Flight of a Starling

by Lisa Heathfield

  “I think it’s why they stay so close together,” Dean says.

  “So the hawk can’t get them.”

  All I can see now is the hawk hovering.

  “Do you think some of them are tired?” I ask. “That they want to stop, but they have to keep following?”

  “Maybe.”

  The sun rises higher and I close my eyes and pretend that this is it, this is all there is. There are no shattered families, just me and Dean, in a field of grass, with a sky filled with starlings.

  I hear Dean move beside me, and then he’s kissing me. And all the pain goes. He kisses away the past and the future. It’s only now, it’s all I need. There’s the sky above and the ground holding us steady, and I disappear into him. We kiss until everything else tips off the edge of the earth and all that’s left is us, in our starling field.

  We kiss until we have to stop, and Dean pulls away.

  “We can’t stay here all morning.”

  “I wish we could.”

  “So do I.” I’d stay here forever with Dean, away from the burnt edges of my life.

  He leans down and kisses me again and everything shrinks to just us.

  “But my mom won’t be too happy if I’m late for college.” And so we go, leaving the starlings behind us.

  Dean parks his car away from the circus site, and even though it’s still too early for most people to be awake, we walk a wide circle along the beach.

  “Best avoid them,” Dean says, pointing to a couple close together by the beach huts.

  I can tell who it is straight away. I start to drag Dean back where we came.

  “What is it, Lo?” he asks.

  But anger roars so loud in me that it blocks everything else out. It blocks out the sea, the sky, the sand and replaces it all with Ma’s skin on Rob’s. I let go of Dean and start to run.

  Somewhere, I’d been holding onto the hope that Spider and I had got it wrong. That it hadn’t been my mom after all. Or maybe she’d just been showing Rob something, a mark on her skin that made her take her shirt off. I’d imagined all sorts of excuses and hadn’t realized that I’d been hanging onto them all.

  But now she’s sneaking off with him again. My dad will be waiting for her, while she’s running fast away, not caring if she breaks us.

  Dean pulls me to a stop. I’m breathing hard. I feel like spilled petrol, ready to burst into flames.

  “What’s wrong, Lo?”

  “It was Ma and Rob,” I say and he can’t hide the shock on his face. “I hate her.”

  “You don’t. Not really.”

  “I do.” And I’m crying in front of him, but I don’t care. Because everything’s twisted and it hurts too much to hold it in.

  “You’re going to be OK,” he says.

  “How?” I cry. Dean puts his arms around me.

  “Because you’re strong.”

  “But I hate her,” I say, staring hard at him.

  “You’ve got to try not to. It’s not worth it. It just makes everything more complicated.”

  He gently pushes my hair from my eyes.

  “How am I going to go back?” I ask. “How am I supposed to live with them? And do today’s shows with Rob, when I want to kill him?”

  “You’ll do what you did yesterday and before that. You’ll get through it because you have to.”

  “And tomorrow and after that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Until it explodes and the secret will kill us all?”

  “It won’t kill you,” he says.

  “But it feels like my life has capsized, Dean.”

  “You can’t change what she’s done, Laura. The only person who can make it right is your mom.”

  “But what if she doesn’t? What if the whole boat just completely flips over?”

  Dean looks at me steadily. “Then you swim.”

  Rita

  I can hear Lo shouting as I walk across the grass. I run up the steps of Mada and the argument flies toward me as soon as I open the door.

  “I don’t have to,” Lo screams. I don’t ever remember seeing her like this, not this bad. It makes me hesitate, scared to touch her.

  “You do,” our mom says. She’s standing still and her voice is strong.

  “You can’t make me.”

  “You’ll be letting Rita down.” Ma nods at me, as though I’ve always been in here and a part of Lo’s wild anger.

  “What’s going on?” I ask, staying by the front door. I don’t want to go in any further. I think I’ll melt from Lo’s rage.

  “I’m sick. So I can’t work tonight.” Her anger has turned to tears.

  “Not too sick to shout at me,” Ma says.

  I go to Lo, because she hasn’t. Even though Lo’s crying, Ma hasn’t rushed to her like she should, like she normally does.

  “Ma,” I plead.

  “We can’t do the show without the changeling,” Ma says. I’ve heard her voice like this before. It’s as though she’s put a big full stop at the end of her words.

  Lo stands up and runs from their van, slamming the door so hard that the pictures on the wall rattle.

  I follow my sister into Terini and slowly close the door behind me.

  “Lo?” I don’t know why I whisper. Maybe because the sound in Mada was too strong and I need to balance it out. I don’t know if she hears me. She’s curled tight on top of her duvet, the pillow over her head, her tears digging deep into her sheet.

  “Lo. It’s me.” I sit down next to her and she takes the pillow away. Her hair is plastered scraggy all over her face. She doesn’t bother to push it away.

  “What’s wrong? Is it Dean?”

  “Why does it always have to be about Dean?” She sits up suddenly and I think she’ll start shouting again. “Can’t you see that he’s the one thing keeping me happy?” She pushes past me, swings our bedroom door wide and stamps to the bathroom. I hear her lock herself in.

  ★ ★ ★

  “What’s wrong with Lo?” Spider asks. “She looks like she’s been crying.” On the other side of the ring door curtains, the buzz of the audience reaches through.

  “She’s just feeling a bit ill,” I tell him. “She didn’t want to perform, but Ma says she has to.”

  “Something else is wrong,” Spider says. “You’re being weird.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  I watch my mom and dad through the crack in the curtain. She passes him an armful of knives, which he starts to juggle, tapping them on his knees, his elbows, clutching one in his mouth. The people watching clap to the music. Dad takes the sticks of fire from Ma. He throws them high, so that they turn in the air, spinning by each other until he catches them all. He doesn’t burn his skin. He never does.

  My mom wears her smile fixed proud, fluttering around him as Dad does his bow and they run back past us through the curtain.

  “I won’t drop you,” Ash says, before we move out together, our skates’ wheels spinning down the path Rob has set up for us. His angel wings touch mine as we step onto the wide podium, hold each other’s wrists tight and begin to spin. I concentrate on his face as the music takes our wheels and moves them faster.

  Everything around us streaks in color. Ash nods enough for me to see and I jump into him, twisting my legs so that he has hold of my ankles. When I throw myself back, the audience gasps together over the music. It’s this I love. The tight knot of adrenaline slowly loosening and spreading down my arms to my toes.

  Ash spins fast and begins to dip me down and up, my hair flying backward, my arms tucked to my sides. He swings me closer to the floor, but I trust him. He lifts me high above the level of his head and straight down to the floor as we spin, so fast that I have to close my eyes to stop the dizziness from sinking too deep.

  My head is so close to slamming into the floor. If Ash makes a mistake, I wonder if my skull will actually crack. Would everyone see my secret thoughts spilling out?

  He starts to slow down, and he lifts me, twists me
around again so that I’m sitting on his shoulder. We wave to the faces with their wide eyes, watch their hands clapping to the beat of the music as we step off the podium and skate away from them.

  ★ ★ ★

  “Are you sure Lo’s not sick?” Ash asks. Dad and Spider carried our barrel fire down to the beach and the sticks inside are beginning to turn into flames.

  “She just didn’t want to come,” I say. Dad is talking to Tricks, but he’s near enough to hear my words.

  “Does she need to see a doctor?” he asks, as Spider stands up and settles a long piece of driftwood into the barrel.

  “It’s too damp to light,” Stan tells him, but Spider leaves it there, sticking out of the top.

  “She’s fine. She just wanted an early night.”

  It’s too dark to see the sea, but I can hear it folding its waves and tugging at the sand.

  “That’s not like Lo,” Ash says. But I wish he’d leave it.

  “Maybe she wanted a change,” I say, sharp enough to try to stop him asking more.

  Dad laughs gently at something Tricks says and moves up to make room for Stan.

  “Rob says he saw her with that Dean again,” Ash says quietly, so only I can hear. I’m trying to think of an answer. “That he saw her getting into his car.”

  “Is he spying on her?” I say light-heartedly, trying to keep out the trickle of jealousy that Rob told Ash and not me.

  “So does Lo think he’s going to come and see her in the next town and the next?” Ash asks.

  “I don’t know,” I answer.

  “It can’t work,” he says.

  “Then you don’t need to worry about it.”

  “What about Spider, though? She should think about him,” Ash says.

  “I’m going to go and check on her,” I say, getting up.

  “Don’t be angry with me, Rita,” Ash says.

  “I’m not,” I say. “I’m worried about Lo, is all.” And I bend down to kiss him on the cheek, to let him know that we’re family and we always be.

  I regret wanting to leave as soon as I stand up, as I see Rob stepping over the low wall and walking toward us. I try to pretend that I don’t feel it in my stomach, that him getting closer doesn’t make my heart beat faster.

  “Off to bed already, Rita?” he asks as he stops next to me.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “That’s a shame.”

  I hold his words close to me as I walk away.

  Chapter Nine

  Lo

  There’s no sign of last night’s barrel fire, not even a charcoaled stick to give it away. Dean is waiting by the edge of the sea, where he said he’d be. He’s wearing a different coat, a warmer one to keep out the cold.

  “You’re early,” he smiles as I get to him.

  “So are you.”

  He bends down and kisses me on the lips. But he looks nervous, too close to the edge of my world.

  “Are you OK?” He leans his head a bit to the side. The early sun is in line with my eyes as I look at him.

  “Not really,” I say.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” he asks, but I shake my head. Rita, Ma, and Rob are trying to take over my thoughts, but I won’t let them.

  “Can we walk a bit?”

  He nods. “I made something for you.” He holds my hand, and I let him lead me.

  Further up the beach, there’re shapes in the sand.

  “Close your eyes,” Dean says and I laugh as I do.

  “What is it?” I ask as we edge further forward.

  “OK. Open them.”

  In front of us, hundreds of tiny sand starlings swoop in their yellow sky. Some cling to the edge of a trapeze scooped and molded from the grains.

  “Do you like it?” He seems uncertain.

  I know I’m the girl who sits on the bar, my changeling wings dotted with shells, my eyes made from sparkled sea-glass.

  “I love it.” I want to say more, that it’s the best thing anyone’s ever done for me, but my words get lost. Instead, I step closer to Dean and I kiss him. I can taste the salt on his lips as I put my hands into his hair and pull him to me. My anger, my hurting, it all disappears. And in its place there are sand sculptures and stars.

  It’s seagulls squawking that pulls us apart. We both look up as three of them screech in the sky above us.

  “They’re challenging us,” I say. “To beat the sea.”

  “To what?”

  “To make the waves stand still.”

  I pull him with me to step over an abandoned stretch of shells and go so close to the sea that it almost touches us. The sand underneath our feet is wet, and I feel the soles of my shoes sink in slightly deeper.

  I dare the sea to get me, but Dean grabs my hand and pulls me backward, laughing suddenly. We run toward it again and it almost catches us before it scurries back. And it drags with it everything that’s been burrowing into my mind, flinging it all high with its spray.

  “Wait till the very last second,” I say, Dean’s hand still in mine. And we pause like statues until the racing water moves us up the beach.

  Dean laughs again and happiness isn’t just near him, it’s actually in him, taking up all the space.

  “It’s winning,” he says.

  “No. We are.” And I pull him to the water’s edge and wait for it to snatch wet at us again.

  “We should leave our footprints,” Dean says, running back with me from the sea.

  “Together?” I hesitate. It’s mine and Rita’s ground we’re on.

  “I’d like to,” he says. “So the beach remembers us.” And I know I want to.

  “Next to your sculpture,” I say and he smiles as we walk back to the starlings still hanging in their different air.

  I think of all my footprints, over the years. And how this one will forever have Dean next to me.

  “OK,” I smile. We hold hands, balancing on one foot, our legs touching, as we push our feet into the sand.

  “Will the sea get them?” Dean asks.

  “Maybe. But that’s OK.”

  We topple forward, grabbing onto each other’s arms to stop ourselves from falling. We look back and our footprints are blurred, almost one.

  “They’re ruined,” Dean says, screwing up his nose.

  “No, they’re just smudged. It makes them better,” I say.

  “How’s that?”

  “No one wants perfect.” And the sound of the sea fills my ears as Dean kisses me.

  ★ ★ ★

  I know as soon as I get close to our site that something is wrong. There’s a strange feeling, wrapping its way around the vans. I should run, but I don’t want to know.

  Ma is standing by the steps of her home, with Helen standing next to her. They don’t see me until I’m almost by them.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask. Ma jumps a bit and stares right through me. “Ma?”

  “It’s Gramps,” she says. I step back when she tries to hug me. It stops her words.

  “Your dad woke up and found him this morning,” Helen says.

  “Found him where?”

  “He fell when he was getting out of bed.”

  “Where is he?” I ask.

  “He’s in his room.”

  “Is he bad?”

  “Yes,” is all Ma says. She’s woven to the spot.

  “It was just a small fall,” Helen says. “He’ll be fine.”

  “How long was he lying there?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” my mom answers.

  “And you didn’t even hear him calling?” I glare at her.

  “I’d gone for a walk.” She tilts her head forward, her fingers twisting in on themselves. “I didn’t realize the time.”

  “So he was hurt, and he needed you, but you weren’t there,” I say, my voice rising. “He thought you’d forgotten him.”

  “Your mom is upset enough,” Helen tells me.

  “Is she?” My words smash up against her.

  “This won’t
help anyone,” Helen says.

  “I should have been there,” Ma says quietly. Her hoop earrings, her painted lips tell me where she was.

  I push past her, up the steps, into their van. Inside, it feels different. I run through the silence and open his door.

  Oh, Gramps.

  He lies under a sheet, his face swollen with a bruise so purple that it sits on top of his skin. Rita holds one of his hands, Dad the other. They barely glance up at me.

  “Gramps?” I say. He opens his eyes, but he looks in pain, as though everything hurts.

  “Hello, lass,” Gramps says.

  Dad reaches his hand to me and I go and take it. I stand clumsy and useless by his side.

  “He didn’t break anything when he fell,” Dad says, squeezing my hand. “So that’s good.”

  Rita stares intently at Gramps.

  “Shouldn’t you go to a doctor?” I ask quietly.

  “I’ll be fine.” But his voice is small. “Just a little knock, is all.”

  “It looks worse than it is,” Dad says.

  “You must take him,” I say, but Dad holds up his hand to stop me saying more.

  “It’s his choice,” Rita says, as though she’s Ma, and it makes me feel even more helpless.

  I sit alone by Gramps’s bed. He’s sleeping, his hand resting in mine. Rita and Dad are eating their breakfast in the kitchen. I can hear the sound of Ma vacuuming, as if she could clean this all away.

  He doesn’t look like my Gramps. His face is puffy, its color all wrong, the bruise leaking into the pink.

  “Gramps?” I say, but he stays asleep, his breathing steady. “I’m sorry Ma didn’t get to you when you fell.” I hope that he doesn’t hear that I’m crying. “And I’m sorry that I wasn’t here. I was with a boy,” I whisper. “With Dean. I should have told you before.” Regret tries to get at me. “I’d like you to meet him.”

  I want Gramps to reply, to undo the complicated thread knotted too tight inside me. To give me answers for everything I don’t understand. But the room just hums quietly.

  “I’m scared, Gramps,” I whisper, so quietly that even if he was awake I doubt he could hear. “Nothing feels safe anymore.”

  The door opens and Dad comes in. His face is weary. Deep worry lines spill into his forehead. He stands by me, one arm over my shoulder.