Текст книги "Boundless"

Автор книги: Cynthia Hand

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“It’s okay,” he murmurs against my hair.

Wan Chen makes a throat-clearing noise from where she’s sitting at her desk.

“I think I’ll go get some dinner,” she says, slipping past us without meeting my eyes.

I find a tissue, blow my nose hard. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m so emotional. Maybe I’m overreacting just a tad.”

“Tell me,” he says.

“It’s Jeffrey.” I start welling up again. But between the sniffles I manage to tell him everything.

“I don’t know what to do!” I exclaim. “He won’t listen to me, and I have a bad feeling about his girlfriend. Maybe I’m being unfair, judgmental, like he said, but you should have seen the way she had him wrapped around her little finger. ‘You know what I like….’ Gag me. And she was all super smug like, ‘You’re in college? Yuck, I hate school.’ Where does she get off? And hello, she’s like twenty and he’s six-freaking-teen. And she’s filling his head with nonsense, I can just tell.” I finally run out of breath. “I sound like a crazy person, don’t I?”

He doesn’t smile. “You sound scared.”

I slump into my desk chair. “What should I do?”

He goes to the window and looks out, thoughtful. “There’s not much you can do. Unless …”

I wait, but he doesn’t finish the sentence. “Unless what?”

“You could call the police.”

“On her?”

“On him. About the fire. You could tip them off to where he works.”

I stare at him, dumbfounded.

“He’ll get arrested, but it would get him away from her. He’d be safe,” he says.

“Safe.”

“Safer. He’d have to go back to Jackson. To juvie, maybe, for a while. But it might straighten him out.”

“I don’t think I could do that to him,” I say after a minute. I can’t betray him that way. He’d hate me forever. “I can’t.”

“I know,” Christian says. “I was just putting it out there.”

Jeffrey doesn’t call me after that, but then what did I expect? I think about going back to the pizza place to apologize, but something tells me (namely, Christian tells me) that I would probably end up making things worse. Let him cool down, Christian says. Let you cool down.

Christian and I are miraculously back to normal, back to deep conversations over coffee, racing each other on our morning jogs, laughing as we thrust and parry at each other in fencing class, everything like it was before our date. Well, almost. There’s always this moment at the end of our times hanging out together, as we’re saying good-bye, when I know he wants to ask me out again. To try again. To woo me. Because he thinks that’s part of his purpose.

But he’s decided to let me make the first move, this time. The ball’s in my court. And I don’t know if I’m ready.

Which brings us to late March, and the end of winter quarter, a few days before we’re out for spring break. I’m about to sit down for my lit class final exam, when I get the following text:

Water broke. Do NOT come to the hospital. I’ll call you later.

Angela’s in labor.

I have a pretty hard time concentrating on my test. I keep thinking about her face when she said, I don’t know how to be a mother, her face after Phen disappeared and left her standing in the courtyard, the way the fire in her seemed to burn out right before my eyes. When I talk to her lately she always sounds sleepy, and she always says that she’s fine, gives me some little detail about how she’s preparing for the baby—took a Lamaze class, bought a bassinet, stocked up on diapers—but she’s not her fierce and fiery self. She thinks her life is ruined. Her purpose over with, irrelevant. Lost.

I check my phone after I turn in my final, but there’s no update.

Is he here yet? I text. I try not to think too much about all that might entail.

She doesn’t answer.

About an hour later I’m pacing around my dorm, chewing my fingernails, when Christian knocks on my door.

“Hey, I finished my last final. Do you want to grab some sort of celebratory dinner?” he asks.

“Angela’s in labor!” I burst out.

I almost laugh at the aghast look on his face.

“She texted me a few hours ago, and I don’t know if it’s happened already or not. She told me not to come to the hospital until she called me, but …”

“You’re going to go anyway, aren’t you?”

“I’ll stay in the waiting room or something but … yeah. I want to go.” I put on a coat, because it’s March in Wyoming and probably still freezing. “Do you want to come with me?”

“You mean, you’d take us both to Wyoming? You can do that?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never tried to bring anybody along with me before.” I hold my hand out to him. “Dad does it, though. Want to try?”

He hesitates.

“The waiting room. Not the delivery room,” I emphasize.

“All right.” He takes my hand, and my blood positively boils with our shared power and the anticipation I’m feeling. Zapping us should be no trouble at all.

“Okay, give me your other hand.” I face him, both of our hands joined. He gasps when I summon the glory around us.

“It’s that easy for you, isn’t it?”

“Glory? I’m getting better at it. How about you?”

He looks at his feet, gives me a half-embarrassed smile. “It’s not that easy. I can do it, but it usually takes me a little while. But I can’t cross. That is way beyond me still.”

“Well, glory’s easier when I’m with you,” I say, and am rewarded by his eyes lighting up. “Let’s go.” I close my eyes, think of my backyard in Jackson, the aspen trees, the sound of our babbling brook. The light around us intensifies, red behind my eyelids. Then fades.

I’m not holding Christian’s hand anymore.

I open my eyes.

Tucker’s barn.

Gack, maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t succeed in bringing Christian. I whip out my phone.

Sorry, I text him. Want to try again? I can come back.

It’s okay. I’ll get home the traditional way. See you in a couple days. Say hello to Angela for me.

I look up to see Tucker staring at me from the hayloft.

I’m gone before he has time to form a greeting.

I find Angela in the recovery part of the maternity wing, dressed in a faded blue-and-white hospital gown, staring out the window. The baby’s a few feet away in a plastic bassinet on wheels, wrapped up tightly in a blanket so he looks like a little burrito, sleeping, a tiny blue cap on his head that doesn’t quite cover his thatch of thick, black hair. WEBSTER says a printed card at the end of the tub. His face is all purple and splotchy, swollen around the eyes. He kind of looks like he was just in a boxing match. And lost.

“He’s adorable,” I whisper to Angela. “Why didn’t you text me?”

“I was busy,” she says, and there’s a hollow quality to her voice that makes my heart sink, a terrible dullness in her eyes.

I sit down in a chair near the bed. “So it was pretty bad, huh?”

She shrugs, using only one shoulder like she’s too tired to use both. “It was humiliating, and terrifying, and it hurt. But I survived. They say I can go home tomorrow. We, I mean. We can go home.”

She stares out the window again. It’s a nice day, blue sky, fluffy clouds moving past the glass.

“Good,” I say, for lack of something better. “Do you need me to—”

“My mom can handle it. She’s out getting more supplies right now. She’ll help me.”

“I’ll help you too,” I say. “Seriously. I’m all done with finals. I have almost two weeks off.” I lean forward and put my hand on hers.

She’s feeling such despair that it makes my chest hurt.

“I don’t know anything about babies, but I’m here for you, okay?” I gasp against the pain.

She pulls her hand from under mine, but her eyes soften slightly. “Thanks, C.”

“I don’t think I ever told you how much I admire you for how you’re handling all this,” I say.

She scoffs. “Which part? For the way I lied to everybody about who the father is? For the way I put all my hopes in a silly vision? For how stupid I was to let it happen in the first place?”

“Um, none of the above. For going through with this, even though you’re scared.”

Her lips tighten. “I couldn’t give him away to some stranger, not ever knowing what would happen to him.”

“That’s brave, Ange.”

She shakes her head. Maybe not, she says in my head. Maybe he would have been safer away from me. With a human family. Maybe he would have been better off. Maybe I’m being selfish.

The baby starts making a grunting noise, twisting in the blanket he’s wrapped in. He opens his eyes, golden like hers, and starts to cry, a thin, reedy-sounding wail. The sound sends a prickle down my spine. I jump to my feet.

“Do you want me to hand him to you?” I ask.

She hesitates. “I’ll page the nurse.” She presses a button on the frame of her bed.

I go to the side of the bassinet and look in. He’s so tiny. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so small and new. I’ve never even held a baby before, other than Jeffrey, I guess, and I don’t remember that.

“I don’t want to break him,” I confess to Angela.

“Me either,” she says.

But we’re saved by Anna, who comes into the room a few steps ahead of the nurse. She sweeps right in and lifts the baby, cooing, holds him to her shoulder, but he doesn’t stop crying. She checks his diaper, which is apparently fine. This is clearly a relief to Angela.

“He’s hungry,” Anna reports.

Angela looks tense. “Again? He just fed like an hour ago.”

“Do you want to try to nurse him again?” the nurse asks.

“I guess.” She holds out her arms, and Anna gives her the baby; then Angela looks at me like, Sorry to be rude, but I’m about to flash my breasts here.

“I’ll be … out,” I say, and duck into the hall. I head down to the gift shop and buy her some yellow flowers in a vase that’s in the shape of a baby boot. I’m hoping she’ll think it’s funny.

When I get back, Anna’s holding the baby again, and he’s quieted down. Angela is lying with her eyes closed, her breathing shallow. I set the flowers on the windowsill and gesture to Anna that I’m going.

She nods, but walks with me to the door.

“Do you want to hold him?” she whispers.

“No, I’m good to look and not touch. He’s beautiful, though,” I say, even though that might be a stretch.

She gazes down at him with adoration in her eyes.

“He’s a miracle,” she says. Her eyes flicker over to Angela. “She is frightened now. It was the same for me. But she’ll understand, soon enough. That he’s a gift. She’ll realize that she’s been blessed.”

The baby yawns, and she smiles, readjusts the blue cap on his head. I inch toward the door.

“Thank you for being here,” she says then. “You’re a good friend. Angela is lucky to have someone like you.”

“Tell her to call me,” I say, unnerved as usual by the steady intensity of Anna’s dark, humorless eyes on me. “I’ll be around.”

When I get in the elevator, I hold the door for a couple with a baby dressed in what looks like a pink jumpsuit with ladybugs embroidered on the feet. They’re both—the mother in a wheelchair with the baby in her arms, the father standing behind her—focused entirely on the baby, their bodies turned toward her, their eyes not leaving her tiny face.

“We’re taking her home,” the father tells me, proudly.

“Congratulations. That’s epic.”

The orderly who’s pushing the wheelchair looks at me all suspicious. The mother doesn’t even seem to hear me. The baby, for her part, thinks that the elevator is the most fascinating thing, like, ever. She decides the appropriate reaction to this wonderful magic box that takes you somewhere different from the place that you started in is a sneeze.

A sneeze.

You’d think she’d recited the alphabet, for all the excitement this action stirs up in her parents.

“Oh my goodness,” says the mother in a high, soft voice, bending her face close to her baby’s. “What was that?”

The baby blinks confusedly. Then sneezes again.

Everybody laughs: the mother, the father, the orderly, and me, for good measure. But I’m watching the way the father puts his hand gently on the back of his wife’s shoulder, and how she reaches up briefly to touch his hand, love passing between them as simply as that, and I think, Angela won’t get this. She won’t leave the hospital this way.

It makes me remember a quote from today’s exam. From Dante. Midway upon the journey of life, I found myself in dark woods, the right road lost.

I know what he means.

13

A SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSON

“A glory sword is more than a simple weapon,” Dad’s saying. “I have talked about a sword being an extension of your arm, imagining that it’s part of you, but a glory sword is more than a metaphor. The glory is part of you; it grows from the light inside you, that energy, that connectedness to the power that governs all life.”

We’re on the deserted beach again, because he decided that place is less distracting for us to train than my backyard in Jackson. It’s dusk. Christian and I are sitting near the waterline, our toes buried in the sand, while Dad gives us a mini lecture on the composition of glory and its many uses.

And here I thought I was on spring break. We’ve been training every day since we got back to Jackson. At least today we’re hitting the beach.

Dad continues. “There is nothing, not on earth, or in heaven, or even in hell, that can overcome that light. If you believe this, then the glory will shape itself into anything that you need.”

“Like a lantern,” I say.

“Yes. Or an arrow, as you’ve also seen. But the most effective form is a sword. It’s quick, and powerful, sharper than any two-edged blade, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”

Now he’s gone all poetic on us.

I remember how Jeffrey reacted to the idea of a glory sword. “What about a glory gun?” I ask. “I mean, this is the twenty-first century. Maybe what we should really be trying to shape is a glory semiautomatic.”

“Which would require you to create what, a glory stock and barrel, a firing mechanism, glory gunpowder, glory shells and bullets?” Dad questions, his eyes amused.

“Well, it sounds dumb when you put it that way. I guess a sword is good.”

Dad makes a face. “I think you’ll find the sword more useful than anything else. And tasteful.”

“An elegant weapon, for a more civilized age,” I joke.

He doesn’t get it, but my geekiness makes Christian smile, which counts for something.

“Why?” Christian asks suddenly. “Why would a sword be more useful, I mean?”

“Because the enemy uses a blade as well,” Dad says, his eyes serious. “Fashioned from their sorrow.”

I sit up straighter. “A sword made of sorrow?” I try not to think about Christian’s vision, about the blood on my shirt, about how scared I am, like every minute, that what he’s seeing is my death. But I haven’t worked up the courage yet to ask Dad for his interpretation of the future.

“Typically it’s shorter, more like a dagger. But sharp. Penetrating. And painful. It injures the soul as well as the body. It’s difficult to heal,” Dad says.

“Well that’s … great,” I manage. “We have a glory sword. They have a sorrow dagger. Yay.”

“So you see why it’s so important that you learn,” he says.

I get up, brush sand off my shorts. “Enough talk,” I say. “Let’s try it.”

About an hour later I drop back down to the sand, panting. Christian is standing next to me with the most beautiful blade of glory in his hand, perfect and shining. I, on the other hand, have made a glory lantern a few times, a glory arrow of sorts (more like a glory javelin, but it’d do the trick in a pinch, I think, which is not nothing, I point out), but not a glory sword.

Dad is frowning, big time. “You’re not concentrating on the right things,” he says. “You must think of the sword as more than something physical that you can hold in your hand. You must think of it as truth.”

“I thought you said it wasn’t a metaphor.”

“I said it was more than a metaphor. Let’s try something else,” he suggests. The sun is fully down now, shadows stretching across the ground. “Think of something you know, absolutely, to be true.”

I say the first thing that comes to mind. “I know I’m your daughter.”

He looks pleased. “Good. Let’s start there. Think about the part of you that knows that fact. That feels it, in your gut. Do you feel it?”

I nod. “Yes. I gut-feel it.”

“Close your eyes.”

I do. He steps up beside me and takes my wrist in his hand, stretches my arm out in front of me. I feel him draw glory around us. Without being asked, I bring my own to meet it, and his glory and my glory combine, his light and mine making something greater, something brighter. Something powerful and good.

“You are my daughter,” he says.

“I know.”

“But how do you know you’re my daughter? Because your mother told you so?”

“No, because … because I feel a connection between us that’s like …” I don’t have the right word for it. “Something inside me, like in my blood or whatever.”

“Flesh of my flesh,” he says. “Blood of my blood.”

“Now you’re getting weird.”

He chuckles. “Focus on that feeling. Believe that simple truth. You are my daughter.”

I focus. I believe. I know it to be true.

“Open your eyes,” Dad says.

I do, and gasp.

Right before my eyes is a vertical bar of light. It’s definitely glory, that light, a rippling mix of golden warmth and cool silver, the sun and moon combined. I can feel its power moving through me. I glance down at my outstretched arm, watch the glory curl around my elbow, down my forearm, to where I’m grasping the light like it has a kind of handle; then I sweep my gaze up the length again, to the tip, and it seems to have an edge to it. A point.

Yep. It’s a sword.

I look over at Christian, who grins and gives me a mental thumbs-up. Dad lets go of my wrist and steps back, admiring our handiwork.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he says.

“Yeah. Now what do I do with it?”

“Whatever you want,” he says.

“Do I have to be careful with it? Can I cut myself?”

Dad responds by forming his own glory sword and swinging it at Christian, so fast that he doesn’t even have time to move, let alone duck out of the way, before the sword cuts through him. I bite back a scream, sure I’m about to see my best friend cut in half, but the blade passes through like a sunbeam cutting through clouds. Christian stands there totally shocked, his own glory sword abruptly gone from his hand, then looks down at his stomach. A long section of his T-shirt flutters to the ground, cleanly severed. But there’s not a scratch on his body.

“Holy …” Christian lets out a breath. “You could warn a guy before you attack him like that. I liked that shirt.”

“If you were a Triplare,” Dad says matter-of-factly, “you’d be dead.”

I frown. “He is a Triplare.”

“One of theirs, I mean,” Dad clarifies. “Those with the dark wings.”

“So we can’t hurt each other?” I ask. “I mean, if we spar with glory swords, they’ll pass through like that?”

“As long as you are aligned with the light, glory will not harm you,” Dad answers. “It is part of you, after all.”

Christian’s chewing on his bottom lip, which is not like him. “My wings aren’t all white,” he confesses, meeting Dad’s eyes. “They have black specks. What does that mean?”

“It happens when a child is born from a white-winged mother and one of the Sorrowful Ones,” Dad says thoughtfully. “It’s a mark the Black Wings leave to identify their Triplare children.”

“But our wings are a reflection of our souls, right?” I ask, confused. “You’re saying that Christian’s father marked his soul?”

Dad doesn’t answer, but his grim look says it all.

Christian looks like he’s going to be sick to his stomach.

Time for some stress relief, I think.

I move my arm slowly back and forth, watch the way the light lingers in the air, trailing my movement. It’s almost dark now, the sky a deep navy, and the sword against it reminds me of sparklers on the Fourth of July. On an impulse I write my name with it. C. L. A. R. A.

“Come on,” I say to Christian. “You try.”

He recovers himself and focuses until a bright blade appears in his hand, then starts writing his own letters in the air. We start to goof around, turning circles, making patterns, then taking swipes at each other’s exposed arms and legs. Just as Dad said, the blades pass right through. The warmth and power of the glory makes me a bit giddy, and I keep laughing as I maneuver the sword. For a minute I forget about the visions. There’s nothing that can touch me, with this. Nothing to fear.

“I’m glad you understand now,” Dad says, and there’s relief in his voice. “Because this is our last session.”

Christian and I both drop our arms and look at him, startled. “The last session?” I repeat.

“Of your training,” he says.

“Oh.” I lift the sword again. My heart is suddenly heavy, and the sword dims in my hand, flickers. “Will we be—will I be seeing you around?”

“Not for a long while,” he says.

The sword goes out. I turn to him, stricken, fearful that I haven’t been taught enough. I’ve learned so much in this small amount of time: how to fly better, how to fight, how to cross and transport others, which has already come in handy when I need to get Christian and me to the beach on our own, how to almost instantaneously call glory and shape it, and use it more efficiently for healing. He’s also taught us to speak to each other in our minds one-to-one, so that we can talk silently without being heard by anyone else, not even angels, which I’m sure every now and then he regrets doing, when it’s clear that Christian and I are talking about him behind his back. It’s been harder work than any of my courses at Stanford, but I’ve loved the training, truth be told, as scared as it makes me feel. It’s brought me closer to my dad, more a part of his life. It’s made me feel closer to Christian. But I don’t feel ready for any kind of Black Wing–Triplare battle. He didn’t even teach us to use the actual glory swords until today. “How long?”

He puts his hand on my shoulder. “You’ve got some trials ahead of you, I’m afraid, and I can’t help you. I can’t interfere, as much as I’d like to.”

That doesn’t sound good. “Any more hints you’d like to give me?”

“Follow your vision,” he says. “Follow your heart. And I’ll be with you again soon.”

“But I thought you said not for a long while—”

He smiles almost embarrassedly. “It’s a matter of perspective.”

He turns to Christian. “As for you, young man, it’s been a pleasure getting to know you. You have a fine spirit. Take care of my daughter.”

Christian swallows hard. “Yes, sir,” he says.

Dad turns back to me. “Now, try again with the sword, on your own this time.”

I close my eyes and try again, going through the steps carefully, and it works. The sword fills my hand. Dad draws his own, and we all spend a little more time there, just a little more time, together on the beach, Christian and Dad and I, writing our shining names onto the air.

“I heard about Angela,” Wendy says as we walk out of the Teton Theatre in Jackson a few days later. I called her, like I promised, asked her to hang out, and since I picked her up it’s been like old times, her and me joking around, shooting the breeze, and I’ve done an admirable job, I must say, of not showing that I think about Tucker every single time that I see any of his expressions cross her face.

Sometimes it really sucks that they’re twins.

“What did you hear?” I ask her.

“That she had a baby.”

“Yep, she did, a boy,” I say a bit guardedly. I’m protective when it comes to the subject of Angela and her baby. Maybe because I feel like they don’t have anybody else to protect them, and there is so much in this world that they might need protecting from, starting with the nasty gossip that’s surely going around about them in Jackson. Word here travels fast.

“That’s tough,” Wendy says.

I nod. Last time I called Angela, I could hear Web wailing the whole time in the background, and she said, “What do you want, Clara?” all monotone, and I said, “I’m calling to see how you are,” and she said, “I’m a clueless teen mom whose baby never stops freaking crying. I’m covered in milk and puke and crap, and I haven’t had more than two hours of sleep in a week. How do you think I am?” And then she hung up on me.

She obviously hasn’t come around to seeing how she’s blessed.

“She’ll get through it,” I say to Wendy. “She’s smart. She’ll figure it out.”

“I never thought she’d be the kind to …” Wendy trails off. “Well, you know. She’s not exactly the motherly type.”

“She has her mom to help her,” I say.

We head toward the square, where the antler arches greet us at the four corners. I think about how long ago it feels since I first came here and stood under one of those arches, when my hair started to glow and my mom decided we needed to dye it. Just to get me by until I learned to control it, she’d said, and I’d laughed and said something like, I’ll learn to control my hair? and it had felt crazy, saying that. Now I can control it. If my hair started to glow at this moment, I’m fairly certain I’d be able to put it out pretty quick, before anybody noticed.

I’ve grown up, I think.

We walk into the park and take a seat on a bench. In one of the trees over our heads there’s a small dark bird staring at us, but I refuse to look closely enough to see if it’s a bird or a particularly annoying angel. I haven’t been seeing as much of Sam these days, only twice since February, and neither time he spoke to me, although I’m not sure why. I wonder if I offended him, last time. I take a sip of the soda I got for the movie. Sigh.

“It’s nice to be back,” I say.

“I know,” Wendy says. “You haven’t talked much about what’s going on with you. How’s Stanford?”

“Good. Stanford is good.”

“Good,” she says.

“Stanford is great, actually.”

She nods. “And you’re going out with Christian Prescott?”

I nearly spit out my soda. “Wendy!”

“What? I’m not allowed to ask you about your love life?”

“What about your love life?” I counter. “You haven’t said anything about that.”

She smiles. “I’m dating a guy named Daniel; thanks for asking. He’s studying business communications, and we were in the same English composition class last fall, and I helped him with some of his papers. He’s cute. I like him.”

“I bet that’s not all you helped him with,” I tease.

She doesn’t take the bait. “So what’s going on with you and Christian?”

I’d rather have my teeth pulled than have this conversation, her staring at me expectantly with her version of Tucker’s hazy blue eyes.

“We’re friends,” I stammer. “I mean, we’ve been on a date. But …”

She quirks an eyebrow at me. “But what? You’ve always liked him.”

“I do like him. He makes me laugh. He’s always there for me, whenever I need him. He understands me. He’s amazing.”

“Sounds like a match made in heaven,” she says. “So what’s the problem?”

“Nothing. I like him.”

“And he likes you?”

My cheeks are getting hot. “Yes.”

“Well.” She sighs. “It’s like my daddy always says. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.”

I don’t know what she means, but I have the distinct feeling that she’s getting at something Tucker-related. I laugh like I get it, and look off across the street, where there’s a sudden flurry of noise and movement. Some kind of show is being put on. They’ve blocked off part of the road, and a number of costumed guys are standing in the middle of it, shouting something about how the notorious Jackson gang has robbed a bank in Eagle City.

“What is this?” I ask Wendy.

“You’ve never seen this before?” she asks incredulously. “Cowboy melodrama. One of the other great things about this town. Where else on earth can you go and witness a good old-fashioned Wild West shoot-out? Come on, let’s go have a look.”

I follow her across the street toward the action. The cowboy actors are quickly drawing a crowd from the tourists on the boardwalk. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but I notice that the actors all tote rifles or pistols.

Wendy turns to me. “Fun, right?”

“Consider me entertained.” I turn, laughing, pressed in by the people around me, when suddenly I see Tucker farther up the boardwalk, coming out of what appears to be the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! museum, another place I’ve never been to even though I’ve considered Jackson my home for more than two years. He’s smiling with his dimples out, his teeth a flash of white against his tanned face. I can hear the faint sound of his laugh, and I can’t help it, it makes me smile to hear it. I love his laugh.

But he’s not alone. Another second and Allison Lowell, the girl from the rodeo, the girl who was one of his dates at prom the year I went with Christian, the girl who’s had a giant crush on him pretty much her whole life, follows Tucker out of the building, and she’s laughing too, her long red hair in a fish-tailed braid over her shoulder, peering up at him exactly the way I know I used to look at him. She puts her hand on his arm, says something else to make him smile. He folds his arm around her hand, like he’s escorting her somewhere, always the perfect gentleman.

Shots ring in the air. The crowd laughs as one of the villains staggers around melodramatically, then dies and lies twitching.

I know how he feels.

I should go. They’re coming this way, and any second he’s going to see me, and there isn’t even a word for how awkward that’s going to be. I should go. Now. But my feet don’t move. I stand like I’ve been frozen, watching them as they walk along together, their talk easy, familiar, Allison glancing over at him from under her lashes, wearing a western-style shirt with those vees on the shoulders, tight jeans, boots. A Wyoming girl. His type of Wyoming girl, specifically.

I can’t stop thinking about how much better she’d be for him than I am.

But I also kind of want to tear her hair out.

They’re close now. I can smell her perfume, light and fruity and feminine.

“Uh-oh,” I hear Wendy say behind me, noticing them at last. “We should—” Get out of here, she’s about to say, but then Tucker glances up.

The smile vanishes from his face. He stops walking.

For all of ten long seconds we stand there, in the middle of the crowd of tourists, staring at each other.

I can’t breathe. Oh man. Please don’t let me start crying, I think.

Then Wendy pulls on my arm, and my feet magically work again, and I turn and run—oh yes, I’m that dignified—and I’m about three blocks away, around the corner, before I slow down. I wait for Wendy to catch up to me.

“Well,” she says breathlessly. “That was exciting.”