The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender(51)

“I think the wings will probably give me away,” I said dryly.

“That’s what those are for.” Cardigan pointed to a set of wings in the corner, the very ones Gabe had made when he had hoped to teach me to fly. Seeing those wings made my chest ache. I looked away. I didn’t want to be sad. Not that day.

Cardigan and I suspected Gabe had a new sweetheart. He’d rarely been home in weeks. When I did see him, it seemed he was always on his way out, his hands scrubbed clean, the collar on his shirt freshly pressed, his woodsy smell replaced with the sharp tang of cologne that my mother always pretended to be offended by. He left his dilapidated pickup truck in the driveway. Perhaps his sweetheart was too delicate for those tattered, threadbare seats. Whoever she was.

I wrinkled my nose. “How are those supposed to help?”

“If I wear them, there will be two angels, not one,” Cardigan said defensively. “It’ll throw people off your scent.” She held up the mangled mess with her fingers. “I glued a bunch of feathers to ’em. So, see? No one will think your wings are real. They’ll just assume we’re both wearing costumes. Plus, a lot of people still think the Angel never leaves the house. And that she only wears white. And that she has talons —”

“I don’t have . . . what?”

“Talons,” Cardigan made her finger into a hook. “You know, like an eagle.”

I folded my arms across my chest. “I do not have . . . those.”

Cardigan shrugged. “I know, but there’ve been speculations. Which,” she quickly added, “only further supports what I’ve been saying: no one will know it’s you because you won’t be what they’re expecting.”

I watched nervously as dark strands of my hair fell and gathered at my feet.

“It keeps sticking to your feathers,” Cardigan said, checking to be sure she’d cut each side evenly.

The bleach took the longest, and for a moment we both feared I would end up with orange hair. But when the smell of bleach finally stopped burning my eyes, Cardigan took a step back and whistled. “Jeez, Ava. You are one hot blonde!”

In ancient Gaul the midsummer celebration was called the Feast of Epona, named after the goddess of abundance, sovereignty, and the harvest. She was portrayed as a woman riding a mare. The pagans celebrated solstice with bonfires believed to possess a form of earthly magic, granting maidens insight on their future husbands and banishing spirits and demons. The men of the Hopi tribe dressed in traditional masks to honor the kachinas, the dancing spirits of rain and fertility who were believed to leave the villages at midsummer to visit the dead underground and hold ceremonies on their behalf. In Russia young girls floated their flower garlands down rivers, reading one another’s fortunes by the movement of the flowers on the water. In Sweden neighbors gathered to raise and dance around a huge maypole draped in greenery and flowers. They call it Litha or Vestalia in Rome, Gathering Day in Wales, All Couples’ Day in Greece. It’s Sonnwend, Feill-Sheathain, Thing-Tide, the feast day of John the Baptist.

For the people of Pinnacle Lane, the solstice celebration was a chance to shed their cloaks of modesty and decorum, and replace them with wildflowers woven in their hair. Only during the summer solstice did the old Moss sisters remove their crosses from between their low-hanging breasts and drink themselves silly on great pints of malt liquor. Only during solstice could Pastor Graves forgive himself for his favorite sweet, the Nipples of Venus, feasting on white chocolate from the truffle’s teat. And only during solstice could Rowe Cooper arrive at the festival to find two identical winged girls waiting for him.

“How d-did you . . . ?” Rowe flicked his fingers at the feathers sprouting from his sister’s shoulder blades.

Cardigan hit his hand away. “Don’t. They’re not dry yet. Pretty neato, huh?”

Rowe turned toward me. “I like your hair.”

I smiled.

Rowe glanced from girl to girl. “So, why do you look the same?”

Cardigan put an arm around me. “We’re blending in.”

As we wandered through the festivities, I saw something new or strange at every turn: an ambush of tiny tigers and panda bears, their face paint smeared, their fingers clasping giant sticks of cotton candy; men and women in medieval garb; a small girl in a wheelchair, her legs encased by a shiny fabric mermaid tail. There were Norwegian mormors dressed in their woolen bunads, and Shakespeare’s mule-headed Bottom stumbling from tents of sheer turquoise and white. The crowds of solstice revelers were so strange that, for perhaps the first time ever, I fit in. I grabbed Cardigan and swung her around right there in front of a booth selling wind chimes. Then I laughed out loud because no one even glanced at the angels dancing to the chimes ringing in the growing breeze. Cardigan was right. We blended in beautifully.

I’d spent so many years imagining the event, placing myself in the crowd, that I wondered if maybe, in the end, it wouldn’t matter if I actually felt the flames of the bonfire on my face. I often wondered the same thing about being kissed. Or falling in love. Did I need to experience them if I could imagine them? A part of me feared that Pinnacle Lane’s solstice celebration couldn’t possibly live up to la fête in my head.

I was thrilled to discover I was wrong. From my window for the past fourteen years, I hadn’t been able to hear the crowds sing along when the street-corner musicians played rowdy drinking songs on their mandolins and sitars. I couldn’t observe lovers finding shadows perfect for private trysts. I hadn’t known how easy it would be to avoid getting caught by my grandmother, the heat from the ovens clouding the bakery’s windows all night. Or how hard I would laugh when Rowe let the Kiwanis Key Club girls paint a tri-colored rainbow across his left cheek. And I hadn’t known how my heart would pound when Rowe pulled me aside, gently took my face in his hands, and pressed his lips to mine.