Boundless (Unearthly) (12 page)

“Let’s go outside,” I suggest breathlessly.

“Lead the way,” he says, and walks behind me, his hand on the small of my back as I head toward the door, burning through the fabric of my dress. We’re about halfway there when we literally bump into Thomas, who I realize I simply walked away from with no explanation the minute I heard Christian’s name.

“I was looking for you,” Thomas says. He looks at Christian and, more importantly, at Christian’s hand, which has moved down to my hip. “Who is—”

“Hey, you’re Doubting Thomas!” Christian says, suddenly jovial.

Thomas looks over at me, startled. “Is that what you call me? Doubting Thomas?”

“It’s affectionate, really,” Christian says, and as Thomas looks, well, doubtful, and hurt, Christian claps him on the shoulder and moves us past him. “You have a nice night.”

Something tells me that Thomas isn’t going to ask me out again.

I’m relieved for the cool air that greets us when we make it outside. There’s a bench on the porch, and I steer Christian over to it. He sits, then abruptly puts his face in his hands. Groans.

“I’m drunk,” he says, his voice muffled. “I’m sorry.”

“What happened to you?” I sit down next to him, reach to put my hand on his shoulder, but he sits up.

“Don’t touch me, okay? I don’t think I can handle it like this.”

I fold my hands in my lap. “What’s wrong?” I ask.

He sighs, runs his palms over his hair. “You know how you said Angela could make herself have the vision by walking in that thing at the church? Well, I did it. I went there.”

“I went there, too,” I gasp. “We must have just missed each other.”

“Did you have the vision?”

“Yes. I mean no, not at the church. But later, I had it.” I swallow. “I saw you with the sword.”

“Fighting?” he asks.

“Fighting two people.”

He nods grimly. “I think we’re having the same vision. Did you see who I was fighting?”

“It was too dark. I couldn’t tell.”

We take a minute to process this, which is hard with the Bee Gees blaring out at us, “Somebody help me, somebody help me, yeah.”

“That’s not all,” Christian says. “I saw you.”

Hopefully he didn’t see the part where I was cowering against the wall, trying and failing to summon the courage to get up.

He shakes his head. “No, you were …” His voice is raspy, like his throat is dry, and, absurdly, he wishes that he could get another drink.

Dread boils over me. “I was what?”

“You were hurt.”

He puts his hand on my wrist and shows me what he saw. My own face, tearstains on my cheeks, my hair loose and tangled around my shoulders. My lips pale. My eyes glazing over. The front of my shirt covered in blood.

“Oh” is all I can think to say.

He thinks I was dying.

He licks his lips. “I don’t know what to do. I only know that when I’m there, in that room, wherever it is, I have one overwhelming thought. I have to keep you safe.” Something works in his throat. “I would lay down my life to protect you, Clara,” he says. “That’s what I feel. I’d die to protect you.”

We don’t talk as I drive him home. I walk him up the stairs and into his room, past Charlie, who’s sprawled on the futon playing his Xbox. I guide Christian over to his bed.

“You don’t need to take care of me,” he protests as I pull back the covers and sit him down on the mattress. “I was stupid. I just wanted to escape for a minute. I thought—”

“Shut up,” I say gently. I pull his shirt over his head and toss it in the corner, then go to the minifridge and find him a bottle of water. “Drink.” He shakes his head. “Drink.”

He downs almost the entire bottle, then hands it back to me.

“Lie down,” I tell him. He stretches out on the mattress, and I go to work removing his shoes and socks. He stares up at the ceiling for a minute, then groans.

“I think this is the first time I’ve ever had a real headache. I feel like—”

“Shh.” I cast a glance at Charlie over my shoulder. He’s faced away from us, his fingers punching the buttons on the Xbox controller passionately. I turn back to Christian.

“You should sleep,” I tell him. I stroke his hair away from his face, my fingers lingering near his temple. He closes his eyes. I move my hand to his forehead, and peek again at Charlie, who’s as oblivious as ever.

Then I call the glory to my fingers and send the tiniest bit of it into Christian.

His eyes open. “What did you just do?”

“Does your head feel better?”

He blinks a few times. “The pain’s gone,” he whispers. “Completely gone.”

“Good. Now go to sleep,” I tell him.

“You know, Clara,” he sighs sleepily as I get up to leave. “You should be a doctor.”

I close the door behind me, then take a minute to lean against the wall and catch my breath.

It’s funny. Here I’ve been seeing this dark room for months, and I know something bad has happened right before Christian and I end up there, hiding, and I know it’s not going to do any good for us to hide, and I know that this whole vision could be life or death. Those people, whoever they are, want to kill us. I’ve sensed that from the beginning.

But I don’t think I ever truly considered that I might die.

Okay, God,
I cast upward at breakfast Sunday morning, nibbling at a dry piece of toast while the bells of Memorial Church chime in the background.
Give me a break. I’m eighteen years old. Why put me through all of this, the forest fire and the visions and the training, if I’m going to kick the bucket, anyway?

Or maybe this is a punishment. For not fulfilling my purpose the first time.

Or maybe it’s some kind of ultimate test.

Dear God,
I write in my notebook as I’m sitting in chemistry class on Monday morning listening to a lecture on the laws of thermodynamics.
I don’t want to die. Not now. Sincerely, Clara Gardner.

Please, God,
I plead when I’m up at three a.m. on Tuesday morning trying to dash off my
Waste Land
paper.
Please. I don’t want to die. I’m not ready. I’m scared.

“Oh yeah?” says T. S. Eliot. “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”

Angela doesn’t show up for the Poet Re-making the World. Doesn’t turn in the paper. Which means, according to the rules in the syllabus, that she can’t pass the class.

The idea sends a chill through me. Angela Zerbino: straight-A student, high school valedictorian, school-geek extraordinaire, lover of all things poetical, is going to fail her first college poetry course.

I’ve got to find her. Talk to her. Right freaking now. I’ll do whatever it takes.

The minute class is over, I call Amy. “Do you know where Angela is?” I ask.

“She was in the room, last time I saw her,” she tells me. “Why? Is something going on?”

Oh, something’s going on.

I sprint all the way back to Roble, but stop short when I reach the building. Because a crow is perched on the bike rack again.

“Don’t you have somewhere better to be?” I ask it.

No reply, except it hops from the rack to one of the bikes. My bike, as a matter of fact.

I don’t want bird poo on my bike, broken or not. I take a few steps forward, waving my arms at it. “Go away. Get out of here.”

It cocks its head at me, but doesn’t otherwise move.

“Go on.”

I’m directly in front of it now. I could touch it if I wanted to, and it doesn’t budge. It stares at me calmly and holds its ground. Which is when I know—or maybe I’ve always known, and haven’t wanted to admit to myself—that this is not a regular old crow.

It’s not a bird at all.

I open my mind then, like cracking open a door, ready to push it closed again at any moment. I can feel him, that particular flavor of sorrow I know so well. I can hear that sad music, the way I used to hear it calling me last year from the field behind the school grounds, a melody of
this is all that I am, when I was so much more; I’m alone, alone now for good, and I can never go back, never go back, never go back
.

I wasn’t being paranoid. It’s Samjeeza.

I take a step back, slam the door in my mind so hard it gives me an instant headache, but a headache’s better than the sorrow by a long shot.

“What are you doing here?” I whisper. “What do you want?”

I know I felt sorry for him last year, I did; I knew how much he’d cared about my mom, even in his twisted-up way, and I’d taken pity on him that day in the cemetery. Even now I don’t fully understand what came over me. I just walked over there and gave him my mother’s bracelet, and he took it, and he didn’t try to hurt us and we all got home safe and sound. But that doesn’t make him any less dangerous. He’s a fallen angel, aligned with the powers of dark. He’s almost done me in on two separate occasions.

I force myself to stand up straight, look him in his wide yellow eyes.

“If you’re here to kill me, then do it already,” I say. “Otherwise I’ve got stuff I’ve got to do.”

The bird shifts and then, without warning, takes off, straight at me. I yelp and duck and prepare to, I don’t know, have my head separated from my shoulders or something, but he breezes past me over my shoulder, so close he brushes my cheek with his feathers, up and away, into the cloud-darkened sky.

Standing outside her dorm room in A wing, I try to call Angela again, and I can hear her phone ringing from inside. She’s home. It’s a miracle.

I pound on the door.

“Come on, Ange. I know you’re there.”

She opens the door. I push my way inside before she can protest. A quick glance around reveals that the roommates aren’t here. Which is good, because it’s about to get ugly.

“Okay, what is going on with you?” I demand to know.

“What do you mean?”

“What do you mean, what do I mean?” I cry. “You’ve been dodgy. The whole dorm is talking about how you’re involved, in a horizontal-type way, with Pierce. He’s the PHE, you know, the dorm doctor. He lives on the first floor. Blondish, shortish, scruffyish—”

She gives me an amused look and closes the door behind me, locks it. “I know who he is,” she says with her back to me. “And yes, we’re together. Involved, if that works better for you, in a horizontal-type way.”

My mouth drops open.

I owe Christian ten bucks.

Angela puts a hand on her hip. I notice that she’s got a wet washcloth slung over one shoulder. She’s wearing sweats, an oversize Yellowstone National Park T-shirt with a trout on the front, her hair braided in a long, single plait down her back, no shoes or socks, and no polish on her fingers or toes. Under the fluorescent lights of our room, her skin has a blue cast to it, lavender shadows under her eyes.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“I’m fine. Tired, is all. I was up all night working on my Eliot paper.”

“But you weren’t in class—”

“I got an extension,” she explains. “Things have been crazy lately, and I’ve been so swamped that I’ve fallen way behind. I spent all weekend trying to catch up with everything.”

I squint at her. She’s lying, I sense vaguely. But why?

“Are
you
okay?” she asks. “You look a little wild-eyed.”

“Oh, well, let’s see: My dad showed up saying that he wants to train me to use a glory sword. Because I’m apparently going to have to fight for my life at some point. And oh yes, I’m having a vision where someone is trying to kill me, which works well with Dad’s theory that I should sharpen up my glory sword. And if that’s not enough, Christian’s having the same vision, except in his vision he doesn’t see me holding a glory sword. He sees me all weak and covered with blood. So maybe I’m going to die.”

She stares at me in horror.

“This is what happens when you don’t return my phone calls,” I say, flopping down on her bed. “All the proverbial crap hits the proverbial fan. Oh, and I just saw the bird again, and I felt his sorrow this time, and it’s definitely Samjeeza. So yay, right?”

She leans against the door frame like all that bad news has knocked the air out of her. “Samjeeza? Are you sure?”

“Yep. Pretty sure.”

There’s a sheen of sweat on her forehead, a greenish tinge to her skin.

“Hey, I didn’t mean to scare you,” I say, sitting up. “I mean, it’s not good, but—”

“Clara—” She stops and presses the washcloth to her mouth, inhales deeply, closes her eyes for a minute. And she goes even greener.

All thoughts of Samjeeza fly out of my head.

“Are you … sick?”

I’ve never been sick, truly sick, a day in my life. Never had a cold, the flu, never got food poisoning, never had a fever or an ear infection or a sore throat. And neither has Angela.

Angel-bloods don’t get sick.

She shakes her head, closes her eyes.

“Ange, what is going on? Stop saying everything’s fine and spill.”

She opens her mouth to say something, but suddenly she groans and rushes out into the hall and two doors down to the bathroom, where I hear the unmistakable sounds of her throwing up.

I creep to the bathroom door. She’s in a stall crouched in front of the toilet, clutching the sides with white-knuckled hands, shivering.

“Are you okay?” I ask softly.

She laughs, then spits into the bowl, gets a wad of toilet paper, and blows her nose. “No. I am definitely not okay. Oh, Clara, isn’t it obvious?” She pushes her hair out of her face and glares at me with fierce, shining eyes. “I’m pregnant.”

“You’re—”

“Pregnant,” she says again, the word echoing off the tile. She stands up and brushes herself off, pushes past me and back to her room.

“You’re—” I try again, following her.

“Knocked up. Yes. A bun in the oven. Preggers. With child. Expecting. In the family way.” She sits down on the bed, stretches her back, and lifts her shirt.

I stare at her belly. It’s not huge, not so much that I would have noticed it if she weren’t pointing it out, but it’s gently rounded. There’s a faint black line that stretches from her belly button down. She stares up at me with tired eyes, and I feel in that moment that she’s about an eyelash away from crying. Angela Zerbino, on the edge of tears.

“So,” she says softly. “Now you know.”