Scars Like Wings

by Erin Stewart

  Dr. Layne smiles at me with weary eyes when I enter. Glenn’s and Cora’s are strained, too. A pang of guilt hits me: they’re all worried about the broken girl in aisle seven. I brace myself for the onslaught of encouragements reminding me that everything’s going to be okay.

  That I’m a survivor.

  “Ava, sit down,” Dr. Layne says, patting the cushion next to her. “We need to talk.”

  I shift in the seat, wondering what aspect of yesterday they want to discuss. I am not about to get into my boy drama with them, and how would they even know about my fight with Piper?

  Dr. Layne taps her pen quickly on her notepad, a nervous tick that’s out of sync with her usually poised, professional demeanor. She should be happy: I finally had the breakdown breakthrough she’s always wanted. Surely a public meltdown falls somewhere between guilt and bargaining on the therapy path to healing.

  Glenn refuses to make eye contact with me. Cora dabs the corners of her eyes with a tissue.

  Something’s different.

  Something’s not right.

  “I really am fine,” I say, still trying to piece together the weird energy in the room.

  Dr. Layne talks slowly, like she’s trying to keep me calm, or maybe even stay calm herself.

  “Ava, something’s happened,” she says. “To Piper.”

  41

  Darkness settles in my chest.

  “Piper’s parents found her early this morning. They think she may have taken too much pain medication.”

  Cora sniffles and covers her mouth. Glenn looks at his feet. Layne looks at me.

  “She overdosed?” I ask.

  My anger toward Piper morphs into fear and guilt. She called me three times.

  Layne measures her words carefully.

  “It’s unclear—”

  I cut her off. “Is she dead?” My voice rises along with my panic at this all-too-familiar conversation where people dole out truth morsels so I don’t flip out—so I choose to live despite the pain. “You have to tell people when people they love die! Just tell me! Dead or alive?”

  Layne rests her hand on mine.

  “Alive. She’s alive.”

  Air fills my lungs and I put my cheek down on the couch armrest, my head suddenly weighing one thousand pounds.

  “She wouldn’t have done that. Not on purpose.”

  But even as I say the words, the darkness creeps deeper—not with fear, but affirmation. I knew Piper was in a bad place. I knew. But she said things were better since I got here.

  Except I wasn’t there. Not last night. What did I tell her? That our friendship was a burden? She threw away the necklace.

  She called three times.

  I threw her away.

  “I knew she was struggling, but I didn’t think she’d—”

  I stop short, afraid speaking it out loud will make it real. Dr. Layne taps my hand again softly.

  “This is no one’s fault, Ava. But we know you’re close with Piper, and we’re concerned about you. Cora told me about your episode last night. At the store.”

  Dark circles hang below Cora’s eyes. Did she sleep at all? Glenn looks equally haggard.

  “I had a bad day.”

  “Do you have a lot of bad days?” Layne presses.

  “I’m not going to gulp down a bottle of codeine, if that’s what you’re asking.” I try to say this glibly, the way Piper would, but the words catch in my throat.

  Dr. Layne leans toward me, the weight of her body on the couch cushion making me fall into her slightly.

  “What you girls are going through is more than most people can bear. There’s no shame in asking for help. We all wish Piper had.” She locks eyes with mine. “How do you really think you’re doing?”

  I think about yesterday, about how tired I am of fighting the gaping blackness.

  Did Piper feel it, too?

  She called three times.

  “I think—” I look at Cora and Glenn, their dark circles and pink eyes probably matching my own. “I think maybe no one is as fine as they’re pretending to be.”

  Dr. Layne nods. “I think you’re right.”

  “Can I see her? I need to see her,” I say.

  “Soon. The doctors are helping Piper now, but I would like to help you, if you’d let me.”

  “How?”

  “Well, for starters, I think it’s time for a road trip.”

  * * *

  Dr. Layne won’t tell me where we’re going, probably for fear I’ll tuck and roll out of the moving car on the highway. Once we’re about twenty minutes south on the freeway, though, I know exactly where we’re headed.

  I slouch into my seat as she drives, grateful that she doesn’t try to fill the silence with therapy talk. Out the window, huddled farm towns replace sprawling suburbs. The new-spring green rolls out from the highway toward the base of the mountains.

  My mind drifts to Piper as the fields and horses and foothills flash past my window.

  I should have been fighting the darkness with her.

  We could have fought it together.

  After about an hour, a lake at the base of the western foothills comes into view.

  Home.

  My stomach tightens at the familiar crests of the foothills surrounding the farming community. These wide-open pastures dotted with cows and horses used to make me feel limitless, like I was somehow part of the grandeur of the peaks and valleys stretching out into infinity.

  Now they fill me with dread.

  Dr. Layne exits the highway, heading west toward my old neighborhood.

  We pass the orchard where Sara and I used to pluck cherries each summer. We pass kids playing foursquare on the blacktop where I skinned my knee in third grade. The creek with the wooden bridge where Chloe and I carved our initials in middle school. The bleachers where Josh kissed me.

  We pass the ice-cream shop where Mom and I inhaled pistachio-almond cones. The hardware store where Dad would pretend he knew the difference between a lug nut and bolt.

  My old life passes in front of the window, and as it does, I catch my reflection in the glass. How can home still be the same when I’m so different?

  Dr. Layne pulls along a curb and stops the car. Ahead, just beyond a baby-pink cherry tree, is my street.

  “I’m not going to force you to do this,” she says. “Say the word and I’ll turn around right now.”

  From the sidewalk, Mrs. Heckman waves like she does to everyone, while wrangling her three corgis on her punctual morning walk. The tulips bloom in straight rows along the edge of Colonel Ashby’s military-perfect garden on the corner.

  It’s like my life is still here. Moving on without me.

  Even though part of me wants to turn away, the part that was me for sixteen years wants nothing more than to turn this corner.

  “We’ve already come this far,” I say.

  Dr. Layne pulls forward, hugging the turn as we start down the street where I once lived.

  42

  She parks under the maple tree in our front yard.

  Behind it, a gaping space.

  Demolition crews tore down the straggling remnants, so now there’s nothing left but a foundation dug into the earth and a few erratic pieces of rusted rebar sticking out at odd angles.

  “Why are we doing this?” I say, turning away from the nothingness formally known as my life. Dr. Layne leans back in her seat, her fingers tapping the wheel. After a minute, she points to my neck.

  “You’re not wearing that necklace you usually wear. The one Piper gave you?”

  I grab at the empty space.

  “You know, most people think the phoenix symbolizes survival,” Dr. Layne continues.

  I picture the wings on Piper’s back, angrily flapping away from me yesterda
y. “I know—rise up from the ashes unharmed and all that motivational mumbo jumbo.”

  Dr. Layne looks past me to the empty lot out the window. “Except the flames do hurt it. They completely consume it. The magic of the phoenix is not that it’s unharmed, but that it’s reborn.”

  I turn to the window again, unsure that visiting these particular ashes will produce any sort of magical transformation. Dr. Layne tries another approach.

  “Look at it this way: What was the most painful part about the hospital?”

  I don’t even have to think.

  “The tank.”

  Just saying the word makes my skin hurt, thinking of the nurses scrubbing off my scabs, picking off my skin in tweeze-size snippets.

  “Exactly. But the nurses had to remove the burned areas so the grafts could grow. If you hold on to the old skin, you’ll never heal.” She leans across me, pulls the shiny handle, and pushes open my door. “Time to let go.”

  I reluctantly follow her across the front lawn. Mom’s tulips burn red and orange along the walkway to where the front door should be. We walk on a soft mix of ash and dirt and random charred bits, maybe something I loved once.

  Dr. Layne asks me to describe how the house was laid out, so I try to picture walking in the front door, Mom’s handbell curio cabinet straight ahead, a massive leather couch to the right. I walk around the foundation, which seems so much smaller now. You’d never know by looking at it how much life—and love—it once held.

  “This was the family room,” I say.

  I walk across the space into what was the kitchen.

  “Our table was kind of right”—I move over a few feet so I’m square with the multipeaked mountain I could see while eating breakfast—“here.”

  The wind whips my bandana against my neck. As it blows through the trees, I can almost hear Dad’s voice reading the headlines and Mom’s laugh on the phone. I close my eyes and hear her singing, Dad clanging pans to make bacon on Sunday morning, Mom yelling at me for missing curfew, Dad sitting at the table crying when his own dad died.

  I open my eyes.

  The voices leave.

  A gust stirs the ashes into a mini dust devil made of my past. Spinning across my old kitchen, the dirt flies with nothing to hold it down, nothing to cling to but air.

  “What’s the point of all this?” I say. “Is this part of my therapy? Checking off the seven stages?”

  Dr. Layne just looks at me.

  “Which one am I on now? Anger, right?” I reach down and fill my hands with ashes and dirt, my life sifting between my fingers. I fling it after the dust devil, trying somehow to hit it. To hurt it. To stop it from looking so sad and solitary and pathetic.

  I throw another handful.

  And another.

  Dirt and ash blow back into my face, leaving gritty residue on my lips.

  “Now what?” I raise my voice over the wind. “I’m healed? I should just move on and forget my life ever happened?”

  I start to throw another handful, but my strength leaves me. I sink to the ground instead, dropping the ashes. Dr. Layne kneels next to me, her arm around my shoulder.

  “Moving on doesn’t mean forgetting,” she says. “It just means letting go of the hurt.”

  The dust spirals out of existence as I try to find the words to explain the similar twisting in my chest.

  “But the hurt is all I have left,” I say. “When it’s gone, so are they. I’m alone.”

  Dr. Layne pulls me closer.

  “You’re not alone.”

  “Yes, I am. Everyone leaves me. You want to know my first thought when you told me about Piper? I thought, of course. Nobody I love sticks around.” I sweep my arm out, gesturing to the emptiness around us. “It’s all gone. I. Am. Alone.”

  “When?” Dr. Layne says, her voice unexpectedly stern. “When have you been alone?”

  “Since that very first night. That’s kind of what sole survivor means.”

  Dr. Layne’s lips scrunch to one side.

  “So in the hospital, surrounded by nurses and doctors who worked to save you? When Cora and Glenn sat by your bed around the clock? When Piper—”

  “What about Piper?” I interject. “She’s running for the exit, too.”

  “Piper’s not trying to abandon you. She’s hurting. She needs you. So do Cora and Glenn and all the people who love you. They all need you, just like you need Piper to keep fighting.”

  “I already told you, I’m not going to do anything drastic.”

  “I’m not talking life and death, Ava. I’m saying, are your scars going to keep people out, or let people in?” She touches her face. “You didn’t choose to be burned. Neither did I. I could have stayed angry. I could have pushed everyone away. But I had a choice, just like you have a choice.” She moves her fingers to her chest. “You decide how your scars change you here. You decide how much love you let in. You chose to live that night in the fire, and you need to keep choosing it.”

  I stand from the dirt and walk off the concrete slab into the grass, orienting myself to where my bedroom would have been on the second story. I find the spot in the grass and stand in it, facing Dr. Layne.

  “I did not choose any of this. My dad pushed me out a window and I landed right here, in a life I did not choose.”

  Dr. Layne’s eyebrows furrow, trying to understand.

  “You think your dad pushed you?”

  I nod. “The last thing I saw before the roof collapsed was him, running toward me. He pushed me, and I fell. Right here.”

  Dr. Layne stands and folds her arms, her hip jutted out slightly as she considers the grassy spot where my neighbor found me that night.

  “Ava. I’ve seen the police reports. Your dad’s body was found in the hallway outside your room. You’re right—they think he was trying to get to you. But the ceiling collapse blocked him.”

  “He pushed me,” I say. “How else did I get out that window?

  Dirt spirals between us, but Dr. Layne doesn’t blink.

  “Ava, your dad didn’t push you. You jumped.”

  43

  That can’t be true.

  I crumble to the grass, replaying that night in my mind. The heat crashing down from the ceiling. Snippets of a movie reel—flashes of panic and smoke and burning in my throat. I opened the window to breathe.

  Dad’s face through the flames. His mouth moved at me. And that’s it—the next thing I knew, I was on the ground clinging to the stars and my neighbor’s face above me, telling me to hang on.

  I lay my head among the cool blades, right where I landed that night. This time, puffy clouds glide above me rather than twinkling stars. Dr. Layne tells me to take as long as I need.

  Even if I did jump, I didn’t know what I was leaping toward. I didn’t know how I’d look, or that when I woke up, I’d be alone.

  Even if I chose life in a moment of panic, how do I keep choosing it now?

  A silhouette enters my view, backlit by the sun. I think I’m having some majorly realistic déjà vu until the memory speaks.

  “As I live and breathe,” a woman’s voice says.

  I shield the sunlight until the shape comes into focus as Mrs. Sullivan, the neighbor who found me that night, burning on the grass. She puts her hand over her heart as I stand. As soon as I’m on my feet, she hugs me tight to her, then holds me at arm’s length.

  “Let me look at you. You look”—she scans my face, smiling—“wonderful.”

  I let her hug me again.

  She clings to me for a long time, and when she finally lets go, she holds me by the shoulders, searching my eyes. “I can’t tell you the good it does my heart to see you standing here. Alive and well.”

  A tear slides down her wrinkled skin, and she laughs and lets go of me to pull a yellowed hanky with an
embroidered pink flower from her shirt pocket. She dabs at her eyes.

  “What a silly old ninny I am,” she says. She dabs again, starts to put it back, and changes her mind as new tears emerge. “I think about you all the time. We pray for you every week at the Sunday service.”

  “For me?”

  “Of course, dear. All of us.” She shakes her head. “You gave me quite the scare that night, you know. A couple of times, I thought I’d lost you for good.”

  So much of that night is a smoky haze, but I never thought what I must have looked like to her. How frightened she must have been trying to keep me awake as the house burned.

  “I never thanked you,” I say. “For helping me.”

  The words seem so small, so wholly inadequate. She laughs and waves her hanky in the air.

  “Oh goodness, don’t you dare thank me,” she says. “To tell the truth of it, I’m not sure I did much to help.”

  She takes my hand in hers and taps it lightly, not reacting in the slightest to my disproportionate thumb. Her skin is thin and soft against mine.

  “I’m not gonna sit here and pretend to know why God lets things happen to good people like you and your folks, but I know this: God puts people in our path, and my path crossed yours that night,” she says. “Your story is part of mine now, and I know that’s how he wants it—our hearts all jumbled together.”

  Her eyes fall on the remnants of my life behind me.

  “There’s always beauty in the ashes. Sometimes we just can’t see it yet.”

  She squeezes me tight one more time, steps back and shakes her head like she still can’t believe I’m real.

  “God bless,” she says. Another dab at both eyes, and then she turns and walks back toward her house. For a moment, I want to call her back, to tell her she saved me that night.

  How her voice snatched me back from the darkness.

  How she helped me choose to stay.