No such luck.

“First get me out of this thing.” I gesture to the dress.

She moves around me quickly, loosening and unfastening all the laces and ties. I go into the dressing room and change back into my normal clothes. When I come out, she’s sitting at one of the tables drumming her pencil on her notebook.

“Okay,” she says. “Tell me.”

I take a seat across from her.

“Every angel-blood has a purpose on Earth. Usually it comes in the form of a vision.”

She scribbles furiously into her notebook.

“When do you see this vision?” she asks.

“Everybody’s different, but sometime between thirteen and twenty, usually. It happens after your powers start to manifest. I only got mine last year.”

“And you only receive one purpose?”

“As far as I know. Mom always says it’s the one thing I was put on this Earth to do.”

“So what happens if you don’t do it?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

“And what happens after you complete it? You go on to live a normal, happy life?”

“I don’t know,” I say again. Some expert I’m turning out to be. “Mom won’t tell me any of that.”

“What’s yours?” she asks, still writing.

She looks up when I don’t say anything. “Oh, is it supposed to be a secret?”

“I don’t know. It’s just personal.”

“It’s okay,” she says. “You don’t have to tell me.”

But I want to tell her. I want to talk about it with someone other than my mom.

“It’s about Christian Prescott.”

She puts her pencil down, her face so surprised I almost laugh.

“Christian Prescott?” she repeats like I’m about to hit her with the punch line to a very silly joke.

“I see a forest fire, and then I see Christian standing in the trees. I think I’m supposed to save him.”

“Wow.”

“I know.”

She’s quiet for a minute.

“That’s why you moved here?” she asks finally.

“Yep. I saw Christian’s truck in my vision, and I read the license plate, so that’s how we knew to come here.”

“Wow.”

“You can stop saying that.”

“When is it supposed to happen?”

“I wish I knew. Sometime during fire season is all I know.”

“No wonder you’re so obsessed with him.”

“Ange!”

“Oh, come on. You eye-hump him all through British History. I thought you were just enraptured, the way everyone else at school seems to be. I’m happy to find out that you have a good reason.”

“Okay, enough angel talk,” I say, getting up and heading for the door. I’m sure I’m beet red by this point. “Our lasagna’s getting cold.”

“But you didn’t ask me about my purpose,” she says.

I stop.

“You know your purpose?”

“Well, I didn’t know until now that it was my purpose. But I’ve been having the same daydream thing, over and over again, for like three years.”

“What is it? If you don’t mind me asking.”

She looks serious all of a sudden.

“No, it’s fine,” she says. “There’s a big courtyard, and I’m walking through it fast, almost running, like I’m late. There are lots of people around, people with backpacks and cups of coffee, so I think it’s like a college campus or something. It’s midmorning. I run up a set of stone steps, and at the top is a man in a gray suit. I put my hand on his shoulder, and he turns.”

She stops talking, staring off into the darkened theater like right now she’s seeing it play out in her mind.

“And?” I prompt.

She glances over at me uncomfortably.

“I don’t know. I think I’m supposed to deliver a message to him. There are words, there are things I am supposed to say, but I never can remember them.”

“They’ll come to you, when the time is right,” I say.

I sound just like my mom.

What’s comforting about Angela, I think as I get ready for bed that night, is that she reminds me that I’m not alone. Maybe I shouldn’t feel alone, anyway, since I have Mom and Jeffrey, but I do, like I’m the only person in the world who has to face this divine purpose. Now I’m not. And Angela, in spite of her know-it-all nature, doesn’t know what her purpose means any more than I do, and no amount of research or theorizing can help her. She simply has to wait for the answers. It makes me feel better, knowing that. Like I suck a smidge less.

“Hey, you,” says Mom, poking her head in my room. “Did you have a good time with Angela?” Her face is carefully neutral, the way it always is whenever the topic of Angela comes up.

“Yeah, we finished our project. We’re doing it tomorrow. So I guess we won’t be hanging out as much now.”

“Good, we’ll have some time for flying lessons.”

“Awesome,” I deadpan.

She frowns. “I’m glad about Angela.” She comes into my room and sits next to me on the bed. “I think it’s great that you can have an angel-blood friend.”

“You do?”

“Absolutely. You need to be careful, that’s all.”

“Right, because everyone knows what a hooligan Angela is.”

“You feel like you can be yourself around Angela,” she says. “I get that. But angel-bloods are different. They’re not like your normal friends. You never know what their real intentions might be.”

“Paranoid much?”

“Just be careful,” she says.

She doesn’t even know Angela. Or her purpose. She doesn’t know how fun and smart Angela is, all the cool things that I’ve learned from her.

“Mom,” I say hesitantly. “How long did it take you to get all the pieces for your purpose? When did you know—for absolute certain—what it was that you had to do?”

“I didn’t.” Her eyes are mournful for a few seconds, and then her expression becomes guarded, her body going stiff all the way up to her face. She thinks she’s already said too much. She’s not going to give me anything else.

I sigh.

“Mom, why can’t you just tell me?”

“I meant,” she continues like she didn’t even hear my question, “that I didn’t ever know for absolute certain. Not absolute. The whole process is usually very intuitive.”