“It’s too risky.” He looks like he wants to say something else, but we’re standing on the crowded sidewalk outside the Stanford Bookstore, where I’ve bumped into him while coming out with my armload of poetry collections for my humanities class and a giant ten-pound textbook entitled Chemistry: Science of Change, which is what prompted this conversation. You could get caught using glory, he says in my head.
Relax, I reply. It’s not like I’m going to go around healing people right this minute. I’m looking into it as a possible career path, that’s all. No big deal.
But it feels like a big deal. It feels like my life finally has a—for lack of a better word—purpose, one that isn’t all about being an angel-blood but makes use of the angel-blood part of me, too. It feels right.
He sighs.
I get it, he says. I want to help people, too. But we have to lie low, Clara. You’re lucky that this girl you healed didn’t see what you did. How would you have explained that? What would you do if she was going around campus telling everybody about your magical glowing hands?
I don’t have an answer for him. My chin lifts. But she didn’t notice. I’ll be careful. I would only use glory when I thought it was safe, and the other times, I’d use regular medical stuff. Which is why I want to become a doctor. I have the power to heal people, Christian. How can I not use it?
We stand there for a minute, locked in a silent argument about whether or not it’s worth the risk, until it becomes clear that neither of us is going to change our mind. “I have to go,” I say finally, trying not to pout. “I have a set of problems on quantum mechanics to work through, if you think that’s not too dangerous for me to tackle.”
“Clara …,” Christian starts. “I think it’s great that you found a direction to go in, but …” All it would take is one slip, he says. The wrong person seeing you, one time, and then they could figure out what you are, and they’d come after you.
I shake my head. I can’t spend my entire life being afraid of the black-winged bogeymen. I have to live my life, Christian. I won’t be stupid about glory, but I won’t sit around and wait for my visions to happen in order to do something with it.
At the word visions a new worry springs up inside him, and I remember that there was something he promised to tell me. But I don’t want to hear about it now. I want to sulk.
I shift my heavy load of books to the other arm. “I’ve got to run. I’ll catch you later.”
“Okay,” he says stiffly. “See you around.”
I don’t like the feeling that’s hanging like a dark cloud over me as I walk back to my dorm.
That it doesn’t matter what I said about not wanting to be afraid. That I’m always, in some form or another, running away from something.
3
WHITE PICKET FENCE
This time someone else is with me in the blackness, another person’s breathing shuddering in and out somewhere behind me.
I still can’t see anything, can’t determine where I am, even though this is like the umpteenth time I’ve had the vision. It’s dark, as always. I am trying to keep quiet, trying not to move—not to breathe, even—so I can’t exactly explore my surroundings. The floor is slanted down. Carpeted. There’s the faint scent of sawdust in the air, new paint, and this: the hint of some distinctly masculine smell, like deodorant or aftershave, and now the breathing. Close, I think. If I turned and reached out, I could touch him.
There are footsteps above us: heavy and echoing, like people descending a set of wooden stairs. My body tenses. We’ll be found. Somehow I know this. I’ve seen it a hundred times in my visions. I’m seeing it right now. I want to get it over with, want to call the glory, but I don’t, on the off chance that it won’t happen this time. I still have hope.
There’s a noise from behind me, strange and high-pitched, like maybe a cat yowl or a birdcall. I turn toward the sound.
There’s a moment of silence.
Then comes a burst of light, blinding me. I flinch away from it.
“Clara, get down!” yells a voice, and in that wild, scuffling moment I instantly know who’s with me—I’d recognize his voice anywhere—and I find myself vaulting forward, upward, because some part of me knows that now I have to run.
I wake to a ray of sunshine on my face. It takes me a second to place where I am: dorm room, Roble Hall. Light pouring through the window. The bells of Memorial Church in the distance. The smell of laundry detergent and pencil shavings. I’ve been at Stanford for more than a week now, and this room still doesn’t feel like home.
My sheets are tangled up in my legs. I must have really been trying to run. I lie there for a minute taking deep breaths from the abdomen, trying to calm my racing heart.
Christian’s there. In the vision. With me.
Of course Christian’s there, I think, still peeved with him. He’s been in every other vision I’ve had, so why stop now?
But there’s some kind of comfort in that.
I sit up and glance over at Wan Chen, who’s asleep in the bed on the other side of the room, snoring in little puffs. I free myself from the sheets and pull on some jeans and a hoodie, fight my hair into a ponytail, trying to keep quiet so I don’t wake her.
When I get outside there’s a large bird sitting on a lamppost near the dorm, a dark shape against the dawn-gray sky. It swivels to look at me. I stop.
I’ve always had a complicated relationship with birds. Even before I knew I was an angel-blood, I understood that there was something off about the way birds went quiet whenever I passed by, the way they followed me and sometimes, if I was oh-so-lucky, dive-bombed me, not in an unfriendly way, really, but in an I-want-to-see-you-closer sort of way. One of the hazards of having wings and feathers yourself, I suppose, even if they’re hidden most of the time: you attract the attention of other creatures with wings.
One time when I was having a picnic in the woods with Tucker, we looked up and our table was surrounded by birds—not just the common camp-robber jays that try to get the food you’re eating, but larks, swallows, wrens, even some kind of nuthatch Tucker said was extremely rare, all hanging out in the trees around our table.
“You’re like a Disney cartoon, Carrots,” Tucker teased me. “You should get them to make you a dress or something.”
But this bird feels different, somehow. It’s a crow, I think: jet-black, with a sharp, slightly hooked beak, perched on top of the post like a scene straight from Edgar Allan Poe. Watching me. Silent. Thoughtful. Deliberate.
Relax, I reply. It’s not like I’m going to go around healing people right this minute. I’m looking into it as a possible career path, that’s all. No big deal.
But it feels like a big deal. It feels like my life finally has a—for lack of a better word—purpose, one that isn’t all about being an angel-blood but makes use of the angel-blood part of me, too. It feels right.
He sighs.
I get it, he says. I want to help people, too. But we have to lie low, Clara. You’re lucky that this girl you healed didn’t see what you did. How would you have explained that? What would you do if she was going around campus telling everybody about your magical glowing hands?
I don’t have an answer for him. My chin lifts. But she didn’t notice. I’ll be careful. I would only use glory when I thought it was safe, and the other times, I’d use regular medical stuff. Which is why I want to become a doctor. I have the power to heal people, Christian. How can I not use it?
We stand there for a minute, locked in a silent argument about whether or not it’s worth the risk, until it becomes clear that neither of us is going to change our mind. “I have to go,” I say finally, trying not to pout. “I have a set of problems on quantum mechanics to work through, if you think that’s not too dangerous for me to tackle.”
“Clara …,” Christian starts. “I think it’s great that you found a direction to go in, but …” All it would take is one slip, he says. The wrong person seeing you, one time, and then they could figure out what you are, and they’d come after you.
I shake my head. I can’t spend my entire life being afraid of the black-winged bogeymen. I have to live my life, Christian. I won’t be stupid about glory, but I won’t sit around and wait for my visions to happen in order to do something with it.
At the word visions a new worry springs up inside him, and I remember that there was something he promised to tell me. But I don’t want to hear about it now. I want to sulk.
I shift my heavy load of books to the other arm. “I’ve got to run. I’ll catch you later.”
“Okay,” he says stiffly. “See you around.”
I don’t like the feeling that’s hanging like a dark cloud over me as I walk back to my dorm.
That it doesn’t matter what I said about not wanting to be afraid. That I’m always, in some form or another, running away from something.
3
WHITE PICKET FENCE
This time someone else is with me in the blackness, another person’s breathing shuddering in and out somewhere behind me.
I still can’t see anything, can’t determine where I am, even though this is like the umpteenth time I’ve had the vision. It’s dark, as always. I am trying to keep quiet, trying not to move—not to breathe, even—so I can’t exactly explore my surroundings. The floor is slanted down. Carpeted. There’s the faint scent of sawdust in the air, new paint, and this: the hint of some distinctly masculine smell, like deodorant or aftershave, and now the breathing. Close, I think. If I turned and reached out, I could touch him.
There are footsteps above us: heavy and echoing, like people descending a set of wooden stairs. My body tenses. We’ll be found. Somehow I know this. I’ve seen it a hundred times in my visions. I’m seeing it right now. I want to get it over with, want to call the glory, but I don’t, on the off chance that it won’t happen this time. I still have hope.
There’s a noise from behind me, strange and high-pitched, like maybe a cat yowl or a birdcall. I turn toward the sound.
There’s a moment of silence.
Then comes a burst of light, blinding me. I flinch away from it.
“Clara, get down!” yells a voice, and in that wild, scuffling moment I instantly know who’s with me—I’d recognize his voice anywhere—and I find myself vaulting forward, upward, because some part of me knows that now I have to run.
I wake to a ray of sunshine on my face. It takes me a second to place where I am: dorm room, Roble Hall. Light pouring through the window. The bells of Memorial Church in the distance. The smell of laundry detergent and pencil shavings. I’ve been at Stanford for more than a week now, and this room still doesn’t feel like home.
My sheets are tangled up in my legs. I must have really been trying to run. I lie there for a minute taking deep breaths from the abdomen, trying to calm my racing heart.
Christian’s there. In the vision. With me.
Of course Christian’s there, I think, still peeved with him. He’s been in every other vision I’ve had, so why stop now?
But there’s some kind of comfort in that.
I sit up and glance over at Wan Chen, who’s asleep in the bed on the other side of the room, snoring in little puffs. I free myself from the sheets and pull on some jeans and a hoodie, fight my hair into a ponytail, trying to keep quiet so I don’t wake her.
When I get outside there’s a large bird sitting on a lamppost near the dorm, a dark shape against the dawn-gray sky. It swivels to look at me. I stop.
I’ve always had a complicated relationship with birds. Even before I knew I was an angel-blood, I understood that there was something off about the way birds went quiet whenever I passed by, the way they followed me and sometimes, if I was oh-so-lucky, dive-bombed me, not in an unfriendly way, really, but in an I-want-to-see-you-closer sort of way. One of the hazards of having wings and feathers yourself, I suppose, even if they’re hidden most of the time: you attract the attention of other creatures with wings.
One time when I was having a picnic in the woods with Tucker, we looked up and our table was surrounded by birds—not just the common camp-robber jays that try to get the food you’re eating, but larks, swallows, wrens, even some kind of nuthatch Tucker said was extremely rare, all hanging out in the trees around our table.
“You’re like a Disney cartoon, Carrots,” Tucker teased me. “You should get them to make you a dress or something.”
But this bird feels different, somehow. It’s a crow, I think: jet-black, with a sharp, slightly hooked beak, perched on top of the post like a scene straight from Edgar Allan Poe. Watching me. Silent. Thoughtful. Deliberate.
