Again I look at Mom. Again she looks away.
The campfire gives a sudden loud pop, which makes us all jump.
“Steve, you’re scaring the children,” Mom scolds.
“We’re not children,” Jeffrey says. “We want to know.”
Billy nods. “Understandable,” she says, casting a significant glance at Mom. “That’s why you’re here. To get answers.”
I get a glimmer of what Mom’s feeling. Resignation. But she’s accepted that this is going to happen, even if it’s so very dangerous for us. It makes her heart beat fast, but she sits there and tries to keep her breathing even.
I guess we really are going to get some answers.
“So you fight the Black Wings?” I ask. “Is that the point of the congregation?”
“No.” Billy shakes her head. “We don’t fight them, not physically speaking, at least not if we can help it. We’d lose, nine times out of ten, maybe ten times out of ten. Our best defense against Black Wings is to stay undetected. Which we’ve largely managed to do. Most of the people here have never even seen a Black Wing, let alone fought one.”
“So what do you do, then?” Jeffrey asks, a tad belligerently, like he’s disappointed not to be battling the fallen angels one-on-one. “If you don’t fight them?”
“We track down angel-bloods,” answers Mr. Phibbs. “Get to them before the other side does. Tell them about who and what they are. Help them.”
“And we follow our purpose,” Mom adds, finally looking at me. “That’s how we do our part. We figure out what we’re supposed to do and we do it.” Interesting.
I’m still not going to accept my purpose if it means that Tucker has to die.
Walter Prescott suddenly stands up on the other side of the fire. “Enough talk,” he says. “I think it’s time for s’mores. Who wants s’mores?”
I look across at Christian. He’s holding a bag of marshmallows in one hand and a bag of chocolate bars in the other like some sort of peace offering. He smiles.
“I do,” Jeffrey says.
Once again, ladies and gentlemen, my brother and his stomach.
Everyone settles into eating. Angela looks downtrodden that the Black Wing conversation is done, but in a few minutes she’s over it, leaning forward again, listening to more stories with a glow in her golden eyes, big smile on her face. She’s on cloud nine, basking in this sense of community she’s never had before. Even Jeffrey likes it here. Earlier he played a game of soccer with some of the other angel-bloods, a real game where he didn’t have to hold anything back.
He’s got this air about him of deep satisfaction, like that’s all he ever wanted, just to play some serious sports and eat some good food and not have to be anything but what he is.
I should feel like that too, I guess, enjoying this thing. So why don’t I?
Let’s see, chimes the voice in my head, well, you failed at your purpose. How many of the people here did that? And it looks like your boyfriend is destined to die. And your mom clearly doesn’ t trust you as far as she can throw you. And you don’ t know these people, but they’ re all looking at you like they know you.
“So, Mr. Prescott,” says Mr. Phibbs when we’re all tapped out on s’mores, sticky with marshmallow and smeared with chocolate. I wonder if angel-bloods can have sugar comas.
“Me?” asks Christian. He has chocolate on his chin.
“Yes, you,” says Mr. Phibbs. “You’re our newest member, I hear.”
“Yes, sir,” says Christian, his face getting red.
You’re a member? I think at him incredulously.
He blinks in surprise that I am talking to him via brain. That it could be that easy, between us, when it’s so hard with everyone else. Yes. As of this morning.
And how does one become a member, exactly?
You make a promise to serve the light. To fight for the side of good.
I thought they said they didn’t fight.
He gives me the mental equivalent of a shrug.
And that’s what you did this morning?
Yes, he says unwaveringly. I took an oath.
And so the revelations keep on coming.
“How is any of this possible?” I ask Angela later, when we’re both in our pj’s, snuggled up in our sleeping bags. We zipped the top off the tent so we can look up and see the spattering of stars over our heads. The air is cooler than it was earlier, but still completely comfortable. We don’t even need tents, at least not for the weather, although they do afford us some sense of privacy out here in the open meadow, where separate fires are spread all around us. Every now and then I catch the scent of snow on the wind, and it reminds me that we’re in this magic oasis in the middle of the forest, that everywhere else it’s winter, but here it’s summer.
“Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” I say to Angela.
“I know, right?” Angela says with a laugh. “It’s Billy.”
“What do you mean?” I turn over onto my side to look at her.
“Billy can do things with the weather. I guess it’s an extremely rare gift for an angel-blood. I’d never even heard of it before. Billy comes out here about a week before the meeting and makes it all grow.”
“So Billy told you all this?”
“She told me some,” Angela says. “Not as much as I wanted her to. She was nice to me and all, but she really just wanted to gab with your mom. They seem like best friends.”
“They do,” I agree. “It’s so weird.”
My mom has a best friend, someone I don’t remember, someone I didn’t even know about until today. I think about the way they sat together at the fire, with the same blanket wrapped around them, and how Billy would sometimes lean to whisper something in Mom’s ear that made her smile.
How could she not tell me about her best friend?
“This is so awesome,” Angela says. She turns to me with bright eyes. “Want to hear more about what I did learn?”
I can’t help but giggle at the excited puppy-dog expression on her face. “You’re like a kid in a candy store here, aren’t you?”
“Oh come on, can you blame me? This is an amazing research opportunity.” Leave it to Angela to see this as a “research opportunity.”
“Okay, let’s hear it,” I say.
She fishes her notebook out of her bag and turns on a flashlight, flips through the pages to find her place.