If These Wings Could Fly

by Kyrie McCauley

  Sofia finds me before first period. She tears down the hall and throws her arms around me. “Leighton! You beautiful person, where have you been? We haven’t talked in a week!”

  “Sorry, Sof.” I’ve been in a domestic nightmare. “I was . . . way behind on my summer reading. I spent the last few days catching up.” We make our way through the crowded hall together, bumping into so many people that it becomes silly to keep apologizing. It’s a stampede of wide-eyed freshmen, and we are caught in the fray.

  “Well, me too. At least we could have suffered together,” she says, her long dark hair bouncing in its perpetual cheerleading ponytail. Sofia is the happiest person I know, and I’m not sure how, but even her features are happy. Her cheeks are low, round, and rosy. Her eyebrows arch dramatically, and she leaves them to grow naturally, adding to the drama. Her smile is a little off-balance—the right side of her mouth curls up higher. It makes her always look like she just stopped laughing a moment ago. And usually she did. After nights like last night, I’m so grateful she’s my friend.

  “So what do you have first period?”

  Sofia unfolds her schedule and crinkles her nose. She holds the paper away from her body like it’s contaminated. “Physical Education.”

  “Wow. That’s unfortunate. You’re gonna have to shower all over again.”

  “And have wet hair all day.”

  “The scheduling gods did not smile upon you.”

  Sofia groans, leaning her head on my shoulder. “What about you?”

  I pull out my schedule to double-check.

  “AP English.”

  “Oh good, you get to read about people killing each other for stupid reasons first thing every day.”

  “Still better than gym.”

  “Good point. Bummer that none of our classes overlap this semester.”

  “Seriously. But we have newspaper. And first dibs on assignments now that we’re seniors. Do you still want sports? They better not give it to Chris just because he’s a guy—”

  Sofia stops walking so fast I bump into her. We’ve reached the large windows that face the soccer field.

  “What the hell.” Sofia doesn’t swear much, and the “hell” comes out on a sigh, like she didn’t mean to say it out loud.

  Crows cover almost every inch of the field.

  “Didn’t you notice them earlier?” I ask.

  “A few here and there, like usual. Nothing like this.”

  We pause at the windows, letting freshmen bump into us in their haste to beat second bell. Across the street is the football stadium, and I can make out small dark shapes filling the bleachers. The crows are in constant motion, taking off and landing, circling overhead. There must be thousands of them. And they’ve all decided to come here.

  God knows why any creature would choose Auburn.

  Especially one that can fly away.

  Chapter Four

  IT ISN’T UNTIL AFTER SECOND PERIOD that I have a chance to find my locker. It’s not in the senior hall. I follow numbers down, rounding the corner into the junior hallway.

  Warm.

  Warmer.

  Hot.

  Great. I get to spend senior year banished to the juniors’ hall. They must have run out of lockers for seniors. Which means no hanging out at the Senior Wall, which is literally just a wall that seniors alone get to stand at and lean against to talk between classes and yell at any lowerclassmen who get too close. Every year the senior class decorates the wall with a gigantic “CLASS OF” banner with the graduation year, and everyone writes curse words and smutty messages on it until the administration takes it down because it’s too vulgar. One class didn’t make it past homecoming.

  All I really need out of senior year is a diploma, but I still feel a pang over missing out on another normal high school thing. I’ve already missed so much. Nights I’ve chosen to stay home because he was in a bad mood. Birthday parties I knew to never ask for.

  I open my half-size locker and start to cram all my textbooks inside. I’m still trying to convince myself that Senior Wall is a dumb tradition anyway when someone grabs me from behind.

  Well, doesn’t grab. Tickles. My ribs.

  “What the hell!” I yell, spinning.

  “Oh shit.” The hands are off and the person steps back. Liam McNamara is standing there, looking every bit like he knows he messed up. “I’m so sorry. I thought you were Lyla Jacobs.”

  “Who?”

  “Lyla. She’s a junior. Your hair looks a lot like hers. And she’s my cheerleader.”

  “I didn’t know they were considered property.” I know what he means. Sofia’s been doing this for a few years. But I want to let him squirm.

  “No, they’re not.” He runs his hand over the top of his head. “I’m really screwing this up.”

  “Um, yeah,” I say. I know Liam. I know of Liam, I should say. We move in different social circles. Or rather, he moves in a circle and I’m more of a solitary dot.

  Liam McNamara: fellow senior, student council vice president, member of the varsity football team. His superlative should be Most Likely to Score a Modeling Contract While Running for Congress. Liam has always had a lot of girlfriends and a lot of charm. But thanks to my home, I’ve seen the flip side of the charming coin, and it isn’t a prince.

  “Lyla is the cheerleader, who I respect and do not consider property in any way, shape, or form, who is paired with me for the season. She’ll, like, decorate my locker and make me cookies and stuff.”

  I don’t roll my eyes. I don’t. But it takes a long, conscious mental effort not to do so.

  “Okay, well. It’s fine. You just startled me.”

  “Yeah, I’m really sorry. Lyla is my friend. I swear I don’t go around touching strange girls. Not that you are strange, I just mean—”

  “It’s okay, Liam. I’ll see ya around.”

  “Well, actually, my locker is, uh—” He points to the bottom half-locker that’s under mine. Because of course. Let’s draw this awkwardness out for the whole year.

  I move to the side, letting Liam crouch down at his locker.

  “We should at least ask them to switch us. Wouldn’t want one of our star players to injure himself stooping over for his books, would we?”

  “Ah, thanks, but that wouldn’t be very chivalrous of me. Besides, it’s just football.”

  “Did you say just football? In this town that’s practically blasphemous.”

  “Yeah. But there’s not much else to do around here, and it’ll look good on college apps.” Our conversation has taken a surprising turn, and I try to quiet the surge of curiosity I feel. Let’s move along here. But Liam doesn’t move along. He stands at our shared locker space and leans against mine.

  “We have first period together, right, Leighton?”

  Leighton.

  “Didn’t know you knew my name, Liam. Let alone how to pronounce it.”

  “Leighton. Like Peyton. Like Peyton Manning. Easy enough to remember.”

  “Do I remind you of a professional football player?”

  He laughs.

  “No. You’re a shrimp. You would literally get crushed on a football field. But seriously, there’s, like, two hundred kids in our class. I know who you are.”

  “Just not from behind.”

  “I’m never gonna live that down, am I?”

  “Probably not. But it’s only been five minutes. Give it time.”

  “Leighton’s a cool name,” Liam says.

  I pause while adjusting my bag.

  “Thanks. It was a birthday present.”

  A dad joke. Seriously? But Liam laughs, and I soften a little.

  Calm down, Leighton. Not everyone is out to get you.

  “So, Advanced Placement English. Should be a fun semester,” I say, sarcasm infused in every syllable.

  “Yeah, no kidding. Our summer reading was depressing. But I liked Beloved. You headed this way?” Liam nods his head toward the senior hall. “We should get moving be
fore the bell.”

  Liam takes my heavy calculus book and starts walking. It takes me a moment to realize he isn’t stealing it but carrying it for me. I blink stupidly a few times before catching up.

  “You liked Beloved? It was really sad.”

  “Sure, but it was important. Stories matter. Representation matters. Besides, it’s better than reading Romeo and Juliet freshman year. Enough about rich white kids already.”

  I laugh. Liam is one of very few Black students in our school, and I’m caught off guard by his candor.

  “Fair point,” I say. “Didn’t care for the romance?”

  “That wasn’t romance. That was idiocy. I don’t know who said ‘all is fair in love and war,’ but I’m calling bull. When you love someone, you don’t treat them like that. You don’t end up dead.”

  I know we are talking about a book, but in my mind I hear the crack of the door hitting the wall last night. I see that same wall this morning, perfect, as though the plaster never broke. I remember how my eyes slipped past it as I hung up frames, like they were unwilling to accept the way our strange house erases his violence for him.

  I’ve stopped walking, and when Liam notices, he stops, too. The air around me feels cold. I can’t remember what was funny or cute or charming about our conversation.

  “Can I have my book back?” I ask, my tone cool and crisp, as controlled as I can make it. I can’t help it. The alternative to cold is crying, and I don’t want to fall apart. Not here.

  “Um, yeah, of course, Leighton,” Liam says, handing my book back. “Is this about earlier? Cuz I’m really sorry . . .”

  “I just forgot a notebook. I’ll see you in class,” I mutter, and I’m gone, walking down the hallway as fast as I can without getting called out for running. I try to ignore the burning throat and stinging eyes so they’ll go away. Just act normal.

  Normal.

  Normal.

  There.

  The word has lost all meaning.

  Chapter Five

  IF THERE WAS EVER ANOTHER VERSION of Campbell Grace Barnes, I missed it. As far back as I can recall, she’s been the serious one. I’m a reader, sure, but Cammy is a thinker. She thinks while she brushes her hair, her fingers ruthlessly detangling knots in the shiny, straight red strands. She thinks while she eats her cereal, one hand holding a spoon, the other one tapping against the table. A staccato beat to accompany her thoughts. She thinks when he yells, and when he throws things.

  Most of the time, I have no clue what Campbell is thinking. I know her better than I know anyone, but her mind is the Mariana Trench, and there are depths I’ll never see. And that’s okay. She can contain the secrets of the universe and keep every last one to herself for all I care, as long as she’s still a kid sometimes. That’s all I want. And it’s there when she leaves on her bicycle.

  Campbell loves Mom, Juniper, me, and her bike, and I’m not sure the bike would come fourth if she ranked us. She covets it. Every day after school, she is in the house only long enough to ditch her backpack, and then she’s off, riding down Frederick Street, turning left at the corner. She goes to a richer neighborhood—one that almost passes for suburbia, though the houses still have a ton of space between them. She rides with her friends, zipping in and out of streets, ignoring helmet laws. Campbell on her bike is not thinking. And that is good for her.

  On our fourth day of school, Campbell has already been gone a half hour when there is a knock at our door. I spring from the kitchen table, where I had been stress-reading some college brochures and wondering if I’d ever set foot on one of those ivy-covered campuses.

  Mrs. Stieg is standing on our front porch. Mrs. Stieg is probably in her mid-seventies, and I don’t know how long she’s been a widow, but I never knew her husband. She is sweet and gray and grandmotherly. She likes to wave at us from her front porch when we walk to the bus stop. Mrs. Stieg likes roses, and they grow in abundance around her home every summer. Mrs. Stieg likes to ignore knocks at her door in the middle of the night.

  “Can I help you?” I ask. I’m wondering where I get this compulsion to be polite to someone who couldn’t bother to help me call the police. I miss what she says. Something about Campbell.

  “Sorry?”

  “My garden on the far side of my house. Your sister and her boys rode through it yesterday and ruined my Mister Lincolns.”

  Her boys. Campbell’s bike-riding friends happen to be mostly boys. Mrs. Stieg likes to strongly imply her disapproval.

  “Mister Lincoln?” I repeat.

  “My roses. They destroyed a patch of roses.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry, Mrs. Stieg. That doesn’t sound like Cammy.”

  Yes it does.

  “I didn’t think so, dear. It’s those boys she spends her afternoons with. Shouldn’t a girl her age have girlfriends?”

  “I think a girl her age should just have friends, actually.”

  My rebuttal earns a stern look.

  “I’m sorry for the flowers. Can we help fix them? I’ll bring Campbell over first thing tomorrow, and we will clean up any mess.”

  Mrs. Stieg considers the peace offering, which I’m still not sure she deserves after the other night. I try to forgive it. Maybe she wasn’t sure what she heard. Maybe she was scared.

  “Very well. Seven a.m. You girls should bring some gloves.”

  We arrive at 7:15 the next day, holding gardening gloves we dug out of the garage and large coffee tumblers. Campbell isn’t usually a coffee drinker, but an early Saturday playing with thorns warrants some caffeine.

  When I confronted her about the garden mishap last night, she said it was an accident. Her friends biked home with her, and they were all going down the hill too fast to stop, so they crashed into a flower bush. She tugged up her shorts, showing me the thorn scrapes.

  “Why would I bike into thorns on purpose, Leighton. It hurt.”

  I relented, unconvinced. Campbell was out on the roof when I went for help. She would have seen Mrs. Stieg’s light turn on and then off again. If any thirteen-year-old in the world believed in vigilante justice, it would be Campbell Grace.

  Whether the damage was done on purpose or not, we’ll be spending the morning cleaning it up. We get our instructions from Mrs. Stieg and dive into the scramble of branches and wrecked flowers.

  “You guys really demolished this thing,” I say, tugging on a stubborn piece. Mrs. Stieg wants us to remove all the broken branches, and then she will see if the thing is salvageable. If it isn’t, we owe her a bush. “Did you just run through it once?”

  Campbell doesn’t hear me—or at least, she pretends not to. She has her arms buried in the bush, and there are little lines of blood where the thorns have already gotten her.

  “Why don’t you go home and put on long sleeves? You’re going to get shredded up.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Whatever,” I snap back. This is her mess. I’m just trying to help.

  We work silently from then on, sweat and blood mixing on our arms and legs where the thorns nick us.

  Why roses? Of all the flowers someone could obsess over, why choose one with a built-in defense system? It would be like trying to domesticate a garden full of Campbells—a constant battle, and one likely to draw blood.

  We finally finish pulling apart the broken bush around nine and go get Mrs. Stieg for her evaluation. The bush does not look good. It is missing huge patches of branches. But she studies what is left, pushing and pulling at it. Testing its roots.

  “It’ll live,” she says. “Though we’ll have to wait and see how rough it looks next bloom.”

  Next bloom, meaning next year. I’ll take the reprieve.

  “Great, thank you, Mrs. Stieg.”

  I elbow Campbell.

  “Thanks,” she says, halfheartedly.

  “And here,” Mrs. Stieg says. “Take these home for your sweet mother.” She hands me a freshly gathered bouquet of roses, from a non-trampled bush. They are bright yellow, and they sm
ell even stronger than the Mister Lincolns did.

  “Young lady,” Mrs. Stieg says, facing Campbell. “Running wild around this town isn’t going to get you very far. You have to respect your elders.”

  “I do,” Campbell says, but I grind my teeth at the statement. Not all elders deserve our respect.

  “Did you girls know I was married for forty years?” Mrs. Stieg asks. I feel Campbell straighten beside me. It’s subtle, but there’s a tension there that wasn’t a moment ago, and it’s echoed in my own body.

  “That’s great,” I mutter.

  “My husband wasn’t perfect, you know,” Mrs. Stieg presses on. “Men aren’t perfect. But it is their job to provide for their families, and that is stressful for them. Do you know what a woman’s job is?”

  Campbell’s hands clench at her waist, and I fold my arms over my chest.

  We know where this is going, and it has nothing to do with the roses or Cammy’s bike or her friends that are boys, and everything to do with the other night. When I think of how scared we were, I feel like I could be sick. The combination of bile and the sweetness of roses is overwhelming.

  “To support their husbands,” continues Mrs. Stieg, unaware of how close I am to throwing up in her rose beds. “To forgive them. To manage that stress. And to do so privately. Without embarrassing them or causing a fuss. Do you girls understand?”

  And this is when quiet, always-thinking Campbell decides to speak up.

  “That’s really fucking stupid, Mrs. Stieg.”

  She turns on her heel and marches across the road and into our home, slamming the door behind her.

  Mrs. Stieg’s mouth is open. She turns to me, and I know she’s waiting for my apology. Or maybe my apologies, plural.

  I’m sorry for the noise.

  I’m sorry for the disturbance.

  I’m sorry for Campbell swearing at you, and I’m sorry I ever knocked on your door for help.

  “Thanks for the roses,” I offer instead, and follow Campbell home.

  Part of me knows it’s stupid. We’ve made an enemy where we needed a friend. But another part of me knows that Mrs. Stieg was never going to help us. Her generation was taught that appearances mattered most. That being a good wife is somehow better than being happy. Or safe.