Boundless (Unearthly, #3)(85)

I call his name again, jog upstairs to his room. He’s not here, but his sheets are on the bed, rumpled at the bottom corner. The drawers of his old dresser, the one Mom said she was getting rid of before we moved to Wyoming—in fact, I complained because she bought Jeffrey a whole new set of bedroom furniture for the move, oh clever, sneaky Mom—are full of his clothes. It smells like him in here.

I search the drawers, looking for clues, but I get nothing.

He lives here, clearly. Or he did. It doesn’t seem like he’s been back here for a while. Add that to what the pizza place manager said about him not showing up to work for a week, and color me officially worried.

Lucy could have him, right now. Asael could have him. Or he could be—

I won’t let myself think the word dead, won’t allow myself to picture Jeffrey with a sorrow blade through his heart. I have to believe that he’s out there, somewhere.

I sit down on his bed and dig for a scrap of paper in my purse, a pen. On the back of a Nebraska grocery store receipt I write the following note:

Jeffrey,

I know you’re mad at me. But I really need to talk to you. Call me. Please remember that I’m always in your corner.

Clara

I hope he gets the message.

Outside again, I hide the key back under the flagstone and take a long, last look at the house where I grew up, and I wonder if I’ll ever lay eyes on it again after tonight, or if I’ll ever get to talk to my baby brother.

Very soon now, I’ll have to catch a train.





18


YOU’LL SEE ME AGAIN


At some point in the afternoon it seems like I have nothing to do but wait for night to fall. I glance at my watch. I’ve got hours to go before I have to make the journey to the train station.

Before I go to hell.

I should do something frivolous, I think. Fun. Ride a roller coaster. Eat a ton of rocky road ice cream. Buy something ludicrous on credit. These very well could be my last hours on this earth.

What should I do? What is the thing that, if everything changed, I’d miss the most?

The answer comes to me like a song on the wind.

I’ve got to fly.

It’s stormy at Big Basin. I climb quickly, easily, my nerves giving me even more speed than usual, and take my place on the rock at the top of Buzzards Roost, legs dangling over the edge, staring out across the blue-black tangle of clouds that lies heavy over the valley.

Not good flying conditions. I briefly consider going somewhere else—the Tetons, maybe, crossing there—but I don’t. This is our thinking spot, Mom’s and mine, and so I’ll sit here and think. I’ll try to be at peace with whatever’s going to happen.

I cast back to the day Mom first brought me here, when she broke the news to me that I was an angel-blood. You’re special, she kept saying, and when I laughed at her and called her crazy, denied that I was faster or stronger or smarter than any other perfectly normal teenage girl I knew, she said, So often we only do what we think is expected of us, when we are capable of so much more.

Would she approve of what I’m about to do, the leap I’m about to make? Would she tell me I’m insane to think that I can do this impossible thing? Or, if she were here, would she tell me to be brave? Be brave, my darling. You’re stronger than you think.

I’m going to need to come up with a story to tell Samjeeza, I remind myself. That’s my payment. A story, about Mom.

But what story?

Something that shows my mother at her very best, I think: lively and beautiful and fun, the things Samjeeza most loves about her. It has to be good.

I close my eyes. I think about the home movies we watched in the days before she died, all those moments strung together like a patchwork of memories: Mom wearing a Santa hat on Christmas morning, Mom whooping in the stands at Jeffrey’s first football game, Mom bending to find a round, perfect sand dollar on the beach at Santa Cruz, or that time we went to the Winchester Mystery House on Halloween night and she ended up more creeped out than we were, and we teased her—oh, man, did we tease her—and she laughed and clutched at our arms, Jeffrey on one side and me on the other, and she said, Let’s go home. I want to get in bed and pull the covers up over my head and pretend like there’s nothing scary in the world.

A million memories. Countless smiles and laughs and kisses, the way she told me she loved me all the time, every night before she tucked me into bed. The way she always believed in me, be it for a math test or a ballet recital or figuring out my purpose on this earth.

But that’s not the kind of story Samjeeza will want, is it? Maybe what I give him won’t be good enough. Maybe I’ll tell him, and he’ll laugh the way he does, all mocking, and then he won’t take me to hell after all.

I could fail at this before I even start.

I feel dizzy and open my eyes, wobble unsteadily at the edge of the rock. For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m too high up. I could fall.

I scramble back away from the edge, my heart hammering in my chest.

Whoa. This is too much pressure, I think. I rub my eyes. It’s too much.

A gust of wind hits me, warm and insistent against my face, and my hair picks this moment to slide out of my ponytail and swirl around me, into my eyes. I cough and swipe at it. For all of two seconds I wish I had a pair of scissors. I would hack it all off. Maybe I will, if and when I get back from hell. The new me will need a radical makeover.