Emilienne eventually complained that their eggs were hardly worth the mess they made of the yard so decided to have the chickens slaughtered. Gabe caught them and took them, one by one, into the woodshop and snapped their necks with his large hands. Gabe had no reason to think that I might be hiding behind a pile of rubble in the woodshop, watching the end of each hen’s life. What horrified me the most — what would haunt me for years to come — was how each bird flapped and flapped her wings, expecting them to carry her to freedom. I never could eat chicken after that. It seemed cannibalistic.
As Cardigan lowered herself onto the branches of the cherry tree outside my window, I got out of bed, shook out my wings, and said, “I’m coming with you.”
Cardigan paused, stared at me, then pulled herself back into the room. “Cool.”
It took us half an hour to concoct a harness strong enough to pin down my wings. We made it using an old leather bridle Rowe grabbed from the workshop behind my house and tossed up to us. He waited for us in the dark yard, the end of his lit cigarette glowing red.
The harness kept my wings folded flat to my back, but it was painful. I finally understood the phrase seeing stars. An old musty cloak we found in a forgotten hall closet hid them completely. The cloak was emerald-green wool with a satin lining and a giant hood that fell down my back.
We snuck off the hill and walked silently down Pinnacle Lane. We passed Marigold Pie’s house, then the Fields’ house. We passed the spot where the rough road turned to pavement and where a pair of worn sneakers hanging from an overhead power line danced in the wind. I was sure the other two could hear the quickening of my heart as I stepped farther and farther away from the only place I had ever known. We passed my grandmother’s bakery and the house that stood behind it, the Lutheran church, the elementary school, and the spot where Rowe and Cardigan waited for the bus that took them to school. We passed the remodeled police station with its brick walls and clear, shiny windows, and the cluster of identical new homes that sprang up after the war. We passed the old deaf couple’s little white house and the place where my mother once watched the moon disappear. Then we arrived at the reservoir, a dark spot guarded by maple trees and surly high-school students.
Much to my relief, no one seemed to notice me or that I was wearing a large and unfashionable cloak. Cardigan moved to join a group that was building pyramids out of empty beer cans on the reservoir’s cement ledge.
“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” I muttered, backing away until I bumped into someone behind me. Rowe.
He smiled down at me. “N-nah, it was a p-p-perfectly good idea. It t-takes a while to acclimate oneself to the d-deb-bauchery of wild t-t-teenage life. Come on,” he said, and, taking me by the elbow, steered me to a secluded spot beneath the trees.
Years later the lights of the growing city would erase the stars from the sky, but back then they shone through the branches like jailed fireflies.
“Weird, isn’t it?” Rowe sat next to me. “H-how it’s sup-po-posed to be spring, but doesn’t l-look l-l-like it?” I watched the bulge of his Adam’s apple jump as he breathed and swallowed. He was right. Without the rain, it seemed spring would never come and the stars would remain forever imprisoned by the leafless branches.
“The only constellation I know is that one.” I pointed to a cluster of stars that made the shape of a ladle.
Rowe swallowed hard. “A-actually, the B-Big Dipper is a p-p-part of Ursa Major — the Great Bear. It makes up his b-body and t-ta-ail. See his legs?”
“Oh, yeah,” I murmured. “There it is.” It did look like a bear, a big white bear, head down, rooting through the snow. “I wonder why I haven’t seen that before.”
“Maybe you just needed someone to help you see the parts that aren’t so obvious.”
I looked at him. “You didn’t stutter.”
Rowe ducked his head. “I don’t always.”
“Ava!” Cardigan commanded from the reservoir’s edge. “Come over here!”
I pulled my knees to my chest, nervously tugged the cloak tighter around my shoulders. I shook my head. Not just yet.
“Are you afraid they won’t like you?” Rowe asked.
“Oh.” My eyes widened. “I hadn’t even thought of that. What if they don’t like me?”
“It’s hard to imagine anyone not liking you,” he said candidly, meeting my eyes. He cleared his throat. “Anyway, what’s r-really bothering you?”
“It’s . . . dangerous for someone like me to be out in the open.”
As if in response, my wings started to flutter beneath their shroud. I gave the cloak a good yank.
“Someone like you? Someone different, you mean?”
I shrugged. “Yes,” I answered quietly, suddenly shy.
“So, is it dangerous for us or for you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, are you the threat, or are we?”
“You are! Well, they are.” I motioned to the cluster of teenagers. Of course it was them.
Rowe peered at me thoughtfully. “Funny. I suspect they might say otherwise.” He stood. “And that might just be the root of the problem: we’re all afraid of each other, wings or no wings.” Rowe smiled that quick smile of his. “Shall we join them?”
He offered his hand and pulled me up easily. I was surprised by how small my own hand looked wrapped in his. I blushed. I adjusted the cloak one last time and let him lead me toward the group, his hand gently pressed against the small of my back.
Cardigan sat on the edge of the reservoir with two boys and a girl. The boys were twins, identical in every way. The girl was small and bone-thin, her wrists like crane legs.
Cardigan stood and, with a flourish toward me, announced, “This is the Living Angel,” resurrecting the name the newspapers had given me on the day I was born. On the day Henry and I were born.
The three stared at me, then the girl said, “Isn’t she supposed to have wings?”
The twins laughed at her. I gaped at Cardigan, shocked that my best friend would give me away just like that. Some friend, I thought, glaring at Cardigan.
“She does!” Cardigan said. “They’re just — hidden.” Her face fell as she sat back down. “It is her, though.”
Rowe moved slightly, shielding me from the group. He frowned at Cardigan. “You can’t be s-serious,” he said to her quietly. “You don’t kn-now how they’re g-going to r-react.”
Still believing it was all a joke, one of the boys said, “I heard her wings are, like, six feet long.”
“Twelve feet, five inches across actually,” I murmured.
“Like an eagle?” he dared.
“Wandering albatross.”
The other twin stood and crossed his arms. “So, if they’re so big, how d’ya hide ’em?”
I sighed and moved out of Rowe’s protective stance. I pulled the green cloak open just far enough to reveal the front straps of my harness.
One of them whistled. “Off the wall. That looks painful.”
“It is,” I admitted.
“Why do it, then?” the girl asked. She had a soft, wispy sort of voice that made me think of dandelion clocks. I shrugged.