Stained Glass Souls (Wattys 2014, Collector's Dream Award Winner)

Ariel: Teach Me to Fly

"When you walk to the edge of all the light you have and take that first step into the darkness of the unknown, you must believe that one of two things will happen. There will be something solid for you to stand upon or you will be taught to fly." ~ Patrick Overton, The Leaning Tree: poems

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(Ariel: unedited)

She was telling herself to keep walking. One foot in front of the other. Breathe. In, out, in out. Ignore the dark-haired boy with the burning eyes, who was running towards her with blood on his hands.

“Ariel.” He wasn’t shouting, but he was close. She could hear the break in his voice. The crack. At any moment, he could shatter, anger slipping through the chinks in his armor like a black, swirling fog, poised to encompass her. As she glanced at him quickly, trying to look through him instead of at him, she stopped short.

Maybe he had already cracked. What else could explain the crimson, running in rivets down his fists? His curls were matted, crushed flat to the top and left side of his head. Black, drying fluid flaked off his blotchy skin like ashes. She watched them tangle with the wind, sweep towards her. Floating. Fingers outstretched, ready to pounce.

“Stop it.” She jerked back, breathless. He had felt so close, so warm, heat radiating off his skin. But when she looked upon he was five solid steps away, such a hurt writhing in his eyes that she was ashamed of her fear.

“Hey.” He sounded softer this time. Footsteps sounded in her ears as he shuffled cautiously over the concrete sidewalk towards her. “Ariel.” He made no move to touch her, but she felt compelled to raise her chin, meet his gaze. She wasn’t afraid. He would not, not intimidate her. “Ariel, I need help.”

“Go to the police.” She didn’t trust the blood. It was magnetic. There was so much of it, enough to make the butterflies in her stomach turn to wasps. Stingers pricked into her skin, inside out, piercing through the cavity of her chest. She was frozen. Frozen in place. Frozen cold. It was so cold. Distracted by the ice creeping over her limbs, she didn’t see him move.

“Please.” He touched her shoulder. His fingers were hot, driving through the thin material of her jacket. “I just need to wash the blood off before I go home.”

“Jewel isn’t allowed to see this side of you?” She hated the mockery in her voice. A defense mechanism against his eyes, dark and empty and somehow beautiful. “Where am I supposed to take you?”

Home. She realized before he said it what he meant: take me back to your house. The real house. There was nowhere else to go: certainly not the cottage, where remnants of a dead boy lingered around every corner. Iris was holed up in her room there, spindling the rest of her short existence away in mourning for the son she loved. The other son, the rejected one, was probably at the graveyard. Biding the hours until he staked his claim upon death, reading obituaries of people that wanted to be remembered, consigned instead to a square space of grass upon a lonely hill. Anya was gone. Dad was gone. Chicago.

But two blocks from Highland Hills, the old house stood empty. How did Price know? How could he? She kept silent about her past, her origins. But something about the way he shifted uneasily when he said home made her think that someone, somewhere, had given him information. Tidbits.

The girl with the eating problem, she lived two hours away. Only place to go, man.

“Ariel.” He was shaking her, hard enough to make her teeth rattle. “I can’t go home like this.”

“Shouldn’t you have thought of that before you hit someone?”

“I don’t have time to stand here and argue with you.” He glared at her. “If you won’t help me, I’ll go to the lake. Maybe I’ll test the water.”

The deep end is next to the oak tree, she thought. What would you do with that? Nothing. She was being ridiculous. This was Price. His temper brought his stupidity, but it wouldn’t bring his suicide. She stepped out of his grasp. If she took him home, he had to stop touching her. Watching her with those hot, dark eyes. She didn’t have to guess what he was thinking – she could feel it.

It’s dangerous. A voice in the back of her head began to chime. Danger, danger, danger.

“So?” Seeming to sense her tortured thoughts, he let his hands hang uselessly by his sides. One fist clenched, as if trying to hide the blood from her searching eyes.

It was foolish. Ariel couldn’t understand why, even knowing this, she said “Okay.”

His car was parked a ways down Main Street. There was a flurry of frantic movement from the building ahead, people rushing in and out. She squinted her eyes to make out the faintly lit sign. Tattoo. Something had gone down at the tattoo parlor. Judging from the blood on Price’s hands, something bad. She tried not to dwell on these facts, random and useless, as she scuttled into the driver’s seat. “Keys?” Despite her best attempts at a light, even tone, her voice was trembling.

Price dug a keychain out of his pocket and leaned over to her. For a split second, she thought he was going to do something completely irrational, like kiss her. His breath was warm on the curve of her shoulder. If she raised one hand, titled her head forward, she would be touching his curls. Even matted and dirty, they looked soft. Intriguing.

“Ariel?” He was back in the passenger seat, glaring at her. “Can you drive?”

The car was rumbling beneath her feet. He had been turning the keys, starting the engine. Heat gushed from the vent by her ankles, floating up to paint the windows grey with fog. She couldn’t help but notice how his fists were still clenched, propped upon his thighs. He stared straight ahead – through the window shield, to the people milling outside the tattoo parlor. One was shouting, hysterical.

And then one girl, hair glowing green through the haze of falling snow, slipped out through the back door. Charliegh.

“Drive.” Price demanded. “Drive, Ariel!”

He sounded so frantic. Which was he more afraid of: Charliegh noticing him, or noticing Charliegh? Even as she spun out of the parking lot, wheels sliding across fresh ice, she couldn’t shake the feeling of dread. Whatever had happened had been a game-changer. To innocent bystanders, maybe it had appeared to be just to a fight. Another pair of angry teenager boys, attacking each other over a potential prom date.

But Ariel was no innocent bystander.

She was entangled, trapped in this town and the secrets that it held. Some secrets, she was beginning to discover, wanted to be uncovered. Begged to be uncovered. Like the fight – the animosity between Charliegh and Price was no secret. Rumors had been floating around the school for weeks.

Lovers quarrel.

She felt a pinch at this. Was that what this was? Was she driving Price away from his girlfriend, all set to patch him up, become a rebound girl? Albeit a rebound girl who could barely pull herself out of bed in the morning, much less make a valid attempt to attract such a volatile boy.

Yet some secrets, such as the actual cause of the fight, screamed do not touch. Step aside. Proceed with caution. Some secrets – like Randall – did not deserve to be uncovered. They would remained, buried by the weight of the past, until they were old news. Too late of a story to make a splash, a ripple, an impact.

They drove through the mountains. Past Redemption. Past any hope of patching Charliegh and Price’s relationship, that much was certain. Whatever said relationship had been. Ariel couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if one of those hidden secrets were uncovered. Fresh, raw with the newness of them. Throbbing with barely concealed pain.

And of her own secrets.

What would people make of them?

Shuddering, her foot drove into the gas pedal. Faster, faster, faster. Yanking her away from a town with too few people holding too many secrets inside. One of these days, something was going to burst. The past was about to be shifted, dug up, thrust into the world of the living once again.

And when that day came, she intended to be as far away from Price, and Redemption, and a hospital ward as possible.