Scars Like Wings

by Erin Stewart

  “Now, we understand that you are not the typical student. We want you to know that anytime you need extra help or someone to talk to, we are here. We also have a full-time nurse available. She will handle your medications throughout the day.”

  My skin buzzes up my arms.

  “I can’t take my meds on my own?”

  The vice principal leans his pockmarked face so close to mine that a fleck of his spit ricochets off my cheek.

  “This may be hard to understand, but the best thing we can do for you is treat you like every other student,” he says. “No special treatment. No special rules.”

  Unlike Mr. D, Vice Principal Lynch stares directly at me when he talks, and his eyes stay glued to me even when I turn back to the principal. Shameless staring. Unusual for an adult.

  I’d say he’s swerving into tough-love territory, which is usually reserved for people like Cora and the nurses in the burn unit, whose jobs or bloodlines require them to spend time with me. They develop a whole separate set of coping-with-Ava strategies.

  “What Mr. Lynch means is we do have some legal criteria we have to meet. Students can’t carry pills with them. You can understand that, right?”

  I nod even though I want to scream. I take a ridiculous amount of medicine like clockwork. It’s going to be hard to fade into the back row if I have to march out the front of the classroom every two hours.

  “We’re already into our second semester, but your teachers have all been informed about you. About your situation. What I’m trying to say is we’ve tried to prepare everyone.” He ekes out a smile as he trips over his tongue. “Enough logistics, right? Let’s talk about you. We hear you’re a singer?”

  I shake my head.

  “Your aunt Cora—”

  “Is wrong.” Should have known Cora would already have been here, sprinkling her optimistic pixie dust. “I don’t sing.”

  Mr. D looks from me to Mr. Lynch, probably searching for some other get-to-know-you small talk. He fails.

  “Then I guess that’s that. Do you have any questions?”

  Only about a million. What if I can’t do this? What if I’m not strong enough? How did I get here, with this face and your eyes looking through me and your hands wiping on your pants like I’m contagious?

  I shake my head. Nope. No questions. At least, none you can answer.

  Mr. Lynch points to the headphones around my neck. “Those will have to go in your bag until after the final bell.”

  I look from him to Mr. D, hoping for some sort of intervention, some exception to the no-exceptions rule. “They’re just for the hallway. I won’t use them in class.”

  Mr. Lynch shakes his head. “School rule.”

  Both men watch as I take the headphones off my neck, the slight lifting of weight off my skin making me feel instantly more exposed. A ball of panic rises in my throat as I stick them in my bag. How will I disappear now?

  As they escort me from the office, Mr. D goes to pat my shoulder but changes his mind at the last second, his hand floating awkwardly in the air.

  “Ava. The students have also been warned—told—they’ve been told about you. But your aunt suggested you might want to take a few minutes in each class to tell your peers about yourself. Meet this thing head-on.”

  This thing? My melted face? My messed-up life? What thing are we talking about here?

  “Yeah, that’s a definite no,” I say.

  I don’t need people to understand me. I don’t need to answer questions or make friends or be an inspirational mascot. All I need is to get through the next two weeks.

  “Well, it’s up to you,” Mr. D says as the bell screeches overhead. Boisterous voices and bodies flood the hallway. “My door is always open. I like to think of myself as more of a friend than an administrator.”

  He shoots me a winning smile with his bleached-white teeth, and I can’t help but picture the Viking at the front door.

  “You’re gonna love it here, Ava. I guarantee it.”

  Mr. Lynch offers no such encouraging words. He points to the clock on the wall.

  “Class starts in five,” he says. “Don’t be late.”

  I hesitate on the threshold between the relative safety of the office and the melee of students quickly filling the hallway. The words running the gauntlet come to mind, conjuring up images of medieval Britain where criminals walked half-naked in a line, flanked by men with whips.

  Facing the crowded corridor now, I’d prefer to take my chances with the British.

  My new bestie, Big D, starts high-fiving hulking boy-men in letterman jackets. Mr. Lynch yells at a student to walk.

  Clearly, Principal Danner is here to relive his teenage glory days. Mr. Lynch is here to avenge them.

  Me? I just want to survive.

  4

  A group of boys sees me first.

  A skinny one with zit-ridden skin jumps back with a “whoa.” His buddies turn to me, then do an about-face to the lockers, doing a truly terrible job of hiding their laughter. They peek sideways at me with quick head jerks. Real supersleuths.

  I sense eyes on me—a feeling I should be used to by now. Whispers and gasps are the background soundtrack to my life, but in this small hallway surrounded by kids my own age, the heat of so many eyes creeps up my neck. My legs and arms start to itch as the familiar buzzing spreads through my body. My face burns as I cast my eyes to the ground.

  Don’t look up.

  I force myself not to react, even when I hear a group of girls break into nervous giggles and whispers, followed by “Shhhhh…shhhh…stop. She’s coming.”

  A girl at her locker pretends to look past me as she takes hurried glances at where my ear should be. I tug my bandana tighter so she can’t see there’s no left ear left, just a canal hole and a lobe remnant whose survival defies explanation.

  I tilt my head back to restrain the building tears. Thanks to the contracting of my cheek scars, my bottom eyelids are more like busted levies, barely able to hold back the slightest moisture.

  But I will not cry. Not here.

  I try to calm my racing heart as I continue down the hallway, reminding myself that I don’t need these people any more than they need me. I force my head higher, but what I really want is to crawl into one of these lockers to escape all the eyes. Their stares tell me I’m different, sure, but they reveal an even deeper truth: I’m less.

  Something to be looked at, not talked to.

  This is why I don’t need mirrors; I can see my reflection in the eyes of everyone around me.

  My face always finds me.

  I pretend not to notice the group of boys elbowing each other or the fact that everyone else squishes together on the other side of the hallway. Without my headphones to soundproof me, I act like I don’t hear the whispers behind cupped hands.

  Through the din of lockers and feet and chatter, my good ear picks up the words I’m not meant to hear:

  Burned.

  Fire.

  New.

  Gross.

  Zombie.

  A white-hot pain shoots to the tips of my fingers, and I realize I’ve been death-gripping the strap of my bag with my good hand. I stretch my palm, flexing my stiff skin.

  I make it to my first class, exhaling the air I’ve been storing since I left the office. One hallway down!

  Only ten days to go.

  I slink to a seat in the back row. This is my plan: Stay in the shadows. Get through today.

  The earth science teacher is a large man with an even larger bushy black beard. He strides into the room and drops a pile of books on the front table. When he scans the room, he does a double take at me. So much for Big D’s warnings.

  He starts talking, but the damage is done. His brief pause in my direction gives my classmates permission to turn and look. I
sink lower in my seat.

  When I was a little kid, I could summon an invisibility cloak by closing my eyes. My parents would play along as I yelled, “You can’t see me!” Mom would walk right next to me, saying, “Where’s Ava?” and Dad would bump into me, crying, “Oh no! We’ve lost her forever.”

  I could use those toddler superpowers today.

  I remind myself that today is the worst day—it has to be, right? Everyone has to see me for the first time. And in two weeks, it will be over. Cora can check off my good-faith recovery effort in her binder, and I can retreat to the solace of a bedroom without mirrors or prying eyes to remind me what I am.

  The bearded teacher scrawls the word life on a whiteboard.

  “Today, we start a new unit.” He underlines the word emphatically. “Together, we will plumb the depths of what it means to be alive. We will study the living world around us and the world within us.”

  He tells us we’re having an assessment quiz and gives a boy in the front row a bunch of papers to hand out to the class. When the boy gets close to me, he hesitates, holding the sheets tentatively, like he’s offering a bunny carcass to a rabid dog.

  A squeaking, strangulated sound escapes from his throat when I reach out my left hand without thinking. His eyes lock on my fused flipper fingers and my prominent “thumb,” which dwarfs the rest of my hand because it belongs on my foot and not here in the open, freaking out the villagers.

  I quickly flop my Frankenhand back to my lap, horrified. The boy half chucks a quiz at me, recoiling quickly.

  He speeds back to his desk, and I pick up the paper from the floor, trying to ignore his wide-eyed glances that make me feel distinctly subhuman.

  Perhaps I should make a public service announcement? DON’T WORRY, FOLKS! UGLY’S NOT CATCHING TODAY!

  That’s when I notice another boy next to me, staring with reckless abandon at the disproportionately huge toe-thumb in my lap. I push my hand into my pocket and train my eyes back on my desk. He screeches his desk closer to mine.

  “Is that your toe?” he whispers.

  I ignore him.

  “Hey!” he says a little louder. “Is it?”

  I thrust my shoulder forward so he knows my hearing isn’t the problem. If talking to other people was part of my survival plan, I would tell him to go away.

  Instead, I pretend this assessment is one thousand times more interesting than it actually is and seriously consider rescuing my headphones from my bag so this kid will stop trying to strike up a convo. My fingers move upward in a habit I can’t seem to break, searching for my hair to twist around my finger.

  “Good talk, good talk,” he says.

  I shrink further into my paper. He hesitates for a second before inching back to his row.

  I sneak a sideways glance in his direction. His eyes are on his paper now, allowing me to see he’s a small kid with warm brown skin. The black curtain of his hair flips up, and his dark eyes meet mine before I can turn away. He gives me a thumbs-up, and I’m not sure if he means it as a cruel joke or some outdated symbol of camaraderie.

  I flick my eyes away.

  I tick through the normal reactions: Shameless staring? Not really. Not in a gawking, don’t-tap-on-the-glass kind of way. He’s borderline frantic friendliness with his excitement over my toe-hand, but that’s still not it. Not pity. Definitely not like I’m invisible.

  I scribble in the corner of my notebook, trying to label this boy’s reaction.

  Nosy

  Curious

  Clueless curiosity

  The boy waves at me like we’re old friends when the bell rings, so I shoot him my best “What’s your problem?” stare. He smiles back. Clueless it is.

  This kid has no clue how he’s supposed to act around me. Because no matter what reaction people have, there is always one common thread:

  Everyone looks at me.

  Then everyone looks away.

  Until now.

  5

  I employ my best covert-ops tactics to make it through the rest of the day. I skulk along locker walls, looking down at my phone, pretending to be super interested in the texts Cora sends every thirty minutes to make sure I’m okay. In each class, I retreat to the back row and basically try to dissolve into Crossroads High.

  When I walk past the gym and see the girls in shorts, I’m extra grateful Cora negotiated my way out of phys ed so a coach with a whistle and the power to make my life miserable can’t make me “suit up.” My compression garments don’t really make me a candidate for running/jumping/throwing, plus there’s the whole my-sweat-glands-burned-off thing. But mostly, there is absolutely no way I’m going to disrobe in a locker room full of high school girls whose big body-image issues include whether their boobs and thigh dimples are the right size.

  Luckily, even though it’s the middle of the semester, I’m not too lost in my classes since I’ve been working at least a year ahead online.

  But after each class, I face the hallway again. A group of girls walk by, all talking at the same time, reminding me of the friends I left behind. Like a flock, the five of us would fall into formation—Emma walking backward, gesturing wildly, regaling us with a story about the latest senior boy in her chem class who she was 100 percent positive brushed her hand on purpose. Stacy always text-walked next to her, head bent over her phone, thumbs flying, while Blake came a few steps behind with her nose buried in flash cards, stressing about a test or a Spanish oral. Chloe and I walked in the middle, Chloe’s huge hair and even bigger laugh filling the space around us.

  We belonged to each other.

  We had a pattern.

  I had a place.

  At lunchtime, I take one look at the hordes of hungry students barreling into the cafeteria and head the other way. Even with a normal face, walking into a high school cafeteria is like infiltrating a lion’s den.

  No place for an already-wounded straggler.

  I consider going full-throttle pathetic and eating in a bathroom stall, but a sign with an arrow to the auditorium changes my mind. At the end of a long hallway, I poke my head through a pair of double doors into a silent, darkened theater with rows and rows of cushioned seats and a stage curtain drawn tight.

  Down the next hall, I find a smaller, second door leading backstage. A maze of thick curtains leads me past a costume closet and a single mirrored vanity until I find a dark corner concealed by black fabric.

  I tuck myself against the wall. I peek under the gap below the curtains and see three pairs of combat boots huddled together on the far side of the stage. Judging by the draft and the odor, they belong to some students taking a lunchtime vape break by an open backstage door. But thanks to the thick curtains, they have no idea I’m here.

  Invisible at last.

  I balance my paper bag on my legs, inhaling my turkey sandwich along with the burned popcorn vapor from my backstage-hideout compadres.

  Cradled in the corner of the stage, I feel safer than I have all day. In a former life, Chloe and the rest of my flock would be here, too, laughing about Emma’s latest crush and taking turns running lines for our next musical.

  No matter what, we had the stage—and each other.

  I take out my phone to read the latest text from Cora.

  All OK?

  I send her a GIF of a Viking giving a thumbs-up.

  Then I put on my headphones, dial my own number, and listen to the message I’ve heard a thousand times. Mom’s voice cuts through the loneliness—just slightly, but enough.

  “I’m at the store, honey, and I can’t remember if you like the deodorant with the pink flowers or the cucumbers. Call me back. Love you.”

  Okay, so it’s not some deep, existential message from beyond the grave or anything, but I’ll take it. The only other remnant I have of my parents is a half-bu
rned chunk of metal that used to be one of my mom’s handbells.

  I listen to the message again, relishing this moment alone. Only nine and a half more days.

  I rest my head back on the wall and stretch my tired legs out straight under the black curtain in front of me.

  But my solitude is short-lived, as a gaggle of girls files in. Instinctively, I scrunch my feet back so they won’t know I’m here.

  Through the slit between the curtains, I spy three girls huddling around the backstage vanity, all trying to see themselves at once. Another girl opens the costume closet, digging through a pile of brightly colored fabrics.

  Afraid they’ll spot me, I pull my knees into my chest, wincing as the skin stretches tight. A month ago, Dr. Sharp cut Zorro-style slices in my knees to help them move better, but the skin still feels like someone shrank it two sizes in the dryer. I ignore the pain and hug my legs tighter.

  The mirror trio lay out the contents of a pink makeup bag on the small table below the glass. An arsenal of eyeliner and concealer stands ready to jump into action, as if the girls are about to perform open-heart surgery with blush and lipstick.

  The girl in the middle brushes her long, black hair. Her voice echoes around the stage.

  “Did you see it?”

  “Be nice, Kenzie,” a girl calls out from the costume closet. “It’s a she, by the way, not an it.”

  “I know it’s a girl, dummy. I meant have you seen it—her face? I caught a glimpse, just for a second, but believe me, it was more than enough.”

  “Is it really that bad?” She slams the closet shut, so I can’t hear the answer, only the last two words.

  “…Freddy Krueger.”

  The girl who said it pauses to blot her hot-pink lips.

  “I’m not being mean, you guys. It was shocking. Not like I’d say it to her face or anything, but can you imagine going to high school looking like that?”