Scars Like Wings

by Erin Stewart

  “Sounds fun,” I say.

  Piper cocks her eyebrow at me.

  “You? Wallflower Ava wants to go to a party?”

  I nod as the girl at the other table shushes us again and shoots Piper some serious side-eye.

  “It’s your funeral,” Piper says, clearly talking louder on purpose. “Besides, Asad hasn’t told you the worst part yet.”

  Asad’s eyes dance and he doesn’t even try to suppress his spirit fingers.

  “Costumes!”

  * * *

  After school, Piper explains the annual ritual of the cast and crew party while she rifles through my closet.

  Everyone dresses as a Broadway character to compete for tickets to a play at the downtown Eccles Theater. Last year, Piper, Kenzie, and Sage won as dancers from Chicago, with fishnets, black blazers, leotards, and top hats.

  “It was epic. Of course, we had an edge since Kenzie’s parents buy the tickets.” Piper pauses to hold up a long-sleeved dress with a high collar. “I’m sorry. You do realize you’re a sixteen-year-old girl with decent C cups, right? Why do I feel like I’m going through the closet of a middle-aged widow?”

  I grab the dress and toss it into a growing pile of castoffs.

  “It’s not that bad.”

  Piper holds up another frock. “Oh, it’s that bad.”

  “Cora bought a bunch of stuff for me at a secondhand store. I mostly just wear the stuff I inherited from Sara.”

  Piper pauses her search, eyeing my clothes. I bury my hands inside the front pockets of the sweatshirt I’m wearing, which reads San Diego in swirly letters. I’ve never been.

  “You wear a dead girl’s clothes?”

  I try to explain that it’s not that weird. Sara and I had an open-door borrowing policy. Every time I’d visit, I’d go home with an overnight bag filled with half my clothes and half hers.

  I take an arguably hideous paisley shirt from Piper’s lap and stuff it in the back of my closet with the rest of the thrift-store atrocities.

  “What are you looking for, anyway?”

  “Inspiration.”

  Piper yanks a formal gown from the depths of the closet and hands it to me. “This is a maybe.”

  My fingers run down the satin fabric of the green dress Sara wore to her sophomore homecoming dance. I did her hair in spiraled curls, and Cora took about a million pictures of Sara’s date awkwardly pinning on her corsage, and we all pretended not to notice his fingers “accidentally” brushing her boob. Twice.

  “This is it!” Piper squeals. She holds my silicone mask over her face. “I saw people in the unit with these and I thought they were so weird, but for this, it’s perfect!”

  “For what exactly?”

  “Helloooo. The most iconic Broadway character of all time?”

  My brain catches up to her. She’s had some out-there ideas, but this…this is asking for a train wreck.

  “Noooo.”

  “Yes. The Phantom!”

  “Like The Phantom of the Opera phantom?”

  “No, like tollbooth phantom. Of course opera phantom.” She grabs the green homecoming dress I’m about to throw into the discard pile. “And I’ll go as Christine!”

  I take the mask and hold it up to my face so Piper can see exactly what she’s suggesting.

  “You want me to go as a deformed psychopathic hermit to my first party at this school?”

  Piper nods.

  “It’s social suicide,” I say.

  “It’s a stroke of genius!” she says. “Like when you have a zit on your face and you don’t want anyone to make fun of it, so you talk about it first so no one else can.”

  I snap the elastic rubber band around my head, feeling the familiar claustrophobia of my hot breath trapped beneath the plastic.

  “I’m not dealing with an acne blemish here, Piper.”

  “Listen, you show up as the Phantom, it’s like daring people to mock you, and if they do, they’re total losers because you already made the joke. You own it.”

  “I own my scars?”

  Piper picks up a scarf from the pile of clothes on the floor and slings it around her neck.

  “Yes, dahling, you make your scars work for you. They are fabulous because you are fabulous.”

  “And you are crazy.”

  But it feels so good to see her smile that I don’t even try to fight her. Piper wheels herself around the room, singing at the top of her lungs, her tattoo moving with her shoulder blades like a phoenix in flight.

  “ ‘The Phantom of the Opera is here…inside my mind!’ ”

  * * *

  On Saturday night, I get ready in front of Cora’s bathroom mirror, fastening on my mask, which Piper and I painted half white to look more Phantomesque. Cora, who thinks the whole idea is morbid, helps me put on a black cape and wig Glenn once wore as Dracula.

  She stands behind me, brushing out the strands of the wig just like my mom used to do with my own hair.

  “Are you sure about this?” she asks for the twentieth time.

  In the mirror, the painted portion of the mask covers half my face, while the other half flattens my skin slightly, smoothing and blanching it uniformly.

  With my black wig slicked into a low ponytail and the white button-up shirt and cape, I actually look like the infamously disfigured Broadway recluse. Perhaps even more surprisingly, I look like a normal girl dressed up in a costume. Sure, half the costume is my own personal permanent Halloween, but tonight, I let myself believe the lie.

  Just a girl in a costume going to a party.

  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  I feel pretty good about myself until I see Piper on my doorstep. Instead of being up in her usual ponytail, her hair flows over her shoulders in tiny, tight tendrils framing her face and completely covering the scars on her neck. Nude compression garments cover the rest of her scars beneath the fragile straps of Sara’s green dress.

  I fight the urge to rip off my mask and shut the door.

  “You look amazing,” I force myself to say instead.

  Glenn lifts Piper’s wheelchair over the front step and then stands back to admire us.

  “You girls clean up nice.” His smile falters when his eyes land on Piper. “That’s Sara’s dress.”

  Piper smooths out the satin fabric on her lap.

  “Is it okay?” Piper asks.

  Glenn smiles again, but this time only with his lips, his mind floated elsewhere.

  “Do you remember when that son-of-a-gun couldn’t get that corsage pin on her?”

  Cora laughs.

  “He almost stabbed her to death right in front of us.” She wipes her eyes, wet from laughing, and then all three of us are laughing together, and even though the memory stings a little, it feels good to remember.

  Cora reaches out her hand to Piper.

  “Of course you can wear it,” she says. “Sara would want someone Ava loves to use it.”

  Glenn pulls Cora tight against his side in a half hug. She’s so petite next to him, like she could hop right into his shirt pocket.

  Piper thanks him and then announces she has a surprise. She tells us all to watch her thighs closely, where after a few seconds of intense armrest grabbing, Piper lifts one thigh upward like she’s marching in place.

  She beams up at me as her leg flops back to the seat.

  “You may just get your standing O yet.”

  * * *

  Glenn carries Piper to the car, and Cora drives us to the party, talking nonstop about the size of the houses, which inflate into mansions as we get farther from our neighborhood. Carports give way to four-car garages, and pickup trucks become BMWs until we reach Kenzie’s house, a colossal modern atrocity with sharp angles built into a hill overlooking the lights of the valley.

 
; Cora reminds us for the one-billionth time that we can call her at any time and she’ll be here ASAP to pick us up.

  I bump Piper’s chair up the steep gravel path toward the front door, which is twice as tall as I am. She picks at the cuff of her compression garments, fraying it more each time she fidgets.

  “Are you nervous?” I ask.

  “Of course not. I just don’t usually wear these ones,” she says, tugging the arm of her garments down before putting her hands in her lap.

  Her fingers find the frayed edge again.

  “Okay. Maybe a little nervous.”

  My own stomach tangles into knots when we reach the door. Music blares from inside, and I smooth my hair back one more time, hoping I’m not committing the party foul of the century by showing up as a disfigured man.

  “Hey.” Piper snaps her fingers at me. The daffodil green of the dress matches her eyes. “We can do this. It’s a party. It’s supposed to be fun.”

  I laugh. “Right. Just two carefree crippled girls out on the town. What could possibly go wrong?”

  Piper laughs with me as she reaches for the doorbell.

  “Let’s find out, shall we?”

  28

  Kenzie answers the door as some sort of slutty feline.

  She stands with her hand on her hip for a second, her long tail extending from her skintight leopard-print leotard. The fuzzy ears on her head wiggle as she shakes her head and finger in unison at Piper.

  “Uh-uh. No way. Drama cast and crew only, and you made it crystal clear that you want nothing to do with us.”

  “She’s with me,” I say, stronger than I feel.

  Kenzie looks me up and down.

  “What is on your face?”

  I try to stand straighter despite the rising desire to run after Cora’s car and go home, where girls dressed as sexy cats with razor-sharp claws can’t get me.

  “My costume.”

  Piper jumps in.

  “She’s from a little musical you may have heard of called The Phantom of the Opera.”

  Kenzie folds her arms, her painted black cat nose turned up, watching me struggle to maneuver Piper’s chair up the doorstep. With an audible huff, she scurries down the hall into the family room to sit on the lap of the massive football player who knocked Asad down in earth science and clearly violates Kenzie’s drama-kids-only rule. He’s dressed like a puppy, which makes zero sense, because there are no dogs in Cats.

  Asad waves to us as he makes his way from the kitchen into the foyer.

  “Piper, you look amazing, as always,” he says. “And, Ava, ho-ly crap. Hands down the best Phantom costume I’ve ever seen.”

  “Hamilton, I presume?” I say, motioning toward his bright blue topcoat, complete with shiny brass buttons and a white ruffly scarf-type thing around his neck. He’s even drawn on a mustache and goatee.

  “At your service!” he says, raising his Solo cup into the air.

  Asad pushes Piper’s wheelchair with his free hand, guiding us into the kitchen, where people in various stages of costume commitment stand around drinking out of red cups. Guys dressed as French revolutionaries, girls with bouffant Hairspray hairdos, and six other guys dressed exactly like Asad and a few more with blue-striped polo shirts and arm casts masquerading as Evan Hansen.

  It’s like a Broadway dressing room exploded.

  The red sparkle of a pair of shoes on a miniskirted Dorothy reminds me that I still need to return the good-luck pair to the closet before Kenzie finds yet another reason to hate me.

  Asad hands Piper and me each a cup, instructing us to only drink out of the large white cooler and not the orange one, unless we want a “little something extra.”

  “Which we do not,” Piper says, pointing to the spokes of her wheelchair. “As I am already a rolling public service announcement on underage drinking.”

  Asad dances with some equally rhythm-deficient crew people while Piper and I stand by the wall, nursing our drinks, trying to look completely occupied by our liquid consumption.

  “Are we doing it? Are we normal teenagers yet?” I ask.

  Piper laughs.

  “Let’s see…standing awkwardly against a wall at a party. We’re on our way!”

  In the middle of the room, Asad gyrates in a dance move that can only be described as a robot undergoing an exorcism. He doesn’t seem to notice or care about the girls next to me laughing at him. He jerks and twitches until his grand finale lands him on his knees on the floor, hands up toward the ceiling.

  He reaches out to me. I shake my head.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Piper hands me her cup.

  “Why not. It is a party, after all.”

  Asad wheels her out into the middle of the room, where he continues his gyrations and Piper does a hind jive from her seat. She squeals like a kid when Asad whips her chair in a circle.

  Sage makes her way toward me, also dressed in skintight jungle spandex with cat ears.

  “Ava. That is the best costume.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “I figure why not use my natural talents, right?”

  “You’ve got my vote!” She holds her cup to me in celebration but lowers it as Piper rolls next to us. Sage’s eyes—and smile—shift to the floor.

  “Hey, Pipe,” she says. “How are you?”

  Piper cuts her off, raising her hand between them.

  “Careful. You’re under strict Kenzie surveillance.” She nods over to the other room, where Kenzie watches us from her perch atop her puppy/boyfriend.

  Sage shakes her head.

  “It’s not like that. Maybe you guys can still work this out.”

  “No thanks,” Piper says. “Life’s much better out of that particular shadow. You should try it. You’d be amazed at how little you care about what she thinks once you get a mind of your own.”

  Piper grabs both my hands, spinning us into the middle of the room and away from Sage. I hold tight to her, knowing if I let go I’ll slink back toward the wall.

  “So, is he here?” Piper asks.

  “Who?”

  “Don’t play coy with me, Ava Lee. The drama boy.”

  I shake my head, still not ready to tell Piper it’s Asad, or even admit it out loud at all.

  “Don’t see him.”

  When the song stops, Asad beckons us into the hallway to tell us that I’m in the lead by a long shot in costume votes.

  “And guess what. The costume prize is two Wicked tickets!” Excitement lights up his eyes. “As you know, Wicked was one of the most influential plays of my young life.”

  “Who talks like that?” Piper asks. “Seriously, were you born a fifty-year-old man-child or is this something you’ve fine-tuned over the years?”

  Asad laughs.

  “Life’s full of mysteries, Piper. Like how someone so beautiful can be so cruel.”

  A group of Lion King lionesses squeeze past us in the hallway.

  Asad whispers, “Okay, you didn’t hear it from me. Act surprised!”

  A gong sounds from the living room, prompting a migration. I move with the wave, telling myself to ignore the excitement welling in my chest. It’s just a silly contest.

  On the fireplace ledge, Kenzie holds a glass bowl filled with pieces of paper and two Wicked tickets. Asad shoots me a thumbs-up.

  “Okay, everybody. As you all know, the costume contest is judged by your peers.” She shakes the bowl. “We’ve tallied all these votes and the winner is—” Kenzie nudges her puppy, who perks up and does a drumroll on the coffee table.

  “Riley Jones!”

  The room erupts into applause as a girl in a brightly colored toucan costume stands to shake her tail feathers. Asad holds up his hands in disbelief. I sink against the wall.

  It doesn’t matter, I tel
l myself.

  I turn to tell Piper the same thing, but she’s already halfway through the crowd, pumping her wheels toward Kenzie. I want to yell at her to let it go, but the red in her cheeks tells me the Piper ship has already sailed.

  “Liar!” she yells.

  “Excuse me?” Kenzie answers demurely, adjusting her kitty ears. “Last time I checked, you quit the drama club.”

  “Kenzie, don’t play with me. I know Ava won.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “Asad told us.”

  Her head snaps toward Asad, who appears to be trying as hard as I am to melt into the drywall. Kenzie narrows her eyes at him and then turns back to Piper.

  “Ava was disqualified.”

  “Why?”

  Kenzie toys with her long black tail, letting it slide between her fingers.

  “Because it’s a costume contest. She already looks like that.”

  A low murmur passes through the crowd as everyone in the room turns to look at me. I shrink as far back as I can, the normal in tonight’s normal high school party fading fast. I inch behind the drinks table, feeling like I might choke on the suddenly thick air.

  “Are you really going to take out our problems on her? Are you that selfish?” Piper is seething.

  Kenzie’s face flashes red as she drops her tail.

  “I’m selfish? You’re the one using her to get back at me because you think I ruined your life.”

  “You did!” Piper yells back.

  Kenzie scoffs. “Sure. Blame me for everything. Convenient how you always forget who was supposed to be driving that night. Why didn’t you, again? Oh yeah, you were too much of a drunken coward.”

  In one move, Piper reaches up and grabs the votes bowl from Kenzie, who yanks back on it hard, pulling Piper forward in her chair. Kenzie gives it one more strong tug, lifting Piper up like she’s sitting on a spring, and onto the carpet. The bowl flies out of both their hands, shattering on the stone fireplace.

  The low back of Piper’s dress reveals her entire phoenix as she lies motionless on the floor. I want to help her, but I have become one with the wall. Asad has managed to break free, though, and reaches for Piper.