Kaleidoscope (Faylinn Series) (17 page)

I nodded reluctantly. If only I could have kept my lips shut. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“I’ll be gone tomorrow,” Declan replied, then hesitantly said, “If that’s a factor in you coming or not.”

It was. “The next day then?”

“What am I? Mud beneath a toadstool?” Kai asked, positioning himself against his tree and finally smirking at me, sending my nerves frantically in every direction.

I cleared my throat. “Kai,” I said surprisingly even. “Would you like me to come see you tomorrow?”

Please say no.

It wasn’t even because I despised him. But the idea of being alone with him actually terrified me; and not in the I’m-terrified-of-the-things-that-go-bump-in-the-night terror, but because he stripped me of my confidence and relentlessly tormented my vulnerabilities without even realizing it. Or maybe he did and that’s why he did it: to purposefully fluster me.

“I’ll pass,” he said, disinterested in our one-on-one conversation already. “I do have a life apart from watching Declan’s back.”

“Do you now?” Declan asked, humored, pulling himself back together. “Please share. I’d like to know what you do when I’m not here to keep you in check.”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Kai said and turned his back on us, traveling into the woodlands.

“Yeah, I would.” Declan replied, watching him. But Kai didn’t answer. He once again shot off his feet without as much as a goodbye.

“Why does he always do that?”

Declan chortled and moved his aqua eyes back to me. “Do what?”

“Just walk away without any explanation.”

“He’s all about the dramatic exits, I guess. I stopped questioning why Kai does the things he does a long time ago.” Declan scanned the trees around us. “It’s almost sundown, Calliope.”

“Right. I was leaving.” I started to back away and waved. “I’ll see you on Wednesday.”

“You know where to find me.” He offered a small smile and my stomach tingled.

The house was dark when I got home. Mom obviously was caught up at the office, but I didn’t know where my dad was. We hadn’t talked much aside from the casual greetings and polite conversation about our days since the day I told him about Favner. Though we hadn’t spoken, I was comforted by the fact that he wanted to keep me at home. Safe and sound.

I fell asleep that night with the reassurance that no matter what happened I would be looked after. I would be protected.

T
he tingling woke me from my sleep that night. My spine tingled like it had fallen asleep. I sat up and rolled my shoulders around, trying to get rid of the feeling, but it wouldn’t let up. I reached my hand around my back and went to scratch when I felt them.

My wings.

I flipped on my nightstand light and got to my feet, hurrying to my mirror. I pulled the hem of my shirt up and spun my back to the mirror, peering over my shoulder. It looked like two small rolls of creamy yellow fabric, budding from in between my shoulders. I reached back and stroked the delicate buds. The wings tucked snuggly in themselves as if unready to hatch. They were soft. I watched them in my mirror, breathing in and out.

It was that moment that everything clicked in my head. Everything I had been fighting or wanting to deny was becoming a reality now that this yellow mess poked out over my spine. When it looked you dead in the eye how could you reject it any longer? It was like I was in an AA meeting and I was finally coming to terms with my life.

My name is Calliope Willow Holbrook and I have wings. I am a faery.

I couldn’t tear myself from the mirror. I knew I needed to sleep, but I had freaking faery wings! Every couple of minutes that thought triggered in my mind and I was reminded that I was looking at
my
back, not just watching some fantasy movie play across the mirror. Their appearance altered subtlety as I observed them, but nothing drastic happened. After about an hour the weight of my eyelids began to sag and I dragged my legs to bed, compelling myself to sleep.

When I woke up the following morning, I raced to the mirror to check the progress of my wing’s development. The rolls had grown, but they stayed curled inside like a bear hibernating in the winter. Even after watching them all night long it still hadn’t clicked that they grew out of me.

Suddenly it dawned on me. How was I going to hide the Hunchback of Notre Dame? I looked like I had a hump growing from my back. My backpack would cover it while I wasn’t in class, but what was I supposed to do when I took it off? It was only October. It wasn’t cold enough to wear a hoodie inside, but I would simply have to suffer the heat. With the bulk of the material and the hood resting against my shoulders, maybe it would distract the eye.

I threw on my thickest sweatshirt and checked my back. The bulge was still visible, but not as noticeable. It wasn’t ideal, but it would have to do. I rolled my ringlets into buns on either side of my ears, settling for Princess Leia style, going for a grunge look and praying I pulled it off.

Cameron must have seen it in my eyes as soon as our eyes met. When I walked up to our lockers, he scanned my body up and down and knew. “You got them?” he whispered close to my ear.

I nodded once, discreetly I hoped, pretending that he didn’t say anything to me.

Isla was busy on her phone, thankfully overlooking our small interaction as Lia walked up.

“Good morning, all,” she said.

“Good morning,” Cameron and I said in unison. Isla barely lifted her head and muttered something resembling, “morning.”

“I’m dying to go swimming. You want to head to Lake Keowee and go for a dip after school?” Lia asked.

Cameron and I shared a quick look and glanced swiftly away, but I don’t think it was fast enough.

“I’m going to have a lot of homework today. Maybe I’ll catch you next time. How about a movie tonight?”

She glanced between Cameron and me. Isla was oblivious as she finished writing a text. Cameron caught onto the immediate awkward silence, but rather than saving me he bailed. “Isla, we’re going to be late. Let’s go.” He escorted her away from our crowd.

“Bye, guys.” She waved over her shoulder.

“Bye, Isla,” I said.

They weren’t gone for more than five seconds when Lia cornered me.

“What’s up with the secrecy?”

“What secrecy?” I shifted my backpack. The weight was pinching my buds.

“You and Cam.” She gestured to him walking down the hall. He looked over his shoulder, an anxious look in his eyes.
Poor timing, Cam.
“You’re hiding something.”

“I’m not hiding anything,” I said, shaking my head and chuckling breathlessly.

“Are you and Cameron. . .” she let her question trail off, alluding to something sketchy behind Isla’s back. “You know. . .”

“No,” I said adamantly and started walking to class.

“What is it then?” she persisted. “Why can’t you tell me?”

“There’s nothing to tell,” I chuckled to make light of things. I did not need her

thinking I was doing the dirty with Cameron behind Isla’s back. How could she think so low of me?

“Oh, there definitely is,” she insisted.

Lia wasn’t going to make this very easy on me. I hated lying to her, but I couldn’t tell her. “There really isn’t, Lia. We’re just back to the way it was before.”

“No, this is more,” she challenged.

I sighed. “Enough detective for one day, yeah?”

She eyed me, knowing I wasn’t being completely honest, but she let it go. “Whatever you say, liar. Keep your secrets to yourself. I’ll let you for today.”

The last thing I needed today was for Lia to start a fight and abandon me. I felt alone enough as it was. Losing a best friend on top of my human genes might actually put me in a mental institution.

“I saw you with Jake yesterday,” I deflected the conversation from me. “You looked awfully chummy by his locker.”

She stood a little taller, closing off her expression to me. “I was talking to him about our life skills project.”

“You did
not
tell me you had a class with him. And you have a project together?”

She shrugged, trying to feign indifference. “What’s there to tell? He’s in a class with me. He sits across the room and I actually listen during class. No one else exists in there, but me and the teacher.”

I smirked. “And you have a project with him?” I egged her on. It was probably a bad move, but the distraction of simple life issues was refreshing. I actually missed them. I’d gladly welcome them back if they would take away my new genes.

“Mrs. Jennings paired us against her better judgment. I did not willingly go into the partnership and I set ground rules on day one. If he causes me to fail this project I will make his life a living hell.”

“I can imagine that was only more of an incentive to screw up. Some attention is better than no attention in some people’s minds.” I chuckled.

She wasn’t amused. “He has actually deemed himself to be a worthy partner, contributing and pulling his weight on his part of the assignment. I’ve been quite impressed.”

“Apparently,” I said, nudging her shoulder. “I don’t recall mere school project partners smiling the way you did at him.” She grew quiet and shifted uncomfortably. “I’m only giving you a hard time, Lia. If you really like him don’t let me—or Cam, for that matter—hold you back.”

Neither of us spoke for a moment.

“He’s really not some dumb jock,” she said timidly. “He’s actually really smart. And nice.”

I grinned. Though Jake was that last person I pictured making Lia happy, I wasn’t about to be the one to stand in her way.

“I’m glad you’re happy, Lia.”

“Thank you.” She finally smiled at me.

“Would Matt absolutely flip if he found out about him?” The idea made me chuckle. Cameron wasn’t the only one who wasn’t a fan of Jake.

“Oh, Matt’s living up his life in Italy. I couldn’t care less what he thinks,” she said. But I knew she was speaking through her teeth. Matt’s opinion meant everything to Lia.

“Can I be there when you tell him?”

Lia shoved me and I nearly tripped over myself, laughing.

• • •

By the end of the day my back was throbbing. It felt like I had a charley horse the size of Texas between my shoulder blades. My backpack was not helping the situation at all. I dodged everyone I could on my way out of the school doors and raced home as fast as my car would take me. Lia would have questioned me further, seeing the apparent pain in my eyes and Cameron would have begged to see them.

When I stormed through the garage door my dad was there to greet me, hunting in the fridge for an afternoon snack.

“Is everything all right, Calliope?” he asked, closing the door.

“No, it’s not all right. They came in.” I arched my back, dropping my backpack on the kitchen floor and tugged my sweatshirt off. “I have to get to my room.” He stepped to the side and let me run down the hallway, swinging my door shut.

I tore my shirt off and instantly the wings uncurled from their cocoons, stretching like a limb after being in one position for too long. I immediately felt freedom. When I peered at myself in the mirror, four long daisy-like petal shapes fluttered behind me as if they were waving, greeting me for the first time.

They felt strange as if they didn’t belong to me, like they weren’t attached to my body. It was like an out of body experience. I was above myself watching these wings branch out of someone else’s back. And yet they felt more a part of me than anything else, like my arms, just another limb that moved without effort.

The top wings peeked about a foot and a half above my shoulders. They weren’t as big as I pictured them being and that was fine by me. I just hoped they didn’t plan on getting any bigger. These were controllable. Now the struggle was to figure out how to plaster these babies to my body and hide them under my clothes.

I fiddled around with their movement, testing how they fluttered and my ability to shift them. It turned out I could get them to curl around my torso, but they didn’t want to stay that way for long. I suspected it was like trying to stay in a position for any extended amount of time. They needed to stretch. I let them spring back out behind me and the relief was instant.

They really were beautiful. Their soft yellow tint gleamed in the reflection of the mirror, a soft reminder that they were there, a soft reminder that they grew out of
me
. After admiring them for who knows how long, it dawned on me that I was running out of time for solutions. I needed something for school tomorrow.

It really was unfortunate that I had to find something to hold them down. I dug around in my drawers, throwing out tank tops, underwear and bikinis. Then something caught my eye—my leotard from ballet. I couldn’t wear it every day because, number one, it was from like three years ago and two sizes too small; and number two, it would be too noticeable under my clothes. But it would give me something to go shopping in in the meantime.

It took a lot of restraint to keep the wings down without snagging them in the spandex. I pinched them a couple times and winced from the pain.
You are smarter than the leotard.
I stretched the straps over my shoulders, feeling the indentation they were already leaving in my shoulders, but I finally managed to conquer the leotard.

“Where are you going?” Dad asked when I passed through the kitchen on my way to the garage.

“To buy something to hold these down,” I said, slipping my purse over my shoulder.

When I looked to him there was a haze over his eyes, making him unreadable as he scanned my body.

“Dad?”

“What?” He gazed up at my eyes, finally acknowledging me again.

“I’ll see you later.”

He only nodded as I waved.

After searching through way too many stores for my wing restrainer I finally found a viable bustier. I suppose it was more of a tight tube top. There was no boning or wires that could jab at my wings. It was stretchy, a soft comfortable material, and, most importantly—form fitting.

By the time I had purchased the wing restrainer and got in my car to go home, it felt like I had been tightening my abs all day and could barely hang on a minute longer. The wings began to cramp. I raced home, blaring music, summarizing Macbeth, trying to think of Cameron, and solving math problems in my head all at the same time, just to keep my mind off of them. When I pulled into the garage it was seven-thirty and Mom was home.