Tentacle and Wing

by Sarah Porter

  “You, boy! Keep back! Do you hear me? Keep back!” The man on the cab screams through his microphone so loudly that his voice rips into scraps of noise. He has a rock in his other hand.

  “I’m behind a locked gate,” Gabriel points out. “We’re kids, and anyway you’ve got us outnumbered, thirty to two. So what are you afraid of?”

  “I told you to stay back!”

  I see a woman fall as people shove her. A boot slams into her neck, and she howls. Why won’t he stop?

  And then I’m running again. I grab Gabriel’s shoulders, and the people who are still watching yelp in shock and alarm. It must look to them like I just sank my hands into blazing coals, though in fact his skin feels cool in the dusky air.

  “Gabriel, what are you doing? You said we were just coming here so that they would understand . . . so that they’d feel ashamed of threatening us!”

  “That part is your job. I’m here to make them ashamed of what pathetic cowards they are. See, Ada? We’re a team.” He’s smiling, but it’s more like a snarl.

  That’s when a hand flies up and something dark comes whizzing out of the crowd. There’s a crack that seems to be made of both sound and pain at the same time, and blackness blooms through my head.

  Chapter Eight

  BLUE.

  Luminous and feathery and alive. It takes me a while to realize that I’m lying on my back in a bed. Why can’t I see anything except that folding, beaming blue, then?

  After another moment, I understand that my eyes are still closed. The blue is inside my lids. There’s a bag of ice on my forehead, and water trickles down my neck. Hot pain fights with the icy numbness.

  “It was my fault,” someone says. Right, that’s Gabriel. “It was working, just talking to them was working. It was that man Scott Held who was leading them, I think; I recognized him from the pictures of the riots at Novasphere. But the rest of them were backing down. They were going to leave. And then . . .”

  “Then what, Gabriel?” That’s Ms. Stuart. Her voice is tense and cold.

  “Then I decided to mess with them.”

  “In other words, both Ada and I made a tremendous mistake in trusting your judgment. And she’s been injured as a result. We’re lucky she wasn’t killed. What will she think of you, now that she’s seen you put your most selfish impulses ahead of her safety?”

  “I’ll tell her I’m sorry.” His voice is taking on a defiant edge, though.

  “The decision to confront that mob was different for you. You grew up here, and to you we’re all family. Ada put herself at risk to help people she’d just met.”

  “I know that.”

  “You knew it, of course. But you didn’t respect it.”

  I hear her footsteps, then a door closing. The blue pulsates and then leaps upward; I could swear I feel it passing through my eyelids like a blast of static. I open my eyes, trying to follow it.

  “Ada!” It’s Ophelia, leaning forward in a chair beside my bed. Her sunglasses are slipping down her nose, and she shoves them back up. I’m in what looks like a fancy hotel room, except that the TV is cracked and the straw-colored curtains are shredded and there are magic marker drawings all over the walls. There’s a second queen bed across the room from me, heaped with clothes and bent paperbacks. And the blue is there, prancing and translucent, like a living veil between my face and Ophelia’s. Can’t she see it? “I’m so, so happy you’re awake! When I saw Gabe carrying you back here, I was afraid—”

  He’s there too, curled up in a ball at the foot of my bed with his arms around his knees. His skin is mottled light green, and even though I don’t know him very well, it doesn’t look to me like he’s feeling too great. “Ada?”

  “Hi,” I say. “Can you see it? The blue?” It’s lofting upward as if an air current were bellying up beneath it. “What is that?”

  They look at each other. “Ada, you got hurt. You should go back to sleep, okay? We’ll be right here.” Ophelia’s trying to smile reassuringly, but her mouth has an anxious pinch.

  Oh. Maybe it’s just my eyes, then. Maybe that curling scarf of light isn’t on the visible spectrum for most people—​though Gabe and Ophelia don’t exactly have normal eyesight either.

  “If you can’t see it, then maybe you can feel it? Gabriel, it’s right over your head now! Touch it!”

  He flashes Ophelia another look, then lifts his hand and waves it around. He’s humoring me.

  The blue arches itself, crinkling like the thinnest possible silk, and then sways just beyond the reach of his fingertips. His hand flops back down, and it follows, always half an inch away from making contact. It’s playing with us.

  And that means, whatever it is, it’s smart enough to play. Did it understand what I was saying?

  “I don’t feel anything. Listen, Ada, someone threw a rock at your head. You’ll be better soon, but right now things probably look strange to you.”

  I give up on making them believe me. I’m feeling sleepy, and the bed seems to be pitching from side to side.

  “What happened? With those awful people?”

  “They took off when they saw you fall. You bled a lot, and I think they thought they’d murdered you. It was my fault, Ada. Somehow I thought I could get away with freaking them out for fun. I thought—”

  “Okay,” I tell him. My eyes are drifting closed again.

  “Not now, Gabe,” Ophelia says. “Let her rest.” She bends over to dab the ice melt off my neck with a towel, and her wings spread out, softly fluttering.

  The blue dives back into the darkness of my lids, dancing and teasing me. I’m sure it knows I see it. It probably knows that I’m the only one who can.

  Chapter Nine

  WHEN I wake the next day, there’s a jam jar full of tumbling-over wildflowers by my bed: hot pink beach roses and black-eyed Susans. Someone brought in my violin and duffle and set them on top of the long dresser on the opposite wall. And Ophelia is just coming in with a plate of toast and boiled eggs in one hand and a glass of juice in the other. She puts the food on the nightstand and leaps into the air, and her wings beat with a flurry of opal sparks. For a long moment, she hovers five feet off the ground, and my heart skips because maybe she’s about to really fly, to flip and buzz around the ceiling. But then she sinks slowly down and her bare toes curl into the carpet. She seemed so close to taking off.

  Whatever the blueness was that I saw last night, it’s gone.

  “Ms. Stuart says you’re excused from going to class and doing chores today. And I get to look after you! We can go to the beach!”

  I was about to say that I’m well enough to study and work with everyone else. But I can tell from Ophelia’s face that she’d be disappointed to lose her extra day off. “That sounds good. Can we go swimming?”

  “I have to be careful not to let my wings get waterlogged. I have my methods. But no dunking me!” She jumps again, and this time she spins on the way down, and her speed-blurred wings look like hoops of rainbow balanced on the air. “Are you well enough to go out, though? Because if you’re not, I’m really okay if you’d rather stay here.”

  I could teach Ophelia a thing or two about lying, that’s obvious.

  “I’m way better. My head just hurts a little bit now.” I run a finger over the swell. It feels like someone gave me crude stitches and I’ll definitely have a scar there.

  “I have an extra swimsuit if you need one. We get tons of donated clothes. Oh, I’m glad you’re not hurt too badly. I didn’t want to stay mad at Gabriel.”

  She beams and starts flutter-jumping around the room, digging through piles of clothes for swimsuits and sandals. I take my hand from my forehead—​the truth is that my head is still humming with pain—​then sit on the side of the bed and eat. No one worries too much about crumbs here. That’s one more thing about this place that would drive my mom absolutely crazy.

  And then I stop chewing with my mouth full of toast and jam, thinking of my parents. It’s their first morn
ing without me, and the image of them sitting at the kitchen table, ignoring my empty chair, jabs me like a spike in my chest. I don’t have my phone, so I can’t tell if they even tried to call, but I bet they didn’t. I bet my mom wants to forget her monster daughter as quickly as possible. She’ll have a nice, pure, human replacement for me soon. Hopefully.

  If they’re going to forget me, then I’m going to forget them right back. I swallow my toast.

  I’ve decided that I don’t even want to know what’s in that duffle. Private mementos, my dad said. He even told me to open it when I’m alone, like I’ll get so emotional that it will be embarrassing. What did he do, fill it with framed photos of the three of us together, my old plush animals, the inlaid music box he gave me for my eighth birthday? Like I need the past rubbed in my face that way. Seeing those things will hurt me way too much, and anyway there are plenty of clothes and stuff here. I don’t need to open it at all.

  When Ophelia is in the bathroom, I shove the duffle deep into the back of a bottom drawer and pile random sweaters in front of it. My dad let me go too easily; the more I think about it, the more I feel like he was just putting on a show of wanting to keep me. Going through the motions. I don’t know what it was, but there was a tiny hint of something phony in his voice. Maybe he didn’t actually care that much. Maybe he was relieved.

  Slamming the drawer makes me feel a little better.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  The path to the beach runs in a thin line of beaten dirt between low brambles dotted pink by roses and white by blackberry blossoms, all of it rumbling with bees and hopping with crickets. There’s the sharp green smell of sunbaked grass, the gusty salt smell of the waves crashing below us. It’s all so beautiful that I can half forget the wall surrounding us and the bright blades of curling wire that keep us trapped in here—​though after last night, I feel a lot better about everything the wall keeps out.

  Once we reach the sand, Ophelia charges squealing down the slope and hits the water with her wings whirring into huge bows of colored light—​but instead of flopping onto her belly the way a normal person would, she hangs at a slant, her lower half submerged and her torso leaning into the air. I drop our books and towels on the sand and watch her. She zips over the foam at such incredible speed that by the time my toes are in the water, she’s already hitting the distant fence with a clang. She grips the chain link and laughs.

  “Ada! Race me! Swim out here and race me back to shore!”

  She could do twenty laps by the time I got out there. It’s so absurd that I laugh too and fling myself into the water. “Yeah? You want to eat my dust?”

  Once I’ve swum ten yards out, Ophelia launches herself again. Her legs raise a wake like a motorboat’s, a long knife of water that smacks me right in the face. She runs out onto the beach with her sunglasses tipping crazily and flings them onto the sand. I can’t read the expression in her black jewel eyes—​they’re too remote from anything I’ve ever known—​but they’re shining.

  “Hey!”

  She pivots, giggling. “Want a ride out? That way it’ll at least be a tie. Well, almost a tie. Grab my feet!” Before I can say anything, she’s shooting my way so fast that I barely manage to catch hold of her ankles.

  Towing me slows her down a little, but not as much as I would have guessed. Froth flies from my shoulders, and water rips in icy folds around my neck. It’s getting colder fast, and deeper. Sunbeams pierce the water below me and vanish into dim gray.

  Ophelia’s impact rattles the chain link. I let go and swim the last few feet to grab the fence beside her. My body pitches with the surge. We’re both gasping for breath, and there’s a dizzy lull where I just hang in place, staring into the depths where the fence’s steel spits up rough corkscrews of light.

  Far below us and off to the left, I can just make out a blot of darkness interrupting the regular pattern of the links. I can’t tell what it is, and my breath catches thinking of all the slippery, hungry things big enough to block that much light. I can identify seals and whales, even below the surface, by the red dabs of warmth they cast. Whatever this is, it’s cold.

  “Ada? What is it?”

  Am I just imagining things, or does Ophelia’s sweet voice suddenly have a tiny jab of hardness hidden in it?

  “There’s something down there. For a second I was thinking shark, but it’s not moving, so it can’t be. And I guess nothing that size could get through the fence anyway. Can you see? It’s over there. A big dark patch. I think at least fifty feet down. Maybe more.”

  She turns her head. It’s impossible to tell which direction she’s looking in, or maybe she’s always looking in a hundred directions at once. Either way, she doesn’t look over there for long.

  “It’s too dark down there to see anything. Maybe there’s some seaweed or something.”

  Now I’m sure: listening to her is like biting into a plum and then cracking your teeth on the pit. She’s a terrible liar. “Seaweed would move, though, right? In the current?”

  “We can go back if you’re nervous. But there’s nothing there.” She hesitates. “Ada? I know your vision is maybe different, but it would be better if you didn’t talk about seeing things. You know, the way you did last night.”

  Anger flares in my chest. “I’ve spent my whole life not saying what I see, and never telling anyone the truth, and keeping secrets, so that people wouldn’t guess what I am! The only good thing about coming here is that I can finally be honest, and you’re telling me I have to go back to lying?”

  When I get to the only good thing, Ophelia’s lips pinch, and I know I’ve hurt her. I didn’t mean to, but I can’t face going back to the sky is blue and ducks have pretty feathers. Am I supposed to turn the whole world into one big lie?

  “That’s not what I mean. No one here cares how different you are from normal. I mean, compared to most of us, you’re outrageously normal. I’m just glad that you can look at my eyes and not feel scared.”

  I am a little scared, though. The complicated black sparkle on her huge globe eyes suddenly seems way too alien.

  “The sky is blue,” I snap. “The clouds are white. Flowers have a lot of pretty colors. Is that better?”

  Of course she doesn’t understand what I’m talking about.

  “Let’s go back. I’ll give you another ride if you want. Even though it’s not fair for you to be angry with me. The problem is, we don’t really know you yet, and someone might think—​so I’m just trying—”

  “Trying what?” It comes out harsher than I meant.

  Ophelia doesn’t answer that. She frowns and hurls herself away from the fence, whizzing to the beach without me. I wait to see if she’s coming back, but she walks out onto the sand and shakes a few drops from her wings, then throws herself face-down on a towel.

  I swim a short way out from the fence and try to get a better look at whatever it is that Ophelia says doesn’t exist. Twisty wires of light reflect off the fence everywhere except in that one area. It’s far enough below the surface that even for me the murk blurs everything else. There’s a big, ragged shadow, but that’s all I know, and it would be impossible for me to dive down that far without scuba gear. So I might as well start the long swim back.

  When I turn around, Ophelia is sitting up, watching me with eyes like a thousand jet stars.

  Chapter Ten

  WE READ and ignore each other, sprawled out on the sand. I haven’t seen it yet, but apparently there’s a library at the Genesis Institute full of donated and salvaged books that were never meant for kids. I have a true-crime thriller about a serial killer that my parents would have smacked straight out of my hands.

  Around noon Ophelia runs back to the dining room for sandwiches and apples, and we have a picnic, which might be fun if we both weren’t still tense with resentment. I got a little snappy with her, but I’m not sure why she’s so angry. I’m not even completely sure why I’m so angry. She’s probably worried that everyone here will think I’m
insane if I talk about things they can’t see, and I should think it’s nice of her to want to protect me. But I don’t. My dad put on his act of protecting me for years, and I still wound up here.

  The problem with faking so much is that after a while it starts to seem like nothing is real. Not even me. Maybe if I could stand on the street screaming every single thing I see and feel and think, then I would start to come into reality, like a drawing that was erased forcing itself back onto the paper. I know Ophelia doesn’t understand that, but I think that’s why I got so upset. She was telling me to stay erased.

  It’s midafternoon and I’m just thinking of going back up the hill and doing my violin practice when Rowan and Gabriel show up in swimsuits, swinging a bucket. Rowan gives me a big smile, and Gabriel looks off, like maybe he’s embarrassed about last night. I’m still in a glum mood, and my mind is full of images from my book: a girl walking past a deep shadow and then noticing a flashing edge in the darkness, and as the edge shifts forward, it resolves into a knife clutched in a bone-white hand. Of course, if I’d been with her, I would have seen the killer right away, his whole body glowing red. I could have saved her so easily, with exactly the thing that’s supposed to be wrong about me. The last thing I want to do now is talk to anyone, especially Gabriel.

  There’s a loud splash offshore, maybe just a dozen yards from us.

  I turn but I don’t have time to search for whatever it is, because Rowan comes over to me and softly touches the bruised swell on my forehead. He’s blocking my view anyway.

  “That looks pretty bad. Ada, I just wanted to tell you how great it was that you stood up for us. Someone should at least say thanks.” From the way Gabriel doesn’t glance around, I’m pretty sure who Rowan means by someone.

  “You’re welcome,” I say, because the biggest thing my parents taught me, after lying, was to always be polite. But since he’s not actually all that welcome, I guess this counts as both.