Clipped Wings

by Helena Hunting

  “Have a nice night.” I turned and headed for my car.

  “See you soon, Hayden,” she called after me, laughing.

  “Let’s hope not,” I mumbled, sliding into the driver’s seat.

  6

  TENLEY

  Wednesday didn’t start out well. Nightmares kept me awake half the night and I slept through my alarm. By the time I woke up, I was already late for my meeting with Professor Calder. The lots close to my advisor’s building were full, so I ended up parking on the opposite side of campus. I took the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator, aware I was making a terrible second impression. Our first meeting at the start of the semester hadn’t gone smoothly, and I’d hoped to be better prepared the second time around.

  I knocked on his half-open door.

  He glanced at me from over his glasses, disapproval unmistakable as he beckoned me inside. “Miss Page¸ how kind of you to show up. Are you so eager to be demitted from the master’s program already?”

  “I’m sorry, Professor, my alarm—”

  “Excuses are offensive. Shut the door and take a seat.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  He raised a hand. “Stop talking.”

  I sat in the chair opposite his desk. He stared at me until I looked away. I tried not to fidget. Or cry. Initially, Professor Calder had been pleasant enough over email, praising my ideas and the foundations of my research. He’d seemed genuinely intrigued by my focus on modification as an emergent cultural norm. But in person he’d been standoffish and blunt to the point of cruelty. I had no idea what I’d done to warrant the extreme change.

  “I’ve been through your introductory research. It’s abysmal. You’ll need to go through the suggested revisions by next Wednesday. If it isn’t much improved, we will need to discuss whether or not you have the ability to meet the rigorous demands of this program.”

  I looked up at the sound of his chair rolling across the floor. He rounded his desk, papers in hand. They were covered in red marks. “Do you have anything to say, Miss Page?”

  “Thank you for seeing me even though I was late. It won’t happen again.” I couldn’t get anything else out for fear I would break down.

  He sighed dramatically. “Next week is busy for me. I hadn’t planned on coddling you so much. You’ll have to come in early. Will nine o’clock pose a problem for you again?”

  I shook my head.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Nine o’clock will be fine. Thank you, Professor.”

  He handed me the papers. “Now go. I believe you have to teach in fifteen minutes. I wouldn’t advise you to be late for that, too.”

  I collected my things and left his office, still holding back tears. I couldn’t afford to allow my emotions to get the better of me; I had a first-year seminar to deal with.

  By the end of the day, I wanted to crawl into bed and wipe the hours from my memory. As luck would have it, that didn’t happen. An accident on the way home rerouted me off the freeway onto an unfamiliar exit. My GPS lost its signal, and I wound up in a part of the city I’d never been in before. The buildings were run down; graffiti adorned the crumbling brick and boarded-up windows of abandoned storefronts. The sun began to sink below the tree line, and the neighborhood didn’t look nearly as welcoming as where I lived now. I’d grown up in small-town Minnesota. I might not have known every street by name, but places were usually familiar—nothing like the ominous environment I found myself in now. Tears of frustration threatened as I glanced at street signs. Distracted, I ran through a stale yellow.

  The flash of blue-and-red lights in my rearview mirror proved my error had not gone unseen. The tears I had been fighting all day won the battle, forging a path down my cheeks. I swiped at them with the sleeve of my shirt.

  Traffic was heavy on the four-lane street, so I turned down a cul-de-sac as directed by the signals of the officer behind me. I’d never been pulled over before; I’d never even gotten a parking ticket. My fingers tapped restlessly on the wheel while I watched the officer saunter up to the driver’s side window. I rolled it down. The quiet inside the car was broken by the sound of horns honking and a man yelling somewhere in the distance. The temperature had dropped, and the chill in the air made me shiver. The officer was younger, probably in his early thirties.

  “I’m sorry—”

  He cut me off, sounding bored. “License and registration, please.”

  I bit down on the inside of my cheek and rifled around in the glove compartment for the registration, then retrieved my license from my wallet. I handed them over, then stared at the odometer, willing myself not to cry again. It wasn’t working, and the officer didn’t seem like he was all that interested in doing anything but writing a ticket.

  He frowned as he inspected my license. “Says here you’re from Arden Hills, Minnesota. Seems like you’re quite a ways from home, Miss Page.”

  “I moved here for school.”

  “You want to tell me why you ran that light back there?” He inclined his head in the direction of the intersection I failed to stop at.

  “I-I was distracted. There was an accident on the freeway and I had to get off. I made a wrong turn and I don’t know this area.”

  He was cold, remote. Like he heard versions of the same story a thousand times and it no longer affected him. I wondered how long it took for that to happen, for empathy to dissolve into disdain over human error. Not very long, I imagined. A flicker of something like recognition flashed across his face as he looked from me to my license and back again.

  “Wait here, please.”

  He left with my personal information in hand. The sun disappeared behind the houses as I waited. Under different circumstances the flashing light of the police car would have been embarrassing, but for now I was grateful. Being stranded in a place like this, where the windows of the house to my right were taped with plastic and the screen door was hanging by one hinge, made me nervous.

  It was a long time before he returned. When he did, his demeanor had changed. Gone was the detached coldness. Instead he spoke with an air of familiar apology. “You’ve had a difficult year, Miss Page.”

  “Wh-what—” I stopped. I was well acquainted with pity.

  “I recognized the name. When tragedy strikes a small community close by, people in my line of work tend to hear about it.” He handed me my license and registration. “You’ll need to get that changed to your new address. You know where to do that?”

  I nodded and slipped them into my purse. “Thank you, Officer. I’ll take care of it first thing in the morning.” I waited for a ticket for running the light, but it never came.

  He propped an arm on the doorframe and leaned in. “You really shouldn’t be driving out here alone. This is a rough part of town. You know how to get home from here?”

  I’d only learned the routes from my apartment to Northwestern and to the closest grocery store. Embarrassed, I told him as much. He offered to escort me to familiar surroundings. After I gave him the address to Serendipity, he got back in his car and led the way home.

  The motion sensor kicked on as I pulled into the driveway behind the store, bathing the area in soft light. As I turned off the engine and got out of the car, so did my escort. He had that typical cop look: clean-cut, short hair, broad shoulders, and thick arms. He was sporting a five o’clock shadow, and his face was all harsh angles. Nine months ago his presence might have soothed. Now it was hard to see anything in that uniform but a reminder of the accident. There had been so many questions after the crash. I’d never had any answers worth giving, only horrifying memories.

  “Are you okay from here?” He rested his palm on the butt of his gun while he took stock of his surroundings.

  “I’m fine. Thank you for being—” My voice cracked. “Thank you.”

  “You take care of yourself, Miss Page.” He handed me a business card.

  It had the Chicago police force emblem on it. Below were his name, badge number, and
direct line at the precinct. “Thank you, Officer Cross. I promise I’ll be more careful.”

  A call crackled through his radio, and he made a hasty departure. I unlocked the door and climbed the stairs leading to my apartment. It was late, and I was tired. The thought of food made my stomach turn even though I hadn’t eaten anything since morning. There were essays to mark for the class I taught and a thesis to work on, but fatigue dragged me down. The day had been taxing from the start, and I felt wasted. A specter of my former self, lost in a sea of waning numbness. The emotions I thought I had buried in Arden Hills with the people I loved were resurrecting themselves.

  * * *

  At three in the morning I woke for the third time in as many hours. Exhaustion was no match for the siege of nightmares. Some weeks were better than others, but this one had been horrendous. I went to the kitchen and filled a glass with water, unable to erase the lingering images. The sound of footsteps in the hallway outside my apartment made me pause, the glass halfway to my mouth. Setting it on the counter, I tiptoed to the door and peeked through the eyehole. Sarah’s white-blond hair came into view as she rifled around in her oversized bag, mumbling to herself.

  “Damn it!” She turned the bag over, dumping the contents onto the floor and dropping to her knees.

  I flipped the lock and opened the door.

  “Jesus Christ! You scared the shit out of me.” She threw a glare my way.

  “Sorry, it sounded like you might need a hand.” I looked at the pile of random items littering the hallway. Among them was a wad of cash secured with a rubber band. Wherever she bartended, it must have been busy to pull in that kind of money midweek.

  “I can’t find my keys. I just had them in my hand, and now I can’t find them. I don’t know how that happens. I mean seriously, is there a goddamn key fairy that just up and aways with my shit so I can’t get into my apartment? My feet are killing me and I need a drink. Damn it, I can hear them!”

  “Have you tried your jacket pocket?” I pointed to where the sound was coming from.

  She shot me a patronizing look. “Of course I—” She patted her pocket and pulled out the key chain.

  I helped her stuff the rest of her things back in her duffel-bag-sized purse.

  “Sorry I’m being such a bitch. It was a long night.”

  “If I got home at three in the morning and couldn’t find my keys, I’d be bitchy, too.”

  She unlocked her door and looked me over, assessing my state of wakefulness. “Do you want a beer?”

  “Sure, just let me get my keys.” I was wide awake anyway.

  I’d been in Sarah’s apartment for a drink once before. The living room contained a mishmash of furniture that didn’t match but seemed to go together anyway. She shed her coat and dropped it on a chair, and her bag followed suit. Deadly-looking stilettos were kicked off and left in the middle of the floor. Sarah groaned and sauntered to the fridge. Grabbing two beers, she popped the tops and handed me one. She curled up in a wicker chair that looked like a nest, giving me the choice between a floral print couch straight out of the ’70s or a beanbag chair. The couch was surprisingly comfy.

  “Why are you awake, if you don’t mind me asking?” Sarah asked.

  “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Bad dreams?” she asked, guzzling back half her beer.

  “Sometimes.”

  Sarah waited for me to elaborate. When I didn’t, she nodded like she understood and moved on. We talked about school and work and how it was difficult to balance them both. Now that the semester was in full swing, Cassie had cut back my shifts so I had enough time to focus on course work and my thesis.

  At twenty-four, three years my senior, Sarah was working on her MBA. The cost was astronomical, even with her partial scholarship. Conversation with Sarah was easy; she was funny and exuberant and honest. In many ways she reminded me of friends from my past.

  It was five in the morning by the time I wandered back across the hall, still wired and unable to sleep. I paced around my living room, stared at the bookshelves, and pulled down the sketchbook.

  I flipped through the pages, stopping at a crudely drawn sketch of a silly tattoo I once wanted. I mentioned getting a tattoo for my eighteenth birthday in passing a couple of times to see what Connor would say. He didn’t seem to mind until I showed him the design, then he was adamantly opposed.

  I changed the design to something else and got it anyway, thinking it wasn’t a big deal and he’d get over it. It was just a tattoo, nothing too out there as far as I was concerned. The tiny heart was generic enough, although I wanted it black instead of red, just to make it different. The location made it easy to hide. Except from Connor, of course. I thought it was sexy. He didn’t. He was so upset with me when he saw the tattoo on my hip. The argument and tears that followed came with a forced promise not to desecrate my body again. I never expected that kind of reaction from him at the time. How naïve I was.

  I fingered the ladder of rings in my ear, another of my acts of rebellion. Connor hated those, too. His intolerance for anything that didn’t conform to socially sanctioned norms was a point of contention between us. From hair color to clothes, he always stayed safely inside the lines, and I always tried to see how much further I could push them. I thought our differences would have made us stronger; we balanced each other out. But in the end I took everything from him.

  Trey might have been right about relinquishing what had been given to me in the will. While I wasn’t ready to let go, part of me felt like it never should have been mine in the first place.

  My mother assured me that having cold feet was normal in the weeks preceding the wedding. Maybe she was wrong. If I hadn’t been so afraid of losing Connor, I might have confessed my doubts. But I was weak. Connor was gone now, and only I could be held accountable. All I wanted was to avoid all the hoopla that would have resulted if our mothers had been in charge. We never would have gotten on that plane if I hadn’t insisted on a destination wedding. In doing so, I sentenced everyone I loved to death.

  I turned to the last page in the book, tracing the delicate lines of the sketch I finished just days before I moved to Chicago. It was a representation of every soul I ripped from this earth, as well as the tattered state of my own. I might never be whole again, but I needed to find a way to release some of the guilt I carried so I could attempt to move forward. I was still stagnating, despite having left behind the unyielding reminders of what I’d lost. I thought leaving would help, but I was still struggling to find balance in Chicago.

  Maybe Hayden was right, maybe I needed to give in to the pain. The possibility that it could help put the past behind me made me want to set aside my fears over the feelings Hayden evoked. The potential for some sense of inner peace was too tempting. I was resolved. I would show him the design. I wanted a permanent reminder of everything I had lost because of my cowardice. It was the only way I could see that might allow me to heal.

  7

  HAYDEN

  I hadn’t seen Tenley in days. Well, that was a lie; I had seen her entering and leaving the antiques store on several occasions. But whenever I went through Serendipity under the pretense of buying my fourth coffee of the day from the adjoining café, she was nowhere to be found. There was a pretty good chance she was hiding after our chat in the basement. As Lisa patiently informed me, talking about genital piercings didn’t quite fit with polite conversation. I would be more conscious of discussion topics next time around. On the positive side, Cassie had to duck out early today. That would make it very difficult for Tenley to pull a disappearing act.

  It was early evening when my uncle Nate stopped by Inked Armor. He was still in a suit, so he must have come straight from work to get Cassie.

  I dropped my pencil and pushed away from my desk. We did the man-hug back-pat thing. Chris and Jamie greeted him with the same enthusiasm as I did. It had been a while since I’d seen Nate. We both worked long hours, and he spent his spare time doting on my aunt.
He was whipped, but he didn’t seem to mind.

  “I’m glad you stopped in,” I said. “When are we going to start planning that piece you’ve been talking about?”

  “Soon? I’m picking Cassie up again tomorrow. I’ll bring some pictures with me and we’ll figure something out.”

  “Excellent. I’m holding you to it this time.”

  Nate had been going on for a while about getting a tattoo, but he hadn’t committed. I figured if I could get him to bring something in for me to work with, it wouldn’t be hard to persuade him to put it on his skin. Cassie might not be open about it, but she had a thing for ink.

  At six o’clock Nate went over to Serendipity to get Cassie. After they left, Tenley took up residence behind the register. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. I was between clients and wasn’t expecting anyone for at least another half hour, which gave me time to talk Tenley into bringing her design by later.

  “Getting coffee.” Chris called after me, but I waved him off and rushed out of the shop. It was warm for the beginning of October, so I pushed up the sleeves of my shirt, feeling overly hot and nervous. I hadn’t planned this out at all. I tried to tell myself she was just a girl. All I was going to do was invite her over so I could persuade her to let me put some art on her body. What a crock of shit.

  The bells above the door jingled my arrival. So much for the surprise angle. She looked up from the book clutched in her hands, then quickly down again. I was off to a fantastic start. The skittish kitten was back. Clearly Lisa was right; I hadn’t been as well behaved as I’d thought when I’d last spoken to her.