Billy said once that Black Wings could turn into birds. That’s the only way they can fly; otherwise their sorrow weighs them down. So is this bird an ordinary crow?

I squint up at it. It cocks its head at me and stares right back with unblinking yellow eyes.

Dread, like a trickle of ice water, makes its way down my spine.

Come on, Clara, I think. It’s only a bird.

I scoff at myself and walk quickly past it, hugging my arms to my chest in the cold morning air. The bird squawks, a sharp, jarring warning that sends prickles to the back of my scalp. I keep walking. After a few steps I peer back over my shoulder at the lamppost.

The bird is gone.

I sigh. I tell myself that I’m being paranoid, that I’m just creeped out because of the vision. I try to put the bird out of my mind, and start walking again. Fast. Before I know it, I’m across campus, standing under Christian’s window, pacing back and forth on the sidewalk because I don’t actually know what I’m doing here.

I should have told him about the vision before, but I was too upset that he rejected my being-a-doctor idea. I should have told him before that, even. We’ve been here for almost two weeks, and neither one of us has talked about visions or purpose or any of the other angel-related stuff. We’ve been playing at being college freshmen, pretending that there’s nothing on our plates but learning people’s names and figuring out which rooms our classes are held in and trying not to look like complete morons at this school where everybody seems like a genius.

But I have to tell him now. I need to. Only it’s—I check my phone—seven fifteen in the morning. Too early for the guess-what-you’re-in-my-vision conversation.

Clara? His voice in my head is bleary.

Oh crap, sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.

Where are you?

Outside. I—Here … I dial his number.

He answers on the first ring. “What’s up? Are you okay?”

“Do you want to hang out?” I ask. “I know it’s early….”

I can actually hear him smiling at the other end of the line. “Absolutely. Let’s hang out.”

“Oh, good.”

“But first let me put some pants on.”

“You do that,” I say, glad he can’t see me totally blushing at the idea of him in boxers. “I’ll be right here.”

He emerges a few minutes later in jeans and a brand-new Stanford sweatshirt, his hair rumpled. He restrains himself from hugging me. He’s relieved to see me after our argument at the bookstore a week ago. He wants to say he’s sorry. He wants to tell me that he’ll support me in whatever I decide to do.

He doesn’t have to say any of this out loud.

“Thanks,” I murmur. “That means a lot.”

“So what’s going on?” he asks.

It’s hard to know where to begin. “Do you want to get off campus for a while?”

“Sure,” he says, a spark of curiosity in his green eyes. “I don’t have class until eleven.”

I start walking back toward Roble. “Come on,” I call over my shoulder. He jogs to catch up with me. “Let’s take a drive.”

Twenty minutes later we’re cruising around Mountain View, my old hometown.

“Mercy Street,” Christian reads as we pass through downtown looking for this doughnut shop I used to go to where the maple bars are so good it makes you want to cry. “Church Street. Hope Street. I’m sensing a theme here….”

“They’re just names, Christian. I think someone had a laugh putting city hall on Castro between Church and Mercy. That’s all.” I check my mirrors and find myself unprepared for the glimpse of his gold-flecked eyes gazing at me steadily.

I glance away.

I don’t know what he expects of me now that I am officially single. I don’t know what I expect of myself. I don’t know what I’m doing.

“I’m not expecting anything, Clara,” he says, not looking at me. “If you want to hang with me, great. If you want some space, I get that too.”

I’m relieved. We can take this “we belong together” thing slow, figure out what that really means. We don’t have to rush. We can be friends.

“Thanks,” I say. “And look, I wouldn’t have asked you to hang out with me if I didn’t want to hang out with you.” You’re my best friend, I want to say, but for some reason I don’t.

He smiles. “Take me to your house,” he says impulsively. “I want to see where you lived.”

Awkward conversation officially over. Obediently I make a right toward my old neighborhood. But it’s not my house. Not anymore. It’s somebody else’s house now, and the thought makes me sad: someone else sleeping in my room, someone else at the kitchen window where Mom always used to stand watching the hummingbirds flit from flower to flower in the backyard. But that’s life, I guess. That’s being a grown-up. Leaving places. Moving on.

The sun is coming up behind the rows of houses when we get to my street. Sprinklers cast nets of white mist into the air. I roll the window down and drive with my right hand, let my left hand drag through the cool air outside. It smells so good here, like wet cement and fresh-cut grass, the aroma of bacon and pancakes wafting between the homes, garden roses and magnolia trees, the smells of my life before. It’s surreal, passing along these familiar tree-lined streets, seeing the same cars parked in the driveways, the same people headed off to work, the same kids walking to school, only a little bigger than the last time I saw them. It’s like time has stopped here, and these past two years and all the crazy stuff that went down in Wyoming never took place.

I park the car across the street from my old house.

“Nice,” Christian says, gazing out the open window at the big green two-story with blue shutters that was my home-sweet-home for the first sixteen years of my life. “White picket fence and everything.”

“Yeah, my mom was a traditionalist.”

The house, too, looks exactly the same. I can’t stop staring at the basketball hoop that’s set up over the garage. I can almost hear Jeffrey practicing, the cadence of the ball hitting the cement, his feet shuffling, his exhaled breath as he jumps and puts the ball through the hoop, the way the backboard thumps and the net swishes, and Jeffrey hissing, “Nice,” between his teeth. How many times did I do my homework with that sound in the background?

“He’ll turn up,” Christian says.