The days start zipping by, October leaning toward November. I get caught up in the busyness of school, the “Stanford duck syndrome,” which is where it appears like you’re swimming calmly, but under the water you’re furiously kicking. I go to class five days a week, five or six hours a day. I study roughly two hours for every hour I spend in class. That’s at least seventy-five hours a week, if you do the math. Then once you subtract sleeping and eating and showering and having sporadic visions of me and Christian hiding in a dark room, I’m left with about twenty hours to hit the occasional party with the other Roble girls, or get my Saturday afternoon coffee with Christian, or go snack shopping with Wan Chen, or go to the movies or the beach or learn how to play Frisbee golf in the Oval. Jeffrey’s also calling me every once in a while, which is a huge relief, and we’ve been having an almost-weekly breakfast together at the café where Mom used to take us when we were kids.
So there’s not much time to think about anything but school. Which suits me just fine.
I keep seeing the crow around campus, but I do my best to ignore it, and the more times I see it and nothing happens, the more I believe what I keep telling myself: that if I don’t engage it, everything will be fine. It doesn’t matter if it’s Samjeeza or not. I try to act like everything’s normal.
But then one day Wan Chen and I are coming out of the chemistry building, and I hear somebody call my name. I turn around to see a tall blond man in a boxy brown suit and a black fedora—I’m thinking circa 1965—standing on the lawn. An angel. There’s no denying that.
He also happens to be my dad.
“Uh, hi,” I say lamely. I haven’t seen or heard from him in months, not since the week after Mom died, and now poof. He appears. Like he walked off the set of Mad Men. With a bicycle, bizarrely enough, a pretty blue-and-silver Schwinn that he takes a minute to lean against the side of the building. He jogs over to where Wan Chen and I are standing.
I pull myself together. “So … um, Wan Chen, this is my dad, Michael. Dad, my roommate, Wan Chen.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Dad rumbles.
Wan Chen’s face goes greenish, and she says that she’s got another class to get to, and promptly takes off.
Dad has that effect on humans.
As for me, I am filled with the sense of deep abiding happiness I always get when I’m around my father, a reflection of his inner peace, his connection with heaven, his joy. Then, because I don’t like feeling emotions that are not my own, even the good ones, I try to block him out.
“Did you bike here?” I ask.
He laughs. “No. That’s for you. A birthday present.”
I’m surprised. Never mind that my birthday was in June, and it’s November. I can’t remember ever receiving a birthday gift from Dad in person. In the past he usually sent something extravagant in the mail, a card stuffed with cash or an expensive locket or concert tickets. Money for a car. All nice things, but it always seemed like he was trying to buy me off, make up for the fact that he’d abandoned us.
He frowns, an expression that’s not quite natural on his face. “Your mother arranged the presents,” he confesses. “She knew what you’d want. She was also the one who suggested this bicycle. She said you’d need it.”
I stare at him. “Wait, you mean it was Mom who sent all that stuff?”
He nods in this half-guilty way, like he’s admitted to cheating on the good-father test.
O-kay. So I was actually getting presents from my mom when I thought I was getting presents from my absentee father. That is messed up.
“What about you? Do you even have a birthday?” I ask, for lack of something better to say. “I mean, I always thought your birthday was July eleventh.”
He smiles. “That was the first full day I got to spend with your mother, the first day of our time together. July the eleventh, 1989.”
“Oh. So you’re like twenty-three.”
He nods. “Yes. I’m like twenty-three.”
He looks like Jeffrey, I think as I scrutinize his face. They have the same silver eyes, the same hair, the same golden tone to their skin. The difference is that while Dad is literally as old as the hills, calm, at peace with everything, Jeffrey is sixteen and at peace with nothing. Out there “doing his own thing,” whatever that means.
“You saw Jeffrey?” Dad asks.
“Don’t read my mind; that’s rude. And yes, he came to see me, and he’s called me a couple times, basically because I think he doesn’t want me to look for him. He’s living around here somewhere. We’re going out to Joanie’s Café tomorrow. That’s the only way I can get him to spend time with me—offer free food—but hey, whatever works.” I have a stellar idea. “You should come with us.”
Dad doesn’t even consider it. “He won’t want to talk to me.”
“So what? He’s a teenager. You’re his father,” I say, and what I don’t say, but what he probably hears me think anyway, is You should make him go home.
Dad shakes his head. “I can’t help him, Clara. I’ve seen every possible version of what could happen, and he never listens to me. If anything, my interference would make things worse for him.” He clears his throat. “Anyway, I came here for a reason. I’ve been given the task of training you.”
My heart starts beating fast. “Training me? For what?”
Something in his jaw works as he considers how much to disclose. “I don’t know if you know this about me, but I am a soldier.”
Or the leader of God’s army, but okay, let’s be modest. “Yeah, I kind of did know that.”
“And swordplay is a specialty of mine.”
“Swordplay?” I say this too loudly, and the people walking by flash us alarmed looks. I lower my voice. “You’re going to train me to use a sword? Like … a flaming sword?”
But that’s Christian’s vision, I think immediately. Not mine. Not me, fighting.
Dad shakes his head. “People often mistake it for a flaming sword, from the way the light ripples, but it’s made from glory, not fire. A glory sword.”
I can’t believe I’m hearing this. “A glory sword? Why?”
He hesitates. “It’s part of the plan.”
“I see. So there’s a definite plan. Involving me,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Is there a copy of this master plan written down that I could take a peek at? Just for a minute?”
The corner of his mouth lifts. “It’s a work in progress. So, are you ready?” he asks.
“What, now?”
“No time like the present,” he says, which I can tell he thinks is a joke. He goes over to retrieve the bicycle, and together we meander slowly back toward Roble.
“How’s school, by the way?” he asks, like any other dutiful dad.
“Fine.”
“And how’s your friend?”
I find it bizarre that he’s asking about my friends. “Uh—which one?”
“Angela,” he says. “She’s the reason you came to Stanford, isn’t she?”
“Oh. Yeah. Angela’s doing okay, I think.”
The truth is, I haven’t hung out with Angela since that day at MemChu, almost three weeks ago. I called her this past weekend and asked if she wanted to go to the new gory slasher film that came out on Halloween, and she blew me off. “I’m busy” is all she said. She’s also not interested in going to parties or even poetry readings, which I assumed she’d be all over, or doing much of anything besides going to class, and even in our Poet Re-making the World class she’s been oddly quiet and nonopinionated. Lately I’ve seen more of her roommates than I have of Angela: Robin is in my art history class on Mondays and Wednesdays and a lot of times we get coffee after, and Amy and I always seem to show up in the dining hall for breakfast at the same time, where we sit together and chat up a storm. It’s through them that I know that Angela’s either been hanging out at the church or holed up in their room, glued to her laptop or reading big intimidating-looking books or scribbling away in her good old black-and-white composition notebook, wearing sweats most days, sometimes not even bothering to shower. Clearly something more intense than usual is going on with her. I figure it’s her purpose heating up—her obsession with the number seven, the guy in the gray suit, all that jazz.
“I always liked Angela,” Dad says now, which startles me because as far as I know, he only met her that one time. “She’s very passionate in her desire to do what is right. You should look out for her.”
I make a mental note to call Angela as soon as I have a minute. We’ve reached Roble by this point, and Dad stands looking at the building with its ivy-covered facade while I park the bike on the rack outside.
“Do you want to see my room?” I ask a bit awkwardly.
“Perhaps later,” he says. “Right now we need to find a place where we won’t be disturbed.”
I can’t think of anywhere better than the basement of the dorm, where there’s a study room with no windows. People mostly use it to make phone calls when they don’t want to bother their roommates. “It’s the best I can do on short notice,” I say, as I lead Dad down there. I unlock the door and hold it open for him to see.
“It’s perfect,” he says, and goes right in.
I’m nervous. “Should I stretch out or something?” My voice echoes strangely in this claustrophobic little room. It smells in here, like dirty socks, sour milk, and old cologne.
“First we should decide where you would like to train,” he says.
I gesture around us. “I’m confused.”
“This is the starting point,” he says. “You must decide the ending point.”
“Okay. What are my options?”
“Anywhere,” he answers.
“The Sahara desert? The Taj Mahal? The Eiffel Tower?”
“I think we’d make quite a spectacle practicing swordplay at the Eiffel Tower, but it’s up to you.” He grins goofily, then sobers. “Try somewhere you know well, where you’ll be comfortable and relaxed.”
That’s easy. I don’t even have to think about it for two seconds. “Okay. Take me home. To Jackson.”
“Jackson it is.” Dad moves to stand in front of me. “We will cross now.”
“And what is crossing, exactly?” I ask.
“It’s …” He searches for the words, finds them. “Bending the rules of time and space in order to move from one place to another very quickly. The first step,” he adds dramatically, “is glory.”
I wait for something to happen, but nothing does. I look at Dad. He nods his head at me expectantly.
“What, I’m going to do it?”
“You’ve done this before, haven’t you? You brought your mother back from hell.”
“Yes, but I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“Brick by brick, my dear,” he says.
I swallow. “What, I’m like building Rome now? Maybe we should start with something smaller.” I close my eyes, try to center myself in the now, try to stop thinking, stop processing, just be. I listen to my breath drag in and out of my body, try to empty myself, forget myself, because only then can I reach that quiet place inside me that’s part of the light.
“Good,” Dad murmurs, and I open my eyes to glory’s golden wash around us.
“In this state,” he says, “you have access to anything you ask for. You must simply learn how to ask.”
“Anything?” I repeat skeptically.
“If you ask and you believe, yes. Anything.”
“So if I really wanted a cheeseburger, like right now …”
He laughs, and the sound echoes around us like a chorus of bells. His eyes are molten silver in this light, his hair gleaming.
“I suppose I’ve had stranger requests.” He holds out his hand, and something golden brown appears in it. I take it. It’s like bread, only lighter.
“What is it?” I ask. Because it’s so not a cheeseburger.
“Taste it.”
I hesitate, then take a bite. It explodes on my tongue, like the best buttery croissant I’ve ever had, almost melting in my mouth, leaving a faint aftertaste of honey. I scarf down the rest, and afterward I feel completely satisfied. Not full. But content.
“This stuff is amazing,” I say, resisting the urge to lick my fingers. “And you can produce this out of thin air, anytime you want?”
“I ask, and it comes,” he says. “But now, focus. Where were we?”
“You said that in glory we can access anything.”
“Yes. That is how one passes between heaven and earth, and how it’s possible for me to travel from one place on earth to another. One time to another.”
I get momentarily excited. “Are you going to teach me how to move through time, too?”
I like the idea of giving myself an extra hour to study for exams, or finding out who’s going to win the Stanford-Berkeley game before it happens. Or—a lump jumps up in my throat—I could go to see Mom. In the past.
Dad frowns. “No.”
“Oh,” I say, disappointed. “Not part of the plan, huh?”
He puts his hand on my shoulder, squeezes gently. “You will see your mother again, Clara.”
“When?” I ask, my voice suddenly hoarse. “When I die?”
“When you need it most,” he says, ambiguous as ever.
I clear my throat. “But for now, I can what, cross to wherever I want to go?”
He takes my hands in his, looks into my eyes. “Yes. You can.”
“That could come in extremely handy when I’m running late for class.”
“Clara.” He wants me to be serious now. “Crossing is a vital skill. And it’s not as difficult as you might think to achieve,” he says. “We are all connected, everything that lives and breathes in this world, and glory is what binds us.”
Next thing he’ll be talking about the Force, I know it.
“And every place has a piece of that energy, as well. A signature, if you will. So to move from here to there, you must first connect to that energy.”
“Glory. Check.”
“Then you must think of the place you wish to go. Not the location on a map, but the life of that place.”
“Like … the big aspen tree in my front yard in Jackson?”
“That would be ideal,” he says. “Reach for that tree, the power it’s generating from the sun, the roots stretching themselves out in the earth, drinking, the life of the leaves….”
For a minute I’m hypnotized by the sound of his voice. I close my eyes, and I can see it so clearly: my aspen tree, the leaves starting to turn colors and drop, the movement of the chilly autumn wind through the branches, the whispering as it stirs the leaves. It actually makes me shiver, imagining it.
“You’re not imagining it,” Dad says. “We’re here.”
I open my eyes. Gasp. We’re standing in my front yard under the aspen tree. Just like that.
Dad lets go of my hands. “Well done.”
“That was me? Not you?”
“All you.”
“It was … easy.” I’m shocked by how simple it was, such an impossible-sounding thing as going almost a thousand miles in the literal blink of an eye.
“You’re very powerful, Clara,” Dad says. “Even for a Triplare, you’re remarkable. Your connection is strong and steady.”
This makes me want to ask him a dozen questions, like, If that’s true, why don’t I feel more, I don’t know, religious? Why aren’t my wings whiter? Why do I have so many doubts? Instead I say, “Okay, let’s do this. Teach me something else.”
“With pleasure.” He takes off his hat and suit jacket and lays them carefully on the porch railing, then goes to the house and returns with Mom’s kitchen broom, which he promptly snaps into two pieces like it’s a strand of uncooked spaghetti. He holds out one half to me.
“Hey,” I gasp. I know it shouldn’t be a big deal, but I connect the broom with Mom dancing around the kitchen, sweeping theatrically, mock singing “Whistle While You Work” in her most nasally high-pitched Snow White voice. “You broke my broom.”
“I apologize,” he says.
I take my half of the broom, narrow my eyes suspiciously on his face. “I thought this was about glory swords.”
“Brick by brick,” he says again, raising his half of the broom, which is the end with the bristles on it. He brushes it behind my calves, and I jump. “First let’s work on your stance.”
He teaches me about balance, and angles, and anticipating the moves of my opponent. He teaches me to use the strength of my core rather than the muscles of my arm, to feel the blade—er, broom—as an extension of my body. It’s like dancing, I realize very quickly. He moves, and I move in response, keeping time with him, staying light, quick, up on the balls of my feet, avoiding his blows rather than blocking them.
“Good,” he says at last. I think he might even be sweating.
I’m relieved because this fighting thing isn’t too difficult. I thought it might be one of those things like flying, where I totally sucked for a while, but I pick it up pretty quickly, all things considered.
I guess I’m my father’s daughter.
“You are,” Dad says with pride in his voice.
On the other hand, while part of me is all glowy and sweaty and proud that this is going so well, another part finds it crazy. I mean, who uses swords anymore? It feels like theater to me, like play, trouncing around the backyard whacking at my dad with a stick. I can’t imagine it as something dangerous. I’m holding this broom like a sword, and half the time I want to bust out laughing it’s so ridiculous.
But underneath it all, the idea of really wielding a weapon, trying to cut someone with it, totally freaks me out. I don’t want to hurt anybody. I don’t want to fight. Please don’t let it be that I have to fight.
The thought makes me miss a step, and Dad’s section of the broomstick is at my chin. I look up into his eyes, swallow.
“That’s enough for today,” he says.
I nod and drop my piece of broom into the grass. The sun is going down. It’s getting dark now, and cold. I hug my arms to my chest.
“You did well,” Dad says.
“Yeah, you said that already.” I turn away, kick at a fallen pinecone.
I hear him come up behind me. “Sometimes it’s difficult to be the bearer of a sword,” he says gently.
Dad’s known for being tough, the guy who’s called in whenever some big baddie needs a slap-down. Phen talked about him like he was the bad cop in the “good cop/bad cop” scenario, the one who smacks the criminals around. In the old artwork Michael’s always the stern-faced angel hacking up the devil with a sword. His nickname is the Smiter, Phen said. That job would definitely suck. But when I try to peek inside Dad’s mind, all I get is joy. Certainty. An inner stillness like the reflection on the surface of Jackson Lake at sunrise.
I glance over my shoulder at Dad. “You don’t seem too conflicted about bearing a sword.”
He reaches down and picks up my half of the broom, holds the pieces together for a few seconds, then hands the broom back to me in one piece. My mouth drops open like a kid at a magic show. I run my fingers over the place where it was jagged, but I find it perfectly smooth. Not even the paint is marred. It’s like it was never broken.
“I’m at peace with it,” he says.
Together we turn and walk back toward the house. Somewhere off in the trees I hear a bird singing, a bright, simple call.
“Hey, I was wondering….” I stop and work up the guts to bring up something that’s been in the back of my mind ever since he mentioned the word sword. “Would it be okay if Christian trained with us?” His gaze on me is steady and curious, so I go on. “He’s having a vision of using a flaming—I mean glory—sword, and his uncle’s been training him some, but his uncle’s not going to be around much longer, and I think it would be nice—I mean, I think it would be useful for both of us—if you trained us together. Could that be part of the plan?”
He’s quiet for such a long time I’m sure he’s going to say no, but then he blinks a few times and looks at me. “Yes. Perhaps when you’re home for Christmas break, I’ll train you together.”
“Great. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he says simply.
“Do you want to come in?” I say at the edge of the porch. “I think I can scrounge up some cocoa.”
He shakes his head. “Right now it’s time for the next part of your lesson.”
“The next part?”
“You remember how to cross?”
I nod. “Call the glory, think of the place, click your heels together three times and say, ‘There’s no place like home.’”
“I’ve seen that movie,” he says. “One of your mother’s favorites. We watched it every year.”
Us too. Thinking about it makes a sudden tightness in my throat. WOO, she called it. She read the book to me out loud every night before bed when I was seven, and when we were finished, we watched it on DVD, and we sang the songs together, and we tried to do that walk they do when they’re on the yellow brick road, stepping over each other’s legs.
No more WOO with Mom, ever.
“So now what?” I ask Dad, refusing to let myself get choked up again.
He grins, a wicked grin, even though he’s an angel. “Now you get yourself home.”
And just like that, he vanishes. No glory or anything. Just fft. Gone.
He expects me to cross back to California on my own.
“Dad? Not funny,” I call.
In answer, the wind picks up and sends a bunch of red aspen leaves into my hair.
“Great. Just great,” I mutter.
I put the broom in the hallway, near the door, in case we need it again. Then I wander back into the yard and summon a circle of glory. I check my watch and determine that Wan Chen’s going to be in class for another hour, so I close my eyes and concentrate on my room, the lavender bedspread, the small desk in the corner that is always messy with papers and books, the air conditioner in the window.
I can picture it all perfectly, but when I open my eyes, I’m still in Jackson.
Dad told me to focus on something living, but we don’t even own a houseplant. Maybe this isn’t going to be so easy after all.
I close my eyes again. There’s the smell of mountain snow on the air. I shiver. I would have brought a coat if I’d known I was going to be in Wyoming today. I’m a wuss about cold.
You’re my California flower, I remember Tucker saying to me once. We were sitting on the pasture fence at the Lazy Dog, watching his dad break in a colt, the leaves in the trees red just like they are today. I started shivering so hard my teeth actually began to chatter, and Tucker laughed at me and called me that—his delicate California flower—and wrapped me in his coat.
All at once I become aware of the smell of horse manure. Hay. Diesel fuel. A hint of Oreos.
Oh no.
My eyes fly open. I’m in the barn at the Lazy Dog. I haven’t gone to my home.
I’ve gone to Tucker’s.
I’m so startled I lose the glory. And right that minute Tucker comes whistling into the barn carrying a bucket of horseshoes. He sees me, and the tune fades from his lips. He promptly drops the bucket, which lands on his foot, which makes him jerk his foot up and start hopping on the other one.
For a long minute we just stare at each other. He stops hopping and stands with his hands shoved in his pockets, wearing a flannel shirt that’s one of my favorites, blue plaid, which makes his eyes so beautiful. I flash back to the last time I saw him, almost six months ago, Yellowstone and the brink of a waterfall and a kiss that meant good-bye. It feels like it happened a lifetime ago, and at the same time like it happened yesterday. I can still taste him on my lips.
He frowns. “What are you doing here, Clara?”
Clara. Not Carrots.
I don’t know how to answer him, so I shrug. “I was in the neighborhood?”
He snorts. “Isn’t your neighborhood about a thousand miles southwest of here?”
He sounds mad. Something in my gut twists. Of course he has all sorts of reasons to be mad at me. I’d probably be furious if the situation were reversed. I hid things from him. I pushed him away when all he wanted was to be there for me. Oh yeah, and I almost got him killed, let’s not forget. And I kissed Christian. That was the kicker. Then I had to go and break his heart.
He rubs the back of his neck, still frowning deeply. “No, seriously, what are you doing here? What do you want?”
“Nothing,” I say lamely. “I … came here by accident. My dad’s teaching me how to move through time and space, something he calls crossing, which is like teleporting yourself to where you want to go. He thought it would be hilarious to leave me to get home all by myself, and when I tried, I ended up here.”
I can tell by his face that he doesn’t believe me. “Oh,” he says wryly. “Is that all? You teleported.”
“Yeah. I did.” I’m starting to get irritated, now that I’m finally over the shock of seeing him again. There’s something about his expression, a wariness that instantly rubs me the wrong way. The last time he looked at me like that was after we first kissed, right here in almost exactly this spot, when I lit up with all my happy glory and he knew I was something otherworldly. He’s looking at me like I’m some strange unearthly creature, something not human.
I don’t like it.
“You can mess with time, huh?” he says, rubbing his neck. “Think you could go back about five minutes and warn me about dropping the bucket of horseshoes? I think I might have busted one of my toes.”
“I can fix it,” I say automatically, stepping forward.
He takes a quick step back, puts a hand up to stop me. “With your glory thing? No, thanks. That always makes me want to puke.”
It hurts, him saying that. It makes me feel like a freak.
So he’s decided to go with the old reliable Tucker-the-jerk routine. And what I extra-triple-hate about this is that I know he’s not a jerk, not even a little bit of a jerk, but he’s putting on his jerk hat special for me because I’ve hurt him, and because he wants to keep me at a distance, and because it makes him angry to see me here.
“So you were trying to get back home to California,” he says, putting a heavy emphasis on the words home and California. “And you ended up here. How’d that happen?”
I meet his eyes, and there’s a question in them that’s different from the one he asked.
“Bad luck, I guess,” I answer.
He nods, bends to pick up the scattered horseshoes at his feet, then straightens. “Are you going to stay out here all night?” he asks, the very definition of surly. “Because I have chores to do.”
“Oh, by all means, don’t let me keep you from your chores,” I retort.
“Horse stalls won’t muck themselves.” He grabs a shovel and offers it to me. “Unless it’d make your little heart go pitter-pat to get to work on a real-live working ranch.”
“No, thanks,” I say, stung that he’d treat me like a city slicker after everything. I feel a flash of despair. Then anger. This is not how I imagined it would be, seeing him again. He’s making it difficult on purpose.
Fine, I think. If that’s how he wants it.
“I can go right now,” I say, “but to do that I’ll have to use glory, so you might want to step outside for a minute. I’d hate to make you puke all over your nice boots.”
“Okay,” he says. “Don’t trip on your way out.”
“Oh, I won’t,” I say, because I can’t think of a witty comeback, and I wait until he slips out of the barn before I summon glory and will myself anywhere but here.