by Cynthia Hand
“Seven of you …,” she repeats.
She’s finally getting it. “My dad said that there are never more than seven Triplare to walk the earth at any given time, and Asael wants them all. Christian said something about that once, too—seven Triplare, something Walter told him.” I look over at her. “What is it with the number seven, right? But like you said, it’s God’s number.”
“The seventh,” she whispers. She gazes down at her stomach. “The seventh is ours.”
“Now we’re on the same page,” I tell her, and speed up.
When I get back to Stanford, the first thing I do is try to find my brother. What Samjeeza said about Jeffrey—where’s your brother, Clara?—bugs me, and I don’t want to wait for him to call me to hang out. Part of me just wants to see him. Plus he should know about the seven-Triplare thing. So I take matters into my own hands and start Googling pizza places in or around Mountain View—let’s call it a hunch that Jeffrey’s hanging out in or near our old hometown. After all, that first time he showed up at my dorm room he said he thought he’d seen me, and that was the day I took Christian to Mountain View before we went to Buzzards Roost.
It turns out that there are three pizza joints in Mountain View, and Jeffrey works at the third one I check—right next to the train station, on Castro Street.
He’s not thrilled to see me when I come barging into his life. “What are you doing here?” he asks when I appear at the counter and sweetly ask for a Diet Coke.
“Hey, can’t a girl miss her brother?” I ask. “I need to talk to you. Do you have a minute?”
“All right, fine. Hey, Jake, this is my sister,” he tells a huge Latino guy behind the counter, who kind of grunts and nods. “I’m going on break.” He guides me to a table in the far front corner, under the window, and sits down across from me. “Do you want a pizza?” he asks, and hands me a menu. “I get a free one every day.”
“Dream job, huh?” I look around at the huge frescoes of different vegetables painted on the orange wall behind Jeffrey’s head: a giant avocado, four big tomatoes, an enormous green pepper. This isn’t quite what I pictured when Jeffrey told me he worked in a pizza joint. The place is small, narrow, but in a cozy way, with warm peach-colored tile on the floors, simple tables lined up on either side of the room, the kitchen open behind the counter, clean and shining with stainless steel. It’s more upscale and organic than your average pizzeria.
Jeffrey looks tired. He keeps blinking and rubbing at his eyes.
“You alive over there?” I ask.
He smiles wearily. “Sorry. Late night.”
“Working?”
“Playing,” he says, his smile amping up into a grin.
That doesn’t sound good. “Playing what?” I ask, and I’m guessing that the answer isn’t going to be Xbox.
“I went to a club.”
A club. My sixteen-year-old brother is tired because he was out late at a club. Awesomesauce. “So, let me see your fake ID,” I say, trying to play it cool. “I want to see how good it is.”
“No way.” He takes the menu from me and points at a pizza called the Berkeley vegan. “This one’s gross.”
“Well, let’s not have that, then.” I look down at the paper placemat-menu. “How about we try this one?” I say, pointing to pizza called the Casablanca.
He shrugs. “Fine. I’m kind of sick of all of them. Whatever sounds good to you.”
“Okay. So come on, let me see the ID.”
He folds his arms across the table. “I don’t have a fake ID, Clara. Honest.”
“Oh, right. You’re going to one of those superawesome clubs that don’t require an ID,” I say sarcastically. “Where’s that, because I am totally going.”
“My girlfriend’s dad owns the club. He lets me in. Don’t worry. I don’t drink … much.”
Oh, how comforting, I think. I actually have to bite my lip to keep myself from going all nagging-older-sister on him.
“So you’re calling her your girlfriend now, huh?” I say. “What’s her name again?”
“Lucy.” He takes a minute to run to the back and put in our order. “Yeah, we’re like, together now.”
“And what’s she like, other than being the daughter of some guy who owns a club?”
“I don’t know how to describe her,” he says with a shrug. “She’s hot. And she’s cool.”
Typical guyspeak, about as vague as possible.
He smiles, thinking about her. “She’s got a wicked sense of humor.”
“I want to meet her.”
He smirks, shakes his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not? What, you think I’d embarrass you?”
“I know you’d embarrass me,” he says.
“Oh, come on. I’ll behave, I promise. Bring her to meet me sometime.”
“I’ll think about it.” He stares out the window, where a group of teenagers is walking down the sidewalk, purposely bumping into one another, laughing. He watches them as they pass by, and I get a sad vibe off him, like he’s looking at the life he used to have. Without meaning to, he’s made himself grow up. He’s being an adult. Taking care of himself.
Going clubbing.
He clears his throat. “So what did you come to talk to me about?” he asks. “You need advice on the love life again? Did you hook up with Christian yet?”
I roll my eyes. “Ugh. Why does everyone keep asking me that? And you’re my little brother. That sort of thing is supposed to disgust you.”
He shrugs. “It does. I’m disgusted, really. So did you?”
“No! But we are going on a date on Friday night,” I admit with reluctance. “Dinner and a movie.”
“Ah, so maybe Friday …,” he teases.
I want to smack him. “That’s the kind of girl you think I am?”
Another shrug. “I was there that morning you snuck home after spending the night over at Tucker’s. You can’t play all innocent with me.”
“Nothing happened!” I exclaim. “I fell asleep, is all. Sheesh, you’re worse than Mom. Not that my innocence or lack thereof is any of your business,” I continue quickly, “but Tucker and I, we couldn’t … you know.”
His forehead rumples up in confusion. “You couldn’t what?”
He never was the sharpest knife in the drawer. “You know,” I say again, with emphasis.
Comprehension dawns on his face. “Oh. Why?”
“If I got too … happy, I started to glow, and then Tucker kind of got sick. That whole glory-terrifies-humans thing. So.” I start rearranging the packets of crushed red pepper on the table. “That’s what you have to look forward to, I guess.”
Now he really does look weirded out. “O-kay.”
“That’s why it’s hard to have relationships with humans,” I say. “Anyway, that’s not what we need to discuss.” I swallow, suddenly nervous about how he’ll take this idea of mine. “I’ve been training with Dad.”
His eyes narrow, immediately cautious. “What do you mean, training?”
“He’s been training me to use a glory sword. Me and Christian both, actually. And I think you should come with us, next time.”
For a minute he stares at me with guarded eyes. Then he looks at his hands.
I keep babbling. “That sounds fun, right? I bet you’d do great.”
He scoffs. “Why would I want to learn how to use a sword?”
“To defend yourself.”
“Against who, an angel samurai? This is the twenty-first century. We have something called guns now.”
Jake comes out and puts a steaming pizza on the table. He looks grouchy. Jeffrey and I wait in silence as he sets plates in front of us.
“Is there anything else I can get you?” Jake asks sarcastically.
“No, thank you,” I say, and he stalks off, and I lean across the table and whisper, “To defend yourself against Black Wings.” I tell Jeffrey about my talk with Samjeeza in the cemetery, including the fact that Sam
jeeza specifically asked about him, the way I keep seeing Samjeeza as a crow around campus, the things Dad said about the seven, er, T-people and how if we’re going to fight anybody, it’s probably going to be them. “So Dad’s teaching me. And I know he’d want to teach you, too.”
“T-people?”
I stare at him pointedly until he says, “Oh.”
“So what do you think? Will you come? It could be like Angel Club, except without Angela, because she’s … busy.”
He shakes his head. “No, thanks.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not going to learn to fight. That’s just playing the game. It’s not for me.”
“Jeffrey, you’re like a champion fighter. You’re a linebacker. You’re the district mid-class wrestling champ. You’re—”
“Not anymore.” He stands up, gives me a look that says very clearly that he’s done talking about it. “Enjoy the pizza. I have to get back to work.”
10
DINNER AND A MOVIE
“You should go black,” Angela says.
I turn around, startled to see her standing behind me at the mirror. She points at the dress I’m holding in my left hand.
“The black,” she says again.
“Thanks.” I hang up the other dress. “Why does it not surprise me that you would choose black?” I tease. “Goth girl.”
She walks stiffly over to Wan Chen’s bed and sits, helps herself to a bottle of peppermint-scented lotion Wan Chen keeps next to the bed, and starts rubbing it into her feet. I try not to stare at her belly. Just in the last few days she’s kind of popped. With the dark, baggy clothes and the way she always hunches her shoulders lately, she’s still able to hide that she’s pregnant if she wants to. Not for long, though. Pretty soon there’s going to be a baby.
A baby. The idea still seems too crazy to be true.
I step into the bathroom and change into the dress, the very definition of the little black dress, sleeveless and form-fitting and cut to the knee. Angela was right. It’s perfect for a date. Then I go over to the mirror that hangs on the back of my closet door and contemplate whether I should pull my hair up or leave it down.
“Down,” Angela says. “He loves your hair. If you leave it down, he’ll want to touch it.”
Hearing her say it that way, as if I’m preparing myself like a plate of food to be served up for Christian, only increases the anxiety I feel about this whole situation. Everything I do to get ready for this date boils down to the same thing: Will Christian like it? Will he like my perfume? My strappy shoes? My hair? The necklace I chose, a tiny silver bird’s wing that glints against the hollow of my throat? Will he like it? I ask myself each time, and then I have to ask myself if I want him to like it.
I pull my hair out of the ponytail and let it fall freely down my back. There’s a sharp knock at the door, and I run to open it. Christian’s standing in the hall wearing khakis and a blue dress shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows. He smells like Ivory soap and shaving cream.
He holds out a bouquet of white daisies. “For you.”
“Thank you,” I say, which comes out as a squeak. I clear my throat. “I’ll put these in some water.”
He follows me inside. I rummage around for something to use as a vase, but the best I can find is a Big Gulp cup. I fill it with water and set the flowers on my desk.
Christian glances at Angela sitting on Wan Chen’s bed, scribbling away in her black-and-white composition notebook. “Hello, Angela,” he says.
“Hi, Chris,” she says, but she doesn’t stop writing. “Clara said I could crash here while you were out tonight. I need to get away from my roommates. They’re treating me like an episode of 16 and Pregnant. So. You brought flowers. Very smooth.”
“Yeah, I try,” he says with a smirk. He looks at me. “You ready?”
“Yes.” I fight the urge to tuck my hair behind my ears. “Bye,” I say to Angela. “Wan Chen will be back from her astronomy thing around midnight. You might want to get off her bed before then.”
She waves her hand at me dismissively. “Go,” she says. “Get swept off your feet already.”
When we’re both situated in his truck, Christian puts the key in the ignition, but he doesn’t start it. Instead he turns to me.
“This is a date,” he says.
“Oh, good,” I say, “because I was wondering, what with the flowers and all.”
“And as a date, there are certain ground rules we need to go over.”
Oh boy. “Okay,” I laugh nervously.
“I will be paying for all of our activities this evening,” he begins.
“But—”
He holds up his hand. “I know that you are a modern, liberated, independent woman. I respect that, and I understand that you are capable of paying for your own meal, but I will still be paying for the movie, and then for dinner, and whatever else. Okay?”
“But—”
“And even though I’m paying, it doesn’t mean that I expect anything from you. I want to treat you tonight, and that’s all.”
It’s cute that he’s blushing.
“All right,” I fake-grumble. “You’ll pay. Anything else?”
“Yes. I’d like us to steer clear of all angel-related topics tonight, if you don’t mind. I don’t want to hear the word angel, or purpose, or vision, or any of our other special terminology. Tonight I want us to simply be Christian and Clara, two college students on a date. How’s that sound?”
“Sounds good,” I say. More than good, even. It sounds perfect.
It was a great idea in theory, not talking about angel stuff, but what it really means is that an hour later, sitting in the dimly lit auditorium before the movie begins at this amazing little indie film theater in Capitola, we’re running out of things to talk about. We’ve already been through how the first week of winter classes went, and the gossip going around Stanford, and our favorite movies. Christian’s is Zombieland, which surprises me—I would have pegged him as a profound type, like The Shawshank Redemption.
“Shawshank’s good,” he says. “But you can’t beat the way Woody Harrelson kills zombies. He takes such joy in it.”
“Uh-huh,” I say, making a face. “I’ve always found zombies to be the least threatening of the scary monsters. I mean, come on. They’re slow. They’re brain-dead. They don’t plot evil or try to take over the world. They just—” I put my arms out in front of me and give him my best zombie groan. I shake my head. “So not scary.”
“But they just. Keep. Coming,” Christian says. “You can run, you can kill them, but more of them always pop up, and they never stop.” He shudders. “And they try to eat you, and if you get bitten, that’s it—you’re infected. You’re doomed to become a zombie yourself. End of story.”
“Okay,” I concede, “they’re kind of scary,” and now I’m vaguely disappointed that we’re not here to watch a zombie movie.
“Next time,” Christian says.
“Hey, I have a new rule for our date,” I suggest with a cheerful grin. “No mind reading.”
“Sorry,” he says quickly. “I won’t do it again.” He sounds so serious all of a sudden, embarrassed like I’ve caught him looking down the front of my shirt, that I have no choice but to throw a piece of popcorn at him.
“You’d better not,” I say.
He smiles.
I smile.
And then we sit in silence, munching popcorn, until the lights dim and the screen flickers to life.
Afterward he drives me to the beach. We have dinner at Paradise Beach Grille, this little upscale place on the shore, and after dinner we take our shoes off and walk along the sand. The sun set hours ago, and the light of the moon is playing off the water. The ocean gently shushes us, lapping at our feet, and we’re laughing, because I have admitted that my favorite movie is Ever After, this old and completely cheesy retelling of the Cinderella story where Drew Barrymore tries and fails to master an English accent. Which is embarrassing, but th
ere it is.
“So, how am I doing?” he asks after a while.
“Best date ever,” I answer. “Good movie, good food, good company.”
He takes my hand. His power and mine converge, the familiar heat sparking between us. A cool breeze picks up and blows my hair, and I toss it back over my shoulder. He glances at me out of the corner of his eye, then looks away, out at the water, which gives me a chance to look at him.
It’s awkward to call a guy beautiful, but he is. His body is lean but strong, and he moves with such grace—like a dancer, I think, although I would never tell him that. Sometimes I forget how beautiful he is. His gorgeous gold-flecked eyes. Those thick dark eyelashes any girl would kill to have, his serious eyebrows, the finely chiseled angles of his cheekbones, the full, expressive lips.
I shiver.
“Are you cold?” he asks, and before I can answer, he takes off his jacket, the black fleece jacket, and pulls it around me. I am immediately enveloped by his smell: soap and cologne, a whiff of cloud, like he’s been flying. I flash back to the first time I wore his jacket, the night of the fire, when he put it around my shoulders. It’s been over a year since that night, but the vision still lingers bright in my mind: the burning hillside, the way Christian said, It’s you, the way it felt when he took my hand. It never actually happened that way, but it feels like a memory.
It’s you, he said.
“Thank you,” I say to him now, my voice faltering.
“You’re welcome,” he says, and picks up my hand again.
He doesn’t know what else to say. He wants to tell me how beautiful I am to him, too, how I make him feel like the best, strongest version of himself, how he wants to tuck my runaway hair behind my ear and kiss me, and maybe this time I’d kiss him back.
Now I’m the one cheating.
I let go of his hand.
It doesn’t matter, he says into my mind. I don’t mind you seeing what’s inside me.
My breath catches. I have to stop being such a chicken, I think. It’s not that I’m afraid of him, exactly, because if there’s one person in this world who makes me feel safe, it’s Christian, but I’m scared to let go, to let what’s between us really happen. I’m afraid to lose myself.