“I bet it feels weird,” she says to me. “Everything’s been turned upside down on you.”
“Have you ever met a Triplare?” I ask after a minute.
She scratches the back of her head, considers. “Yes. Two of them, besides you and Long Face back there. Two, in all of my hundred and twelve years on this earth.”
“Could you tell they were different? From other angel-bloods, I mean?”
“Honestly, I didn’t get to know either of them. But on the outside I’d say they looked and acted like everyone else.”
“You’re a hundred and twelve?” Jeffrey suddenly pipes up from the back.
Her pleasant smile stretches into a mischievous grin. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you never to question a woman about her age?”
“You just said it.”
“Then why’d you have to ask?” she shoots back playfully.
“So you only have eight years left.” He looks down into his lap as he says this.
I feel a pang of something like loneliness then, knowing that Billy only has eight years left. I won’t get to have her in my life very long. In some ways I was taking a lot of comfort in the idea that Billy was going to hang around after Mom died. She was like a tiny piece of Mom I got to keep. She has all these memories of her, all this time they spent together. “Eight years isn’t very much,” I say.
“Eight years is plenty of time for what I have planned.”
“Which is?”
“I want to get to know you two, for one thing. That’s one part of your parents’ master plan I never agreed with. You know, when you were babies, I used to change your diapers.” She winks at Jeffrey. He blushes.
“Don’t get me wrong. They had their reasons for keeping you isolated. Good reasons. But now, I get to spend time with you. See you graduate. Help you pack up for college. I hear it’s Stanford, right, Clara?”
“Right. Stanford.” I did accept their offer. I’m destined to go there, according to Angela.
Billy nods. “Mags always did have a thing for Stanford.”
“Did you go with her?”
She snorts. “Gracious, no. I never had any tolerance for school. My teachers were the wind, the trees, the creeks and rivers.”
We pull up to the school.
“And on that note,” Billy says cheerfully, “off you go. Try to learn something.” I want to tell Tucker about my dad, but every time I open my mouth to say something about it, try to frame the words, it sounds so dumb. Guess what? My dad just dropped into town yesterday. And you know what else? He’s an angel. Which makes me this super-special-über angel-blood. What do you think of that?
I glance over at him. He appears to be actually paying attention to the lecture in government class. He’s cute when he’s concentrating.
Mr. A’s about to call on you.
Christian. I tune in just in time to hear Mr. Anderson say, “So, who knows the rights included in the First Amendment? Clara, why don’t you take a crack at it?”
“Okay.” I glance down at my blank notebook.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances, Christian reads off in my mind.
I repeat what Christian said.
“Good.” Mr. Anderson looks impressed that I had the whole thing memorized. He moves on, and I relax. I smile at Tucker, who’s looking at me like he can’t believe he landed such a genius for a girlfriend.
Thanks, I say to Christian silently. I look over at him. He nods slightly.
My empathy blinks on like one of those fluorescent bulbs that takes a minute to charge up.
Sorrow descends on me like a cloud moving over the sun. Loneliness. Separation, always this sense of separation from everything good in this life. The field where Samjeeza stands is full of sunshine, but he can’t absorb its warmth. He can’t smell the new grass at his feet, the fresh rain from this morning’s spring shower. He can’t feel the breeze. All of that is beauty, and it belongs to the light. Not to him.
I should be used to it by now, the way he pops up and plays with my head.
He’s here again, isn’t he? Christian again. Now worried.
I give him the mental equivalent of a nod.
What should we do?
Nothing. Ignore him. There’s nothing we can do.
But it suddenly occurs to me that maybe that’s not true anymore. I sit up. I raise my hand and ask Mr. Anderson for a hall pass, suggest in a vague way that I need to use the restroom, possibly for female reasons.
Where are you going? Christian asks, alarmed, as I gather up my stuff. What are you doing?
Don’t worry. I’m going to call my dad.
I call my house from the phone in the office. Billy picks up.
“Trouble?” she asks immediately.
“Can I talk to my dad?”
“Sure thing.” Silence as she sets the phone down. Muffled voices. Footsteps.
“Clara,” Dad says. “What do you need?”
“Samjeeza’s here. I thought maybe you could do something.” He’s quiet for a moment. “I’ll be there in a minute,” he says finally.
It literally takes him a minute to get here. I barely have time to sit down on one of the hall benches to wait for him before he comes striding through the front door. I stare at him.
“Did you fly here?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Wow.”
“Show me.” There’s a fierceness in his eyes that strikes me as familiar, like I’ve seen this look on his face before. But when? I lead him outside, across the parking lot, to the field. I hold my breath as he steps without hesitation over the fence and onto unprotected ground.
“Stay here,” he orders. I do.
Samjeeza is standing, in human form, on the far edge of the field. He’s afraid. It’s his fear that I’m remembering, I realize, from the day of the fire. Mom suggested that someone was going to come looking for her, and Samjeeza pictured two white-winged angels, one with red hair, the other blond, glowing and fierce, holding a flaming sword.
My dad.
Samjeeza doesn’t move or speak. He stands perfectly still, his fear radiating out of him along with the sorrow now, and humiliation, that he would be so afraid.
Dad takes a few steps toward him, then stops. “Samyaza.” The man suit Samjeeza wears seems transparent, false, next to Dad’s solid radiance.