Awkwardly, Ava changed direction to pass the group of them on the left, and almost stumbled.
“Nice outfit,” Brenda Mulligan called out. Brenda was one of the small group of girls who seemed to follow Jennifer everywhere. A zombie, Morgan called her. “All those girls are zombies,” Morgan had said. “Except they don’t even want brains!”
Ava ignored the group’s laughter. If they were laughing at her, which they probably were, she didn’t want to know.
“Hey, cut it out,” Jeff said.
Ava looked up in shock. He was defending her! She couldn’t believe it. He was so gallant, like Cary Grant. She wanted to run up right then and there and plant one on him.
She gave him a bright smile as she passed, just to annoy Jennifer even more, and a thousand fantasies filled her head as she raced up the front steps of the school.
She imagined herself and Jeff going down a wedding aisle. Her sitting on her elephant and wearing a big white feathered dress, him in his swimming trunks, his tanned muscles gleaming, his handsome face smiling as he vowed to defend her and love her and act just like Cary Grant but even more awesome until they were old and dead.
As she pushed through the front doors, she was jumping down from the elephant’s back and into Jeff Jackson’s arms.
“Ava!” Morgan’s voice called out, piercing through the hallway chatter.
Ava tried to pretend she couldn’t hear her friend. Suddenly the hallways seemed impossibly crowded—and dangerous. All she had to do was get to homeroom and she’d be safe. She shouldn’t have even been here. What she should have done, she realized, was walk right past the school and loiter all day at the supermarket down the street, or out in the woods like some juvenile delinquent.
“Ava!”
Morgan was right in front of her. Despite herself, Ava was impressed that her friend could move so quickly. Morgan wasn’t the most graceful girl ever, not that Ava could talk.
“I have a test, I need to study.”
“Bull. What happened?” Morgan stood with her hands at her waist, refusing to budge. Her red hair wild around her freckled face.
“I got sick. What do you mean?”
“Something happened, at the lake. You weren’t sick, you freaked out.”
“You misunderstood.”
“I did not. One minute you were making out with the most popular boy in school, the next minute you were freaking out in the bathrooms.”
“We didn’t make out.”
“Whatever. You would have, if you hadn’t freaked out.”
“Quit saying that!”
They were standing in front of a classroom, and now kids were pushing by them to get inside. People were starting to stare.
“Ava! Why are you being so weird? And why are you wearing that hood?”
Ava took Morgan’s hand and started pulling her down the hallway to the girls’ bathroom.
“You better tell me what’s going on,” Morgan said, “if you’re going to make me miss homeroom. I already have three tardies, you know.”
“Listen, something really terrible is happening, okay?” Ava said, pulling Morgan into the girls’ room.
She’d expected to find a safe haven there, but she realized, too late, that they weren’t alone. Jennifer Halverson’s BFF Vivienne Witmer was standing at the mirror smearing gloss over her perfect Angelina-Jolie lips.
“I hope everything is okay,” Vivienne said, turning to them with exaggerated concern.
“Thanks,” Ava said.
“You must really be having a bad hair day,” Vivienne said as she walked past and out the door. “See you!”
“She is so unpleasant,” Morgan sniffed. “It’s just because Jeff Jackson likes you, you know. Now are you going to tell me what’s going on or not?”
Ava studied her friend. If she had to tell anyone, it would be Morgan. She probably should tell someone what was going on in case the feathers killed her or something, or she suddenly turned into a giant bird. But just the thought of talking about it out loud made her feel sick.
“How bad can it possibly be? We live in Pennsylvania and we’re twelve. Do you have some weird rash or something?”
“No!”
“Why do you have your head covered? Did you get a bad perm? Or cut off all your hair?” Morgan’s eyes widened. “Oh my god, you shaved your head.”
“Why would I shave my head?”
“You totally liked that girl’s shaved head on America’s Next Top Model. You did it, didn’t you?”
“No!”
“Do you need me to help you shop for a wig?”
“No, I do not.”
“Ava, look on the bright side. You could get a pink bob or something.”
“Okay,” Ava said. “I’ll tell you what happened, and what’s happening, but you won’t believe it. And you have to swear you will not tell one single other soul.”
“I swear!”
“But I can’t tell you here. Can you come over after school? My dad gets home around six so we’ll have a couple of hours.”
Morgan crossed her arms and leaned against one of the sinks. “You can’t make me wait until after school. It’s only first period! Which we are missing, by the way, thankyouverymuch.”
“You might freak out when I tell you.”
“I promise not to freak out, okay? No matter what it is.”
“You swear?”
“Yes!”
Ava took another deep breath. Outside, the halls were quiet now. Normally she would never have skipped a class, but nothing about today was normal, was it? She thought wistfully of her straight A’s and how little good they would do her in the world now. Obviously, it was all downhill from here.
Morgan stood waiting, her big green eyes watching Ava worriedly, impatiently.
“Let’s go into a stall,” Ava said. “Just in case anyone comes in. And then I’ll show you. The one at the end.”
“Okay,” Morgan said.
Ava checked all the other stalls, just to be sure, even though all the doors were wide open. She would die if anyone overheard what she was about to tell her friend.
And then she followed Morgan into the last stall and latched the door.
“Okay,” Ava said. “So . . . ”
Her voice caught in her throat. To her surprise, she started to cry.
“Ava,” Morgan said softly, reaching out to touch Ava’s arm, “whatever it is I will help you. You’re my best friend.”
Ava nodded. Even with Morgan, it was so unbelievably embarrassing. She had to just do it quickly if she was going to do it at all.
“Well,” she said, sighing, “just look, then. And no screaming.”
And she unzipped her hoodie and pulled it off. Under, she was wearing a black Rolling Stones T-shirt her dad had given her, which she took off, too, until she was standing in her flowered bra.
Wincing, she looked up to see Morgan’s reaction.
Her friend stood there with her mouth hanging open, staring in wonder.
“You have. . . ” Morgan reached out her fingers and touched Ava’s arm.
“Yes. They just started coming in at the lake, and now . . . Well, this.”
“Wow. They’re . . . ”
“Feathers,” Ava whispered.
“Beautiful.”
Ava just stared at Morgan, who was softly touching the feathers on her arm with a dazzled look on her face. “What?”
“They’re beautiful,” Morgan said. “It’s like you’re wearing this completely glamorous, fantastic old feather jacket. It’s so amazing. Like in one of those old movies your dad is always making us watch. With all those ladies who lie in bed and faint and stuff.”
“But it’s not a jacket.”
“Let me see the back. It totally looks like you’re wearing a jacket. Look how they go down your back and stop at your neck, and end perfectly at your elbows. It’s totally weird.”
“Yeah, thanks, I KNOW it’s weird.”
“But weird and beautif
ul, Ava. They’re all glittery and perfect. Like, if you sold this in a store it would cost a million dollars.”
Ava stamped her sneakered foot in frustration. “I can’t take it off though! What am I supposed to do??”
Morgan shrugged, and then her face changed. “Wait a second . . . ” She furrowed her brows.
“What?”
“Look.” Morgan was touching Ava’s arm near the elbow, lifting one of the feathers. “It looks like . . . Like they’re starting to peel or something.”
“What??!” Ava snatched her arm away in panic. How much worse could it get? The tears returned then, hot and streaming down her face. What was wrong with her? “I’m such a freak!” she cried.
“No, look,” Morgan said. “See? When you lift up the feather, it looks like it’s starting to peel. And underneath, your skin is perfect. Can you feel that? Like you’re . . . shedding or something.”
“Oh my god. What is happening to me?”
Morgan was about to respond—though of course she didn’t know any better than Ava did what was wrong—when the bell rang outside, signaling the end of first period. Any minute the bathroom would be full of girls.
Quickly, Ava grabbed her T-shirt and slipped it back on. As she was reaching for her hoodie, she noticed the little clump of feathers scattered on the toilet seat and the floor. “Morgan!” She pointed at the feathers, and her friend bent down to pick them up, accidentally knocking into Ava’s arm as she did.
Zipping up her hoodie, Ava burst out of the stall just as Jennifer Halverson entered the bathroom with a few of the zombie girls just behind. After flushing the feathers away, Morgan followed Ava out of the stall.
Jennifer laughed. “Having some alone time, girls?” she asked. The zombies all laughed with her.
“Hey, have you seen Jeff around?” Morgan asked, her voice obnoxiously sweet. “He keeps asking about Ava. I think he has a crush or something. Guess we’ll go see what he wants!”
And with that, Morgan brushed past the group of them and out the door.
Jennifer stood looking after her, with her mouth open and her hands on her hips. “Did you hear what she just said to me?”
Ava slinked out the bathroom door and into the crowded hallway, avoiding Jennifer’s evil glare, adjusting her clothes so that no feathers would show, peeling or not.
CHAPTER FOUR
The rest of the day passed by in a haze of embarrassment and humiliation—which wouldn’t have been so different from most other days for Ava, except that this time there was actually a reason for it. School seemed to last forever, even worse than usual. In gym class, she had to muster every ounce of emotion to convince the teacher she was too sick to participate, and then she had to spend the whole class sitting in the grass next to Alison Freeman, watching the other girls play soccer as sweat rolled down her back, in and out of the feathers, and Alison went on and on about some Broadway musical she’d just seen as well as her great love for field hockey.
It was, truly, the worst hour of Ava’s life.
Morgan was no help at all, rushing to find her between classes and staring at her with big googly eyes, offering Ava her arm as if she were an old lady.
“I may have feathers all over me,” Ava was forced to say under her breath at one point, “but I can still walk, Morgan.”
Morgan had just opened her eyes even wider and whispered back, “I bet you can fly, too. Do you want me to help you find out?”
“No!”
By the time Ava got home, she thought she might pass out from heatstroke, not to mention humiliation and mortification generally. The house was empty, except for Monique spread out lazily on the couch in front of the television, licking her paws and staring at Ava suspiciously.
“What?” Ava asked, putting her hands on her hips.
Monique narrowed her eyes and placed her paw on one of the fake fur pillows Ava had insisted her father buy. “Ava Gardner would totally have pillows like this,” she’d argued at the time.
“Whatever,” Ava sighed, heading to her room and tossing her backpack onto the floor. Behind her, Monique let out a loud yowl.
Ava pulled off the horrible hoodie and collapsed on her bed. She clicked on the ceiling fan and let the air move over her. The feathers were so thick now. Why couldn’t she have grown feathers in the wintertime? They might have come in handy then. She closed her eyes and tried to pretend she was somewhere far away. The air and coolness felt wonderful, amazing against her skin, ruffling through the feathers.
She turned over onto her stomach and stretched out. It felt so good, the cool air. She relaxed into the bed, let her mind drift . . .
She woke up disoriented, wrapped in covers. The room was dark. Monique was spread out beside her and moonlight spilled into the room through the window. So bright and silver and glittering, bathing her.
The windows were open, and cool air was blowing down on her from the fan whirring above her on the ceiling. She pulled in the covers more tightly around her.
For a few minutes, she barely knew where she was.
She looked around for a clock. 10:05, it said. It took her a moment to realize: 10:05 p.m. At night. She must have slept all through the evening. Slowly, the day came back to her, a sick feeling in her gut as she remembered school, the way everyone had stared at her, how uncomfortable she’d been.
And Jeff Jackson, defending her. Her heart fluttered. It hadn’t been that bad a day, when it came down to it.
She got up, throwing off the covers, and pulled on her hoodie again. She tiptoed out of her room. She was hungry, she realized. Starving, in fact.
Her father’s bedroom door was open and his bed still made. No wonder the house was so quiet; even if her father were home and asleep, she’d at least hear a snore or two. There was a note on top of the television: “Out fishing, back late. Dinner’s in the fridge.”
She froze. Realized, all of a sudden, that she’d fallen asleep with the bedroom door open . . . He had to have seen her, checked in on her at least. She felt a sudden resentment that he hadn’t awakened her for dinner. And now she was starving and had to fend for herself! But more importantly, she thought, catching herself: Wouldn’t he have seen? When had she pulled the covers around herself? Her heart pounded. Plus she hadn’t been wearing a shirt! So she was weird, gross, and perverted, all at once. She felt guilty, as if she’d done something horribly wrong and been found out.
The thought crept up on her: but she hadn’t done anything, had she? Maybe if he saw, and knew, he could help her.
Immediately she dismissed the idea. Her father had already dealt with the death of his wife, and plus now his own mother not only had one foot in the grave but was also talking to his dead father as if it was perfectly natural. She, Ava, was all he had.
How could she tell him she was covered in feathers?!
She sighed and wandered to the kitchen. As she crossed the living room, she caught sight of the full moon over the mountains in the distance, through the big sliding glass door.
Of course. Her father always went fly fishing on nights of the full moon. He had for as long as she could remember, though Grandma Kay had told her once that he’d become much more regular and even fanatical about it after his wife died, as a way to cope. That is what the moon is for, she’d said. It lets him see her again.
Grandma Kay always talked that way, though.
Ava stared at the moon now. Perfectly round in the sky, a bright, glowing coin. Its light turned the whole house to silver. Outside, the trees swayed, and a wind rattled the leaves. It was spooky, but beautiful, strange, like something out of a dream. Everything seemed so otherworldly at night. Especially with the full moon outside and her father out fishing.
Her dad always said that fishing by moonlight was the best, that the trout were different somehow, surfacing for the bright light and getting confused and dazzled when it was not the sun that greeted them. He’d stay out all night and fish until dawn, but he was always happy the next day, glowing ev
en. “They swim right to you,” he said. “You could scoop them up with your hands.” The forest, too, turned magical under the moon, he said, revealing all its secrets.
“Whatever floats your boat,” was her typical response. More trout to throw right back in the water. She always thought how terrible it would be to be a fish in these parts, getting caught over and over again whenever you just wanted to swim to the surface and get some dinner.
Speaking of which . . . Her growling stomach broke the mood, and she padded over to the kitchen to see what goodies her father had left behind.
Inside, right in the middle of the top shelf, was a Tupperware bowl with a note that said “DINNER, HEAT THREE MINUTES, FROM DAD” taped to the top. She peeked, saw it was his famous spaghetti bolognese, one of her favorites.
Things were starting to look up.
She poured herself a glass of lemonade and stuck the food in the microwave, then wandered back over to the sliding door as the rich scent of meat and sauce began to fill the house.
A figure moved and she cried out loud, almost dropping her drink, before she realized it was her own reflection she was looking at. She stopped, staring at herself. She looked . . . pretty. Even in her stupid hoodie. Tall and lean, her long black hair curling down and her skin pale, ivory, which was nice in this light. Beautiful, even. She set down her drink and stepped forward, curious.
She was entirely alone. Her father wouldn’t be home for hours yet.
She unzipped the hoodie and pulled it off. Watched as the feathers spread from underneath her short sleeves down to her elbow, catching the moonlight and seeming to glitter.
She stepped forward again, focusing in on her reflection in the glass. Shadows fell over her body, but the feathers glimmered and shone in the light, bright as the moon. Her hair fell black down over them. The feathers did really look like a jacket of some kind, like Morgan had said. She twisted around and looked over her shoulder, lifting up her hair to see the feathers covering her back, spreading up to her neck and down to her hips, but perfectly. As if someone had painted in an outline for them to fill.
She turned back around, moving her hair to cover her breasts.