Boundless (Unearthly, #3)(26)

“Angela dated guys back in Jackson,” Christian reminds me.

I shake my head. “Not so much. She went to parties sometimes. And prom. But she never even kissed anybody, she told me. She said boys were a complete waste of time and energy.”

Christian’s dark eyebrows furrow, and I can feel him remembering that one party back in eighth grade where they played spin the bottle and he and Angela went out on the back porch and kissed. Then his eyes meet mine and he knows that I know he’s remembering this, and his face starts to get red.

“It wasn’t anything,” he mutters. “We were thirteen.”

“I know,” I say quickly. “She said it was like kissing her brother.”

Christian stares into his coffee cup. Finally he says, “If you want to find out what’s going on with Angela, you should ask her.”

“Good idea.” I pull out my cell and dial Angela’s number for like the twentieth time today, put it on speaker so Christian can hear as it goes straight to voice mail. “I’m busy right now,” Angela’s voice says in the recording. “I may or may not call you back. Depends on how much I like you.”

Beep.

“Okay, okay,” Christian says as I hang up. “I don’t know what to tell you. It’s a mystery.”

I let out a frustrated breath. “I’ll see her in class Tuesday,” I say. “Then we’ll get to the bottom of this.”

“Tuesday is three days away—you sure you can wait that long?” Christian asks playfully.

“Shut up. And anyway, it’s probably nothing. I bet you ten bucks it has to do with her purpose, not some guy. Something about ‘the seventh is ours.’”

“‘The seventh is ours’?”

“It’s what Angela says in her vision. She’s been driving herself crazy trying to figure out what it means. She keeps going to the church to make herself have the vision, but she hasn’t got much beyond the location on campus where it’s going to happen and ‘the seventh is ours,’ at least not that she’s told me lately.”

“That’s cryptic.” Christian’s eyes are thoughtful. “Wait,” he says, officially catching up. “What’s this about church? Angela makes herself have the vision? How?”

I tell him about the labyrinth and Angela’s theory that it will, under the right circumstances, induce visions. Christian sits back in his chair and stares at me like I’ve told him that the moon is made of cheese. Then he presses his fingers to his eyes as if he has a sudden headache.

“What?” I ask him.

“You never tell me anything, you know that?” He drops his hand and looks at me accusingly.

I gasp. “That is not true. I tell you loads of stuff. I tell you more than anybody. I mean, I didn’t blab to you about this thing with Angela, but it’s Angela, and you know how she is.”

“How she is? What happened to ‘there are no secrets in Angel Club’?”

“You never agreed to that,” I point out. “You had the biggest secret of us all, and you never breathed a word.”

“Is there anything else I don’t know?” he asks, ignoring my very good point about his blatant hypocrisy. “Besides the stuff with this Phen guy that you can’t tell me about?”

“I saw my dad,” I say. “But this only happened yesterday, okay? I was going to tell you today. Right now, as a matter of a fact. See, I’m telling you.”

Christian pulls back, surprise all over his face, his mind reeling with it in a way that makes me feel surprised all over again by what happened. “Your dad? Michael?”

“No, my other dad, Larry. Yes, my dad, Michael. He said he’s been given”—I inflate my voice to sound all authoritative and official—“the task of training me. We went back to my house and spent a couple hours in the backyard whacking each other with broomsticks.”

“You were in Jackson yesterday?” Christian looks dazed. He’s in that phase where he’s repeating everything I say because he can’t process it fast enough. “Training?” he says. “Training you to what?”

I become aware that we’re sitting in a public place and we shouldn’t be openly discussing any of this. I shift to talking in his mind. To use a sword.

His eyes widen. I look away, sip the last dregs of my cold coffee. The enormity of what I just told him—that I’m going to be expected to use a sword, too, to fight, maybe even to kill somebody—is really settling in for the first time.

This is the part where my life becomes all apocalyptic, I think.

Which sucks, quite frankly. I remember how good it felt to help Amy that night, to use my power to fix her ankle even the little bit that I did. How happy I was with the idea that I could use my power to heal hurts and right wrongs. Now it all feels like a silly pipe dream. I’m going to fight. Possibly die.

You were right, I say bleakly. We’re never going to be allowed to live normal lives.

I’m sorry, Christian says. He wishes something better for me, something easier.

I shrug it off. It’s what we’re supposed to do, right? Maybe that’s our purpose, to become fighters. That makes sense, if you think about it. Maybe it’s what all the Triplare are meant for. We’re like warriors.