Everton Miles Is Stranger Than Me

by Philippa Dowding

  My mother worried about this. The twins are spectacularly twinned. They think together, they finish each other’s sentences, and sometimes I swear they brain-talk to each other. They have the same name, also a bad idea, but no one listened to me when they were born. Jez thinks they’re weird, and sometimes I have to agree.

  I really can’t say what will happen to them if they’re separated all day. The first inkling, this screaming, is not good. They shriek and slam cupboards and bang dishes on the table. Mom hears me come in and calls hello from upstairs. Why isn’t she calming them down?

  “Mom! Why are C2 screaming?”

  “Oh!” she calls back, like it’s the first time she’s noticed. “Could you feed them please, Gwen? I’m just finishing some work.” My mom works for a law firm, and she just got a promotion. I sigh. My old dog, Cassie, is curled up on the couch, so I bury my face in her smelly dog fur and she thumps her tail a little. She doesn’t even get up.

  In the hall, I see a creamy yellow envelope on the table. It has my name on it in elegant writing.

  Gwendolyn Golden.

  I frown and get a little knot in my stomach. I slip the envelope into my back pocket then wade into the kitchen. I order C2 to sit and shhhh. Bagels and milk appear, which seems to calm them. They start talking about their teachers more quietly, then my mother comes downstairs and I’m off duty.

  I slip past her and up to my room.

  I open the letter.

  Dear Gwendolyn,

  By now you’ve probably heard that you have a new schoolmate. He’s new in town and visiting me at The Float Boat tonight. Please come by and meet him at 7:00 p.m.

  Your Faithful Mentor,

  Emmeline Forest

  P.S. You’ve met him before.

  I stare at this letter from Mrs. Forest, baffled. I reread it a few times. Who have I met before? No one. I don’t know any boys I haven’t grown up with.

  It’s a mystery.

  At dinner, my mother begs me to stop fiddling with my spaghetti.

  “What did Mrs. Forest want?” she asks. She must have been here when the letter arrived.

  “She wants me to meet someone tonight at The Float Boat. They’re new in town.”

  My mother raises an eyebrow. “Meet someone new? How mysterious!” She’s right to be surprised. New people don’t turn up in Bass Creek all that often. She adds, “You know, there’s a new mechanic shop around the corner from The Float Boat. It just opened last week. I noticed a few teenagers out front.”

  Mechanic? The word rings in my head like it should mean something, but it doesn’t.

  After clearing up the dinner dishes, I head out into the cool September evening. I stride down the street toward The Float Boat and the Mystery Person. I’m lost in thought (who is it?) when I hear bottles rattling in a shopping cart. The familiar sound comes from a side street, so I stop and wait.

  It’s Mr. McGillies. His long coat is as filthy as ever, and his thick glasses look exactly like the bottom of one of the bottles that he collects around town in his old grocery cart. He stops his cart in front of me.

  “Hi, Mr. McGillies,” I say politely. Even though I’ve been floating above the cornfield and watching his cabin all summer, I haven’t seen him for a while and he looks thin and old, more bent over than usual. He almost never looks people in the eye, but this time he does. He looks up at me (he’s very short), and his eyes look gigantic behind their glasses. He looks smaller than I remember, like he’s drying up and shrivelling. But then, I’m growing.

  “Missy has a new friend in town,” he says. Mr. McGillies is cryptic at the best of times.

  “No, I don’t. What do you mean, Mr. McGillies?” I ask. He knows. He knows what’s going on at The Float Boat, he knows who I’m meeting. He and Mrs. Forest are totally in on this together. My Watcher and my Mentor, tormenting me for fun.

  He grins then starts coughing. I don’t remember Mr. McGillies coughing before. When he catches his breath, he slowly rattles away down the sidewalk. Even his rattling seems different from the last time I saw him, slower and quieter.

  “Don’t fly away now, missy!” he calls softly over his shoulder.

  “Thank you, Mr. McGillies.” He never says much, it’s true, but he has been a good Watcher. Last summer he saved me from the terror of the Shade with just a bottle in his hand. Maybe you don’t have to talk much to keep an eye out for people. I think about last night in the laneway outside his cabin …

  … Gwendolyn …

  I shudder and then head on down the street.

  Five

  Mrs. Forest waits for me on the porch of The Float Boat. Candied air wafts out the open door into the darkness, and the warmly lit windows glow.

  “Gwendolyn!” she calls. I swing up onto the porch, and Mrs. Forest wraps me in a warm hug, which I allow. It would be impossible to stop her anyway — she’s everywhere. My Mentor. I’ve missed her. We haven’t talked much all summer.

  “So, who’s the Mystery Person?” I ask as I follow her into the store. I feel a little guilty for not talking to Mrs. Forest for weeks, but she doesn’t seem to notice. There’s no point in feeling guilty, though. It’s not easy to be upset in The Float Boat. It’s hard to be sour in a candy store.

  I step inside, and the Mystery Person grins from the counter.

  “Hi, Gwendolyn Golden,” he says in a teasing voice.

  The Mystery Person has grown since I last saw him. He’s unnervingly tall and handsome. How does that happen in a matter of a few months?

  “Hi, Everton Miles.” My hand goes to my necklace, and I grasp my father’s golden feather there. A bad habit when I’m nervous. This is the new boy in town? Everton Miles. I don’t know him well. I’ve only met him once before. But how could I forget him? I remember everything else about that night perfectly, the Midsummer Party. The other Night Flyers. The Spirit Flyers. The singing. Frankly, a night of flying and dancing among old-growth trees with a group of starshot immortals would be a hard thing for anyone to forget.

  He’s all shoulders and broad chest, long arms and legs, and I know immediately that he’s both much wiser and cooler than me, although he’s not much older. He has unnervingly dark blue eyes.

  Mrs. Forest watches us.

  “Remember Everton and his brother Emerson from last summer? At the Night Flyer Midsummer party? They just moved here. Emerson opened a mechanic shop around the corner,” she says.

  “Yes, I remember. My mom mentioned something about a new mechanic shop,” I say.

  My, but he is charming. All dark hair, blue eyes, and red lips. His black T-shirt clings nicely to his shoulders. I try hard not to notice.

  Mrs. Forest slides into a booth, and I slide in beside her. Everton crams himself into the booth facing us, and for a moment our knees touch under the table. I shoot mine off to the side. Mr. Forest sits one booth over, quietly reading a newspaper. He smiles at me and then goes back to reading.

  “Everton is from the city. He’s never lived in a small town, Gwen,” Mrs. Forest goes on. “Everything is new to him and probably quite strange.”

  “My old school had five thousand kids,” Everton adds. “It wasn’t exactly a paragon of virtue or scholarly learning, either.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “There was a lot of fighting. Drinking. Drugs. Stuff like that. Pretty much what you’d expect.”

  I want to tell him that I have no expectations of what a city high school might be like, but he keeps talking.

  “I wasn’t the best student either, to be honest. Hopefully grade ten will be better. What about you? Are you a good student?”

  “Good enough, I guess.” I shrug. It’s a lie; I’m a crap student. But I’m relieved, too. At least he’s not going to be popping up in any of my classes.

  “Everton’s offered to practice your flying skills with y
ou,” Mrs. Forest says. “Maybe you can help him adjust to small-town life in return? He can answer questions about being a Night Flyer, and help you with your choice next summer.”

  Choice. Yes, that choice, the one that has to be made at the Midsummer Party next year. About who I am and what I’m going to do with my gift. Fly. Not fly. I haven’t thought much about it for a while. I’ve been blocking it out.

  “Okay.” I’m not at all sure I want flying lessons from Everton Miles. I’m going to feel like his hopeless little sister. I still have trouble with landings.

  Mrs. Forest reaches into a bag on the floor and pulls out an enormous book. A little groan escapes me when I see the title: Your First Flight: A Night Flyer’s Handbook. There’s a gold star stamped on the cover that says: The Complete & Unabridged Version (Newly Updated!). The rest of the cover is very familiar. It’s a quaint watercolour painting of a mother, father, and young son from the 1950s on the sidewalk dressed in their Sunday best. They’re perfectly average-looking, except they’re all shoulder-height off the ground.

  They’re a family of happy Night Flyers.

  It’s exactly the same cover as the book under my bed, which is not a book. It’s actually a box. It’s got photos of my dad in it and my golden feather. It’s also got my torn and taped three-page brochure, Your Life as a Night Flyer Starts Today: Your Ten Most Pressing Questions Answered (Micro-Edition for the Less-Than-Willing Reader).

  Mrs. Forest shoves the gigantic book at me, and I leave it on the table between us. I get it. No more three-page, micro-edition brochure for me.

  “Not much of a reader?” Everton asks, amused.

  “It’s a pretty big book,” I answer honestly.

  Mrs. Forest brings us tea and we talk a little more about school, and then it’s time to go. I drop the Night Flyer’s Handbook into my backpack and head out into the darkness. The enormous book feels like a block of cement at my back.

  As the door closes behind me, I realize I could talk to Mrs. Forest about the winged creature whispering my name. If not Jez, then why not her? She’s my Mentor. But there’s that stubborn secrecy again. It was late, I was tired, who knows what I saw? It was probably nothing. Right?

  Gwendolyn.

  Six

  A large set of shoulders jostles me on the sidewalk.

  “So what is there to do at night?” Everton asks. He follows me out of The Float Boat so silently, I startle.

  “Nothing.”

  My town closes up after dark. It’s not the most exciting place on the planet. A light switches on in the top floor of a house down the street. Everton grins, and not a totally good grin, to be honest. It’s a Cheshire Cat grin: Bad Boy Alert.

  He jogs then lifts off. His feet rise slowly above my head. He hangs lazily in the air, floating down the sidewalk. This is odd. I’ve never had a conversation with someone bobbing ahead of me like a balloon. I can suddenly see why Jez always acts a little uneasy when I do it to her. Everton clearly has the hang of flying. I still have to think hard about it most of the time.

  “Hey, watch this,” he grins. The Bad Boy Alert siren ramps up to three alarms. When either my little brother or sister say, “Hey, watch this,” it usually ends in a trip to the hospital. With stitches.

  Everton zips to the top of the house with the light on. There’s a glow behind the curtains. He peeks in the window then whispers, “They’re watching television!” He takes a huge breath then lets out an unholy crowing sound like a rooster. He zips back down to my side and yells, “Run!”

  I run. A split second too late. I’m so astonished that I stand and watch the curtains shake and the window fly open. A lady peers down at me. I can’t place her, but she’s familiar. Then my feet decide to get me out of there and I catch up with Everton.

  “That was stupid,” I spit at him when we’re around the corner.

  He grins. “Who cares? She doesn’t know who I am.”

  “She probably knows who I am, though! Thanks a lot. This is a small town, Everton. You better get that through your head.”

  Everton shrugs and seems pleased with himself.

  “I’m leaving,” I say and march onto the main street. He catches up to me. “Sorry, Gwendolyn. You’re right. I don’t know this town, and you do.” He’s so sincere and there’s the full-watt charm beaming at me, too.

  “Want to meet my brother?” He grins. He points to a sign behind me: Miles Motors.

  “Please?” He looks so goofy and harmless that I roll my eyes and follow him through the big double doors.

  It’s a big garage filled with tools, boxes, and car parts. It already looks lived-in and comfortable and smells of cars and oily rags. Come to think of it, there was a mechanic shop here before, but I can’t remember what it was called or who ran it. I don’t drive yet, and I don’t think Mom ever brought her car here. A man in overalls looks up at a car raised high on a metal table. He hears us enter.

  “Hi!” he calls and walks over. “Gwendolyn Golden, so nice to meet you again. I’m Emerson Miles. Remember us?” He wipes his big greasy hands on a rag. He looks like Everton, except instead of charming he just looks pleasant. His blue eyes twinkle, and his enormous hand engulfs mine as we shake. He’s quite a bit older than his little brother.

  “Of course, from the Midsummer Party. Welcome to Bass Creek,” I say, as welcoming as I can. What I really want to say is, “Why on earth would anyone want to leave the big city to live here?”

  “Thanks.” Emerson is a Night Flyer too, just like his little brother, except he’s kind of a Night Flyer community leader, like Mrs. Forest.

  I realize that there are now four Night Flyers in Bass Creek.

  It used to be just Mrs. Forest and me, but now with the Miles brothers, we’ve doubled our numbers overnight. We’re becoming almost ordinary, the Night Flyers in this town.

  Seven

  I’m flying.

  Night creatures buzz around me. Cornfields wave in the September night below my feet.

  Earlier, I walked home from Miles Motors (Everton politely accompanied me at his brother’s suggestion), I talked to Mom, I went to bed. I stuffed the copy of Your First Flight: A Night Flyer’s Handbook (The Complete & Unabridged Version, Newly Updated!) under my bed beside the fake box version. Then, hours later when the house was asleep, I flew out my window.

  I probably shouldn’t have. But I did.

  A light breeze moves my hair and brushes my cheek. The dirt road below me is empty, and I try not to glance at the spot where the doll may or may not have been. I ignore the strange flutterings all around me — or is that my heart? I float high enough to see over the cornfield to the distant trees. Mr. McGillies’s cabin stands all alone in the darkness next to the forest.

  It feels so good to stretch and roll in the air. I drift. I hover. I do a gentle figure eight.

  I watch.

  A light is on in the cabin again. Mr. McGillies moves back and forth in front of the window. His shadow flickers past, again and again. Why is he still awake?

  Suddenly, a shiver of cornstalks rattle below me. A flutter of wings.

  My heart hammers.

  Gwendolyn.

  Then a creature steps out of the field and onto the road below me.

  For a second I see him clearly.

  A man.

  A man with wings. Dark, feathered wings, and a hint of golden eyes, fiery and dangerous-looking.

  Gwendolyn.

  The whisper comes again. I’m too astonished to move. We really do freeze with terror. Then he’s gone in a streak of dark smoke into the stars above. I watch him go, but it’s really just a thought, a possibility. There may have been nothing there at all.

  I float down to where he stood, and it’s suddenly very clear to me that I cannot touch down on this spot. The road where the creature stood is burned and gently smoking.

  A bla
ck feather rests in the creature’s footprint.

  I’m horrified as I slowly reach down, although I know this is stupid, stupid, stupid.

  Something is making me reach out to the feather. Then at the last moment I snatch my hand away and grasp my father’s golden feather around my neck instead. As I watch, the black feather catches fire and burns to ash before my eyes.

  “Gwendolyn Golden, fancy meeting you here,” a voice says quietly. I start and look up just as Everton Miles steps out of the corn.

  Eight

  Everton walks over to the spot where the black feather just burned to nothing. He pushes the dirt around with his shoe.

  “What are you staring at?” he asks.

  “Nothing.” I stand up straight. “What are you doing here?”

  “I could ask you the same question. Do you think you should be out here at this hour?” He’s teasing me, but there’s an edge to his voice. A part of me, a big part, a sensible part, thinks just tell him what you saw. But another part, the cowardly sneaky part, holds back. First Jez, then Mrs. Forest, now Everton Miles. I’m a liar, a teller of partial truths.

  “I come to this part of the cornfield almost every night. I keep wondering why Mr. McGillies has his light on,” I say.

  “Oh, yeah, Mr. McGillies is your Watcher.” Everton has already steered me away from the spot where the feather burned. He lifts off gently, and I follow.

  “Do you know him?” I ask.

  Everton shakes his head. “Not really. He likes bottles, I hear.” Everton picks up speed. I struggle to keep up.

  “You still haven’t told me why you’re here,” I say. We’re past the cornfield now, and I can see the houses on the last street in town just ahead, but he doesn’t answer me.