Unearthly (2 page)

“Can I be there when you tell him? I'll bring popcorn.”

“Jeffrey's turn will come,” she says, a muted sadness coming up in her eyes, that look she gets when she thinks we're growing up too fast. “When he receives his purpose you'll have to deal with that too.”

“And then we'll move again?”

“We'll go where his purpose leads us.”

“That's crazy,” I say, shaking my head. “This all seems crazy. You know that, right?”

“Mysterious ways, Clara.” She grabs my spoon and digs a big chunk of Chubby Hubby out of the carton. She grins, shifting back into mischievous, playful Mom right before my eyes. “Mysterious ways.”

Over the next couple weeks the vision repeats every two or three days. I'll be minding my own business and then bang—I'm in a service announcement for Smokey the Bear. I come to expect it at odd times, on the ride to school, in the shower, eating lunch. Other times I get the sensation without the vision itself. I feel the heat. I smell smoke.

My friends notice. They stick me with an unfortunate new nickname: Cadet, as in Space Cadet. I guess it could be worse. And my teachers notice. But I get the work done, so they don't give me too much grief when I spend the class period scribbling away in my journal on what can't possibly be class notes.

If you looked at my journal a few years ago, that fuzzy pink diary I had when I was twelve with Hello Kitty on the cover, locked with a flimsy gold key I kept on a chain around my neck to keep it safe from Jeffrey's prying eyes, you'd see the ramblings of a perfectly normal girl. There are doodles of flowers and princesses, entries about school and the weather, movies I liked, music I danced around to, my dreams of playing the Sugar Plum Fairy in
The
Nutcracker
, or how Jeremy Morris sent one of his friends to ask me to be his girlfriend and of course I said no because why would I want to go out with someone too cowardly to ask me out himself?

Then comes the angel diary, which I started when I was fourteen. This one's a midnight blue spiral-bound notebook with a picture of an angel on it, a serene, feminine angel who looks eerily like Mom, with red hair and golden wings, standing on the sliver of the crescent moon surrounded by stars, beams of light radiating from her head. In it I jotted down everything Mom ever told me about angels and angel-bloods, every fact or piece of speculation I could coax out of her. I also recorded my experiments, like the time I cut my forearm with a knife just to see if I would bleed (which I did,
a lot
) and carefully noted how long it took to heal (about twenty-four hours, from when I made the cut to when the little pink line completely disappeared), the time I spoke Swahili to a man in the San Francisco airport (imagine the surprise for both of us), or how I could do twenty-five
grands jetés
back and forth across the floor of the ballet studio without getting winded. That was when my mom started seriously lecturing me about keeping it cool, at least in public. That's when I started to find myself, not just Clara the girl, but Clara the angel-blood, Clara the supernatural.

Now my journal (simple, black, moleskin) focuses entirely on my purpose: sketches, notes, and the details of the vision, especially when they involve the mysterious boy. He constantly lingers at the edges of my mind—except for those disorienting moments when he moves blindingly to center stage.

I grow to know him through his shape in my mind's eye. I know the sweep of his broad shoulders, his carefully disheveled hair, which is a dark, warm brown, long enough to cover his ears and brush against his collar in the back. He keeps his hands tucked into the pockets of his black jacket, which is kind of fuzzy, I notice, maybe fleece. His weight is always shifted slightly to one side, as if he's getting ready to walk away. He looks lean, but strong. When he begins to turn I can see the faintest outline of his cheek, and it never fails to make my heart beat faster and my breath hitch in my throat.

What will he think of me? I wonder.

I want to be awe-inspiring. When I appear to him in the forest, when he finally turns and sees me standing there, I want to at least
look
the part of an angel. I want to be all glowy and floaty like my mom. I'm not bad looking, I know. Angel-bloods are a fairly attractive bunch. I have good skin and my lips are naturally rosy so I never wear anything but gloss. I have very nice knees, or so I'm told. But I'm too tall and too skinny, and not in the willowy supermodel sort of way but in a storklike, all-arms-and-legs sort of way. And my eyes, which come across as storm-cloud gray in some lights and gunmetal blue in others, seem a bit too big for my face.

My hair is my best feature, long and wavy, bright gold with a hint of red, trailing behind me wherever I go like an afterthought. The problem with my hair is that it's also completely unruly. It tangles. It catches in things: zippers, car doors, food. Tying it back or braiding it never works. It's like a living thing trying to break free. Within moments of wrestling it down, there are strands in my face, and within the span of an hour it usually slides out of its confines completely. It takes the word
unmanageable
to a whole new level.

So with my luck, I'll never make it in time to save the boy in the forest because my hair will have snagged on a tree branch a mile back.

“Clara, your phone's ringing!” Mom hollers from the kitchen. I jump, startled. My journal lays open on my desk in front of me. On the page is a careful sketch of the back of the boy's head, his neck, his tousled hair, the hint of cheek and eyelashes. I don't remember drawing it.

“Okay!” I yell back. I close the journal and slide it under my algebra textbook. Then I run downstairs. It smells like a bakery. Tomorrow's Thanksgiving, and Mom's been making pies. She's wearing her fifties housewife apron (which she's had since the fifties, although she wasn't a housewife back then, she assures us) and it's dusted with flour. She holds the phone out to me.

“It's your dad.”

I raise an eyebrow at her in a silent question.

“I don't know,” she says. She hands me the phone, then turns and discreetly exits the room.

“Hi, Dad,” I say into the phone.

“Hi.”

There's a pause. Three words into our conversation and he's already out of things to say.

“So what's the occasion?”

For a moment he doesn't say anything. I sigh. For years I used to practice this speech about how mad I was at him for leaving Mom. I was three years old when they split. I don't remember them fighting. All I retained from the time they were together are a few brief flashes. A birthday party. An afternoon at a beach. Him standing at the sink shaving. And then there's the brutal memory of the day he left, me standing with Mom in the driveway, her holding Jeffrey on her hip and crying brokenheartedly as he drove away. I can't forgive him for that. I can't forgive him for a lot of things. For moving clear across the country to get away from us. For not calling enough. For never knowing what to say when he does call. But most of all I can't get past the way Mom's face pinches up whenever she hears his name.

Mom won't discuss what happened between them any more than she'll dish about her purpose. But here's what I do know: My mother is as close to being the perfect woman as this world is likely to see. She's half
angel
, after all, even though my dad doesn't know that. She's beautiful. She's smart and funny. She is magic. And he gave her up. He gave us all up.

And that, in my book, makes him a fool.

“I just wanted to know if you're okay,” he says finally.

“Why wouldn't I be okay?”

He coughs.

“I mean, it's rough being a teenager, right? High school. Boys.”

Now this conversation has gone from unusual to downright strange.

“Right,” I say. “Yeah, it's rough.”

“Your mom says your grades are good.”

“You talked to Mom?”

Another silence.

“How's life in the Big Apple?” I ask, to steer the conversation away from myself.

“The usual. Bright lights. Big city. I saw Derek Jeter in Central Park yesterday. It's a terrible life.”

He can be charming, too. I always want to be mad at him, to tell him that he shouldn't bother trying to bond with me, but I can never keep it up. The last time I saw him was two years ago, the summer I turned fourteen. I'd been practicing my “I-hate-you” speech big-time in the airport, on the plane, out of the gate, in the terminal. And then I saw him waiting for me by the baggage claim, and I filled up with this bizarre happiness. I launched myself into his arms and told him I'd missed him.

“I was thinking,” he says now. “Maybe you and Jeffrey could come to New York for the holidays.”

I almost laugh at his timing.

“I'd like to,” I say, “but I kind of have something important going on right now.”

Like locating a forest fire. Which is my one reason for being on this Earth. Which I will never be able to explain to him in a thousand years.

He doesn't say anything.

“Sorry,” I say, and I shock myself by actually meaning it. “I'll let you know if things change.”

“Your mom also told me you passed Driver's Ed.” He's clearly trying to change the subject.

“Yes, I took the test and parallel parked and everything. I'm sixteen. I'm legal now. Only Mom won't let me take the car.”

“Maybe it's time we see about getting you a car of your own.”

My mouth drops open. He's just full of surprises.

And then I smell smoke.

The fire must be farther away this time. I don't see it. I don't see the boy. A hot gust of gritty wind sends my hair flying out of its ponytail. I cough and turn away from the blast, swiping hair out of my face.

That's when I see the silver truck. I'm standing a few steps away from where it's parked on the edge of a dirt road.
AVALANCHE
, it says in silver letters on the back. It's a huge truck with a short, covered bed. It's the boy's truck. Somehow I just know.

Look at the license plate,
I tell myself.
Focus on that.

The plate is a pretty one. It's mostly blue: the sky, with clouds. The right side is dominated by a rocky, flat-topped mountain that looks vaguely familiar. On the left is the black silhouette of a cowboy astride a bucking horse, waving his hat in the air. I've seen it before, but I don't automatically know it. I try to read the numbers on the plate. At first all I can make out is the large number stacked on the left side: 22. And then the four digits on the other side of the cowboy: 99CX.

I expect to feel crazy happy then, excited to have such an enormously helpful piece of information handed to me as easily as that. But I'm still in the vision, and the vision is moving on. I turn away from the truck and walk quickly into the trees. Smoke drifts across the forest floor. Somewhere close by I hear a crack, like a branch falling. Then I see the boy, exactly the same as he's always been. His back turned. The fire suddenly licking the top of the ridge. The danger so obvious, so close.

The crushing sadness descends on me like a curtain dropping. My throat closes. I want to say his name. I step toward him.

“Clara? You okay?”

My dad's voice. I float back to myself. I'm leaning against the refrigerator, staring out the kitchen window where a hummingbird hovers near my mom's feeder, a blur of wings. It darts in, takes a sip, then flits away.

“Clara?”

He sounds alarmed. Still dazed, I lift the phone to my ear.

“Dad, I think I'm going to have to call you back.”

Chapter 2
Yonder Is Jackson Hole

On the road to Wyoming, there are lots of signs. Most of them warn of some kind of danger:
WATCH FOR DEER. WATCH FOR FALLING ROCK. TRUCKS, CHECK YOUR BRAKES. TUNE IN FOR ROAD CLOSURES. ELK CROSSING NEXT 2 MILES. SNOW SLIDE AREA, NO PARKING OR STOPPING.
I drive my car behind Mom's the whole way from California with Jeffrey in the passenger seat, trying not to freak out about how all the signs point to the fact that we're headed someplace wild and dangerous.

At the moment I'm driving through a forest made up entirely of lodgepole pines. Talk about surreal. I can't get over the sight of all the Wyoming license plates on the cars speeding past, many with the fateful number 22 on the left side. That number has brought us a long way, through six short weeks of crazy preparation, selling our house, saying good-bye to the friends and neighbors I've known my entire life, and packing up and moving to a place where none of us knows a single solitary soul: Teton County, Wyoming, which according to Google is county number 22, population just over 20,000. That's roughly five people per every square mile.

We're moving to the boonies. All because of me.

I've never seen so much snow. It's terrifying. My new Prius (courtesy of dear old Dad) is getting a real workout on the snowy mountain road. But there's no turning back now. The guy at the gas station assured us that the pass through the mountains is perfectly safe, so long as a storm doesn't come up. All I can do is clutch the steering wheel and try not to pay attention to the way the mountainside plunges off a few feet from the edge of the road.

I spot the
WELCOME TO WYOMING
sign.

“Hey,” I say to Jeffrey. “This is it.”

He doesn't answer. He slumps in the passenger seat, angry music pounding from his iPod. The farther we get from California and his sports teams and his friends, the more sullen he becomes. After two days on the road, it's getting old. I grab the wire and yank one of his earbuds out.

“What?” he says, glaring at me.

“We're in Wyoming, doofus. We're almost there.”

“Woo freaking hoo,” he says, and stuffs the earbud back in.

He's going to hate me for a while.

Jeffrey was a pretty easygoing kid before he found out about the angel stuff. But I know how that goes. One minute you're a happy fourteen-year-old—good at everything you try, popular, fun—the next you're a freak with wings. It takes some adjustment. And it was only like a month after he got the news that I received my little mission from heaven. Now we're dragging him off to Nowheresville, Wyoming, in January, no less, right smack in the middle of the school year.

When Mom announced the move, he yelled, “I'm not going!” with his fists clenched at his sides like he wanted to hit something.

“You are going,” Mom replied, looking up at him coolly. “And I wouldn't be surprised if you find your purpose in Wyoming, too.”

“I don't care,” he said. Then he turned and glared at me in a way that makes me cringe every time I remember it.

Mom, for her part, obviously digs Wyoming. She's been back and forth a few times scouting for a house, enrolling Jeffrey and me in our new school, smoothing out the transition between her job at Apple in California and the work she'll be doing for them from home after we move. She has chattered for hours about the beautiful scenery that will now be a part of our everyday lives, the fresh air, the wildlife, the weather, and how much we'll love the winter snow.

That's why Jeffrey is riding with me. He can't stand to listen to Mom blather on about how great it's all going to be. The first time we stopped for gas on the trip he got out of her car, grabbed his backpack, walked over to mine, and got in. No explanation. I guess he decided that he currently hates her more than he does me.

I grab the earbud again.

“It's not like I wanted this, you know,” I tell him. “For what it's worth, I'm sorry.”

“Whatever.”

My cell rings. I dig around in my pocket and toss the phone to Jeffrey. He catches it, startled.

“Could you get that?” I ask sweetly. “I'm driving.”

He sighs, opens the phone, and puts it to his ear.

“Yeah,” he says. “Okay. Yeah.”

He flips the phone closed.

“She says we're about to come up on Teton Pass. She wants us to pull over at the lookout.”

Right on cue we come around a corner and the valley where we'll be living opens up below a range of low hills and jagged blue-and-white mountains. It's an amazing view, like a scene from a calendar or a postcard. Mom pulls into a turnoff for the “scenic overlook” and I come to a careful stop next to her. She practically bounds out of the car.

“I think she wants us to get out,” I say to Jeffrey.

He just stares at the dashboard.

I open the door and swing out into the mountainy air. It's like stepping into a freezer. I tug my suddenly-much-too-thin Stanford hoodie over my head and jam my hands deep into the pockets. I can literally see my breath floating away from me every time I exhale.

Mom walks up to Jeffrey's door and taps on the window.

“Get out of the car,” she commands in a voice that says she means business.

She waves me toward the ridge, where a large wooden sign shows a cartoon cowboy pointing into the valley below.
HOWDY STRANGER,
it reads.
YONDER IS JACKSON HOLE. THE LAST OF THE OLD WEST.
There's a scattering of buildings on either side of a gleaming silver river. That's Jackson, our new hometown.

“Over there is Teton National Park and Yellowstone.” Mom points toward the horizon. “We'll have to go there in the spring, check it out.”

Jeffrey joins us on the ridge. He isn't wearing a jacket, just jeans and a T-shirt, but he doesn't look cold. He's too mad to shiver. His expression as he surveys our new environment is carefully blank. A cloud moves over the sun, casting the valley in shadow. The air instantly feels about ten degrees colder. I'm suddenly anxious, like now that I've officially arrived in Wyoming the trees will burst into flame and I'll have to fulfill my purpose on the spot. So much is expected of me in this place.

“Don't worry.” Mom puts her hands on my shoulders and squeezes briefly. “This is where you belong, Clara.”

“I know.” I try to muster a brave smile.

“You,” she says, moving to Jeffrey, “are going to love the sports here. Snow skiing and waterskiing and rock climbing and all kinds of extreme sports. I give you full permission to hurl yourself off stuff.”

“I guess,” he mutters.

“Great,” she says, seemingly satisfied. She snaps a quick picture of us. Then she moves briskly back to the car. “Now let's go.”

I follow her as the road twists down the mountain. Another sign catches my eye.
WARNING,
it says,
SHARP CURVES AHEAD.

Right before we reach Jackson we turn onto Spring Gulch Road, which takes us to another long, winding road, this one with a big iron gate we need a pass code to get through. That's my first inkling that our humble abode is going to be fairly posh. My second clue is all the enormous log houses I see tucked away in the trees. I follow Mom's car as she turns down a freshly plowed driveway and makes her way slowly through a forest of lodgepole pine, birch, and aspen trees, until we reach a clearing where our new house poses on a small rise.

“Whoa,” I breathe, gazing up at the house through the windshield. “Jeffrey, look.”

The house is made of solid logs and river rock, the roof covered with a blanket of pure white snow like what you see on a gingerbread house, complete with a set of perfect silver icicles dangling along the edges. It's bigger than our house in California, but cozier somehow, with a long, covered porch and huge windows that look out on a mind-bogglingly spectacular view of the snow-covered mountain range.

“Welcome home,” Mom says. She's leaning against her car, taking in our stunned reactions as we step out into the circular drive. She is so pleased with herself for finding this house she's practically bursting into song. “Our nearest neighbor is almost a mile away. This little wood is all ours.”

A breeze stirs the trees so that wisps of snow drift down through the branches, like our house is in a snow globe resting on a mantelpiece. The air feels warmer here. It's absolutely quiet. A sense of well-being washes over me.

This is home, I think. We're safe here,
which comes as a huge relief because, after weeks of nothing but visions and danger and sorrow, the uncertainty of moving and leaving everything behind, the insanity of it all, I can finally picture us having a life in Wyoming. Instead of only seeing myself walking into a fire.

I glance over at Mom. She's literally glowing, getting brighter and brighter by the second, a low vibrating hum of angelic pleasure rolling off her. Any second now and we'll be able to see her wings.

Jeffrey coughs. The sight is still new enough to weird him out.

“Mom,” he says. “You're doing the glory thing.”

She dims.

“Who cares?” I say. “There's no one around to see it. We can be ourselves here.”

“Yes,” says Mom quietly. “In fact, the backyard would be perfect for practicing some flying.”

I stare at her in dismay. Mom has tried to teach me to fly exactly two times, and both were complete disasters. In fact, I've essentially given up on the idea of flight altogether and accepted that I'm going to be an angel-blood who stays earthbound, a flightless bird, like an ostrich maybe, or, in this weather, a penguin.

“You might need to fly here,” Mom says a bit stiffly. “And you might want to try it out,” she adds to Jeffrey. “I bet you'd be a natural.”

I can feel my face getting hot. Sure, Jeffrey will be a natural when I can't even make it off the ground.

“I want to see my room,” I say, and escape to the safety of the house.

That afternoon we stand for the first time on the boardwalk of Broadway Avenue in Jackson, Wyoming. Even in January, there are plenty of tourists. Stagecoaches and horse-drawn carriages pass by every few minutes, along with a never-ending string of cars. I can't help but scan for one particular silver truck: the mysterious Avalanche with the license plate 99CX.

“Who knew there'd be so much traffic?” I remark as I watch the cars go by.

“What would you do if you saw him right now?” Mom asks. She's wearing a new straw cowboy hat that she was unable to resist in the first gift shop we went into. A cowboy hat. Personally I think she's taking this Old West thing a bit too far.

“She'd probably pass out,” says Jeffrey. He bats his eyelashes wildly and fans himself, then pretends to collapse against Mom. They both laugh.

Jeffrey has already bought himself a T-shirt with a snowboarder on it and is deliberating on a real, honest-to-goodness snowboard he liked in a shopwindow. He's been in a much better mood since we arrived at the house and he saw that all is not completely lost. He's acting a lot like the old Jeffrey, the one who smiles and teases and occasionally speaks in full sentences.

“You two are hilarious,” I say, rolling my eyes. I jog ahead toward a small park I notice on the other side of the street. The entrance is a huge arch made of elk antlers.

“Let's go this way,” I call back to Mom and Jeffrey. We hurry across the crosswalk right as the little orange hand starts to flash. Then we linger for a minute under the arch, gazing up at the latticework of antlers, which vaguely resemble bones. Overhead the sky darkens with clouds, and a cold wind picks up.

“I smell barbecue,” says Jeffrey.

“You're just a giant stomach.”

“Hey, can I help it if I have a faster metabolism than normal people? How about we eat there.” He points up the street where a line of people stand waiting to get into the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar.

“Sure, and I'll buy you a beer, too,” Mom says.

“Really?”

“No.”

As they bicker about it, I'm struck with the sudden urge to document this moment, so I'll be able to look back and say, this was the beginning. Part one of Clara's purpose. My chest swells with emotion at the thought. A new beginning, for us all.

“Excuse me, ma'am, would you mind taking our picture?” I ask a lady walking past. She nods and takes the camera from Mom. We strike a pose under the arch, Mom in the middle, Jeffrey and me on either side. We smile. The woman tries to snap a picture, but nothing happens. Mom steps over to show her how to work the flash.

That's when the sun comes out again. I suddenly become super aware of what's going on around me, like it's all slowing down for me to encounter piece by piece: the voices of the other people on the boardwalk, the flash of teeth when they speak, the rumble of engines and the tiny squeal of brakes as cars stop at the red light. My heart is beating like a slow, loud drum. My breath drags in and out of my lungs. I smell horse manure and rock salt, my own lavender shampoo, Mom's splash of vanilla, Jeffrey's manly deodorant, even the faint aroma of decay that still clings to the antlers above us. Classical music pours from underneath the glass doors of one of the art galleries. A dog barks in the distance. Somewhere a baby is crying. It feels like too much, like I'll explode trying to take it all in. Everything's too bright. There's a small, dark bird perched in a tree in the park behind us, singing, fluffing its feathers against the cold. How can I see it, if it's behind me? But I feel its sharp black eyes on me; I see it angle its head this way and that, watching me, watching, until suddenly it takes off from the tree and swirls up into the wide-open sky like a bit of smoke, disappearing into the sun.