“Are you going to tell her?” he asks, so softly I can hardly hear him over the music. His expression is truly pathetic, and where a few moments before anger surged through me, now I feel drained and sad.

“No. I just wanted to tell you. I don’t know why. I wanted you to know.”

“Thanks,” he says. He gives a short, humorless laugh. “I think.”

“Don’t mention it. I mean ever. Really.” I get up to leave.

“I feel like a cheater,” he says then. “All the ribbons and medals and trophies I won in California, they don’t mean anything. It’s like I was taking steroids, only I didn’t know it.”

I know exactly what he means. It’s why I dropped out of ballet, even though I loved it, and why I never picked it up again in Jackson. It felt dishonest, doing so easily, so naturally, what the other girls had to work so hard to accomplish. It was unfair, I thought, to take the attention away from them when I had such a huge advantage. So I quit.

“But if I hold myself back, I feel like a fake,” says Jeffrey. “And that’s worse.”

“I know.”

“I won’t do it,” he says. I look into his dead-serious gray eyes. He swallows, but holds my gaze. “I won’t hold myself back. I won’t pretend to be less than I am.”

“Even if it puts us in danger?” I ask, glancing away.

“What danger? Angela Zerbino’s dangerous?”

That’s when I’m supposed to tell him about the Black Wings. There are bad angels now, angels that hunt us and sometimes kill us. There are shades of gray we didn’t know about before, and it’s something that I should tell him, something that he needs to know, but his eyes are pleading with me not to take any more away from him.

Mom told us that we’re special, but what kind of “gift” comes with a war between angels as the strings attached? Maybe I don’t want any more taken from me either. Maybe I don’t want to be remarkable, don’t want to fly or speak some bizarre angel language or save the world one hot guy at a time. I just want to be human.

“Watch yourself, okay?” I tell Jeffrey.

“I will.” Then he adds, “Thanks. . . . You’re all right sometimes, you know.”

“Remember that next time you’re dragging me out of bed at five in the morning,” I say wearily. “Tell Kimber I said hi, by the way.”

Then I escape to my room and lay in the dark turning the words Black Wing over and over in my head.

Chapter 8

Blue Square Girl

This morning the sun’s so bright it feels like I’m standing on a frozen cloud. I’m at the top of a run called Wide Open. It’s a double blue square—more difficult than green circle, but not black diamond level. I’m getting there. The valley below is so white and serene it’s hard to believe it’s the first week of March.

I readjust my goggles, slip my hands into my poles, and flex forward in my boots to test the bindings. All set. I launch myself down the mountain. The cold air whips the exposed part of my face, but I’m grinning like an idiot. It feels so good, the closest I can come to flying. I almost feel the presence of my wings in moments like these, even though they’re not there. There’s a section of moguls on one side of the run, and I try them out, lifting and dropping in and out of them. It makes me aware of the strength of my knees, my legs. I’m getting good at moguls. And powder, which is literally like pushing through cloud, sinking up to your knees in fluffy white snow that flies out behind you as you go. I like to hit the runs first thing in the morning after a new snow, so I can carve my own path through the fresh powder.

I’ve got it bad for skiing. Too bad the season’s almost over.

Wide Open deposits me at South Pass Traverse, a trail that cuts almost horizontally across the mountain. I straighten my skis and push off to gain momentum, cutting through the trees. There’s a bird singing back there somewhere, and when I pass by it stops. The trail opens up onto another groomed slope, Werner, one of my faves, and I stop at the edge. People are setting up giant slalom gates on the hill. Race today.

Which means that Christian will be here.

“What time’s the race?” I call to one of the guys setting up.

“High noon,” he calls back.

I check my watch. It’s a few minutes before eleven. I should go eat, then take the big quad chair up to the top of Werner and watch the race.

At the lodge I spot Tucker Avery having lunch with a girl. This is a new development. I’ve spent almost every weekend this winter at Teton Village (yay Mom for not scoffing at the ridiculously expensive season pass) and almost every weekend I see Tucker sometime in the afternoon, after he’s done with his morning teaching on the bunny hill. But it’s not like I’m bumping into him all over the mountain. He’s more of a backcountry skier, off the groomed trails. I haven’t tried that kind of thing yet—apparently it requires a partner so if something terrible happens to one of you the other can go for help. I’m not into the extreme stuff—my goal is to become a black diamond girl, nothing fancy. Teton Village is funny, with its signs always reminding you that THIS MOUNTAIN IS NOTHING YOU’VE EVER EXPERIENCED BEFORE and if you don’t know what you’re doing, YOU JUST MAY DIE. The backcountry signs say stuff like BEYOND THIS POINT IS A HIGH RISK AREA, WHICH HAS MANY HAZARDS INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, AVALANCHES, CLIFFS, AND HIDDEN OBSTACLES. YOU MAY BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE COST OF YOUR RESCUE and I think, um, no thanks. I choose life.

Is this girl talking to Tucker now his backcountry partner? I take a few discreet steps to the side so I can see her face. It’s Ava Peters. She’s in my chemistry class, definitely one of the pretty people, a little busty with that superlight blond hair that almost looks white. Her dad owns a white-water rafting company. It doesn’t surprise me to see Tucker with a popular girl, even though he’s definitely a Have-Not. At school I’ve noticed that he’s one of those guys who seems to get along with everybody. Everybody but me, that is.

Ava’s wearing too much eye makeup. I wonder if he likes that kind of thing.

He glances over at me and smirks before I have a chance to look away. I smirk back, then try to saunter over to the deli counter, but I can’t pull it off. It’s impossible to saunter in ski boots.

I stand with a few spectators on the side of Werner run and watch Christian hurl himself at the gates, sometimes grazing them with his shoulders as he passes through. It’s graceful, the way his body bends toward the gate, his skis coming up onto their edges and his knees nearly brushing the snow. His movements so careful, so purposeful. His lips pursed in concentration.

After he blasts through the finish line I penguin-walk over to where he’s watching the other racers run the course and say hello.

“Did you win?” I ask.

“I always win. Except when I don’t. This was one of the don’ts.” He shrugs like he doesn’t care, but I can tell by his face that he’s unhappy with his performance

“You looked good to me. Fast, I mean.”

“Thanks,” he says. He fiddles with the number that’s strapped to his chest: 9. It makes me think of 99CX, his license plate.

“Are you trying for the Olympics?”

He shakes his head. “Nope. I’m on the ski team, not the ski club.”

I must look confused, because he smiles and says, “The ski team’s the high school’s official team, which only competes against other teams from Wyoming. The ski club’s where all the hard-core people go, the skiers who get sponsors and national recognition and all that.”

“Don’t you want to win gold medals?”

“I was in club, for a while. But it’s a little too intense for me. Too much pressure. I don’t want to be a professional skier. I just like skiing. I like racing.” He grins suddenly. “The speed is very addictive.”