Free Unearthly by Cynthia Hand Page B

School tomorrow. I had to make up a spelling test I’d missed in third period, which seemed even more ridiculous.
    â€œQuartarius,” I said, my mom’s name for a quarter angel.
    Q-U-A-R-T-A-R-I-U-S. Clara is a Quartarius.
    I thought about my mom’s strange language. Angelic, she’d called it. So uncanny and beautiful, like notes of a song.
    â€œShow me my wings,” I said.
    My voice sounded strange that time, like there were other higher and lower echoes around my words. I gasped.
    I could speak it.
    And then I felt my wings under me, lifting me upward slightly, one folded beneath the other. They stretched nearly to my heels, glowing white even in the darkness.
    â€œHoly crap!” I exclaimed, then clapped both of my hands over my mouth.
    Very slowly, afraid that I’d make the wings go away again, I got up and turned on the light. Then I stood in front of the bedroom mirror and looked at my wings for the first time. They were real—real wings with real feathers, weighty and tingling and absolute proof that what happened earlier with my mom was no joke. They were so beautiful it made my chest tight to look at them.
    Gently, I touched them. They were warm, alive. I could move them, I found, the same way I could move my arms. Like they were truly a part of me, an extra set of limbs that I’d been oblivious to my whole life up to now. I would have guessed that I had a good ten- to twelve-foot wingspan, but it was hard to be sure. All that wing simply didn’t fit in the mirror.
    Wingspan, I thought, shaking my head. I have a wingspan. This is insane.
    I examined the feathers. Some were very long, smooth and sharp, others softer, more rounded. The shortest feathers, the ones closest to my body where my wings connected at the shoulder, were small and downy, about the size of my thumb. I grabbed one of them and pulled until it came free, which stung so fiercely my eyes teared up. I gazed intently at that feather in my hand, trying to get my head around the fact that it came from me. For a moment it just lay there in my palm, and then, slowly, it started to dissolve, like it was evaporating into the air, until there was nothing left.
    I had wings. I had feathers. I had angel blood in me.
    What happens now? I wondered. I learn to fly? I dangle from a cloud strumming a harp? I’ll receive messages from God? Dread uncurled itself in my gut. Our family was hardly what you’d call religious, but I’d always believed in God. But I was finding out then that there was a big difference between believing in God and knowing that he exists and apparently has some great master plan for my life. It was pretty freaky, to say the least. My understanding of the universe and my place in it had been turned completely upside down in less than twenty-four hours.
    I didn’t know how to make the wings go away again, so I folded them against my back as tightly as I could and lay down on my bed, angling my arms so I could feel the wings underneath me. The house was quiet. It felt like everyone else on the Earth was asleep. Everyone else was the same, and I had changed. All I could do that night was lie there with this knowledge, amazed and frightened, stroking the feathers under me gently, until I fell asleep.

Chapter 5
Hot Bozo
    Christian and I only have one class together, so catching his attention is no easy task. Every day I try to pick my seat in British History so there’s a chance that he’ll sit next to me. And so far in the span of two weeks, the stars align exactly three times and he ends up in the desk next to mine. I smile and say hello. He smiles back and says hi. For a moment, an undeniable force seems to draw us together like magnets. But then he opens his notebook or checks his cell phone under his desk, signifying that our Nice weather we’re having chitchat is over. It’s like, in those few crucial seconds, one of the magnets gets flipped around and pulls him