Matters of Circumstance (13 page)

But why would they do something like this as a joke? It wasn’t like they were familiar enough with her to know how to prank her. Farrah had never seen them in her life until they had come to the shop for the first time.

No, she didn’t like the feelings they gave her at all. There was a black air about them, suspended like those rainclouds in cartoons, and the more she interacted with them the more prominent it became. She did not know what their motives really were, but it felt like they were trying to draw her close enough to strike her with their lightning.

Neal was right about a lot of things, but this was certainly not one of them.

“We’ll talk again,” the man told her conversationally as he and his partner grabbed their coffees from her station.

“Yes, maybe we can make an appointment or do lunch or something,” said the woman.

Farrah said nothing, but this did not seem to bother them in the least. They left the shop with a friendly-looking wave that made bile rise in her throat. It had all happened so fast that she was still reeling from it, but even now she knew that the last thing she wanted was for them to make another visit.

“Farrah,” Shellie said once they were gone. “Do you know them now?”

She shook her head. “Not at all. I’m just as weirded out as you.”

Shellie did not reply to this, but then again what else was there to say? Weird pretty much covered everything.

Farrah, pacing furiously in her bedroom, felt like she was at the end of her rope.

“I-I don’t know anymore,” she said for the umpteenth time. “It’s just me, probably. I’m just blowing this up bigger than it should be. I mean, what else could it be?”

“Um, seriously suspicious behavior?” suggested Neal. He had been lying on her bed, flexing his exposed wings and watching her rant, for the last fifteen minutes. “Look, I’ve already taken back everything I’ve ever said in their defense, I completely agree with what you think they’re around for, and I’m willing to bet that if you told anyone else about this they would agree with you, too. You can stop second-guessing yourself now, Farrah. It’s not getting you anywhere.”

He was sitting up at this point, and when she passed by he grabbed her arm and pulled her down to sit next to him. “You’ve had your time to vent, now it’s time to stop freaking out,” he said, looking her in the eye hard. “And start thinking of a productive way to handle the situation.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know where they go when they leave,” she said. “I don’t know when they’ll be back, and even if I did how am I supposed to deal with them? You haven’t met them, Neal, you haven’t seen how I get when they’re around.” She was shaking her head, and while she knew she should stop she just kept shaking and shaking and shaking… “I don’t like them—”

“Yeah, I got that much,” he said with the slightest quirk of the lips. Gentle but strong, he reached out and held her face still. “You haven’t dealt with anything like this before, have you?”

“No,” she said, hardly daring to move her lips. “Before I got wings I was boring and had no stress and never got like this at all. The—”
only good thing about this is you,
she had wanted to say, but the words crumpled in her throat and stuck to the walls, refusing to exit. “Erm. Sorry I’m always freaking out and running to you,” she said, looking down without moving her head (since he was still holding it). “You’re probably sick of it by now.”

“I’d rather you run to me instead of bottling it up.” His hands left her face to grip her shoulders. Then his face broke into a warm smile. “And, you know, it’s pretty cool that you depend on me, too,” he said a little bashfully.

Farrah shut her eyes and hugged him hard, loving that he returned the gesture without question. His wings were closed, but instead of making it uncomfortable it seemed as if they were keeping her arms in place, telling her it was okay to keep holding on.

However, “You don’t even know the half of it, Neal” was the only thing she could say.

Neal, being Neal, didn’t pry any further into that as he kept hugging her, and they stayed like that for a while. That is, they stayed like that until her wings started shifting beneath her hoodie.

“Oh, sorry,” he said, moving his hands from around them. He probably thought he was flattening them or something.

“I didn’t do that, they moved on their own.”

That got him to lean back and look her in the face with pleasant surprise. And she didn’t exactly want to, but she let him go and stared back all the same.

“You’ve actually been doing the exercises?” he asked incredulously.

Farrah frowned. “Yes. I do them every morning before school, just like you recommended.”

“Yeah, but you hate your wings,” he said, and she could hear his energy rising with every word. “I didn’t think you were actually doing anything with them. I thought you just said you did to make me happy.”

She supposed she understood why he would think that, but that didn’t mean she liked the sound of it. “I don’t
hate
them.”

“If you don’t, then what do you feel about them? I always thought you hated them.” He didn’t sound challenging, merely curious. Interested in the truth, like the science-minded person he was.

“I—well, I don’t love them, either, you were right about that,” she said, struggling to find the right words to express herself. “But—I don’t know, it is sort of cool that they’ve been getting stronger, too…”

Neal grinned from ear to ear and play-punched her arm. “So you do like them, a little bit.”

“I just really don’t like all the stuff that comes with them: having to wear a sweater all the time, being afraid to talk to my parents or go to the doctor, being hounded by people I can’t escape because I’m at work—”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” he said soothingly, pushing her hair out of her face. Then he gathered her in his arms like she was a little lost puppy he had plucked out of a sodden cardboard box in the middle of a rainstorm.

Come to think of it, Farrah thought as she silently held him back, that
was
sort of what he had done.

She swallowed, her face boiling in mortification at how easy it was to get her acting like this nowadays. Pre-wings Farrah had never been weak and melodramatic. She wanted to tell Neal how sorry she was that this kept happening, but she had already said that too much lately. There had to be another way to make it up to him.

“Have you gotten any new data?” she asked, trying to direct the conversation away from herself.

“Beyond everything that I’ve already told you?”

“That was, like, a month ago or something.”

He laughed quietly and pulled away. “Well, I don’t know for sure, but if that dead guy is any indication then the range of people who could grow or are growing wings is probably random, and younger people like us, who have pretty much just gotten over puberty, are more likely to survive the development. I’m guessing it’s because we have more energy and material to work with than, say, a 39-year-old man.”

In one movement he was laying with his head on her lap. His wings were mostly closed and sprawled on either side of him, and there was a self-assured smile on his naturally tanned face. “That guy could have also been a fluke. I don’t know anything but what the newspaper said about him—they said that except for the lumps he had no health problems, so I’ll have to take their word for it, but he could have been abnormally weak, too. Anything is possible, so I really can’t come to any conclusions from just him. It would have been easier if I could have talked to him, you know?”

A little tentatively, she pushed her fingers through the barest tips of his blonde hair. “Are you frustrated?”

“Not like you,” he said, meeting her eyes more or less upside down.

“Figuring this out means a lot to you, though, doesn’t it?”

“I want to understand why we’re like this, and what
this
is supposed to mean,” he replied with a fairly nonchalant gesture to his wings. “It’s more out of curiosity than necessity.”

“But you like having answers, don’t you?”

Neal raised his eyebrows. “Are you trying to get at something?”

“I just thought of it right now,” she said, moving her fingers a little closer to his scalp, exposing his dark and light blonde highlights. “What if I talked to those people to see what they know? It might help us out.”

If his expression was any indication, then Neal was not as sold on this idea as she hoped he might be. “Yeah, but you’re terrified of them. Why would you put yourself through that, if you didn’t know what was going to happen?”

“Because if it helped it would be worth it?”

He thought, and then said carefully, “Obviously I can’t tell you to do it or not, but my spidey senses are tingling. I don’t think you should, but my opinion doesn’t have to mean anything.”

“Your opinion means something to me.” It meant everything.

“Thanks.” Neal smiled a little wider, revealing that lone snaggletooth, and she found her whole being surging with affection. If it wouldn’t have been so awkward, she would have kissed him.

“Is all this natural?” she asked, ruffling his hair so he would understand what she was referring to.

“As far as I know,” he said without missing a beat. He apparently sensed that a subject change was in order as well.

Farrah could not help the somewhat puzzled quirk of her lips. “What do you mean, as far as you know?”

“I don’t know what people do to me while I’m asleep at parties or whatever,” he said. And then he seemed to catch himself. “Not that hairstyling would be
my
first prank, but…”

She laughed. “Yeah, I hear you. I just haven’t seen so many highlights before.” Still sifting through his hair, she admired how beautifully varied it was. Hers wasn’t like this at all; it was just the same big, bushy color all throughout. Like a Spanish Hermione Granger.

“I’m sure it’s attributed to my blonde-haired blue-eyed Aryan heritage.” He yawned and covered his mouth with his hand. “Oh god, I’m starting to fall asleep on you. Sorry about that.” He made to sit up, but she put her hands on his shoulders to stop him.

“It’s fine, I don’t mind if you stay there,” she said. Then she flashed him a teasing grin. “Just don’t actually fall asleep. I want to keep talking to you.”

Neal did not need to be told twice, for he settled back down fast. “I’ll try,” he said. “But for a human pillow you’re pretty damn comfortable.”

*****

Farrah was still on the lookout for that weird couple two days later when Ruby approached her. School had just gotten out, and Farrah was walking to her car. This was a strange experience, too, but she had the early afternoon shift at Joe’s today so she couldn’t take the bus and still make it in time.

“Hi Farrah,” she said, but there was something off in her voice.

“Hey Ruby,” she replied, channeling lightheartedness because she didn’t know what else to do. “I can’t talk very long ‘cause my shift starts soon, but if you need a ride—”

“No, I’m covered today,” she said, smiling briefly and stiffly.

“Okay then, what—”

“Do you need to talk about something?” It came out forcefully, and the expression on Ruby’s pretty face indicated that she had wanted to say that for a while.

Farrah frowned, her eyebrows drawing together in her perplexity. “Talk about what?” she asked.

“That’s the thing: I don’t know, but you’ve been so distant lately—have you noticed that?” Now Ruby looked a little hurt.

They had reached Farrah’s car at this point, exchanging various greetings with their classmates along the way as if nothing was wrong. Truth be told, Farah wished someone else was bombarding her with conversation right now, because she really didn’t know what to say.

Well, honesty was the best policy, right? “I… I’m speechless, Rube. I had no idea I was being distant at all.”

“That wasn’t what I mean,” she said. “Not really—I mean, I know we’ve never been best friends or anything, but we still used to talk about some things and now it’s like we don’t even talk at all.”

She was actually bothered by that? Farrah was at once touched and guilty. Of course she was aware of how distant she had been from Ruby—not to mention Michael—these days, but…

She especially felt bad because she didn’t think she had the courage to tell Ruby what was really going on. She probably trusted her enough, but actually getting the words out was a whole other story.

“Ruby, this is going to sound really cliché, but you have to believe me when I say that if I could tell you, I would. I’m just—” she cut herself off and fiddled with the shoulder strap of her backpack, searching for the right words. “A lot of things are going on right now. My parents don’t even know about it. I swear that’s no lie.”

“What? Not even your parents?” she said disbelievingly. “But you have a great relationship—” Her eyes widened and she looked at Farrah’s hoodie with a whole new light, then back to her face. This repeated twice before she said, “Oh my god. Farrah, you’re not preg—”

“No, I’m not,” she said—and quickly, before someone else in the parking lot could mishear and start spreading rumors. “It—god, how do I even…?” She put her hand on her forehead, eyes searching for an inspiration of some kind. Nothing appeared.