On a Dark Wing

by Jordan Dane

  So I got in our SUV and left town with Dad—feeling pissed, ashamed, scared, loaded with guilt—and still not knowing what I’d say to Tanner. On top of everything, I’d be missing Nate’s big adventure. With me being worried for Tanner and for Nate, I was in a pretty crappy mood.

  “I thought we’d stop at that little café on the way up, get something to eat. You in?” Dad asked like I had a choice.

  “Yeah…whatever,” I mumbled.

  With a lot on my mind, I stared out the passenger window with my arms crossed. I knew my dad hated me using the word whatever, but it was my only way to let him know I wasn’t into his father-daughter bonding ritual anymore. Whatever sent a message that I didn’t care about any of this and that he could make all the decisions. Dad usually ignored me when I got moody, but not this morning. For some reason, me not talking and my “whatever” had pushed him. Before we got out of our neighborhood, he pulled over the SUV, shifted it hard into Park, and turned toward me. When I heard the crunch of leather, the sound of him shifting in his seat, I couldn’t make myself look at him.

  “Is this how it’s going to be the whole trip?” When I didn’t answer, he kept talking. “You were the one who asked to go a day early. Now you act like I’m forcing you. What’s up with you, Abbey? Talk to me.”

  Dad was being a shit and so was I. That gene, I’d inherited.

  I crossed my arms tighter and only caught his reflection in the glass, his face silhouetted in the lights off his dash. I could have told him exactly how I felt about the timing of his trip and started our day with an argument, but I didn’t want the hassle, not when I felt like such a loser.

  “It’s just early, Dad. Can we just…go?”

  For a long moment, he didn’t say anything and neither did I. I stared out my passenger window, waiting him out. Stubborn was my middle name and no one knew that better than my dad. When he finally heaved a sigh, I recognized his usual signal that he’d let it go. He shifted the car into gear and we were off again, but Dad was on edge now and I woke up that way.

  Our father-daughter bonding trip had gotten off to a great start. Typical.

  Almost two hours later

  Breaking up our four-hour trip, Dad and I hit Trudy’s Café almost every time we went to our cabin near Healy. It looked like a little Swiss chalet with souvenirs, T-shirts, refrigerator magnets (can’t have too many of those little beauties) and key chains, shit like that. I could almost hear the yodeling. Off the Parks Highway, it was on our way, so stopping for a stackage of pancakes would have been very cool, except that I felt like a helium balloon, only without the helium. I carved a piece out of the center of my cakes and filled it with syrup to see if I could hold it in. A syrup dam. That pissed off Dad, but I guess that was the whole point. When he got up to pay the bill and sneak a visit to the head, I went outside to call Tanner. Avoiding the front parking lot, loaded with tourists in their mobile tin cans on wheels, I went for a quiet spot behind the restaurant.

  I still didn’t know what I’d say, but I hoped that when I heard Tanner’s voice, something would come to me. After he answered on the second ring, I heard car noises in the background. His mother must have been driving him to school.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked. “You never actually…call.”

  “Yeah, well. I had to catch you before I fall off the face of the planet. Getting bars at the cabin would be a major stroke of good luck and you know how that goes. Luck and me aren’t exactly seeing eye to eye these days. I just wanted to say…”

  “Look, you don’t have to. I’ll text you. Later, okay?”

  “I know. You’re not alone. Your mother’s there, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “Then just listen, ’cause my cell may not be working for much longer.”

  “Okay.”

  I took a deep breath and walked onto a small lookout point in back of Trudy’s. Where I stood, I could see into a gorge that had a rushing river the color of jade. Looking at it made the morning chill dig into me and I crossed my arms, still holding my phone. When I pictured Tanner’s face, it gave me the courage to say what I needed to.

  “I wish I had guts like you, Tanner, but I don’t. I’m defective. I haven’t been a very good friend lately. I should have gone with you today…and faced the music.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m a trailblazer. Everyone knows the Silver Scorpion is a party on wheels.”

  The Silver Scorpion was a Liquid Comics graphic novel about a Muslim boy in a wheelchair who lost his legs in a land mine, but had the superpower to control metal with his mind. It was the creation of a group of disabled American and Syrian kids that Tanner had become fascinated with.

  With his mother listening, Tanner tried to sound okay on his side of the conversation, talking about comics, but I knew better. I heard the worry in his voice…and the sadness. I knew he’d hate today. Hearing him on the phone made me wish I was there.

  I didn’t deserve him as a friend. I seriously didn’t.

  “Look, I’ll be here when you get back,” he said. “Thanks for calling. For real, I mean.”

  For my sake, Tanner made things easy on me. That’s the kind of guy he was.

  “Yeah, see you soon. First thing, I promise.”

  I wanted to tell him everything would be all right, but I couldn’t lie. Things were about to get a whole lot worse and I had no idea how to make it better for him.

  Near Healy, Alaska

  After we got to the cabin, Dad had me doing chores. On my suck-odometer, chores ranked in the red zone as something seriously wrong and unnatural, like anchovies on pizza, but I wasn’t in the mood to talk anyway. I put away the groceries we’d bought from a small food store and put fresh linens on the beds and cleaned the kitchen while he chopped wood and cleared snow off the porch and back deck. The cabin was real basic. The front door had a mudroom for taking off our wet boots. The main room had a stone fireplace, a sitting area, and the kitchen. I had my own bedroom and so did my dad. We shared a bathroom that turned gross when he left the seat up—which was like…always.

  By the time my dad got done with his ax, freaking me out like he was Jason on Friday the 13th (so not funny), he came in breathing a little heavy and got a fire going in our hearth. I smelled the wood burning and heard the crackling as I shut the door to my room. The place was always real quiet, which drove me crazier than usual. I had to have music in my ears and snag alone time behind closed doors, scarfing on a Kit Kat bar. Lying on my bed, I got completely wrapped in my tunes.

  When one of my favorite Sara Bareilles’s songs came on my iPod—“Gravity”—it reminded me of Nate. Listening to her sing about wanting to drown in love and being fragile always made me cry. I imagined Nate looking at me, really seeing me. In my dreams, I looked thin and smelled really good, too, like chocolate. Nate’s blue eyes were the color of new denim and they always made it hard for me to breathe. Even in my daydreams, it was the same. I wanted to know what it would be like to touch a boy, for real.

  The lyrics made me ache to kiss him…and hold him…and know what it felt like to really be in love. When my throat tightened, tears rolled down my cheeks and my room turned into a major blur, making it easy to cuddle up in Nateworld. I would never even come close to having someone like him and he sure didn’t need me. He had a real life ahead of him. I could totally see him saving lives and doing real stuff, but that didn’t stop me from fantasizing. I closed my eyes and blocked out the cabin to picture him with me now.

  That would’ve worked, too—except for Dad.

  He barged into my bedroom and ruined everything. I jumped off my pillows and wiped a hand over my face as I pulled the music from my ears.

  “Come on, Dad. Knock.” I couldn’t look at him or else he’d know I’d been crying.

  “I did. You had that music so loud
, guess you didn’t hear me.”

  I kept my back turned as I sat on the edge of my bed, hiding the raging blush that heated my cheeks. I wanted Nate to stay in my head, but Dad’s intrusion messed that up.

  “What’s so important?” I asked.

  “I can grill us hamburgers or hot dogs. What do you feel like?”

  I knew he was hungry and he figured I would be, too, but everything Dad did bugged me more than usual. That wasn’t his fault. I felt tired and on edge for reasons he didn’t know. I took a deep breath and kept my voice calm.

  “No, thanks. I’ll get cereal later. I’m not hungry.” I stuffed the Kit Kat paper wrapper under my thigh.

  “But you didn’t eat much this morning. You always like it when I grill. Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure, Dad. Really.” I still couldn’t look at him. I knew my eyes were red because they felt swollen and they stung.

  “Well, I’ll make extra, in case you change your mind.”

  Before I could argue, he left my room.

  “Nate, give me strength.” I loved saying his name.

  Picturing Nate made me forget about my dad not taking no for an answer. After I listened to “Gravity” one more time—without an interruption—I unpacked my stuff. I put away my clothes and stashed the bags of chips and candy I’d brought. My Kit Kat bars went on the windowsill where they’d be nice and cold. I liked them that way. I opened another one and had it half gone when I noticed that I’d left something very important behind.

  My damned cell-phone charger.

  “Oh, no. No, no.”

  I dumped my knapsack on the bed and tore through everything, looking for it, but it wasn’t there. I’d forgotten it, damn it. Getting up that early, I knew I’d forget something major. Now I’d have to turn off my phone to conserve energy. Being on roam for a signal in such a remote location, my battery would run down in a hurry if I didn’t try to salvage what I could. I’d have to save my call time for emergencies or for text messages that I wasn’t sure would actually send. That meant no information about Nate. I’d be cut off from anything that mattered to me.

  Without a battery charger, my cell would be virtually useless. I knew exactly how that felt. Dad never had a phone installed at the cabin. That went against his weekend-warrior manifesto, he said. If I got desperate, I’d have to get him to drive me to the nearest phone, but that would only get him curious about what was so important. Damn it!

  “I gotta get out of here.” I sighed as I tossed my empty knapsack to the floor. “I can’t breathe in this place.”

  If my cell had enough bars to work, getting to a high spot would be best. I had to call Tanner before my cell died. With the cabin walls closing in on me, I needed to get out. I swung open the door to my room and kept my eyes focused dead ahead. I never looked for my dad. I grabbed my coat and put on my boots outside in the mudroom. When I heard my father calling, asking where I was going, I pretended not to hear him. If he wanted peace and quiet, he’d get more of that without me.

  Being around him only reminded me of how terrible I’d feel once he found out about the pictures of me posted on the internet. I never had “the talk” with Dad. That had always been Mom’s job, like when she first told me about my period when I was ten. If Dad heard from virtual strangers about those nasty photos of me, that would be the first time we’d crossed the sex line. That wasn’t something I even wanted to think about, much less live through.

  With snow crunching under my boots, I headed for the lower ridge behind the cabin, to get those images out of my mind. It made me ill thinking about them, but I couldn’t turn off the replay in my head. I climbed until I sweated under my layers of clothes and felt the heat rush to my cheeks.

  Where I was going, I could think better. I hoped my cell phone might work long enough to talk to Tanner, but when I got to the first ridge, I soon found out that I didn’t have the bars to make the call.

  “Damn it.” I tried holding my cell in the air and moved it around, but nothing helped. “Tanner, I’m sorry.”

  After I stuffed my phone in my jacket pocket, I slumped against a tree and took a deep breath to clear my head. The ridge overlooked part of the valley, one of my alone places. In the daytime, I could see across the lake and the rolling hills of evergreens. When smoke spiraled from the chimneys of the other cabins, it made the valley look like a postcard.

  But on a clear night like tonight, the view was even more special.

  The snow reflected the moonlight like I was walking on powder-blue marshmallows and the night sky took my breath away. Just for me, a gazillion stars twinkled across the universe and the northern lights shot ripples of green-and-red ribbons from one corner of the sky to the other.

  “Holy…sh—shit,” I panted, still out of breath. “Gawh.”

  The colors of the aurora borealis sent waves of light across the valley—and over me. Doused by shimmering magic, I stretched out my arms and spun with my head back until it made me dizzy. When I nearly lost my balance, I fell back on purpose, letting the fresh snow cushion my fall. Cocooned in a blanket of white, I watched the steam of my breath disappear into the darkness, the essence of my soul vaporizing into the night sky. I imagined what it might feel like to be completely alone. No Dad. No cabin. No worries. Just me. I heard the beating of my heart and, if I kept real still, the wind whispered through the trees and the snow crunched under me.

  “Something good is coming…right? It’s gotta be,” I whispered and watched my breath drift over me like wisps of smoke. “Wish you were here, Nate Holden.”

  Even though I knew he couldn’t hear me, I still pictured Nate lying beside me, making snow angels and holding my hand. After all the crap that had happened, being on the ridge with the dazzling light show blazing across the night sky made it all magic, like having him here could actually happen. I shut my eyes and made a wish.

  But a sudden noise stopped me cold. I wasn’t alone.

  The loud caw of a raven made me jump. The haunting sound echoed over the valley. I sat up and looked around me, peering through the dark for that damned bird. When a chill settled into my bones, it made the hair shift on the back of my neck and my arms. I jumped to my feet and looked around. Even though I didn’t see it, I knew the raven was there—watching me in the dark, laughing at me…and listening to my thoughts.

  I ran down the trail, heading back for the cabin.

  Whatever made all those birds come to my window last night, it was still with me. I felt it like the chill racing across my skin as I ran. Not even the magic of the northern lights and making wishes on Nate could make things better. My leaving town hadn’t changed anything. I had a creepy feeling that whatever was coming, it wouldn’t be good at all—not even close.

  A few hours later Palmer, Alaska

  With the lights out in his room, Nate Holden was under his bedcovers in his boxers and T-shirt, staring at the framed poster of Denali hanging on his wall. His dad had gotten him the poster of the mountain and he’d dreamed about climbing it ever since he could remember—his rite of passage into his father’s world. His alarm had been set for 4:00 a.m. but he knew he wouldn’t need it. His body clock would get him up well before the buzzer went off.

  Before he hit the sack, he’d texted Josh. His best friend seemed nervous, but as eager as he was to get the climb started. Since they were doing the climb for the first time tomorrow, they never talked about the bad stuff that could happen, unless his dad forced them. Nate didn’t want to focus on that, but he had to admit that when he lay alone in the dark like this, he thought about it.

  So when his door opened a crack, shining light from the hallway into his room, he appreciated the company. A tiny voice whispered to him.

  “Can we come sleep with you?”

  Hiding a smile, Nate rolled over and pulled back his co
vers to let his little sister, Zoey, scramble in next to him with her favorite stuffed moose. Her bare feet were ice-cold, but the rest of her was like a little heater. Zoey hadn’t asked to sleep in his bed since she’d been five years old, but in the past two weeks, this had been her third time.

  “I brought you a present,” she said. “Wanna look at it?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  In her hand she held up a colorful beaded string. A small silver cross and a four-leaf clover glittered in the pale light shining in from the hallway.

  “I made it. For you,” she said. “It’s a good-luck bracelet.”

  “Oh, wow. You did this, by yourself?”

  “Yep.” She rolled to her knees with a serious look on her face. “Let me put it on you.”

  With a smile on his face, he held out his wrist and watched her small fingers work.

  “Don’t take it off. Okay?”

  In the shadows, when he saw she looked worried, his smile faded.

  “Wearing your bracelet will be like you’re there with me. I promise. I won’t take it off. Ever.” After he kissed her forehead, she sank under the blankets.

  “G’night, Nate.”

  “Sweet dreams, monkey face. You, too, Mister Bullwinkle.”

  Zoey scrunched in closer and pressed the fuzzy moose against his chest. After her breathing got real steady and her arms loosened their grip on him, Nate knew Zoey had fallen asleep. She smelled like toothpaste and soap and something sweet.

  When he kissed the top of her head, any worries he had vanished. He closed his eyes and dreamed of making his climb. With a blanket of white under his mountaineering boots and nothing but blue sky overhead, he stood on the summit of Denali. With his arms outstretched, he looked over the entire world from above the clouds and breathed in the thin air that few men had ever experienced.

  Sweet…real sweet.