I remember this one time when we were kids, when a bird flew into our window. We were watching Saturday morning cartoons, and then, thump. Jeffrey ran out to see what it was.
He picked the bird up, held it gently in his hands, asked me if we couldn’t fix it, somehow. It was a starling with its neck broken. It was already dead.
“Where did it go?” he asked when I tried to explain it to him.
“Heaven, maybe. I don’t know.”
He’d wanted to bury it in the backyard, said things like a miniature pastor about the life the bird must have lived, flying free, how its brother birds would miss him. And when we covered it with dirt, he’d cried.
What happened to that kid? I wonder now, struggling to push down the lump that’s risen in my throat. Where did he go? And I suddenly want to cry. I feel like everything is falling apart in our lives.
“So,” Angela says. “We should talk.”
“Um—” This could be a problem, being that we’re under lock and key all the time. “The thing is, I’m grounded—” I say. But then I stop, because something else catches my attention. A feeling, lingering on the edges of my mind. Something that shouldn’t be here, not this way, this heaviness pushing in.
Sorrow.
I go to the window and look out. Storm clouds, blue-black and threatening, cover the mountains. There’s a charge in the air, like lightning.
And sorrow. A very definite flavor of sorrow.
Samjeeza is here.
“Clara?” Angela says. “Earth to Clara.”
It’s not possible, though. The school is on hallowed ground. Samjeeza can’t come here.
I scan the distance, past the parking lot, past the fence where the school grounds end and a field begins, an empty grove of cottonwood trees. I don’t see Samjeeza, but he’s there. There’s a pull to his sorrow this time, a loneliness that calls to me. I lay my hand on the cool glass and let it tug at me. I strain my eyes to see into that field. There’s something black in the tall grass.
“What is it?” Angela asks, coming up beside me. Her voice breaks the spell the sorrow was casting on me. I back away from the window.
Christian is suddenly by my side, and he puts his hand on my shoulder, making me jump again. His green eyes are wide with alarm.
“Do you feel it?” I gasp.
“I feel you. What’s wrong?”
“Samjeeza is here.” Somehow I have the presence of mind to keep my voice low, so I’m not shouting this thing to the entire school.
“Here?” Angela repeats in a stunned voice from behind him. “Seriously? Where?”
“In the field behind the school. I think he’s in a different form, but I can feel him.”
“I feel him, too,” Christian says. “Although I can’t tell if it’s coming on its own or through you.”
Angela’s eyebrows come together. She concentrates for a few seconds, then exhales.
“I don’t feel anything.” She glances down the hall toward the side door, in the direction of the field. She wants to go out there. She wants to see this angel.
I squeeze her arm, hard. “No.” I reach into my pocket for my cell, then realize Samjeeza still has it. “Do you have your phone?”
She nods and drops her backpack on the floor to pull her phone out of an outer pocket.
“Call my house. Not my cell,” I say quickly, before she dials. “Billy will probably answer.
Tell her what’s going on.”
I turn to Christian. “Go get Mr. Phibbs. He usually eats lunch in his office. Go find him.” He nods once, then sprints back toward the exit. Angela starts talking excitedly into the phone.
“Where’s Tucker?” I ask, ice forming in my chest at the image that flashes through my brain of Tucker heading out to the parking lot, off to rodeo practice. Samjeeza knows him now.
He knows that I love him.
Tucker’s not at the cemetery, I think again.
“He’s right over there,” Angela answers quickly, seeing the terror in my face.
I whip around, spot Tucker immediately, and everything inside me goes limp with relief.
He stands up when he sees me coming, crosses toward me, and puts his arms around me without me even having to ask.
“What’s up?” he asks. “You look like—”
“The angel’s here, out in the field behind the school.” I shiver.
“Right now?”
Oh yes. It’s still there. The sorrow weaving its way to me, wrapping tendrils around my heart, Samjeeza’s sad loneliness like the aching notes of a siren’s song.
“Yes,” I say. “Right now.”
“What do we do?” he asks grimly.
“Stay inside. He can’t enter school grounds. It’s holy ground.” In spite of the dire situation, a side of Tucker’s mouth twists in a wry smile. “School is holy ground. You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Angela, still on the phone, holds her hand up.
“Billy wants to know if we’re all accounted for,” she says.
No, I realize. We’re not. One of us isn’t here. Jeffrey. He stormed out.
Toward the parking lot.
“Clara, wait!” Tucker calls after me, as I run. “You’re running toward him?”
“Stay there!” I yell over my shoulder.
I don’t take any more time to explain. I don’t think about how it might look to the other students. I just run. I barrel out of the cafeteria and down the hall, burst out of the side door, run straight toward the parking lot, following the sorrow. Then I see Jeffrey, walking between the cars, head lifted like he’s listening to something. Curious. Following the call.
“Jeffrey!” I cry.
He stops, glances over his shoulder at me. Scowls. Turns back toward the field. He’s so close to the end of the parking lot. I run, as fast as I’ve ever run, not caring if people see. I focus on closing the distance between my brother and me. I focus everything I have on saving him.
And right at the edge of the low wooden fence that marks the beginning of the field, I reach him.
I grab him by the shoulders and tug him backward so hard we both lose our balance and fall. He tries to push me away from him.
“Jeffrey,” I gasp. “Stop.”
“God, Clara. Calm down. It’s just a dog,” he says, still trying to shake me off.
I scramble to my feet, still hanging on to him. I look out into the field. He’s right. It’s a dog, a large black dog, about the size and shape of a lab, but with thicker fur. Something wolfish in the way it’s sitting there so completely still, looking at us, one ear erect, the other slightly bent.