“Clara can fill me in later,” he calls back over his shoulder. “Or you could make, like, stone tablets or something. Angel Club ten commandments.” Then he’s gone.

So much for finding out exactly what he knows.

Angela looks at me. “He’s funny.”

“Yeah, he’s a barrel of laughs.”

“So. The rules.”

I sigh. “Lay them on us.”

“Well, first, and this one’s a no-brainer, no one tells anybody about this. We’re the only ones who know about Angel Club, okay?”

“Do not talk about Angel Club,” says Christian with a smirk.

“I mean it. Don’t tell your uncle.” Angela turns to me. “Don’t tell your mom. Don’t tell your boyfriend. Got it? Second rule: Angel Club is a secret from everybody else, but we don’t keep secrets from each other. This is a no-secrets zone. We tell each other everything.”

“Okay . . . ,” I agree. “What are the other rules?”

“That’s it,” she says.

“Oh. One per stone tablet,” I joke.

“Ha. Ha.” She turns back to Christian. “What about you? You’ve been awfully quiet this whole time. You’ve got to swear too.”

“No, thank you,” he says politely.

She leans back in her chair in surprise. “No, thank you?”

“To the rules. I won’t go blabbing about this thing to my buddies on the ski team. But I tell my uncle everything, and I’m going to tell him about this.” His eyes seek mine, pin me. “It’s stupid not to communicate what you know to the adults. They’re only trying to protect us. And as far as the no-secrets zone, I can’t agree to that. I don’t even really know you guys, so why would I tell you my secrets? No way.”

Angela’s speechless. I find this kind of funny.

“You’re right,” I say. “We ditch the rules. There are no rules.”

“I think it’s great, though,” he says as a way of soothing Angela. “Meeting and finding out what we can do, trying to figure things out. Count me in. I’ll be here, whenever, until it snows and then I have ski team, but maybe then we can move this to Sunday afternoons, which would work for me.”

Angela recovers. She even whips up a smile. “Sure, that’s doable. Probably better for Jeffrey’s schedule, too. Sundays. Let’s do Sundays.”

There’s a moment of uncomfortable silence.

“Okay then,” Angela says finally. “I think this meeting is adjourned.” It’s almost dark when I leave the theater. Storm clouds are brewing overhead, churning like a grumbling stomach. I guess I should be grateful for the rain, since the storm put out the fires, which in the end probably saved people’s lives and homes. It’s only weather, I remind myself, but sometimes I wonder if this particular weather’s been sent to bother me personally, a punishment, maybe, for not doing my job, for failing at my purpose, or some other sort of ominous sign.

I try for a quick, casual good-bye to Christian at the corner, but he puts his hand on my arm.

“I still want to talk to you,” he says in a low voice.

“I have to go,” I manage. “My mom will be wondering where I am. Call me, okay? Or I’ll call you. One of us should definitely call the other.”

“Right.” His hand drops away. “I’ll call you.”

“I gotta run. I’m late.”

And then I’m off in the opposite direction.

Coward, says the nagging voice inside my head. You should talk to him. Find out what he has to say.

What if he says we belong together?

Well, then you’ll have to deal with that. But at least you won’t be running away.

I think it’s more of a brisk walk.

Whatever.

I’m having an argument with myself. And I’m losing.

So not a good sign.

Chapter 3

Other People’s Secrets

Mom comes out of her office the moment she hears me step through the front door.

“Hey,” she says. “How was school?”

“Everybody talked about my hair, but it was fine.”

“We could try to dye it again,” she suggests.

I shrug. “It must mean something, right? God wants me to be blond this year.”

“Right,” she says. “You want a cookie, blondie?”

“Do birds fly?” I scamper after her into the kitchen, where, sure enough, I smell something wonderful baking in the oven. “Chocolate chip?”

“Of course.” The buzzer goes off, and she puts on an oven mitt, takes the sheet of cookies out of the oven, and sets it on the counter. I pull up a stool on the other side of her and sit. It feels so normal it’s weird, after what’s happened, all the drama and fight-for-your-life stuff and serious soul-searching, and now . . . cookies.

The night of the fire I came home assuming we’d have this big tell-all, and everything would be out in the open now that the stuff from my vision had happened. But when I got home, Mom was asleep, asleep on the most important night of my life, and I didn’t wake her, didn’t blame her because we were both, at the time, so literally fried, and she’d been attacked, almost died and all. But still. It wasn’t exactly how I thought my purpose would go.

It’s not like we haven’t talked. We have, although mostly it was a debriefing of what’s already happened. No new information. No revelations. No explanations. At one point I asked,

“So what happens now?” and she said, “I don’t know, honey,” and that was it. I would have pressed her about it, but she kept getting this look on her face, this bleak expression, her eyes so full of pain and sadness, like she’s so incredibly disappointed in me and how my purpose turned out. Of course she would never come right out and say that, never tell me that I’ve screwed up everything, that she thought I would be better than that, that she thought I’d make the right choices when my time came, that I’d prove myself worthy to be called an angel-blood. But the look says it all.

“So,” she says as we wait for the cookies to cool. “I thought you’d be home a while ago.

Did you go to see Tucker?”

And already I need to make a big decision: to tell her about Angel Club, or not tell her.

Okay. So I think about how the first thing out of Angela’s mouth when it came to rules was not to tell anybody, especially the adults, and then I think about the way Christian refused, just like that, said that he tells his uncle everything.