Chapter Text
One day, I am gonna grow wings.
It’s the line from ‘Let Down’ that circulates my head the most. It’s the most popular one, just look at anyone with a Radiohead tattoo, but it’s popular for a reason. The words on their ankles and shoulders are identical but not a single one of them have the same tattoo. It means different things to different people, but there’s four I’ve seen enough of to believe them to be the main interpretations.
It’s about escape, for some people. Getting out of a situation or a place that’s slowly killing them. Growing wings to fly away from your oppressive small town with your ex-boyfriend who lingers in your life like a ghost, your college campus with a professor that’s never cared about himself or you, the restaurant where your conservative mother accidentally finds out about your bi-curious thoughts. You’re sitting in the park, begging a god you don’t truly believe in to give you wings and let you join the sparrows in the trees so you can for once be the one looking down on the world and it will stop scrutinizing you.
And for others, its about success. I am going to grow wings, I am going to rise above the rest and finally do what I need to in my bones to be able to live with myself. Potential, finally fulfilled. There’s a lot of finally in that interpretation. For a moment, they’re reminded of that most fragile of concepts: hope. It swells in their chest as if there are wings within them, and just as quickly as it appears, it vanishes.
Then there’s metamorphosis. The Kafka shit. It’s kind of a combination of the first two- get out of hell and do something with your life- but the added bit of leaving your old self burning behind you. Grow wings. Become that person you’ve always wanted to be, not just by copying their achievements, but by becoming them entirely. Your old self is in that small town’s cemetery, rotting under flowers left by that rotten ex-boyfriend whose ghostly nature is finally appropriate.
And then there’s the ones who want to die.
Which is exactly how I felt on the nineteenth of August, sitting on a bench in a town I didn’t know next to a man I didn’t love, telling him that he shouldn’t have ever come back for me.
”It’s not exactly a short drive,” he said with barely concealed frustration, “you know that, right?” The semi-crushed daisies in his hand were getting further mutilated by the shaking fist clenching their stems as if it would cure everything.
”I did it last week,” I replied calmly. It was true. He knew that I’d know that. My family had spent all summer getting ready to move out of our well-worn and well-loved Belleville home to the equally if not even more exciting to Renneston, a civilization nestled between two forests in Vermont that was the definition of small town. The trip from New Jersey wasn’t a short one.
”So why the hell are you telling me to go back?”
That’s a good question. With a good answer. But I don’t feel like telling him that.
”I don’t know,” I mutter, my hands fidgeting in my lap.
”You don’t know,” Korse says, frustration turning to anger and concealment fading away. “You don’t know- you know what I don’t know? What I don’t get? I just drove seven and a half hours to surprise you, because I knew how hard this was going to be on you, and you don’t give a shit. You want me to turn around and leave you here?”
”Yes,” I say.
”Fine by me,” he replies, abruptly standing and throwing the daisies on the bench as he storms away. Their white petals have faded, the edges of them almost the same brown as the faded wood they now lay on. The twine tied around the stems is snagged by a jagged splinter. These poor Belleville daisies have been through it.
I watch as Korse storms away, his combat boots trampling the grass as he marches forward, ignoring the dirt path that lays in front of the bench and winds into the distance to my left and right. Before he vanishes into the sunset, I start gathering the daisies in my hands, gently caressing the damaged petals and wishing I could apologize to them. It’s not you, I’d say, you didn’t do anything wrong.
I’m so focused on the innocent victims in my palms that I don’t see Korse return until my shirt is in his fist and my face is inches from his.
“You’re an ass, Gerard,” he says, spraying his saliva onto my cheek, his hands now grasping my neck. “You know that?”
My heart pounds in my chest as he tightens his grip. “I wish I hadn’t come. I can’t believe I did. I can’t believe I even put in the effort. Pathetic ass Way.”
When I don’t react, just sputter and struggle against him, he releases me with the same force as he did the daisies, and my back hits the wooden planks of the bench. Korse walks backward, wiping his mouth and his eyes and, this time, uses the path.
He has disappeared into the trees by the time my breathing returns to a normal rhythm. Zach Korse and I had started spending time together in June, just before the end of the school year; he was older than me, him 19 and me 17, but we’d had some classes together, and eventually became friends. We hung out now and then, and one night, watching a horrible horror movie on cable, he leaned in and I didn’t stop him. It was mid-July when I began regretting that decision.
Korse was aggressive, if you couldn’t tell by now. He had never been in a real relationship- hell, neither had I- and I didn’t know what I was supposed to be okay with or not. He liked the idea of me. I liked the excitement of him. It was a decent arrangement, until the big goodbye that I took for a breakup.
Everyone interprets things differently.
I look down and see the daisies have been completely crushed. My eyebrows knit together in regret as I cradle the few blooms that have any petals left. I don’t know how long I spend with the daisies, but the sun is completely gone by the time I get up and walk down the path, the opposite direction Korse went, back to the entrance of the park and three streets over to my new house.
My hopes for a discreet entry are dashed by my hand fumbling with the new key in the lock and the ancient hinges on the door. The black paint of the door is faded and chipping, exposing the raw cedar wood beneath it that matches the rest of the house. Apparently it’s nearly a hundred years old, and you can tell- the expansive porch with its columns holding up the gabled roof is a pretty stark difference from the brown brick of a townhouse we had back in Belleville.
I elbow the door shut with my free hand as I step into the entryway, the walls the same yellowish white as the whole house that looks like water stains more than paint, and slip off my black Converse sneakers, damp from the dewy grass. My watch says it’s 10:15.
Well, shit.
”Gee?”
My eyes dart up to the staircase in front of me. Above the landing, closest to the second floor, my brother Mikey looks out over the banister. He reaches up to adjust his glasses before shoving his hand back in the pocket of his unicorn-patterned pajama pants.
“Hey, Mikes,” I say, trying to sound as aloof as I can. “What’re you doing?”
“Existing. Where’s Korse?”
I internally groan, having forgotten that Mikey and my mom were there when he surprised me on the porch with the daisies that were still only barely destroyed. “On his way back to New Jersey,” I say with a finality that I hope stops any more questions.
Mikey furrows his brow and, noticing the daisies, opens his mouth, but seeing my glare closes it, shrugs, and heads back to his room. I walk down the hallway into the small kitchen, hoping to find a vase or a glass in the cabinets or still in the stack of boxes resting in the corner, but instead being greeted by the angry face and crossed arms of my mother.
”Well, hello,” she says, “so good to see you again!”
I just sigh. “Sorry, Mom.”
”It is 10:15. Remind me when your curfew was?”
”9:30.”
“You are in a strange town. You were with a guy I don’t know that well, or frankly like, and you thought this was the time to test me?”
”I said I was sorry, Mom. And don’t worry, you won’t be seeing him again any time soon.”
Her face softens. “Oh, hon. Did you break up?”
“Yeah, for the second time,” I say, opening a cabinet and taking out a souvenir glass from a restaurant I don’t remember and turning the faucet on.
”I’m not sure those are worth saving, Gee,” Mom says, judging the brown, crumpled, pierced daisies in my hand that I put in the glass with an inch or so of water.
“Sure they are,” I reply, messing with the arrangement of the flowers. “They didn’t deserve this.”
Mom gives me that look that means she’s questioning what the hell she gave birth to, and then the one that means she loves it anyway. “Don’t do it again, Gee.”
”I won’t. Sorry, Mom. For real.”
”It’s alright, hon. Get some rest, hon.”
She gives me a quick kiss on the cheek and heads up the stairs, each of the ancient steps creaking out the announcement of her escalation. I wait a few moments in the kitchen, with its ugly water-stained wallpaper with a green leaf-patterned border along the top and bottom. Once the stairs stop screaming and I hear the door slam, I cautiously carry the glass up to my new room and set it on my bedside table, right under the window.
“There you go,” I whisper to the daisies. “You’re alright now. He can’t hurt you anymore.” He can’t. We’re safe now.
I strip off my jeans and sweatshirt and put on my Bowie shirt and black pants- the ultimate pajama combo- before crawling into bed. The words I said to the daisies play over and over in my mind, drowning out Korse’s angry outburst and the bruises forming on my neck. I turn to face the daisies.
As I drift off, a petal falls off of one of the flowers and floats on the surface of the water. Another detaches and gently meets the imitation wood of my table, the delicate curve touching the glass.
I fell asleep thinking about being the same and different, intertwined but apart, and seventeen and nineteen.