I don’t immediately see Angela among the scattering of students who are gathered here, most of them walking slowly in an indiscernible pattern at the front of the sanctuary. I wander down the red-carpeted aisle toward them, past the rows of mahogany pews, my skin prickling at the depictions of angels everywhere, in the stained-glass windows, in the mosaics on both sides of me, in the space between the arches on the ceiling: angels everywhere, gazing down, always with their wings unfurled behind them. One of them is probably Michael, I think. All I have to do to find my dad is go to church.
I spot Angela. She’s with the others, walking inside a circle at the top of the steps at the front. Something’s laid out on the floor like an enormous rug, deep blue with white patterns on it, a kind of path that goes in loops. She doesn’t see me. Her lips are pursed in concentration, and then they move like she’s saying something, but I don’t hear a sound outside of the shuffling of feet, the whisper of clothing as people walk. She stops in the center of the circle, bends her head for a long moment, her hair obscuring her face, then starts up again, walking slowly, her arms swinging by her sides.
My empathy surges to life. I can feel them all, every single one of the people inside the circle. There is a girl on my left who’s homesick. She misses the big city, her family’s walk-up in Brooklyn, her two little sisters. A guy who’s stopped in the center wants desperately to ace his first calculus test. Another guy is wondering about a blonde in his film-studies class, whether she thinks he has good taste in movies, whether she likes him, and then he feels guilty for thinking about such things in a church. Their emotions and the entwined thoughts are like wafts of air hitting me in the stillness of this place—hot and cold, fear and loneliness and hope and happiness—but I get a sense that it’s all emptying out, as if the feelings cluttering their brains are slowly being drawn into the circle like water swirling down a drain.
And above the rest of them I feel Angela. Focused. Full of purpose. Determination. Seeking the truth with the persistence of a guided missile.
I take a seat in the front pew and wait, lean forward onto my knees and close my eyes. I have a sudden memory of Jeffrey as a kid, back when we went to church when I was little, falling asleep in the middle of a sermon. Mom and I had a hard time trying not to laugh at him, all slumped over like that, but then he started snoring, and Mom poked him in the ribs, and he jolted upright.
What? he whispered. I was praying.
I stifle a laugh, remembering that. I was praying. Classic.
I open my eyes. Someone is sitting next to me putting on shoes: a pair of boots, beat-up and black with ratty laces. Angela’s. I look over at her. She’s wearing a baggy black sweatshirt and purple leggings, a little grungier than usual, no makeup, not even the normal black around her eyes. She’s got that same look on her face that she got last year when she was trying to figure out what college to go to: a mix of frustration and excitement.
“Hi,” I start to say, but she shushes me, gestures to the door. I follow her out of the church, glad for the fresh air on my face, the sudden sun, the breeze that shifts the fronds in the palm trees at the edge of the quad.
“Took you long enough to get here,” Angela says.
“What is that thing anyway, in the church?”
“It’s a labyrinth. A knockoff of one, anyway. It’s made of vinyl so they can roll it up and move it around. It’s patterned after these huge stone labyrinths they have in churches in Europe. The idea is that walking in circles can free the mind so that you can pray.”
I arch an eyebrow at her.
“I was thinking about my purpose,” she says.
“Does it work? Was your mind freed?”
She shrugs. “At first I thought it was pointless, but I’ve been having a hard time concentrating lately.” She clears her throat. “So I tried it, and after a while I got this amazing clarity. It’s weird. It just steals over you. Then I figured out that I could make the vision come to me this way.”
“Make the vision come? On purpose?”
She scoffs. “Of course on purpose.”
Knowing this instantly makes me want to go back inside and try it. Maybe I’d get more than that little bit of darkness. Maybe I’d figure my vision out. But there’s another part of me that shudders at the thought of going to the pitch-black room voluntarily.
“So. Why I texted you,” Angela says, her shoulders tense. “I have the words.”
I stare at her. She throws her hands up in exasperation.
“The words! The words! All this time—I mean, for years, C—I’ve been seeing this place in my visions, and I know I’m supposed to say something to somebody, but I never hear myself say the words. It’s been driving me crazy, especially since I got here and I know it’s going to happen pretty soon—within the next four years, I’m guessing anyway. I’m supposed to be a messenger, at least that’s what I thought, but I never knew the message, until now.” She takes a breath, sighs it out. Closes her eyes. “The words.”
“So what are they?”
She opens her eyes, her irises a flash of eager gold.
“The seventh is ours,” she says.
Okay. “So what does that mean?”
Her face falls, like maybe she was expecting me to know the answer and share it with her. “Well, I know that the number seven is like the most significant of all the numbers.”
“Why, because there are seven days in a week?”
“Yes,” she says, completely straight-faced. “Seven days in a week. Seven notes on the music scale. Seven colors in the spectrum.”
She is seriously obsessed with this. But I guess that comes as no real surprise. It’s Angela.
“Huh. So your vision is brought to you by the number seven,” I joke. I can’t help but think of Sesame Street. This episode is brought to you by the number twelve and the letter Z.
“Hey, C, this is serious,” she says. “Seven is the number of perfection and divine completion. It’s God’s number.”
“God’s number,” I repeat. “But what does it mean, Ange? ‘The seventh is ours’?”
“I don’t know,” she confesses, frowning. “I have considered that it might be an object of some kind. Or a date, I suppose. But …” She grabs my hand. “Here, come with me.”
She pulls me across the quad again, essentially retracing the route I used to get here, all the way out into the arcade, where there’s a group of black statues, a replica of Rodin’s Burghers of Calais, six mournful-looking men with ropes around their necks. I don’t know the history or what doom they’re supposed to be going toward, but they’re clearly walking to their deaths, which I’ve always found weird and unsettling to run into in the middle of Stanford’s bustling campus. Kind of a downer.