Unearthly

Chapter 19 Corduroy Jacket

So we train. Every morning I rise with the sun, and I try not to think about Tucker. I shower, comb my hair, brush my teeth, and try not to think about Tucker. I go downstairs and make myself a smoothie — Angela has us on a raw food diet; she says it’s purer, better for the mind. I go along with it. I even add the seaweed, which, oddly, makes me think about Tucker. And fishing. And kissing. I gag it down. After breakfast there’s meditation on the front porch, which is pretty much a vain attempt not to think about Tucker. Then I go inside and spend some time on the internet. I look up the weather report, the direction and speed of the wind, and, most important, the level of the current fire danger. In these last days of August, it’s always on yellow or red alert. Always imminent.

On yellow days I pass the afternoons flapping around the back woods with the duffel bag, exercising my wings, adding more and more weight each time, trying not to think of Tucker in my arms. Sometimes Angela comes with me and we fly side by side, weaving patterns into the air. If I work hard enough, push myself long enough, I’m able to banish Tucker from my mind for a few hours. And sometimes I have the vision and don’t think of him at all for a while.

Angela’s got me documenting the vision. She has a spreadsheet. On the days that she isn’t hanging out, helping me, she usually calls around dinnertime, and I can hear the music from Oklahoma! in the background, and she grills me about the vision. She gave me a little notebook that I keep in the back pocket of my jeans, and if I have the vision I’m supposed to drop everything (and when I have the vision, I usually drop everything, anyway) and write it down. Time. Place. Duration. Every facet of the vision I can remember. Every detail.

It’s because of this that I begin to notice the variations. At first I assume the vision’s exactly the same every time, over and over again, but when I have to write it down I realize that there are small differences from day to day. The gist is still the same: I’m in the forest, the fire approaches, I find Christian, and we fly away. Every single time I wear the purple jacket. Every time Christian wears black fleece. These things seem constant, unchangeable. But sometimes I climb the hill from a different angle, or I find Christian standing a few steps to the right or left from the day before, or we recite our lines: “It’s you,” “Yes, it’s me,” in a different way or a different order. And the sorrow, I notice, changes. Sometimes I feel the ache of it from the first moment.

Other times, I won’t feel it until I see Christian, and then it crashes over me like a breaking wave. Sometimes I cry, and sometimes my attraction to Christian, the magnetism between us, overwhelms the grief. One day we fly away in one direction, and the next day we fly away in the other.

I don’t know how to explain it. Angela thinks the variations could be tiny alternate versions of the future, each based on a series of choices I will make on that day.

This makes me wonder: How much of this is choice? Am I a player in this scenario or a puppet? I guess, in the end, it doesn’t matter. It is what it is: my destiny.

On red alert days I fly around the mountains near Fox Creek, scouting, searching for signs of smoke. Given the direction that it comes from in my vision, Angela and I figured out that the fire will most likely start in the mountains and sweep down Death Canyon (chillingly appropriate, I think) until it ends up at Fox Creek Road. So I patrol in a twenty-mile radius of the area. I fly without worrying about whether people will see me. Even in my depressed, self-pitying state, that’s pretty cool. I quickly learn to love flying in the daylight, when I can see the earth below me, so quiet and pristine.

I’m truly like a bird, casting my long shadow over the ground. I want to be a bird.

I don’t want to think about Tucker.

“I’m sorry you’re so unhappy right now,” Mom says to me one night as I numbly flip through the channels. My shoulders are sore. My head aches. I haven’t eaten a satisfying meal in over a week. This morning Angela thought it’d be an awesome experiment to try to burn my finger with a match, to see if I’m flammable. Turns out, I am. And in spite of the fact that I’m doing what she wants me to do now, a good little trouper, which is, ironically, thanks to Angela, God bless her, Mom and I are still on rocky soil. I can’t forgive her. I’m not exactly sure what part I can’t forgive her for, but there it is.

“Do you see this thing? It’s like a tiny blender. You can chop garlic and puree baby food and make a margarita, all for the low-low price of fortynine ninety-nine,” I say, not looking at her.

“It’s partially my fault.”

That gets my attention. I turn the TV down. “How?”

“I’ve neglected you this summer. I let you run wild.”

“Oh, so it’s your fault because if you’d been paying better attention you would have stopped me from dating Tucker in the first place. Nipped those pesky emotions in the bud.”

“Yes,” she says, willfully missing my sarcasm.

“Good night, Mom,” I say, turning the volume back up. I flip to the news. Weather report. Hot and dry. Some high winds. Fire weather. Storms likely later in the week, where a single lightning strike could set the entire area ablaze. Fun times ahead.

“Clara,” says Mom slowly, obviously not finished with her confession.

“I get it,” I snap. “You feel bad. Now I should get some sleep, in case I have to fulfill my destiny tomorrow.”

I shut off the television and chuck the remote down on the couch, then get up and push past her to the stairs.

“I’m sorry, baby,” she says, so low I don’t know if she means for me to hear her. “You have no idea how sorry I am.”

I stop in the middle of the stairs and turn back.

“Then tell me,” I say. “If you’re sorry, tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“Everything. Everything you know. Starting with your purpose. That’d be nice, don’t you think, if the two of us could sit down over a cup of tea and discuss our purpose?”

“I can’t,” she says. Her eyes darken, the pupils dilating like my words are causing her physical pain. Then it’s like she closes a door between us, her expression emptying out. My chest gets tight, partly because it makes me so furious that she can do that, that she’s so effectively shutting me out, but also because it just occurred to me that the only reason she’d work so hard to keep me in the dark is if she doesn’t believe I can handle the truth.

And that must mean the truth is pretty bad.

Either that, or, in spite of all her supportive motherly talk, she really doesn’t have any faith in me at all.

The next day’s a red alert day. That morning I stand in the front hallway, trying to decide whether or not to wear the purple jacket. If I don’t wear it, will the fire still happen? Could it be as simple as that? My entire fate resting on a simple fashion decision?

I decide not to test it. Anyway, at this point, I’m not trying to avoid the fire. I want it over with. And it gets cold up there in the clouds. I put the jacket on and head out.

I’m halfway through my patrol when the wave of sadness hits me.

It’s not the usual sadness. It isn’t about Tucker or Christian or my parents. It’s not pity or teenage malaise. This is pure, unfiltered grief, like everyone I’ve ever loved has suddenly died. It rages through my head until my vision blurs. It chokes me. I can’t breathe. My lightness disappears. I start to fall, grabbing at the air. I’m so heavy I drop like a stone.

Thankfully I hit a tree and don’t splat right against the rocks and die. Instead I strike the top branches at an angle. My right arm and wing catch a branch. There’s a snapping sound, followed by the worst pain I’ve ever felt, high in my shoulder. I scream as the ground rushes up at me. I put my working arm in front of my face, getting whipped and stung and scratched all the way down. Then I come to rest about twenty feet off the ground, my wings tangled in the branches, my body hanging.

I know there’s a Black Wing. In my panic and pain I’ve still been able to make that small deduction. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Which means that I have to get out of here, fast. So I bite my lip and try to free myself from the tree. My wings are really stuck, and I’m pretty sure the right one’s broken. It takes me a minute to remember that I can retract them, and then I tumble out of the tree the rest of the way.

I hit the ground hard. I scream again, wildly. The pain from my shoulder is so intense from the jolt against the ground that I come close to passing out. I can’t get air into my lungs. I can’t think clearly. My head’s so clouded with the sadness. If anything, it’s getting worse, more intense by the second, until I think my heart will explode with the pain of it.

That means he’s getting closer.

I struggle to sit up and find that I can’t move my arm. It hangs off my shoulder at a weird angle. I’ve never been this hurt before. Where’s my amazing healing power when I need it? I pull myself gingerly to my feet. The side of my face feels wet. I lift a hand to touch my cheek and come away with blood.

Never mind that, I think. Walk. Now.

Every move I make jolts my shoulder, sending a shock wave of pain all through my body. In that moment I feel like I could literally die. There’s no hope, no light, no prayer on my lips. I’m so done. I’m tempted to just lie down and let him have me.

No, I tell myself. That’s the Black Wing you’re feeling. Keep walking. Put one foot in front of the other. Get out of here.

I stagger forward another few feet and lean against a tree, panting, trying to gather my strength. Then I hear a man’s voice behind me, drifting toward me through the trees like it’s carried on the wind. Definitely not human.

“Hello, little bird,” he says.

I freeze.

“That was quite a fall. Are you all right?”