Before Wings Page 3

  “C’mon, I know a place.” He had shucked the lumber jacket. Already his tanned face was darker.

  “I’m dying for one.”

  He gave a slow appreciative smile. “You didn’t bring any?”

  “I read the rules.”

  “Yeah, I’m glad I don’t live on the grounds.”

  He turned onto a path that disappeared into a shimmering dance of leaves and bug wings. Adrien swore and waved wildly around her head. “I wouldn’t do this for any other reason, y’know.”

  He turned and grinned back at her. “No?”

  She rolled her eyes and looked away. This was the way she handled boys at school—smoked their cigarettes and sidestepped their comments and hands. When she was alone, she thought about the possibilities—thought about them a lot—but she never let them happen. There was something about touching, coming that close—she was sure all that heat would light up her brain like a Molotov cocktail.

  “Erin not around?”

  “We had a fight and she took off.”

  “Already?” He ducked through two spruce and she followed, emerging in a small clearing. More mayflies. A halo of wings settled onto Paul’s hair and shoulders. “This is where they teach school kids to build lean-tos.”

  “We’re going to build one and crawl in to smoke?”

  He grinned again, scanning her face. Adrien rolled her eyes emphatically, realizing how she had set herself up. “Give me a smoke,” she said, delicately picking wings off her shirt front. Fluttering on her breast. How embarrassing.

  He pulled out the pack. “So, what did you fight about?”

  Impatient, she shrugged. “I just told her she needed to sell T-shirts in better colors. She bit off my head.”

  He handed her a cigarette. “Doesn’t sound like her.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t like her much.”

  “Why?” He lit her cigarette, then his own.

  “She’s bossy.”

  “She’s the boss.”

  “I don’t like being bossed.” Adrien wandered to the edge of the clearing, watching bugs rise through shafts of sun that cut through the trees. How could air color itself like that, green shadows and gold streams of light? Even the bugs looked pretty out here. She pulled one off her throat and watched it flutter off.

  “Tough city girl.”

  She turned to find him assessing her, eyes traveling slowly. “Stop that.” She waved her hand, breaking his gaze, and he turned to look into the woods. “I’m not easy, if that’s what you mean.”

  “No, Angel, nothing about you is easy.”

  “Stop calling me Angel. You want me to call you ...” She searched for an appropriate name. “Darth Vader?”

  Unexpectedly, he laughed. “Darth Vader and Angel— that’d make a great team. Cover all the angles.”

  “Do you always think about death?”

  “Do you?”

  She paused, considering. “The possibility is always lurking.”

  “Isn’t it for everyone?”

  “Not like me.”

  “That makes two of us, eh?”

  This time she assessed him, the broad face, thick eyebrows, wide mouth. His nose beaked slightly, his hair was shaggy, down to his collar. Lower than that she was not going to look now, but just wait until his back was turned.

  “How old are you?” she asked.

  “Sixteen this July. You?”

  “November. So how d’you get your smokes?”

  “There’s always someone who’ll sell to minors.”

  “Yeah.” No matter how many signs were posted, teenagers found out who was open for business. “You do anything else?”

  “Drugs?” He shot her a look. “I got enough shit happening in my head. You?”

  “Someone spiked my pop at school once, but I’ve never done anything on my own.”

  “You want to?”

  “It was too weird.” She had been terrified at the sudden lights happening in her head, and had crawled into a bathroom corner to sweat it out. After that, she had never shared another can of pop. “What d’you think happens, y’know, when you die?”

  “Pain,” he said softly.

  “Yeah, but I mean is there overwhelming darkness or do you go to a place of light?”

  “I don’t know. I never get to the actual moment of dying. All I see is another way it’s gonna happen, coming straight at me.”

  “I think it’s light,” she said. “That’s how it was for me the first time. I had a brain aneurysm two years ago. My whole head exploded with light.”

  “So, what was it like ... meeting God?”

  She shook her head. “It wasn’t God. More like a star dying in my brain. Y’know how they explode when they go out? It’s like that—a huge explosion, nuclear bomb, the end of the world. Boom!” She snapped her fingers. “Lots of people walk around with a blood vessel bulging in their brain and they don’t even know it. Sometimes you don’t feel any symptoms. It just ruptures, and you drop dead.”

  He stood quietly on the other side of the clearing. “So that’s the way it’ll be for you, eh?”

  She took a quick breath. “Yeah.”

  “At least you know how you’re going,” he said.

  three

  Late morning, the sky clouded over. Sharp gusts of wind kept slamming the screen door. Two core staff who worked year-round at the camp returned from a day off and stood bantering with Aunt Erin on the office porch as if they actually enjoyed her company. Adrien watched suspiciously, alert for any signs of suck-up or kiss-ass, but there didn’t seem to be any. Brain slumming, she decided. In order to survive, no, like her aunt’s tyrannical leadership, they had tossed mental efficiency out the window and reduced to low gear. Well, that didn’t mean she had to. At noon, she recorded her current total of small ugly red sweatshirts, and stood. “I’m going for lunch.”

  “Be back at one,” Aunt Erin said.

  As if Adrien couldn’t figure that out. She banged the screen door and ran heavily down the steps, then stood letting the wind hit her full in the face. From here she could see clear across the freshly cut lawn to the lake, which rolled and heaved under an approaching storm. Thunder rumbled faintly in a slate gray sky. An eerie fork of lightning flickered low to the water, and a small shiver of white echoed through the inside of Adrien’s head. Again, lightning forked the entire horizon. It was like watching her own brain, the knife lines of electricity that sliced through its heavy mass. Calling, the sky was calling her into the gray pulp of its brain, the dazzle of its forked currents. Come, we know you, come and be with us.

  Staff were heading to the dining hall. Someone shouted her name, but Adrien turned and ran across a lawn of translucent wings toward a sky that broke open, again and again, into fierce light. She was at the ridge, starting down the path, when she saw the spirits darting over the water’s surface like dragonflies, twisting as if in agony. She could make out arms and legs, different hair lengths, even breasts, but their faces were shadowed. The spirits were moaning, a low sound that seemed to be calling the storm toward the beach, where Adrien came to a halt, pushing to stay erect in the wind. She was sure the spirits were calling something specific—a short phrase, several words, repeated like the lightning that snaked the sky. Another sheer burst of white, and Adrien stepped forward into the wild lake, the call of the spirit girls, the energy of their brains dying across sky. Into some understood sameness.

  “Are you crazy?”

  Someone was dragging her out of the water onto the beach. She pushed, trying to turn back toward the lake, and was shoved onto the sand. A heavy weight sat on her. She fought until the white light bled from her brain, leaving her crumpled and soaked, covered with sand. When she opened her eyes, there was only gray sky and Paul’s face staring down at her. Mayflies crawled over them both.

  “Get off me,” she said.

  “D’you know what happens if lightning strikes water while you’re in it?”

  “I said get off me.”

/>   “What were you doing?”

  “Get the fuck off!” she yelled.

  They stood slowly, fallen trees righting themselves, trunks split open and rotting. She was so tired. How was she supposed to explain this?

  “Nice scenery,” she said.

  Lightning flickered again, illuminating the incredulous look on Paul’s face. She turned and climbed the path up the ridge, heading through the endless flutter of wings toward her cabin for a change of clothes.

  A bottom corner was wet, but otherwise the photograph was undamaged. Fortunately, she had tucked her wallet into the pocket of her dad’s lumber jacket instead of her jeans. Adrien stood shivering in her underwear, staring at the smiling faces of her aunt and the eight girls grouped around her. The picture was at least two decades old. Were people happier then? The girls’ grins seemed impossibly authentic, and each face held its happiness differently. She was sure she had never smiled like that, even before her aneurysm. Most teenagers needed group permission to laugh, and then it was a sharp loud sound that had a manufactured quality, but once she had heard a girl let loose a free sound so startling that Adrien had turned to stare. The girl had looked so ordinary—brown hair, glasses, pimply skin.

  Rain poured steadily, the cabin roof and walls a shell of sound. The scent of spruce had sharpened and the air felt deeper, heavier. Hunger hit her in slow waves. How was she going to face Paul? Would he tell anyone? If only she had thought to sneak some Smarties, she wouldn’t have to eat lunch with Aunt Erin and her fan club. Miserably she pulled on a sweater, dry jeans and a raincoat, and headed through the dripping trees to the dining hall.

  Predictably, Paul and the two core staff were grouped around Aunt Erin at one of the tables reserved for skills and maintenance staff, while the rest of the dining hall sat empty. Adrien remembered staring at staff tables with a camper’s awe, imagining every aspect of the archery instructor’s romance with the lifeguard. Back then, staff had seemed like fallen angels—prone to sin, but presiding over Camp Lakeshore with heavy wings. She had never realized they were just older versions of herself. Now she would be sitting at one of those tables and some fifth-grade weenie would fall in love with her. The whole thing was an enormous scam. Adrien dragged a tray along the serving counter and received her dump of macaroni, lime Jell-O, cucumber salad and a glass of milk.

  “You’re lucky,” remonstrated a hairnet, waving her serving ladle. “We almost went back to where we came from, waiting for you to arrive.”

  A hot flush oozed across Adrien’s face. Silently, she reached for a slice of bread.

  “You’re missing your smile,” teased another hairnet. “But Paul here—he’s always got a smile for those who feed him, doesn’t he?”

  Adrien glanced behind herself to see Paul handing his plate over the counter for seconds. Suddenly she was brushed with the memory of his weight pressing her down while lightning tore at the sky, but in this vision electricity shot into their mouths—they were breathing white fire. The image faded, leaving her open-mouthed, not sure if she had made a sound. The hairnets were still babbling about Paul’s smile, but she had a feeling he had picked up on something. Maybe the electric current. Well, he better not misinterpret it—she wasn’t a weenie camper anymore. Adrien picked up her tray and scuffed toward the chattering table. There was an empty space next to Aunt Erin where Paul obviously belonged, so she sat at the opposite end where things would be quieter, less subject to electric visions and unreasonable heartbeats.

  Rain pounded the roof. Lightning laced the sky, followed almost immediately by thunder so loud it seemed to rise out of the ground. No one reacted. Aunt Erin made a comment and the core staff laughed. They looked married, as in recently. Adrien glanced at the woman’s hands and noticed an engagement ring. No wonder they liked Aunt Erin—they were in a state of premarital bliss.

  Paul slid his plate onto the table across from her. “Pass my milk and cutlery,” he called through yet another volley of laughter.

  Faces turned in their direction, eyes flicked between them, an eyebrow lifted. “Getting a head start, Paul?” asked the groom-to-be, a tall skinny guy with a black cowboy hat.

  Careful as a curler, Aunt Erin slid Paul’s knife, fork and glass of milk down the middle of the table, then returned to her macaroni without giving her niece a glance. Adrien felt as if her face had been erased, as if she didn’t exist, as if she had died. Suddenly she hated her aunt. The feeling was like two hands grabbing her stomach and twisting it.

  “Are you Adrien?” The young woman with the engagement ring leaned closer. She was plump, with dark shoulder-length hair. “I’m Gwen and this is my fiancé, Guy. I remember when you were seven years old, building your first fire with tiny little twigs for your Campfire badge.”

  “Oh yeah.” Adrien didn’t like strangers remembering things about her that she couldn’t remember herself. And Paul was watching her again. She could feel his sixth sense scanning the air for trouble. At the other end of the table, Aunt Erin stood abruptly.

  “I’ll be up at the corrals if anyone needs me. You all know what you’re doing this afternoon.”

  It was an order, not a question. “Aye aye, boss,” grinned Guy.

  “Adrien, you keep on with inventory. I’ll be back to check on things around three.” As Aunt Erin picked up her tray and headed across the dining hall, her thin lanky body was suddenly cast in sharp relief by a bolt of lightning that lit every window. Everything was reduced to black and white. The hairnets gave a soundless cry, the mouths in their brilliantly lit faces opening simultaneously as thunder crashed down around them, then faded into a long stretched-out silence.

  “Tree on fire!” Aunt Erin ran for the door as Paul and Guy erupted from their chairs.

  “Which tree? Oh please, not the Wishing Tree,” cried Gwen, going after them. Adrien grabbed her raincoat, jamming her arms into the sleeves as she passed through the doorway into midday darkness. Rain was coming down hard—whichever tree had caught fire wouldn’t burn long. The deluge pounded her hood as she followed Gwen’s form through the bush, and sure enough, when they reached the others, the tree was smoldering but there were no flames.

  “It is the Wishing Tree,” Gwen wailed.

  A huge silver birch stood on a slight incline in a clearing. It had been split down the middle, and one half remained upright while the other lay on the ground, exposing the blackened gut. Slight whiffs of smoke rose delicately from the charred wood. Aunt Erin put a hand on the split trunk and stood silently in the pouring rain, not bothering to pull up her hood. Guy put his arm around Gwen and she leaned against him.

  In the wet and dark, nothing moved except the memories in Adrien’s head. Every summer she had spent here, her counselor had woken the cabin of girls in the middle of the night and taken them to see the Wishing Tree. It had always been a night full of moonlight, the Wishing Tree’s silvery trunk rising before them like a glowing earth spirit, summoning them into the whispering promise of its leaves. Every counselor held the ceremony differently—sometimes the girls stood in a circle, sometimes they found private places to sit and watch the tree, but at some point each one touched the tree’s shimmering bark and made a wish. That was the magic of it—a girl gave the tree a touch of herself, and it touched her too. Adrien remembered sending something into the silver bark, and the cool green wish the tree had slipped back to her. Now, in the rain, she stepped forward to touch the tree again, send one last wish into its dying life, but as she touched the warm trunk Aunt Erin grabbed her hand and pulled it off.

  “You’ve brought something with you, girl,” she said fiercely, the lines of her face made harsher by the rain. “I don’t know the meaning of it, but you be careful what you do here. You just be careful with what’s mine.”

  Aunt Erin turned and headed into the trees, her yellow jacket floating in the dark. Lightning flashed and distant thunder rolled. Guy cleared his throat uncomfortably, Gwen patted the tree and made soothing noises, but Adrien stared after the d
isappearing jacket. The first shock of her aunt’s words was gone and something new was growing inside her. It was true, she had brought something. The spirits on the lake, the storm, the split tree—in some way it all belonged to her. Far across the horizon, the last flicker of lightning danced through her brain, a promise of what was to come.

  “Erin’s upset. I’m sure she didn’t mean that.” Gwen’s voice reached toward her, soft and comforting. Adrien looked at the others, meeting their eyes one by one. It was easy, she felt powerful, made of deep dark earth, wet whispering trees, huge sky. Gwen blinked, Guy cleared his throat. Only Paul met her eyes, steady, silent.

  “Of course she did.” Adrien turned and headed into the trees. She had lunch to eat and a lot of ugly T-shirts to count. After that, an entire summer stretched ahead of her. The earth contained her, the sky held her close, her sisters were kicking ass on the lake. She might live longer than this summer, she might not, but if The Big One got her here, she would die in a place that knew and claimed her as its own.

  The evening air held the coolness that followed rain. Bird song ricocheted through the trees. Adrien stopped unpacking her suitcase and listened as cowboy boots stepped onto the small porch and the cabin’s outer door opened.

  “Adrien?” called a voice. “It’s me.”

  Me about summed it up for Aunt Erin. Adrien stood without speaking and waited as the boots came down the hall. Her light was on and the door stood open. Anyone with a forty-watt brain could tell she was here. Her aunt stopped in the doorway, yellow jacket dripping onto the floor. Bug wings clung to the wet material, opening and closing. Adrien folded a sweatshirt and put it in a dresser drawer. It wasn’t a Camp Lakeshore sweatshirt.

  “Leave the mayflies outside,” she said carefully.

  “They’ll leave with me when I go.”

  “They give me the creeps. You should spray pesticide to get rid of them.”