by Mindy Hayes
I nodded once, discreetly I hoped, pretending that he didn’t say anything to me.
Isla was busy on her phone, thankfully overlooking our small interaction as Lia walked up.
“Good morning, all,” she said.
“Good morning,” Cameron and I said in unison. Isla barely lifted her head and muttered something resembling, “morning.”
“I’m dying to go swimming. You want to head to Lake Keowee and go for a dip after school?” Lia asked.
Cameron and I shared a quick look and glanced swiftly away, but I don’t think it was fast enough.
“I’m going to have a lot of homework today. Maybe I’ll catch you next time. How about a movie tonight?”
She glanced between Cameron and me. Isla was oblivious as she finished writing a text. Cameron caught onto the immediate awkward silence, but rather than saving me he bailed. “Isla, we’re going to be late. Let’s go.” He escorted her away from our crowd.
“Bye, guys.” She waved over her shoulder.
“Bye, Isla,” I said.
They weren’t gone for more than five seconds when Lia cornered me.
“What’s up with the secrecy?”
“What secrecy?” I shifted my backpack. The weight was pinching my buds.
“You and Cam.” She gestured to him walking down the hall. He looked over his shoulder, an anxious look in his eyes. Poor timing, Cam. “You’re hiding something.”
“I’m not hiding anything,” I said, shaking my head and chuckling breathlessly.
“Are you and Cameron. . .” she let her question trail off, alluding to something sketchy behind Isla’s back. “You know. . .”
“No,” I said adamantly and started walking to class.
“What is it then?” she persisted. “Why can’t you tell me?”
“There’s nothing to tell,” I chuckled to make light of things. I did not need her
thinking I was doing the dirty with Cameron behind Isla’s back. How could she think so low of me?
“Oh, there definitely is,” she insisted.
Lia wasn’t going to make this very easy on me. I hated lying to her, but I couldn’t tell her. “There really isn’t, Lia. We’re just back to the way it was before.”
“No, this is more,” she challenged.
I sighed. “Enough detective for one day, yeah?”
She eyed me, knowing I wasn’t being completely honest, but she let it go. “Whatever you say, liar. Keep your secrets to yourself. I’ll let you for today.”
The last thing I needed today was for Lia to start a fight and abandon me. I felt alone enough as it was. Losing a best friend on top of my human genes might actually put me in a mental institution.
“I saw you with Jake yesterday,” I deflected the conversation from me. “You looked awfully chummy by his locker.”
She stood a little taller, closing off her expression to me. “I was talking to him about our life skills project.”
“You did not tell me you had a class with him. And you have a project together?”
She shrugged, trying to feign indifference. “What’s there to tell? He’s in a class with me. He sits across the room and I actually listen during class. No one else exists in there, but me and the teacher.”
I smirked. “And you have a project with him?” I egged her on. It was probably a bad move, but the distraction of simple life issues was refreshing. I actually missed them. I’d gladly welcome them back if they would take away my new genes.
“Mrs. Jennings paired us against her better judgment. I did not willingly go into the partnership and I set ground rules on day one. If he causes me to fail this project I will make his life a living hell.”
“I can imagine that was only more of an incentive to screw up. Some attention is better than no attention in some people’s minds.” I chuckled.
She wasn’t amused. “He has actually deemed himself to be a worthy partner, contributing and pulling his weight on his part of the assignment. I’ve been quite impressed.”
“Apparently,” I said, nudging her shoulder. “I don’t recall mere school project partners smiling the way you did at him.” She grew quiet and shifted uncomfortably. “I’m only giving you a hard time, Lia. If you really like him don’t let me—or Cam, for that matter—hold you back.”
Neither of us spoke for a moment.
“He’s really not some dumb jock,” she said timidly. “He’s actually really smart. And nice.”
I grinned. Though Jake was that last person I pictured making Lia happy, I wasn’t about to be the one to stand in her way.
“I’m glad you’re happy, Lia.”
“Thank you.” She finally smiled at me.
“Would Matt absolutely flip if he found out about him?” The idea made me chuckle. Cameron wasn’t the only one who wasn’t a fan of Jake.
“Oh, Matt’s living up his life in Italy. I couldn’t care less what he thinks,” she said. But I knew she was speaking through her teeth. Matt’s opinion meant everything to Lia.
“Can I be there when you tell him?”
Lia shoved me and I nearly tripped over myself, laughing.
• • •
By the end of the day my back was throbbing. It felt like I had a charley horse the size of Texas between my shoulder blades. My backpack was not helping the situation at all. I dodged everyone I could on my way out of the school doors and raced home as fast as my car would take me. Lia would have questioned me further, seeing the apparent pain in my eyes and Cameron would have begged to see them.
When I stormed through the garage door my dad was there to greet me, hunting in the fridge for an afternoon snack.
“Is everything all right, Calliope?” he asked, closing the door.
“No, it’s not all right. They came in.” I arched my back, dropping my backpack on the kitchen floor and tugged my sweatshirt off. “I have to get to my room.” He stepped to the side and let me run down the hallway, swinging my door shut.
I tore my shirt off and instantly the wings uncurled from their cocoons, stretching like a limb after being in one position for too long. I immediately felt freedom. When I peered at myself in the mirror, four long daisy-like petal shapes fluttered behind me as if they were waving, greeting me for the first time.
They felt strange as if they didn’t belong to me, like they weren’t attached to my body. It was like an out of body experience. I was above myself watching these wings branch out of someone else’s back. And yet they felt more a part of me than anything else, like my arms, just another limb that moved without effort.
The top wings peeked about a foot and a half above my shoulders. They weren’t as big as I pictured them being and that was fine by me. I just hoped they didn’t plan on getting any bigger. These were controllable. Now the struggle was to figure out how to plaster these babies to my body and hide them under my clothes.
I fiddled around with their movement, testing how they fluttered and my ability to shift them. It turned out I could get them to curl around my torso, but they didn’t want to stay that way for long. I suspected it was like trying to stay in a position for any extended amount of time. They needed to stretch. I let them spring back out behind me and the relief was instant.
They really were beautiful. Their soft yellow tint gleamed in the reflection of the mirror, a soft reminder that they were there, a soft reminder that they grew out of me. After admiring them for who knows how long, it dawned on me that I was running out of time for solutions. I needed something for school tomorrow.
It really was unfortunate that I had to find something to hold them down. I dug around in my drawers, throwing out tank tops, underwear and bikinis. Then something caught my eye—my leotard from ballet. I couldn’t wear it every day because, number one, it was from like three years ago and two sizes too small; and number two, it would be too noticeable under my clothes. But it would give me something to go shopping in in the meantime.
It took a lot of restraint to keep the wings dow
n without snagging them in the spandex. I pinched them a couple times and winced from the pain. You are smarter than the leotard. I stretched the straps over my shoulders, feeling the indentation they were already leaving in my shoulders, but I finally managed to conquer the leotard.
“Where are you going?” Dad asked when I passed through the kitchen on my way to the garage.
“To buy something to hold these down,” I said, slipping my purse over my shoulder.
When I looked to him there was a haze over his eyes, making him unreadable as he scanned my body.
“Dad?”
“What?” He gazed up at my eyes, finally acknowledging me again.
“I’ll see you later.”
He only nodded as I waved.
After searching through way too many stores for my wing restrainer I finally found a viable bustier. I suppose it was more of a tight tube top. There was no boning or wires that could jab at my wings. It was stretchy, a soft comfortable material, and, most importantly—form fitting.
By the time I had purchased the wing restrainer and got in my car to go home, it felt like I had been tightening my abs all day and could barely hang on a minute longer. The wings began to cramp. I raced home, blaring music, summarizing Macbeth, trying to think of Cameron, and solving math problems in my head all at the same time, just to keep my mind off of them. When I pulled into the garage it was seven-thirty and Mom was home.
She and Dad danced around the kitchen, opening and closing drawers, working around one another to get dinner ready as I raced by, trying to slip by without them noticing.
Success! They didn’t even as much as twitch, too consumed by each other and the meal. I reached my bedroom door, closing it behind me. I tugged off my shirt and struggled with the leotard, moving as cautiously as I could around my wings. When they finally unfurled I let out the breath of air I held. Never had anything felt so good.
There was a knock at my door. “Calliope?” Mom called.
Crap! “Just a second!” I looked to the door handle and realized I hadn’t locked it. Crap! Crap!
I reached for my shopping bag, tearing the tags from the bustier. What was I thinking? There was no time for the bustier!
“Honey?” She rattled the door and I heard the click as she turned the knob.
“Hold on, Mom! I’m naked!” I hollered in a panic. I might as well have been naked. I was completely indisposed. Under the pressure I concentrated as much as I could, but they didn’t want to lie down. Who could blame them? They’d been trapped for enough hours as it was.
“What’s taking so long, Callie?” she questioned through the crack in the door.
“Just give me a second,” I pleaded, hoping she couldn’t hear the distress in my voice. I sighed and closed my eyes, reaching for the nerve endings in my back. Thoughts of the trees and the cool breeze running through my hair fanned across my mind. Leisurely my wings glided around me, wrapping snuggly around my torso. And stayed. I threw on my shirt.
“Come in.”
“You snuck right by us.” She smiled, but I saw the suspicion in her eyes as she scanned my body. “You hungry?”
I nodded. “Starving.” Not really, but it was something to say.
She looked to the shopping bag on my bed. “Did you go shopping?”
Dad saved me when he appeared behind her. “What’s taking you girls so long? Dinner is ready,” he said, kissing Mom on the neck, distracting her on purpose. She giggled and spun on him, smacking him in the arm. “Finn.” She grinned.
He looked to me. I thanked him with my eyes and he winked, but I could see the unrest in his eyes. He thought we were going to be discovered.
I asked them to give me a minute and then I would be there. Dad closed my door with a relieved look on his face. He couldn’t have closed it fast enough though. I tore of my shirt and released the wings and stretched them wide. These things were not meant to be confined.
This was going to be way more difficult than I had planned.
• • •
School dragged on and on the next day. Keeping my wings pinned down wasn’t going to be as easy as I’d hoped. They stayed confined, but they were suffocating. It felt like I was trapped in a straightjacket. The more I thought about it, the more I was aware of their need to be free. But I had to get used to this. They had to get used to this. I couldn’t let them roam free. It just wasn’t going to happen. Not possible.
I found Kai and Declan huddled together in the clearing, speaking angrily in hushed tones. When I looked at them side-by-side Declan was a few inches taller than Kai. Though they were both well built, Declan’s figure was more intimidating, bulkier. Declan looked down at Kai or I suppose it was more of a glare, but Kai didn’t shrink in the least from his stare. If anything, he looked fiercer glaring right back as they spoke vehemently.
“Hey fellas, am I interrupting something?”
Their eyes jerked toward me as if surprised by my presence. It wasn’t as if I had been that quiet.
“No, of course not.” Declan tried a smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. In his eyes I saw traces of fear.
“Is there something I should be worried about? Is everything okay?”
“There’s nothing you need to worry about, Calliope.”
Kai scowled at Declan, clenching his jaw tightly, an obvious stance of disagreement on his part.
My forehead scrunched. “It doesn’t look like nothing to me.”
“It’s nothing,” he reassured.
Kai crossed his arms. “Declan and I have very different views of what exactly ‘nothing’ is.”
“We’re not going to quarrel about it in front of her, Kai,” Declan hissed. “Why are you pushing it?”
“Why do you think she can’t handle it?” Kai shot back.
I liked Kai’s confidence in me, but Declan’s uncertainty made me worry that maybe it really was something I didn’t want to know. They faced each other, nearly chest to chest. I really didn’t want to have to break up a faery brawl, so I decided to intervene before it got that far.
“Okay, boys. . .knock it off, and how about you let me decide what I can and cannot handle.”
They continued their stare down with gritted teeth. “It should be her decision. You can’t take that away from her,” Kai pressed.
“Fine.” Declan broke. He exhaled and moved away. “But I will tell her.”
Kai was satisfied enough that he grew a snarky grin. “Fine.”
Declan straightened his shoulders. “Some fae came too close for my comfort today, so we had to steer them away.”
“Declan hasn’t had anyone get that close to you before and—”
“And it riled me up a little bit,” Declan inserted.
Relief settled inside of me. At least it wasn’t any more information about me that they knew and I didn’t, or that Favner had finally located me. “Now, that wasn’t so bad was it? I think I can handle knowing about a couple of faeries adventuring out my way.” They stayed silent, which always seemed to speak volumes with them. “But I’m guessing these faeries weren’t as harmless as you two?”
Kai narrowed his eyes at Declan, urging him to give it up.
“They were Keepers of Favner. His top two in command.”
“Which means Favner knows one of two things.” Kai looked pointedly at me. “Or both. That Declan and I are leaving Faylinn and hiding something from him or that you are alive.”
“And Favner can’t know I’m alive because then I’ll be deemed as a rogue faery and forced to go back?” I questioned. I still wasn’t completely clear with what Favner’s beef was with me.
“Exactly,” Declan stated, eager to end the conversation. “What did you come here to talk about today, Calliope?”
With all the testosterone drama I’d almost forgotten about my wings. “They came in.” I shrugged.
“Your wings?” Declan asked.
“Well, let’s see them.” Kai relaxed first, letting the corner of his mouth quirk up.
“No.” I took a step back.
“Oh, don’t be such a troll. Let’s see those big beautiful wings.” Kai came closer, but I held my ground this time, meeting his confidence head on.
I suppose he was trying to insult me. Trolls must be cowards. “I don’t want to take them out. I finally figured out how to strap them down comfortably.” Or as comfortably as it was going to get. “It’ll take me another hour to strap them back in if I show you now.”
It was only partially true. The main reason I didn’t want to show them was because I knew they would gawk and talk about them for the entire afternoon and I couldn’t bear to hear them examine every little inch of me. Not today. Not ever. But really not today.
Kai rolled his eyes and folded his arms defiantly across his chest, pinning the vines under his hand. “Fine.”
“Don’t listen to him, Calliope. You don’t have to show us anything you don’t want to.”
“Thank you, Declan,” I acknowledged. “I only came to give you the news. It’s just one more step to faerydom that I figured I would share with you two.”
“So you just use us for faery information and then leave,” Kai said. “I see how it is. I feel so violated.”
I gave Kai an annoyed glare, one that I’m sure he was getting used to and I was becoming a pro at.
“Calliope,” Declan prompted, ignoring Kai. “How do you feel about your wings?”
I hadn’t been able give myself five minutes to think much past what an inconvenience they were. When I thought about it though, they really were pretty. A little cumbersome to hide underneath my clothes, but they were truly magical. The wings finally made me feel magical. “I like them. Definitely better than my ears. My ears make me feel like a troll.” I eyed Kai.
Declan chortled and shook his head. “You don’t look the like a troll, trust me.”
“Trolls are hideous,” Kai agreed.
“Obviously trolls exist,” I muttered dryly.
Declan gave me a rueful shrug. Why wasn’t I surprised? For all I knew every other creature from my bedtime storybooks existed in my backyard without my knowledge. All the monsters hiding under beds and in closets really did haunt every child’s night.