Radiant (6 page)

“Have you taken a good look at yourself in the mirror lately?” I asked, and then, maybe because I didn’t want to come off as totally shallow, I added, “You’re the only person who really understands me, Phen. That’s why I want it to be you.”

And because I love you.
I didn’t say out loud, but I wondered if he could see it on my face.

“Besides, I want to experience it with someone who really knows what they’re doing,” I said playfully, thinking of that lady in 1636.

He gave a small, disbelieving laugh. “Oh, I don’t know what I’m doing.” His dark eyes were dark with something like desire.

“I know you want me,” I said. I kissed him again. Slowly. Showing him it was all right.

He groaned, then pulled away again. “This isn’t supposed to happen this way. I was supposed to teach you.”

“So teach me.”

“I’m not good for you,” he said. “I’m not . . . good.”

“You’re not bad,” I protested. “You’re ambivalent, right?” Up to then I’d liked the idea of his ambivalence. If he’d been a White Wing, there’s no way I ever would have tried this. He would have been too good for me. Untouchable. But it was perfect like this. He was perfect.

I leaned in again, but he took me by the shoulders and pushed me away from him. Hard. I stumbled back.

“No,” he said. “Angela, please try to understand. I’m sorry if I led you to think . . .”

Rejection flared through me. Sudden tears sprang to my eyes. “You led me to think what? That you could be interested in someone like me?”

He sighed. “You are magnificent, strong-willed, smart. You’re amazing. Any mortal boy would be lucky to have you.”

“I don’t want a mortal boy,” I said, my voice silly and cracking and vulnerable. “I want you. It can be casual. I don’t care.”

He closed his eyes for a minute, his jaw tightening. Then he dropped his head, sighed again, and said, “I can’t be with you, Angela.”

“Why not?”

“You’re a child,” he said.

I stepped back like he’d slapped me. “I’m a child.”

He didn’t say anything.

“You . . .” I was shaking, I was so hurt and mad and utterly crushed. I couldn’t catch my breath. “Well, you’re a tease, then.
Play me something on your violin, Angela. Take it off, Angela.
You . . . you were toying with me.”

He looked up. Anger flared in his eyes. “No. I didn’t ask for this. I don’t need this.”

“Great. Fine. I don’t need you either. You . . . asshat,” I blurted out, and then I charged for the door. I couldn’t stand to be in his presence for another second. I ran. Out of his flat. Down the cobblestone streets, all the way back to my grandmother’s, where I flung myself down on my bed and cried harder than I’d ever cried before.

How stupid of me, I thought later, when I could form coherent thoughts again. How adolescent. I touched my lips where the memory of his kiss still lingered. How foolish. I should go back, apologize.

But when I did, he was gone.

CLARA

“So who’s the dead guy?” Angela asks.

We’re in the Sistine Chapel with Phen. There is so much here, so many different frescoes and murals and tapestries, that I don’t know where to look. It’s giving me a headache, to be honest.

“That’s Moses,” answers Phen. “It’s called
The Discussion Over the Body of Moses
.”

“Looks like a pretty heated discussion,” Angela says. “Who’s the angel with the spear?”

“Michael.”

I can’t help myself. I turn and look, and yep, there’s my dear old dad, wearing golden armor and some kind of feathered helmet, threatening to poke the devil. He even sort of resembles my dad, something in his face that reminds me of Jeffrey. I swallow. I haven’t seen either of them, Dad or Jeffrey, since the week of Mom’s funeral.

“So Michael’s kind of a badass,” Angela says, the side of her mouth hitching up in a half-suppressed smile. She meets my eyes, practically winks at me.

Phen scoffs. “He thinks so. He’s called The Smiter, after all.”

I quickly look away, struggling to keep my face neutral. I’m so going to strangle her later.

“And who’s the angel in green?” she asks.

Phen squints up at the fresco. “Hard to say. Uriel, probably.”

“Why, because Uriel is fond of the color green?”

He scoffs again. “Because Uriel is Michael’s bosom friend.”

Okay, bad idea or not, I have to admit this is interesting. We’ve been hanging out with Phen for only a couple of hours and already I’ve learned so much stuff I didn’t know before. Like my dad has a best friend. Uriel.

“So the left side is the life of Moses, and the right side is the life of Jesus, and the ceiling is creation,” Angela’s saying as I wander off a few steps. I crane my neck to see the famous depiction of God creating Adam on the ceiling. It’s always struck me as ironic, how the figure of God is reaching, his body almost fully extended in his effort to touch Adam, and there’s Adam all blasé about it, like he can’t be bothered to even lift his hand that far.

“What about this?” I hear Angela whisper as she and Phen make their way over to look at the back wall, Michelangelo’s
The Last Judgment
: a tangle of naked writhing bodies, some of them being lifted up toward heaven, some being dragged down.

“What about it?” Phen says after a long moment.

“Is this how it’s going to be?” she asks. “We’re all going to be sorted? In the end?”

I want to hear this. I move closer, hold my breath so I can listen over the shuffle of feet and quiet chatter of the tourists around us. For a minute Phen looks like he’s going to say something serious, impart some crucial piece of knowledge about the universe, life and death, heaven and hell, eternal rewards and everlasting punishment. Then he smiles.

“If I told you it’d spoil the surprise,” he says.

She whacks him in the arm. “Fine. Don’t tell me.”

“Oh, I won’t.”

“You’re a jerk, you know that?” she says, but she’s laughing.

Phen wants to climb to the top of the dome at St. Peter’s. Good thing I’m wearing decent shoes, is all I’m saying. It takes us a while to get there. First we have to take an elevator and then climb something like three hundred and twenty-three steps in this claustrophobic, shoulder-wide spiral staircase. But then we’re outside, and it’s like standing on top of the world, Rome stretched out beneath our feet all ablaze in the setting sun.

It takes my breath away. Well, that, and I just climbed all those stairs.

“This is amazing,” breathes Angela.

“Yes,” Phen says, and I guess he should know amazing when he sees it. “It is.”

I stand at the rail and take a few pictures of the view, but I realize there’s no way that my camera will be able to capture how beautiful it is. Then I turn and impulsively snap a picture of Phen and Angela. I know the second I see it flash across my screen that I’ve taken a gorgeous photo of them, standing close together but not touching, Phen not looking at the sunset but at Angela, openly admiring the way she’s bathed in golden light, strands of her long, dark hair blowing around her face as she gazes out with a rapt expression. In that instant I get the sense that this might not be a one-sided thing, their relationship. He might like her, too.

I’m not sure how I feel about this. It seems wrong to me, an eighteen-year-old in love with someone who’s older than dirt—literally—but who am I to judge? My mom married an angel too, after all.

Age is only a number, right?

I should go, I think, slip away and let them have this romantic moment together.

But then Angela says, “I have to pee. I’ll be right back.”

I stare at her, baffled. “You’re going to go all the way down to the bottom? I’ll come with you,” I offer.

“No. You stay,” she says, and I recognize the no-nonsense tone. This isn’t about her having to go to the bathroom. This is about her wanting me to be alone with Phen.

“Wait,” I say, but she’s already gone.

“Women,” Phen says with a laugh. “They always pick the most inopportune times to powder their noses.”

“Yeah, women are so dumb that way,” I say, irritated. I don’t like to be manipulated, even if I understand why she’s doing it. I should be nice, make small talk, try to get to know him. And he is likable, I’ll admit. Funny. Charming. I can see what Angela digs about him, and I know that this is important to her, that she wants me to approve of him, but I can’t help it, hypocritical or not. For some reason I can’t quite put my finger on, he makes me uncomfortable.

He smirks. This guy is a master at smirks. “You don’t try very hard to hide the fact that you don’t like me.”

I look away, embarrassed that it’s so obvious. “I like you, Phen.”

“Right,” he says sarcastically.

“Well, I want to like you, anyway.” That much is true.

“Why?” he asks. “Why do you care?”

“Because Angela cares.”

“Ah. I guess that makes you a good friend.”

“I guess.”

“So you’re trying to like me, but you can’t quite manage it,” he says with a laugh. “Why?”

“Because I don’t know what you are,” I answer. Might as well be honest.

He lifts his arms palms up, in a gesture that says,
What you see is what you get
.

“No,” I say. “You’re an angel.”

“Thank you for reminding me.”

“But you don’t act like an angel. You don’t feel like one. You don’t talk like one.”

“I see. Do you know many angels?” he asks.

Oh, crap. I do not want this conversation to become about me and the angels I know. The angel, singular. I turn away, watch the last wedge of the sun disappear behind the horizon. Below us in the square, the people are like tiny dark ants against the stone, milling around, and I suddenly feel so removed from them, like we’re different species, them and me, and I’m alone, watching them but unable to be part of their world.

“We’re not all alike, you know,” Phen says then. “Angels.”

“I get that. But you look like one of us, and you’re not. So I guess I don’t understand what you’re playing at, or what you want with Angela.”

I look up at him. All the humor is gone from his eyes. He rakes his fingers through his hair, then sighs heavily.

“I never fit in with the others,” he says after a thoughtful pause. “Never. The joyous ones with their optimism, their duties, their never-wavering faith in what He wanted. The Watchers who loved the humans so much it killed them to watch them die like pretty butterflies. The sad ones, who hated the humans for their free will, and hated Him for giving it to them. I don’t love or hate humans. I respect them. They shape themselves, in a way that we angels do not. They tell lies and sleep around and curse, and they try to define themselves so valiantly.
Who am I?
they keep asking.
Why am I here?
”

I don’t know what to say to this. That’s all I’ve really been asking myself for the past two years. Is that what makes me human, I wonder, that I keep asking this question?

“I think Angela is beautifully human, even if she is more than that. So are you. And yes, I’m an impostor. I make myself seem young and I pretend. It’s the only way I can feel anything.”

He sounds tired, sad. Maybe I’ve been overly judgmental about this whole thing, I think. I haven’t had an open mind, that’s for sure. But I still can’t read him. I can’t look into his heart and know whether his intentions are good or bad. So, almost without thinking, I turn and put my hand over his on the rail.

His eyes flash up to mine. His skin is cool, smooth, but hard, like touching a statue. He gives me a sorrowful smile.

“It takes a great deal of energy, being human, even if it’s only on the outside,” he says, and for a moment he lets me see the layer of him that’s under the surface: his spirit, a blurring like someone is smudging charcoal around him. His soul is gray. Cold. Almost colorless. I feel how weary he is with himself, how resigned that this existence is all that there will ever be for him, day after day after day, until the end of the world, and even then he doesn’t know what will happen or if anything will truly change.

“Humans fear death so much, but there is no death,” he whispers. “There is only the illusion of it. We can never cease to be. We must stay like this. Forever.”

Trust an angel to make eternity sound like a huge bummer.

“You should leave Angela alone,” I say then, firmly. Because Angela deserves someone good. Phen may not be evil. But he’s not good. She deserves someone who will be crazy about her for her, her zany intelligence and spurts of kindness, her little quirks. Not just for her “humanness.” She deserves someone real.

Phen pulls his hand away, smirks again, and the blurring around him stops, solidifies. He’s done showing me the truth.

“I tried to resist her,” he says. “Have you ever tried to say no to her?”

“You clearly didn’t try hard enough.”

“It’s a tad hypocritical,” he says, his voice harder, “you disapproving of me for pretending to be something I’m not.”

“Oh yeah? And why is that?”

“Because you’re not human either. But you want to be.”

My breath catches. It’s true. I’m more angel than human. But he can’t know that. Can he?

“I’m human,” I protest. I want to lie, tell him that I’m only a quarter angel, that my angel blood is so diluted that it hardly matters, that I’m a smidge away from being completely normal, but I’m afraid he’ll see right through me and that will only make things worse. I fortify the mental wall I’ve built between us. “I’m not pretending anything.”

“You’re a child pretending to sit at the grown-ups’ table,” he says.

“If I’m a child, then so is Angela,” I shoot back.

“Indeed.” He sighs like this place suddenly bores him, tugs his hand through his hair again. “We should go find her. It’s getting dark.”

ANGELA

The Vatican didn’t go well. I can see it all over Clara’s face when I get back from the bathroom. She doesn’t like Phen. She’ll never like him. She thinks he’s too good, too special, too angelic for me. I’m only a Dimidius, after all.

“Where does she get off, judging me?” I rant to him later, after I’ve snuck out and basically attacked him back at his flat. He strokes my hair, trying to pacify me, but I’m still mad. “I mean, it’s not like she’s so flawless.”

“She’s worried about you,” he says.

I glance up at him. “Don’t do that. Don’t act like you’re endangering me or something. I thought we were past that.”

“I’m an angel,” he says simply. “What we have isn’t normal. Clara wants something normal for you.”

“Well, I don’t want normal.” I snuggle down into his chest, press a kiss there. “I don’t know why she’s so fussy about it. She of all people should understand. Her mom married an angel, for heaven’s sake!”

I know the minute I say it that I’ve betrayed her.

Phen tenses, his hand freezing on my bare back. “What?”

I sit up and untangle myself, pull the sheet to cover me. “I shouldn’t have told you,” I say. “I didn’t mean to. Please, don’t . . .”

“No, I won’t,” he says softly, almost like he’s talking to himself. “It has nothing to do with you,” he says, and I’m not sure what he means by that. He looks at me sternly. “But you should be more careful. If the fallen knew, they would hunt her.”

“Okay.”

He pulls me back down to him. We lie there for a minute without talking.

“This is foolishness, Angela,” he says finally.

I close my eyes. “If this is foolish, I don’t want to be wise.”

“I care about you, more than I could ever have expected,” he says. “And I’ve . . . enjoyed this.”

“Me too.”

“But I can’t love you. And you deserve love. Clara is right about that.”

I swallow down the lump in my throat. “I don’t need love right now,” I whisper. “Okay?”

“Okay,” he says, and then I kiss him, as if I can make it like this conversation never happened, like I can make everything but us go away. And, for a little while at least, it does.

When I get back to the house Nonna is sitting on the front step. Waiting. She stands up when she sees me.

“So. It is true. You’ve been with a boy. All night.”

I force myself to stay casual. “Did Clara tell you that?”

“I don’t need Clara to tell me what is plain,” she says. “You have defiled yourself.”

“Oh, Nonna, don’t be so dramatic.”

She bangs her cane against the cobblestone, hard. “Your mother does not send you here for this!”

“So why does she send me?” I shoot back. “To get rid of me for a few months, that’s why. So she can be alone without a kid to weigh her down. Right?”

“Of course not. She sends you so that you might learn history, and understand the world. So that you will learn about family.”

I don’t say anything.

“Today you and Clara will take a train to my sister in Florence. You will stay there for the rest of the summer. And you will not see this boy again.”

“He’s not a boy,” I say.

“I don’t care what he is,” Nonna says wearily. “You will go. Now get upstairs and pack.”

I want to refuse. I’m eighteen now, a grown woman. I make my own choices. But I don’t argue. When Phen said good-bye to me this morning there was a finality in his voice, like maybe he won’t be there if I go back again. I guess I always knew that our time together would be fleeting. Ephemeral. And if he doesn’t decide to call it off now, it’s not like going to Florence will stop us from being together.

“Fine,” I say softly. I slip past Nonna into the house. In the kitchen, Clara looks up at me from the table, then looks quickly away.

“Well played,” I tell her.

“I didn’t do anything. She has eyes, you know. She could see you weren’t here. I tried to cover, but—”

“You’re a crappy liar,” I fill in. Which is true. Clara couldn’t lie her way out of a paper bag.

“Sorry,” Clara murmurs. “But Ange, about Phen—”

“Don’t concern yourself with Phen,” I interrupt. “Now apparently I’ve got some packing to do.”