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meet his eyes. Then I know without having to ask that Walter’s dying and that it’s the one-hundred-and-twenty-years rule.
    “Oh, Christian. When?” I whisper.
    Soon. A few months, is his best guess. He doesn’t want me to be there, he says silently, because he doesn’t think he’ll be able to say it out loud. It hurts him so much, Walter telling him to stay away, the idea that he might never get to spend time with him again. He doesn’t want me to see him like that.
    I understand. At the end my mom was so weak she couldn’t even walk to the bathroom. That was one of the worst parts of it, the indignity of it all. Her body giving out. Giving up.
    I scoot over and slip my hand into his, which startles him. The familiar electricity passes between us, making me feel stronger. Braver. I rest my head on his shoulder. I try to comfort him the way he’s always managed to comfort me.
    I’m right here, I tell him. I’m not going anywhere. For what it’s worth.
    “Thanks.”
    “Forget all the gloom-and-doom stuff,” I say after a while. “Let’s just live a little.”
    “Okay. Sounds like a plan.”
    I pull away, glance at the clock on the dashboard. Seven forty-five—plenty of time, I think. I know something that will make us both feel better.
    “Where are we off to now?” Christian asks.
    “You’ll like it,” I say, starting the car. “I promise.”
    An hour later I park the car near the visitor center at Big Basin Redwoods State Park and hop out.
    “Follow me,” I say, and head off beneath the towering trees toward the Pine Mountain Trail.
    I’m surprised that I remember the way, but I do. I remember like it was yesterday. It’s shaping up to be a sunny day, but it’s cool in the shadow of the giant redwoods. There aren’t any other hikers along the path, and I get the eerie sense that Christian and I are the only two people on earth, like somehow we’ve wandered back into a time before the dawn of man, and any moment now a woolly mammoth is going to step out of the trees to confront us.
    Christian stays a few steps behind me as we hike, a quiet appreciation for the beauty of this place rolling off him. He doesn’t hesitate when we reach Buzzards Roost and have to do a bit of rock climbing. Within moments we’re at the top of the ridge, gazing across the valley of enormous trees, blue coastal mountains in the distance, the gleam of the ocean barely visible beyond them.
    “Wow,” he breathes, turning in a slow circle, taking it all in.
    “That’s what I said, the first time.” I sit down on a boulder, lean back to soak in the sun. “This is where my mom brought me to tell me about the angels, when I was fourteen. She said it was her thinking spot, and now that I live here again, I think it could be mine, too. I’m supposed to find a thinking spot for happiness class. A safe zone, the professor calls it.”
    “How’s happiness class going, by the way?”
    “Okay, so far.”
    “Are you feeling happy?” he asks with the hint of a smirk.
    I shrug. “The professor says that happiness is wanting what you have.”
    Christian makes a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat. “I see. Happiness is wanting what you have. Well, there you go. So what’s the problem, then?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Why is the class only okay?”
    “Oh.” I bite my lip, then confess. “Every time I meditate, I start glowing.”
    His mouth opens. “Every time?”
    “Well, not every time now , since I figured out how it works. Every time that I do it the way you’re supposed to—empty my mind, focus on the present; you know, just be , remember?—whenever I actually get into it, then boom. Glorified .”
    He gives a disbelieving chuckle. “So what do you do?”
    “I spend the first five minutes of every class trying not to meditate while all the other students are trying to meditate.” I sigh. “Which is not conducive to the whole stress-relief thing.”
    He laughs, a full-blown, delighted kind of