The Fallen Sequence (61 page)

Luce buried her face in her hands.

“That is, if you need family therapy.” Shelby sighed. “Sorry, who’s talking about themselves again?” She raised her right hand, then slowly put it down. “You know, Shasta’s not that far from here.”

“What’s Shasta?”

“Mount Shasta, California. It’s just a few hours that-away.” Shelby jerked her thumb toward the north.

“But the announcers only show the past. What
would be the point of going there now? They’re probably—”

Shelby shook her head. “ ‘The past’ is a broad term. Announcers show the distant past right up to the events happening seconds ago, and everything in between. I saw a laptop on the desk in the corner, so there’s a good chance … you know …”

“But we don’t know where they live.”

“Maybe you don’t. Me, I zoomed in on a piece of their mail and got the address. Committed it to memory. 1291 Shasta Shire Circle, apartment 34.” Shelby shrugged. “So, if you wanted to go visit them, we could totally drive there and back in a day.”

“Right.” Luce snorted. She desperately wanted to go visit them, but it just didn’t seem possible. “In whose car?”

Shelby laughed a faux-sinister little laugh. “There was only one thing that wasn’t sorry-ass about my sorry-ass ex-boyfriend.” She dug into the pocket of her sweatshirt, pulling out a long key chain. “And that was his very sweet Mercedes, parked right here in the student lot. Lucky for you, I forgot to give him back the extra key.”

They tore down the road before anyone could stop them.

Luce found a map in the glove compartment and traced the line up to Shasta with her finger. She called
out some directions to Shelby, who drove like a bat out of Hell, but the maroon Mercedes almost seemed to like the abuse.

Luce wondered how Shelby was staying so calm. If Luce had just broken up with Daniel and “borrowed” his car for the afternoon, she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from remembering road trips they’d taken, or arguments they’d gotten into while driving to a movie, or what they’d done in the backseat that one time with all the windows rolled down. Surely Shelby was thinking about her ex. Luce wanted to ask, but Shelby had been clear that the topic was off-limits.

“Are you going to change your hair?” Luce asked finally, remembering what Shelby had said about getting over breakups. “I could help you, if you are.”

Shelby’s face pinched into a scowl. “That freak’s not even worth it.” After a long pause, she added, “But thank you.”

The drive took most of the rest of the afternoon, and Shelby spent it working herself up, bickering with the radio, scanning the channels for the craziest nutjobs she could find. The air got colder, the trees thinned out, and the elevation of the landscape rose steadily the whole time. Luce focused on staying calm, imagining a hundred scenarios about meeting these parents. She tried to avoid thinking about what Daniel would say if he knew where she was going.

“There it is.” Shelby pointed when a massive snow-capped mountain came into view directly in front of the road. “The town sits right in those foothills. We should be there just after sunset.”

Luce didn’t know how to thank Shelby for hauling her all the way up here on a whim. Whatever was behind Shelby’s shift in attitude, Luce was grateful—she wouldn’t have been able to do this on her own.

The town of Shasta was wacky and artistic, with a good number of elderly people walking leisurely down the wide avenues. Shelby rolled down the windows and let in the brisk early-evening air. It helped settle Luce’s stomach, which was knotting up at the prospect of actually having to talk to the people she’d seen in the Announcer.

“What am I supposed to say to them? Surprise, I’m your daughter back from the dead,” Luce practiced aloud as they were sitting at a stoplight.

“Unless you want to totally freak out a sweet old couple, we’re going to have to work on that,” Shelby said. “Why don’t you pretend you’re a solicitor, just to get in the door and feel them out?”

Luce looked down at her jeans, beat-up tennis shoes, and purple backpack. She didn’t look like a very impressive salesperson. “What would I sell?”

Shelby started to drive again. “Hawk car washes or something cheesy like that. You can say you’ve got
vouchers in your bag. I did that one summer, door to door. Almost got shot.” She shuddered, then looked at Luce’s white face. “Come on, your own mom and dad are not going to shoot you. Oh, hey, look, here we are!”

“Shelby, can we just sit in silence for a little while? I think I need to breathe.”

“Sorry.” Shelby pulled into a large parking lot facing a compound of small, single-story connected bungalow-style buildings. “Breathing I can do.”

Through her nerves, Luce had to admit it was a pretty nice place. A series of the bungalows stood in a semicircle around a pond. There was a main lobby building with a row of wheelchairs lined up outside the doors. A big banner read
WELCOME TO SHASTA SHIRE RETIREMENT COMMUNITY
.

Her throat felt so dry it hurt to swallow. She didn’t know if she even had it in her to say two words to these people. Maybe it was one of those things you just couldn’t think about too much. Maybe she needed to get up there and force her hand down on that knocker and then figure out how to act.

“Apartment thirty-four.” Shelby squinted at a square stucco building with a red Spanish-tile roof. “That looks like it over there. If you want me to—”

“Wait in the car till I get back? That would be great, thanks so much. I won’t be long!”

Before Luce could lose her nerve, she was out the car door and jogging up the winding sidewalk toward the
building. The air was warm and filled with a heady scent of roses. Cute old people were everywhere. Split into teams on the shuffleboard court near the entrance, taking an evening stroll through a neatly pruned flower garden next to the pool. In the early-evening light, Luce’s eyes strained as she tried to locate the couple somewhere in this crowd, but no one looked familiar. She would have to go straight to their house.

From the footpath leading up to their bungalow, Luce could see a light on through the window. She stepped closer until she had a clearer view.

It was uncanny: the same room she’d seen earlier in the Announcer. Even down to the fat white dog asleep on the rug. She could hear dishes being washed in the kitchen. She could see the thin, brown-socked ankles of the man who had been her father however many years ago.

He didn’t feel like her father. He didn’t look like her father, and the woman hadn’t looked at all like her mother. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with them. They seemed perfectly nice. Like perfectly nice … strangers. If she knocked on the door and made up some lie about car washes, would they become any less strange?

No, she decided. But that wasn’t all. Even though
she
didn’t recognize her parents, if they really were her parents, of course they would recognize
her
.

She felt stupid for not thinking about that before.
They’d take one look at her and know she was their daughter. Her parents were much older than most of the other people she’d seen outside. The shock of it might be too much for them. It was too much for Luce, and this couple had about seventy years on her.

By then she was pressed against their living room window, crouching behind a spiny sagebrush cactus bush. Her fingers were dirty from gripping the windowsill. If their daughter had died when she was seventeen, they must have been mourning her for close to fifty years. They’d be at peace with it by now. Wouldn’t they? Luce popping up uninvited from behind a cactus plant would be the very last thing they needed.

Shelby would be disappointed. Luce herself was disappointed. It hurt to realize that this was as close as she was ever going to get to them. Hanging on the windowsill outside her former parents’ house, she felt the tears roll down her cheeks. She didn’t even know their names.

EIGHT

ELEVEN DAYS

To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Sent: Monday, 11/15 at 9:49 am
Subject: Hanging in there

Dear Mom and Dad,

I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch. Things at school have been busy, but I’m having a lot of good experiences. My favorite class these days is humanities. Right now I’m working on an extra-credit assignment that takes up a lot of my time. I miss you guys and hope to see you soon. Thanks for being such great parents. I don’t think I tell you that enough.

Love,
Luce

Luce clicked Send on her laptop and quickly switched her browser back to the online presentation Francesca was giving at the front of the room. Luce was still getting used to being at a school where they handed out computers, complete with wireless Internet, right in the middle of class. Sword & Cross had a total of seven student computers, all of which were in the library. Even if you managed to get your hands on the encrypted password to access the Web, every site was blocked except for a few dry academic research ones.

The email to her parents had been prompted by guilt. The night before, she’d had the strangest feeling that merely by driving out to the retirement community in Mount Shasta, she was cheating on her
real
parents, the ones who had raised her in this lifetime. Sure, at some point, these other parents had been real, too. But that was still too strange a thought for Luce to really absorb.

Shelby hadn’t been one-tenth as pissed off as she could have been about driving Luce all the way up there
for no reason. Instead, she just fired up the Mercedes and drove to the nearest In-N-Out Burger so they could get a couple of off-the-menu grilled cheese sandwiches with special sauce.

“Do not give it a second thought,” Shelby said, wiping her mouth with a napkin. “Do you know how many panic attacks my screwed-up family’s given me? Believe me, I’m the last person who’s going to judge you about this.”

Now Luce looked across the classroom at Shelby and felt an intense gratitude for the girl who, a week before, had terrified her. Shelby’s thick blond hair was pulled back by a terry-cloth headband, and she was taking diligent notes on Francesca’s lecture.

Every screen Luce could see in her peripheral vision was fixed on the blue and gold PowerPoint presentation that Francesca was clicking through at a snail’s pace. Even Dawn’s. She looked especially spunky today in a hot-pink T-shirt dress and a high side ponytail. Was it possible she’d already recovered from what had happened on the boat? Or was she covering up the terror she must have felt—and maybe still felt?

Glancing over at Roland’s monitor, Luce scrunched up her face. It didn’t surprise her that he’d been mostly invisible since he arrived at Shoreline, but when he did turn up in class, she was actually upset to see her former reform school cohort following the rules.

At least Roland didn’t look especially interested in the lecture on “Career Opportunities for Nephilim: How Your Special Skills Can Give You a Wing Up.” In fact, the look on Roland’s face was more disappointed than anything else. His mouth was set in a frown and he kept lightly shaking his head. Also strange was the fact that every time Francesca made eye contact with the students, she distinctly passed over Roland.

Luce pulled up the class chat room board to see whether Roland was logged on. It was supposed to be a tool for the class to bounce questions off each other, but the questions Luce had for Roland were not for class discussion. He knew something, something more than he’d let on the other day—surely it had to do with Daniel. She also wanted to ask him where he’d been on Saturday, whether he’d heard about Dawn’s trip overboard.

Except Roland wasn’t online. The only other person in the class who was logged on to the chat room was Miles. A text box with his name on it popped up on her screen:

Helloooo over there!

He was sitting right next to her. Luce could even hear him chuckling. It was cute that he got a kick out of his own dumb jokes. This was exactly the kind of goofy, teasing rapport she would love to have with Daniel. If he weren’t so brooding all the time. If he were actually around.