Scars Like Wings

by Erin Stewart

  “Everybody did,” I say, my own guilt creeping up again.

  Mr. Lynch nods and turns to the locker of cards that came too late.

  “It’s a good reminder: Everyone has scars. Some are just easier to see.”

  * * *

  Asad and Sage abandon their usual cliques to sit with me at lunch. Sage asks about Piper, and then gets a weird look on her face like maybe she’s about to cry or puke. “I should have done more.”

  “Join the club,” I say.

  On the far side of the cafeteria, the volleyball team has set up a poster for everyone to sign commanding Piper to GET WELL SOON! I toss my soggy sandwich down on the table.

  “We should do more now. Something real. Not cards or words or smiley-face hearts on her locker,” I say. “You know none of these people are going to be here for Piper when she isn’t the gossip of the week, and she’s going to be right back in all the same old crap. We have to fix it.”

  “How do you fix this?” Asad asks.

  “I don’t know. There has to be something we can do. One actual thing.”

  Sage chews slowly, thinking. “What would make Piper do this? Why now?”

  Kenzie catches my eye from her table. She watches me with sideways glances, her pink-tinged eyes sparking something in my brain.

  “The day Piper took the pills, Piper and Kenzie were fighting outside.”

  And then—like the jerk I am—I chose Kenzie over Piper.

  Sage shakes her head. “Kenzie didn’t say anything about a fight with Piper. She barely talks to her.”

  Kenzie stands and takes a step toward me, but then abruptly sits like she’s changed her mind, and as she does, a thought that’s been smoldering longer than I realized suddenly catches fire. The anonymous text of me melting. The cruel one-liners on Piper’s phone from Kenzie.

  Piper said she could handle a few texts. But what if it was more?

  I hug Sage.

  “You’re a genius. Of course Kenzie didn’t talk to Piper. That’s never been her style.”

  * * *

  After school, I return to the hospital, armed with my wig and a mission.

  Piper’s mom sits outside the room, bloodshot eyes reading a pamphlet on depression. She tells me again that Piper’s not ready to see anyone.

  “Where’s Piper’s phone?” I say.

  Her mom rifles through a drawstring personal-belongings bag next to her, finally holding up Piper’s hot-pink cell phone.

  I enter the passcode I’ve seen Piper do a thousand times and open her text messages. Just as I thought, four new texts from an unknown number on the night Piper overdosed.

  Everyone hates you.

  You know you should have been driving.

  Why didn’t you just die that night?

  Maybe you still should.

  I turn the screen to Piper’s mom. She gasps as she reads them, covering her mouth as she scrolls through.

  “Who would do this?” she says.

  I put the unknown number into my own cell phone. Piper’s mom keeps staring at the texts. She barely responds when I tell her to play Piper’s Fire Mix for her.

  “And tell her I’m going to fix this. I’m going to fix everything.”

  46

  Asad looks at me like I’ve lost my mind.

  “No way. Taking down Kenzie has kamikaze mission written all over it,” he says while prepping our mealworms for the release into the woods today.

  I sketch Rum Tum Tugger onto our lab report, making note of the fact that one of his legs somehow broke and now he limps along, dragging his useless limb alongside him. The sight of him heaving his way across the habitat is so pathetically heroic I can barely watch.

  “What else can I do? I have to fix this, and I need your help.”

  Asad shakes his head.

  “A wise friend of mine once said that in this high school cosmos, bullies are the gravity we count on.”

  “Well, a wise green-skinned witch once said we should try defying gravity.”

  Asad sighs, smiling. “Using Broadway to bolster your argument. Tacky.”

  “I learned from the best.”

  “Unfortunately, life is not a musical, remember? We can’t fight all of Piper’s battles for her.”

  I put my finger into the dish, helping Rum Tum Tugger climb up to the water sponge.

  “But we can fight this one.”

  We follow Mr. Bernard past the football field to the wooded area separating the school from the neighborhood behind it. He turns to us at the edge of the field, his hands raised up dramatically.

  “Let us say goodbye to our friends who have led us on this journey of discovery. We have watched them build a community. We have watched them transform. And now, we bid them farewell.”

  He says an honest-to-goodness prayer, complete with snippets of poetry from Maya Angelou about how nobody makes it through life alone. It’s all very dramatic, and after the prayer, he nods solemnly to us as if we’re about to send our grandparents out on an iceberg instead of release insects into the field where seniors sometimes pee during gym class.

  Asad and I hold the dish together, touching it lightly to the grass. Magical Mr. Mistoffelees and Macavity scurry away, but Rum Tum Tugger won’t leave the dish until Asad shakes him out.

  Asad puts his arm around my shoulder as we watch the beetles burrow into the mulch.

  “Do you think they’ll be okay out there in the big, bad world?” he says, pretending to be choked up.

  “As long as they have each other,” I say. “Someone to count on. No matter how impossible the odds.”

  Asad rolls his eyes and clutches his chest.

  “Break my heart, why don’t you?”

  When I give him my best pouty face, he throws his hands up in surrender.

  “You win. Tell me your plan.”

  * * *

  My plan is this: if the unknown number is routing through Kenzie’s phone, then all we have to do is call the number when we can hear her phone ring. She won’t be able to hide anymore from how she’s treated Piper.

  We make our first attempt during drama. Asad pretends to hang scenery behind where Kenzie rehearses lines, her phone in the front mesh pocket of her backpack. When I call the number, the line rings on my end, over and over. Kenzie’s stays silent.

  I try again in the hallway the next day.

  Nothing.

  Asad stands next to Kenzie in the cafeteria while I call.

  Nothing.

  Asad decides she’s turned her ringer off during school.

  “Or maybe it’s not Kenzie,” he says.

  “It’s her,” I say. “I know it.”

  We even call one time when she’s waiting for a ride home, holding her phone right in her hand. Like always, a few rings and a call-ending click.

  Each time we fail, I feel like I’m letting Piper down. She leaves the hospital after a week, but she still won’t see me. Every day after school I go to her house, and every day her mom tells me she’s not up for company.

  “Give her time,” she says.

  One afternoon, I jam my foot in the door before her mom can close it. I crane my head into the dim house and yell: “You’re not getting rid of me, Piper! I’m going to fix this.”

  At home, I scroll through Piper’s pictures online, hoping for some sign of life. All I find are more messages from classmates echoing the sentiments from her locker.

  I tap on my own profile, where the picture of Sara and me is still my final post. I open my camera roll on my phone to the last picture—Piper and me at the wig store, her cheek against my hot-pink hair.

  Before I can second-guess myself, I upload it to my wall. #scarsistersforlife #keepflying

  I want to say something else, something witty and
personal and perfect. Something right. But the words don’t come.

  I tap submit.

  An instant later, the photo appears on my homepage, and just like that, the picture-perfect illusion of Ava Before the Fire is gone.

  I tag Piper and shut the screen before anyone can comment.

  Without Piper, life hobbles along in a pseudo normal. Homework. Play practice. Failed attempts to catch Kenzie. Cora signs me up to take the SAT, and a huge book called The College Application Survival Guide replaces the Burn Survivor Quarterly on her nightstand. She even starts dropping hints about visiting a campus or two this summer.

  End-of-the-year fever spikes at Crossroads. The hallways are so congested with prom posters advertising the Night of Your Life! and gaggles of girls signing yearbooks that no one notices the pictures and cards shedding off Piper’s locker after a few weeks. I watch as someone tramples a picture of her between classes without even seeing it, just like they don’t see the Piper-size void walking next to me.

  I can face the hallway alone now. I just don’t want to.

  Just like I don’t want to get up on that stage without Piper in the audience. During dress rehearsal, I stand on my mark in my hideously pink Glinda dress, squinting into the spotlight. The play is in one week. This will be my first performance without Mom and Dad. What if Piper isn’t there, either?

  Every night, I fall asleep to Piper’s anthem about turning scars into wings. But as the play zooms closer on my calendar, I begin to doubt I can fix anything for either of us. I ask Cora to drive me to group.

  “I think I need it,” I say.

  In the spacious rec room, our circle of four seems especially small. I stop outside the ring of chairs, staring at where Piper should be.

  “She’s coming back,” Dr. Layne says. She puts her arm around me, pulling me into the circle. “Her place here will be ready when she is.”

  Piper’s empty spot glares at me as we talk about the power of love. How we need it. How we show it. How we deserve it.

  For once, when it’s my turn to share, I talk. I tell the group about how I’m trying to help Piper by exposing Kenzie.

  “I blame myself for not helping Piper before, and I’m sure she does, too. But I’m going to fix all of this for her.”

  My comment is met with silence, even from Braden, who is amazingly not already crying. He raises his hand hesitantly.

  “If you want to talk about blame, I’m kind of an expert. I’m the boy who carried a gas can over an open bonfire. There was no one else to blame but myself. And for a long time, I did. Every surgery, I told myself I deserved the pain. It was my fault when my dad left. My fault for making my mom a single parent buried in medical bills.”

  He pulls his sleeve up so we can see his splotchy arm, the skin all wrinkled and discolored from his shoulder down to where his forearm cul-de-sacs.

  “But after years of blaming myself, guess what.” He rubs his other hand up and down his scars. “I’m still burned. Guilt can’t unscar my skin. I guess what I’m saying is blame is useless.”

  “He’s right,” Olivia chimes in. “I know it’s kind of weird I still come to these groups. I should be better by now, right?”

  I don’t dare nod.

  “But I don’t come because I need to be fixed. I come because I’m accepted, just the way I am.” She looks up at me. “You can’t fix Piper. All you can do is be stronger together.”

  Dr. Layne concludes by telling us to show love to someone today, even if we just love ourselves. I almost laugh out loud thinking of how Piper would have said Braden probably loves himself on the regular.

  Then Dr. Layne leads us in a group hug that hits an easy 10.5 on the awkward-o-meter. But when I start to inch away after a quick squeeze, Olivia pulls me back in. She laces her arm through mine as Dr. Layne folds me against her side and Braden props his half arm on Olivia’s shoulder.

  I let them pull me in, and as I give in to the embrace, the room suddenly doesn’t feel so empty. In that vast room, standing skin to skin—scar to scar—our small and slightly broken circle of trust fills the space.

  On my way out, Dr. Layne gives me another brochure about burn camp and tells me to “give it some thought.”

  This time, I take it.

  * * *

  I check my post when I get home. No sign of Piper. But I have to scroll through the comments on the #scarsisters picture three times to reach the end.

  Queenchloe84 Ava! Where have you been?!

  4eva_emma Love the pink hair.

  Nightavenger You look great! We miss you down here!

  Sttb704 You are an inspiration!

  My gut reaction is to scoff at the pages and pages of words. Pathetic. Awkward. Empty.

  But then I look next to the words at the profile pics of my old friends, the faces I used to know so well, and a thought hits me: Do they feel like I do with Piper, helpless and unsure what to say or do? How long did they sit with their fingers hovering over the keyboard, waiting for the right words to come? How many times did they type, erase, type, erase before hitting send?

  I scroll through the comments again. The girls from drama who tried to be there for me after the fire. I pushed them away, afraid they couldn’t handle the new me. Afraid they would find I was unfixable.

  Like me, they don’t know the perfect thing to say, but here they are, saying something anyway.

  Maybe it’s never been about the words.

  Maybe my therapy group was right: it’s about being there—reaching out—even if there’s no way in hell to fix it.

  I type a quick reply at the top of the thread.

  dramagrrl Thanks! Miss you all, too! I’ll come visit soon.

  To my surprise, I mean every word.

  I lie back on my bed and listen to Piper’s “Phoenix in a Flame” anthem. While the girl sings about wings, I pick up the burn-camp brochure next to me. On the cover, a man with a hole for an ear like mine carries a laughing little boy. Scars blur both their faces under the words, “Nothing heals people like other people.” The pink phoenix symbol soars above the words.

  I turn off the Fire Mix and text Asad.

  Remember the tattoo parlor where you took Piper?

  Yeah. Why?

  Because you’re taking me.

  47

  Asad drives while I clutch the letter from Cora saying I can deface my body to my heart’s content. Cora wasn’t crazy about the idea at first. Okay, truth: she said it was the craziest idea she’d ever heard.

  “Why would you want to add scars to your body?” she asked, genuinely puzzled.

  I reminded her that it is, in fact, my body and that up until now, I’ve had zero say in my scars.

  “But with a tattoo, I get to decide what I look like,” I said. “For once.”

  That got her pretty good.

  My announcement that I’m going to burn camp also put her in an especially agreeable mood. So after a quick phone consult with Dr. Sharp, who gave me his medical-degree blessing to ink any nongrafted skin, she signed the form. She also put this in big letters at the top: SOMETHING SMALL! TASTEFUL! THAT WON’T HORRIFY HER GRANDCHILDREN!

  As we drive to the parlor, Asad doesn’t mention my lack of compression garments, but I’m sure he noticed. My ridging skin-graft scars twist and turn down my arms and legs, and even I’m not used to seeing them so exposed like this outside lotioning hour. But I haven’t picked a spot for the tattoo yet, and I don’t want to be trying to unzip and shimmy out of my garments in public.

  The tattoo parlor is nothing like I expect, which was essentially a cliché movie portrayal of leather-clad biker chicks and dudes getting inked in some dodgy back room. Instead, Asad and I walk into a spotlessly clean store smack-dab in the middle of a suburban strip mall.

  With its reclining chairs and sterilize
d instrument trays, it’s more like a dentist’s office than my imagined skeezy den of iniquity. I try not to let the reality take anything away from my rebellious act of solidarity. Asad peruses the various images pinned to the wall like a smorgasbord of skin art. He points to one, a zipper, opening up the skin below it.

  “You should totally get this one.”

  I tell him skin zippers most likely violate Cora’s “horrifying grandchildren” rule, and besides, I already know what I’m getting.

  Asad turns to face me, one eyebrow cocked.

  “Please tell me it’s not some Chinese proverb. Half the time those don’t even say what you think they do and you walk around your whole life thinking your wrist says ‘hope and love’ but it really says ‘Where’s the toilet?’ ”

  I unfold the burn-camp brochure from my back pocket and point to the bird.

  “I’m getting that,” I say. “Like Piper’s.”

  “Piper as in phoenix Piper?” a voice behind us asks. A guy barely older than us rustles through a beaded curtain behind the front desk. He doesn’t have the bearded, leather-vested look I hoped for, but with his man bun and thick, black-framed glasses, he does give off a certain just-got-high-on-my-hookah-in-the-storage-room vibe that will have to do. On his bicep, a colorful dragon tattoo curls around his arm down to his wrist.

  “You know Piper?” I ask.

  “You bet. I did her ink.” He reaches his hand out to me. “Gabriel.”

  “Ava.”

  “Well, Ava. Any friend of Piper is welcome here. A fellow Viking, I presume?”

  I nod.

  “Me too. Graduated last year. Your girl Piper was my first solo job, actually. She came in here demanding something majestic, something out-of-this-world—” He smiles at me. “Something to give her wings. So I did. How is she?”