Wing Jones(3)

Marcus. I glance out on the field, hoping to catch a glimpse of my brother, but he’s disappeared with the rest of the team. I probably won’t see him till tomorrow. He’ll be going out tonight with the team to celebrate the win. Out with Monica. Out with Aaron.

Thinking about Aaron makes my heart skip like a little girl with a jump rope.





CHAPTER 3


I’m at the front of the snack bar line and am about to order when someone slips neatly into the narrow space between me and the counter, the way a nickel does in the slot of a gumball machine. Someone fair and small with wavy red hair, mermaid hair. Mermaid hair to match her mermaid green eyes. Someone who reeks of cheap perfume and too much hair spray.

I clear my throat, I can’t help it. It isn’t fair that Heather Parker thinks she can waltz right to the front without even a hint of an excuse me. Heather turns, wavy hair fluttering around her like she’s got an invisible servant fanning her, and glares up at me. It is a special skill, to glare up at someone who is a whole half a foot taller, but it’s something Heather Parker has perfected. She’s had a lot of practice over the years.

“Ew,” she says, her tiny nose wrinkling. “I didn’t know they let the freaks come out tonight.”

You’d think that after hearing something over and over again the blade would dull, but it goes into me every time. Every. Single. Time. Freak. Sinking into me, staining me, like hundreds of invisible tattoos. Freak on my forehead. Freak on my chest. Freak on my arm. Freak on my feet. Freak, freak, freak.

I used to stare at myself in the mirror, wondering what made me so different. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I can’t blend in, and I don’t stand out in a good way like Marcus. I stick out. Marcus, he manages to stand out, to shine when he wants, but he can blend in too. Not me. I can’t blend in but I don’t stand out. And I guess that’s enough for Heather Parker to call me a freak every chance she gets. Enough so everyone else has started to believe it too. Just like when Heather decided that butterfly clips were cool last year, and all the other girls started wearing them. Or when she shunned Lily Asquith for daring to kiss a boy Heather had laid claim to and the next day Lily’s diary was passed around school and the word slut was chalked all over her driveway. It doesn’t hurt that Heather’s father is our local weatherman, which doesn’t sound that glamorous to me, but apparently it’s enough to make Heather practically famous. She says she’s gonna be a news anchor on CNN because she’s got “the face for it” and “all the right connections.” She’s also vicious, but I don’t know if that’s a required qualification to be a news anchor.

The student behind the concession stand is watching our interaction the way someone would watch a wildlife documentary. The kind where the hyenas take down a giraffe. His expression is a mixture of expectation and pity. He knows what’s going to happen but he’s powerless to stop it, and part of him is a little bit excited to see the hyena take down her prey. He isn’t going to get between Heather Parker and one of her victims.

I could step on her. I could pick up one of my freakish legs and bring it down on her pretty little face and squash her like an insect. I imagine the scene comic-book style, playing out on my own personal projector, and it makes me smile.

Smiling is the wrong thing to do. Heather’s face flames red and she leans closer to me.

“What are you laughing at?” And she calls me something else – something worse than a word. The sound of it makes the person in line behind me, someone I don’t know, inhale sharply.

I flinch. I’ve got this word all over me too.

“Wing!” I look up and see my brother’s girlfriend, Monica, jogging toward me. Her long blond hair is streaming out behind her and she’s out of breath. “There you are! Your mama and grannies have gone home already and told me to tell you. They said you took too long getting the Cokes.”

She stops and takes in the scene. Heather standing right under my nose, the silent boy behind the register, the group of freshmen gawking and giggling next to us. The silent echo of what Heather just called me ringing in all our ears.

“You causing trouble, Parker?” Monica says, her voice dangerous sweet, like sugar laced with poison.

“Your daddy know where you goin’ tonight?” Heather shoots back. “I heard he doesn’t like who you’ve been hanging around with.”

Monica doesn’t rise to the bait. Instead, she smiles, lips pressed tight together, so tight they almost disappear, and grabs my hand. “Come on,” she says. “We don’t need to stick around with this trash.”

Heather looks like she’s winding up for another insult – I can hear the gears inside her clanking – but Monica is pulling me away, so fast and so far that whatever Heather yells out after us is eaten by the wind. I wish the wind would eat all of her.

“What is her problem with you?” says Monica when we’re almost out of the stadium. “You never done anything to her. You never done anything to anyone.”

I shrug. It doesn’t matter what I have or haven’t done. Heather Parker is one of those people who feeds on other people’s pain. It’s what keeps her skin so clear and her hair so shiny.

“Thanks for rescuing me back there.” I feel awkward saying it, but I want Monica to know that I appreciate her getting involved. She didn’t have to.