by Erin Stewart
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2019 by Erin Stewart LLC
Cover art copyright © 2019 by Jan Heur
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Atticus for permission to reprint his poem “She conquered her demons and wore her scars like wings.”
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Stewart, Erin, author.
Title: Scars like wings / Erin Stewart.
Description: First edition. | New York : Delacorte Press, [2019] | Summary: One year after the fire that claimed her parents’ and cousin’s lives and left her severely disfigured, sixteen-year-old Ava faces the return to high school.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018039863 (print) | LCCN 2018048573 (ebook) | ISBN 978-1-9848-4884-0 (ebook) | ISBN 978-1-9848-4882-6 (hc : alk. paper) | ISBN 978-1-9848-4883-3 (glb : alk. paper) | ISBN 978-0-593-12381-2 (exp.)
Subjects: | CYAC: Disfigured persons—Fiction. | High schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Self-confidence—Fiction. | Orphans—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.S7457 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.1.S7457 Sc 2019 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23
Ebook ISBN 9781984848840
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Acknowledgments
About the Author
To Kyle.
You've made my life.
1
One year after the fire, my doctor removes my mask and tells me to get a life.
He doesn’t use those exact words, of course, because he’s paid to flash around lots of medical-degree terms like reintegration and isolation, but basically, the Committee on Ava’s Life had a big meeting and decided I have wallowed long enough.
My postburn pity party is over.
Dr. Sharp examines my skin grafts to make sure I haven’t inadvertently grown batwings in my armpits since our last monthly pat-down. Scars can be screwy little suckers, and since my body is 60 percent screwed up, it takes Dr. Sharp a full twenty minutes to check me over. The tissue paper covering the vinyl exam table crinkles beneath me as my aunt Cora watches attentively from the sidelines, scribbling notes in her gargantuan “Ava’s Recovery” binder while her eyes follow Dr. Sharp.
He removes the bandana from my head and then my clear plastic mask, his fingers grazing my scars.
“Everything’s healing beautifully,” he says, without even a hint of irony. The coldness of his fingers registers above my eyes but fades as he moves to the thicker grafts around my mouth.
“Well,” I say, “you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a p—”
“Ava!” gasps Cora, who is not only my aunt but also the self-appointed CEO of the aforementioned committee on my life.
Dr. Sharp shakes his head and laughs, revealing two deep dimples on either side of his smile, which only makes him even more like one of those McHottie doctors on TV who bang each other in the on-call room between saving lives. I blame his smoldering eyes and strong jawline for the butterfly swarm in my stomach every time he touches my grafts. It also doesn’t help that I’m keenly aware he has seen me naked approximately nineteen times. Sure, it’s on an operating-room table, but naked is naked, even covered with gauze and nineteen surgeries’ worth of scars.
But we never address that awkward elephant in the room, just like I never mention the fact that he once literally took a chunk of my butt and stretched it across my face to make a new forehead.
Dr. Sharp hands me a small, salon-style mirror so I can admire his handiwork.
“No thanks,” I say, giving it back.
“Still having trouble looking?”
“Unless I grew a new face overnight, I already know what I’m going to see.”
Dr. Sharp nods while typing a note into my chart, and I sense a forthcoming committee meeting about my resistance to reflective surfaces. It’s not like I haven’t seen my face. I know how I look. I choose not to keep looking.
With a dimply smile, Dr. Sharp holds up my plastic mask.
“I think you’ll be happy to hear that you can get rid of this little guy.”
Cora squeals and awkwardly side-hugs me, careful not to apply too much pressure to disrupt the all-important healing process.
“You couldn’t have given us a better gift today, Dr. Sharp. It’s been a year, this week actually, since—” Cora pauses, and I can almost see her brain trying to come up with the right words.
“The fire,” I jump in. “One year since the fire.”
Dr. Sharp hands me the mask, which has been my constant companion every day, twenty-three hours a day for that year. Its one job: keep my face flat as it heals so my scars don’t bulge out in fleshy blobs. The doctors and nurses reassure me constantly that the mask has made my scars heal so much better, although I’m unconvinced it can get much worse than the patchwork of discolored grafts I call my face.
“You’ll still need to wear the body-compression garments until we’re sure the scars won’t interfere with your movements,” Dr. Sharp says. “But I do have one more piece of good news for you.”
Cora gives him the slightest nod, which tells me t
hat whatever comes next is a direct result of an Ava’s Life meeting. My invitation must have gone straight to spam.
“Now that you don’t have to wear the mask, I am authorizing—and strongly recommending—that you return to school,” he says.
I flip the mask around in my hand without looking up.
“Yeah, that’s a hard pass,” I say. “But thanks.”
Jumping off the sidelines, Cora lays her massive binder by the sink and half sits on the patient chair with me, lightly tapping my thigh.
“Ava, I know you’re bored with those online classes, and you’re always saying how you wish things could go back to normal.”
Normal.
Right. Old normal. Ava Before the Fire normal. Normal normal.
“That’s Never. Going. To. Happen,” I say. “I’m not going to waltz back into my old school and have everything be the same.”
“You could go to the school by our house, like we’ve talked about. Or pick any school you want,” Cora says, undeterred. “You know, a fresh start? Make new friends and begin a life here.”
“I’d rather die,” I mumble.
I’ve been doing fine at home taking classes online in my pajamas. Where no one can see me. Where no one can point and stare and whisper as I walk by like I’m deaf as well as deformed.
“I know you don’t mean that,” Cora says. “You’re lucky to be alive.”
“Right. I’m a human rabbit’s foot.”
Why am I the lucky one because I survived? Mom, Dad, and my cousin Sara are probably dancing through a celestial meadow somewhere or happily reincarnated as monkeys in India while I face an endless loop of surgeries and doctors and stares from strangers.
But I can’t compete with tombstones. Death trumps suffering every time.
“If it were Sara, I’d want her to live a full life,” she says. “And I know your mother would want you to be happy.”
Her attempt to use dead people to win this argument irks me.
“I’m not Sara. And you’re not my mother.”
Cora turns away from me, and so does Dr. Sharp, pretending to concentrate especially hard on the computer screen rather than acknowledge the tension that fills the exam room like smoke. I hate that Dr. Sharp is here for this embarrassing toddler tantrum, but he’s partly to blame for blindsiding me with this development.
Cora sniffles quietly, and I wish I could take back my jab. She didn’t ask to be my makeshift mother any more than I asked to be her understudy offspring. We’re both trying to navigate this sick twist of “luck” the universe threw our way.
Dr. Sharp clears his throat. “Ava, the fact is, we’re concerned about your level of isolation. Reintegration is a major part of your healing process, and we all think it’s time to start,” he says. I refrain from asking him who this mysterious “all” includes, since my concerning hermit status is news to me. “What if you go to school for a trial period, and then we reassess our reintegration strategy? Say two weeks?”
Cora looks at me hopefully, tears still wetting her eyes, as the guilt of the lucky creeps into my chest. The guilt of the one who lived.
This week marks one year for her, too. One year without her daughter. One year taking care of me, the girl who survived instead.
I can’t give her Sara, but I can give her two weeks.
“Fine,” I say. “Ten school days. If it’s not a complete train wreck, then we’ll talk about more.”
Aunt Cora hugs me so tight that I act like it hurts more than it does so she’ll stop.
“It’s only two weeks,” I remind her. “And it is going to be a complete train wreck.”
“It’s a start,” she says.
I re-cover my scarred scalp with my red bandana as Cora and Dr. Sharp exchange a triumphant look. I toggle the transparent mask between what’s left of my hands, fighting the urge to put it back on.
* * *
—
Cora stops at the front desk to haggle about unpaid surgery bills while I meander down the hallway of the burn unit, looking at artwork from some Hospital Arts Initiative to bring beauty to dying people. I don’t even realize I’ve wandered into the regular hospital atrium until a little girl clinging to her mother’s skinny jeans emits a high-pitched scream.
Her chubby little finger points at me.
At my face.
The woman flushes red as she mutters an apology and yanks her child away by her arm. The girl continues to wail and crane her neck back toward me as her mom scurries away. A man in a pleather armchair shifts his eyes quickly back to his newspaper, but I can feel him watching me as I inch my way back to the hallway, trying to act casual.
I wait inside the safety of the burn unit, where people are used to faces like mine. The man with the newspaper steals glances at me from down the hallway, making me wish Cora had let me bring my headphones so I could turn on my music and tune out everything—and everybody—else. Instead, I turn to a 3-D art display called Starlight Reflections hanging in the window, and pretend to be immensely interested in the broken pieces of glass shaped like little stars, each five-pointed mini mirror shooting rainbow fragments of light across the hallway.
The cascading Milky Way of tiny mirrors distorts me, reflecting a Picasso reality in the shards that hang together as if one touch will send them splintering to the floor. I find myself in the glass, my red bandana framing my fractured face.
For a second, I allow myself to believe the broken glass is to blame for the broken girl.
Once I step away, my face will be fine.
Normal.
That’s what the committee wants. Go back to high school. Be normal again.
I know better.
Normal people don’t terrorize small children.
Normal sixteen-year-olds look in mirrors. Is my lipstick on straight? Is my hair doing that swoopy thing in the front? Their reflections reassure them, and if they don’t like what they see, they fix it.
For me, mirrors are a reminder.
I’m a monster.
Nothing in the world can fix that.
2
Cora spends the next week in a tizzy of back-to-school shopping, convinced that my successful return to normal teenage life hinges on whether I carry a backpack or an over-the-shoulder messenger bag.
The night before my official “reintegration,” she spreads a lineup of bags on my bed. Bold-printed tote bags, floral canvas backpacks, and nylon crossbodies stare up at me.
“What are the kids using these days?”
I shrug. “I’ve been wearing hospital gowns and pajamas, so I may not be the best style source.”
I don’t add that I highly doubt anyone’s going to be looking at my accessories. Cora’s eyes flick from the bagstravaganza to me, her eyebrows pushed together with the same look she gets doing the Sunday crossword. Like if she can just focus hard enough, she can find the solution.
But for all Cora’s efforts, I’m one puzzle she can’t fix.
“I think this one,” she says decisively, holding out a black messenger bag to me. “But try it just to make sure before I return the rest.”
Rather than modeling it, I tell her whatever she wants is fine and remind her that in two weeks, when I return to my glorious hermithood, I won’t need it.
Cora’s mouth turns downward, and for a second, her CEO-of-Ava’s-recovery mask slips and I see someone else, someone small and scared who wishes more than anything her own daughter were here, modeling backpacks and getting excited for new friends and rowdy sleepovers and all the other normal sixteen-year-old-girl things Cora wanted for Sara.
I sigh and take the messenger bag from her, slinging it over my head.
“It’s perfect, Cora, thanks.”
She adjusts the bag so it falls neatly by my side. The weight of it tugs on my already taut shoulders, but
it’s good to see her smile.
Cora plucks a navy blue bandana from my collection and holds it up next to the blousy blue shirt she bought me. “Now, this is an outfit.” She doesn’t have money to throw at new clothes right now, but I’m grateful not to wear Sara’s hand-me-downs tomorrow. Luckily, it’s February, so I can wear long sleeves and jeans to cover most of my compression garments.
“You’re sure about no wig?” she says. “That nice lady from the hospital said we could call anytime. We could hop in the car right now and go get one.”
I shake my head. “Definitely not.”
A wig might cover my patchy scalp better than a bandana, but it’s not going to fool anyone. The lady who came armed to the burn unit with wigs and makeup and all sorts of other hide-your-scars paraphernalia was nice, but for all her efforts, fake hair and foundation couldn’t cover this. So why pretend?
After Cora leaves, I unzip my compression garments, carefully shedding the second skin that keeps my scars from puffing out like cotton candy.
I lie facedown on the bed in a tank top and shorts, the yarn from Sara’s quilt tickling my nose. Cora returns and starts our nightly slather-me-in-lotion routine. We begin on my right side. She gently straightens my arm, which from this angle looks freakishly thin. Like skin-and-bones, back-from-the-dead zombie thin. Who knew fat cells could burn up?
Cora works the lotion into all my cracks and crevices as the familiar medical/old-lady smell of the oily cream fills the room. My beige compression garments slump like snakeskin on my desk. After a year, they seem more me than the purply-pink swirling scars of my actual body.