Light as a Feather

by Zoe Aarsen

  As soon as I stuck my head into the shower area, I heard light footsteps ahead of me and darted back out of the shower block just in time to see the double doors swinging closed. I bolted with all my might for those doors, finding a new burst of energy, leaving the locker room just as the girls from the pom squad filtered in, hot on my trail.

  Outside, my ears adjusted to the quiet night. It was cold enough to startle me, cold enough for the air to smell sharply like snow. Ahead of me by at least ten feet, I saw Violet booking it for the gate that led to the parking lot. She glanced over her shoulder only once, dark hair flying. Reaching the fence, she grabbed at the gate that was all that kept her from sprinting across the parking lot, and found it surprisingly stuck. From behind her, I saw plainly what it took her a second to realize: There were a padlock and a chain securing the gate, presumably to keep visitors from using the high school track at night. I could hear Violet snarl in frustration as she ran her fingers over the lock for a split second and then wasted no time doing what I never expected her to do: climb the fence in her tiny pom-pom skirt.

  “Oh, geez,” I muttered to myself. I slowed myself down to an abrupt stop at the bottom of the fence just as Violet was two steps into her ascension toward its top. I reached up and grabbed her left foot with the intention of pulling her back down to the blacktop, but instead of faltering, she held on to the fence more tightly. I pulled harder a second time and was taken by surprise when she jumped down from the fence to knock me over with a fierce, raging look in her eyes. I fell backward hard, hitting the blacktop and instantly knowing I had bruised my tailbone. While I was down, Violet delivered a brutal, powerful kick to my gut, completely knocking the wind out of me. I gasped for air and rolled over onto my hands and knees as she began scaling the fence a second time, and before even catching my breath, I was back on my feet, reaching for her again in an attempt to pull her down.

  Only this time, I caught her by surprise. This time, it was her body that hit the blacktop with an unpleasant thud, and her head that smacked against the ground. It was as her eyes blinked slowly, refocusing as she tried to figure out what had just happened and how badly she had been injured, that I reached for that gold chain around her neck and pulled with all my might.

  This time, she howled, “OW!” and her fingers flew to the back of her neck, where undoubtedly the chain had dug into her sensitive skin before the clasp snapped off.

  With the locket clutched tightly in my right hand, I was scaling that fence as fast as I could, still very aware of Violet’s dazed state on the blacktop below me. By the time I reached the top of the fence, other girls from the pom squad had caught up to us, and while half of them bent to help Violet back onto her feet, the other half childishly shook the bottom of the fence in an attempt to make me fall. I threw one leg over the top and took two small, careful steps down before I decided to abandon caution and jump. I landed firmly with a thunk that sent pain snaking up my back from my tailbone, and wiped a dark trickle of blood out of my right eye. I wasted a fraction of a second looking over my left shoulder only to see that Violet’s fury had returned, and she was violently pushing back her teammates intending to help her. One foot in a black leather dance shoe slipped into a hole in the aluminum fence, and within seconds, Violet had reached the top, as if a supernatural force were lifting her.

  Now it was my turn to run, to run as fast as I could. The only thoughts in my head as I ran were nebulous, imprints of colors suggesting the immense physical pain I felt. I had the keys to Trey’s mom’s car in the right pocket of my black jeans, but the only way to get across the lot to the Civic was to weave through parked cars. There was a possibility that Violet would reach the car faster than I would, and even if she didn’t, I didn’t like the idea of driving out of the lot on my own without Trey. From there, I wouldn’t know where to go, or what to do with the locket.

  Fortunately, just then, through the west doors of the school, Trey ran out, followed by Mischa. Trey spotted me, and then saw Violet chasing me, and he broke into an impressive sprint and tackled Violet from the side, knocking her over. “Don’t get up!” he warned her as he dashed behind me toward his mother’s parked car. Parents and teachers from both Willow and Angelica poured out of the school through the west doors and had witnessed Trey’s assault on Violet. Coach Simon was among them, holding a bloodied handkerchief to his nose. Several mothers rushed toward Violet, who obeyed Trey and made no effort this time to get up. As I anxiously transferred the locket from my sweaty right palm into my left palm so that I could jam the key into the car door, I looked up to see the disarray we had caused in the parking lot: pom squad girls crying and shouting angrily on the other side of the fence near the track, parents weaving through parked cars toward me and Trey, Mischa standing alone on the stairs leading to the west entrance, her arms wrapped around herself.

  “Don’t look, just drive!” Trey commanded. I climbed into the driver’s side of the car and started the engine so that I could open the lock on his side. He popped into the car and slammed the door shut seconds before the heavyset dad of one of the basketball players reached the car and yelled, “Out of the car right now, you two! You are both in a lot of trouble!”

  I tried to block out the man’s voice, and set the locket down on the plastic divider behind the transmission lever. Trey fastened his seat belt and said confidently, “Let’s go.”

  I backed out of the parking spot as fast as I could, a little impressed with my own driving skills until I heard the crunch of metal and realized I had backed out a little too overzealously and had clipped the back corner of the car next to me. Without checking to see how bad the damage was, I floored Mrs. Emory’s Civic toward the entrance of the parking lot in the wrong direction so as to not waste time. I made an illegal right turn, and could see the angered father through the passenger’s-side window, his face red, his hands packed in fists. Near the doors to the high school building, concerned parents were helping Violet limp back inside.

  CHAPTER 18

  WHERE DO WE GO?” I asked Trey, terrified, barely even stopping at the stop sign at the end of the block before throwing the car into a hard left turn without signaling. My pulse was racing. I felt like I was sweating flakes of ice. My palms felt so slippery I feared I might not be able to control the car.

  “We have to destroy this thing,” Trey muttered, picking the locket up to examine it. “How do we destroy a gold locket?”

  At the next corner, I turned right and merged into traffic, heading toward the rural highway that was our best bet for getting out of the town limits quickly. Almost immediately after I felt the warm rush of relief from mixing in with other cars driving at normal speeds, I heard the sirens of several police cars behind us. Someone at the high school had called the cops, and they were coming after us.

  “Oh God!” I exclaimed. “Do you think I should pull over?”

  “Um, you just assaulted a fellow student, I just punched a teacher, and you just drove away from the scene of an accident. I really don’t think you should pull over right now,” Trey advised me.

  “Right,” I agreed, impulsively switching lanes and cutting off someone to my left who honked angrily at me. I wanted to put as many cars as possible in between us and that police car behind us in traffic.

  Using his minuscule, chewed-down fingernails, Trey managed to pry the locket open and made a sound that was a mix of oops and whoa. I took my eyes off the road for a split second to see that there was a small lock of golden hair, the color of honey, in the locket. It had uncurled the moment Trey had parted the two halves of the heart, and was stretched out, tickling his palm.

  “I don’t know if this is gross or cool,” he muttered.

  I thought instantly of the portrait in the Simmonses’ hallway, with Violet’s grandmother, her blond hair perfectly coifed, smiling so gracefully. My memory of that patient smile suddenly seemed eerie. In the painting, Grandmother Simmons wasn’t welcoming guests into her living room with that smile. She h
ad been telling me, through the cracked paint, that her patience would outlast mine. The Simmonses were trouble, and I’d made the mistake of crossing them.

  We were greeted by two more police cars when I turned right onto the rural highway leading out of town. Upon seeing our car, they flipped on their sirens and the swirling red and blue lights on the tops of their vehicles filled the night with color.

  “I really don’t like this,” I told Trey, my voice shaking. I was already starting to wonder if anyone had called my mother to inform her that there was a wild police hunt for my capture in progress.

  “Just keep driving.” Trey scratched his head, thinking, and said, “The lakes. If we can make it as far as County Highway up past the airport, we can toss it over the side of the suspension bridge at White Ridge Lake.”

  That was far from where we were. The drive up to Shawano Lake and the smattering of smaller lakes around it in the densely forested area would take almost thirty minutes, driving fast. I wasn’t sure my nerves and driving ability could hold out that long. The rural highway was only four lanes—two lanes eastbound, as we were, and two lanes westbound. If the police attempted to obstruct our passage, I wouldn’t have the first idea of how to react. What was equally concerning was that we had less than a quarter tank of gas.

  “Trey, I don’t know if we’re going to make it that far,” I said, too scared to even cry.

  “Think about Mischa,” Trey encouraged me. “We have to at least try.”

  “But do you think throwing the locket into deep water is going to be enough to actually destroy it?” I asked. I would have felt a lot better if we had made the preparations to throw it into a vat of acid or an incinerator hot enough to melt precious metal. But it was eight o’clock on a Tuesday night in suburban Wisconsin; how the heck would we ever come across either of those options? “Gold doesn’t rust.”

  “I think,” Trey hypothesized slowly, “if we just put it in a place where Violet will never be able to get her hands on it again, we’ll be in much better shape than we are now. And if it’s the hair that holds the power, that’s easy to deal with right now.”

  He fished around in the pocket of his coat until he found a book of matches.

  “Trey! I’m driving!” I shrieked, overcome by my fear of fire. I didn’t want to smell burning hair or see smoke in the car with me while I needed to be focused on the outrageous speed at which I was driving down the rural highway, passing occasional cars while three police cars with sirens blaring chased us.

  “This is the police. Pull over.”

  The police officer riding shotgun in the car closest behind us had rolled down his window and was barking out orders to us using a bullhorn.

  “It’s okay,” Trey assured me. “If I burn the hair now, we’ll be halfway done with the job even if the gas runs out.”

  He was right, so I took a deep breath and tried my best to ignore him as he lit the edge of the golden lock. The hairs curled and blackened quickly, filling the car with a sickening, sweet odor and a ton of smoke.

  “All done,” Trey said, lowering his window just enough to slide his left hand through so that the remaining ashes could blow off into the wind.

  “You are under arrest. Pull the vehicle over to the side of the road.”

  Ahead of me by about forty feet in traffic was a logging truck, piled high with freshly cut trees secured with an elaborate network of cords and hooks. It was taking up more than one lane, and passing it was going to be impossible without swerving into oncoming westbound traffic.

  “What do I do, what do I do?” I asked Trey.

  Trey placed a steady hand on my right thigh to calm me down. “Watch for a gap in oncoming traffic, then dip into that lane and gun it.”

  Listening, I watched, and then he added, “And pray like hell there isn’t a car right in front of the truck when we get around it.”

  I took a deep breath after a blue Volvo station wagon whizzed past us on the left, and I threw Trey’s mom’s car into the oncoming lane and hit the gas. Almost a hundred feet ahead of us, cruising at the same speed we were, a maroon Kia was approaching us, threatening to hit us head-on if I wasn’t able to pass the logging truck and merge back into the eastbound lane. For some unfathomable reason, the driver of the logging truck picked up speed, and I didn’t think I was going to be able to get ahead of him before the Kia smashed into us.

  “Jesus!” I screamed. At the very last second before impact with the Kia, I realized that if I tried to cut off the truck driver at the speed at which he was traveling, he’d clip the back of our Civic. I swerved farther left into the second westbound lane, narrowly missing an oncoming Jetta. My stomach lurched as I heard the horrific whur of gravel beneath our spinning wheels. We had veered onto the side of the road, but fortunately I had recovered the car before it had spun off beyond the gravel, into the tall grass and pine trees.

  “Oh my God,” Trey whispered, his voice full of vibrato from the bumping along of the car over the gravel. He was clutching his car seat with both hands, the locket still tucked in the palm of his left hand.

  “We’re good. I’ve got this,” I exclaimed, unable to believe that we hadn’t been annihilated by one or both of the oncoming cars we had just dodged, both of which had slammed on their brakes after we passed them, skidded, and were halted in the middle of their respective lanes. With no immediate oncoming traffic in either westbound lane, I hit the gas again once getting back on the pavement, not wanting to floor the car while still on loose gravel. We soared in front of the logging truck, and its driver skidded to a stop. Behind us, we heard the distant squealing of brakes as the police cars also desperately tried to avoid slamming into the back of the truck.

  Unlike in chase scenes in movies, the ties holding the logs in place on the back of the truck did not tear open, causing mayhem and destruction to the police cars. But the distraction did give me enough time to pass a Chevy truck ahead of us on the highway and gain a sizable lead on the police.

  “That was awesome, but I think later, when we have time, I’m going to wet my pants,” Trey confided.

  I forced a smile. I’d only had my license since August, and at this point I was pretty sure that after my mad dash for White Ridge Lake, I’d never be licensed to drive again.

  It was less than a minute before we heard the sirens soaring behind us again, and the situation became only slightly more dire when there were two more police cars waiting for us at an intersection about two miles before we entered the lake region. At Trey’s urging, I blazed through the intersection without stopping, and the two new police cars joined in the chase after us.

  “These two are a little late to the party,” Trey quipped.

  I almost wanted to cry with relief as we passed the smallest body of water in the cluster of lakes that were located north of Shawano Lake, the much larger body of water to the south. Ahead of us, I could see the lime-green metal of the small bridge that spanned the expanse of White Ridge Lake. We were so close. So close.

  And then the Civic rolled to a stop.

  The gas tank needle was jiggling to a stop above the E, indicating that our luck had run out and we were finally completely out of gas. It was probable we’d driven the last mile entirely on fumes.

  “No, no, no!” I yelled, slapping my palms against the steering wheel in frustration.

  “No time to waste. Let’s go,” Trey urged me. He handed me the locket before rocketing out of the passenger side of the car. I followed his lead, hearing the police cars slamming to screeching halts behind us, no doubt leaving streaks of black rubber on the asphalt.

  “This is the police! You are under arrest! I command you to stop and put your hands above your heads!”

  I ignored the commands of the police as Trey and I ran the last few feet toward the small bridge with all the energy we had left in us. We ran to its center, and I hesitated just for one second, looking down into the lake’s gray depths. The lake looked unusually dismal that night in the pale moonlight,
with black trees, barren of their leaves for the winter, crowning the lake’s edges. Feeling the weight and the cool metal of the locket in my right hand, I leaned back, and whipped the gold necklace as far as I could into the gentle ripple of water below. It sank beneath the dark surface without even making a splash, and moments later I felt the strong hands of police on my arms, handcuffing me. I turned toward Trey on my left, who was also being handcuffed and led back toward the police car. He was smiling that perfect smile of his, that precious, rare smile that only I ever got to see, the smile he had reserved for me alone since we were little kids.

  It was over, at last.

  EPILOGUE

  OUR UNASSUMING LITTLE HOUSE ON Martha Road looked surprisingly different when I came home for winter break. It was smaller than I remembered it being just a few weeks earlier, when I’d watched it shrink out of view through the back windshield of our car. For the first time, I noticed that the shingles on the roof could use some attention, the brown paint on our shutters was peeling, and the little metal mailbox mounted next to our front door was rusting in one corner. I knew it wasn’t the house but rather my perspective that had changed during the time I’d been away, but it was still unsettling to see my childhood home for the first time with fresh eyes.