Tentacle and Wing

by Sarah Porter

  “And do I hate you?”

  “No.”

  “Am I waiting for my chance to kill you?”

  “No.”

  “You seem very sure about my feelings. So, look at me. Tell me what you see. How do I feel about you?”

  Tell me what you see. That’s exactly what my dad always said to me when we were alone, at the zoo or in a park. But when he said it, he was training me to lie.

  Gabriel tips his head back. “You respect me.”

  Ms. Stuart’s lips crimp like she’s trying not to laugh. “Most of the time, yes, I do. Very much. And what else? What do you see?”

  She’s asking the same questions my dad did, but the difference is that she really wants the truth. The truth exactly the way he sees it. I don’t know when I started walking closer to them, but I’m just a few feet away now.

  All Gabriel’s colors are gone, as if they’d vanished down a drain. He’s back to icy white.

  “You love me, Ms. Stuart.”

  “Thank you, Gabriel.”

  Then he can’t keep the attitude down any longer. He swings his head and glares at me and Marley. “But they think they’re normal, and they think that makes them special here, and that’s way worse than being normal for real!”

  Ms. Stuart nods. “It’s certainly worse for them.”

  “I know I’m not normal,” I say. “I’ve known for years that—​that I’m a kime. My dad wanted me to keep it a secret.”

  Gabriel pivots and stares at me contemptuously. “You look normal.”

  “Well, so do you. Right now.”

  Ms. Stuart gets that squelched-laughter smile again. “And your name is?”

  “Ada Lahey.”

  “Lahey? Interesting. There’s a prominent microbiologist with that name.”

  I’m about to say, Yes, that’s my dad, but Gabriel’s already talking over the end of her sentence. I feel like I can’t quite keep up.

  “So how did you figure out what you were?” he asks, and he sounds just a little bit friendlier.

  “My vision. I can see people’s body heat and some other things, too.”

  “You’ve got infrared?” Now he’s enthusiastic. “Cool! So does Jared. He’s eight. Well, not actually vision, but sensors, anyway. Real infrared vision is super rare. I guess the two of you can talk about, um, that you can tell what chair someone was just sitting in.” He laughs. Ms. Stuart is still staring at me like she’s sizing me up. I don’t know why, but I almost feel like I have to prove myself.

  “I can even tell if someone just left a room. As long as it’s not too hot a day, anyway, because then the heat all around hides it. But if it’s chilly, I can see a red blur for, like, ten seconds.”

  I am twelve years old, and I have never been able to tell anyone that before. I couldn’t even talk about it in my journal, because my dad was really intense about never putting anything in writing. There was always the risk that someone would read it.

  Say it with your violin, Ada. Whatever you see, describe it in music. Never words. Music is safe.

  “Well,” Ms. Stuart says. She looks around at Marley, cowering back near the gate, then at the little boy, squeezed in a ball and whimpering. “I’ll, uh, introduce myself to the others later. I’ve got to be getting back. Gabriel will help all of you settle in. All right?”

  She takes off again before I have time to answer. Her hem flounces against the grass.

  Gabriel breaks out in a grin. “So, what do we do about your normal friends? That girl will lose her mind if I go anywhere near her.”

  “I’ll get them,” I say. I can hear the gate opening again, and the van’s engine starting, but I don’t bother to watch it leave.

  Chapter Five

  “IT USED to be a hotel and convention center. The government took it over right after the first of us were born, when everyone was panicking and leaving Long Island anyway and all the hotels were suddenly worthless. So they’d have someplace to put us. I was one of the first ones born who actually survived, and I came here when I was just a month old.”

  Gabriel will keep explaining things in a very important voice for as long as I let him. I’ve only known him for fifteen minutes, and that’s already obvious. We’re walking up the slope toward the silvery building, sticky grass nipping at our legs and crickets popcorning up at every step. As we get higher, the rush of the sea gets louder.

  My violin case is in my arms, and the little boy’s backpack thumps on my shoulders. He finally calmed down enough to tell us his name, Corbin, and now he’s making short dashes through the grass to look at bugs, then zipping back to us. Gabriel is carrying my duffle. Marley drags along far behind us, and it turns out that she doesn’t have any luggage with her.

  I didn’t ask her why not, because maybe her parents were too freaked out to go get her things or maybe they just didn’t care enough to bother. Either way, she probably doesn’t want anybody prying.

  “One thing you’ll have to get used to, though: there aren’t nearly enough adults here to do all the work, so everybody has to pitch in. After class we help out in the garden or cook, and the bigger kids like us look after the smaller ones. If you notice something dirty, you clean it yourself. We all get one free day per week, that’s it, and one hour off before dinner. See, this is a community, and it’s important for all of us to keep that in mind and not complain.”

  “I don’t mind helping,” I say. I’d like Gabriel more if he didn’t lecture so much. I glance back for Marley, still stumbling along, and see the high stone wall stretching into the woods. The razor wire along its top gleams like liquid gold. “Can we get to the beach?”

  “We have a private beach here. Just for us. So, fine, none of us can ever leave the grounds, but it’s better in here anyway.” Gabriel says it so proudly that it’s like he thinks we’re movie stars instead of prisoners.

  I have to remind myself that he’s been here all his life, and he can never go anywhere else, so he has to be proud of whatever he can. It’s not like he can brag about his hockey team, or visiting Hawaii with his family, or anything else normal kids would talk about.

  “That’s so cool,” I say. Because I can feel how much he needs to hear it. The cruelest thing I could do would be to start talking about how fun everything is in the world outside.

  We’re almost at the building. It’s sleek and modern with big windows and a long, low roof with different sections angling different ways. An overgrown tangle of beach roses grows along the walls, and a cracked driveway curves past a glass door with Reception written in flaking gold script.

  Gabriel nods. “So Ms. Stuart left it up to me to pick your roommate. She leaves me in charge a lot. I think I know who I want you with.”

  “You could ask me what I want,” I say. I’m okay with making an effort to be nice to him, but he should make an effort back.

  “Oh, that girl Marley? You want to barricade yourself in a room with Miss Normal?”

  I’d also like him better if he weren’t so touchy. “That’s not what I meant. It’s just, if you’re choosing my roommate, it would be good if you asked my opinion.” I try to think of how to put it. Something that will get through his attitude. “Out of respect.”

  He pulls open the glass door and makes a sarcastic little bow. So that didn’t work.

  We wait a few seconds for Corbin to catch up, but Marley is so far down the slope still that Gabriel wrinkles his nose and turns away. “Whatever. Come on. And you know if you act weirded out when you meet everyone, they’ll never forget it. Corbin’s so little they’ll give him a pass, but you aren’t. I’m warning you for your own good.”

  I’m not answering that. I take Corbin’s hand and follow Gabriel up to a curved reception desk scarred all over with knifed initials. Gabriel plunks my duffle on top, so I leave the rest of our things there too. We turn a corner and enter a huge room with a stone fireplace and a lot of low suede couches and brass lamps on glass tables. It must have been a very fancy lobby once, though no
w all the furniture is chipped and stained. There’s a huge picture window along one wall full of wind-ripped clouds and wild green ocean. A modern chandelier made of chunks of warped aqua glass hangs in the room’s center.

  Maybe a dozen kids are sitting around on the floor with board games or tattered books. And I know I can’t act surprised, but I still jump a little as they come into focus.

  The first one I really take in is a chubby boy with a face like a little pink circle surrounded by dark, shiny fur; he recoils when he sees me, as if we’d met before somewhere, though that’s obviously impossible. He has hardly any neck, and I can tell that his fur keeps spreading inside his clothes. Someone cut the collar and sleeves off his shirt so it would fit. His arms look like extra-long seal flippers with human fingers fanning out at the ends.

  There’s a girl maybe four years old with blue skin and a plume of blue tentacles instead of hair. My mom liked to talk about kimes having tentacles. The girl looks up at me shyly, and the tentacles coil like they’re embarrassed.

  A boy covered in fish scales with round sequin-bright eyes on the sides of his head. Another boy with gray and white feathers and webbed bird feet sticking out of his jeans.

  There are others so strange I can’t even process it. They’re all staring at me. “This is Ada,” Gabriel announces. “She’s not as bad as she looks. Ophelia, Ada is your new roomie. Say hi.”

  I look where he’s looking. A thin girl with white-blond hair and enormous, pitch-black sunglasses is perched on a ledge next to the fireplace. Some kind of shimmery wall hanging is right behind her, but she’s leaning on it like she doesn’t care about messing it up. I thought Gabriel didn’t want to put me with anyone normal-looking. Actually, I was sure he’d pick the most disturbingly mixed-up roommate for me that he could, someone like a collage of parts from tarantulas and worms and puppies with a human mouth gibbering in the middle. But Ophelia is actually pretty, and as far as I can tell, she could pass for human as easily as I can. I wonder if she’s always been here, or if they caught her with the same trick they used on me.

  I pull myself together, let go of Corbin, and walk around the edge of the room to her, checking the floor as I go so I don’t step on somebody’s tail. It’s not her fault that Gabriel made that obnoxious show of choosing her on his own, just to prove how in charge he is here.

  She gets up to meet me, and the wall hanging gets up with her. Oh.

  Ophelia has wings.

  Dragonfly wings: two pairs of translucent ovals spread out more than a yard from each side of her back. Wings lace-veined and throbbing with colors so delicate that even somebody with normal eyes couldn’t possibly have names for them.

  “Hi, Ada,” she murmurs. I realize right away that she’s not like Gabriel, just waiting for me to be uncomfortable so she can act superior and tell me how much I suck.

  She’s afraid I’ll be repulsed by her. It’s so unfair that she has to feel that way that I get a little angry, though I don’t know at what.

  “Hi, Ophelia.” I hesitate a moment, in case it’s an awkward subject, but then I decide to go ahead. “Your wings are beyond amazing. They’re the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  I guess it was an okay thing to say, because she smiles. “I can’t fly, though. They’re not big enough for me to get really airborne. I can sort of hover for a few yards, but that’s it. But that’s okay, because of what Ms. Stuart says.”

  Gabriel followed me over here. He’s listening, probably dying for a chance to judge me.

  I decide to ignore him. “What does Ms. Stuart say?”

  “That we could change the world, and that’s why everyone hates us. That we’re all new jumping-off points for evolution. So, see, I can’t fly personally, but as long as my wings give me an advantage, I might have kids with bigger wings someday. And then their kids will have even bigger wings than that, until they evolve all the way into real live faeries. And that would be magnificent.”

  “Faeries,” Gabriel sneers. “Hey, Ophelia, why don’t you take off your glasses?”

  She shies back like he slapped her. “Why should I?”

  “You’re fine with Ada seeing your wings, because you know humans will think they’re pretty. You look just like some cute little faerie on a buttercup! As long as you keep your glasses on. But for you to even be worrying about what humans like, or what they don’t like—​that’s what’s disgusting! Not your eyes. Take off your glasses.”

  Ophelia twists her head to the side, and her cheeks flush. She was so happy until he had to butt in.

  “Why are you telling her what to do?” I say.

  Gabriel spins at me and a tide of scribbly green and magenta lines charges across his face and neck, then spills down his arms. Ooh, so he’s getting angry. Again.

  “Because she has to get over caring how normals feel! They hate her, they’re going to hate her no matter what she does, so she should show them her eyes and just laugh in their faces while they scream! She should—”

  “They’re her eyes. Not yours. So she can take off her glasses when she wants to!”

  Wow. Gabriel is actually strobing. Lime green and purple and white blink over him so fast they blur together. He tosses back his midnight hair. “You just got here!”

  “I’m here now. And you’re being a jerk to my roommate. The one you picked for me.”

  There’s a long pause while we’re standing close and glaring at each other. Then Ophelia decides to break the tension. “It’s okay, Ada. I’m ready now. I mean, if you don’t mind?”

  I hate to let Gabriel be right about anything, but the truth is that my heartbeat goes a little quick and shivery as she reaches up. All that talk about people screaming made me nervous. I brace myself and try to freeze my expression in a blank, calm look. She takes hold of the earpieces and lifts the glasses off, and for a flash, it looks like she has a second pair of big, bulging, oval lenses glued to her face just behind them.

  No. Those are her eyes, except that each one is made out of hundreds of tiny eyes squeezed together. They’re all glittering at me at once like facets of two immense black diamonds. Blue-green light glazes their surface. I can see Gabriel at the edge of my vision, and the expectant smirk on his face.

  Nice try.

  “So,” I say. I take a deep breath to make sure my voice will come out right. “So, Ophelia, that’s something we have in common.”

  She tips her head, and her compound eyes flicker with a thousand broken sparks. “What is?”

  “We both see the world in ways other people can’t. My vision is different from regular humans’ too. The man who sent me here said it was too bad that he couldn’t dissect my eyes.”

  She grimaces. “That’s horrible.”

  “So what are you, then?” someone asks behind me.

  Seriously? I even have to deal with this here?

  I turn and it’s the seal boy staring at me so intensely that it’s hard not to squirm. Corbin has crawled into his lap. All that fur is probably comforting. “What are you? No one here can tell.”

  The worst part is that I can’t even say, Human! Why do you ask? anymore. Because they all know I’m not. And all at once I’m too tired to come up with some new smart-ass answer.

  So I sigh and recite the list. “I’m mixed. Greek, French, Eritrean—​that’s my dad’s mom, his parents met when she was studying in Paris—​Persian, and some English. My mom says there’s Russian, too, from the part near Mongolia.”

  His mouth hangs open like he’s totally baffled. “Like any of that matters. I didn’t mean that! I meant, what’s your other animal? Besides human? Because with most of us it’s pretty obvious, but with you there’s no way to tell.”

  Oh. I guess that would be an important question, but I’ve never given it much thought. “I have no idea. I just know I see colors where other people don’t.”

  “She says she has infrared.” Gabriel believed me before, but now he’s pretending to be skeptical.


  Before I can snap back at him, everyone’s head turns, and I look to see Marley at the lobby’s edge with her back against the wall. Her gaze is riveted on Ophelia’s glimmering globe eyes. She lets out a quick, breathy shriek and totters, and I can see Gabriel’s mouth twist wickedly. If he starts making fun of Marley and I try to stand up for her, will everyone hate me? Maybe she’s acting stupid, but she lost everything she’s ever known today. And I did too, but the difference is that I always knew I might get found out and shipped off. Marley didn’t.

  Then the seal boy lifts Corbin out of his lap, gets up, and weaves around the sofas to her. “Hi. I’m Rowan. I’d probably be scared too if I was you, but you don’t have to be, okay? We’re not going to hurt you. Okay?”

  Marley can’t make a sound, but she manages to nod a little. And Rowan is instantly my favorite person in the room.

  He holds out a finger-tipped flipper. “Don’t feel like you have to shake my hand if you don’t want to. I won’t be offended. But if you do, you might find out it’s not that bad.”

  She’s breathing hard, but she does it. Her hand takes Rowan’s in a quick squeeze, and she even sort of smiles.

  Soft blue ripples slide through Gabriel’s skin, and he rolls his eyes. “Yeah, and if the normals ever get hold of you and tear your flippers off, do you think you’ll still care so much about making them feel comfortable?”

  It’s weird to think that Rowan and Gabriel could be friends, but from the grin on Rowan’s face, I know they are.

  “We’re the future, Gabe. Why should we be mean when our victory is totally inevitable anyway?”

  Victory.

  It’s lucky no one on the outside can hear them talking like this, or all that razor wire wouldn’t be nearly enough to keep us safe.

  Chapter Six

  A BELL RINGS and Ophelia takes my arm as everyone gets up, half the kids climbing over the furniture in ways that would make my mom throw a fit if she saw it. “Dinner!” Ophelia put her glasses back on when I wasn’t looking, and I realize Gabriel’s right: she must be self-conscious about her eyes, even around other kimes. The sun is sinking behind the hotel, and the hallway she leads me down is pretty dimly lit, so she can’t actually need those glasses to keep out the glare or anything.