Page 24 of Glass Wings
“You should go and be an astronaut,” she blurted out. “I’ve always heard that if you join the military, they will essentially pay for anything you want to do. Make your six-year-old self proud of who he grows up to be.”
David cocked his head and stared at her for a moment too long.
Hadley’s checks heated, assuming she said the wrong thing. Using none of her brain cells, only instinct, she jumped up and ran towards him, grabbing his hands with hers. She watched as a mischievous smile played across his lips.
“My six-year-old self would lose it if he thought he had a chance,” he replied.
Hadley did her best to mask her sigh of relief as she saw a glimmer of a smile from the corners of his mouth. Maybe she somehow could help. Maybe she just needed to be a human being.
“My mom died when I was sixteen,” she said, her face less than twelve inches apart from his. “It was fairly sudden. Her liver failed and she only had a few months; the doctors said she was too far in for a transplant. One day we were shopping, laughing, and getting ready for my homecoming dance, and then the next day I found herweeping on the floor in the bathroom. She had gotten back from a doctor's appointment, getting the diagnosis. A few weeks later, she didn’t know who I was. I would sit there as a stranger by her bedside as she made up these beautiful but delirious stories of her flying through the skies with wings.”
David held her eyes with his, not blinking, not moving.
“I wanted to kill myself, then. I had no one and nothing. Our house got auctioned off. I was alone. I don’t know how to comfort you, David. I’m probably the least qualified person in the world to help you in a real way, but I can tell you it will always get better if you want it to. Every day, I am choosing to live.”
Hadley let herself indulge in a cocktail of emotions. Grief for her mother, empathy for her loneliness, pride for figuring out how to take care of herself and her best friend.
“Hailey,” David said, kissing her hands. “I think you might have saved my life, at least for today.”
Hadley blushed and pulled away from him.
“Well, you have me for another thirty minutes,” she said, “what should we do?”
Five minutes later, Hadley walked out of the bottom of the elevator and through the building doors, her steps slapping down on the sidewalk. She grinned at the ground as she walked through the parking lot, making her way to Grant’s beat-up car.
He jumped as she approached.
“Holy shit, girl,” he yelled from his cracked window. “You scared the heck out of me! Why are you back so early? Everything a’ight?”
Hadley got in the car and pulled the cash out of her bra strap, moving into the now familiar routine of counting out Grant’s payment in bills and handing it over.
“It was fine,” she said.
Grant was used to her not going into detail and started up the car, reversing out of the parking spot. A moment later, he cursed and hit the brakes, the car jolting violently.
A man was leaning on the trunk of the car behind them, smoking a cigarette. Grant had nearly hit him. He was wearing a full dark bluesuit and tucked back his black gelled hair. Hadley mostly noticed how white his teeth were.
“Don’t bother moving or anything. What a stupid place to hang out and smoke,” Grant muttered under his breath as they drove off.
The man flicked the ash off of his cigarette, completely unphased, and watched their car until it was out of his sight. He smiled, his eyes then turning a glaring red.
8
Allienna | Kinnari Temple | Late 1990s
She rememberedthe day the cramping began. Having never experienced a pain both dull and unbearable, Allienna fell to the floor in the one-room temple that served as her home.
She thought of her encounter with Ayurveda every day, marking tallies in her mind as another sun set and another moon rose. That day marked seven hundred forty-three thousand, eight hundred and seventy-two.
She was alone, holding her hand to her lower stomach with the faint smell of copper in the air.
There was an unusual wetness on the inside of her undergarments. Allienna rushed off her long-sleeved, purple, form-fitting dress and pulled out on the band of her underwear, peering down.
It can’t be.
She slid the cloth fully down her legs to examine the stain. Allienna’s doe eyes got even wider, and she stared at bright red blood.
Mortal blood.
