And here’s what I’d want her to say: It’s time to stop being afraid, Clara. There’s always going to be danger. Live your life.
I turn the phone off and set it on my desk.
I won’t let you do this to me, I think at the bird, even though it’s not present at the moment. I’m not scared of you. And I’m not going to let you drive me away.
5
I REALLY WANT A CHEESEBURGER
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.