Matters of Circumstance (4 page)

“Pork wrapped in leaves and baked in an underground oven, basically. It’s good.” He was smiling at her—probably because she sounded like a moron when she said
laulau
. “Like every other place, though, Hawaii had its good and bad points. Everybody smokes pot, it’s proven to be the worst state for education, is generally racist against white people, and doesn’t look like the movies about 95% of the time. But its spirit just sort of… makes you want to come back. They have this saying—
wea eva you go, dea you stay,
if you’ll excuse the white-boy accent.”

It didn’t sound like he had an accent to her—actually, the way Neal talked sometimes reminded her of the Hawaiian guys she saw on TV. Sometimes he spoke too simply and/or ambiguously, and he developed this tone that she didn’t recognize.

“Okay, I’ll bite: what does it mean?” she said.

Clearly enjoying the way she was humoring him, he grinned big enough to put his lone snaggletooth on full display. “Basically means that once you’ve lived in Hawaii, you can’t really stay anywhere else. You always come back.”

“Is it true for you?” The words were out before she could stop them, and while they made some heat rise in her face Farrah couldn’t bring herself to take them back.

His smile only widened. “Yeah, me too. I only lived on Oahu while I was there, but I hear there are some pretty chilly places on the Big Island or Maui I could go—where, you know, the hoodie would make sense. I think it would be great to go back someday.”

“Oh, that’s cool,” she said, unable to look him in the eye any more and completely unsure of why. She didn’t really…

“Hey, do you think everybody ditched us on purpose?” asked Neal suddenly. “Because for some reason I’m getting the feeling that we’re being watched like this is Punk’d or something.”

It was about time he felt it. Farrah had known they were being followed from the start. “I think you’re right,” she said, not bothering to speak loudly. They could probably hear anyway. “Ruby had a cleaning at the dentist last month, but even though you only get one every six months she’s apparently going in for another today.”

Neal laughed, and Farrah though she saw a flash of Ruby’s bright blonde hair out of the corner of her eye. “Oh, that’s almost as bad as the alibi someone tried to feed me once. The guy said his girlfriend had family visiting and she wanted him to meet them, and I was like,
‘okay, I understand. Have a good time.’
But then
she
says that she has to take her dog to the vet, and I was like,
‘but I thought you had family over’
and she looks at me like
I’m
the crazy one. I mean, if you’re going to lie about it, at least make sure you’re synchronized, right?”

Farrah couldn’t help laughing, but just as she was about to tell him Michael’s alibi Neal remarked, “I wonder why they did it, though. Maybe they think we’re a couple or something?”

“I have no idea.”

“I mean,” he said, shoving his hands in the pockets of his hoodie thoughtfully. “We have been spending an awful lot of time together, seemingly out of the blue…”

As he said that Farrah’s heart thudded loudly. She told herself to ignore it. It didn’t mean anything that he had said that. Neal was equally nice to everybody, and she was a kindred spirit. If she had been anybody else he would have noticed her condition and been there for them, too. That was just the kind of person he was.

“Yeah, I guess that would look pretty suspicious to me, too,” she said noncommittally.

Neil suddenly leaned down by her ear and whispered, “I think we should start talking about what to get your secret boyfriend for his birthday or something. And I’ll act like your not-so-secretly gay best friend—it would really throw ‘em for a loop, don’t you think?” He straightened and waggled his eyebrows at her, totally oblivious to the way he had just thrown her
hormones
for a loop. “Huh? What do you say? It’d be fun, right?”

“What is this, Disney Channel?” said Farrah with a somewhat forced grin of humor. That had to be the most PG-rated prank she had ever heard. Was he really eighteen?

Neal began humming a peculiar tune, and when she gave him a confused look he sang, “You an’ me ain’t nothin’ but mammals, so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery—hey!” She had just shoved him. “What was that for?”

Farrah shook her head, but try as she might she couldn’t wipe the smile from her face. “Being with you is like hanging out with an eight-year-old.”

“Must be a super mature eight-year-old, huh?” Now it was his turn to play shove her. “Right? Am I right?”

“Of course not,” she told him. “You’re an eight-year-old through and through.”

Neal seemed about to leave it at that, but then he said, “Well, you can’t say that I don’t look astonishingly grown up for a fourth grader.”

This was true. She really couldn’t.

*****

Neal lived towards the edge of the suburbs, approximately a twelve minute walk from the mini shopping court with Joe’s Joe. Farrah loved being at his house, but that wasn’t only because he had told his parents about his wings to explain the holes in the t-shirts he wore around the house. What she really liked was the overall laidback atmosphere. Farrah had always considered her own house comfortable, but in comparison to Neal’s house the atmosphere at home was suffocating and stiff and formal.

For example, in her house she only felt comfortable being with her friends in her room, but with Neal the only place they didn’t spend time in was his father’s private bathroom, which nobody wanted to go in anyway.

Actually, the atmosphere at his house was a lot like Neal himself. Sometimes she even found herself thinking of it as her second home.

“We can’t fly, can we?” she said one day. It was more of a statement than a question.

“Of course not.” Then Neal seemed to realize something and looked at her in disbelief. “Wait—you mean you haven’t tried?”

She shook her head.

“Holy damn! That was one of the first things I did when my wings came in. I jumped off my bed.”

“You would, wouldn’t you?” she muttered to herself.

“Of course I would. What’s the point of having wings if we can’t fly?” he exclaimed, either choosing to ignore or simply not realizing that her comment had not been made to be remarked upon.

Farrah went with it anyway. “Well, that’s what I was thinking. Mine are really weak.”

He nodded. “Yeah, mine are too. That’s what I was talking about when I first showed you. They’re babies.” She wrinkled her nose, but he wasn’t done yet. “Think about it: human infants can’t even lift their own heads at first, and these are brand new baby wings, aren’t they? We can’t expect to fly in the first month. So I started an experiment. You’re the control—”

“Wait a second, when did this happen?” she said, indignant.

Neal just shrugged. “You don’t do anything to your wings.”

“Hey—”

“Am I wrong?”

“No,” she admitted, crossing her arms in a sudden bout of self-consciousness. She didn’t have any shirts with wing slits, and while he had offered she hadn’t felt comfortable using his, either. As a matter of fact, she hated even taking her hoodie off. The wings only looked natural on Neal.

Her response elicited a smug expression. Behind him, Neal’s exposed left wing twitched and almost smacked a fairly recent photo of himself with his parents and twenty-something older brother on his bedside table, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Exactly,” he said. “So what I’ve been doing with mine is exercise. I’ve been timing myself to see how long I can keep them extended, how many times I can open and close them in a minute—stuff like that. I’ve also been watching my weight to see if I’m gaining muscle mass.”

Farrah whistled, impressed despite herself. She tentatively began to uncross her arms. “I can’t believe you never told me. How long have you been doing this?”

“I started a few days after I figured out I couldn’t fly, so about six weeks ago. So far there hasn’t been anything to talk about, though. I’ve been getting stronger at a pretty linier rate, but just recently I’ve begun losing weight and feeling something like growing pains, which is weird for a couple of reasons. If I’m growing I should be putting on weight, not losing it. I should also be—you know—growing, and that hasn’t happened either, so I’m not sure what’s going on.” Developing an increasingly faraway expression, Neal ran his fingers through his wavy hair and scratched his scalp.

A sinking feeling developed in the pit of her stomach. “Neal, that’s not good.”

He had conjured a marble tablet somewhere between his report and her response, and began flipping through it now. “I know, but none of the bird-related legends I’ve found mention anything about this sort of transformation. The weight and growing pains also make me wonder if I’m losing density, which in a way would make sense because birds have hollow bones. It also generally takes four to six weeks for healthy weight loss to occur, meaning that if this is just a part of who we are then it’ll happen to you sometime soon.” He looked up from the journal with a genuinely apologetic smile. “I won’t ask to see numbers or anything, but if you could take a minute to weigh yourself every day or so it might help.”

Farrah held her chin up. “I don’t care if you know how much I weigh. I’m not insecure about it,” she declared.

“Whatever you’re most comfortable with.”

There was a small silence, and then she blurted, “How much more thought or research have you put into this?”

Neal laughed, looking sheepish now. “Well, in the beginning I was just recording all that on the wing muscles to see if I could make any progress, you know? Just for fun. It’s only been recently that I’ve been seriously looking into things. Sorry about the info-dump I just gave you back there. I get carried away with these things.” He scratched the back of his head and flexed his wings, nearly hitting the picture again. If she wasn’t mistaken, his cheeks were a little pink as well.

Funny, she had been thinking that Neal wasn’t the type to get embarrassed about anything.

“Actually, I thought it was really interesting.” And that was the honest truth. “I want to know why we’re like this, too, that’s why I’m asking what else you’ve found. Or speculated, if you can’t prove it.”

For some reason his current smile felt the most genuine. “Not many people can tolerate my geek side.”

“I told you, it’s not tolerance. I’m interested, too,” she said, looking right into his nice blue eyes. Why was this all of a sudden such a big deal? It didn’t make any sense to her, but she didn’t like it.

They stared at each other for a long time, but then Neal broke the contact. He cleared his throat loudly and looked through his notebook again. “Okay, well when it was only me I didn’t have anything to work with—no comparison, you know? Since you’ve come along exactly the same way I’ve gotten a little suspicious, but even now there are a dozen possibilities. What are your ethnicities? Maybe common ancestry is the answer.”

“Um.” Farrah had to take a moment to remember them all. She was from a very mixed family. “Well, as my last name implies, I’m Irish—”

“Me too.” He grabbed a pen out of nowhere and made a quick note, then motioned for her to continue.

“I’m Native American.”

“What tribe?”

“Blackfoot.”

“Damn. I’m Iroquois. Just a little bit, but it’s there.”

“I’m also Swedish, German, Czech, Hispanic, and my dad says we’ve got slivers of Polish and Chinese, too.”

“Yeah, I’m none of that,” he said, consulting his notes again. “The Native American might be something, because they’re so connected to the land and animals, but since they’re different tribes I don’t want to put all too much faith in it. I’m sure someone was also adopted into both of our families somewhere along the line, and those people are wild cards. So we may have some half-bird common ancestor, but it’s kind of reaching, you know? And Ireland doesn’t have bird legends, really.” Then his attitude became lighthearted and joking. “What would you do if I was your fifth cousin twice removed, though? Just curious.”

Playing along, Farrah shrugged. “I don’t know. Friend you on Facebook or something.”

His laugh was what got her laughing with him, not the joke itself. The moment was rather short-lived, however, cut off by the call of the research tablet. Neal made a small tick on the current page. “Oh well, next theory—and just so you know, they’re all pretty far-fetched.”

“So’s having wings.”

“Exactly what I was thinking: anything’s possible. We could possibly be a new species emerging to deal with global warming. Or changing climate and rising ocean levels in general, if you prefer.”

“But wouldn’t flying just be a way to avoid the issue? We’d have to land on the diminished, heated earth again anyway. And besides, you’re fair-skinned and I’m not all that dark. Being so close to the sun would just burn us.”

“To give the theory some credit, in this case we would be the first draft of the species. Many more changes would have to occur for us to be ideal.”

“Then the wings would start out small, wouldn’t they? Not just suddenly appear in two weeks.”

“Well, to be honest I have never liked cats, and have always liked grains and heights,” Neal admitted with another scratch on his neck. It seemed to be a gesture of awkwardness.