Unearthly

Chapter 16 Bear Repellent

The next morning my cell phone rings at some ungodly hour. Under the covers, I groan and grope around for it on the nightstand, find it, pull it in with me, and answer cheerfully.

“What?”

“Oh good. You’re up.” Tucker.

“What time is it?”

“Five.”

“I’m going to kill you.”

“I’m on my way over,” he says. “I’ll be there in about a half hour. I thought I’d call so you had time to brush your hair and put on your face.”

“You think I’m going to wear makeup to go hiking with you?”

“See, that’s what I like about you, Carrots. You’re not fussy.”

I hang up on him. I throw the blankets off and lay for a minute gazing up at the ceiling. Outside it’s pitch-dark. I was dreaming about him, I realize, although I can’t remember the details. Something about the big red barn on the Lazy Dog Ranch. I yawn. Then I force myself to get up and get dressed.

I don’t shower, because the noise would wake Mom. I splash cold water on my face and put on some moisturizer. I don’t need makeup. My skin lately is starting to have its own natural glow, another sign that things are starting to change, starting to intensify the way Mom said they would. I put on mascara and apply some lip gloss, then turn my attention to the wild waves of hair cascading down my back. There’s a clump of tree sap clinging to a strand, evidence of last night’s flying practice. I spend the next fifteen minutes trying to get rid of the sap, and when I finally remove it, along with a fat chunk of my hair, I hear tires on the gravel road outside.

I slip quietly downstairs. Jeffrey’s right. Mom’s not in her room. On the kitchen counter I write her a note: Mom, going out to see the sunrise with friends. Be back later. I have my cell. C. Then I’m out the door.

This time I’m nervous, but Tucker acts like nothing’s changed, so completely normal that I wonder if maybe I imagined all the tension between us yesterday. I relax into our familiar banter. His smile’s infectious. His dimple’s out the whole drive, and he drives fast enough to have me clutching that handle above the door as we round corners. He takes a secret side road to get into Grand Teton, bypassing the main gate, and then we’re zooming down the empty highway.

“So what day is it?” I ask.

“Huh?”

“You said it was a special day.”

“Oh. I’ll get to that.”

We drive to Jackson Lake. He parks and hops out of the truck. I wait for him to come around and open my door. I’m getting used to his “yes, ma’am” manners, so much that I’m starting to find his gentlemanly ways sweet.

He checks his watch.

“We’ve got to hike fast,” he says. “Sunrise is in twenty-six minutes.”

I lean down to tighten the laces on my boots. And we’re off. I follow him up and out of the parking lot and into the woods.

“So what classes are you taking next year?” he asks over his shoulder as we make our way up the hill on the other side of the lake.

“The usual,” I say. “AP Calculus, College English, government, French, physics, you know.”

“Physics, huh?”

“Well, my dad is a physics professor.”

“No kidding? Where?”

“NYU.”

He whistles. “That’s a long way from here. When did your folks split up?”

“Why are you suddenly so chatty?” I ask a tad sharply. Something about the idea of telling him about my personal history makes me uncomfortable. Like I’ll start telling him and won’t be able to stop. I’ll blab the whole story: Mom’s half-angel, I’m a quarter, my vision, my powers, my purpose, Christian, and then what? He’ll tell me about the rodeo circuit?

He stops and turns around to look at me. His eyes are dancing with mischief.

“We’ve got to talk because of the bears,” he says in a low tone, hamming it up.

“The bears.”

“Got to make some noise. Don’t want to surprise a grizzly.”

“No, I guess we don’t want to do that.”

He starts up the trail again.

“So, tell me about this thing that happened with your grandpa, where your family lost the ranch,” I say quickly before he has a chance to get back to the subject of my family. He doesn’t break his stride but I can almost feel him tense up. The tables are turned. “Wendy says it’s why you hate Californians. What happened there?”

“I don’t hate Californians. Clearly.”

“Whew, that’s a relief.”

“It’s a long story,” he says, “and we don’t have that long to hike.”

“Okay. Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s fine, Carrots. I’ll tell you about it someday. But not now.”

Then he starts to whistle and we stop talking. Which seems to suit us both fine, bears or not.

After a few more minutes of hard climbing, we come out on a clearing at the top of a small rise. The sky’s bathed in a mix of gray and pale yellow, with a tangle of bright pink clouds hanging right above where the Tetons jut into the sky, pure purple mountain majesty, standing like kings on the edge of the horizon. Below them is Jackson Lake, so clear it looks like two sets of mountains and two skies, perfectly replicated.

Tucker checks his watch. “Sixty seconds. We’re right on time.”

I can’t look away from the mountains. I’ve never seen anything so formidably beautiful. I feel connected to them in a way I’ve never felt anywhere else. It’s like I can feel their presence. Just looking at the jagged peaks against the sky makes peace wash over me like the waves lapping on the shore of the lake below us.

Angela has a theory that angel-kind are attracted to mountains, that somehow the separation between heaven and earth is thinner here, just as the air is thinner. I don’t know. I only know that looking at them fills me with the yearning to fly, to see the earth from above.

“This way.” Tucker turns me to face the opposite direction, where across the valley the sun’s coming up over a distant, less familiar set of mountains. We’re completely alone. The sun is rising only for us. Once it clears the mountaintops, Tucker takes me gently by the shoulders and turns me again, back toward the Tetons, where now there are a million golden sparkles on the lake.

“Oh,” I gasp.

“Makes you believe in God, doesn’t it?”

I glance over at him, startled. I’ve never heard him talk about God before, even though I know from Wendy that the Averys attend church nearly every Sunday. I would have never pegged him as the religious type.

“Yes,” I agree.

“Their name means ‘breasts,’ you know.” The side of his mouth hitches up in his mischievous smile. “Grand Teton means ‘big breast.’”

“Nice, Tucker,” I scoff. “I know that. Third-year French, remember? I guess the French explorers hadn’t seen a woman in a really long time.”

“I think they just wanted a good laugh.”

For a long while we stand side by side and watch the light stretch and dance with the mountains in complete silence. A light breeze picks up, blows my hair to the side where it catches against Tucker’s shoulder. He looks over at me. He swallows. He seems like he’s about to say something important. My heart jumps to my throat.

“I think you’re—” he begins.

We both hear the noise in the brush behind us at the same moment. We turn.

A bear has just come onto the trail. I know immediately that it’s a grizzly. Its massive shoulders glow in the rays of the rising sun as it stops to look at us. Behind it two cubs tumble out of the bushes.

This is bad.

“Don’t run,” warns Tucker. Not a possibility. My feet are frozen to the ground. In my peripheral vision I see him slide his backpack from his shoulder. The bear lowers her head and makes a snuffling sound.

“Don’t run,” says Tucker again, loudly this time. I hear him fumbling with something.

Maybe he’s going to hit her with an object of some kind. The bear looks right at him.

Her shoulders tense as she prepares to charge.

“No,” I murmur in Angelic, holding up my hand as if I could hold her back by the force of my will alone. “No.”

The bear pauses. Her gaze swings to my face, her eyes a light brown, absolutely empty of any feeling or understanding. Sheer animal. She looks intently at my hand, then rises to stand on her hind legs, huffing.

“We won’t harm you,” I say in Angelic, trying to keep my voice low. I don’t know how it will sound to Tucker. I don’t know if the bear will understand. I don’t have time to think. But I have to try.

The bear makes a noise that’s half roar, half bark. I stand my ground. I look into her eyes.

“Leave this place,” I say firmly. I feel a strange power moving through me, making me light-headed. When I look at my outstretched hand I see a faint glow rising under my skin.

The bear drops to all fours. She lowers her head again, woofs at her cubs.

“Go,” I whisper.

She does. She turns and crashes back into the brush, her cubs falling in behind her.

She’s gone as suddenly as she appeared.

My knees give out. Tucker’s arms come around me. For a minute he crushes me to him, one hand on the small of my back, supporting me, the other on the back of my neck. He pulls my head to his chest. His heart is pounding, his breath coming in panicked shudders.

“Oh my God,” he breathes.

He has something in one of his hands. I pull away to investigate. It’s a long, silver canister that looks vaguely like a fire extinguisher, only smaller and lighter.

“Bear repellent,” says Tucker. His face is pale, his blue eyes wild with alarm.

“Oh. So you could have handled it.”

“I was trying to read the directions on how to spray the thing,” he says with a grim laugh. “I don’t know if I would have figured it out in time.”

“Our fault.” I sink down so I sit on the rocky ground near his feet. “We stopped talking.”

“Right.”

I don’t know what he heard, what he thought.

“I’m thirsty,” I say, trying to buy myself some time to come up with an explanation.

He slips the canister back into his backpack and retrieves a bottle of water, opens it and kneels beside me. He holds the bottle to my lips, his expression still tight with fear, his movements so jerky that water spills down my chin.

“You did warn me about the bears,” I stammer after I try to drink a few swallows. “We were lucky.”

“Yeah.” He turns and gazes down the trail in the direction that the bear went, then back at me. There’s a question in his eyes that I can’t answer.

“We were pretty lucky, all right.”

We don’t talk about it. We hike back down and drive into Jackson for breakfast. We go back to Tucker’s house later in the morning for Tucker’s boat and spend the afternoon on the Snake fishing. Tucker hooks a few and throws them back. He catches a big rainbow trout, and that one we decide to eat for dinner along with fish he caught the day before. It’s not until we’re standing in the kitchen of the Avery farmhouse, Tucker teaching me how to gut the fish, that he brings the bear up again.

“What did you do today, with the bear?” he asks as I stand with the fish at the kitchen sink, trying to make a clean incision up the belly the way he showed me.

“This is so gross,” I complain.

He turns to look at me, his expression hard the way it always gets whenever I try to get something past him. I don’t know what to say. What are my options? Tell the truth, which is against the only absolute rule Mom has really given me about being an angel-blood: Don’t tell humans — they won’t believe you and if even they did, they couldn’t handle it. And then there’s option two: Come up with some sort of ridiculous-sounding lie.

“I sang to the bear,” I try.

“You talked to it.”

“I sort of hummed at it,” I say slowly. “That’s all.”

“I’m not stupid, you know,” he says.

“I know. Tuck—”

The knife slips. I feel it slide into the fleshy part of my hand below my thumb, slicing through skin and muscle. There’s a sudden rush of blood. Instinctively I close my fingers around the gash.

“Okay, whose brilliant idea was it to give me a knife?”

“That’s a bad cut. Here.” Tucker curls back my fingers to press a dish towel over the wound. “Put pressure on it,” he directs, letting go. He dashes out of the room. I press for a moment, like he said, but the bleeding’s already stopped. I feel suddenly strange, light-headed again. I lean against the counter dizzily. My hand starts to throb and then a flare of heat like a tiny lick of flame shoots from my elbow to the tip of my pinkie finger. I gasp. I can actually feel the gash closing itself, the tissue knitting together deep inside my hand.

Mom was right. My powers are growing.

After a moment, the sensation fades. I peel back the dish towel and examine my hand. By now it’s only a shallow cut, little more than a scratch. It seems to have stopped healing itself. I flex my fingers back and forth gingerly.

Tucker appears with a tube of antibiotic ointment and enough bandages to fix up a small army. He dumps it all on the counter and crosses quickly over to me. I pull the dish towel tight across my palm and tuck my hand into my chest protectively.

“I’m okay,” I say quickly.

“Let me see,” he orders. He holds out his hand.

“No, it’s fine. It’s only a scratch.”

“It’s a deep cut. We need to close it.”

I slowly lower my hand to his. He takes it and gently turns it so my injured palm faces up. He tugs back the dish towel.

“See?” I say. “Only a minor flesh wound.”

He stares at it intently. I’m holding my breath, I realize. I tell myself to relax. Just act normally, like Mom says. I can explain this. I have to explain this.

“Are you going to read my future?” I say with a weak laugh.

His mouth twists. “I thought you were going to need stitches for sure.”

“Nope. False alarm.”

He sets right to fixing me up. He cleans the cut with water, smears on a bit of ointment, then smoothes a bandage over it carefully. I’m relieved when the cut’s covered by the bandage and he finally has to stop staring at it.

“Thanks,” I tell him.

“What’s going on with you, Clara?” His eyes when he looks up at me are fierce, full of so much hurt and accusation that it takes my breath away.

“What — what do you mean?” I stammer.

“I mean,” he starts. “I don’t know what I mean. I just. You’re just. ”

And then he doesn’t say anything else.

Insert the biggest, most awkward silence in the history of big awkward silences. I stare at him. I’m suddenly exhausted by all the lies I’ve told him. He’s my friend, and I lie to him every day. He deserves better. I wish I could tell him then, more than anything I’ve ever wanted. I wish I could stand in front of him and truly be myself and tell him everything. But it’s against the rules. And these aren’t rules you break lightly.

I don’t know what the consequences would be if I told.

“I’m just me,” I say softly.

He scoffs. He picks up the dish towel and holds it up, a bit of white terry with my incredibly bright red blood soaked into the middle of it. “At least now I know you can bleed,” he says. “That’s something, I guess. You’re not completely invincible, are you?”

“Oh right,” I retort as sarcastically as I can manage. “What, did you think I was Supergirl? Vulnerable only to Kryptonite?”

“I don’t know what I think.” He’s managed to tear his gaze away from the dish towel and is now looking at me again. “You’re not. normal, Clara. You try to pretend you are. But you’re not. You talked to a grizzly bear, and it obeyed you. Birds follow you like a Disney cartoon, or haven’t you noticed? And for a while after you came back from Idaho Falls, Wendy thought you were on the run from someone or something.

You’re good at everything you try. You ride a horse like you were born in the saddle, you ski perfect parallel turns your first time on the hill, you apparently speak fluent French and Korean and who knows what else. Yesterday I noticed that your eyebrows kind of glitter in the sun. And there’s something about the way you move, something that’s beyond graceful, something that’s beyond human, even. It’s like you’re. something else.”

A violent shiver passes through me from head to foot. He really has put it all together. He just doesn’t know what it adds up to.

“And there couldn’t possibly be any rational explanation for all of that,” I say.

“Considering your brother, the best I’ve been able to come up with is that maybe your family’s part of some kind of secret government experiment, some kind of genetically altered animal-friendly superhumans,” he says. “And you’re in hiding.”

I snort. It would be funny if the truth wasn’t so much weirder. “You sound crazy, you know that?”

Another silence for the record books. Then he sighs.

“I know. It’s crazy. I feel like—” He stops himself. He suddenly looks so miserable that my heart aches for him.

I hate my life.

“It’s okay, Tuck,” I say gently. “We’ve had kind of a crazy day.”

I reach to touch his shoulder but he shakes his head. He’s about to say something else when the screen door opens and Mr. and Mrs. Avery enter the house, talking loudly because they know they’re interrupting us. Mrs. Avery spots the pile of bandages and ointment on the counter.

“Uh-oh. Someone have an accident?”

“I cut myself,” I say quickly, avoiding Tucker’s eyes. “Tucker was teaching me how to clean out the fish, and I got careless. I’m okay, though.”

“Good,” says Mrs. Avery.

“That’s a nice fish,” Mr. Avery says, peering down in the sink where I dropped the big rainbow trout. “You catch that today?”

“Tucker did, yesterday. Today he caught the one over there.” I gesture to the open cooler. Mr. Avery looks at it and gives a low whistle of appreciation.

“Good eating tonight.”

“You sure that’s what you want for your birthday dinner?” asks Mrs. Avery. “I can make anything you like.”

“It’s your birthday!” I gasp.

“Didn’t he tell you?” laughs Mr. Avery. “Seventeen years old today. He’s almost a man.”

“Thanks, Pop,” mutters Tucker.

“Don’t mention it, son.”

“I would have gotten you something,” I say softly.

“You did. You gave me my life today. Guess what?” he says to his parents, louder than his usual gruff speech. “Today we ran into a mama grizzly with two cubs up at the ridge off Colter Bay, and Clara sang to it to make it go away.”

Mr. and Mrs. Avery stare at me, aghast.

“You sang to it?” Mrs. Avery repeats.

“Her singing is that bad,” said Tucker, and they all laugh. They think he’s joking. I smile weakly.

“Yep,” I agree. “My singing is that bad.”

After Mrs. Avery fries up the fish for dinner, there’s cake and ice cream and a few presents. Most of the gifts are for Tucker’s prize rodeo horse, Midas, which I think is a funny name for a horse. Mr. Avery brags about the way Tucker and Midas can pick a single cow out of a herd.

“Most horses that compete are trained by professionals and cost well over forty grand,” he says. “But not Midas. Tucker raised and trained him from a colt.”

“I’m impressed.”

Tucker looks restless. He rubs the back of his neck, a gesture I know means he’s wildly uncomfortable with the way the conversation’s going.

“I wish I could have seen you compete,” I say. “I bet that’s something to behold.”

“You’ll have to catch him this year,” says Mr. Avery.

“I know!” I exclaim. I drop my chin into my hand as I lean on the kitchen table and grin at Tucker. I know I’m making it worse, teasing him. But maybe if I just act normal everything will go back to the way it was.

“Let’s go out to the barn and show Midas the new bridle,” Tucker says.

With that he whisks me out of the house to the safety of the barn. The horse comes to the front of his stall the moment we go in, ears cocked forward expectantly. He’s a beautiful, shiny chestnut color with large, knowing brown eyes. Tucker strokes under his chin. Then he puts on the new bridle his parents gave him.

“You should have told me it was your birthday,” I say.

“I was going to. But then we were almost eaten by a grizzly.”

“Oh, right. What about Wendy?” I ask.

“What about her?”

“It’s her birthday, too. I’m the worst friend ever. I should have sent her something.

Did you exchange gifts?”

“Not yet.” He turns toward me. “But she gave me the perfect gift.”

The way he’s looking at me sends butterflies into my stomach. “What?”

“You.”

I don’t know what to say. This summer hasn’t turned out at all the way I’d planned.

I’m not supposed to be standing in the middle of a barn with a blue-eyed cowboy who’s looking at me like he’s about to kiss me. I shouldn’t be wanting him to kiss me.

“What are we doing?” I ask.

“Carrots. ”

“Don’t call me that,” I say shakily. “That’s not me.”

“What do you mean?”

“An hour ago you thought I was some kind of freak.”

He tugs a hand through his hair in agitation and then looks directly into my eyes.

“I didn’t ever think you were a freak. I think. I thought you were magic or something. I thought that you were too perfect to be real.”

I so want to show him, to fly to the top of the hayloft and smile down on him, to tell him everything. I want him to know the real me.

“I know I said some stupid things today. But I like you, Clara,” he says. “I really like you.”

It might be the first time he’s actually said my name.

He sees the hesitation in my eyes. “It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything. I just wanted you to know.”

“No,” I say. He’s a distraction. I have a purpose, a duty. I’m not here for him. “Tuck, I can’t. I have to—”

His expression clouds.

“Tell me this isn’t about Christian Prescott,” he says. “Tell me you’re over that guy.”

I feel a flash of anger at how condescending he sounds, like I’m some silly girl with a crush.

“You don’t know everything about me,” I say, trying to rein in my temper.

“Come here.” His voice is so warm and rough-edged that it sends a shiver down my spine.

“No.”

“I don’t think you really want to be with Christian Prescott,” he says.

“Like you know what I want.”

“I do. I know you. He’s not your type.”

I stare helplessly down at my hands, afraid to look at him. “Oh, and I suppose you’re my type, right?”

“I suppose I am,” he says, and he’s crossing the distance between us and taking my face in his hands before I can even think to stop him.

“Tuck, please,” I manage in a quivery voice.

“You like me, Clara,” he says. “I know you do.”

If only I could laugh at him. If only I could laugh and pull away and tell him how stupid and wrong he is.

“Try to tell me you don’t,” he murmurs, so close his breath is on my face. I look up into his eyes and see the beckoning heat in them. I can’t think.

His lips are too close to mine and his hands are drawing me closer.

“Tuck,” I breathe, and then he kisses me.

I’ve been kissed before. But nothing like this. He kisses me with surprising tenderness, for all of his gutsy talk. Still cupping my face, he gently brushes his lips against mine, slowly, like he’s memorizing what I feel like. My eyes close. My head swims with his smell, grass and sunshine and musky cologne. He kisses me again, a little more firmly, and then he pulls back to look down into my face.

I so don’t want it to be over. All other thoughts vanish from my brain. I open my eyes.

“Again,” I whisper.

The corner of his mouth lifts, and then I kiss him. Not so gently this time. His hands drop from my face and grab at my waist and pull me to him. A small soft groan escapes him, and that noise makes me feel absolutely crazy. I lose it. I wind my hands around his neck and kiss him without holding anything back. I can feel his heart thundering like mine, his breath coming faster, his arms tightening around me.

And then I can feel what he feels. He’s waited such a long time for this moment. He loves how I feel in his arms. He loves the smell of my hair. He loves the way I looked at him just now, flushed and wanting more from him. He loves the color of my lips and now the taste of my mouth is making his knees feel weak and he doesn’t want to seem weak in front of me. So he draws back, and his breath comes out in a rush. His arms drop away from me.

I open my eyes.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

He can’t speak. His face has gone pale beneath his golden skin. And then I realize that it’s too bright in there, too bright for the shady dark of the barn, and the light’s coming from me, radiating off me in waves.

I’m in glory. Tucker stares at me in shock. I can feel his shock. He can see everything now in all this light, glowing out through my clothes so I might as well be standing naked in front of him. I inhale sharply. Part of me twists painfully at the look of terror in his eyes, and just like that, the light goes out. His presence in my mind fades away as the barn darkens, and we’re standing a few steps apart from each other now.

“I’m sorry,” I say. I watch the color slowly come back into his face.

“I don’t know what.,” he tries, and then stops himself.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“What are you?”

I flinch.

“I’m Clara.” My name, at least, has not changed. I take a step toward him, put my hand out to touch his face. He shies away. Then he grabs my hand, the one with the cut. I gasp as he jerks the bandage away.

The wound is completely healed. There isn’t even a scar. We both peer down at my palm. Then Tucker’s hand falls away.

“I knew it,” he says.

I’m flooded with a strange mix of panic and relief. There’s no explaining this away. I’ll have to tell him. “Tuck—”

“What are you?” he demands again. He staggers back a few steps.

“It’s complicated.”

“No.” He shakes his head suddenly. His face is still so pale, greenish like he’s about to throw up. He keeps backing away from me, and then he’s at the door of the barn and he turns and runs toward the house.

All I can do is watch him go. I feel disconnected from myself, shaky with the shock of what’s happened. I don’t have a ride home. And Tucker could be in the house getting a shotgun for all I know. So I run. I stumble toward the woods at the back of the ranch, grateful for the cover of the trees. It’s starting to get dark. Once I’m a little ways in, my wings snap out without me even having to summon them. I fly carelessly, getting completely lost before I can sense the way home, instantly soaked by clouds and so cold I’m shivering hard enough to make my teeth chatter, tear-blinded and halfpanicked.

I cry as I wing my way home. I cry and cry. It feels like the tears will never stop.

Mom discovers me in my room sobbing into my pillow a few hours later. I’m scratched and scraped and tear-streaked, but what she says when she sees me is

“What happened to your hair?”

“What?” I’m desperately trying to get it together so I can decide how much I’ll tell her about the whole Tucker thing.

“It’s back to its natural color. The red is completely gone.”

“Oh. I brought the glory. It must have zapped the color right out.”

“You attained glory?” she says, her blue eyes wide.

“Yeah.”

“Oh, my darling. No wonder you’re upset. It’s such an overwhelming experience.”

She doesn’t know the half of it.

“Rest now.” She presses a kiss to my temple. “You can tell me more about it in the morning.”

When she’s gone I send a frantic email to Angela: Emergency, I write, hardly able to make my fingers and brain work well enough together to get out a simple message.

Call me ASAP.

There’s no one to talk to. No one to tell. And already I miss him.

I give in to the need to hear his voice and call Tucker on my cell. He answers on the first ring. For a minute neither of us speaks.

“Leave me alone,” he says, and then he hangs up.