“You could call the police.”

“On her?”

“On him. About the fire. You could tip them off to where he works.”

I stare at him, dumbfounded.

“He’ll get arrested, but it would get him away from her. He’d be safe,” he says.

“Safe.”

“Safer. He’d have to go back to Jackson. To juvie, maybe, for a while. But it might straighten him out.”

“I don’t think I could do that to him,” I say after a minute. I can’t betray him that way. He’d hate me forever. “I can’t.”

“I know,” Christian says. “I was just putting it out there.”

Jeffrey doesn’t call me after that, but then what did I expect? I think about going back to the pizza place to apologize, but something tells me (namely, Christian tells me) that I would probably end up making things worse. Let him cool down, Christian says. Let you cool down.

Christian and I are miraculously back to normal, back to deep conversations over coffee, racing each other on our morning jogs, laughing as we thrust and parry at each other in fencing class, everything like it was before our date. Well, almost. There’s always this moment at the end of our times hanging out together, as we’re saying good-bye, when I know he wants to ask me out again. To try again. To woo me. Because he thinks that’s part of his purpose.

But he’s decided to let me make the first move, this time. The ball’s in my court. And I don’t know if I’m ready.

Which brings us to late March, and the end of winter quarter, a few days before we’re out for spring break. I’m about to sit down for my lit class final exam, when I get the following text:

Water broke. Do NOT come to the hospital. I’ll call you later.

Angela’s in labor.

I have a pretty hard time concentrating on my test. I keep thinking about her face when she said, I don’t know how to be a mother, her face after Phen disappeared and left her standing in the courtyard, the way the fire in her seemed to burn out right before my eyes. When I talk to her lately she always sounds sleepy, and she always says that she’s fine, gives me some little detail about how she’s preparing for the baby—took a Lamaze class, bought a bassinet, stocked up on diapers—but she’s not her fierce and fiery self. She thinks her life is ruined. Her purpose over with, irrelevant. Lost.

I check my phone after I turn in my final, but there’s no update.

Is he here yet? I text. I try not to think too much about all that might entail.

She doesn’t answer.

About an hour later I’m pacing around my dorm, chewing my fingernails, when Christian knocks on my door.

“Hey, I finished my last final. Do you want to grab some sort of celebratory dinner?” he asks.

“Angela’s in labor!” I burst out.

I almost laugh at the aghast look on his face.

“She texted me a few hours ago, and I don’t know if it’s happened already or not. She told me not to come to the hospital until she called me, but …”

“You’re going to go anyway, aren’t you?”

“I’ll stay in the waiting room or something but … yeah. I want to go.” I put on a coat, because it’s March in Wyoming and probably still freezing. “Do you want to come with me?”

“You mean, you’d take us both to Wyoming? You can do that?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never tried to bring anybody along with me before.” I hold my hand out to him. “Dad does it, though. Want to try?”

He hesitates.

“The waiting room. Not the delivery room,” I emphasize.

“All right.” He takes my hand, and my blood positively boils with our shared power and the anticipation I’m feeling. Zapping us should be no trouble at all.

“Okay, give me your other hand.” I face him, both of our hands joined. He gasps when I summon the glory around us.

“It’s that easy for you, isn’t it?”

“Glory? I’m getting better at it. How about you?”

He looks at his feet, gives me a half-embarrassed smile. “It’s not that easy. I can do it, but it usually takes me a little while. But I can’t cross. That is way beyond me still.”

“Well, glory’s easier when I’m with you,” I say, and am rewarded by his eyes lighting up. “Let’s go.” I close my eyes, think of my backyard in Jackson, the aspen trees, the sound of our babbling brook. The light around us intensifies, red behind my eyelids. Then fades.

I’m not holding Christian’s hand anymore.

I open my eyes.

Tucker’s barn.

Gack, maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t succeed in bringing Christian. I whip out my phone.

Sorry, I text him. Want to try again? I can come back.

It’s okay. I’ll get home the traditional way. See you in a couple days. Say hello to Angela for me.

I look up to see Tucker staring at me from the hayloft.

I’m gone before he has time to form a greeting.

I find Angela in the recovery part of the maternity wing, dressed in a faded blue-and-white hospital gown, staring out the window. The baby’s a few feet away in a plastic bassinet on wheels, wrapped up tightly in a blanket so he looks like a little burrito, sleeping, a tiny blue cap on his head that doesn’t quite cover his thatch of thick, black hair. WEBSTER says a printed card at the end of the tub. His face is all purple and splotchy, swollen around the eyes. He kind of looks like he was just in a boxing match. And lost.

“He’s adorable,” I whisper to Angela. “Why didn’t you text me?”

“I was busy,” she says, and there’s a hollow quality to her voice that makes my heart sink, a terrible dullness in her eyes.

I sit down in a chair near the bed. “So it was pretty bad, huh?”

She shrugs, using only one shoulder like she’s too tired to use both. “It was humiliating, and terrifying, and it hurt. But I survived. They say I can go home tomorrow. We, I mean. We can go home.”

She stares out the window again. It’s a nice day, blue sky, fluffy clouds moving past the glass.

“Good,” I say, for lack of something better. “Do you need me to—”

“My mom can handle it. She’s out getting more supplies right now. She’ll help me.”

“I’ll help you too,” I say. “Seriously. I’m all done with finals. I have almost two weeks off.” I lean forward and put my hand on hers.

She’s feeling such despair that it makes my chest hurt.

“I don’t know anything about babies, but I’m here for you, okay?” I gasp against the pain.

She pulls her hand from under mine, but her eyes soften slightly. “Thanks, C.”

“I don’t think I ever told you how much I admire you for how you’re handling all this,” I say.

She scoffs. “Which part? For the way I lied to everybody about who the father is? For the way I put all my hopes in a silly vision? For how stupid I was to let it happen in the first place?”

“Um, none of the above. For going through with this, even though you’re scared.”

Her lips tighten. “I couldn’t give him away to some stranger, not ever knowing what would happen to him.”

“That’s brave, Ange.”

She shakes her head. Maybe not, she says in my head. Maybe he would have been safer away from me. With a human family. Maybe he would have been better off. Maybe I’m being selfish.

The baby starts making a grunting noise, twisting in the blanket he’s wrapped in. He opens his eyes, golden like hers, and starts to cry, a thin, reedy-sounding wail. The sound sends a prickle down my spine. I jump to my feet.

“Do you want me to hand him to you?” I ask.

She hesitates. “I’ll page the nurse.” She presses a button on the frame of her bed.

I go to the side of the bassinet and look in. He’s so tiny. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so small and new. I’ve never even held a baby before, other than Jeffrey, I guess, and I don’t remember that.

“I don’t want to break him,” I confess to Angela.

“Me either,” she says.

But we’re saved by Anna, who comes into the room a few steps ahead of the nurse. She sweeps right in and lifts the baby, cooing, holds him to her shoulder, but he doesn’t stop crying. She checks his diaper, which is apparently fine. This is clearly a relief to Angela.