She smiles at my joke, but it’s just to be polite. A pity smile.
Another long silence.
“Okay, so enough with the chitchat,” I say restlessly. “Let’s talk about our project. I was thinking about the reign of Queen Elizabeth. We could talk about what it was like to be a woman, even a woman with a lot of power, back in the day. A female empowerment kind of project.” For some reason I think this will be right up Angela’s alley.
“Actually,” she says. “I had another idea.”
“Okay. Shoot.”
“I thought we could do a presentation on the Angels of Mons.”
I almost choke. If I’d been drinking water I would have sprayed it all over the table.
“What are the Angels of Mons?” I ask.
“It’s a story from World War I. There was this big battle between the Germans and the British, who were badly outnumbered but won. After it was over there was a rumor going around about these phantom men who appeared to help the British. The mysterious men shot at the Germans with bows and arrows. One version said that the men were standing between the two armies, shining with a kind of unearthly light.”
“Interesting,” I manage.
“It was a hoax, of course. Some writer made it up and it got out of hand. It’s like an early version of UFOs, a crazy story that kept getting told again and again.”
“Okay,” I say, taking a breath. “Sounds like you have it covered.”
I can just picture the look on Mom’s face when I tell her that I’m going to do a project on angels for British History.
“I thought it would be interesting for the class,” says Angela. “A specific moment in time, like Mr. Erikson suggested. I also think we can relate it to today.”
My mind races, trying to think up a tactful way to turn down her idea.
“Yeah, well . . . I did really like the Elizabeth thing, but—” I’m floundering.
She grins.
“What?”
“You should see your face,” she says. “You’re really freaking out.”
“What? No, I’m not.”
She leans forward across the table.
“I want to research angels,” she says. “But it has to be British, because it’s British History after all. And this is the best British angel story there is. And wouldn’t it be crazy if it were true?”
My heart feels like it’s fallen into my stomach.
“I thought you said it was a hoax.”
“Well, yes. That’s what they would have wanted everyone to think, wouldn’t they?”
“Who’s they?”
“The angel-bloods,” she says.
I stand up.
“Clara, sit down. Relax.” Then she adds, “I know.”
“You know wh—”
“Sit down,” she says. In Angelic.
My jaw literally drops.
“How did you—?”
“What, you thought you were the only one?” she says wryly, looking at her nails.
I sink into the chair. I think this classifies as a real, honest-to-goodness revelation. Never in a million years would I have expected to stumble upon another angel-blood at Jackson Hole High School. I’m floored. Angela, on the other hand, is so energized that she’s practically shooting out sparks. She scrutinizes me for a minute, then jumps up.
“Come on.” She bounces onto the stage, still smiling that cat-ate-the-canary kind of grin. She waves at me impatiently to join her. I get up and slowly climb the stairs onto the stage, looking out into the empty theater.
“What?”
She takes off her coat and tosses it into the dark. Then she takes a few steps back so that she’s about arm’s length away from me. She turns to face me.
“All right,” she says.
I’m starting to get pretty alarmed.
“What are you doing?”
“Show thyself,” she says in Angelic.
There’s a flash of light, like a camera’s. I blink and stumble with the sudden weight of my wings on my shoulder blades. Angela is standing with her own wings fully extended behind her, beaming at me.
“So it’s true!” she says excitedly. Tears gleam in her eyes. She furrows her brows a little and her wings disappear with a snap. “Say the words,” she says.
“Show yourself!” I shout.
The flash comes again, and then she’s standing with her wings out. She claps her hands together delightedly.
I’m still stunned.
“How did you know?” I ask.
“The birds tipped me off,” she says. “What you said in class about them.”
So much for laying low. Mom’s going to kill me.
“Birds drive me crazy, too. But I didn’t know if that was a freak coincidence or what. And then I heard you were a whiz in French class,” she says. “I take Spanish, myself. I’m so good at it because I speak fluent Italian, on account of my mom’s family, all those summers in Italy. It’s similar, a Romance language and whatnot. That’s my story, anyway.”
I can’t stop staring at her wings. It’s such a shock for me to see them on someone I don’t know, a crazy juxtaposition: Angela with her glossy black hair sweeping over one side of her face, black tank top, gray jeans with holes in the knees, dark eyeliner and lips, purple fingernails, and then these blindingly white wings stretched out behind her, reflecting the stage lights so she’s lit with a radiance that is positively celestial.
“I didn’t really know for sure, though, until your brother beat the wrestling team,” she says.
“The entire wrestling team?” That’s so not the version I heard from Jeffrey.
“Didn’t you hear about it? He went to the coach and asked to be on the team, the coach said no, tryouts were in November, better luck next year, so Jeffrey said, ‘I’ll wrestle the best guys on the team for each weight class. If they beat me, fine, I’ll try again next year. If I beat them, I’m on the team.’ That’s how the story circulated. I have gym first period, so I was right there, but I didn’t pay much attention until he was halfway through the middleweight. Practically the whole school turned out to watch him beat the champion heavyweight. Toby Jameson. That guy’s a monster. It was an amazing thing to watch. Jeffrey just took him down, didn’t even look winded, and when I saw him like that I knew that he couldn’t be entirely human. And then later I wore the angel shirt to Brit History and watched your face get all tense and broody when you looked at it. So I was pretty sure I was right.”