Before Wings Read online

  “Part of the beauty of life.” Her aunt raised an arm and looked at the scattering of pale bugs. “Laid as an egg in the water, live for two years in the lake, then get their full wings and fly for one or two days. Harmless, don’t bite, don’t even eat once they’re flying. Just mate, spawn and die.”

  “Two years as an egg so they can fly for two days?” said Adrien. “What a waste.”

  “Spend two years dreaming in the water so they can make their two days in the air worth it. Each second is full of mystery, things you know nothing about. If we spent more time dreaming, maybe we’d have wings too.” Aunt Erin studied the bugs on her arm as if they were her dearest friends. “Correct term for them is Ephemeroptera. Comes from the Greek word ephemeros. Greeks made up that word after seeing the way these creatures live. Admired their ephemeral nature.” Her voice held an odd note, straining against something. She looked up and Adrien glanced away.

  “Sorry about what I said this afternoon.” Aunt Erin’s voice was abrupt as ever. “Shouldn’t have said it. Upset about the tree.”

  “The Wishing Tree,” Adrien said softly, folding a T-shirt. It wasn’t a Camp Lakeshore T-shirt.

  “Tree’s older than me. Older than the camp. Thousands of kids have wished upon it.”

  “Maybe it’ll live.”

  “Lightning struck its heart. Won’t last long.” Her aunt shuffled her feet. She hadn’t come into Tuck’n Tack that afternoon to check on Adrien, nor had she joined staff for supper. “Everything all right?”

  “Yes.” Adrien started pulling underwear out of her suitcase, all of it labeled with her name so laundry staff could identify and return it to her. Aunt Erin hesitated, then sat on the other bed.

  “You know summer staff will arrive tomorrow for Training Session?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your roommate was on staff last summer. She’ll teach you the ropes. I expect you to participate in all staff training exercises. Good for you to know what goes on all over the camp. During Training Session, Tuck’n Tack is open from four to five daily for staff purchases. When the kids arrive, you start working full-time.”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re here for a reason.” Her aunt still hadn’t looked directly at her. “Don’t know why, just felt you needed to be here now. Something to do with you, something to do with the camp.” She paused and rubbed her forehead. “Won’t have much time for you. Camp gets real busy.”

  “I know.”

  “Just wanted you to know you’re welcome. I invited you because I wanted you here.”

  “Sure,” said Adrien carefully. If her aunt was going to try for tears and a hugging scene, Adrien was ready to shove her into eternity. Aunt Erin stood slowly, turned as if to go, then turned back. In the overlit room, the bones of her face seemed too large, like Inuit sculpture.

  “Need to ask you this.” Her pale blue eyes watched an invisible halo around her niece’s head. “I’m missing something. A photograph.”

  Adrien swallowed, the movement hooking her throat.

  “An old picture—me and some kids when I worked here as a counselor.”

  Adrien’s hands were shaking. She hid them in her suitcase.

  “It’s important. Let me know if you find it.”

  “Sure.” Adrien listened to her aunt’s boots walk slowly down the hall. During the conversation, neither had looked directly at the other. Now, in the empty air, Adrien could hear every drip of water that fell from the restless trees.

  four

  Her new roommate arrived early the next morning. Adrien was still somewhere in sleep, floating in an emerald green ocean, ascending through light that streamed down from the surface. Weightless, suspended in light, she floated without body, history or parents that clung to her with a suffocating hope. There was just the light and the deep echoing sounds the green water made in her ears. Just the light ...

  The cabin’s outer door slammed. Adrien’s eyes flew open as someone began dragging a heavy object down the hall, muttering loudly. A kick sent the bedroom door hard into the wall and a girl entered butt-first, pulling a duffel bag. A few steps into the room, she stumbled over a pair of loosely tossed jeans and looked up to find Adrien staring at her.

  “Oh my god!” she cried, one hand going to her heart. “Don’t scare me like that!”

  “I’m not scaring you.”

  “Yes, you are,” said the girl. “Lying in bed all quiet and sneaky.”

  “I was sleeping,” said Adrien. “I’m a sneaky sleeper.”

  The girl gave her a suspicious look, then glanced around the room. “This place is a mess.”

  “Yes, it is.” Adrien lay back and locked her hands behind her head, watching leaf shadows dance across the ceiling. She had to use the washroom like crazy, but she wasn’t giving this girl the satisfaction of knowing it.

  “Couldn’t you at least have cleaned up before I got here?” the girl asked plaintively. She was several years older than Adrien and chubby, with carefully curled blond hair and delicate pink and blue makeup. She looked as if she should be working at Zellers.

  “I was going to clean up when I got up,” stressed Adrien.

  “Well, get up.” The girl grunted as she lugged the duffel bag, inch by inch, onto her bed.

  Laundry staff, Adrien guessed, studying her. On a brave day, arts and crafts. She could just see this girl gluing colored macaroni onto glitter-painted cardboard.

  “My name’s Darcie.” The girl began tugging savagely at the duffel bag’s zipper. “This damn thing’s stuck. It’s my brother’s, he uses it for hockey. It stunk so bad, I sprayed it with deodorant.”

  “That won’t help. It’s not an armpit.”

  “Anyway,” stressed Darcie, ignoring Adrien’s biological data, “it’s too small, but Mom said I had to learn to live Spartan. She teaches ancient history. I don’t think she ever went to camp as a kid—probably read The Iliad instead. How’s one duffel bag supposed to last me the whole summer? What did you pack your stuff in?”

  “A suitcase,” Adrien admitted.

  “A suitcase.” Darcie sighed. “I had to squish things very tiny, then get my brother and his friend to sit on it while I zipped it closed. Ta-da!” She pulled out a curling iron, waved it around and set it carefully on the dresser.

  “What’re you doing here this summer?” Adrien couldn’t help the note of incredulity in her voice. Her roommate was a cross between Barbie Doll and the Pillsbury Doughboy. Thank you, Aunt Erin.

  “I’m the archery instructor.” Darcie said it with pride.

  “You shoot arrows?” Adrien sat up.

  “Good,” said Darcie complacently. “You know the difference between arrows and bullets.” She pulled out a Camp Lakeshore T-shirt, gave it a sniff and wailed, “It smells like hockey! I’m going to spend all summer smelling like my brother’s jock strap.”

  “Maybe if you spray it with deodorant, Spart.”

  Darcie set down the T-shirt and gave her another suspicious look. “Okay,” she said. “I can already tell we’re like night and day. Your aunt obviously put us together to teach us a lesson.”

  “What kind of lesson?”

  Darcie waved a vague hand. “Oh, about each other, probably. Humanity. The love of life. She likes to improve people.”

  “She probably thought you’d improve me,” said Adrien grudgingly. “She thinks I’m a bump on a log. A grouch from the swamp. Something that lives in your subconscious and never comes up.”

  Darcie grinned, then pulled out a makeup kit and started arranging bottles of nail polish and perfume on the dresser. “I always had the feeling she thought I was kind of flighty. Like she could never figure out how I learned to shoot. It doesn’t go with my hairstyle.”

  “You really can shoot, eh?”

  “Win every contest I enter.”

  “Way to go, Spart.”

  “Up and at ‘em, Grouch.”

  All morning long, the parking lot was a bustle of cars as summer staff arrived.
Adrien worked her first shift in Tuck’n Tack, selling Mars Bars and sweatshirts to harassed-looking parents, younger brothers and sisters, and new staff members anxious to become Camp Lakeshore look-alikes. Darcie didn’t need to purchase anything—she already had a T-shirt in every available color.

  “Dinky sailboats, Spart,” Adrien had commented as her roommate donned the blue version.

  “Evolve out of the swamp, Grouch,” Darcie replied. “Learn social skills.”

  Social skills, thought Adrien, handing two red sweatshirts to a father of twins, do not come in my size. Do the dead use social skills? Do the dying? Should I take lessons on how to die politely?

  “I’ll take a medium blue sweatshirt and an Oh Henry!,” said an obvious staff-to-be. Mustering her dying social skills, Adrien handed the staff socialite her new sweatshirt and candy bar, made change and got a smile ready for the next person in line. It was Paul.

  “We don’t sell smokes,” she said. “Not even under the counter.”

  He tapped the pocket in his lumber jacket. “When’s your break?”

  “The boss hasn’t told me.”

  “Probably won’t get one. Busy day.”

  “I’m experiencing a major nic fit.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ve got them when you need them. Give me a Nibs, will ya?”

  “Not one of these wonderful T-shirts?” Adrien noticed he wasn’t wearing the Camp Lakeshore logo.

  “Got one at home,” said Paul. “If I wear it here, I get mixed up. Too many people wearing the same thing and I can’t remember who’s me.” He slid some change onto the counter. “Don’t die before I do, eh?”

  She handed him the red licorice. “The excitement here is killing me.”

  He grinned and was gone. She endured until noon, when Aunt Erin helped her close the awning and lock up Tuck’n Tack. Then they stood on the office porch, watching the last of the parents bid farewell to their offspring in the parking lot.

  “Hey Grouch!” called a voice. “Give me a smile.”

  Startled, Adrien and her aunt turned to see Darcie holding a camera in front of her face. There was a click and she lowered it. “Well, you made a heroic effort, anyway,” she grinned. “Last picture on my roll. I’ll mail it off tomorrow.”

  As her roommate left, Adrien took a careful step away from Aunt Erin. She would never have allowed herself to be trapped in a photograph with her aunt if she had seen it coming. Aunt Erin stiffened slightly, then spoke in her usual clipped voice. “Pizza for lunch. Flo, Di and Jo always make a great pizza for first staff lunch. Camp Lakeshore tradition.”

  Adrien shrugged. Pizza was pizza. How could anyone non-Italian claim it as a tradition? She headed to the cabin to wash up, then ducked around it and ran toward the lake. It had been a long morning without breaks, and she had been waiting to find out if the spirits would show on a day like today, when the camp was full of people laughing, calling, coming and going.

  The spirits were gone. The sky was a canvas of fresh blue paint and a strong wind blew steadily in her face, trying to brush away thoughts of gloom and death. But the sunny view in front of her felt completely wrong, just like the photograph of Aunt Erin and her cabin of girls looked true but was utterly false. The real Aunt Erin wasn’t a smiling eighteen-year-old or everyone’s favorite camp director, she was a woman who prowled the campground like something out of Wuthering Heights, terse, dour, locked into some inner secret. That secret hovered over everyone, tangible but unseen. What was most real about this place was hidden in a second mysterious Camp Lakeshore, one that surrounded Adrien like a fading dream. But whose dream was it?

  Then she saw the five girl-shapes slip-sliding the waves, their glow barely visible in the sunlight. Adrien breathed out long and slow. So, they hadn’t deserted her. No matter how many people crowded the beach and grounds, no matter how many of them wore Camp Lakeshore T-shirts, the true loneliness of this place would remain, a promise between the spirits and herself.

  She turned and headed to the dining hall for pizza.

  It didn’t take her long to figure out she was the youngest staff member. Most of the people crowding the staff tables were in the eighteen-to-twenty-two range and knew each other from former summers. The jokes being told at her table were all loud and inside. Laughter rolled around like a bowling ball, knocking down everyone except her. Adrien ate in silence until a lull appeared, then lunged for it.

  “The Wishing Tree was struck by lightning,” she said, not looking up. “Last night.”

  “The ol’ Wishing Tree, eh?” drawled the guy sitting across from her. He was wearing a red Camp Lakeshore T-shirt with cut-off sleeves and an expanded neck hole, and had mastered the art of keeping his biceps perpetually flexed. “Go up in flames?”

  “Split in half,” said Adrien, avoiding his eyes. They were too blue. She wondered if he wore colored contact lenses.

  “Ooo,” he murmured. “No more midnight wishes.”

  “Now we just have to figure out how to stop the midnight pee trips,” sighed a girl in a University of Saskatchewan Huskies sweatshirt.

  “Nothing to drink after high noon,” said the guy. “On pain of death.” The girls at the table seemed to find this riotously funny. Adrien sat, absorbing this latest truth—the Wishing Tree was another scam, perpetrated on weenies hopeful enough to fall for it.

  “But don’t you think,” she shot into the beginning of yet another inside joke, “little kids need that sort of stuff? Half the tree’s alive—you can still use it.”

  Once again, the very blue eyes settled on her. This time, she made herself stare back. The guy looked old enough to be attending university, but he had streaked the top of his hair platinum blond like someone searching for easy popularity. He definitely looked manufactured. “Who are you?” asked the guy in a careless voice. “An early camper?”

  The Huskies girl tittered and slapped his arm lightly. The guy had a ready-made fan club.

  “Where’d you get that cute little T-shirt?” asked Adrien. “The Jock-for-Brains shop?”

  The blue eyes flickered in surprise, then hardened as the guy tilted his chair onto its back legs and focused on her. Suddenly Adrien realized her table was in the middle of a long pause and no one was going to speak a word until Jock-for-Brains did. She had stumbled onto some kind of social elite and taken on the guy in charge. She chanced another glance and found the blue eyes still studying her. Everyone else had developed a manic fixation on their pizza.

  “So, I asked you a question,” the guy said finally. “Who are you?”

  “Adrien Wood.” She stretched out the words so she didn’t sound too obedient.

  “What’re you doing here?”

  “Tuck’n Tack. I sell T-shirts.” She tasted the last phrase, almost smiling. The guy let his chair drop forward and leaned forward, jaw jutting.

  “We’ll see how your summer goes for you, Adrien Wood.” He stood abruptly and joined the serving line for more pizza. The conversation at the table gradually picked up, but no one spoke to her, and when Jock-for-Brains returned, he also ignored her. Well, that was all right. She hadn’t been thrilled with the conversation anyway. To quote the hairnets, this was one guy who could go back to where he came from, and further.

  The early afternoon was spent on an orienteering exercise that split everyone into small groups and sent them all over the grounds, picking mayflies off their bodies while they explored the camp layout. Adrien trailed along behind her group. Trying to give her niece a social edge, Aunt Erin had placed her with several new staff, but it had backfired miserably. The others were several years older and completely ignored her, so Adrien didn’t offer any help solving clues. The group wandered perpetually in the wrong direction, up by the corrals when they should have been east of the Arts and Crafts building, close to the lake. As they straggled past, Adrien caught a glimpse of Paul working on the paddock fence. How come he didn’t have to attend Training Session? It couldn’t be due to his advanced social skills.

>   “Who’s the cute guy?” asked one of the girls.

  “The Doomsday Man,” said a guy. “I heard about him. The guy’s hooked on gloom—won’t talk, won’t smile, won’t drink a beer. Lives around here somewhere and works on maintenance—cleans the cans.”

  “Too bad,” said the girl. “I like his butt.”

  “Check mine out,” said the guy, offering his, and the giggling girl swatted him. As the group rounded a bend in the trail, Adrien glanced back to see that Paul had straightened and was watching her. She stopped, caught in a beam of light descending through the trees, the wings of insects flickering gold-white about her. The distance made it too far for words, so it was just eyes, the two of them locked into a sudden staring silence that deepened until she could hear the slow pound of her heart. The trees sighed heavily, a horse wickered, the earth let loose a rich dizzying scent. There was the slight pressure of a mayfly on her wrist, the heat of her sunburnt lips, and then the memory from the beach—the weight of Paul’s body, his hands pressing her shoulders, and something else—a scream rising through her so raw it threatened to tear open her face. But she hadn’t screamed at the beach, she was sure she hadn’t screamed. Adrien turned and stumbled after her group, clenching and unclenching her fists until her heart slowed, the scent of the earth receded, and the trees stopped giving their soft whispering sighs.

  Her group came in last, having missed half their clues. Adrien ignored Aunt Erin’s penetrating look. Everyone had gathered in the dining hall for an information session. Gwen and Guy were handing out booklets as Aunt Erin introduced the chain of command—the assistant director Maurice Turcotte and his wife, the nurse, and the hairnets, who smiled and bobbed through a standing ovation. When the applause quieted, Guy was introduced as coordinator of skills and maintenance staff, and Gwen as leader of the female counselors. Adrien stood dutifully to be introduced as Tuck’n Tack staff, but wasn’t surprised at the dull looks she received. Then a series of shrill whistles pierced the air. She turned to see Paul, Gwen and Guy at the back of the room, the three of them leaning forward, their fingers between their lips. Adrien flushed and sat down quickly, but cheers of “Adrien, Adrien” began, Guy waving his hat, Paul and Gwen stomping and clapping. Another whistle blasted and Darcie waved at her from across the room.