Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter One - ITCH
Chapter Two - SPINES
Chapter Three - SCISSORS
Chapter Four - RESCUE
Chapter Five - CARDS
Chapter Six - ESCAPE
Chapter Seven - DARKNESS
Chapter Eight - FOUND
Chapter Nine - RAILROAD
Chapter Ten - CONVERSATION
Chapter Eleven - ANGEL’S FLIGHT
Chapter Twelve - HENRY AND LILITH
Chapter Thirteen - HARP
Chapter Fourteen - DINNER
Chapter Fifteen - HUNTER
Chapter Sixteen - ECHO PARK
Chapter Seventeen - THE BRADBURY
Chapter Eighteen - HIDEOUT
Chapter Nineteen - LAIR
Chapter Twenty - LIBERTY
Chapter Twenty-One - MACHINE
Chapter Twenty-Two - STORM
Chapter Twenty-Three - CATCH OF THE DAY
Chapter Twenty-Four - THE BLUE LADY
Appendix - GLOSSARY OF TERMS
Teaser chapter
GROSSET & DUNLAP
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For Alan Sommerfeld.
Until the Woodbine, my old friend.
The author would like to thank Molly Kempf.
A fellow Oregonian and an Editor
of surpassing skill.
As a writer, I love asking what-if questions.
“What ifthere were a place that made birthday wishes come true?” was the question I asked that led to The Misadventures of Benjamin Piff series of books. “What ifthere were a girl who didn’t know she had superpowers?” led to the Zoom’s Academy series. But for The Mysterious Mr. Spinesseries I had a whopper of a what-if question. “What if a boy found out that he was the son of a fallen angel?”
This was the question that laid the foundation for Wings, the first book in the Mr. Spines series. This book is not intended as an allegory or to challenge matters of personal belief. I’m not a theologian, and wouldn’t want anyone to interpret the contents of this book as my view of what I expect the Afterlife to be like. It is simply a what-if.And I hope that, in exploring the limitless possibilities of that question, you, dear reader, can enjoy the fantastic journey we’re about to embark on together.
Jason Lethcoe
May 1, 2008
There are seven bridges between
the worlds and five of them are broken.
The sixth one has no rails to hold,
and the seventh one was stolen.
—from Bridges Between the Worlds, a children’s story
Chapter One
ITCH
Edward Alistair Macleod had an itch that he couldn’t scratch. It had started on the eve of his fourteenth birthday and hadn’t gone away no matter how hard he’d tried to scratch it. Edward’s itch was in that very uncomfortable spot, right in the upper middle of his back where neither his left nor right hand could reach. So, of course, he’d tried everything he could think of to reach it, including a bent coat hanger, a stick, a wooden spoon, and a flyswatter. But nothing he tried seemed to work. The more he tried to scratch the itch, the worse it became.
It was certainly no ordinary itch.
“You’re up, Macleod!”
Edward’s thoughts were interrupted by the whiny voice of his least favorite teacher, Miss Polanski. Like most of the instructors at the trade school, she wore a dirty pair of overalls that were stained from years of classroom demonstrations. This was highly irregular fashion for a woman in Portland, Oregon, in 1921, but Miss Polanski was absolutely unlike any other woman Edward had ever met. She wore black, wire-rimmed glasses with lenses so cloudy with oil and dirt that it was almost impossible to see through them. Occasionally she would look down her nose at one of her students over the top of the lenses, revealing eyes that were such a pale shade of blue that they looked almost white. Edward wasn’t the only student in the class who thought her eyes were creepy, but she seemed to particularly dislike Edward.
With a wooden pointer, Miss Polanski indicated the top part of a huge sewer pipe that extended down through the classroom floor.
“Get down there and show me the proper way to sanitize a sewer system.” She held up the end of a long piece of rope. “Fasten this around your waist and I’ll pull you up when you’re done.”
Edward’s stomach turned as he caught a whiff of the rotten stench from the exposed pipe. He thought of the hundred feet of cramped, smelly darkness that he would have to endure to get to the bottom, and he shuddered. He gazed helplessly around the classroom, but saw no sympathy in the other students’ eyes. They were all just glad that it wasn’t one of them that had been called on to do the dirty job.
How can I get out of this?Edward thought frantically. For a moment, the only sound in the room was the quiet dripping from the copper pipes that lined the moldy classroom walls. Edward wished that he’d faked being ill that morning instead of coming to class. He’d watched other students take a turn at sanitizing the sewer pipe and had seen how awful the job was. Some barely made it inside the opening before emptying their stomachs; something that Miss Polanski insisted was “just part of the job.”
Until today Edward had somehow avoided being chosen, but now his number was up. At this point he didn’t know what else he could do other than to remain frozen in place, pretending that he hadn’t heard Miss Polanski call his name, and hope that she’d choose someone else.
The teacher noticed his hesitation and smirked.
“What’s wrong with you, Macleod, afraid to get your hands dirty? I know you heard me, so there’s no use in pretending otherwise. Get busy!”
“All right, keep your overalls on,” Edward muttered under his breath. He ran a hand through his mop of black, tousled hair and scowled.
Then he rose from his rickety desk and made his way to the front of the classroom. Edward felt his cheeks go red and he scowled deeply as he tried to ignore the sniggers of his classmates as he ducked to avoid hitting his head on the pipes that lined the ceiling. His gangly height didn’t make it easy for him to navigate the cramped classrooms at the school.
He hated his school and everyone in it. Only one year earlier, he and his mother had lived in a nice little house on Portland’s upper west side. It was the last time he could remember being truly happy. He’d taken for granted the warm cookies, soft beds, hot baths, good books, and late nights playing board games and drinking lemonade with his mom. Life was so good then. He never thought he would end up in such a miserable place like this.
Edward’s school, the Portland Steel Foundry, was a boarding school for students with learning problems. It had been created many years ago as a vocational center for troubled youths who couldn’t seem to grasp basic concepts like English and math. By training these youngsters to do society’s most unpopular jobs, the officials in charge of the school believed they were helping society and providing a future for otherwise hopeless cases.
The subjects taught at the trade school were unsavory by most people’s standards. Edward’s daily schedule included classes like Care and Maintenance of Sewer Pipes, Extrication of Mold and Fungus, Bottle Cap Production, and at the end of the day, Infinite Uses for Ball Bearings. And because they worked with machinery all day, most of the students’ fingernails were stained a permanent black from grease and dirt. The work was hard, and most of the boys and girls at the Foundry were of the same stock, well known for being thick in the arms as well as “thick” in the head.
Edward wasn’t either. He was tall, thin, and very smart. His stay at the Foundry was supposed to have been temporary. After his mother’s untimely death, his aunt claimed that she couldn’t handle Edward’s “attitude problem” and believed that a short stay at the Foundry would do him good.
The “short stay” had turned into a year.
Edward had just tied the end of the rope around his waist when suddenly a loud ringing echoed through the room, signaling the end of class.
“Next time, Macleod.” Miss Polanski grunted. She glared at him over the top of her spectacles with her strange, ice-blue eyes. Edward shuddered. Then, as the scraping sound of chairs being scooted back from desks filled the room, she called after the retreating students, “I want three pages on Eugene Belgrand and the Paris sewer system for Wednesday.”
Relieved, Edward quickly untied the rope and exited the classroom. He had a study period before his next class, Bottle Cap Production, and was looking forward to escaping to the library, one of the few places he could hide for a while, undisturbed.
Edward navigated the winding corridors, his head and shoulders rising like a ship’s mast high above the sea of other students in the crowded hallways. Several kids glanced up at him as he walked, making cracks like, “How’s the weather up there, Macleod?” or “Hey, Bean Pole!”
Edward knew that his gangly, six-and-a-half-foot height was unusual for a fourteen-year-old boy, but having people call him cruel names like Bean Polemade him feel even more like an outcast. He tried to keep his gaze focused straight ahead and pretend that he was alone and that none of the other students existed.
A second bell rang and the halls slowly emptied as classes began. The muffled sound of heavy machinery droned from behind most of the classroom doors he passed, and he wrinkled his nose as the metallic scent of seared copper filled his nostrils, indicating that a beginners’ welding class was underway nearby.
After a few more twists and turns, Edward finally reached the Foundry library. He closed the weathered doors behind him and gazed at the rows of high shelves that spread outward for several hundred feet. Each of the shelves was stocked with repair manuals for almost every kind of machinery imaginable.
Edward breathed a huge sigh of relief. There were no other students in sight. Although it would have been more exciting if the library had been filled with interesting books, at least there was something to read here. Besides, the high ceilings in the library made it one of the few places in the whole school where Edward felt halfway normal.
Edward grabbed one of the manuals, not really caring which one it was, and sat down. Flipping it open, he scanned the interior while distractedly rubbing the itchy spot between his shoulders against the back of the chair. He had just settled in when a rough voice called out from somewhere nearby.
“Hey, Sticks, I’ve been looking for you.”
Edward bristled at the insulting nickname. He set the book he was reading, Gripp’s Guide to Gear and Valve Repairs, down on the stained oak table and looked up.
Wonderful.It was the last person in the world he wanted to see. Leaning against a tall, battered bookcase was John Grudgel, nicknamed Grudge by most of his victims at the Portland Steel Foundry. Grudge leered at Edward from under a curtain of greasy red hair. His usual sidekick, Scott Snerl, a thuggish blond boy who never changed his gray mechanic’s coveralls, stood behind him. Both of them had their big arms folded across their chests.
Here we go again, Edward thought bitterly.
He glared at the bullies. He thought of barking back an insult, but wisely held his tongue. Undoubtedly it would come out all wrong.
“Sticks, I’ve got a question for you,” Grudge said, his voice dripping with malice. As he drew closer, Edward noticed that he was holding something in his fist.
“Know anything about these?”
Edward glanced down at the steel marbles in Grudge’s meaty palm. He fought hard to keep from smirking. Last night at dinner Edward had hidden those same ball bearings in Grudge’s shepherd’s pie. A few minutes later there had been a loud shout from the bully’s table, and word of Grudge’s chipped tooth had spread quickly among the students.
“Nuh-no,” Edward said, fighting to keep the stutter he hated so much in check. “I h-heard about your tooth though. Yuh-you oughta be muh-m-more careful. I’ve heard the puh-peas in the shepherd’s pie cuh-c-can be really t-tough.”
Grudge’s freckled face turned an ugly purple color. Glaring up at Edward, he hissed, “I know it was you, Bean Pole.”
Earlier in the week both boys had gotten in trouble for fighting when Grudge had shoved Edward into an open septic tank during Sewer Repair class. Edward felt that his clever scheme with the shepherd’s pie was justified retaliation. After all, his brains were his only defense against Grudge’s formidable brawn.
“So, w-what if it wasme? What’re y-you going to do about it?” Edward snapped back, trying to sound braver than he felt.
In reply, Grudge poked Edward hard in the chest with a thick forefinger and said, “Maybe I’ll send you crying home to Mommy, Macleod.”
The bully looked over at Snerl and then added in a simpering voice, “Oh, that’s right. He can’t go home, can he? Mommy died, didn’t she Eddie? What was it from, again?”
Grudge pretended to think and then shot Edward an evil grin.
“Oh that’s right, she died of embarrassment because her widdle Eddie-Weddie never learned how to talk.”
Edward flushed deep crimson. Leaping up from the chair he shouted, “Leave my muh-mother out of this, Grudge!”
“Fight! Fight! Fight!” As if on cue, Snerl took up the ritualistic chant. Soon other students poured through the library doors, alerted by the commotion and eager to see the spectacle.
Edward stood with fists clenched, towering above his adversary. He couldn’t help but think that his height would have been an advantage if he hadn’t been so incredibly thin.
“Show me whatcha got, Skinny.” Grudge sneered, gazing up at Edward. The boy was much shorter than Edward, but each of his arms was nearly as thick as Edward’s waist. Edward knew that one solid punch from Grudge’s ham-sized fists would practically snap him in half. He glared back, determined not to let Grudge see how insecure he really was.
As the two boys circled each o
ther, Edward felt the uncomfortable itch on his back burn with renewed vigor. He hated that stupid itch almost as much as he hated Grudge. What Edward wouldn’t give to wipe that sneer off Grudge’s face permanently!
Edward’s eyes darted to the library bookshelves.
Suddenly, a vivid picture of one of the gigantic shelves smashing down on top of the bully’s head filled his mind. Yeah, that would do it,he thought grimly. He smiled cruelly at Grudge as they circled each other, picturing him flattened by the heavy shelves.Just how great would that be? Happiness bubbled up inside of him at the thought of it. It almost made him feel happy enough to sing.
No more John Grudgel . . .
Suddenly, as if in response to the thought, the itch on his back blazed with intensity. Edward stumbled backward, clawing at the inflamed area. It felt like a million bee stings!
Just then the huge bookshelf behind the bully teetered, rocking back and forth as if strong, invisible hands were pushing it from behind. A few students were distracted from Edward long enough to notice, and they pointed at the strangely behaving shelf. Snerl had barely enough time to shout for Grudge to get out of the way when it fell, smashing into the tile floor with a deafening KA-BOOOOM!
“Aah!” Grudge let out a frightened yelp and stumbled away from the wreckage, shaking. Edward stopped trying to reach his itch and stared wide-eyed at the broken shelves and repair manuals strewn across the floor.
Did that really just happen?
A shrill blast sounded directly behind them. Then a disheveled teacher holding a metal whistle dashed into view.
“What’s going on here?” Mr. Ignatius, Edward’s Bottle Cap Production teacher, narrowed his blue eyes at Edward and Grudge. Mr. Ignatius’s pale eyes reminded Edward a lot of Miss Polanski’s, except for the fact that they looked ten times larger when magnified behind his thick glasses.
Wings Page 1