If These Wings Could Fly

by Kyrie McCauley

  “There. Some chivalry. To make up for what jerks guys are.”

  “Chivalrous knights burned women as witches.”

  “Yeah, I know, but this conversation about poor Tess is stressing me out.”

  “Same,” I say, and we head into school together.

  I try to focus on the review questions, but the phrase “poor Tess” is stuck in my mind. Tragedy, the classic plight of the classic heroines.

  I don’t want to be like Tess, poor Tess, or any of these women in books who are trapped. Or worse, they fight back, and they are killed for it. Because that part of it is too true. Speaking up can be dangerous. If you look for them, and I have, there are news stories every single day that tell you how dangerous it can be. I know how many hours of fear are contained in the phrase domestic dispute. There is an entire history of heartache there. And when I imagine myself as a reporter, I hope I can make those words worth their weight on the page. I hope that one day I can tell the stories that deserve to be brought into the light.

  But as much as I hate saying nothing, it’s the only way I know how to keep them safe.

  For now.

  But I won’t be quiet forever.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  AFTER SCHOOL, I TAKE OUT MY frustration with literature in the place where I think best: the newsroom. Sofia is sitting at my desk, and when we make eye contact, it’s like she reads my mind with one little glance.

  “What’s wrong?” she asks.

  “Just a long day. Lit exam.” I drop my research files onto my desk and dig for the scrap of paper I threw into my bag with the name and number of an ornithologist at a nearby college. “Move your butt, I have work to do.”

  Sofia doesn’t move, so I sit on her lap.

  “Very mature,” Sofia says, sputtering as the messy knot of my hair flies into her face. “Just like real journalists.”

  “Real journalists do their work in the office, Sof. They don’t just hang out talking and making googly eyes over crushes.”

  “I refuse to believe that’s true. Swear to me we will never be too grown-up for googly eyes or crushes. Who are you calling?”

  I’m already dialing, but I cover the mouthpiece with my hand. “A bird expert.”

  Sofia pushes me up and sneaks out from my chair. I collapse back into it as the number I’ve dialed starts ringing.

  There’s no answer, so I start to leave a message, but Sofia comes running back over to my desk, waving a sheet of paper and jumping up and down. I glare at her and stumble through the end of my message.

  “Sofia!” I yell after I drop the phone down. “That message was incoherent. What is so important?”

  “Winter formal announcement,” she says, and drops the flyer onto my desk. A dance. She interrupted my phone call because of a dance.

  “I wasn’t gonna go,” I tell her. The winter formal always falls on New Year’s Eve—our district’s attempt to slow down drinking and driving, as though flasks and molly and vodka bottles stashed under passenger seats don’t exist.

  “It’s eighties themed, Leighton. It’s going to be amazing. Besides, Liam’s gonna ask you,” she says. She puts her hand on her hip and tilts her head. “And you will say yes.”

  “Sofia . . .” I don’t argue with her. It’s pointless. “I’m hoping to set up an interview with the ornithologist this afternoon. Will you come along? We can practice our interview skills together.”

  “Yeah, yeah. You just need a ride.”

  Now I tilt my head. “Pleeeease?” I mimic the face Juniper makes when she’s pouting. That girl has an A+ pout.

  My phone rings. “Oh, good, it’s him! Will you take me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Thanks—”

  “With one condition.”

  So close.

  “If Liam does ask, just say yes.” And this time, she doesn’t say it in a pushy way. She says it like she’s offering me the last donut in the box. Like, here, take this, you clearly need it.

  “Fine,” I say, and grab the phone before it stops ringing.

  I set up an interview in an hour and tell Sofia I’ll meet her at her car.

  I lift the winter formal flyer from my desk. Part of me is glad Sofia pushed the issue. It’s the part of me that now secretly hopes Liam does ask me, so I can be selfish and seventeen and say yes.

  Under the dance flyer is another bright pink slip. It’s the township essay contest. I feel like this damn flyer is everywhere I turn, mocking me. I tried to write the essay after the last Friday night football game. I couldn’t do it.

  Auburn Proud, it demands.

  But I’m not.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  ON MONDAY MORNING, I WAKE UP to the smell of coffee, and find Mom on the corner of my bed, two mugs in hand. It’s still dark outside.

  I sit up quickly, listening for some sound from the rest of the house, but it’s quiet.

  “Mom?”

  She hands me a cup of coffee.

  “Everything is fine,” she says, and sips her coffee. She crosses my room to a little corkboard that hangs over my desk. She unpins one of the many college brochures and brings it back to the bed.

  “So. This is the one?” she asks. New York University.

  “How did you know?”

  “I know everything,” she says, and shoves her shoulder gently against mine.

  We sip coffee quietly for a few more minutes. I know what Dad has always expected of me. He said I can’t rely on any kind of talent to get me a scholarship for school, and to work really hard and get the grades. And I have. I’ve developed both a perfect GPA and absolutely no desire to go to the school he thinks is best. And a rather strong desire to go somewhere else out of sheer spite.

  And somehow Mom knows.

  “I applied last week,” I tell her. “For early admission. I’ll hear back this winter.”

  “How did you pay for it? Applications are expensive.”

  “Um, a fee waiver. Mrs. Riley helped me.”

  Mom is quiet for a moment, and I’m dying to know how she feels.

  “Well, that makes our plans for today even more time sensitive,” she says. “So, get dressed. Comfy shoes. Downstairs in ten?”

  I make it downstairs in three minutes, hair in its typically messy bun at the nape of my neck, jeans pulled hastily on, and an old oversized sweater pulled over the tank top I slept in.

  “You are going to regret some of those choices,” Campbell says from the kitchen table, where she’s eating a bowl of cereal. Juniper laughs, dripping milk onto the table.

  No one rushes to clean up the mess.

  I feel like I’ve woken up in an alternate reality.

  “No time to change,” Mom says. “Let’s go.”

  And just like that, the girls are leaving their empty bowls in the sink and rushing me out to Mom’s car, which is already turned on and warmed against the autumn chill.

  We get in and buckle, and I finally ask.

  “What is going on?”

  “We are going—”

  “Wait!” Mom says. “Wait. Let’s surprise her.”

  “She hates surprises,” Campbell says.

  “I hate surprises,” I repeat.

  “You’ll like this one,” Mom insists. “Okay, music. Juniper gets first choice.”

  Campbell and I groan, and I reach for the travel mug of coffee I managed to grab in lieu of breakfast.

  About ten minutes later we pull into the diner.

  “Fun,” I say. “But why did the girls eat breakfast at home?”

  “We aren’t here for breakfast,” Mom says. “We are here for that.”

  She points to the far end of the parking lot, where a bus is idling.

  “We are . . . going on an adventure,” she whispers.

  “TO NEW YORK CITY!” Juniper yells, so loud I almost drop my coffee.

  “Seriously?” I ask Mom, disbelief thrumming through me. We haven’t done anything like this in a really long time. “What about
school?”

  “Not going today. We decided that if you really want to live in New York, you at least have to spend a day there first, make sure you like it.”

  “Fair enough,” I say. But I know I’ll like it. It’s the opposite of Auburn. What’s not to like?

  “The bus takes us into the city and brings us home at five, so we have to fill the whole day,” Mom says. She makes sure Juniper has gloves and a scarf, and gives Campbell her own cozy hat. It’s windy today; we can hear it whistling outside.

  “We haven’t had an Apple Day in so long,” Campbell says.

  “What’s an Apple Day?” Juniper asks. Her smile is big and toothy.

  Mom sips at her coffee, a gentle lift of her lips at Juniper’s question, and I think of the memories it brings.

  “We used to miss a day of school and work every autumn,” I tell her. “And we’d all go to the orchards a town over, and we’d spend the entire morning picking apples, until—”

  “Until the basket was so heavy that Dad was the only one who could lift it,” Campbell says.

  “Dad went, too?” Juniper asks. Her confusion is a testament to how much things have changed. Of course he went, I want to say. But that was another lifetime ago, wasn’t it?

  Campbell ignores Junie’s question altogether, keeps talking.

  “And we’d also eat them the whole time we were picking them, so—”

  “By the time we got home we were sick from them, so many apples!” Mom says. “But there were still so many left. So we’d bake for the rest of the day. Apple pies covering every surface of the kitchen. But of course by then we could barely look at another apple, let alone take a bite—”

  “So we’d give them away,” I say. “We’d take two to Nana and Grandpa, and give them to the secretaries at school. We’d send a bunch to Dad’s work for the crew.”

  “We’d keep one,” Mom says, “and get some vanilla ice cream, and eat it for dinner.”

  “An Apple Day,” Campbell says.

  “Mm,” Juniper says. “Apple Days sound delicious. Hey! Why don’t we have any Apple Days now?”

  I can’t think of an answer to give her, and Campbell sits back into her seat again.

  “We should,” Mom says. “It’s just hard since Nana is so far now, and without Grandpa. He was one of our primary apple pie eaters, you know.”

  “Well, it’s still an Apple Day,” Juniper says.

  “It is?” Mom asks.

  “Yeah,” Juniper says. “The Big Apple!”

  And just like that, she makes us all laugh, even Campbell.

  On the ride to New York, I sit with Mom. She opens her purse and pulls out a worn copy of Pride and Prejudice. It’s her favorite book, and I couldn’t even finish reading it.

  I should try again.

  “Mom, um, how can we afford this? I know money’s been tight lately. I don’t need this,” I ask, my voice low so the girls won’t overhear in the seats in front of us.

  “Tip money,” Mom says.

  But that still isn’t right, because he keeps everything she earns.

  He tracks the money.

  “Cash tips,” she adds. “I just set some aside. We needed something special after all the penny-pinching.”

  So she hid the money. He’s away on a construction job, so I wonder if he even knows about this at all. We can’t hide it; Juniper will slip up.

  “Leighton, stop. You are thinking too hard. This is fine. I can take my daughters on a little trip.”

  There is more to that sentence. She just couldn’t say it out loud.

  I can take my daughters on a little trip without asking permission.

  But this is a morning to let it go. And when I see the city skyline, I stop caring about our secrets and their consequences.

  We begin with a scheduled tour of NYU. We ride in a taxi, to the complete delight of Juniper. Then we visit the Met.

  On our way into Central Park we grab some hot dogs and fruit to eat.

  It is every single cliché I can think of, and it is perfect.

  Mom and Campbell and Juniper make it perfect.

  I start to feel a sense of loss even though it’s nearly a year away. The idea of being away from them is terrifying. Especially if I won’t know if they’re safe.

  I sit on a park bench with Campbell, and she offers me one of the apples we bought. Mom and Juniper are collecting Juniper’s favorite bright leaves out of the fall foliage. I bite into the apple and gag, spitting the bite back out. It looked shiny and red on the outside, but it must have been dropped a lot, because the inside is bruised and soft.

  “Ew, yuck,” Campbell says, grabbing my apple and her own and throwing them into a garbage bin. “We’ll find another apple treat later.”

  We stay in the park for a while longer. The day is cold, but the sun is warm, and it’s peaceful here. I tilt my face up to the light, and catch a glimpse of black in the corner of my vision. High up in an oak tree, there are three crows perched on a branch.

  They are high enough that I can’t be certain.

  And of course it isn’t true, this far away from Auburn.

  But then they rustle their feathers, one after the other, and I’m more sure of it.

  One of the crows is gray.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “AUBURN WOLVES CAN’T BE BEATEN.”

  The Auburn Gazette’s headlines haven’t been this positive in a long time. Sofia is entirely caught up in covering the team lately, in this rare moment when sports are genuinely as newsworthy as this town always wants them to be. She asked if she could interview my father about the Wolves’ last winning streak, and I’ve been pushing the interview back with one soft excuse after another. Tonight they played their last regular-season game—another win. An undefeated season, for the first time in almost two decades.

  This time when I decide to go to the game, I join Liam’s family. It’s perfect timing, actually, because Mom is taking the girls to sleep over at Nana’s apartment so Juniper can complete her Auburn history assignment. The ride to the away game is quiet. As soon as I get in, Fiona hands me one of her earbuds, and she plays music for us the entire ride.

  But the ride home is different, because it’s a win, and Liam had a great game.

  I’m still quiet, but I notice some things from the backseat.

  I notice how Liam’s dad has a version of loud that isn’t angry.

  I notice how he drives with one hand on the steering wheel and the other resting in between the seats, holding his wife’s hand. It almost looks unintentional, like their hands come together automatically when they sit beside each other.

  I realize that Liam does this when he drives me to school, but I was never aware of it in the way I am now.

  Liam will drive himself home from the school once the team bus gets back, so Fiona and I grab snacks and head down to their basement on our own while we wait for him. It’s already late, but my parents said midnight, and I’m going to steal every last minute I can here before I have to go home.

  Their basement has a gigantic television on one end, and big sofas and chairs. And the whole other half of the basement is turned into a little dance studio for Fiona, complete with long mirrors and a barre. She moves to her half of the room, slipping her shoes off and stepping into movements she’s done a million times. I bet she dreams dance.

  “When did you start it?”

  “Dance?” she asks. She makes eye contact with me in the mirror as she stretches. “When I was three.”

  She sits down on the floor and pulls her hair loose from the tight bun it was in.

  “I know, it looks crazy,” she says. Her hair is curly and big after she takes it out.

  “It’s really pretty, Fiona.”

  “Psh.” She rolls her eyes. “Tell that to Dylan Carpin.”

  “Who?”

  She sighs, leaning forward. “A kid in my grade.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he liked me,” she says. “He sai
d he wanted to ask me to winter formal.”

  “Do you want to say yes?”

  “I did . . . until he asked what I planned to do with my hair for the dance.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, he said it’s really pretty when it doesn’t look too exotic.”

  “Wow, Fiona. What a jerk.”

  Fiona laughs. “Yup.”

  She stands up and moves to the sofa, curling up next to me.

  “I thought he was nice. He seemed nice otherwise.”

  “Yeah, but nice otherwise could excuse a lot of terrible stuff, couldn’t it?”

  Fiona looks at me. “You’re right. It could. Whatever. My friends and I are going as a group. We don’t need dates.”

  “I’ve never gone with a date to a dance, and I always have fun with my best friend.”

  “Yeah? Good, decision made. Friends only. Well, for me. Maybe you can finally go with someone . . .”

  I pull a pillow to my chest. “Don’t even say it, Fiona.”

  “. . . like Liam?”

  “You said it!”

  Fiona tugs the pillow away from me. “You can’t hide from it; I know you want to go with him. You two are dumb together. It’s great to see a couple of smarty-pants be dumb together.”

  “Thanks, Fiona,” I say, laughing.

  “Just promise you’ll say yes if he asks,” she says.

  What is it with everyone making me promise this?

  Fiona gasps. “Or better yet, you should ask Liam!”

  “Ask me what?” says a voice in the stairwell.

  I glare at Fiona and shake my head no.

  She just smiles, and looks exactly like her brother when she does.

  “Congratulations,” I tell Liam when he sits down on the opposite couch. He must’ve jumped right into a shower before coming down here, because his hair is all wet and he does not smell like he just played a football game. It’s that same earthy shower wash again. The kind he used the first night we kissed. The memory makes me flush with warmth. Maybe Fiona is right. Maybe I am a little dumb with Liam. And maybe that’s okay. To get out of my head and trust my feelings.