“It feels like a test.” I lean back in the chair and look up at the clouds. “Like it’s all one long final examination, and now this vision with the cemetery, it’s the next question. Although it doesn’t seem like I’m supposed to do anything. At least, with my fire, I knew I was supposed to do something.”
“What were you supposed to do?” he asks in an amused voice.
“Save you. Only I wasn’t actually supposed to do that, was I?”
“That’s the hardest part,” he says. “The absence of certainty.” The phrase has a nice ring to it. It could be the motto of my life.
“So if it’s a test, what do you think the answer is?” he asks.
You, I think, the answer is supposed to be you, but I don’t say that. I guess I’m still fighting my purpose, even now that I know it’s my mom dying and not Tucker. It still feels like I am being asked to choose between Christian and Tucker.
“No clue,” I answer finally.
“Right. So,” he says. “Is there something you want to ask me, specifically? I can’t promise that I can give you a good answer, but I’ll try.” I say the first thing that comes to mind. “Did you . . . love Kay?” He looks away, toward the valley and the town below, knocks his skis together again, gently. Resents me for asking.
Sorry, I think at him.
“No, it’s a fair question,” he says. Sighs. “Yes. I loved her.”
“Then why did you break up with her?”
“Because she was going to find out about me.”
“You didn’t tell her?”
He leans back in the chair too and exhales out his nose. “I’ve had it hammered into my head since Day One that we shouldn’t tell humans. It’s bad for both parties, my uncle says. And he’s right—it’s impossible to have a relationship with a human, a real relationship, anyway, without them noticing there’s something off about you. Once they do, then what?” Suddenly I think about my dad, how he moved to the other side of the country after he and Mom split, which in retrospect seems extreme, although it now occurs to me, maybe he found out she wasn’t normal. Maybe that’s why he abandoned us. Maybe Christian’s uncle is right. Maybe any relationship with a human is doomed.
A corner of Christian’s mouth turns up. “I guess we could pick really dumb people to be with.”
“Kay’s not dumb,” I say. She might be a royal queen bee you-know-what, she might play dumb in class sometimes, but she’s no dummy.
“No, Kay’s not dumb,” he agrees. “And eventually she would have made it impossible not to tell her. She was going to get hurt.”
I think of the night Tucker found out, his hounding questions, the crazy assumptions he made. He wouldn’t relent until I revealed myself.
“I get it,” I say quietly, looking down at my gloves.
“So how much does Tucker know?” he asks. “Because he’s not dumb, either.” It embarrasses me that Christian was such a good little angel-blood and did the right thing and kept the right secrets while I so obviously did not. Like a lovesick puppy, compulsively, selfishly, I told a human everything. I put everyone at risk, especially Tucker.
“That much, huh?” Christian says.
“I’ve told him . . . a lot.”
“About me?”
“Yes.”
His eyes when he looks at me now are about ten degrees colder than they were a minute ago.
“I told you. I’m not good with secrets,” I say again.
“Well, you did keep one thing from him, and aren’t you happy you did?” He’s talking about my dream, of course. How it turned out to be Mom’s grave, and not Tucker’s, that I was seeing.
“Yeah,” I admit, “although I don’t know if happy is the right word for it.”
“I know.” He puts his gloves back on, claps his hands together, which startles me into looking up. The chair is quickly approaching the top of the mountain.
“So serious talk is officially over. I brought you here to have fun.” He adjusts his ski poles. I do the same. The chair comes up to the top of the hill. I put my ski tips up the way Christian taught me last year. The chair levels out, and I stand up and push off, brush shoulders playfully with Christian as I slip easily by him. I’m a blue square girl now, not a newbie to the skiing thing anymore.
“My little prodigy,” he says with mock pride. He pulls his goggles down over his eyes.
Smiles wickedly. “Let’s do it!”
I hardly think about my mom the entire morning. Christian and I braid patterns down the face of the slope, weaving back and forth, occasionally invading each other’s space, cutting each other off, playing around like kids. Sometimes we race, and Christian lets me get ahead a bit before he uses his super-racer powers to leave me in the snow, but he never goes very far without me. He skis at my pace, to my skill level. I appreciate that.
Then he takes me to this powder run he says he loves. We stand at the top, looking down.
The sign posted at the side says this is a black diamond: not just difficult, but extra-super, you-might-die-if-you-don’t-know-what-you’re-doing difficult. I stare down at it with wide eyes.
“Oh come on, don’t chicken out now,” Christian practically dares me. “You’re an angel-blood. You’re virtually indestructible, remember? This will be a snap, trust me.” I never did react well to being called a chicken.
Without saying another word I launch myself down the slope, whooping as I go. It’s a black diamond for a reason, I find. The hill is killer steep, for one thing. And it’s covered in nearly waist-deep fluffy powder that feels like a ton of concrete settling over my skis. Within about thirty seconds I’m completely out of control. In less than a minute I crash and burn. Total wipeout.
Christian whooshes up to me, spraying snow.
“Just so you know, this is the last time I ever trust you,” I say.
“But you’re so cute all covered in snow.”
“Shut up and help me find my ski.”
We search through the powder for a while, but don’t locate my missing ski. After ten fruitless minutes I’m convinced that the mountain has eaten it.
“Thank you so much, Christian.”
“Don’t worry, they might find it—come summer,” he says with a snicker.
He doesn’t expect the snowball I fling at him. It explodes into powdery bits on his chest.