Boundless (Unearthly) (29 page)

I nod, dry my eyes on my shirt, and try to smile. It’s not fair of me to expect too much from the congregation. They’ve tried to help us in every way they could. They even offered to send a couple scouts to look for Jeffrey this week, to warn him, but I didn’t think he’d listen to any of them.

“We’ve got to lean on each other,” Billy says, squeezing me.

“Thanks.” I shift my weight to lean heavily against her, and she laughs.

“That’s my girl. Now come on. Let’s get you two on the road.” She keeps her arm around me as we walk to the edge of the meadow. “You call me,” she says, at the point where we’re supposed to say good-bye. “Anytime, day or night. I mean it. I’ve got your back.”

“Wait,” I say. I turn to Christian.
I want to join the congregation,
I say, and I don’t know why it embarrasses me to tell him, but it does.
Officially, I mean,
I clarify, since it seems like, in some ways, I’ve been a member of this group all along.

I’ve been thinking about this for the entire fourteen-hour drive from Nebraska. Longer than that, even. I’ve thought about becoming a member of the congregation since the first time I came to this meadow. Mom and I had a talk about it. I asked her, “So will I be expected to join the congregation now?” and she smiled and said it was something I would have to decide for myself.

“It’s not something to be done lightly,” she said. “It’s a great commitment, you understand, binding yourself to these people, to this cause, for life.”

“Commitment?” I repeated. “Well, when you put it like that, maybe I’ll wait.”

She laughed. “When the time is right, you’ll know,” she said.

It feels like the time is right.

Do you mind waiting?
I ask Christian.

No, of course not,
he says. He understands. He joined the congregation last year, but he doesn’t often talk about why.

I did it because I wanted to be part of them,
he says.
I know on the outside they might seem like a bickering, badgering, half-dysfunctional family, but underneath all that, they’re trying to do the right thing
.
They’re fighting on the side of good, in every way they know how.

He’s remembering the way they came together after his mother was killed. Protected him. Comforted him. Stopped by with meals so he didn’t starve while his uncle learned how to cook for a ten-year-old vegetarian. They became his family, too.

I turn to Billy, who’s been waiting patiently for me to say something out loud. “I don’t know the rules, if I have to be invited or perform some special task or something, but I want to join the congregation. I want to fight on the side of good.” My voice wobbles on the word
fight
, because I can’t fight. I’ve already proven that. But this isn’t a fight with glory swords they’re talking about. Christian’s right—it’s family, the only family I have left. I need to do something. I need to stand for something tangible and good, the way my mother did. I need to try. “Can I do that, before I go?”

“You bet,” she says, and she takes me to find Stephen. We find him reclining in one of those collapsible camping chairs near his tent, reading a large leather-bound book.

“Clara would like to join us,” Billy tells him.

For all of two seconds Stephen thinks she just means I want to join them for roasting marshmallows or something, but then he sees the look on my face. “Ah,” he says. “I see. I’ll call the others.”

Within ten minutes I’m standing in the innermost ring of an outward-spreading circle of angel-bloods, the entire congregation assembled again in the middle of the meadow, and every single one of them is looking right at me. I try not to squirm. Stephen asks me a single question: “Do you promise to serve the light, to fight for the side of good, to love and protect the others who serve alongside you?”

I say I do. In that way it’s kind of like a wedding ceremony.

The congregation unfurls their wings. I’ve seen them do this before, with my mother, when they were saying good-bye to her the last time I was here. But now it’s me in the center of the circle, and it’s night, so when they summon glory around me, it kind of feels like the sun rising in my soul. I haven’t felt glory since the Garter, and something releases inside when the light floods me. I feel warm, for the first time in more than a week. I feel safe. I feel loved. Their light fills the meadow, and it’s different from the glory I call up in myself, fuller, like the beating heart of every person in the circle is my heart, and their breath is my breath, their voices my voice.

God is with us,
they say in Latin, for what I assume is the team motto, their words a swelling hum around me.
Clara lux in obscuro.
Bright light in the darkness.

“I’m thinking about Chicago,” Christian says, the day after we get back to Lincoln. He’s sitting at the dining table in our hotel, surfing the internet on his laptop.

I look up from where I’m preparing Web’s morning bottle. “What are you thinking about it?”

“We should move there,” he says. “I’ve found us the perfect little house.”

I promptly lose count of how many spoonfuls of powdered formula I’ve scooped into the bottle. “Oh. A house.” He’s looking at houses. For us. Even though I feel lighter after the glory in the meadow the other night, the idea of hiding away with Christian and Web, creating a whole new identity for myself, still doesn’t sit right.

But Christian’s excited about it. He’s making plans.

He sees the freaked-out expression on my face, or maybe he feels it. “Clara, don’t worry. We can take this whole thing really slow. One step at a time, with everything. Let’s stay here for a couple more weeks, if you want. I know it’s hard.”

Does he? I wonder. Walter is gone, I think. Christian’s an only child. He’s not leaving anything behind.

“That’s not fair,” he says quietly. “I had friends at Stanford. I had a life there, too.”

“Stop reading my mind!” I exclaim, then say stiffly, “I have to feed Web,” and leave the room.

I’m being childish, I think. It’s not Christian’s fault we’re on the run.

After Web is fed and changed, I slink back into the kitchen. Christian’s closed his laptop. He’s watching TV. He looks up at me warily.

“Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to yell.”

“It’s fine,” he says. “We’ve been cooped up.”

“Will you take Web for a while? I need to take a walk. Clear my head.”

He nods, and I hand Web over to him.

“Hey, want to hang out, little man?” Christian asks him, and Web coos happily in response.

I beeline it for the door.

It’s raining outside, but I don’t care. The cool air feels good on my face. I stuff my hands in the pockets of my sweatshirt, pull up my hood to cover my head, and walk to a park a few blocks from the hotel. It’s deserted. I sit on one of the swings and turn on my phone.

I have to do this one last thing, which I’ve been avoiding—hoping, maybe, that everything would work itself out. But it’s not working itself out.

I have to call Tucker.

“Oh, Clara, thank God,” he says when I say hello. He was sleeping, and I woke him, and his voice is rough-edged. “Are you okay?” he rasps.

I am not okay. Just hearing him brings tears to my eyes, knowing what I’m about to do. “I’m fine,” I say. “I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner.”

“I’ve been going out of my mind, worrying,” he says. “You took off like that, half-cocked and frantic and whatnot, and then the Garter was all over the news. I’m so sorry, Clara. I know Angela was one of your best friends.” He lets out a breath. “At least you’re safe. I thought you were—I thought you might be—”

Dead. He thought I might be dead.

“Where are you?” he asks. “I can come meet you somewhere. I have to see you.”

“No. I can’t.” Just do it, I tell myself. Get it out before you lose your nerve. “Look, Tucker, I’m calling because I have to make you understand something. There’s no future for you and me. I don’t even know what my future is, at this point. But I can’t be with you.” A lone tear makes its way down my face, and I wipe at it impatiently. “I have to let you go.”

He gives an aggravated sigh. “It doesn’t matter, does it?” he says, his voice laced with anger. “All that I said to you before, about us, about what I feel, it doesn’t matter. You’re making the choice for both of us.”

He’s right, but that’s just how it has to be. I push on. “I wanted to tell you that wherever I am, whatever happens, I’ll always think of you, and the time we spent together, as my happiest time. I’d do it all over again, if I had the choice. No regrets.”

He’s quiet for a minute. “You’re really saying good-bye this time,” he says, and I can’t tell if he’s asking me or simply trying to get his head around the idea.

“I’m really saying good-bye.”

“No,” he says against my ear. “No. I won’t accept that. Clara …”

“I’m sorry, Tuck. I have to go,” I say, and then I hang up. And cry. And cry.

I sit on that swing for a long time, in the rain, thinking, trying to get a grip on myself. I try to picture Chicago, what it will be like, but all I can conjure in my head is a giant silver bean and a bunch of tall buildings. And Oprah. And the Bears.

I gaze up at the gray, shifting clouds.

Is this my destiny?
I ask them.
To be with Christian? To go with him? To protect Web because his mother can’t be here?

Is this my purpose?

The clouds don’t have a lot of answers.

For the first time in my life, I wish for a vision. I almost miss having them, which is ironic, I know. Every night lately as I lay me down to fragile sleep, I wonder, will it come? Is this the night when the mysterious scene will play like a movie trailer behind my eyelids and the whole process will begin again: sorting through the fragments, the details, the feelings, trying to understand what they add up to? In that moment before I close my eyes and give in to the darkness of night, to sleep, my body tenses under the sheets. My breath quickens. Waiting.

Hoping that a vision will steal over me, and there will be something God wants me to do. Anything.

Hoping for a direction. A path to walk. A sign.

But the vision doesn’t come.

From behind me, bells start to toll the hour from a towering redbrick church a couple blocks away. I count the beats—ten of them—and stand up. I should get back to Christian.

But then, as the last notes from the clock fade away, an idea comes to me, a thunderclap of sudden inspiration.

I could make myself have a vision. Or, at the very least, I could try.

I glance around. There’s no one else in the park, which makes sense. You’d have to be crazy to go out in this downpour. I’m alone.

I smile and close my eyes. Focus.

And the glory comes, like it never left me. It comes. Thanks largely to the congregation, I think.

I imagine sunshine. A line of palm trees. A row of red flowers along a path of purple-and-tan checkered stones.

I think of Stanford.

I cross.

The quad is largely deserted as I walk to MemChu. The last few steps I practically run into the church. I can’t be gone long, I think. Christian will worry.

It’s still early here, and there’s only one person walking the labyrinth when I get to the front of the nave: a guy in a red sweatshirt, mumbling quietly to himself as he walks the pattern on the floor. I shuck off my damp shoes, pick up at the entrance of the circle and start walking, slowly, following the turns and twists of the pattern, trying to clear my head of all that’s clogging it.

Time to meditate. Briefly I worry that I might start to glow in front of red sweatshirt guy, but he seems lost in his own thoughts and I can’t wait.

I walk in circles for a while, not thinking but moving my feet automatically, following the path before me, then stop and check my watch.

I’ve been here for ten minutes, and I haven’t even come close to having the vision.

Maybe this is a pipe dream. I couldn’t make myself have a vision before. Why would it work for me now?

“You’re not going to get the result you want if you keep looking at your watch,” says a voice. I turn. Standing on the opposite side of the circle in the red sweatshirt is Thomas.

Good old Doubting Thomas.

“Thanks,” I say wryly. “I bet you’re not going to get the result you want if you keep stopping to see how everybody else is doing.”

“Sorry. I was just trying to help.” His eyebrows come together. “How’d you get all wet?”

“Do you come here often?” I ask instead of trying to explain, since this isn’t exactly the place I would have expected to find the guy who could never seem to leave well enough alone in happiness class.

He nods. “Since I finished that class. It helps me get my mind off my crazy life.”

His crazy life, I think. How crazy could it be?

“I’m not very good at this,” I confess, gesturing to the blue vinyl circle. The morning sun is passing through the stained-glass windows, casting a riot of color onto the patterns under our feet. “I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s just not happening.”

“Here.” He pulls at something around his neck and comes away with the earbuds for an iPod, which he hands me. “Try this.”

I tentatively slip the buds into my ears. He presses play, and I’m flooded with a chorus of male voices singing in Latin. Gregorian chant.

Again, Thomas surprises me. I would have pegged him as a rap aficionado.

“Nice,” I say to him.

“I don’t know what they’re saying, but I like it,” he says. “It helps.”

I listen.

Panis angelicus fit panis hominum
… Bread of angels becomes the bread of men …

Sometimes it doesn’t suck to be able to understand any language on earth.

“So now you walk,” Thomas says. “Just walk, and listen, and let your mind empty itself out.”

I do what he says. I don’t think about what I want. I don’t think about Angela or Web or Christian. I walk. The monks chant in my ears, and I hear them like I’m standing among them, and I stop for a moment in the center of the circle, and I close my eyes.

Please,
I think.
Please. Show me the way.

That’s when the vision hits me like a Mack truck doing seventy. And I am swept away.