Unearthly u-1

by Cynthia Hand

  If you looked at my journal a few years ago, that fuzzy, pink diary I had when I was twelve with Hello Kitty on the cover, locked with a flimsy gold key I kept on a chain around my neck to keep it safe from Jeffrey’s prying eyes, you’d see the ramblings of a perfectly normal girl. There are doodles of flowers and princesses, entries about school and the weather, movies I liked, music I danced around to, my dreams of playing the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker, or how Jeremy Morris sent one of his friends to ask me to be his girlfriend and of course I said no because why would I want to go out with someone too cowardly to ask me out himself?

  Then comes the angel diary, which I started when I was fourteen. This one’s a midnight blue spiral-bound notebook with a picture of an angel on it, a serene, feminine angel who looks eerily like Mom, with red hair and golden wings, standing on the sliver of the crescent moon surrounded by stars, beams of light radiating from her head. In it I jotted down everything Mom ever told me about angels and angel-bloods, every fact or piece of speculation I could coax out of her. I also recorded my experiments, like the time I cut my forearm with a knife just to see if I would bleed (which I did, a lot) and carefully noted how long it took to heal (about twenty-four hours, from when I made the cut to when the little pink line completely disappeared), the time I spoke Swahili to a man in the San Francisco airport (imagine the surprise for both of us), or how I could do twenty-five grands jetés back and forth across the floor of the ballet studio without getting winded. That was when my mom started seriously lecturing me about keeping it cool, at least in public. That’s when I started to find myself, not just Clara the girl, but Clara the angel-blood, Clara the supernatural.

  Now my journal (simple, black, moleskin) focuses entirely on my purpose: sketches, notes, and the details of the vision, especially when they involve the mysterious boy.

  He constantly lingers at the edges of my mind — except for those disorienting moments when he moves blindingly to center stage.

  I grow to know him through his shape in my mind’s eye. I know the sweep of his broad shoulders, his carefully disheveled hair, which is a dark, warm brown, long enough to cover his ears and brush against his collar in the back. He keeps his hands tucked into the pockets of his black jacket, which is kind of fuzzy, I notice, maybe fleece. His weight is always shifted slightly to one side, as if he’s getting ready to walk away. He looks lean, but strong. When he begins to turn I can see the faintest outline of his cheek, and it never fails to make my heart beat faster and my breath hitch in my throat.

  What will he think of me? I wonder.

  I want to be awe-inspiring. When I appear to him in the forest, when he finally turns and sees me standing there, I want to at least look the part of an angel. I want to be all glowy and floaty like my mom. I’m not bad looking, I know. All angel-bloods are a fairly attractive bunch. I have good skin and my lips are naturally rosy so I never wear anything but gloss. I have very attractive knees, or so I’m told. But I’m too tall and too skinny, and not in the willowy supermodel sort of way but in a storklike, all-arms-and-legs sort of way. And my eyes, which come across as storm-cloud gray in some lights and gunmetal blue in others, seem a bit too big for my face.

  My hair is my best feature, long and wavy, bright gold with a hint of red, trailing behind me wherever I go like an afterthought. The problem with my hair is that it’s also completely unruly. It tangles. It catches in things: zippers, car doors, food. Tying it back or braiding it never works. It’s like a living thing trying to break free. Within moments of wrestling it down, there are strands in my face, and within the span of an hour it usually slides out of its confines completely. It takes the word “unmanageable”

  to a whole new level.

  So with my luck, I’ll never make it in time to save the boy in the forest because my hair will have snagged on a tree branch a mile back.

  * * *

  “Clara, your phone’s ringing!” Mom hollers from the kitchen. I jump, startled. My journal lays open on my desk in front of me. On the page is a careful sketch of the back of the boy’s head, his neck, his tousled hair, the hint of cheek and eyelashes. I don’t remember drawing it.

  “Okay!” I yell back. I close the journal and slide it under my algebra textbook. Then I run downstairs. It smells like a bakery. Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving, and Mom’s been making pies. She’s wearing her fifties housewife apron (which she’s had since the fifties, although she wasn’t a housewife back then, she assures us) and it’s dusted with flour. She holds the phone out to me.

  “It’s your dad.”

  I raise an eyebrow at her in a silent question.

  “I don’t know,” she says. She hands me the phone, then turns and discreetly exits the room.

  “Hi, Dad,” I say into the phone.

  “Hi.”

  There’s a pause. Three words into our conversation and he’s already out of things to say.

  “So what’s the occasion?”

  For a moment he doesn’t say anything. I sigh. For years I used to practice this speech about how mad I was at him for leaving Mom. I was three years old when they split. I don’t remember them fighting. All I retained from the time they were together are a few brief flashes. A birthday party. An afternoon at a beach. Him standing at the sink shaving. And then there’s the brutal memory of the day he left, me standing with Mom in the driveway, her holding Jeffrey on her hip and crying brokenheartedly as he drove away. I can’t forgive him for that. I can’t forgive him for a lot of things. For moving clear across the country to get away from us. For not calling enough. For never knowing what to say when he does call. But most of all I can’t get past the way Mom’s face pinches up whenever she hears his name.

  Mom won’t discuss what happened between them any more than she’ll dish about her purpose. But here’s what I do know: my mother is as close to being the perfect woman as this world is likely to see. She’s half angel, after all, even though my dad doesn’t know that. She’s beautiful. She’s smart and funny. She is magic. And he gave her up. He gave us all up.

  And that, in my book, makes him a fool.

  “I just wanted to know if you’re okay,” he says finally.

  “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

  He coughs.

  “I mean, it’s rough being a teenager, right? High school. Boys.”

  Now this conversation has gone from unusual to downright strange.

  “Right,” I say. “Yeah, it’s rough.”

  “Your mom says your grades are good.”

  “You talked to Mom?”

  Another silence.

  “How’s life in the Big Apple?” I ask, to steer the conversation away from myself.

  “The usual. Bright lights. Big city. I saw Derek Jeter in Central Park yesterday. It’s a terrible life.”

  He can be charming, too. I always want to be mad at him, to tell him that he shouldn’t bother trying to bond with me, but I can never keep it up. The last time I saw him was two years ago, the summer I turned fourteen. I’d been practicing my “I-hate-you” speech big-time in the airport, on the plane, out of the gate, in the terminal.

  And then I saw him waiting for me by the baggage claim, and I filled up with this bizarre happiness. I launched myself into his arms and told him I’d missed him.

  “I was thinking,” he says now. “Maybe you and Jeffrey could come to New York for the holidays.”

  I almost laugh at his timing.

  “I’d like to,” I say, “but I kind of have something important going on right now.”

  Like locating a forest fire. Which is my one reason for being on this Earth. Which I will never be able to explain to him in a thousand years.

  He doesn’t say anything.

  “Sorry,” I say, and I shock myself by actually meaning it. “I’ll let you know if things change.”

  “Your mom also told me you passed Driver’s Ed.” He’s clearly trying to change the subject.

  “Yes, I took the test and parallel parked and e
verything. I’m sixteen. I’m legal now.

  Only Mom won’t let me take the car.”

  “Maybe it’s time we see about getting you a car of your own.”

  My mouth drops open. He’s just full of surprises.

  And then I smell smoke.

  The fire must be farther away this time. I don’t see it. I don’t see the boy. A hot gust of gritty wind sends my hair flying out of its ponytail. I cough and turn away from the blast, swiping hair out of my face.

  That’s when I see the silver truck. I’m standing a few steps away from where it’s parked on the edge of a dirt road. AVALANCHE, it says in silver letters on the back.

  It’s a huge truck with a short, covered bed. It’s the boy’s truck. Somehow I just know.

  Look at the license plate, I tell myself. Focus on that.

  The plate is a pretty one. It’s mostly blue: the sky, with clouds. The right side is dominated by a rocky, flat-topped mountain that looks vaguely familiar. On the left is the black silhouette of a cowboy astride a bucking horse, waving his hat in the air.

  I’ve seen it before, but I don’t automatically know it. I try to read the numbers on the plate. At first all I can make out is the large number stacked on the left side: 22. And then the four digits on the other side of the cowboy: 99CX.

  I expect to feel crazy happy then, excited to have such an enormously helpful piece of information handed to me as easily as that. But I’m still in the vision, and the vision is moving on. I turn away from the truck and walk quickly into the trees. Smoke drifts across the forest floor. Somewhere close by I hear a crack, like a branch falling.

  Then I see the boy, exactly the same as he’s always been. His back turned. The fire suddenly licking the top of the ridge. The danger so obvious, so close.

  The crushing sadness descends on me like a curtain dropping. My throat closes. I want to say his name. I step toward him.

  “Clara? You okay?”

  My dad’s voice. I float back to myself. I’m leaning against the refrigerator, staring out the kitchen window where a hummingbird hovers near my mom’s feeder, a blur of wings. It darts in, takes a sip, then flits away.

  “Clara?”

  He sounds alarmed. Still dazed, I lift the phone to my ear.

  “Dad, I think I’m going to have to call you back.”

  Chapter 2

  Yonder is Jackson Hole

  On the road to Wyoming, there are lots of signs. Most of them warn of some kind of danger: WATCH FOR DEER. WATCH FOR FALLING ROCK. TRUCKS, CHECK

  YOUR BRAKES. TUNE IN FOR ROAD CLOSURES. ELK CROSSING NEXT 2

  MILES. SNOW SLIDE AREA, NO PARKING OR STOPPING. I drive my car behind Mom’s the whole way from California with Jeffrey in the passenger seat, trying not to freak out about how all the signs point to the fact that we’re headed someplace wild and dangerous.

  At the moment I’m driving through a forest made up entirely of lodgepole pines. Talk about surreal. I can’t get over the sight of all the Wyoming license plates on the cars speeding past, many with the fateful number 22 on the left side. That number has brought us a long way, through six short weeks of crazy preparation, selling our house, saying good-bye to the friends and neighbors I’ve known my entire life, and packing up and moving to a place where none of us knows a single solitary soul: Teton County, Wyoming, which according to Google is county number 22, population just over 20,000. That’s roughly five people per every square mile.

  We’re moving to the boonies. All because of me.

  I’ve never seen so much snow. It’s terrifying. My new Prius (courtesy of dear old Dad) is getting a real workout on the snowy mountain road. But there’s no turning back now. The guy at the gas station assured us that the pass through the mountains is perfectly safe, so long as a storm doesn’t come up. All I can do is clutch the steering wheel and try not to pay attention to the way the mountainside plunges off a few feet from the edge of the road.

  I spot the WELCOME TO WYOMING sign.

  “Hey,” I say to Jeffrey. “This is it.”

  He doesn’t answer. He slumps in the passenger’s seat, angry music pounding from his iPod. The farther we get from California and his sports teams and his friends, the more sullen he becomes. After two days on the road, it’s getting old. I grab the wire and yank one of his earbuds out.

  “What?” he says, glaring at me.

  “We’re in Wyoming, doofus. We’re almost there.”

  “Woo freaking hoo,” he says, and stuffs the earbud back in.

  He’s going to hate me for a while.

  Jeffrey was a pretty easygoing kid before he found out about the angel stuff. But I know how that goes. One minute you’re a happy fourteen-yearold — good at everything you try, popular, fun — the next you’re a freak with wings. It takes some adjustment. And it was only like a month after he got the news that I received my little mission from heaven. Now we’re dragging him off to Nowheresville, Wyoming, in January, no less, right smack in the middle of the school year.

  When Mom announced the move, he yelled, “I’m not going!” with his fists clenched at his sides like he wanted to hit something.

  “You are going,” Mom replied, looking up at him coolly. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if you find your purpose in Wyoming, too.”

  “I don’t care,” he said. Then he turned and glared at me in a way that makes me cringe every time I remember it.

  Mom, for her part, obviously digs Wyoming. She’s been back and forth a few times scouting for a house, enrolling Jeffrey and me in our new school, smoothing out the transition between her job at Apple in California and the work she’ll be doing for them from home after we move. She has chattered for hours about the beautiful scenery that will now be a part of our everyday lives, the fresh air, the wildlife, the weather, and how much we’ll love the winter snow.

  That’s why Jeffrey is riding with me. He can’t stand to listen to Mom blather on about how great it’s all going to be. The first time we stopped for gas on the trip he got out of her car, grabbed his backpack, walked over to mine, and got in. No explanation. I guess he decided that he currently hates her more than he does me.

  I grab the earbud again.

  “It’s not like I wanted this, you know,” I tell him. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

  “Whatever.”

  My cell rings. I dig around in my pocket and toss the phone to Jeffrey. He catches it, startled.

  “Could you get that?” I ask sweetly. “I’m driving.”

  He sighs, opens the phone, and puts it to his ear.

  “Yeah,” he says. “Okay. Yeah.”

  He flips the phone closed.

  “She says we’re about to come up on Teton Pass. She wants us to pull over at the lookout.”

  Right on cue we come around a corner and the valley where we’ll be living opens up below a range of low hills and jagged blue-and-white mountains. It’s an amazing view, like a scene from a calendar or a postcard. Mom pulls into a turnoff for the

  “scenic overlook” and I come to a careful stop next to her. She practically bounds out of the car.

  “I think she wants us to get out,” I say to Jeffrey.

  He just stares at the dashboard.

  I open the door and swing out into the mountainy air. It’s like stepping into a freezer.

  I tug my suddenly-much-too-thin Stanford hoodie over my head and jam my hands deep into the pockets. I can literally see my breath floating away from me every time I exhale.

  Mom walks up to Jeffrey’s door and taps on the window.

  “Get out of the car,” she commands in a voice that says she means business.

  She waves me toward the ridge, where a large wooden sign shows a cartoon cowboy pointing into the valley below. HOWDY STRANGER, IT READS. YONDER

  IS JACKSON HOLE. THE LAST OF THE OLD WEST. There’s a scattering of buildings on either side of a gleaming silver river. That’s Jackson, our new hometown.

  “Over there is Teton National Pa
rk and Yellowstone.” Mom points toward the horizon. “We’ll have to go there, in the spring, check it out.”

  Jeffrey joins us on the ridge. He isn’t wearing a jacket, just jeans and a T-shirt, but he doesn’t look cold. He’s too mad to shiver. His expression as he surveys our new environment is carefully blank. A cloud moves over the sun, casting the valley in shadow. The air instantly feels about ten degrees colder. I’m suddenly anxious, like now that I’ve officially arrived in Wyoming the trees will burst into flame and I’ll have to fulfill my purpose on the spot. So much is expected of me in this place.

  “Don’t worry.” Mom puts her hands on my shoulders and squeezes briefly. “This is where you belong, Clara.”

  “I know.” I try to muster a brave smile.