by Megan Hart
megan hart
Black Wings
FLAME TREE PRESS
London & New York
Chapter One
There hadn’t always been something wrong with her.
As a baby, Briella had been the most beautiful thing Marian had ever seen. Premature by a few weeks, but nothing the doctors had been concerned about. No stay in the NICU or anything like that. She’d been too small for all of the clothes Marian had been given for her baby shower, even the newborn sizes. Tiny, but beautiful and perfect. A little living doll. Ten teensy perfect fingers and toes. With her father’s pale gray eyes and her mother’s dark, spiraling curls, her skin the color of sea-wet sand, Briella had always been a perfect blend of Marian and Tommy. There’d never been a second’s doubt that the kid had inherited the best features from both her parents, even if she’d been an ‘oops’.
A late night, too many visits from the tequila bottle. Marian and Tommy had been thinking about reconciling, stalling the divorce each had threatened at one time or another. High school sweethearts, eight or nine years together, on and off, neither of them willing to give each other up. A baby was the worst way for them to make things work, but who thinks about that when you’re young and made stupid by love?
The pregnancy had seemed like a miracle, after all the trouble Marian had had keeping one before that, the babies they had tried for. Seemed like a sign they ought to try to work it out one more time. Young. Stupid. In love, or what had passed for love between them, at least.
Not that she would have chosen anything different, even if anyone could have convinced her then how hard it was going to end up being. How beautiful babies become recalcitrant, tantrum-throwing toddlers, who grow into elementary school kids with attitude, who morph into pre-teens who think they ought to rule the world.
She and Tommy had stayed together long enough for Briella to be born, and after that Marian had kicked Tommy out for the final time. It had been rough at first. Tommy as her husband had been prone to unreliability. Tommy as not-her-husband felt even less obligation. They got along okay now, for the sake of their daughter. There were still times when Marian could look at him and remember how much she’d loved him, and there were plenty of times when she had no trouble remembering why she didn’t anymore.
From the start, Briella had focused on the world around her in a way that Marian hadn’t realized was unusual in a newborn until the pediatrician had commented on it, suggesting they check the baby’s vision. Briella had been able to see perfectly fine. She just paid more attention to the world than other infants her age.
Briella had been born tiny and had stayed small. Maybe that was part of the problem. Always a little bit behind the other, bigger kids, never able to catch up in some ways, but so far beyond them in others. She’d been sorted into a series of supplemental gifted programs since kindergarten, when the teacher realized Briella was falling behind on her reading work because she was spending too much time devouring the copy of Gone with the Wind she’d begged Marian to buy her after they’d watched the movie together. The shortest kid in her class, but the smartest.
It had never seemed to matter until the last year or so, when they started sorting the kids into classes according to ability level, when they all started to get taller as they headed toward puberty, when friendships that had been in place since preschool started to shift and change right along with them.
In her own elementary school days, Marian had been best friends with two girls in her class. Jody Evans and Angela Heller had lived next door to each other since birth, more like sisters than simply besties. Marian had become their third, happily a bridge between the two strong personalities. Sometimes closer with one, the next week with the other, Marian had been devastated the summer after middle school, when they all moved into the new high school building, to discover Jody and Angela had been placed in a different set of classes to Marian. They had drifted apart after that, although sometimes Marian still bumped into Jody in town. They always promised to get together, but they never managed to find the time. She’d made other friends since, some even better, but there’d never been any who were quite the same.
What was happening to Briella seemed a lot more deliberate. Kids who’d been her lunch buddies for years were sitting at different tables. The ones in her gifted classes stopped inviting her to their birthday parties. Briella had told Marian it was because they didn’t like her anymore, but she wouldn’t say why. When Marian wanted to know if Briella was being bullied, the school guidance counselor had assured her that she was not.
“Some children simply aren’t popular,” the counselor had said. “Not being liked isn’t the same thing as being bullied.”
“Briella…Bean…are you doing something to make them not like you? If you are, why don’t you stop doing it?” Marian had asked later.
Briella’s answer to that had been a shrug. “Why should I be a different person just to make people like me? You can’t make people like you if they don’t, Mama.”
Wise words from a little girl, words that Marian knew were true and yet…something about them had seemed off. She’d spent hours sobbing into her own mother’s arms about the loss of her friendships. If Marian had raised Briella to have enough self-esteem that she didn’t worry about the judgment of her classmates, that was supposed to be a good thing, right? Why, then, did it seem to bother Marian so much more than it did her daughter?
Briella didn’t get into trouble at school. Her grades were above and beyond anything Marian could have asked for, academically. At home, Briella was her usual bright and talkative self, except for an occasional rise of temper that showed itself in ways that Marian wondered might have something to do with the other kids’ opinions of her. Nobody liked to be reminded they weren’t as smart as someone else, and Briella’s go-to insult when she was frustrated about something usually ended up using the words ‘stupid’ or ‘dummy’, no matter how many times Marian scolded her for it.
The kid had inherited that trait from her dad. Tommy had always been at the head of the class and not afraid to point that out. Teachers had loved him despite his smart-ass attitude, so at school he’d gotten away with a lot of crap nobody else could. At home, he’d been and remained his parents’ golden child, unable to do any wrong – except when it came to Marian, of course. His mother had hated her from the start for ‘taking her baby away,’ an attitude that had not improved with the addition of a grandchild Nancy Gallagher had once called ‘an embarrassment’.
Unlike Briella, Tommy had always been able to make and keep friends. Even if he was an arrogant son of a bitch, he worked that clichéd Irish charm in ways Marian had to admit that their daughter had not inherited.
Tommy traveled a lot, and when he was gone it mostly seemed like Briella was out of sight, out of mind. He couldn’t be counted on to send a regular check, but when he came home he threw his money around like he’d printed it. He’d promised Briella he would take her to Disney World for her birthday, but instead he’d taken her to the Disney Store and gaslit her into believing that was what he’d originally said. The kid had come home with a stuffed Pluto dog that was bigger than she was. Briella always acted like her daddy could do no wrong, so if she was resentful about the obvious bait-and-switch, she never said a word about it.
Still, didn’t that have to be at least part of the reason Briella had started acting out so much more frequently? An absentee dad with feast-or-famine affections was bound to mess with a kid’s well-being, even if she had an amazing step-father like Marian’s husband, Dean. But then so could anything else, Marian thought, knowing it was easier to blame Tommy for not being around than it would be to take a good hard look at herself and how b
ad she might be screwing up.
She did the best she could, Marian told herself now, watching her daughter bent over a large, battered notebook at the computer desk. Marian had picked up the five-subject monster at the thrift store back when she’d considered keeping a journal again. Two entries into it, Marian had realized she was never going to do anything or even think anything important enough to write about. She’d torn away the used pages and tucked the book itself into the drawer where she put things she didn’t know what to do with. A year later, Briella had found it there and taken it for her own.
The best she could. What more could anyone expect out of a mother? Marian paused in the den doorway with the plate of apple slices and peanut butter she’d put together for Briella’s snack. The kid came home from school starving almost every day and usually demanded her snacks in the kitchen while she swung her little feet and told her mother all about her day in the fifth grade. Today, though, she’d gone straight to the ancient desktop set up in the den’s back corner, beneath the window. Marian and Dean had talked about upgrading, but a new computer wasn’t high on the priority list, not with the mortgage upside down and Dean’s overtime being cut back every time they got even a little bit ahead.
“Hey, Bean, whatcha doing? Homework?”
Marian had been floored to realize they gave elementary kids so much homework. Not the bullshit kind she remembered from her days at Southside, either. These kids got full-on assignments that counted toward grades, even in the regular classes that weren’t part of the gifted program.
Briella didn’t turn to look at her mother. She was hunched over her ‘idea book’. Nobody was allowed to look inside it. She’d taught herself to write at the age of three and a half, only shortly after she’d learned to read. In the beginning, concerned at her preschool kid’s obsession with the heavy, thick notebook she seemed barely able to lift, Marian had sneaked a peek in the notebook a few times. She’d kind of hated herself for doing it because it reminded her of the times her own mother had violated her trust and read her teenage journal.
There hadn’t been much to snoop on. Scrawled in a nearly illegible hand, it showed that Briella might be able to write, but she wasn’t very good at it. Anyway, at that age, what could Briella be writing in there that was anything for Marian to worry about? She’d stopped checking it after that. Studying her daughter’s intent expression now, Marian wondered if she ought to sneak another look. It might give her at least a tiny clue into what had been going on with the kid since the end of the last school year.
“Aren’t you hungry? Briella,” Marian said sharply now to get her attention. “I brought your snack.”
Briella closed the battered notebook with a snap and looked at her mother with an expression Marian couldn’t figure out, only that she didn’t like it. Marian held up the plate. Briella slid off the chair and reached for it.
“Yum, nom nom nom,” she said. “Thanks, Mama.”
“How was school today?”
Briella shrugged and turned back to the computer monitor. “Fine.”
“Anything good happen?” Marian asked.
“No.”
Marian hesitated, bracing herself as she thought of the end of fourth grade. Fifth had barely begun. “Anything bad happen?”
“No.”
Briella’s fingers danced on the keyboard. The desktop was so slow that any kind of internet search became a chore too taxing for Marian to have the patience for. If she wanted to look something up, she did it on her phone. Briella had a tablet that Tommy had given her last year for her birthday, but no phone yet. She might have tested into a gifted-level IQ, and could read at a college level, but she was still only ten years old.
Marian watched the screen fill with text. Pages of it. Tiny font, hard to read. It looked scientific. “What are you looking at?”
“Did you know that ravens can recognize human faces?” Briella twisted in the chair and stuffed an apple slice into her mouth. She chomped noisily. Messily. Peanut butter gathered at the corners of her lips in a way that had Marian itching to wipe it away.
She looked for a tissue on the desk and snagged one from the box. “I didn’t. C’mere. Get the schmutz off.”
Briella squirmed out of her grip before Marian could take more than a couple swipes. “They can. They remember people who hurt them. Sometimes, they’ll even attack them!”
“Sounds scary.” Marian grabbed her daughter firmly by the arm, almost pinching. “Stay still.”
The school had sent home a letter to parents about how it was common for kids this age to slack off in personal hygiene, and Briella had been acting like the perfect example of that. Nightly showers were a constant battle, as was keeping up with her head of springy natural curls. All of her clothes had stains. She had to be reminded repeatedly to brush her teeth.
Briella shook her head to keep it away from the tissue and yanked her arm hard enough to dig Marian’s fingers in too deep. “They will remember you if you treat them good, too. They’ll bring you treats. Some can even talk! Better than parrots, even.”
“Briella! Damn it, you have peanut butter all over the place. If you can’t eat it neatly, you’ll have to do it at the kitchen table. You can’t be getting—” Marian cut herself off with a sigh at the sight of her daughter’s sullen glare and drew in a breath to calm her tone. “Sweetie, I told you before. We can’t afford to replace the keyboard if it gets too messy to use. You promised me you’d be more careful.”
“Dean could get a second job,” Briella said.
Marian stopped swiping at the girl’s face. “What?”
“If he really wanted to, he could get another job so he could buy me a computer. Anyway, Daddy says he’s going to get me a laptop. He’s not poor, like we are.”
Marian bit the tip of her tongue. Dean worked third shift at the local potato chip plant. He was a supervisor, but that meant instead of working a single line, he often had to take turns at several different jobs when people were out sick or took vacation. There’d been cut-backs and no raise for the past two years. Add in the half-hour commute, and he came home exhausted every morning. He made decent money, but he’d taken on a lot of Marian’s debts when they got together. She’d had some old medical bills from her emergency appendectomy, and not all of them had been paid off yet. They didn’t live hand to mouth, but there was often very little left over from each paycheck.
“We aren’t poor, Briella. Did your daddy say we were?” Tommy might have money now, but he hadn’t grown up with it. Marian wouldn’t have put it past him to try to make himself look better in Briella’s eyes, though.
Briella shrugged. “He didn’t have to say it, I just can tell by our house and stuff.”
This gave Marian pause. They’d moved into Dean’s childhood home when his parents moved to Florida. The house was old, true, and needed some repairs, but old houses always did. Their cars were also old, but paid off. She shopped with coupons, had a budget, saved for things rather than putting them on credit, when she could. They didn’t have the best of everything, but they also didn’t lack for much. She couldn’t recall ever talking about money with or around Briella, and the thought that her child believed they were poor, especially in comparison to Tommy’s unreliable generosity, stung.
“Your daddy says a lot of things he doesn’t…he can’t.… Briella, Dean works very hard to support us. We told you that maybe for Christmas, Santa might—”
“I don’t believe in Santa,” Briella said flatly. “Ruthie Miller doesn’t either, and she told me he’s not real.”
Ruthie Miller was Jewish, something Marian didn’t feel qualified to explain to her kid, since she wasn’t sure exactly what Jews believed, other than they didn’t celebrate Christmas or believe in Jesus. Truth was, Marian herself had stopped believing in him a while ago, right around the time she’d lost her mom. Prayers hadn’t done anything to save June Taylor w
hen she’d stepped into the crosswalk with the right of way, and the drunk asshole with two prior convictions ran her down. Mom had been on her way to church.
“Well, then, if it’s not Santa, Dean and I might be able to get you one for Christmas.” Marian had been researching refurbished Macs. Even the used ones cost more than she thought they’d be able to spend, but Briella had been adamant about getting an Apple.
“That’s three months from now. I need my research sooner than that.” Briella squirmed out of Marian’s grip.
Marian looked over Briella’s shoulder at the computer screen. “What are you researching? Birds? Is it something for school?”
As part of Southside’s gifted program, Briella had done a bunch of projects on her own. They called it independent study. Marian thought it was more like busywork for smart kids who’d be bored without something extra, but Briella had always seemed to love the additional work and spent a lot of her time on voluntary projects. Briella had been working steadily on something since the end of school last May, spending hours scribbling notes in her notebook without sharing anything. She’d also been tinkering with bits of metal and wire she scrounged from the garage and sometimes from the trash, but lately Marian had seen all the tiny, twisted pieces tossed into the garbage can in her room. Whatever the experiments had been, apparently they weren’t working out.
Briella shook her head. “No. Not for school. I just wanted to learn about them.”
“Is it the same thing you’ve been working on all summer?”
“I quit that project. It was stupid,” Briella said with a shift in her gaze that told Marian she was being more secretive than honest.
That was another of those recent developments. Along with the loathing for personal hygiene and lack of friends, Briella had taken up lying. Much like her father, she wasn’t really very good at it.
“I’m sure it wasn’t,” Marian said. “Nothing you do is stupid.”
Briella’s lip curled. “It’s too hard to do anything without the right tools. It never left the theory stage. I wanted it all to work, but I don’t have the right equipment to make it to the practical applications of it. I need better supplies, and if you can’t get me a new computer, you sure can’t get me the other stuff I’d need.”