Matters of Circumstance (3 page)

While Farrah took the bus to and from school, she did actually have a car. It was a Toyota Camry from the early 90’s—not glamorous in any sense, just functional, which was all she cared about. Neal arrived at Joe’s by foot about two minutes after she did. When he saw her he flashed a winning smile, except he might as well have been wearing a mask for all the good it did. Farrah was too busy slamming the car door shut and dashing to meet him to notice anything apart from a person with answers.

Her urgency seemed to take him aback. “What’s wrong? You look like you just found out you were adopted,” he said with a clear note of concern.

“It’s happening,” she said, grabbing his elbows and holding them tightly in alarm. “It’s happening to me right now. They cracked, and…” she trailed off, more panicked than ever. It choked her, synching her voice and air into nonexistence. She didn’t know what to do, and now her eyes were heating up again, and…

Neal gently pulled her hands away, simultaneously addressing her with a low, reassuring voice, “Hey, it’s alright. It’s not going to kill you. You’ll get through this just fine, okay Farrah? You just need to calm down a little—here, I know there’s a bathroom around here somewhere, we’ll see if we can get it all out right now. That’s it, just keep walking…”

Farrah felt like a foolish little girl, but she complied when he spun her around and steered her towards the public bathrooms with his hands on the part of her shoulders that didn’t hurt. Maybe he couldn’t feel the deformity through all of her layers or because of where his hands were positioned, but it was a strangely comforting gesture nonetheless. She was a pus-dripping freak, but someone knew about it and wasn’t afraid of her.

Even if he supposedly had the same condition, that still meant something.

Most of the stores around Joe’s (including Joe’s) were closed at this hour, but since some still weren’t the bathrooms were still open. Neal steered her through the girl’s door without a trace of hesitation. For her part, Farrah had to thank her lucky stars that they were single-toilet.

“You know, I never pegged you as the type to have mental breakdowns,” he said conversationally as he locked the door, yanked paper towels out of the dispenser and ran them under the automatic sink.

“Neither did I.” Right now she really envied his cool, collected attitude.

Neal acted like he hadn’t heard that and said briskly, “Alright, off with the shirt and sweater. We’ll work around the bra.”

She narrowed her eyes at how easily he said this. “Excuse me?”

“It’s because I have a penis, isn’t it?” Try as she might, Farrah couldn’t tell if he was serious or just trying to get a rise out of her. “Do you really think I’m going to do something when you’re hyperventilating and covered in pus?”

Another very good point. She was disgusting and hysterical—even someone desperate would pass on her. Besides, Neal really didn’t seem like he was desperate. He was far too comfortable in his own skin, and way too sincere in the emotions that he expressed. He probably had a girlfriend.

And if she rejected his help now he may never offer it again, so even though it was embarrassing…

Farrah decided to let her dignity rest in pieces and just did what he asked. It hurt to get the sweater back over her head, and her fresh shirt was already so stuck to her that Neal had to help pull it off, but he handled the situation with professional integrity. When he saw her back all that came out of his mouth was a slightly smug, “See? The same exact thing happened to me—now try to hold still, these paper towels are probably going to feel like ice.”

They did. Farrah tensed and gritted her teeth, refusing to move for anything.

Well, that was until he started poking at those stupid granulomas, and then she cried out and whirled around. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she snarled. “That hurt!”

It was impressive that his eyes never left her face despite the fact that she was only wearing a bra. Not that her breasts were spectacular or anything, but weren’t boobs all the same to guys?

She also had to respect the way he kept calm in the face of her fury. “Do you want me to help you or not? I’m trying to clean them out, and it’s going to hurt, but would you rather be leaking all over the place?”

He said it the way a big brother might scold a bratty younger sibling, and it made her retract her metaphorical claws. Head bowed, Farrah turned around again. “Sorry. I guess it just surprised me.”

“I guess so, too,” Neal said in a very different voice, one she couldn’t quite define. “Now I’m going to try again, so brace yourself. We’ll take a break when it gets to be too much, okay? Just tell me when.”

She nodded and readied herself. “Okay.”

The pain was… indescribable. It was white hot, brain-numbing, compounding, absolutely undeniable.
‘Stop it!’
all of her nerves were screaming.
‘Put an end to it
right now!’

And Farrah wanted to—oh, did she ever—but if she called for a break she knew she would never be able to voluntarily submit to this torture again. This way when it was over it would be final, and she had that to look forward to.

“Okay, you’re done. It’s over,” Neal told her softly. “I don’t know how you managed to handle that in one fell swoop, but you did. You shouldn’t have to worry about getting pus over anything anymore—well, not much anyway.”

Her brain registered this dialogue sluggishly, as if through a fog. Ever so slowly, she was becoming more aware of herself and her surroundings. Farrah didn’t know when she had started leaning against the sink, but her hands were braced on either side. Sweat was dripping down her face, she was breathing hard, her eyes were watery, and her whole body felt heavy and spent. She was flushed as if she had gotten sunburned, too, and she was beginning to feel the evening chill now, since she was only wearing her bra…

God, this was so humiliating.

“Thank you,” she mumbled, still staring at the sink. There was a hair coiled around the drain—was it hers? It was the right color, but she had her hair tied up…

“No problem. Anything to help a kindred spirit, you know? It’s just a shame so many trees had to pay the price.”

Was he talking about the paper towels? He was, wasn’t he? How weird.

Neal bumped her bare arm with her hoodie. “Here, you should probably put these back on. They’re a little gross, but it’s better than nothing. I’m sure you’re tired of being half-naked by now.”

Truth be told she had been in so much agony that she hadn’t noticed her state of dress. She took her clothes from him anyway. “Thanks again.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Just before putting her shirt on curiosity got the better of her. She turned around and looked at her back in the mirror above the sink. The skin around the granulomas was a much brighter red than the rest of her, and the cracks looked bigger and cleaner than before. Inside she saw something clear and somewhat shiny.

Farrah made a face and reached over her shoulder to touch one. “What are those…?”

Neal caught her wrist before she could make contact. “They’ll come out in a few days, but I’ve just been aggravating the hell out of them. If you touch them now you’re going to regret it.”

She almost laughed, but she obeyed and pulled her clothes back on anyway. All of her humor disappeared when her shirt settled over her shoulders. It felt like fucking
sandpaper
being scraped across her skin. Tears were springing into her eyes again, and the pain was filling her like she was a coffee pot catching water from the tap.

Eager for any sort of distraction, she looked at Neal intently. “So what are they?” she asked again, her voice raising an octave midway.

He was kind enough to pretend like she had spoken normally, but when he opened his mouth no sound came out. He closed it, thought for a moment and then shrugged a little. When he started fiddling his own layers she understood.

“Here, it’ll be easier to believe if I show you.” Neal pulled his shirt and sweater off in one clean movement and turned to show her his exposed back.

He had wings.

They weren’t feathery like a bird’s. Rather they were ugly and primitive, like a pterodactyl. There was only one bone along the top, and she could see how white it was—could see every joint and vein and muscle—through the smooth, lightly-freckled skin that encased it. Folded up, they were as long as his whole torso. Farrah heard him grunt, and the right one unfurled faster than the left. Collapsed against him they didn’t look like much, but in actuality they went about ten feet across, sprawled panes of parenthetical bones and flesh curled up against the tiny bathroom’s walls. The skin gleamed dully in the bathroom light.

Holy fucking shit, he had
wings.

With a loud sigh both wings folded against his back once more. As he tried to put both layers of clothing back over his head at the same time Neal’s voice was muffled, but she heard him all the same, “Kind of hard to hold them out there like that—I think it’s ‘cause they’re still only baby muscles, you know? They’d probably get stronger if I practiced.”

That was what she was going to have? Right now, as she stood here, she was developing
wings?
She didn’t have a choice or a scientific explanation, this wasn’t a dream, and there was no reversing it?

Could Farrah deny what she had seen? Or better yet, could she deny the wrinkled skin in those granulomas on her back had shone exactly like Neal’s? And he had predicted exactly what would happen to her, could she also deny that?

She couldn’t. Farrah absolutely couldn’t deny a thing, and that complete and utter defeat was horrifying.

“I think my goal is to have a hoodie for each day of the month,” said Neal conversationally. They were supposed to be at the mall with friends, but
somehow
—i.e.: Farrah knew it wasn’t a coincidence—it had ended up only being the two of them.

“A hoodie for every day,” she repeated.

He had her undivided attention, but he reached over and patted her arm anyway. “Don’t you think that would be funny? You’d look over and automatically know what day it is because of what I’m wearing! Be like,
‘oh look, it’s Neal. And check out his jacket—it must be the 7
th
.’
And they’ll all last forever since I’ll only wear them twelve times a year, even less for the last two days since some months don’t have. Isn’t that brilliant? I think it would be great!”

They had been hanging out together a lot in the past week, thanks to their mutual condition. If everything else failed, at least they could talk about that—how hard it was to clean wings in the shower, how hard it was to sleep on their backs, why Farrah should or shouldn’t tell her parents, any number of such things. It usually didn’t go that far, though. With Neal there were always a million and one things to discuss.

In a lot of ways Farrah looked up to Neal, because she knew she wouldn’t have been able to go through this alone. To know that Neal had was incredible. And he was always so easygoing about everything. Nothing she said or did surprised him, and when she needed it he was always willing to have a serious conversation. He had become something like a hero to her. If neither of them had grown wings Farrah was beginning to realize that she would have wanted to know Neal anyway, simply because of everything he was.

Which was not to say that his never-ending optimism didn’t sometimes get on her nerves, because it did. Right now, for example. Farrah wasn’t afraid of speaking her mind to him. “Don’t you care about
why
you need to wear these sweaters?” she hissed. “How can you be so cheerful about this?”

“Because it beats having a stick up my ass?” he suggested with a pointed sidelong glance. They were currently wandering around without a purpose, only stopping when one of them halfheartedly window-shopped. “Honestly, Farrah, if we can’t do anything about it what’s the point of making ourselves feel bad? I don’t know about you, but I prefer being happy.”

And what could she say to that,
‘No, I like feeling sorry for myself and dwelling on the things I can’t change’?

Farrah decided to change the subject instead. “So Ruby told me you’re originally from Hawaii.”

“Technically, I’m originally from southern California,” he said, conforming to the subject with enviable ease. “My parents moved to Hawaii when I was… two, I think? One and a half or two—anyway, we stayed there ‘til the summer before freshmen year, and then we moved here. The east coast was a major shock, but at least wearing jackets here makes sense. Some people in Hawaii do it when its fashionable, but I would hate not to have a choice about it, you know?”

That made sense. It sounded horrible just in theory.

“So.” Farrah felt a little foolish, but plowed on for the sake of keeping the conversation going. “What was Hawaii like? I mean, was living there actually tropical and beautiful like they say?”

“Well, it was tropical in that it never snowed,” said Neal. “But it wasn’t like I lived in a grass hut and ate
laulau
every night.”

She wrinkled her nose. Having been born and raised on the east coast, that didn’t even sound good. “What’s
laulau?”