Chapter Text
If you were to ask me how many friends I have, I would tell you I have quite a few. In all honesty, though, I only have two friends. Lacie and Evan have been my friends for two years, but if I had only met them today, I don’t think we would be friends at all. I am much too shy to be friends with Lacie and much too focused on what others think about me to be friends with Evan. The stars must have aligned in my favor the day that I met them. The thought of how fortunate I am to know Evan and Lacie never escapes me. It plays on constant repeat in my head, like a record that won’t shut up.
All three of us friends go to the same boarding school, Lancaster Boys and Girls School, and we’re all in the same class. We eat lunch together at twelve noon. Our usual table is near the back of the cafeteria and is set up under a small window. Sometimes birds perch on the window and look through the glass. They must have thought it odd to see us eating together. We were a spectacle unravelling before their eyes. With our selfish hearts and busy brains, it was no wonder that humans never learned how to fly. On most days Lacie carried the conversation, talking just to hear her own voice. Her voice sounded like wind chimes and her breath smelled of honeysuckle, so no one cared how much she talked. Evan never had much to say, so he always tried in vain to do his homework. I tried to balance both of them, pushing Evan to answer questions I posed and telling Lacie to work on her English paper. Lacie always laughed at me for this, but all I was doing was trying my best to not look like such a mess in front of the birds peering through the window.
“Evan? Y/N? Do either of you want the rest of my sandwich? I’m much too full to finish it,” Lacie asked us as we ate lunch one day. Evan looked out the window wistfully. He adored it immensely when birds perched on the window, but there were no birds occupying the space on the glass today.
“You should really eat it, Lacie. You didn’t eat much at breakfast this morning,” I said in a soft voice as to not abruptly tear Evan from his thoughts.
Lacie is the prettiest girl I know. She has long, blonde hair that doesn’t even need to be brushed in the morning because it always looks so lovely. She moves like a ballerina, with grace and poise, unlike my own unsteady movements. She’s tall like a ballerina, too. Her legs are long and thin as a dancers are as well, peaking out from underneath her school uniform, beckoning for boys to come her way. Sometimes people can’t decipher whether she’s walking or floating on the air. Lacie wears expensive perfume that her mom gifts to her on holidays, smelling of daisies and rain. Sometimes when she asks me to hold her sweater, it smells more like I’m holding a bouquet of flowers than a plain burgundy heap of wool.
“You’re a nosey one, aren’t you?” Lacie teased me with a playful laugh. “Earth to Evan! I asked you a question!” Lacie said, snapping her fingers in front of the boy’s face.
And then there’s Evan. He likes when people call him Ev, but no one ever does, apart from me. He has too many thoughts in his head and not enough words for them. He wears blue wool sweaters that his mom makes for him. People make fun of him for not having any sweaters from department stores. I told him having a sweater made by someone you know is much better than a sweater made by someone you don’t, because then it’s filled with much more love. His lovely blue eyes look like raindrops and brown hair that sweeps across his forehead. Ev digs his nails into the side of his thumb when he’s nervous.Boys like him are rare, which makes people afraid, I think. When people see someone who doesn’t act or think the same way they do, they often freeze up. A snow storm washes over people and they board up their windows because they don’t know how lovely it is to make snowmen or go ice skating.
“Do you think the birds have already migrated for winter? I think it’s much too early for that, or rather, I hope it’s much too early,” Ev asked thoughtfully as he tried to settle in his seat. His fingers smoothed over the callous he had given himself in the same manner that someone might smooth out wrinkles on top of bed sheets; hoping they’d disappear.
“Evan, stop talking about birds! Girls aren’t going to like you if you keep sounding like a biology textbook,” Lacie scolded. She placed her chin in the palm of her hand and rested her elbow on the table. Her eyes squinted slightly at Ev, examining him with a gentle mindset.
“‘m sorry. You’re right... You’re right. Girls don’t...well, they don’t like birds very much, do they?” Ev replied cautiously. Lacie placed her barely eaten sandwich on Ev’s lunch tray, prompting an uneasy reaction from the boy. I took the sandwich from Ev’s tray and took a bite out of it. Sometimes I have reason to believe that Ev doesn’t like various foods touching other foods. Other times, I find myself thinking Ev always finds an excuse to be uncomfortable.
“I think the birds slept in today, Ev. They forgot to set their alarm clocks last night,” I said lightly. Lacie rolled her eyes at me for encouraging Ev’s interest. Ev just smiled softly as he looked down at his tray. He carefully removed the reddish skin from the baked potato on his tray. If I hadn’t known any better, I would have thought Ev was doing it as to not hurt the potato.
Lacie picked up a new conversation, telling Ev and I about a boy she kissed at the carnival over the weekend. She told me that if I wanted to kiss a boy then I should go to the carnival as well. According to her, all the cute boys go there and wait around for someone to take on the Tunnel-of-Love ride. I don’t think I would much like my first kiss to be one from a boy at the carnival. Maybe it’s silly, but I imagined my first kiss being with someone I absolutely, completely, and utterly loved. The time for that may have passed, though, because I turn seventeen in a few months and I still haven’t done as much as hold a boy’s hand. Lacie says I’m too picky. Imagine a world where people kissed because they loved each other. A world like that might exist in the future. That would be a future I want to live in.
After lunch, Ev and I walked through the school’s courtyard to get to our Ornithology class. Our shoes kicked the small stones on the gravel walkway we were on as we walked. Ev has his eyes up towards the sky, looking for something that wasn’t there. His books were held loosely in his two hands, their smooth covers looking glossy in the sunlight. Sometimes I wondered what it would be like to hold Ev’s hand. His warm hands could balance my cold ones, and maybe he’d be distracted enough to let the cuts he had placed on his them heal. He kept such a tight grip on his books that I decided no one could ever find out.
We walked in silence until a rustling noise came behind us. I turned to see what was behind us making such a noise, but I didn’t turn soon enough. Two boys came rushing up behind Evan and I, purposefully running into my shoulders and knocking Ev’s books to the ground. All I could see was a blur of their khaki pants and ebony colored shirts. They left as soon as they came, as most horrible things do. Like the sound of angry hyenas, their laughs bounced off the brick walls of the school and rung in our ears. Evan froze as I stumbled in order to find my balance. A cloud of dust enveloped his books, sticking to the covers. Some were spread open with pages ready for the clouds to read. Ev’s face grew long, as he opened his jaw with trembling lips.
“They do that to everyone. They did that to me just yesterday when I was near the library,” I said quickly as I kneeled down to gather Evan’s books. A gust of wind ran through the courtyard, causing my hair to obstruct my vision for a moment. Book pages seemed to stand up because of the wind, dancing briefly and then lying back down against each other. The breeze tugged on my shoulder blades, almost asking me to sprout wings and fly away from this horrible situation.
“Don’t lie,” Evan said in a small voice. His shoulders hunched forward as he wrapped his arms around his own torso. I grew quiet as he grew smaller. Receding into yourself isn’t the best way to cope with hurt, but Ev liked it just fine. My heart slowly sunk back into my chest, away from my ribs. The only bad thing about Evan was that he knew when people made fun of him, he was the only one at school being made fun of. My mouth grew dry with guilt. Two boys hadn’t pushed me yesterday by the library. I had lied. Sometimes lying was the only way I could even try to begin to comfort Evan. He needed comfort so badly.
✾
I went to my home in Harvard City for winter break that semester. It was nice to see my parents again, but I felt empty without my friends. Lacie and Evan lived close to each other but far from me, so I spent many days watching the sun rise and fall by myself. One evening my mother began making sugar cookies in the kitchen. When she began feeding the dough into our oven, a certain warmth flooded our house and left me feeling suffocated. I wandered around our house, like a bird in a cage until my mother told me to go take a walk.
I slipped a pair of my brother’s old boots onto my feet and wrapped a navy colored scarf around my neck and shoulders. Newly wrapped in warm attire, I ventured onto our front porch and then down the street. My feet had no traction against the icy road, but I welcomed it. Maybe a good fall would snap me out of the mood I was in. I didn’t like this feeling I had, like I had missed an opportunity. There was something I should have done back at school, but I couldn’t quite think of what it was. I tried to shake those thoughts from my brain as I walked down the street.
About ten minutes into my journey, I came upon my neighbor’s truck stalled in the middle of the road. My neighbor, Andrew, was a strong man who could carry a week’s worth of firewood in his arms. He was a school teacher, but in his spare time he made beautiful paintings. They were the kind of paintings you don’t have to think much about and you love them because of that. Once he showed them to me and offered to let me keep one. I refused, but the kind gesture stayed with me forever. Andrew’s truck was an odd color of orange, because he had bought it from a junkyard and fixed it up. The orange color looked astounding against the dullness of the winter trees and sky.
“Now don’t come any closer, sport. I’ve sure got myself in a pickle,” Andrew said to me, standing near the hood of his car. His back hunched over, making him look down at his front tire.
“What sorta pickle is this exactly?” I asked the man. My hands found their way to my coat pockets, sheltering themselves from the cold.
“Looks as though I’ve hit a little critter… she’s not lookin’ so good,” Andrew sighed, his words cutting through the already sharp winter air. He shook his head in pity.
“What kind of critter? One of those squirrels that eat out of the rubbish bins on 5th Street?” I asked. My head tilted in curiosity. Those squirrels were known for feeling invincible when it came to human interactions. They’d jump onto your windshields or take the food you’ve dropped on your shoe.
“I’m ‘fraid not, sport. It’s a poor cat. Must be a stray because she doesn’t have anything around her neck to say otherwise,” Andrew shrugged. He straightened up and wiped the sweat off of his forehead using the back of his hand. Why he would be sweating in such cold weather escaped me. My interest peaked and I stepped closer to the orange truck. Nestled under Andrew’s tire was the fur of a yellow cat. It looked matted and long, specks of red lined the fur of its belly. I gasped and looked away. The sweating feeling that Andrew had swallowed me up as if it were contagious. My arms crossed over my chest in discomfort as I looked at my shoes. Something about that cat made me feel awfully uneasy. It was like Andrew and I had just committed a major crime.
“You better get along. Nothing like a deceased cat to ruin your day,” Andrew added. I nodded quickly and my feet began to carry me back home. Sometimes your feet just do that sort of thing. They take you places and you don’t even think about it. My mother says it’s a way for your brain to cope with the mundane things in life, but I think it’s a way to cope with things that are so shocking that you hope you’ll forget them forever. But that’s okay, either way your brain is taking care of you and helping you from flying too far off the ground.
✾
When I came back to school after winter break, Lacie and I set aside a night to get together and talk about what we’d done over the holidays. We met in Lacie’s dorm on a Tuesday because that’s when her roommate would be gone. Her room was larger than mine and it was decorated with pink furniture. Lacie showed me the Edith Piaf record her parents had given her for Christmas. She put it on her record player and it played quietly as we talked. Lacie wore her pink silk robe as she laid across her bed. I wore my blue gingham pajamas as I sat on her floor. My hands sifted through my hair as I slowly plaited it.
“You’ll never guess who I kissed on Christmas Eve!” Lacie squealed as she stared up at her ceiling.
“If I’m never going to guess then you should just tell me,” I laughed softly, craning my neck to look up at her.
“But it’s no fun if you don’t guess! You can have three guesses, just like wishes from a genie!” Lacie smiled as she sat up. She liked making things into a game. The hard part about playing games with Lacie was that she always made her own rules. Her own rules tended to benefit her most.
“Alright. Was it a boy you met at the carnival last semester?” I asked, fastening the end of of my braid with a dark blue ribbon.
“No! Geez, all those boys are shallow and they couldn’t understand a sophisticated woman like me even if I paid them to!” Lacie scoffed, combing through her golden hair with her fingers. Her hair looked healthy and rich in the glow of the room’s candlelight.
“Well, I don’t know very many people Lace,” I sighed softly, disappointed with myself. I tried to stay lighthearted but it was hard. Having Lacie talk about kissing boys with me was difficult. I couldn’t relate and it made me feel immature because I didn’t understand half the things she was saying. For all I know, Lacie could have been making it all up! That made me feel a little better; the thought that she was a phony. Accusing Lacie of being a phony made me feel guilty, though, and then I was left feeling the same way I started. All I wanted was to understand what it was like to even know a boy who thought I was pretty enough to kiss. I thought about how Ev had called me pretty last year. He had written it in a note, but it still counted. Maybe if I asked him, Ev would kiss me. I wanted to feel my hand on his cheek and make him feel loved. The way Lacie talked about kissing, though, made it seem like it was more about actions and less about feelings.
“It’s someone we both know, silly!” Lacie smiled, loving my frustration.
“The only person we both know is-”
“Yes! I kissed Evan and he was such a dear about it! He came to my house with a tin of gingerbread and of course I threw it away when he wasn’t looking. Gingerbread tastes like cardboard and fat. But, he came up to my room and sat by my windowsill. I just came right up to him and kisses him because he looked so cute sitting there! Evan is awfully cute. I can’t believe I hadn’t seen it before!” Lacie rambled. Her lips moved quickly as her head nodded with each word.
I felt sick to my stomach. My throat closed up and I looked at her with uncertainty. I knew what she was saying was true, but I couldn’t believe how it had happened. I didn’t know that Evan liked Lacie or that Lacie liked Evan. They seemed so different and sometimes at odds. It seemed as though Lacie was just a cat chasing a bird. She had finally caught him, and I knew she would never let him go. My shaky hands gripped the carpet on Lacie’s floor in an attempt to keep me grounded. Ev was the opportunity I missed before I went home for winter break.
✾
As weeks passed, it became more and more apparent that Lacie and Evan were a proper couple. They sat next to each other at lunch instead of across from each other. Sometimes Lacie whispered things into Evan’s ear that made him blush. I still wonder what she could have said. Things began to change an awful lot between the three of us. My presence began to matter less and less to them, making me recede into the background. Like a shadow, I followed behind the two of them when they walked and moved in a way that wouldn’t get me stepped on. People say you’re supposed to be happy for people that are in love, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel anything about Lacie and Ev. They didn’t seem right together. Lacie didn’t deserve his compassionate mind or tear-drop eyes. She didn’t deserve the way his voice took you to a different world, or even a different universe where nothing bad ever happened. When he talked, his words took flight and sailed through the clouds of your mind. Ev didn’t talk much, and now that he was with Lacie he talked even less.
One night Lacie and Evan went to the cinema without me, leaving me to my own devices. I had become accustomed to nights by myself, but that didn’t make the bouts of loneliness any better. Sometimes I would close my eyes really tight, so tight that it would hurt my eyes, and pretend that someone was lying in bed besides me. Every now and then, I was convinced that there was someone next to me, but when I opened my eyes they must have flown away.
On this particular night, that my only friends had left me to see a film, my tired legs had brought me to the carnival that Lacie had told me about. Harsh, artificial light drew me closer to the heart of the fairgrounds, like a whale opening its mouth to only let the foolish fish into its mouth. I wandered aimlessly for hours, hoping that someone would at least notice that I was there. No one gave me the time of day until I passed by a game booth that only a few people were standing around. Two boys stood behind the booth, running the game. One of the boys was tall and thin. Strong arms lead into the fabric of his quarter-length sleeves. His messy dark hair was hidden under a newsboy’s cap and he smiled at people with a sly look in his eyes. The other boy running the game was shorter and stouter. This boy wore the kind of glasses that the comedic relief in films wear. He had a loud laugh that could be heard whenever people lost the game. The shorter boy sat on a ladder and grumbled every time someone won the game, because then he would have to climb up the ladder and retrieve a prize from the wire hanging above his head.
“Hey, girl! Step on ova’ here and show everyone whatta real winner looks like!” The shorter boy yelled over at me from his seat on the bottom rung of his ladder. I looked around and behind me, unsure if he was really talking to me. The two boys running the game looked at each other and laughed before the taller one motioned me to come over. I obeyed the boys’ requests, walking across the dirt path with my lip between my teeth.
“You look like you want to play this game,” the taller one laughed. The wood that the booth was made out of creaked as he rested his elbow against it.
“Not really. I don’t even know how,” I said, trying to hide the blush rising in my cheeks. The tall boy was handsome and radiated confidence. Of all the people to talk to me tonight, he should have been last in line.
“It’s easy! You pick up the slingshot and knock down the metal birds! You just knock ‘em right down! It’s easy!” The shorter one said to me in a loud voice. The game in front of me consisted a row of metal ducks standing in a row behind the booth. They had red and white targets painted over where their wings should have been. Each duck was a different color, corresponding with a different amount of points. If you obtained enough points, the short boy had to climb up his ladder and get you the prize you wanted.
“I’m not any good at slingshots. I really shouldn’t,” I mumbled shaking my head.
“I’ll show you!” The taller boy offered.
“Connor’ll show ya!” The shorter boy mused.
Suddenly the taller boy, Connor, hopped over the restraints of the booth and stood behind me. He produced a slingshot from the back of his pocket and forced it into my hands. I felt his chest press up against my back and an overwhelming smell of cigar smoke filled my nostrils. Connor took my hands in his, adjusting them in such a way that they held the slingshot with great poise. I was like a puppet on his strings, sending a metal duck to the ground before I knew it. After I had knocked down the bird, Connor’s touch retreated away from me as if he had burnt himself.
“Told ya it was easy, doll! Maybe next time you’ll get the blue bird. Nobody’s ever gotten that one before,” Connor’s co-worker jeered. I put the slingshot down immediately, sensing a strange feeling rise in my stomach. Connor adjusted the hat on his head as he looked at me with thoughtful eyes.
“Jared, I’m done for the night. Boss said I could leave early,” Connor stated gruffly to the shorter boy.
“Aw, what? You’re making shit up again!” the short boy, Jared, complained. Connor shrugged in response and started walking away. I turned to watch him go as if he was a ghost who had only briefly visited this realm.
“Come on, kid! You don’t have to stand there like a flightless bird,” Connor called over to me, not even looking back at me. I jumped slightly in my skin and hurried over to the boy’s side, my steps soon falling in line with his.
Nothing seemed to hold me back from him. No part of me wanted to stop walking alongside him through the carnival. Nobody told me not to share my name with him and that I only had two friends who loved each other more than they loved me. No thought crossed my mind that told me not to laugh at his jokes and not to settle into his touch when he danced with me to the sound of a lazy piano. After we had danced, we walked with dizzy steps to a tent near the edge of the carnival. The light inside the tent was dull and came from nothing more than a lantern placed in the right corner of the tent. Two cots were placed on even sides of the tent. I looked around the makeshift room with amazement and confusion.
“You sleep here?” I asked in a soft voice. My arms slowly crossed over each other.
“Mhmm. That guy Jared and I both do. We travel with the carnival,” Connor nodded. He took his hat off and tossed it onto one of the cots. I watched his muscles swell and stretch as he took his suspenders off, too. My gaze fell to the ground, looking at my black and white saddle shoes. A strange feeling overtook me for the second time that day.
“Hey, kid. What’s the matter?” Connor asked me. His voice was soft and I could feel his thumb gently press underneath my chin, making me look up, into his eyes.
“Nothing…I just wish people didn’t have to live like this. I mean, you must be freezing at night and-,” I started to ramble. Before I could finish another sentence, I felt Connor’s lips press against mine. Nothing stopped me from letting him kiss me. His mouth was harsh against my own and I wondered if that was how Lacie kissed Evan. My limbs were frozen in place, taken over by my lung’s sudden search for more oxygen.
“Have you ever done this before?” Connor whispered into my ear, his lips brushing against the edge of my jaw. I stayed silent, opting to only shake my head in response. His breathy voice told me that that was okay and that he’d take care of me.
I hadn’t planned for the events of that night to take place, but birds aren’t animals that have carefully curated plans. Connor saw my wings that night, and I saw his. We laid in nothing but feathers as the moon rose high in the sky. And when the sun peeked back through the clouds, Connor migrated north with the rest of his flock. He took my wings with him, saying that they’d help him find me whenever he came back. I knew he would never come back because he was a bird of prey and they didn’t often like the company of others.
✾
After I met Connor, I felt completely empty. I was emptier than before. He had taken something from me that I had never planned to give. In the weeks that followed, I walked around like an empty shell. In my classes, I sat with my chin held shut and my gaze towards the ground. Teachers didn’t notice and they didn’t mind. Sometimes I would sit in Lacie’s room and just cry. I never told her why, though, because she never asked. She would just brush my hair like she used to, letting a comforting feeling spread over me.
Do you ever wish you could just go back to how things were in the past? I did. I still do. When I close my eyes all I can see is the beach that I went to with Ev and Lacie last summer. Its pretty beige sand that felt warm when you stood on top of it with your bare feet. No one was at the beach and we wondered why that was the case until we dipped our toes in the water and found that the water was much too cold. We stayed at the beach all day anyways, spreading our towels out on the sand and laying in the sun.
I remember Ev sitting between Lacie and I, reading aloud a book that he had found on his mother’s bookshelf. My head rested on his sun kissed shoulder, letting my eyes pour over the book’s pages. His voice sounded like molasses, slow but steady. That was the first time I ever heard him sound so relaxed. We laughed and joked with him whenever he skipped over the curse words. Lacie would poke his side, eliciting a soft laugh from the boy.
“Bastard isn’t even a bad word, Evan! Just say it!” I remember Lacie laughing.
“Well, someone would feel bad if you called them that! Wouldn’t they?” Evan protested.
“It’s just a book, Ev,” I smiled softly at him, admiring how the rain in his eyes had cleared away. I hugged his arm gently, and I’ll never forget how warm and inviting it was.
“Keep reading for Christ’s sake!” Lacie groaned as she turned and laid on her stomach, hoping for an even tan. Ev sighed and found his place on the page.
“I felt so lonesome all of a sudden. I almost wished I was dead,” Evan read out loud. We grew quiet for a moment., processing the words the author had written. No one moved or said a word. I’m not sure how the others felt, but I know my heart tightened in my chest, making me feel smaller. I had felt that way before and sometimes that feeling creeps back up upon me. It’s an awful feeling; the feeling of being dead when you’re actually alive. I wish I knew why humans experience that sort of thing, but I’m no psychiatrist. All I know is that if you get to a point in your story where it says you wished you were dead, you just keep reading. In the next chapter of your book there might be a time where you’re glad you’re alive. It’s funny how a fictional character and a real person can feel so much alike. I guess that’s the catch of literature. You use it to escape life, only to find out that it’s all the same.
Evan kept reading the book after that, even though we were all noticeably more somber. When he finished the book, we left the beach as if we had never been there at all. We never talked about the book Ev read out loud ever again. I don’t even remember the name of it, but I do remember that I understood it and that’s all that matters.