Before Wings (4 page)

Staff were heading to the dining hall. Someone shouted her name, but Adrien turned and ran across a lawn of translucent wings toward a sky that broke open, again and again, into fierce light. She was at the ridge, starting down the path, when she saw the spirits darting over the water’s surface like dragonflies, twisting as if in agony. She could make out arms and legs, different hair lengths, even breasts, but their faces were shadowed. The spirits were moaning, a low sound that seemed to be calling the storm toward the beach, where Adrien came to a halt, pushing to stay erect in the wind. She was sure the spirits were calling something specific—a short phrase, several words, repeated like the lightning that snaked the sky. Another sheer burst of white, and Adrien stepped forward into the wild lake, the call of the spirit girls, the energy of their brains dying across sky. Into some understood sameness.

“Are you crazy?”

Someone was dragging her out of the water onto the beach. She pushed, trying to turn back toward the lake, and was shoved onto the sand. A heavy weight sat on her. She fought until the white light bled from her brain, leaving her crumpled and soaked, covered with sand. When she opened her eyes, there was only gray sky and Paul’s face staring down at her. Mayflies crawled over them both.

“Get off me,” she said.

“D’you know what happens if lightning strikes water while you’re in it?”

“I said get off me.”

“What were you doing?”

“Get the fuck off!” she yelled.

They stood slowly, fallen trees righting themselves, trunks split open and rotting. She was
so
tired. How was she supposed to explain this?

“Nice scenery,” she said.

Lightning flickered again, illuminating the incredulous look on Paul’s face. She turned and climbed the path up the ridge, heading through the endless flutter of wings toward her cabin for a change of clothes.

A bottom corner was wet, but otherwise the photograph was undamaged. Fortunately, she had tucked her wallet into the pocket of her dad’s lumber jacket instead of her jeans. Adrien stood shivering in her underwear, staring at the smiling faces of her aunt and the eight girls grouped around her. The picture was at least two decades old. Were people happier then? The girls’ grins seemed impossibly authentic,
and each face held its happiness differently. She was sure she had never smiled like that, even before her aneurysm. Most teenagers needed group permission to laugh, and then it was a sharp loud sound that had a manufactured quality, but once she had heard a girl let loose a free sound so startling that Adrien had turned to stare. The girl had looked so ordinary—brown hair, glasses, pimply skin.

Rain poured steadily, the cabin roof and walls a shell of sound. The scent of spruce had sharpened and the air felt deeper, heavier. Hunger hit her in slow waves. How was she going to face Paul? Would he tell anyone? If only she had thought to sneak some Smarties, she wouldn’t have to eat lunch with Aunt Erin and her fan club. Miserably she pulled on a sweater, dry jeans and a raincoat, and headed through the dripping trees to the dining hall.

Predictably, Paul and the two core staff were grouped around Aunt Erin at one of the tables reserved for skills and maintenance staff, while the rest of the dining hall sat empty. Adrien remembered staring at staff tables with a camper’s awe, imagining every aspect of the archery instructor’s romance with the lifeguard. Back then, staff had seemed like fallen angels—prone to sin, but presiding over Camp Lakeshore with heavy wings. She had never realized they were just older versions of herself. Now
she
would be sitting at one of those tables and some fifth-grade weenie would fall in love with her. The whole thing was an enormous scam. Adrien dragged a tray along the serving counter and received her dump of macaroni, lime Jell-O, cucumber salad and a glass of milk.

“You’re lucky,” remonstrated a hairnet, waving her
serving ladle. “We almost went back to where we came from, waiting for you to arrive.”

A hot flush oozed across Adrien’s face. Silently, she reached for a slice of bread.

“You’re missing your smile,” teased another hairnet. “But Paul here—he’s always got a smile for those who feed him, doesn’t he?”

Adrien glanced behind herself to see Paul handing his plate over the counter for seconds. Suddenly she was brushed with the memory of his weight pressing her down while lightning tore at the sky, but in this vision electricity shot into their mouths—they were breathing white fire. The image faded, leaving her open-mouthed, not sure if she had made a sound. The hairnets were still babbling about Paul’s smile, but she had a feeling he had picked up on something. Maybe the electric current. Well, he better not misinterpret it—she wasn’t a weenie camper anymore. Adrien picked up her tray and scuffed toward the chattering table. There was an empty space next to Aunt Erin where Paul obviously belonged, so she sat at the opposite end where things would be quieter, less subject to electric visions and unreasonable heartbeats.

Rain pounded the roof. Lightning laced the sky, followed almost immediately by thunder so loud it seemed to rise out of the ground. No one reacted. Aunt Erin made a comment and the core staff laughed. They looked married, as in recently. Adrien glanced at the woman’s hands and noticed an engagement ring. No wonder they liked Aunt Erin—they were in a state of premarital bliss.

Paul slid his plate onto the table across from her. “Pass
my milk and cutlery,” he called through yet another volley of laughter.

Faces turned in their direction, eyes flicked between them, an eyebrow lifted. “Getting a head start, Paul?” asked the groom-to-be, a tall skinny guy with a black cowboy hat.

Careful as a curler, Aunt Erin slid Paul’s knife, fork and glass of milk down the middle of the table, then returned to her macaroni without giving her niece a glance. Adrien felt as if her face had been erased, as if she didn’t exist, as if she had died. Suddenly she hated her aunt. The feeling was like two hands grabbing her stomach and twisting it.

“Are you Adrien?” The young woman with the engagement ring leaned closer. She was plump, with dark shoulder-length hair. “I’m Gwen and this is my fiancé, Guy. I remember when you were seven years old, building your first fire with tiny little twigs for your Campfire badge.”

“Oh yeah.” Adrien didn’t like strangers remembering things about her that she couldn’t remember herself. And Paul was watching her again. She could feel his sixth sense scanning the air for trouble. At the other end of the table, Aunt Erin stood abruptly.

“I’ll be up at the corrals if anyone needs me. You all know what you’re doing this afternoon.”

It was an order, not a question. “Aye aye, boss,” grinned Guy.

“Adrien, you keep on with inventory. I’ll be back to check on things around three.” As Aunt Erin picked up her tray and headed across the dining hall, her thin lanky body was suddenly cast in sharp relief by a bolt of lightning that lit every window. Everything was reduced to
black and white. The hairnets gave a soundless cry, the mouths in their brilliantly lit faces opening simultaneously as thunder crashed down around them, then faded into a long stretched-out silence.

“Tree on fire!” Aunt Erin ran for the door as Paul and Guy erupted from their chairs.

“Which tree? Oh please, not the Wishing Tree,” cried Gwen, going after them. Adrien grabbed her raincoat, jamming her arms into the sleeves as she passed through the doorway into midday darkness. Rain was coming down hard—whichever tree had caught fire wouldn’t burn long. The deluge pounded her hood as she followed Gwen’s form through the bush, and sure enough, when they reached the others, the tree was smoldering but there were no flames.

“It is the Wishing Tree,” Gwen wailed.

A huge silver birch stood on a slight incline in a clearing. It had been split down the middle, and one half remained upright while the other lay on the ground, exposing the blackened gut. Slight whiffs of smoke rose delicately from the charred wood. Aunt Erin put a hand on the split trunk and stood silently in the pouring rain, not bothering to pull up her hood. Guy put his arm around Gwen and she leaned against him.

In the wet and dark, nothing moved except the memories in Adrien’s head. Every summer she had spent here, her counselor had woken the cabin of girls in the middle of the night and taken them to see the Wishing Tree. It had always been a night full of moonlight, the Wishing Tree’s silvery trunk rising before them like a glowing earth spirit, summoning them into the whispering promise of its leaves.
Every counselor held the ceremony differently—sometimes the girls stood in a circle, sometimes they found private places to sit and watch the tree, but at some point each one touched the tree’s shimmering bark and made a wish. That was the magic of it—a girl gave the tree a touch of herself, and it touched her too. Adrien remembered sending something into the silver bark, and the cool green wish the tree had slipped back to her. Now, in the rain, she stepped forward to touch the tree again, send one last wish into its dying life, but as she touched the warm trunk Aunt Erin grabbed her hand and pulled it off.

“You’ve brought something with you, girl,” she said fiercely, the lines of her face made harsher by the rain. “I don’t know the meaning of it, but you be careful what you do here. You just be careful with what’s mine.”

Aunt Erin turned and headed into the trees, her yellow jacket floating in the dark. Lightning flashed and distant thunder rolled. Guy cleared his throat uncomfortably, Gwen patted the tree and made soothing noises, but Adrien stared after the disappearing jacket. The first shock of her aunt’s words was gone and something new was growing inside her. It was true, she had brought something. The spirits on the lake, the storm, the split tree—in some way it all belonged to her. Far across the horizon, the last flicker of lightning danced through her brain, a promise of what was to come.

“Erin’s upset. I’m sure she didn’t mean that.” Gwen’s voice reached toward her, soft and comforting. Adrien looked at the others, meeting their eyes one by one. It was easy, she felt powerful, made of deep dark earth, wet whispering trees, huge sky. Gwen blinked, Guy cleared his
throat. Only Paul met her eyes, steady, silent.

“Of course she did.” Adrien turned and headed into the trees. She had lunch to eat and a lot of ugly T-shirts to count. After that, an entire summer stretched ahead of her. The earth contained her, the sky held her close, her sisters were kicking ass on the lake. She might live longer than this summer, she might not, but if The Big One got her here, she would die in a place that knew and claimed her as its own.

The evening air held the coolness that followed rain. Bird song ricocheted through the trees. Adrien stopped unpacking her suitcase and listened as cowboy boots stepped onto the small porch and the cabin’s outer door opened.

“Adrien?” called a voice. “It’s me.”

Me
about summed it up for Aunt Erin. Adrien stood without speaking and waited as the boots came down the hall. Her light was on and the door stood open. Anyone with a forty-watt brain could tell she was here. Her aunt stopped in the doorway, yellow jacket dripping onto the floor. Bug wings clung to the wet material, opening and closing. Adrien folded a sweatshirt and put it in a dresser drawer. It wasn’t a Camp Lakeshore sweatshirt.

“Leave the mayflies outside,” she said carefully.

“They’ll leave with me when I go.”

“They give me the creeps. You should spray pesticide to get rid of them.”

“Part of the beauty of life.” Her aunt raised an arm and looked at the scattering of pale bugs. “Laid as an egg in the water, live for two years in the lake, then get their full wings
and fly for one or two days. Harmless, don’t bite, don’t even eat once they’re flying. Just mate, spawn and die.”

“Two years as an egg so they can fly for two days?” said Adrien. “What a waste.”

“Spend two years dreaming in the water so they can make their two days in the air worth it. Each second is full of mystery, things you know nothing about. If we spent more time dreaming, maybe we’d have wings too.” Aunt Erin studied the bugs on her arm as if they were her dearest friends. “Correct term for them is Ephemeroptera. Comes from the Greek word
ephemeros
. Greeks made up that word after seeing the way these creatures live. Admired their ephemeral nature.” Her voice held an odd note, straining against something. She looked up and Adrien glanced away.

“Sorry about what I said this afternoon.” Aunt Erin’s voice was abrupt as ever. “Shouldn’t have said it. Upset about the tree.”

“The Wishing Tree,” Adrien said softly, folding a T-shirt. It wasn’t a Camp Lakeshore T-shirt.

“Tree’s older than me. Older than the camp. Thousands of kids have wished upon it.”

“Maybe it’ll live.”

“Lightning struck its heart. Won’t last long.” Her aunt shuffled her feet. She hadn’t come into Tuck’n Tack that afternoon to check on Adrien, nor had she joined staff for supper. “Everything all right?”

“Yes.” Adrien started pulling underwear out of her suitcase, all of it labeled with her name so laundry staff could identify and return it to her. Aunt Erin hesitated, then sat on the other bed.

“You know summer staff will arrive tomorrow for Training Session?”

“Yes.”

“Your roommate was on staff last summer. She’ll teach you the ropes. I expect you to participate in all staff training exercises. Good for you to know what goes on all over the camp. During Training Session, Tuck’n Tack is open from four to five daily for staff purchases. When the kids arrive, you start working full-time.”

“Sure.”

“You’re here for a reason.” Her aunt still hadn’t looked directly at her. “Don’t know why, just felt you needed to be here now. Something to do with you, something to do with the camp.” She paused and rubbed her forehead. “Won’t have much time for you. Camp gets real busy.”

“I know.”

“Just wanted you to know you’re welcome. I invited you because I wanted you here.”

“Sure,” said Adrien carefully. If her aunt was going to try for tears and a hugging scene, Adrien was ready to shove her into eternity. Aunt Erin stood slowly, turned as if to go, then turned back. In the overlit room, the bones of her face seemed too large, like Inuit sculpture.