Unearthly u-1

by Cynthia Hand

  “Good, stretch them out,” says Mom.

  I extend them as far as I can, until their weight begins to strain my shoulders.

  “To get off the ground you must lighten yourself.” She keeps saying this and I have no clue how to do it.

  “Next you’re going to sprinkle me with pixie dust and tell me to think happy thoughts,”

  I grumble.

  “Clear your mind.”

  “Done.”

  “Starting with the attitude.”

  I sigh.

  “Try to relax.”

  I stare at her helplessly.

  “Try closing your eyes,” she says. “Take deep breaths in your nose and out through your mouth. Imagine yourself becoming lighter, your bones weighing less.”

  I close my eyes.

  “This really is like yoga,” I say.

  “You’ve got to empty yourself out, let go of all the things that mentally weigh you down.”

  I try to clear my mind. Instead I see Christian’s face. Not from the vision, surrounded by fire and smoke, but a breath away like when he leaned over me on the ski slope.

  His dark, thick eyelashes. His eyes with their spatters of gold. Full of warmth. The way the corners crinkle when he smiles.

  My wings don’t feel as heavy then.

  “That’s good, Clara,” says Mom. “Now try to lift off.”

  “How?”

  “Flap your wings.”

  I imagine my wings catching the air the way hers did that time at Buzzards Roost. I think about shooting up into the sky like a rocket, streaking past clouds, brushing the treetops. It’d be wonderful, wouldn’t it, to soar like that? To answer the call of the sky?

  Nothing so much as twitches.

  “It might help if you open your eyes now,” Mom says with a laugh.

  I open my eyes. Flap, I order my wings silently.

  “I can’t,” I pant after a minute. I’m sweating, in spite of the chilly air.

  “You’re overthinking it. Remember, your wings are like your arms. You don’t have to think at your arms to move them, you just move them.”

  I glare at her. My teeth clench in frustration. Then my wings slowly flex back and forth.

  “That’s it,” says Mom. “You’re doing it!”

  Only I’m not doing it. My feet are still firmly planted on the ground. My wings are moving, fanning the air, blowing my hair all over my face, but I’m not lifting off.

  “I’m too heavy.”

  “You need to make yourself light.”

  “I know!”

  I try to think of Christian again, his eyes, his smile, anything tangible, but suddenly I can only picture him from the vision now, standing with his back to me. The fire coming.

  What if I can’t do this? I think. What if the whole thing depends on my ability to fly?

  What if he dies?

  “Come on!” I scream, straining with everything I have. “Fly!”

  I bend my knees, jump, and make it a few feet off the ground. For all of five seconds I think I might have done it. Then I come down hard, at an angle, twisting my ankle.

  Off balance, I crash onto the lawn, a tangle of limbs and wings.

  For a minute I lay there in the soggy grass, gasping for breath.

  “Clara,” says Mom.

  “Don’t.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  Yes, I’m hurt. I will my wings to vanish.

  “Keep trying. You’ll get it,” Mom says.

  “No, I won’t. Not today.” I get to my feet carefully and brush dirt and grass off my pants, refusing to meet her eyes.

  “You’re used to everything coming easy for you. You’re going to have to work at this.”

  I wish she’d stop saying that. Every time, her face gets this look like I’ve let her down, like she expected more. It makes me feel like a big fat failure, both as a human, where I’m supposed to be remarkable — beautiful, fast, strong, sure on my feet, able to do anything that’s asked of me— and as an angel. As a regular girl, I’m not proving to be anything magnificent. And as an angel, I am simply abysmal.

  “Clara.” Mom moves toward me, opening her arms like we’re going to hug now and everything will be okay. “You have to try again. You can do this.”

  “Stop being so soccer mom about it, okay? Just leave me alone.”

  “Honey—”

  “Leave me alone!” I screech. I look into her startled eyes.

  “All right,” she says. She turns and walks swiftly back toward the house. The door slams. I hear Jeffrey’s voice in the kitchen, and her voice, low and patient, answering him. I rub my burning eyes. I want to run away but there’s nowhere to go. So I stand there, my neck and shoulders and ankle aching, feeling sorry for myself until the yard is dark and there’s nothing to do but limp inside.

  Chapter 11

  Idaho Falls

  Angela shows up at our house a whole hour early on Saturday morning, and the minute I see her standing on the porch I know this girls-day-out idea is a big mistake.

  She looks like a kid on Christmas morning. She’s totally freaked-excited to meet my mom.

  “Just play it cool, all right?” I tell her before I let her come in. “Remember what we talked about. Casual. No angel talk.”

  “Fine.”

  “I mean it. No angel-related questions at all.”

  “You told me like a hundred times already.”

  “Ask her about Pearl Harbor or something. She’d probably like that.”

  Angela rolls her eyes.

  She doesn’t seem to grasp the fact that our friendship largely depends on how clueless she appears to my mom. That if Mom knew what Angela and I’ve been talking about all these afternoons after school, the angel research and questions and Angela’s wacky theories, I’d probably never be allowed to go to the Pink Garter again.

  “Maybe it’d be best if you don’t talk at all,” I say. She puts her hand on her hip and glares at me. “Okay, okay. Come with me.”

  In the kitchen Mom is setting a huge plate of pancakes on the table. She smiles.

  “Hello, Angela.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Gardner,” Angela says in this completely reverential tone.

  “Call me Maggie,” Mom says. “It’s good to finally meet you face-to-face.”

  “Clara’s told me so much about you I feel like I already know you.”

  “All good, I hope.”

  I glance at Mom. We’ve hardly said three sentences to each other since the botched flying lesson. She smiles without showing her teeth, her company smile. “Clara hasn’t really told me that much about you,” she says.

  “Oh,” says Angela, “well there’s not that much to tell.”

  “Okay, so pancakes,” I say. “I bet Angela’s starved.”

  Mom turns to get a plate out of the cupboard, and I shoot Angela a warning look.

  “What?” she whispers.

  She’s completely starstruck by my mom. She stares at her all through breakfast.

  Which would have been okay — weird, but okay — except that after about two bites into pancakes she blurts out, “How high can an angel-blood fly? Do you think we could fly in space?”

  Mom just laughs and says that sounds cool but she’s pretty sure we still need oxygen. “No Superman trips to the moon,” she says.

  They smile at each other, which bugs me. If I asked that question, Mom would say she didn’t know, or it wasn’t important, or she’d change the subject. I know what she’s doing: She’s trying to figure Angela out. She wants to know what Angela knows. Which I definitely do not want to happen.

  But there’s no stopping Angela. “What about the light thing?” she asks.

  “The light thing?”

  “You know, when the angels shine with the heavenly light? What’s that about?”

  “We call that glory,” Mom answers.

  “So what’s the point of it?” Angela asks.

  Mom sets down her glass of milk and acts like this is a deep qu
estion that requires some serious thought. “It has many uses,” she says finally.

  “I’ll bet the light comes in handy,” says Angela. “Like your own personal flashlight.

  And it makes you look angelic, of course. No one would doubt you if you show the wings and the glory. But you’re not supposed to do that, right?”

  “We’re never to reveal ourselves,” Mom says, looking at me for an instant, “although there are exceptions. Glory has a strange effect on humans.”

  “Like what?”

  “It terrifies them.”

  I sit up a little. I didn’t know that, and neither did Angela.

  “Oh, I see,” says Angela, really cooking with gas now. “But what is glory? It has to be more than just light, to have that kind of effect, right?”

  Mom clears her throat. She’s in uncomfortable territory now, stuff she’s never told me.

  “You’re always saying how much easier flying would be if I could tap into glory,” I pipe up, not about to let her off the hook. “You make it sound like an energy source.”

  She gives a barely perceivable sigh. “It’s how we connect with God.”

  Angela and I mull that over.

  “Like how?” asks Angela. “Like when people pray?”

  “When you’re in glory, you’re connected with everything. You can feel the trees breathing. You could count the feathers on a bird’s wing. You know if it’s going to rain. You’re part of it, that force which binds all life.”

  “Will you teach us how to do it?” asks Angela. This whole conversation is clearly blowing her mind. She’s itching to whip out her notebook and take some major notes.

  “It can’t be taught. You have to learn to still yourself, to strip away everything but the core of what makes you, you. It’s not your thoughts or your feelings. It’s the self under all of that.”

  “Okay, so that sounds hard.”

  “I was forty before I was able to do it well,” Mom says. “Some angel-bloods never get to that state at all. Although it can be triggered by powerful events or feelings.”

  “Like Clara’s hair thing, right? You told her that gets triggered by emotions,” Angela says.

  Mom gets up from the table and crosses to the window.

  “Oh. My. God. Shut up,” I mouth to Angela.

  “There’s a blue truck in the driveway,” Mom says after a moment. “Wendy’s here.”

  I abandon Mom and Angela and run to meet Wendy, who, unbeknownst to her, will save me from this angel conversation.

  * * *

  Tucker drove her over. He’s leaning against Bluebell in the driveway, staring out at the woods, and somehow it feels like he shouldn’t be allowed to be here, shouldn’t be allowed to peer into my woods or listen to my stream or enjoy my birds singing.

  “Hey, Carrots,” he says when he spots me. I look around for Wendy, who I find rummaging around in the truck for something. “Beautiful day for shopping,” he adds.

  He’s mocking me, I think. I don’t have a comeback.

  “Yep,” I say.

  Wendy slams the door of the truck and steps up onto the porch right as Angela exits the house. “Hey, Angela,” she says brightly. She’s apparently determined to be friendly with this other best friend of mine. “How’s it going?”

  “Great,” says Angela.

  “I’m so excited to go to Idaho Falls. I haven’t been there in forever.”

  “Me neither.”

  Tucker’s not leaving. He’s looking at my woods again. Against my better judgment, I step down off the porch and walk over to him.

  “Shopping for prom dresses, huh?” he asks as I come up beside him.

  “Um, kind of. Wendy needs shoes. Angela’s after accessories, since her mom’s making her dress. And I’m along for the ride, I guess.”

  “You’re not going to prom?”

  “No.” I glance away uncomfortably, back toward the house, where suddenly Wendy seems very into her awkward conversation with Angela.

  “Why not?”

  I give him a “why do you think?” glare.

  “No one’s asked you?” He looks at me.

  I shake my head. “Shocking, right?”

  “Yeah, actually, it is.”

  He rubs the back of his neck, then gazes at the woods. He clears his throat. For a second I get the crazy idea that he might be about to ask me to prom, and my heart does all kinds of stupid erratic leaps in my chest from sheer terror at the idea.

  Because I’d have to reject him right in front of Wendy and Angela, who are acting like they’re talking but I can tell they’re paying attention, and then he’d be humiliated.

  I have no real desire to see Tucker humiliated.

  “Go stag,” he says instead. “That’s what I would do.”

  I almost laugh with relief. “I guess.”

  He turns and calls to Wendy. “I gotta take off. Come here a sec.”

  “Clara’s going to take me home, so I won’t be needing your services anymore today, Jeeves,” says Wendy like he’s her chauffeur. He nods and takes her arm and draws her over to the side of the truck where he speaks in a low voice.

  “I don’t know what prom shoes cost, but this might help,” he says.

  “Tucker Avery,” Wendy says. “You know I can’t take that.”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  She snorts. “You’re sweet. But that’s rodeo money. I can’t take it.”

  “I’ll get more.”

  He must keep holding the money out to her, because then she says no more emphatically.

  “Okay, fine,” he grumbles. He gives her a quick hug and gets in his truck, pulls around the circle, and stops, then rolls down the window to lean out.

  “Have fun in Idaho. Don’t provoke any potato farmers,” he says.

  “Right. Because that would be bad.”

  “Oh, and, Carrots. ”

  “Yes?”

  “If you end up going to prom, save me a dance, okay?”

  Before I have time to process this request, he drives away.

  “Men,” Angela says from beside me.

  “I thought that was nice,” says Wendy.

  I sigh, flustered. “Let’s just go.”

  Suddenly Wendy gasps. She pulls a fifty-dollar bill out of her sweatshirt pocket.

  “That little stink,” she says, smiling.

  * * *

  The second I lay eyes on the dress, I’m in love with it. If I were going to prom, this would be it. The one. Sometimes you just know with dresses. They call to you. This one’s Greek inspired, strapless with an empire waist and a little swath of fabric that comes up the front and over one shoulder. It’s a deep blue, a little brighter than navy.

  “Okay,” says Angela after I’ve been staring at it on the rack for five minutes. “You have to try it on.”

  “What? No. I’m not going to prom.”

  “Who cares? Hey, Maggie, Wendy!” Angela calls across the department store to Wendy, who’s in the shoe department with my mom looking through the clearance heels. “Come see this dress for Clara.”

  They drop everything and come to see the dress. And gasp when they see it. And insist I try it on.

  “But I’m not going to prom,” I protest from the dressing room as I pull my shirt over my head.

  “You don’t need a date,” says Angela from the other side of the door. “You could go stag, you know.”

  “Right. Stag to prom. So I can stand around and watch everybody else dance.

  Sounds fantastic.”

  “Well, we know one person who will dance with you,” says Wendy faintly.

  “He did just break up with his girlfriend, you know,” Mom says.

  “Tucker?” Wendy asks, confused.

  “Christian,” Mom answers.

  My heart misses a beat, and when Wendy and Angela don’t respond, I open the dressing room door and stick my head out. “How’d you hear about Christian breaking up with Kay?”