Boundless (Unearthly) (2 page)

I cup my hands around my mouth and call, “Christian!”

He turns. We weave toward each other through the crowd. In a flash I’m by his side, grinning up at him, almost laughing because it feels so good to be together again after so long.

“Hey,” he says. He has to talk loudly to be heard over the people around us. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Yes, fancy that.”

It doesn’t occur to me until right this minute how much I’ve missed him. I was so busy missing other people—my mom, Jeffrey, Tucker, Dad—caught up in all that I was leaving behind. But now … it’s like when part of you stops hurting and suddenly you’re yourself again, healthy and whole, and only then do you understand that you’ve been in pain for a while. I missed his voice in my head, in my ears. I missed his face. His smile.

“I missed you, too,” he says bemusedly, bending to say it next to my ear so I can hear him over the noise.

His warm breath against my neck makes me shiver. I step back awkwardly, suddenly self-conscious. “How was the boonies?” is all I can think to say.

His uncle always takes him into the mountains during the summers, spends the whole time hard-core training, away from the internet and television and any other distractions, and makes him practice calling glory and flying and all other angel-related skills. Christian calls it his “summer internship,” acts like it’s only a step up from army boot camp.

“Same old routine,” he reports. “Walter was even more intense this year, if you can believe that. He had me up at the crack of dawn most days. Worked me like a dog.”

“Why?” I start to ask, then think better of it.
What’s he training you for?

His eyes get serious.
I’ll tell you later, okay?

“How was Italy?” he asks me out loud, because it’ll look weird to people if we’re standing here facing each other, not saying anything, while we carry out an entire conversation in our heads.

“Interesting,” I say. Which has got to be the understatement of the year.

Angela picks this moment to appear at my side. “Hi, Chris,” she says, lifting her chin in greeting. “How’s it going?”

He gestures at the crowd of excited freshmen milling around us. “I think reality is finally starting to settle in that I’m going here.”

“I know what you mean,” she says. “I needed to pinch myself when we drove down Palm Drive. What dorm are you in?”

“Cedro.”

“Clara and I are both in Roble. I think that’s across campus from you.”

“It is,” he says. “I checked.”

He’s glad that he ended up with a dorm across campus from us, I understand as I look at him. Because he thinks I might not like it if he’s always around, picking the random thoughts out of my brain. He wants to give me some space.

I send him the mental equivalent of a hug, which surprises him.

What was that for?
he asks.

“We need bicycles,” Angela’s saying. “This campus is so big. Everybody has bikes.”

Because I’m glad you’re here,
I say to Christian.

I’m glad to be here.

I’m glad you’re glad to be here.

We smile.

“Hey, are you two doing the mind-meld thing?” Angela asks, and then, as loudly as she can, she thinks,
Because it is
so
annoying.

Christian gives a surprised laugh.
Since when does she talk telepathically?

Since I’ve been teaching her. It was something to do on an eleven-hour flight.

Do you really think that’s a good idea? She’s loud enough as it is….
He’s joking, but I can tell he doesn’t love the thought of Angela being part of our secret conversations. That’s between us. It’s ours.

So far she hasn’t been able to receive,
I say to ease his mind.
She can only transmit.

So she can speak, but she can’t listen
.
How appropriate.

Ann-oy-ing,
Angela says, folding her arms across her chest and glaring at him.

We both laugh.

“Sorry, Ange.” I sling an arm around her. “Christian and I have a lot of catching up to do.”

A flicker of worry passes over her face, but it’s gone so fast I wonder if I imagined it. “Well, I think it’s rude,” she says.

“Okay, okay. No mind-melding. I get it.”

“At least not until I learn to do it too. Which will be soon. I’ve been practicing,” she says.

“No doubt,” he says.

I catch the laughter in his eyes, bite back a smile. “So, have you met your roommate yet?” I ask him.

He nods. “Charlie. He wants to be a computer programmer. Married to his Xbox. How about you?”

“Her name’s Wan Chen, and she’s premed and extremely serious about it,” I report. “She showed me her schedule today, and it made me feel like a total slacker.”

“Well, you are a total slacker,” Angela points out.

“So true.”

“What about your roommate?” Christian asks Angela.
Poor defenseless thing,
he adds silently, which makes me snicker.

“I have two roommates—lucky, lucky me,” says Angela. “They’re total blondes.”

“Hey!” I object to her tone on the subject of blondes.

“And they’re complete fuzzies. One’s a communications major—whatever that means—and one is undecided.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being undecided.” I glance at Christian, a tad embarrassed about my undecidedness.

“I’m undecided,” he says. Angela and I stare at him, shocked. “What, I can’t be undecided?”

“I assumed you’d be a business major,” Angela says.

“Why?”

“Because you look really stellar in a suit and tie,” she says with false sweetness. “You’re pretty. You should play to your strengths.”

He refuses to rise to the bait. “Business is Walter’s thing. Not mine.”

“So what is your thing?” Angela asks.

“Like I said, I haven’t decided.” He gazes at me intently, the gold flecks in his green eyes catching the light, and I feel heat move into my cheeks.

“Where is Walter, anyway?” I ask to change the subject.

“With Billy.” He turns and points at the designated parent section of the quad, where, sure enough, Walter and Billy look like they’re deep in conversation.

“They’re a cute couple,” I say, watching Billy as she laughs and puts her hand on Walter’s arm. “Of course I was surprised when Billy called me this summer to tell me that she and Walter were getting married. I did not see
that
coming.”

“Wait, Billy and Walter are getting married?” Angela exclaims. “When?”

“They got married,” Christian clarifies. “July. At the meadow. It was pretty sudden.”

“I didn’t even know they liked each other,” I say before Angela can deliver the joke I know she’s cooking up about how Christian and I are now some kind of weird brother and sister, since his legal guardian has married my legal guardian.

“Oh, they like each other,” Christian says. “They’re trying to be discreet, for my sake, I guess. But Walter can’t stop thinking about her. Loudly. And in various states of undress, if you know what I mean.”

“Ugh. Don’t tell me. I’m going to have to scrub my brain with the little bit I saw in her head this week. Is there a bearskin rug at your house?”

“I think you just ruined my living room for me,” he says with a groan, but he doesn’t mean it. He’s happy about the Billy-Walter situation. He thinks it’s good for Walter. Keeps his mind off things.

What things?
I ask.

Later,
he says.
I’ll tell you all about it. Later.

Angela lets out an exasperated sigh. “Oh my God, you guys. You are totally doing it again.”

After the orientation speeches, them telling us how proud we should be of ourselves, what high hopes they have for our futures, the amazing opportunities we’ll have while we’re at “the Farm,” as they call Stanford, we’re all supposed to head back to our dorms and get acquainted with one another.

This is the point when they tell the parents to go home.

Angela’s mom, Anna, who’s been her intensely quiet self, sitting in the backseat of my car reading her Bible for the entire thousand-mile trip, suddenly bursts into tears. Angela is mortified, red-cheeked as she escorts her sobbing mother out to the parking lot, but I think it’s nice. I wish my mom were here to cry over me.

Billy gives me another one of those encouraging shoulder squeezes. “Knock ’em dead, kid,” she says simply, and then she’s gone, too.

I pick a comfy sofa in the lounge and pretend to study the patterns on the carpet while the rest of the students are saying their own tearful good-byes. After a while a guy with short, dyed-blond hair comes in and sits across from me, sets a hefty stack of folders on the coffee table. He smiles, reaches out to shake my hand. “I’m Pierce.”

“Clara Gardner.”

He nods. “I think I’ve seen your name on a couple of lists. You’re in B wing, right?”

“Third floor.”

“I’m the fee here in Roble,” he says.

I stare at him blankly.

“P-H-E,” he explains. “It stands for peer health educator. Kind of like the doctor of the dorm. I’m where you go for a Band-Aid.”

“Oh, right.”

He’s looking at my face in a way that makes me wonder if I have food on it.

“What? Do I have the words
clueless freshman
tattooed across my forehead?” I ask.

He smiles, shakes his head. “You don’t look scared.”

“Excuse me?”

“Freshmen usually seem pretty terrified, first week on campus. They wander around like lost little puppies. Not you, though. You look like you’ve got things all under control.”

“Oh. Thanks,” I say. “But I hate to tell you, it’s an act. Inside I’m a nervous wreck.”

I’m not, actually. I guess next to fallen angels, funerals, and forest fires, Stanford feels like a pretty safe place. Everything’s familiar here: the California smells of exhaust and eucalyptus trees and carefully landscaped roses in the air, palm trees, the Caltrain noise in the distance, the same old varieties of plants that I grew up with outside the windows.

It’s the other stuff that scares me: the dark, windowless room in my vision, what’s going to happen in that place, the bad thing that’s happened before I end up hiding there. The possibility that this is going to be my entire life: one vague, terrifying vision after another, for the next hundred years. That’s what’s scary. That’s what I am trying very hard not to think about.

Pierce writes a five-digit number on a Post-it and holds it out. “Call me if you need anything. I’ll come running.”

He’s flirting, I think. I take the Post-it. “Okay.”

Just then Angela bustles in, running her hands down the sides of her leggings like she’s wiping off her mother’s emotions. She stops short when she sees Pierce.

She doesn’t look scared, either. She looks like she’s come to conquer.

“Zerbino, Angela,” she says matter-of-factly when Pierce opens his mouth to greet her. She glances at the folders on the table. “Have you got something in that pile with my name on it?”

“Yeah, sure,” he says, flustered, and rummages through the folders until he lands on
Z
and a packet for Angela. Then he fishes one out for me. He gets up. Checks his watch. “Well, nice to meet you, girls. Get comfortable. We’ll probably start our getting-to-know-you games in about five minutes.”

“What’s that?” Angela gestures to my Post-it as he walks away.

“Pierce.” I stare at his retreating back. “Anything I need, he’ll come running.”

She shoots a glance at him over her shoulder, smiles thoughtfully. “Oh, really? He’s cute.”

“I guess.”

“Right, I forgot. You only have eyes for Tucker still. Or is it Christian now? I can never keep track.”

“Hey. Like, ouch,” I say. “You’re being awfully rude today.”

Her expression softens. “Sorry. I’m tense. Change is hard for me, even the good changes.”

“For you? No way.”

She drops into the seat next to mine. “You seem relaxed, though.”

I stretch my arms over my head, yawn. “I’ve decided to stop stressing about everything. I’m going to start fresh. Look.” I dig around in my bag for the rumpled piece of paper and hold it up for her to read. “Behold, my tentative schedule.”

Her eyes quickly scan the page. “I see you took my advice and enrolled in that Intro to Humanities class with me. The Poet Re-making the World. You’ll like it, I promise,” she says. “Interpreting poetry’s easy, because you can make it mean pretty much whatever you want it to mean. It will be a cakewalk kind of class.”

I seriously doubt that.

“Hmm.” Angela frowns as she reads farther down. “Art history?” She quirks an eyebrow at me. “Science, Technology, and Contemporary Society? Intro to Film Studies? Modern Dance? This is kind of all over the place, C.”

“I like art,” I say defensively. “It’s simple for you, since you’re a history major, so you take history classes. But I’m—”

“Undecided,” she provides.

“Right, and I didn’t know what to take, so Dr. Day told me to enroll in a bunch of different classes and then drop the ones I didn’t respond to. But look at this one.” I point to the last class on the list.

“Athletics 196,” she reads above my finger. “Practice of Happiness.”

“Happiness class.”

“You’re taking a class on happiness,” she says, like that has got to be the most total slacker class in the universe.

“My mom said I was going to be happy at Stanford,” I explain. “So that’s what I intend to be. I’m going to find my happiness.”

“Good for you. Take charge of yourself. It’s about freaking time.”

“I know,” I say, and I mean it. “I’m ready to stop saying good-bye to things. I’m going to start saying hello.”

That night I wake up at two in the morning to somebody pounding on my door.

“Hello?” I call out warily. There’s a jumble of noise from outside, music and people shouting and frantic footsteps in the hall. Wan Chen and I both sit up, exchange worried glances, and then I slide out of bed to answer the door.

“Rise and shine, dear freshmen,” says Stacy, our RA, in a chipper voice. She’s wearing a neon-green plastic circle around her neck and rainbow clown hair. She grins. “Put your shoes on and come out front.”