Cynthia Hand - Hallowed

I take out a notebook, click my pen to the write position. And stare at the blank page. And stare. And stare.

Where do I see myself in ten years?

“Try to visualize yourself,” Mr. Phibbs says, like he’s spotted me back here in the corner and knows that I’m floundering. I always liked Mr. Phibbs; he’s kind of our own personal Gandalf or Dumbledore or somebody cool like that, complete with round, wire glasses and long white ponytail sticking out of the back of his collar. But right now he’s killing me.

Visualize myself, he says. I close my eyes. Slowly, a picture starts to materialize in my mind. A forest beneath an orange sky. A ridge. Christian, waiting.

I open my eyes. Suddenly I’m furious.

No, I think at no one in particular. That is not my future. That’s past. My future is with Tucker.

It’s not hard to imagine it. I close my eyes again, and with a bit of effort I can see the outline of the big red barn at the Lazy Dog, the sky overhead empty and blue. There’s a man walking a horse in a pasture. It looks like Midas, a beautiful glossy chestnut. And there’s — this is the part where the breath suddenly hitches in my throat — a small boy riding the horse, a tiny dark-haired boy giggling as Tucker — the man is definitely Tucker; I’d know that butt anywhere — leads him around the pasture. The boy sees me, waves. I wave back. Tucker walks the horse over to the fence.

“Look at me, look at me,” says the boy.

“I see you! Hi there, handsome,” I say to Tucker. He leans over the fence to kiss me, taking my face between his hands, and that’s when I see the glint of the plain gold band on his finger.

We’re married.

It’s the best daydream of all time. I know somewhere deep down that it’s only a daydream, the combination of my active imagination and wishful thinking. Not a vision. Not the future that’s been set for me. But it’s the one I want.

I open my eyes, tighten my fingers around my pen, and write: “In ten years, I will be married. I will have a child. I will be happy.”

I click the pen closed and stare at the words. They surprise me. I’ve never been one of those girls, either, who dreamed of getting married, never forced a boy to say vows with me on the playground or dressed up in bedsheets and pretended to walk down the aisle. When I was a kid I fashioned swords out of tree branches, and Jeffrey and I chased each other around the backyard yelling, “Surrender or die!” Not that I was a tomboy. I liked the color purple and nail polish and sleepovers and writing my crush’s name in the margins of my notebooks at school as much as any other girl. But I never honestly considered being married. Being Mrs. Somebody. I guess I assumed that I’d get married eventually. It just seemed like it was too far away to worry about.

But maybe I am one of those girls.

I look at the page again. I’ve got three sentences. Wendy is obviously writing an entire book on how awesome her life is going to turn out, and I’ve got three sentences. I have a feeling they’re not the kind of sentences that Mr. Phibbs is going to appreciate.

“Okay, five more minutes,” says Mr. Phibbs. “Then we’ll share.” Panic sets in. I’m going to have to make something up. What should I want to be?

Angela’s going to be a poet, Wendy’s a vet, Kay Patterson over there is head of a sorority house and marries a senator, Shawn is an Olympic-gold snowboarder, Jason’s one of those computer programmers who makes a gazillion dollars coming up with some new way to Google, and I’m — I’m — I’m a cruise ship director. I’m a famous ballerina for the New York City Ballet. I’m a heart surgeon.

I go with heart surgeon. My pen flies across the page.

“Time’s up,” says Mr. Phibbs. “Finish your sentence and then we’ll share.” I read back over what I’ve written. It’s good stuff. Completely bogus, but something.

“There’s nothing more inspiring than the complexity and beauty of the human heart,” I write as my last sentence, and I can nearly make myself believe it. The daydream about Tucker has almost faded from my mind.

“Heart surgeon, huh?” says Angela as we walk together up the boardwalk on Broadway in Jackson.

I shrug. “You went with lawyer. You really think you’re going to be a lawyer?”

“I’d make an excellent lawyer.”

We step under the archway that says PINK GARTER, and Angela fishes out her keys to unlock the door. As usual for this time of day, the theater looks completely deserted.

“Come on.” She puts her hand on my shoulder and pushes me through the empty lobby.

For a minute we stand there in the dark. Then Angela slips away, disappearing into the black, and a moment later a halo of light appears on the stage, which is still decked out with the set of Oklahoma! , a fake farmhouse and corn. I wander reluctantly down the aisle, past the rows of red velvet seats and up to the line of clean white tables in front of the orchestra pit, where all last year Angela and I sat with Angela’s notebooks and stacks of dusty old books and talked angels, angels, angels until sometimes I thought my brain would melt.

Angela practically skips up to the front of the theater. She climbs the stairs at the edge of the stage and stands looking out, so she can get a clear view of anybody coming in. Under the lights her long black hair glows a shade of deep blue that isn’t entirely natural. She sweeps her bangs behind her ear and looks down at me with this super-pleased-with-herself expression. I swallow.

“So what’s this all about?” I ask, trying to sound like I don’t care. “I’m dying to know.”

“Patience is a virtue,” she quips.

“I’m not that virtuous.”

She smiles mysteriously. “You think I haven’t guessed that already?” A figure appears in the back of the theater, and I get that panicky tightness in my chest.

Then the figure comes into the light, and my breath catches for a different reason.

It isn’t Christian. It’s my brother.

I glance up at Angela. She shrugs. “He deserves to know everything we know, right?” I turn back and look at Jeffrey. He shifts uncomfortably from one foot to the other.

Jeffrey’s been hard to figure out lately. Something is definitely up with him. First, there was the night of the fire, when he came tearing out of the trees like the devil was chasing him, his wings the color of lead. I don’t know if that means anything, the state of his spiritual well-being or whatnot, since my wings at that time were pretty dark too, on account of the soot. He said he was out there looking for me, which I don’t buy. But one thing’s for sure, he was out there. In the forest. During the fire. Then the next day he was glued to the television, watching every minute of the news. Like he was expecting something. And later we had this conversation: Me (after spilling the beans about finding Christian in the forest and him being an angel-blood): “So it was kind of a good thing that I saved Tucker instead.” Jeffrey: “Well, what were you supposed to do, if your purpose wasn’t about saving Christian?”

The million-dollar question.

Me (miserably): “I don’t know.”

Then Jeffrey did the oddest thing. He laughed, a bitter laugh, false, which instantly rubbed me the wrong way. I’d just confessed that I’d messed up the most important thing I was ever supposed to do in my life, my reason for being on this earth, and he laughed at me.

“What?” I barked at him. “What’s so funny?”

“Man,” he said. “This is like a freaking Greek tragedy.” He shook his head in disbelief.

“You saved Tucker instead.”

I may have called him a jerk-face or something. But he kept laughing, until I seriously wanted to smack him, and then Mom caught wind of the impending violence in that uncanny way she has and said, “Enough, both of you,” and I’d stalked off to my room.