“I guess.”

　“And what do you vote for?”

　Clare is silent. Her pragmatism and her romantic feelings about Jesus and Mary are, at thirteen, almost equally balanced. A year ago she would have said God without hesitation. In ten years she will vote for determinism, and ten years after that Clare will believe that the universe is arbitrary, that if God exists he does not hear our prayers, that cause and effect are inescapable and brutal, but meaningless. And after that? I don’t know. But right now Clare sits on the threshold of adolescence with her faith in one hand and her growing skepticism in the other, and all she can do is try to juggle them, or squeeze them together until they fuse. She shakes her head. “I don’t know. I want God. Is that okay?”

　I feel like an asshole. “Of course it’s okay. That’s what you believe.”

　“But I don’t want to just believe it, I want it to be true.”

　I run my thumbs across Clare’s arches, and she closes her eyes. “You and St. Thomas Aquinas both,” I say.

　“I’ve heard of him,” Clare says, as though she’s speaking of a long-lost favorite uncle, or the host of a TV show she used to watch when she was little.

 

“He wanted order and reason, and God, too. He lived in the thirteenth century and taught at the University of Paris. Aquinas believed in both Aristotle and angels.”

　“I love angels,” says Clare. “They’re so beautiful. I wish I could have wings and fly around and sit on clouds.”

　“Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich.‘”

　Clare sighs, a little soft sigh that means I don’t speak German, remember? “Huh?”

　“‘Every angel is terrifying.’ It’s part of a series of poems called The Duino Elegies, by a poet named Rilke. He’s one of our favorite poets.”