Hallowed (13 page)

“You didn’t blow it.” He catches my eye. “I think you changed it. But what I’m saying is that I didn’t really understand it before. I couldn’t.”

“And you understand it now?”

His gaze breaks away. “I didn’t say
that
.” He picks up a rock and skips it perfectly across the water. “I want to make sure you know that I don’t think you ruined anything, Clara. It’s not your fault.”

“How do you figure that?”

“You followed your heart. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“You actually mean it.” I’m stunned. I’d always assumed he’d blame me.

“Yes,” he says with a ghost of a smile. “I actually do.” Chapter 9

Paradise Lost

“Farewell, happy fields, / where joy for ever dwells! hail, horrors! Hail, / infernal world!

and thou, profoundest hell / receive thy new possessor! one who brings / a mind not to be
changed by place or time,”
reads Kay Patterson. She has a nice reading voice, I’ll give her that, even though I suspect that underneath her polished exterior beats a heart of pure evil.

Okay, so not pure evil. Because Christian liked her, and Christian’s not an idiot. Even Wendy says that Kay’s not so bad when you get to know her. So there must be something I’m not seeing.

“The mind is its own place, and in itself / can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven,”
she continues.

“Good, Kay,” Mr. Phibbs says. “So what do you think it means?” Kay’s immaculately tweezed eyebrows squeeze together. “Means?”

“What is Satan saying here? What’s he talking about?”

She looks at him with clear annoyance. “I don’t know. I don’t speak old English, or whatever this is.”

I’d mock, but I’m not doing much better. Or any better, truthfully, when it comes to this book. Which doesn’t make sense. I’m supposed to be able to speak and understand any language ever spoken on earth, so why am I so lost on
Paradise Lost
?

“Anyone?” Mr. Phibbs looks around the room.

Wendy raises her hand. “I think maybe he’s talking about how terrible hell is, but for him, it’s better than heaven, because at least in hell he gets to be free. It’s that ‘better to reign in hell than serve in heaven’ idea.”

Creepy. I always get squirmy every time the topic of angels comes up in any regular-person conversation, and now that’s happening in English class. I’m sure my mother would not approve this reading material.

But then again, she probably already knows all about it. Since she knows everything. And tells me nothing.

“Excellent, Wendy,” praises Mr. Phibbs, “I can see you’ve read the CliffsNotes.” Wendy turns a lovely shade of crimson.

“No harm in reading the CliffsNotes, dear,” Mr. Phibbs says jovially. “It’s good to get someone else’s interpretation. But it’s more important that you wrestle with these texts on your own. Feel the words with your gut, not just hear them in your head.
But O, how fallen! how
changed / from him, who, in the happy realms of light, / clothed with transcendent brightness,
didst outshine / myriads though bright,”
he recites from memory. “Beautiful words. But what do they mean?”

“He’s talking about the angel he used to be,” says Angela from up front. She hasn’t said a word during this entire conversation, neither of us have, but now it’s obviously getting to be too much for her to sit here and be quiet when he’s talking about angels. “He’s lamenting how far he’s fallen, because even though he’d rather make the rules in hell than obey God in heaven, like he said, he still feels sorrow, because now he’s”—she glances down at her book to read—
“in
utter darkness, . . . / as far removed from God and light of heaven, / as from the center thrice to
the utmost pole
. I’m not sure how far that is, exactly, but it sounds like pretty far.”

“Did you feel that in your gut?”

“Uh . . .” Angela’s a brain person, not a gut person. “I’m not sure.”

“Well, an insightful interpretation, anyway,” he says. “Remember what Milton tells us at the beginning of the book. His goal here is to explore the idea of disobedience to God, both in the rebellion of the fallen angels and in the heart of man, which leads to the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. . . .”

I shift uncomfortably in my seat. I don’t want to explore the idea of disobedience to God—not exactly a gut-friendly topic of conversation for me right now, since I’ve pretty much made up my mind to fight my purpose.

“Mr. Phibbs, I have a question,” Angela says then.

“Wonderful,” he says. “Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.”

“Right. How old are you?” she asks.

He laughs.

“No seriously. How old?” she presses.

“That’s not at all related to the subject at hand,” he says crisply, and I can tell that she’s rattled him, although I’m not sure why. He smoothes back his white hair, fiddles with the piece of chalk in his hand. “Now shall we get back to Satan and his plight?”

“I just wanted to know if you’re as old as Milton,” Angela says, acting playfully, nauseatingly dumb, like she’s teasing him, like it’s not a serious question, even though it is. “Like, did the two of you ever hang out together?”

Milton, if I remember what Mr. Phibbs told us last week, died in 1674. If Mr. Phibbs ever hung out with Milton that would put him well over three hundred and fifty years old.

Is it possible? I look at him, noting the way his skin sags in places, the host of deep wrinkles on his forehead, around his eyes, circling his mouth. His hands have that gnarly tree quality to them. He’s clearly old. But how old?

“I only wish I could have had that pleasure,” Mr. Phibbs says with a tragic sigh. “But alas, Milton was a bit before my time.”

The bell rings.

“Ah,” he says, his blue eyes sharp on Angela’s face. “Saved by the bell.” That night I sneak out to fly to the Lazy Dog. I can’t help it. Maybe it’s my angelic nature.

I sit outside Tucker’s window with snow in my hair, and I watch him, first as he works on his homework, then getting ready for bed (and no, I turn away when he’s changing, I’m not a total perv), and then as he falls asleep.

At least, right this minute, he’s safe.

Again I consider telling him about my dream—I hate keeping this from him. It feels like something he deserves to know. I’m so angry with Mom, I realize, for all the secrets she keeps from me, but am I any different? I’m keeping this secret to avoid alarming him needlessly if by some stroke of luck I’m reading my vision wrong. I’m holding back because his knowing about it won’t change it. I’m protecting him.

But it still sucks.

Around twelve thirty or so, his window suddenly jerks open. I’m so startled—I’d been half asleep—that I almost fall off the roof, but a strong arm grabs me and hauls me back over the edge.

“Hi there,” Tucker says brightly, like we’re bumping into each other on the street.

“Uh, hi.”

“Nice night for stalking,” he observes.

“No. I was—”

“Get your butt in here, Carrots.”

I climb awkwardly into his room. He puts on a T-shirt and sits cross-legged on the bed, looking at me.

“It’s not stalking if you’re happy to see me?” I suggest tremulously.

“How long have you been out there?”

“How long have you known I was there?”

“About an hour,” he says. He shakes his head in disbelief. “You’re a crazy girl, you know that?”

“I’m starting to figure that out about myself.”

“So why are you really here?” He pats the spot on the bed next to him, and I sit. He slings an arm around me.

“I wanted to see you,” I say as I curl into his side. “It was a long and lonely weekend and I didn’t get to see you much at school today.”

“Oh, right. How was camping? I don’t think I’ve ever been camping in the snow,” he says, raising his eyebrows. “Sounds chilly.”

“It wasn’t exactly in the snow.” Then I tell him about the congregation. Not everything, exactly, not about hell or the Black Wings or Mr. Phibbs as an angel-blood, but I tell him most of it. I know my mom wouldn’t approve. Christian wouldn’t approve. Of course Angela wouldn’t approve. The congregation is confidential, she said, like I should take this entire weekend and put a big old CONFIDENTIAL stamp across it.

I tell him anyway. Because I’m not ready to set up my own secret identity just yet, not from Tucker. Because the one thing I know for sure is that I love him. Because if I’m honest about one thing it makes me feel slightly better about not telling him about other things.

He takes the news of the congregation pretty well.

“Sounds like church camp,” he says.

“More like a family reunion,” I say.

He leans over and kisses me, a soft, featherlight kiss that only catches the side of my mouth, but still leaves me breathless.

“I missed you,” he says.

“I missed you, too.”

I curl my arms around his neck and kiss him, and everything goes away but this moment, his lips on mine, seeking, his hands in my hair, drawing me in, our bodies together on the bed, realigning to get closer, his fingers on the buttons of my shirt.

I can’t let him die.

“You’re so warm,” he murmurs.

I feel warm. I feel like I could burst into flame, simultaneously light and heavy, and time is slowing down, like I am seeing everything frame by frame. Tucker’s face hovering above my own, a tiny mole just below his ear that I never noticed before, the shadows we’re making on the ceiling, the dimple appearing in his cheek as he smiles, the way his heartbeat is speeding up, his breath. And I can feel what he’s feeling too, on the edges of my mind: love, the way he thrills to the feel of my skin under his hands, my smell filling his head—

“Clara,” he says, breathing hard as he pulls away.

“It’s okay,” I say then, drawing his head down to mine again, pressing my cheek to his, our lips not quite touching, our breath on each other’s faces. “I know you have your ideas about this, and I think that’s sweet, but . . . what if this is all the happiness we get? What if this is our chance, before everything changes? What if this is it? Shouldn’t we just . . . live?” This time when we kiss, it’s different. There’s an urgency that wasn’t there before. He pauses to pull his shirt over his head, revealing all that golden brown skin, his rodeo/farm/work hard-physical-labor-all-his-life muscles. He’s beautiful, I think, so crazy beautiful it almost hurts to look at him, and I close my eyes and lift my arms over my head and let him take my shirt off too. The cool air hits my skin, and I shiver, I quake, and Tucker runs his calloused fingertips gently along the top of my shoulder, strumming over my bra strap, across the line of my collarbone and up my neck, ending below my chin where he tips my head up to kiss me again.

This is really going to happen, I think. Me and Tucker. Right now.

My heart is beating so fast, skimming more than beating, like a hummingbird’s wings in my chest, my breath coming in shudders like I’m cold, like I’m scared, but I’m neither. I love him. I love him, I love him—the words have a pulse of their own.

Suddenly he freezes.

“What?” I whisper.

“You’re glowing.” He sits up abruptly.

I am. It’s very faint, not full glory by any stretch of the imagination, but as I spread my fingers and examine the back of my hand I see that my skin is very definitely glowing.

“No, your hair,” he says.

My hair. I immediately grab at it with both hands. It’s shining, all right, beaming. A sparkly shiny sunbeam in the dark of Tucker’s room. I’m a human lamp.

Tucker isn’t looking at me.

“It’s nothing. Angela calls it
comae caelestis
. Sign of a heavenly being. It’s why Mom made me dye my hair last year.” I’m babbling now.

“Can you . . . turn it off?” he says. “I’m sorry, but when I look at it, I feel . . . dizzy, like I’m going to fall over or pass out or something.” He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.

“Also a little nauseated.”

Great to know I have that kind of effect on a guy.

“I can try,” I say, and it turns out not to be too hard to shut it off. Just seeing the strained expression on Tucker’s face does the trick.

I swear I hear Tucker breathe a sigh of relief.

“Sorry about that,” I say again.

He looks at me, swallows hard, tries to regain his composure. “Don’t be sorry. It’s part of who you are. You shouldn’t have to apologize for who you are. It’s pretty, really. Awe inspiring.

Fall down on your knees and worship, all that.”

“But it makes you want to puke.”

“Just a little.”

I lean over to kiss his still adorably bare shoulder. “So. My light’s out. Where were we?” He shakes his head, scratches at the back of his neck the way he does when he’s uncomfortable. Coughs.

I sit there awkwardly for a moment. “Okay,” I say. “I guess I should . . .”

“Don’t leave.” He catches my hand before I can stand up. “Stay.” I let him draw me back down into the bed. He lies behind me, spoons me, rests his hand on my hip and breathes steadily onto the back of my neck. I try to relax. I listen to the ticking of the clock on his nightstand. What if I can never find a way to control the glow? What if every time I feel happy in that particular way, I light up? I’ll light up, he’ll get queasy, and then—
freakus interruptus
.

There’s a bleak thought. It’s like my own special form of birth control. The full body glow.

And then I think, He’s going to die without ever having made love to a woman.

“It doesn’t matter,” Tucker whispers. He moves his hand up and takes mine, squeezes it.

Oh. My. God. Did I just say that aloud?

“What doesn’t matter?” I ask.

“Whether or not we can . . . you know,” he says. It’s crazy that he can’t read minds but still he knows almost exactly what I’m thinking. “I still love you.”

“I still love you, too,” I answer, then turn and snuggle my face into the side of his neck, wrap my arms around him, and that’s where I stay until he falls asleep.

I wake up when somebody opens the curtains, and here’s what I see: Mr. Avery, in overalls, with his back to me, looking out the window where the sun is just cresting the barn.