Boundless (Unearthly) Read Online Free Page B

her.
    “All right, then,” she says. “Let’s get you started.”
    Everybody takes the news that I’ve gone premed in a different way. Wan Chen, for instance, who’s premed herself, reacts like I’m suddenly competition. For a few days she doesn’t say more than two words to me, maneuvering around our tiny dorm room in chilled silence, until she realizes that we’re both in that insanely hard chemistry class and I’m pretty good at chemistry. Then she warms up to me fast. I hear her tell her mother on the phone in Mandarin that I’m a “nice girl, and very smart.” I make an effort not to smile when I hear her say it.
    Angela instantly loves the idea of me as a doctor. “Very cool” are her exact words. “I believe we should use our gifts, you know, for good, not just sit on them unless we’re required to do some angel-related duty. If you can stomach all the blood and guts and gore—which I totally couldn’t, but kudos to you, if you can—then you should go for it.”
    It’s Christian who doesn’t think it’s a good idea.
    “A doctor,” he repeats when I tell him. “What brought this on?”
    I explain about band run and Amy’s miraculously healed ankle and my subsequent aha moment. I expect him to be impressed. Excited for me. Approving. But he frowns.
    “You don’t like it,” I observe. “Why?”
    “It’s too risky.” He looks like he wants to say something else, but we’re standing on the crowded sidewalk outside the Stanford Bookstore, where I’ve bumped into him while coming out with my armload of poetry collections for my humanities class and a giant ten-pound textbook entitled Chemistry: Science of Change , which is what prompted this conversation. You could get caught using glory, he says in my head.
    Relax, I reply. It’s not like I’m going to go around healing people right this minute. I’m looking into it as a possible career path, that’s all. No big deal.
    But it feels like a big deal. It feels like my life finally has a—for lack of a better word—purpose, one that isn’t all about being an angel-blood but makes use of the angel-blood part of me, too. It feels right.
    He sighs.
    I get it, he says. I want to help people, too. But we have to lie low, Clara. You’re lucky that this girl you healed didn’t see what you did. How would you have explained that? What would you do if she was going around campus telling everybody about your magical glowing hands?
    I don’t have an answer for him. My chin lifts. But she didn’t notice. I’ll be careful. I would only use glory when I thought it was safe, and the other times, I’d use regular medical stuff. Which is why I want to become a doctor. I have the power to heal people, Christian. How can I not use it?
    We stand there for a minute, locked in a silent argument about whether or not it’s worth the risk, until it becomes clear that neither of us is going to change our mind. “I have to go,” I say finally, trying not to pout. “I have a set of problems on quantum mechanics to work through, if you think that’s not too dangerous for me to tackle.”
    “Clara …,” Christian starts. “I think it’s great that you found a direction to go in, but …” All it would take is one slip, he says. The wrong person seeing you, one time, and then they could figure out what you are, and they’d come after you.
    I shake my head. I can’t spend my entire life being afraid of the black-winged bogeymen. I have to live my life, Christian. I won’t be stupid about glory, but I won’t sit around and wait for my visions to happen in order to do something with it.
    At the word visions a new worry springs up inside him, and I remember that there was something he promised to tell me. But I don’t want to hear about it now. I want to sulk.
    I shift my heavy load of books to the other arm. “I’ve got to run. I’ll catch you later.”
    “Okay,” he says stiffly. “See you around.”
    I don’t like the feeling that’s