.” She holds out her hand, and it takes me a second to realize that I’m supposed to give her a tomato I’ve been holding. “Friends.”
I pass her the tomato. She slices it quickly, without looking at me. I remind myself that she’s a grown-up, and besides, we’re going to head back to the States in a few weeks and I’m sure there will be all kinds of smart, hot boys for her to keep it casual with at Stanford. Boys who have souls with colors.
I open my mouth to tell her that.
“Don’t,” she whispers. “Don’t ruin this for me, C. Leave us alone. It will work itself out.”
And so I don’t talk about what I saw in Phen that day on the top of St. Peter’s. I tell myself that it’s her life, and I stay out of it.
It’s a decision that I will always regret.
Read on for a sneak peek at
BOUNDLESS
PROLOGUE
The first thing I’m aware of is the dark. Like somebody just shut off the lights. I squint into the inky nothingness, straining to see something, anything, but my eyes don’t adjust. Tentatively I feel with my feet along the floor, which is oddly slanted, as if the room is being tilted downward. I take a step back and my leg strikes something hard. I stop. Try to regain my balance. Listen.
There are voices, faint voices, from somewhere above.
I don’t know what this vision is about yet, where I am or what I’m supposed to be doing or who I’m hiding from. But I do know this. I’m hiding.
And something terrible has happened.
It’s possible that I’m crying. My nose is running, but I don’t try to wipe at it. I don’t move. I’m scared. I could call the safety of glory, I think, but then they would find me. Instead I draw my hands into fists to stop the trembling. The darkness closes in, pressing and encasing me, and for a moment I fight the urge to call glory so hard that my fingernails break the surface of my palms.
Be still, I tell myself. Be quiet.
I let the darkness swallow me whole.
1
WELCOME TO THE FARM
“How you holding up, Clara?”
I jolt back to myself in the middle of my bedroom, a pile of old magazines strewn all around my feet, which I must have dropped when the vision hit. My breath is still frozen in my lungs, my muscles tense, as if they are preparing me to run. The light streaming through the window hurts my eyes. I blink at Billy, who leans against the door frame of my bedroom and offers up an understanding smile.
“What’s the matter, kid?” she asks when I don’t answer. “Vision got you down?”
I gulp in a breath. “How did you know?”
�
��I get them, too. Plus I’ve been hanging around people who have visions for most of my life. I recognize the post-vision face.” She takes me by the shoulders and sits down with me at the edge of my bed. We wait until my breathing quiets. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asks then.
“There’s not a lot to it yet,” I say. I’ve been having this vision all summer, since Italy with Angela. So far there hasn’t been much to go on but darkness, terror, an oddly slanted floor. “Should I tell you anyway?”
Billy shakes her head. “You can if you want, if it would help you get things off your chest. But visions are personal, for you and you alone, in my opinion.”
I’m relieved she’s so laid-back about it. “How do you do it?” I ask after a minute. “How do you go on living like normal when you know that something bad’s going to happen?”
There’s pain in her smile. She puts her warm brown hand over mine. “You learn to find your happiness, kid,” she says. “You figure out those things that give your life meaning and you hold on to them. You try to stop worrying about the stuff you can’t control.”
“Easier said than done.” I sigh.
“It takes practice.” She jostles her shoulder into mine. “You all right now? Ready to come up swinging?”
I conjure a weak smile. “Yes, ma’am.”
“All right, then, get to work,” she says playfully. I resume packing, which is what I was doing before the vision clobbered me, and Billy grabs a tape gun and starts sealing up the finished boxes. “You know, I helped your mom pack for Stanford, back in the day. Nineteen-sixty-three. We were roomies, living in San Luis Obispo, a little house by the beach.”
I’m going to miss Billy, I think as she goes on. Most of the time when I look at her I can’t help but see my mom, not because the two of them look anything alike, outside of being tall and gorgeous, but because, as my mom’s best friend for like the last hundred years, Billy has a million memories like this one about Stanford, funny stories and sad ones, times when Mom got a bad haircut or when she lit the kitchen on fire trying to make Bananas Flambé or when they were nurses in WWII together and Mom saved a man’s life with nothing but a bobby pin and a rubber band. It’s the next best thing to being with Mom, hanging with Billy. It’s like, for those few minutes, when she’s telling the stories, Mom’s alive again.