We Never Asked for Wings (22 page)

“I wish you had one too,” he said. “We could FaceTime.”

Yesenia slid the phone back across the pillow. “I don't think buying me an iPhone is exactly in my mom's budget.”

Alex felt stupid for mentioning it. Carmen was doing everything she could for her daughter, but she never could have bought her a phone. He suddenly felt undeserving, and he pushed the phone deep into his pocket, out of sight, and rolled over on her bed, facing the ceiling. She scooted toward him, her stomach pushed up against his side.

“What did you do with Wes?” she asked.

Alex sighed, happy for the change of subject. He rolled over to face her. “We worked on my project.”

“Yeah? What did you do?”

“He took me to a lab at Stanford. They have a mass spectrometer in the science building next to where he works. He's trying to get me permission to use it.”

She took his hand in hers, pressing it under her shirt, on her stomach, up to her bra. “Use it to do what?”

It was significantly harder to explain with one hand reaching under her bra. “I'm working with isotope signatures,” he started, but then his hands were around her back, pulling at her bra clasp, and he lost his train of thought.

She pushed his hands away.

“Hey, you started it,” he said, struggling to hold on to her as she squirmed away and sat up.

“But you aren't capable of talking and touching at the same time,” she said, and then: “Talk first. Touch after.”

Alex sighed, sitting up and backing away from her, the distance clearing his mind. “The idea is that birds are what they drink. The water that birds drink while they're growing feathers stays in the feathers and doesn't change over time, so when you analyze them you can find out exactly where a bird has been and what it has consumed.”

“Your grandpa would love it.”

Alex went to the hall, where he'd left his box of feathers, and carried it back to the bed. Taking off the lid, he riffled through the folders. “I'm not sure he would,” he said. “It's a destructive process. I don't think he'd like to see his feather collection destroyed, even if it was in the name of science.”

Yesenia shook her head, disagreeing. “Wings, remember?”

Alex sucked in a quick breath. Until that moment, he'd forgotten: she'd been there the night he found the note, the night he learned his grandfather had left and wasn't coming back. He felt his chest contract the way it always did when he thought of his grandfather. Yesenia felt it too. Popping off the bed, she stood behind him, her arms wrapped around his waist. She was so short her head tucked underneath his arm without her having to bend down. “He didn't mean for you to take him literally.”

They'd learned the Icarus myth in sixth grade, and he remembered it then, imagining a heavy set of wax-and-feather wings, jumping out the window and taking off toward the sun. “I know he didn't.”

She reached out, her hands on his hands on the feathers. “So what are you looking for? I mean, what do you think you'll find?”

“I'm not sure yet. All I know is that I want to look for changes over time. I mean, anyone can go down to the shoreline and pluck a wing feather from an egret and put the feather through some fancy process to see where it traveled the year before. Not everyone can then hold the results up against feathers gathered from the same species in the same place in 2005 or 1995 or 1985.”

It was the single thing that made his grandfather's collections so special, he'd decided: he had feathers from as far back as thirty years, all collected from the same location and all meticulously labeled.

“They go back that far?”

“Yep.”

“That's amazing.”

They were quiet as Yesenia pulled out the file folders and arranged them on the bed.

“You could look for toxins.”

“I thought of that. But someone's probably got a whole lab full of soil samples that would prove or disprove any toxins much better than I ever could.”

She was quiet, lining the feathers up end to end, a long red chain.

“You can really tell from the feather where a bird has been?”

“I think so.”

He drew the shape of a continent on the table, as if this would make his explanation more clear, but she was looking out the window, into the night sky.

“So you could figure out where the birds are migrating. See if it's really true, what they are saying.”

“About what?”

“About the planet heating up.”

Climate change. It was a good idea—an amazing idea. Looking at her, he wondered, and not for the first time, who she would be at Mission Hills, as Mr. Everett's student. She'd be like any one of them only better, he thought, but instead she was at Bayshore High, filling in a coloring book full of planets and silent from boredom and fear.

He turned back to his notebook. “So the null hypothesis is that there is no change,” he said. Opening a box, he scanned for something his grandfather would have found every year for thirty years. The Allen's hummingbird. His hummingbird feeders ensured a constant flow of red feathers. Flipping to the back of the box, he pulled out an envelope labeled
SCARLET POPPY V744, ALLEN'S HUMMINGBIRD, JUNE 1995
.
“And the prediction is that if birds fly south to reach a particular temperature, they might not have to fly as far anymore.”

“Exactly,” Yesenia said. “But you'd have to run the experiment to see.”

“If I win. I only run the whole experiment if I win.”

She revealed two feathers she'd managed to smuggle into her fist, the exact color of the streak in her hair. She held one up behind each ear. “You'll win. How could you not win, with an assistant like me?”

“Hey, I might need those!” He reached for the feathers, but she leapt away, to one side of the room and then the other, and when he cornered her she crawled up on top of the bed and let herself be tackled. With one hand he took the feathers and with the other he held both her wrists. She winced in pain.

“I'm sorry,” he said, letting go. Rolling away, he took both her hands in his and tried to lift the cuffs of her long-sleeved sweatshirt.

“Don't.”

She pulled away from him.

“Let me see.”

“It's nothing.”

“Then let me see.”

Holding her still, he peeled back the bandage until he saw what it covered: a large scrape surrounded by a circle of yellowish green scabs, the color of infection. It made him instantly sick, and his stomach lurched as he pressed the bandage back in place.

“You have to see a doctor,” he said, remembering his own infection, but Yesenia shook her head fiercely and pulled away.

“See, that's why I didn't want to show you. I don't want you to worry. I don't want it to even exist!” Her voice was filled with exasperation, and her eyes were wet. “I just want it to be me and you, together,” she whispered. “The way it was before.”

The way it had been just moments before, she meant, before her pain had forced him to remember. She wanted him to forget, but how could he? She was so little, and Bayshore High was so big. He lay down on the bed and pulled her on top of him, held her there unmoving, tight. With his whole being he wanted to be with her, wanted to keep her safe.

And then all at once it hit him: he could get her into Mission Hills. He couldn't believe he hadn't thought of it before. He'd been so busy feeling guilty that he'd missed the obvious. And if she came to school with him he could protect her, every moment of every day.

Lifting her head off his chest, he looked into her eyes.

“I want you to come to Mission Hills with me.”

“So do I. But you know I can't. My mom isn't like your mom.”

But Carmen didn't have anything to do with it. He'd thought of another way.

“I can get you in.”

She shook her head. “No, you can't.”

“I can.” He saw it all coming together, imagined himself and Yesenia racing to the school, logging on to the computer using Mr. Everett's password, and making her a new student profile. “We just need to say you live with me.”

“But why would I live with you?”

“We could say you're my cousin. And you just moved here.”

“Gross.”

“It's not gross if you're not my girlfriend.”

What classes would he give her? He wondered if it would be too obvious if they had all the same classes. Probably. But he didn't like the idea of letting her go off alone, even for an hour. The kids at Mission Hills might be learning, but they weren't any nicer and many of them were just as stupid. More, even. The more he thought about it, the more he realized she would have just as good a chance of getting bullied at Mission Hills as she did at Bayshore, with one difference: he would be there to protect her. She would have to have the same schedule, the same exact schedule he did.

Yesenia squirreled up higher on the bed so their foreheads aligned on the pillow.

“Not your girlfriend?” she asked. “Alex Espinosa, are you breaking up with me?”

I'm not breaking up with you,
he thought.
I'm saving you
.

But instead he asked: “Are you in?”

Yesenia chewed on her lip, then took a deep breath and smiled.

“When do I start?”

T
he light from the west-facing window was only enough to see Luna's profile against her pillow. It was still early, but Alex had been gone for an hour at least, setting his own alarm and heating up the scrambled eggs Letty had left on a plate in the refrigerator the night before. She hadn't seen much of him since they'd moved in. Every day he stayed late at school to work on his project, and afterward he called her on his new cell phone to say he was taking the bus to Stanford, to see Wes—which Letty took to mean Bayshore, to see Yesenia, or at the very least a combination of the two.

She really should wake Luna, but she didn't want to, and she didn't want to go to work either. She'd picked up a co-worker's shifts the weekend before, which meant she'd been at the bar nine days straight, two of them with her daughter. Rick had spent most of the afternoons in the hallway with Luna, so she hadn't been alone, but she was still a distraction, climbing up onto his shoulders and sliding down his back and racing him to the escalator and back while Letty tried to concentrate on measuring with the jiggers that still felt awkward in her hands, looking up complicated recipes she'd not yet memorized. Now, she was tired. She wanted a break from the bar, and even more she wanted time to unpack and to explore her new treasure chest of a house. The owners hadn't emptied it, and every drawer contained a different surprise: embroidered dish towels in the kitchen and doll clothes in the closet and an entire medicine cabinet full of seashells. The tool-chest drawers in the living room were her favorites, though. Alongside the hammers and nails and screws of every size she'd found a collection of crystals, strings of dried flowers, and a heavy metal deity in the shape of an elephant. The elephant was on the windowsill now, light glinting off its golden back.

With a yawn, Luna stretched awake, wriggling across her mattress and climbing off. She staggered over to Letty's bed. Crawling in, she pressed her bony butt into Letty's soft stomach.

“I'm cold.”

Letty wrapped her arm around her daughter and tucked the blanket under her chin. It was her favorite thing about their new room: the air that leaked around the closed window, which smelled of forest instead of jet fuel. She inhaled deeply, filling her lungs.

“Do you want to go to school today?”

“No.” Luna parroted the answer out of habit, and in the quiet Letty could tell her daughter was considering her quick response, whether or not it was true anymore. Every day at dinner Luna added to the long list of things she loved about her teacher: the color of her hair (lemon sorbet, Luna called it), the way she read stories aloud, her crazy hat collection. Finally, she lifted her head off the pillow and turned to look at Letty. “Are you saying I can stay home?”

Letty dropped one eyebrow. “Don't think this is going to happen all the time,” she said, and then grinned conspiratorially. “But if you want to, yes. Your grandma used to let me take a day off. Just one a year—if my grades were perfect—to help her make tamales. What do you say we find out where the backyard ends, and then you can help me get ready for our Christmas party?”

“We're having a Christmas party?”

It was too much good news at once. Luna sprang out of bed, jumping from Letty's mattress to her own and back again.

“Of course we are. Now put on something warm while I make us breakfast.”

After big bowls of oatmeal with brown sugar (or brown sugar with oatmeal, the way Luna made it), Letty called in sick, and then she dialed the school secretary to report Luna's absence too. They put on the rain boots they hadn't worn since they left the Landing and headed into the woods. Letty wanted to know if there was a fence at the property line, or if the forest rose unobstructed to the summit and then down the other side, to the ocean. A step in front of Luna, she led the way through a tangle of manzanitas and into the redwoods. Their boots padded softly on the duff, and Luna kept popping off the trail and balancing on one foot as if waiting to sink. But here, the ground was firm.

While they walked, Letty pulled her daughter forward with one hand, firing off a hundred questions to keep her mind occupied and her feet moving. It worked for a little while, Luna chatting away and following without complaint. But ten minutes later, Luna announced she wanted to turn back. Her feet hurt, she said, and she was hungry. Again. Already.

“Here.”

Letty pulled a packet of gummi bears from her pocket and shook it into Luna's cupped palms. She dumped them into her mouth.

“But I'm hungrier than this,” Luna slurred through a mouth full of the chewy animals.

“Well, we can't go back yet. We just started.” Letty had seen miner's lettuce already, and she realized then why she wanted to explore: there were probably dozens, if not hundreds, of ingredients growing wild in her backyard. She wanted to take inventory. Searching her mind for a way to keep Luna on the trail, she said the first thing that came to her: “We haven't even found the blackberries.”

“Blackberries?” There wouldn't be blackberries this time of year, but Luna didn't know this, and the idea of them kept her walking for another five minutes, looking for the tangled brambles she knew from Mrs. Puente's garden at the Landing.

“We're never going to find them,” Luna said after a while, her voice on the edge of a whine.

“Not if we give up we're not.”

Luna groaned. She stopped walking and scrambled up a rock, so that she stood a good two heads taller than Letty. Her arms crossed, she planted her legs in a wide V. She wasn't moving.

“Come on, just a little farther.”

“We already went a little farther.”

“Just a little more.”

Luna shook her head, braids spinning like blades.

“Let's pretend we're lost in the woods, and we have to find our next meal.”

“I can't. I'll starve to death.”

“Fine,” Letty said, frustration bubbling up. It was supposed to be their perfect day together. “I'm going hiking. You stay here and starve to death.”

“I will,” Luna said. “Watch me.”

As Letty watched, Luna collapsed dramatically, her head hanging off the rock and her eyes rolling back in her head, so that only the whites showed. Her tongue poked out the corner of her mouth.

Despite herself, Letty laughed. “Oh, don't die!” she wailed, and Luna started to laugh too, squirming out of her mother's faux-desperate grasp and rolling off the rock. Letty fell on top of her, pinning her down. In a tangled embrace, they laughed harder than the situation deserved, relieved not to be arguing on their one day off a year.

When they calmed down, Letty tried one final time: “Five more minutes. I promise. I'm looking for something.”

“What?”

“Ingredients. Something edible.”

Without a moment's hesitation, Luna sprang up.

“Where are you going?” Letty called out after her, but Luna was already gone, running down the path in the direction they'd come. Letty took off after her. “Hey—how can you run so fast when your feet hurt?”

As a response, Luna kicked off her boots and kept running. Letty stopped to pick them up and then sprinted after her. When she finally caught up, Luna lay flat on her back in the manicured rose garden separating the cottage from the main house. Her chest rose and fell under her sequined sweatshirt.

“Edible,” she panted with a grin, pointing at the roses all around her. Letty smiled. She'd taught her daughter this, on the first morning in their new home. Rose petals, rose hips—the red fruit shriveled by the cold: all edible.

Letty flopped down on the ground beside her daughter.

“You're edible,” she said, pretending to nibble her cheek. The sky was bright and clear; the last of the roses hung over them like paper cutouts, pressed against the blue.

They lay until their breath returned to normal, and then Letty disappeared around the back of the cottage, returning a few minutes later with a pair of gardening shears and a bucket. Letty trimmed rose petals from the bushes while Luna pulled the last of the pomegranates off the tree, and then they spent a messy morning at the kitchen table. With a book open on the counter, Letty followed the directions, making grenadine from scratch with the pomegranates and then dropping dandelions and pine needles into swing jars full of vodka. When they were done, they lined their creations up on the windowsill, the sunlight illuminating the dark purple grenadine and lighting up the plants suspended in liquid.

“Pretty.”

“They are pretty. And they're going to be delicious too.”

“Can I try?”

“This one you can,” Letty said, pointing to the grenadine. “When it's ready.”

“Why can't I have it now?”

“Because it's not ready. And besides, we have to make cookies.”

They had lunch first, then made a batch of chocolate chip cookies, and Letty had just sent Luna outside to lick a nearly empty mixing bowl when she heard a car pull into the gravel driveway. Luna shrieked when she saw it, and Letty's first (irrational) thought was that her parents had returned; but when she ran out onto the porch it was Rick, climbing out of his Highlander. Luna jumped into his arms, trying to feed him a wet glob of batter from the tip of her sticky finger. He turned his head away, tickling her through his refusal.

“How did you know where we live?” she asked when he set her back down.

“A little bird told me.”

Luna puzzled this over: “My grandpa?”

Rick wrinkled his brow and lifted his chin toward Letty, asking her to explain, but she just shrugged. As much time as they'd spent together in the past few months, she thought, there were still so many things he didn't know. Luna held his hand as he walked to the porch.

“I heard you were sick,” he said.

Letty shook her head no. “Sick of Flannigan's.”

She stepped inside, and Rick followed her, kicking off his shoes and lining them up by the front door, next to Luna's boots. “I know the feeling.”

“Don't you work today?”

“Not until five. They asked me to come early to cover for you, but I told them I was busy.”

“Busy doing what?”

“What does it look like?” he asked. “Checking on you.”

She turned to hide a smile and walked to the kitchen, where she was greeted by the disaster on the table.

Rick followed her. “What's all this?”

“We were getting ready for Christmas.”

“Already?”

“My mom always makes tamales and freezes them. I was going to do the same, but then I realized I don't really like tamales. So we made cookies instead. And drinks.”

“That's not much of a Christmas dinner.”

She'd had the same thought earlier, when they were baking, and it had given her an idea. She flashed him a sly grin. “Didn't I tell you? You're making dinner.”

“They better be some good drinks, then.”

He helped her carry the dirty dishes to the sink and then stood behind her as she turned on the water, his hands rubbing her shoulders for only a moment before Luna burst into the room. Stepping quickly away, Rick asked her to tell him about their morning, and he was still listening, sitting at the table with Luna on his lap, when Letty finished the dishes ten minutes later.

“Yum,” he said, after she'd listed the ingredients in each bottle. “Please tell me you're planning to share?”

Luna wrinkled her nose.

“I'll think about it,” she said, to which Rick started to tickle her and Luna shouted,
“Yes! Yes! Yes!,”
breathless when he finally stopped. “I will,” she exhaled. “But they aren't ready. Mom said.”

“Well, Mom's the boss,” Rick said, winking at Letty and making room for Luna to wriggle away.

On her tiptoes she washed her sticky hands, letting them drip across the kitchen while Letty chased her down with a cloth. “What are we going to do now?”