We’re moving to the boonies. All because of me.
I’ve never seen so much snow. It’s terrifying. My new Prius (courtesy of dear old Dad) is getting a real workout on the snowy mountain road. But there’s no turning back now. The guy at the gas station assured us that the pass through the mountains is perfectly safe, so long as a storm doesn’t come up. All I can do is clutch the steering wheel and try not to pay attention to the way the mountainside plunges off a few feet from the edge of the road.
I spot the WELCOME TO WYOMING sign.
“Hey,” I say to Jeffrey. “This is it.”
He doesn’t answer. He slumps in the passenger seat, angry music pounding from his iPod. The farther we get from California and his sports teams and his friends, the more sullen he becomes. After two days on the road, it’s getting old. I grab the wire and yank one of his earbuds out.
“What?” he says, glaring at me.
“We’re in Wyoming, doofus. We’re almost there.”
“Woo freaking hoo,” he says, and stuffs the earbud back in.
He’s going to hate me for a while.
Jeffrey was a pretty easygoing kid before he found out about the angel stuff. But I know how that goes. One minute you’re a happy fourteen-year-old—good at everything you try, popular, fun—the next you’re a freak with wings. It takes some adjustment. And it was only like a month after he got the news that I received my little mission from heaven. Now we’re dragging him off to Nowheresville, Wyoming, in January, no less, right smack in the middle of the school year.
When Mom announced the move, he yelled, “I’m not going!” with his fists clenched at his sides like he wanted to hit something.
“You are going,” Mom replied, looking up at him coolly. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if you find your purpose in Wyoming, too.”
“I don’t care,” he said. Then he turned and glared at me in a way that makes me cringe every time I remember it.
Mom, for her part, obviously digs Wyoming. She’s been back and forth a few times scouting for a house, enrolling Jeffrey and me in our new school, smoothing out the transition between her job at Apple in California and the work she’ll be doing for them from home after we move. She has chattered for hours about the beautiful scenery that will now be a part of our everyday lives, the fresh air, the wildlife, the weather, and how much we’ll love the winter snow.
That’s why Jeffrey is riding with me. He can’t stand to listen to Mom blather on about how great it’s all going to be. The first time we stopped for gas on the trip he got out of her car, grabbed his backpack, walked over to mine, and got in. No explanation. I guess he decided that he currently hates her more than he does me.
I grab the earbud again.
“It’s not like I wanted this, you know,” I tell him. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
“Whatever.”
My cell rings. I dig around in my pocket and toss the phone to Jeffrey. He catches it, startled.
“Could you get that?” I ask sweetly. “I’m driving.”
He sighs, opens the phone, and puts it to his ear.
“Yeah,” he says. “Okay. Yeah.”
He flips the phone closed.
“She says we’re about to come up on Teton Pass. She wants us to pull over at the lookout.”
Right on cue we come around a corner and the valley where we’ll be living opens up below a range of low hills and jagged blue-and-white mountains. It’s an amazing view, like a scene from a calendar or a postcard. Mom pulls into a turnoff for the “scenic overlook” and I come to a careful stop next to her. She practically bounds out of the car.
“I think she wants us to get out,” I say to Jeffrey.
He just stares at the dashboard.
I open the door and swing out into the mountainy air. It’s like stepping into a freezer. I tug my suddenly-much-too-thin Stanford hoodie over my head and jam my hands deep into the pockets. I can literally see my breath floating away from me every time I exhale.
Mom walks up to Jeffrey’s door and taps on the window.
“Get out of the car,” she commands in a voice that says she means business.
She waves me toward the ridge, where a large wooden sign shows a cartoon cowboy pointing into the valley below. HOWDY STRANGER, it reads. YONDER IS JACKSON HOLE. THE LAST OF THE OLD WEST. There’s a scattering of buildings on either side of a gleaming silver river. That’s Jackson, our new hometown.
“Over there is Teton National Park and Yellowstone.” Mom points toward the horizon. “We’ll have to go there in the spring, check it out.”
Jeffrey joins us on the ridge. He isn’t wearing a jacket, just jeans and a T-shirt, but he doesn’t look cold. He’s too mad to shiver. His expression as he surveys our new environment is carefully blank. A cloud moves over the sun, casting the valley in shadow. The air instantly feels about ten degrees colder. I’m suddenly anxious, like now that I’ve officially arrived in Wyoming the trees will burst into flame and I’ll have to fulfill my purpose on the spot. So much is expected of me in this place.
“Don’t worry.” Mom puts her hands on my shoulders and squeezes briefly. “This is where you belong, Clara.”
“I know.” I try to muster a brave smile.
“You,” she says, moving to Jeffrey, “are going to love the sports here. Snow skiing and waterskiing and rock climbing and all kinds of extreme sports. I give you full permission to hurl yourself off stuff.”
“I guess,” he mutters.
“Great,” she says, seemingly satisfied. She snaps a quick picture of us. Then she moves briskly back to the car. “Now let’s go.”
I follow her as the road twists down the mountain. Another sign catches my eye. WARNING, it says, SHARP CURVES AHEAD.
Right before we reach Jackson we turn onto Spring Gulch Road, which takes us to another long, winding road, this one with a big iron gate we need a pass code to get through. That’s my first inkling that our humble abode is going to be fairly posh. My second clue is all the enormous log houses I see tucked away in the trees. I follow Mom’s car as she turns down a freshly plowed driveway and makes her way slowly through a forest of lodgepole pine, birch, and aspen trees, until we reach a clearing where our new house poses on a small rise.
“Whoa,” I breathe, gazing up at the house through the windshield. “Jeffrey, look.”
The house is made of solid logs and river rock, the roof covered with a blanket of pure white snow like what you see on a gingerbread house, complete with a set of perfect silver icicles dangling along the edges. It’s bigger than our house in California, but cozier somehow, with a long, covered porch and huge windows that look out on a mind-bogglingly spectacular view of the snow-covered mountain range.