Let him comfort her, I think.

“He left,” says Christian.

“He left,” I repeat incredulously.

“So I was thinking,” says Christian, red in the face now, “that I should take Kay home.”

I stare at him, stunned.

“I’ll come right back and get you,” he says quickly. “I thought I’d get her home safe and then I’d take you home.”

“I’ll take Clara home,” says Tucker, who’s been standing next to me the whole time.

“No, it’ll only take a minute,” protests Christian, standing up straighter.

“The dance will be over in ten minutes,” says Tucker. “You expect her to wait for you in the parking lot?”

I feel like Cinderella sitting in the middle of the road with a pumpkin and a couple of mice, while Prince Charming charges off to rescue some other chick.

Christian looks sick with guilt.

“Go ahead and take Kay home,” I say, practically choking on the words. “I’ll ride home with Tucker.”

“That’s all right with you?”

“Sure. I have to be home by midnight, remember?”

“I’ll make it up to you,” he says.

I swear I see Tucker roll his eyes.

“Okay.” I look at Tucker. “Can we go now?”

“You bet.”

After I find Wendy and Angela and say good-bye, I wait at the door as Tucker rounds up his other dates. They look at me with something like pity, and for a moment I actually hate Christian Prescott. We ride crammed together in Tucker’s rusty pickup, four girls in formal wear, squeezed into the cab. He drops off the blonde first, because she lives in Jackson. Then the redhead. Then the brunette.

“Bye, Fry,” she says as she gets out of the truck.

Now it’s just him and me in the cab. It’s quiet as he drives out to Spring Creek Road.

“So . . . Fry, huh?” I tease after a while, unable to stand the silence. “What’s that about?”

“Yeah,” he says, shaking his head as if he still can’t understand it. “In junior high they called me Friar Tuck. Now it’s just Fry. But my good friends call me Tuck.”

When we pull into my driveway, I’m already fifteen minutes past my curfew. I open the door, then stop and look at him. “Can you . . . not mention this whole fiasco to anybody else at school?”

“They already know,” he says. “One thing about Jackson Hole High, everybody is in everybody’s business.”

I sigh.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says.

“Yeah, they’ll forget by Monday, right?”

“Right,” he says. I can’t tell if he’s mocking me or not.

“Thanks for the ride,” I say. “Fry.”

He groans, then grins. “My pleasure.”

He’s such a strange guy. Stranger by the minute.

“See you.” I jump down from the truck, slam the door shut, and make for the house.

“Hey, Carrots,” he calls suddenly.

I turn back to him. “You and I will probably get along better if you stop calling me that.”

“You like it.”

“I don’t.”

“What do you see in a guy like Christian Prescott?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” I say wearily. “Anything else you want?”

His dimple appears. “Nope,” he says.

“Good night, then.”

“Night,” he says, and drives off into the dark.

The porch light comes on as I creep up the steps. Mom stands in the doorway.

“That wasn’t Christian,” she says.

“Brilliant observation, Mother.”

“What happened?”

“He’s in love with another girl,” I say, and pull the silver laurel out of my hair.

Later, in the darkest time of night, my vision turns into a nightmare. I’m in the forest. I’m being watched. I feel the amber eyes of the Black Wing. Then he’s holding me down, pressing me into the cold ground beneath, his body blotting out the light. Pine needles stab into my back. I scream and flail. One hand strikes his wing and I pull out a fistful of black feathers. In my fingers they evaporate. I keep pulling at the angel’s wings, each feather a piece of his evil, until he suddenly dissolves into a heavy cloud of smoke, leaving me coughing and panting in the dirt.

I jolt awake, tangled in my blankets. Someone’s standing over my bed. I suck in a breath to start screaming again, but his hand comes over my mouth.

“Clara, it’s me,” Jeffrey says. He removes his hand and sits down at the edge of the bed. “I heard you screaming. Bad dream, huh?”

My heart’s pounding so hard I hear it like a war drum. I nod.

“Want me to get Mom?”

“No. I’m fine.”

“What was it about?”

He still doesn’t know about Black Wings. If I tell him, he’ll be more vulnerable to them, Mom said. I swallow.

“Prom didn’t exactly go as planned.”

His eyebrows bunch together and he frowns. “You had a nightmare about prom?”

“Yeah, well, it was that kind of night.”

He looks over at me like he doesn’t believe me, but I’m too tired to explain how my life seems to be coming apart at the seams.

Chapter 13

Goth Tinker Bell

My cell phone chirps. I take it out of my pocket, look at it, click IGNORE, and then put it back into my pocket. Across the dining room table, Mom raises her eyebrows at me.

“Christian again?”

I cut a bite of French toast and put it in my mouth. I can hardly taste it, I’m that mad. Which makes me madder still. Normally I love French toast.

“Maybe you should talk to him. Give him a chance to make it right,” she says.

I put my fork down.

“The only possible way for him to make it right is if he builds a time machine, goes back to last night, and . . .” My voice fades. And what? And turns his back on Kay while she’s falling apart? And takes me home instead? And kisses me on the doorstep? “I just need to be mad for a little while, okay? I know it might not be the most mature thing, but there it is.”

The phone in the kitchen starts to ring. We look at each other.

“I’ll get it,” she says, and slides out of her chair to grab the phone off the wall.

“Hello?” she says. “I’m afraid she doesn’t want to talk you.”

I slump at the table. My French toast is cold. I pick up my plate and go into the kitchen, where Mom leans against the counter, nodding as she listens to whatever he’s saying. Like she’s totally taking his side.