I blinked at her, not sure what to say. Had Sarah told Ally what we were doing? “Big night?” I finally managed.
“Yeah. You know, your date with Josh.”
Oh. That. I’d forgotten all about it.
“It was fine,” I said shortly, and opened my backpack to take out my book. Mr. Carlson’s camera nestled at the bottom of the bag.
“Well, you look terrible,” Ally said, pulling out a compact and checking her own makeup. “Did you let him keep you out too late?” She smirked at me.
I started to answer her, but just then Josh walked into the room. He slid into the seat next to mine. I cringed away from him as he leaned toward me and whispered, “We have to talk.”
“No,” I hissed back. “I don’t have to talk to you.”
Ally raised an eyebrow at this exchange. I wished she’d look at something else.
“Laney, come on,” Josh said. He glanced at Ally. I could see the muscle in his jaw twitching. “It’s really important,” he finally ground out.
I turned away and faced the front of the room, not answering him. He knew that Bartlef had killed Cody, and he hadn’t done anything about it. I shuddered.
I could feel Ally’s speculative gaze moving back and forth between Josh and me. I spent the rest of the class looking attentively at Mrs. Norman and ignoring everything else.
As soon as class ended, I scooped up my belongings, shoved everything haphazardly into my backpack, and headed for the door.
I might have managed to avoid Josh if the other students hadn’t bottlenecked at the door. I felt his hand on my sleeve just as I was almost out of the classroom.
“Laney,” he said, his voice pleading, “Will you just listen to me?”
I got out into the hall and turned to face him. “What could you possibly have to say to me?” I asked.
He ran a hand through his hair distractedly, making it stand up in spiky tufts. His eyes were bright silver today.
I looked away from his face.
“Please?” he finally said, quietly.
I looked back up at him. “Where?”
“Someplace private.”
I shook my head. “No way. Someplace public. Very, very public.”
“Okay. Okay. Fine. Of course.” He looked around nervously. “How about up in the bleachers out by the field?” he asked. “That way people can see us but not hear us.”
“When?”
“Last period. Get out of going to sell ads with Mason, okay?”
I thought of the conversation I’d heard the night before—when Josh and Mason had argued over whether I belonged to either of them, when they had admitted that they knew Bartlef had killed Cody. No way in hell was I going anywhere with Mason. “Fine. But that doesn’t mean I trust you any more than I trust him.”
“I understand.”
“I’ll meet you out there.”
“Thanks,” he said. He sounded like maybe he really meant it.
I started to head to the gym but changed my mind at the last minute. This was Mr. Carlson’s free period, and I had something important to ask him.
* * * *
“Okay, Laney, here you go.” Mr. Carlson stepped out of the darkroom and handed me a single sheet of photographic paper with several small images on it. “Take a look at that contact sheet and see if there are any you want me to print. Or better yet, you could wait and print it yourself after you learn to work with the enlarger.”
I shook my head. “No. I really, really need it now, Mr. Carlson.”
“Okay, okay. That’s fine.” He peered at the contact sheet in my hand. “These are pretty blurry,” he said. “I don’t know that I can get a good print off of any of them, anyway. You may need to practice with the camera some more before we use up any more materials.”
“This one,” I said, pointing at a frame in the middle of the page. “Could you print this one for me?”
He looked at it doubtfully. “I don’t think it’s going to make a very good photo, Laney,” he said.
“Would you try anyway?”
He sighed and took the sheet away from me again, stepping back into the darkroom. I tapped my foot while I waited. Why didn’t these people use digital cameras like the rest of the world? This place was backwards. I was starting to hate it.
Ten minutes later he opened the door and turned on the light. “Okay, Laney,” he said. “You can come in.”
I stepped past the light-blocking curtain that hung in front of the doorway. The smell of chemicals burned the inside of my nose, but I didn’t pay any attention to it. Hanging on a line was an 8" x 10" print of the image I’d asked for.
The faces were blurry, like Mr. Carlson had said.
“I didn’t know you were interested in experimental photography,” Mr. Carlson said. “This is actually quite artistic.”
I mumbled some response.
Like black smudges on the photograph, the shadows of dark wings sprouted from the shoulders of the people in the photo.
Not just Bartlef.
All of them.
* * * *
Sarah tried to talk to me at lunch, but our furtive, whispered conversation got as far as “Josh wants to talk to me later” on my part and “What are you going to do?” on Sarah’s before Natalie interrupted loudly.
“What are you two whispering about?” she demanded.
“Nothing important,” I said quickly.
“Bet it’s about Laney’s date with Josh last night,” Ally said. “Laney’s not speaking to Josh this morning.”
“Really?” Andrew perked up. “What did he do?”
I shook my head. “He didn’t do anything.”
“Then why aren’t you speaking to him?” Andrew asked.
“Maybe that's why she isn’t speaking to him,” Scott smirked. “Maybe she wanted him to do something, and he didn’t.”
“What?” I asked, genuinely confused.
“Ignore him,” Natalie said, swatting at Scott’s arm. “He’s just being a jerk.”
Sarah stepped in at that point and changed the subject. Bless you, I thought, and concentrated on eating.
By the last class period of the day, I was truly exhausted. I’d stuffed the photograph into my backpack and spent most of my afternoon classes trying not to think about it.
Right. Like that was going to happen.
We all checked in with Mr. Carlson, then left to go sell ads.
I followed Mason out into the hallway. “I have something I have to go do this period,” I told him.
He frowned. “But we’re supposed to be out selling.”
“I know,” I said. “Maybe we could go out again sometime this weekend to make up for it?” I’d had all day to think about it, and had finally decided that offering to spend extra time with him later was the best way to get Mason to leave me alone for now.
His face cleared. “How about Saturday?” he asked.
“Fine,” I said.
“And maybe we could go out to dinner afterwards?”
“Sure,” I said. Saturday. That was three days away. A virtual lifetime, the way things had been moving recently. I’d deal with Saturday when it showed up.
“Great,” said Mason. He grinned that blinding grin of his and walked down the hallway, a bounce in his step.
I kept imagining black leather wings on his back.
I shuddered and hurried out of the building.
When I got out to the bleachers, Josh sat on the top row, legs sprawled out in front of him. I climbed up and sat down beside him. We didn’t look at each other.
“You get away from Mason okay?” he asked.
“It was fine,” I said shortly.
“Good.” He fell silent again.
“So,” I said, “Talk.”
He sat very still for a long moment. “I don’t even know where to begin.”
“Okay, then I’ll start. Why haven’t you told the police that Bartlef killed Cody?”
“Because they already know. They won’t do anything abou
t it.”
That gave me pause. “So the police are in on it?”
Josh shrugged. “About half of them, maybe? Enough to make sure nothing ever happened to Bartlef.”
“What is wrong with you people?”
He shook his head. “We can’t do anything about it, not while Bartlef is in charge of looking for the Yatah.”
This wasn’t making sense. Clearly I needed more information. “What’s a yaw-taw?” I asked.
“Yatah,” he corrected my pronunciation. “Emphasis on the last syllable.”
“Whatever. What is it?”
“It’s . . . it’s a person,” he finally said.
“What kind of person?”
“A human one.”
“Not funny, Josh. Don’t waste my time.”
He concentrated on his hands, clasped in his lap. “I’m not trying to be funny. I’m trying to explain this in a way you’ll understand. The Yatah is a human, not . . .”
“Not. . . ?” I prodded him when he stopped speaking.
“Not like me.”
“A human who’s not like you?”
“Someone who’s human. Not like me.”
I stared at him. “Not like you.”
He nodded.
“And you are . . .?” I let the sentence dangle, hoping he’d pick it up. When he didn’t, I finished with “not human?” I half expected him to correct me. Instead, he just nodded again.
“And Mason? He’s not human, either?”
“No.” Josh’s voice came out as a strangled whisper.
“Bartlef?”
“No one there last night,” Josh said. “Except you.”
And Sarah, I thought—but if Josh didn’t know that, I wasn’t about to be the one to tell him.
“So what are you, then?”
He shrugged. “The People.” I could hear the capital letter in the way he said it.
“But not human people?”
“No.”
I digested this for a moment. “Then what?”
“Norms have called us all sorts of things.”
“Like fairies?” I guessed.
He nodded. “Or demons, sometimes,” he said. “Occasionally angels, but not very often.”
On account of angels don’t usually have big leathery bat wings, I supposed.
I crossed my arms and huddled in on myself. “So what do a bunch of demons want with me?”
Josh rubbed his eyes with his hands. “You’re the Yatah. Maybe. It’s sort of like . . . I don’t know. Chosen. Or something.”
“Chosen? Chosen human?”
He closed his eyes. When he finally spoke again, his words came out in a tumbled rush. “The Yatah is a human, but not just any human. The word doesn’t translate very well. It also means ‘abortion’ or ‘stillbirth.’”
Well. That wasn’t very flattering.
“It’s kind of like a human without a soul,” Josh finished.
Less and less flattering, in fact.
“So you think I’m the chosen stillborn abortion human without a soul?” I summed up.
“Yes. No. I’m not explaining this very well.”
“No. You’re not.”
He took a deep breath. “Okay. Here’s the deal. The People believe that when the Yatah comes, she will bring with her the Dumaya, a sort of savior. He’s supposed to save us.”
“Well, then,” I said, “I can’t be your Yatah. I didn’t bring anyone with me. Except for my mom. And she’s not your Doo-my-a, she’s a mom. And a woman.” I shrugged. “Good, right? So now we can all go on and I can just forget any of this ever happened.”
“You don’t understand,” Josh said. He finally looked at me, his silver-blue-green eyes intense. “You’re supposed to bring him into the world. As in, have him.”
“Have him?” I squeaked. “Like having a baby?”
Josh nodded, still staring at me intently.
“I can’t have a baby!” I said. “I’m not even seventeen yet. Besides, I haven’t even ever . . .” I stopped speaking. I could feel myself turning bright red. “Oh, no,” I said as the pieces finally fell into place. “No. No, no, no.” This was much worse than Andrew giving me The Look.
“Yeah,” Josh said miserably. “That’s the deal. One of us—either me or Mason—is supposed to be the father.”
Oh, God.
And I thought high school in Atlanta had been bad. At least there no one was trying to, you know, breed with me.
Chapter Seven
“Oh. I think I need to go,” I said. “I feel sick to my stomach.” I stood up and swayed.
Josh reached out and grabbed me, pulling me back down beside him. “You can’t go. Not yet. You’re in danger. We need to figure out what to do next.”
“In danger. Right. From you and Mason, apparently.”
He shook his head. “Not me, Laney. I promise, I’m on your side.”
“How could you possibly be on my side? You’re not even sure I have a soul.”
He sighed. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re the Yatah.”
“How would you know?”
“I don’t. Not for sure. But even if it is you, I can’t . . .” His voice trailed off.
“Can’t what?” Okay. So was it weird that first I was offended that he might want to have sex with me, and then offended that maybe he didn’t?
“Can’t put you in that position.”
Clearly, my mind was in the gutter. “Um. What position?” I felt myself blushing.
Josh’s eyes widened. “No! Not like that! I mean, I like you. A lot. And I don’t want to. . . I mean, I would like to, a lot, but not . . .” He put his head in his hands and cursed.
“Okay,” I said. “Let me get this straight. You’re telling me all this so that we won’t have to . . .” I sorted through a number of possible words in my mind, but all of them seemed ridiculous to say out loud: mate, breed, reproduce, boink—and it got worse from there. Finally I said, “um, hook up. . . because you actually like me enough to really want to hook up?”
“Yes.” His voice was muffled by his hands.
And I couldn’t help it. I started laughing. Out loud. A lot.
In a few seconds, Josh joined me.
“Wow,” he said, after we’d caught our breath. “That went much better when I practiced it in my head.”
“Really? Because I’m having a difficult time imagining any way that conversation could have gone well.”
He laughed again. “You’re probably right.”
“Okay, then. As long as we’re here, I’ve got some other questions for you.”
“Shoot.”
I reached into my backpack and pulled out the photo Mr. Carlson had developed for me. I handed it over to Josh, whose eyes widened as he took in the image.
“Did you develop this yourself?” he asked anxiously.
I shook my head. “No. Mr. Carlson did it for me.”
“Did you tell him anything about it? Anything at all?”
“No. He assumed it was some sort of trick photography or something. Said it was artistic.”
“Good. If Bartlef finds out about this, we’ll all be in trouble. I don’t even know how you managed to catch this much on film.” He looked troubled. “So how did you know to go out there to get the pictures in the first place?”
“This picture isn’t the first time I’ve seen the wings,” I said, skirting around the answer to his actual question.
“Really? When?”
“The first day of school. When you weren’t here. I thought I saw wings on Bartlef, just for a moment.”
His eyes widened. “Wow. No wonder Bartlef thinks you might be the Yatah. Norms usually can’t see that sort of stuff unless we show them.”
“So you can turn it on and off?”
“Sort of.”
“Would you be willing to show me?” I asked hesitantly.
He looked around. “Nowhere this public.”
I thought about going somewhere private
with Josh and my heart started beating faster. I wasn’t sure if the idea frightened me because I was afraid of him or because I wasn’t. “Never mind,” I said quickly. “Maybe some other time.”
That muscle in his jaw clenched. “Right,” he said. “Some other time.” He took a deep breath.
“So what about Mason?”
“I don’t know what to tell you. He’ll be pulling out all the stops to try to get you. He’s Bartlef’s boy.”
“Then why involve you at all?”
He smiled wryly. “Because of my grandfather. He was the Abba—our leader—before Bartlef. And the position only went to Bartlef instead of my dad because the Power skipped a generation. It does that sometimes—a lot more now than it used to. My dad doesn’t have it, not really. But Mason and I are the strongest two of our generation, and the Yatah’s . . . partner . . . has to have the Power. So Bartlef has to include me in any plans to bring about the Dumaya. He’s just hedging his bets, really. He’d like it better if Mason won.”
That was about the longest speech I’d ever heard him make. I hardly knew where to begin, I had so many questions. “Power,” I finally said. “What kind of power?”
Again, he looked around. A few kids had made their way out to the track below, but no one was close enough to hear us. Still, he shook his head. “I can’t show you. Not here.”
“Can’t you just tell me?”
“I don’t think you’d believe me.”
“Really? Because I think after the whole wings thing, all bets about what I will or won’t believe are off.” I paused. “You do have wings, right?”
He smiled his slow smile that made my heart stutter. It was really a good thing that he’d decided not to follow Bartlef’s orders. I don’t know if I could have held out against that smile.
“Yeah,” he said. “I have wings.”
“All the time?”
“All the time.”
“How do you deal with that?” I asked, trying to work out the logistics. “I mean, wearing clothes, sitting in desks, having people walk around behind you. Don’t they get in the way?”
“No. That’s part of the Power. The wings are always there, but not always here, if that makes any sense.”
“Nope. No sense at all.”
“It’s kind of like . . . well, it’s kind of like there are two worlds, one right on top of the other. And I’m mostly in both of them, all the time. But I can fix it so that the wings are only in the other world. Oma Raina calls it the ‘ethereal plane’.”
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