by Cynthia Hand
Tucker looks over my shoulder and seems to notice Christian for the first time.
“How you doing, Chris? Have a nice summer?” he asks.
“Yeah, fantastic,” answers Christian, and his mind suddenly retreats from mine into a wave of forced indifference. “How about you?”
They stare at each other, one of those high-testosterone stares. “Amazing,” Tucker says.
There’s a challenge in his voice. “Best summer of my life.” I wonder if it’s too late to get out of this class.
“Well, that’s the thing about summers, isn’t it?” says Christian after a minute. “They have to end sometime.”
It’s a relief when class is over. But then I have to stand at the doorway of the cafeteria and decide what to do about lunch.
Option A: My usual. Invisibles table. Wendy. Chitchat. Maybe some awkward talk about how I’m dating her twin brother now, and maybe her asking about what exactly happened out there in the woods the day of the fire, which I don’t know how to answer. Still, she’s one of my best friends, and I don’t want to keep avoiding her.
Option B: Angela. Angela likes to eat alone, and people usually give her a lot of space.
Maybe, if I sat with her, they would give me a lot of space. But then I’d have to answer Angela’s questions and listen to her theories, which she’s pretty much been bombarding me with for the past few days.
Option C (not really an option): Christian. Standing casually in the corner, deliberately not looking at me. Not expecting anything, not pressuring me, but there. Wanting me to know he’s there. Hopeful.
No way I’m going in that direction.
Then the decision kind of gets made for me. Angela looks up. She tilts her head to indicate the empty seat next to her. When I don’t hop to it, she mouths, “Get over here.” Bossy.
I go over to her corner and sink into a seat. She’s reading a small, dusty book. She closes it and slides it across the table to me.
“Check this out,” she says.
I read the title. “The Book of Enoch?”
“Yep. A really, really, ridiculously old copy, so watch the pages. They’re delicate. We’re going to need to talk about this ASAP. But first—” She looks up, then calls loudly, “Hey, Christian.”
Oh. My. God. What is she doing?
“Angela, wait a second, don’t—”
She waves him over. This could be bad.
“What’s up?” he says, cool and composed as ever.
“You’re going out to lunch, right?” Angela asks. “You always go out.” His eyes flicker over to mine. “I was considering it.”
“Right, well, I don’t want to mess up your plans or anything, but I think you and me and Clara should have a meeting after school. At my mom’s theater, the Pink Garter, in town.” Christian looks confused. “Um, sure. Why?”
“Let’s just call it a new club I’m starting,” says Angela. “The Angel Club.” He glances at me again, and yep, there’s betrayal in his green eyes, because obviously I’ve gone and blabbed his biggest secret to Angela. I want to explain to him that Angela is like a bloodhound when it comes to secrets, virtually impossible to get anything by her, but it doesn’t matter. She knows. He knows she knows. Damage is done. I glare at Angela.
“She’s one too,” I say simply, mostly because I know Angela wanted to spring it on him herself, and it makes me feel better to ruin her plans. “And she’s crazy, obviously.” Christian nods, like this revelation comes as no surprise.
“But you’re going to be there, at the Pink Garter,” he says to me.
“I guess so.”
“Okay. I’m in,” he tells Angela, but he’s still looking at me. “We need to talk, anyway.” Awesome.
“Awesome,” says Angela cheerfully. “See you after school.”
“See you,” he says, then wanders out of the cafeteria.
I turn to Angela. “I hate you.”
“I know. But you need me, too. Otherwise nothing would ever get done.”
“I still hate you,” I say, even though she’s right. Kind of. This whole Angel Club thing actually sounds like a great idea, if it can help me figure out what it means that Christian and I didn’t fulfill our purpose, since my mom still isn’t exactly forthcoming on the subject. Angela’s stellar with research. If anyone could uncover the consequences for angel-blood purpose-failure, it’s her.
“Oh, you know you love me,” she says. She pushes the book at me again. “Now take this and go eat lunch with your boyfriend.”
“What?”
“Over there. He’s clearly pining for you.” She gestures behind us, where, sure enough, over at the Invisibles table, Tucker is chatting with Wendy. They’re both staring at me with identical expectant expressions.
“Shoo. You’re dismissed,” says Angela.
“Shut up.” I take the book and tuck it into my backpack, then head to the Invisibles table.
Ava, Lindsey, and Emma, my other fellow Invisibles, all smile up at me and say hello, along with Wendy’s boyfriend, Jason Lovett, who I guess is eating with us this year instead of his usual computer-games pals.
It’s weird, us having boyfriends.
“What was that all about?” asks Wendy, peering over at Angela with curious eyes.
“Oh, just Angela being Angela. So, what’s on the Jackson High menu for today?”
“Sloppy Joes.”
“Yummy,” I say without enthusiasm.
Wendy rolls her eyes and says to Tucker, “Clara never likes the food here. I swear, she eats like a bird.”
“Huh,” he says, eyes twinkling, because that’s not his experience with me at all. Around him I’ve always eaten like a horse. I slide into the seat next to his, and he scoots his chair closer to mine and puts his arm around me. Perfectly G-rated, but I can almost feel the topic of discussion shift in the cafeteria. I guess I’m going to be that girl who holds her boyfriend’s hand as they stroll down the halls, who steals kisses between classes, who makes the moony eyes across the crowded cafeteria. I never thought I’d be that girl.
Wendy snorts, and we both turn to look at her. Her eyes dart from me to Tucker and back again. She knows about us, of course, but she’s never seen us together like this before.
“You guys are kind of disgusting,” she says. But then she scoots her chair closer to Jason’s and slips her hand in his.
Tucker smiles in a mischievous way I know too well. I don’t have time to protest before he leans over for a kiss. I push at him, embarrassed, then melt and forget where I am for a minute.
Finally he lets go. I try to catch my breath.
I am so that girl. But being that girl has its perks.
“Ew, get a room,” Wendy says, stifling a smile. It’s hard to read her, but I think she’s trying to be cool with this whole best-friend-dating-my-brother thing by acting completely nauseated. Which I think means that she approves.
I notice that the cafeteria has gone momentarily silent. Then suddenly everything starts up again in a flurry of conversation.
“You do know we’re now officially the talk of the town,” I say to Tucker. He might as well have taken a marker to my forehead and written PROPERTY OF TUCKER in big black letters.
His eyebrows lift. “Do you mind?”
I reach for his hand and lace his fingers with mine.
“Nope.”
I’m with Tucker. In spite of my failed purpose and everything, it looks like I’m actually going to get to keep him. I’m the luckiest girl in the world.
Chapter 2
First Rule of Angel Club
Mr. Phibbs, my teacher for AP English, which happens to be — thank God! — my last class of the day, immediately gets us started on our first “College English” assignment, a personal essay on where we see ourselves in ten years.
I take out a notebook, click my pen to the write position. And stare at the blank page. And stare. And stare.
Where do I see myself in ten years?
“Try to vi
sualize yourself,” Mr. Phibbs says, like he’s spotted me back here in the corner and knows that I’m floundering. I always liked Mr. Phibbs; he’s kind of our own personal Gandalf or Dumbledore or somebody cool like that, complete with round, wire glasses and long white ponytail sticking out of the back of his collar. But right now he’s killing me.
Visualize myself, he says. I close my eyes. Slowly, a picture starts to materialize in my mind. A forest beneath an orange sky. A ridge. Christian, waiting.
I open my eyes. Suddenly I’m furious.
No, I think at no one in particular. That is not my future. That’s past. My future is with Tucker.
It’s not hard to imagine it. I close my eyes again, and with a bit of effort I can see the outline of the big red barn at the Lazy Dog, the sky overhead empty and blue. There’s a man walking a horse in a pasture. It looks like Midas, a beautiful glossy chestnut. And there’s — this is the part where the breath suddenly hitches in my throat — a small boy riding the horse, a tiny dark-haired boy giggling as Tucker — the man is definitely Tucker; I’d know that butt anywhere — leads him around the pasture. The boy sees me, waves. I wave back. Tucker walks the horse over to the fence.
“Look at me, look at me,” says the boy.
“I see you! Hi there, handsome,” I say to Tucker. He leans over the fence to kiss me, taking my face between his hands, and that’s when I see the glint of the plain gold band on his finger.
We’re married.
It’s the best daydream of all time. I know somewhere deep down that it’s only a daydream, the combination of my active imagination and wishful thinking. Not a vision. Not the future that’s been set for me. But it’s the one I want.
I open my eyes, tighten my fingers around my pen, and write: “In ten years, I will be married. I will have a child. I will be happy.”
I click the pen closed and stare at the words. They surprise me. I’ve never been one of those girls, either, who dreamed of getting married, never forced a boy to say vows with me on the playground or dressed up in bedsheets and pretended to walk down the aisle. When I was a kid I fashioned swords out of tree branches, and Jeffrey and I chased each other around the backyard yelling, “Surrender or die!” Not that I was a tomboy. I liked the color purple and nail polish and sleepovers and writing my crush’s name in the margins of my notebooks at school as much as any other girl. But I never honestly considered being married. Being Mrs. Somebody. I guess I assumed that I’d get married eventually. It just seemed like it was too far away to worry about.
But maybe I am one of those girls.
I look at the page again. I’ve got three sentences. Wendy is obviously writing an entire book on how awesome her life is going to turn out, and I’ve got three sentences. I have a feeling they’re not the kind of sentences that Mr. Phibbs is going to appreciate.
“Okay, five more minutes,” says Mr. Phibbs. “Then we’ll share.” Panic sets in. I’m going to have to make something up. What should I want to be?
Angela’s going to be a poet, Wendy’s a vet, Kay Patterson over there is head of a sorority house and marries a senator, Shawn is an Olympic-gold snowboarder, Jason’s one of those computer programmers who makes a gazillion dollars coming up with some new way to Google, and I’m — I’m — I’m a cruise ship director. I’m a famous ballerina for the New York City Ballet. I’m a heart surgeon.
I go with heart surgeon. My pen flies across the page.
“Time’s up,” says Mr. Phibbs. “Finish your sentence and then we’ll share.” I read back over what I’ve written. It’s good stuff. Completely bogus, but something.
“There’s nothing more inspiring than the complexity and beauty of the human heart,” I write as my last sentence, and I can nearly make myself believe it. The daydream about Tucker has almost faded from my mind.
“Heart surgeon, huh?” says Angela as we walk together up the boardwalk on Broadway in Jackson.
I shrug. “You went with lawyer. You really think you’re going to be a lawyer?”
“I’d make an excellent lawyer.”
We step under the archway that says PINK GARTER, and Angela fishes out her keys to unlock the door. As usual for this time of day, the theater looks completely deserted.
“Come on.” She puts her hand on my shoulder and pushes me through the empty lobby.
For a minute we stand there in the dark. Then Angela slips away, disappearing into the black, and a moment later a halo of light appears on the stage, which is still decked out with the set of Oklahoma! , a fake farmhouse and corn. I wander reluctantly down the aisle, past the rows of red velvet seats and up to the line of clean white tables in front of the orchestra pit, where all last year Angela and I sat with Angela’s notebooks and stacks of dusty old books and talked angels, angels, angels until sometimes I thought my brain would melt.
Angela practically skips up to the front of the theater. She climbs the stairs at the edge of the stage and stands looking out, so she can get a clear view of anybody coming in. Under the lights her long black hair glows a shade of deep blue that isn’t entirely natural. She sweeps her bangs behind her ear and looks down at me with this super-pleased-with-herself expression. I swallow.
“So what’s this all about?” I ask, trying to sound like I don’t care. “I’m dying to know.”
“Patience is a virtue,” she quips.
“I’m not that virtuous.”
She smiles mysteriously. “You think I haven’t guessed that already?” A figure appears in the back of the theater, and I get that panicky tightness in my chest.
Then the figure comes into the light, and my breath catches for a different reason.
It isn’t Christian. It’s my brother.
I glance up at Angela. She shrugs. “He deserves to know everything we know, right?” I turn back and look at Jeffrey. He shifts uncomfortably from one foot to the other.
Jeffrey’s been hard to figure out lately. Something is definitely up with him. First, there was the night of the fire, when he came tearing out of the trees like the devil was chasing him, his wings the color of lead. I don’t know if that means anything, the state of his spiritual well-being or whatnot, since my wings at that time were pretty dark too, on account of the soot. He said he was out there looking for me, which I don’t buy. But one thing’s for sure, he was out there. In the forest. During the fire. Then the next day he was glued to the television, watching every minute of the news. Like he was expecting something. And later we had this conversation: Me (after spilling the beans about finding Christian in the forest and him being an angel-blood): “So it was kind of a good thing that I saved Tucker instead.” Jeffrey: “Well, what were you supposed to do, if your purpose wasn’t about saving Christian?”
The million-dollar question.
Me (miserably): “I don’t know.”
Then Jeffrey did the oddest thing. He laughed, a bitter laugh, false, which instantly rubbed me the wrong way. I’d just confessed that I’d messed up the most important thing I was ever supposed to do in my life, my reason for being on this earth, and he laughed at me.
“What?” I barked at him. “What’s so funny?”
“Man,” he said. “This is like a freaking Greek tragedy.” He shook his head in disbelief.
“You saved Tucker instead.”
I may have called him a jerk-face or something. But he kept laughing, until I seriously wanted to smack him, and then Mom caught wind of the impending violence in that uncanny way she has and said, “Enough, both of you,” and I’d stalked off to my room.
Just thinking about it now makes me want to slug him.
“So what do you think?” Angela asks. “Can he join us?”
Tough call. But mad or not, I’m pretty curious to find out what exactly he knows. Since we don’t seem to be communicating well these days, this might be the best way. I turn to Angela with a shrug. “Sure. Why not?”
“We have to make this quick,” Jeffrey says, slinging his backpack down onto one of
the chairs. “I’ve got practice.”
“No problem.” Angela suppresses another smile. “We’re just waiting for—”
“I’m here.”
And there is Christian, striding down the aisle with his hands in his pockets. His eyes roam over the theater like he’s considering making an offer on the place, inspecting the stage, the seats, the tables, the lights and riggings in the rafters. Then his gaze lands on me.
“So let’s do this,” he says. “Whatever it is.”
Angela doesn’t waste any time. “Come join me up here.”
Slowly we all make our way onto the stage and stand in a circle with Angela.