Wings (6 page)

But Tamisin wasn’t listening. Stopping in the middle of the room, she stared at the wall without seeing it. “I
wonder what my real parents are like. Why do you think they gave me up for adoption? Do you think they might be dead?”

“I suppose it’s possible,” said her father.

Her mother was looking at her wings with a most peculiar expression on her face. “They’re very beautiful. Do they work? What I mean is—can you fly?”

Tamisin frowned. It was an obvious question, and she didn’t know why she hadn’t considered it. “I don’t know.” She moved her wings, fanning the air slowly at first, then faster and faster, but all it did was flip the pages of the book on the nightstand and flutter the curtains on the windows. “I guess not.” She didn’t know who was more disappointed, her mother or herself.

“We’ve talked about what we would do if you wanted to try to find your birth parents,” said her father. “You can if you want—it’s your decision. And you know we’d help you any way we can. We love you, pumpkin, and we want whatever’s best for you.”

“What can you tell me about them?”

“Very little, I’m afraid,” said her mother. “The only thing the lawyer who handled it told us was that your birth mother had already named you Tamisin. But we don’t think your life was very good before you came to us. A doctor told us that the mark on your wrist was from a rat bite.”

“What about the lawyer? Could I go talk to him?”

Her father shook his head. “We can give you all the information we have about him, but I doubt it will do you
any good. He was a strange little man. He disappeared years ago. We tried to contact him when you were a few years old, but no one knew what had become of him.”

“Are you going to tell Kyle about your wings?” asked her mother.

Tamisin glanced over her shoulder and watched the color on her wings ripple when she fanned them. “No, and I don’t want you to either. Kyle has never been able to keep a secret. If he hears about them, it will be all over town by noon tomorrow.”

“We won’t tell him, but do you really think you’ll be able to keep it a secret?”

“I’m sure I can,” Tamisin replied. After all, the last thing she wanted to do was let all the people who already thought she was weird know that she was even odder than any of them could imagine.

Tamisin slept in the next morning until everyone else had left the house and then stayed home from school. Having thought about her wings and the news of her adoption all night, she decided that she really wasn’t surprised to learn that she was adopted. After all, even before her wings appeared she’d known that she wasn’t anything like the rest of her family. She loved them, but there’d been too many times that she’d felt as if she didn’t belong.

When Tamisin didn’t get out of bed right away, her cat, Skipper, began to scratch at the door. Yawning, Tamisin sat up to stretch and was surprised when her wings twitched, trapped by the blankets. She’d forgotten about them for the moment, but as her memory of the previous night returned, her emotions were mixed. Having wings was very exciting and they were quite beautiful, but although it had been easy to say that she wanted to keep them a secret, she didn’t know how that would be possible. They were so big and
obvious
.

Standing in the middle of her room, Tamisin experimented with her wings, trying over and over again to fold them close to her body so they lay flat and weren’t too uncomfortable. It took some time, but when she finally had them pressed against her back so closely that she could wear clothes over them without any bumps or wrinkles, she began to feel much better about them. If she could find a way to drop out of swim class, she should be able to get by without anyone noticing anything.

Skipper meowed again on the other side of the door and Tamisin opened it to let her in. While the cat hopped onto the bed, Tamisin spread her wings wide, sighing with relief as the cramped feeling faded away. Since no one else was home, she kept them unfurled as she headed for the basement, the only room that was big enough for what she had in mind.

The room was long; it ran the length of the basement and was half as wide. For all the years Tamisin had been dancing in it, the room had seemed to be big enough for just about anything. It wasn’t until she’d put on the music from her dance solo and was trying out some new steps incorporating her wings that she noticed how low the ceiling was. She’d found that beating her wings while she leaped gave her added distance, but it wasn’t easy to coordinate the two kinds of movement. Although it was tiring, she did it over and over again, getting better with each try until, suddenly, she was airborne. It lasted only a second longer than her usual leap, but it was enough to make her hit her head on the ceiling and keep her feet off the ground farther than she’d ever done before. Wanting
to prove that she hadn’t imagined it, Tamisin stood up and tried again. This time she actually felt suspended in the air before she went too high and hit her head.

With a whoop of excitement, Tamisin tore up the basement steps to the two-floor entryway at the front of the house. She’d have gone outside, but someone was bound to see her. Although the entryway wasn’t very big from front to back, it was the tallest area in the house and the only one where she wasn’t likely to hit her already sore head. For the rest of the afternoon Tamisin practiced beating her wings, thrilled that she was able to go higher. It was true that she could fly, but it was her secret and hers alone. She wouldn’t tell anyone about it, not her parents, not Heather, and certainly not big-mouthed Kyle. For the first time in her life, Tamisin was convinced that being different could be a truly wonderful thing, and she didn’t want anything to spoil it.

Tamisin went back to school the next day with a forged doctor’s note. With her wings tucked against her back and the knowledge of what she could do, she felt special and important in a way she never had before. Her wings were her overwhelming secret now, making her feel as though she no longer had to hide anything else. For the first time in years she wore her hair pulled back and her face scrubbed clean of makeup. She didn’t care if everyone saw her ears or her spreckles.

Her mother had had a hard time getting Petey out of bed that morning, so she didn’t look at Tamisin long
enough to notice the change. Heather was a different story, however. The first thing she said when they met in front of her house was how great Tamisin looked.

“I’ve always thought your ears were cute,” said Heather as they started down the sidewalk toward school. “It’s about time you stopped covering them. What made you change your mind?”

“A lot of things,” said Tamisin. She felt guilty for keeping her wings a secret from her best friend, but she still remembered how Heather had laughed when she heard about the fairies. Maybe Tamisin would show Heather her wings someday, when they weren’t so new. There was one thing they could talk about though. “Guess what I learned yesterday,” said Tamisin. “I was adopted.”

“No!” breathed Heather. “You weren’t really, were you?”

Tamisin nodded. “My parents told me all about it. They thought they couldn’t have any more children after Kyle was born, so they contacted a lawyer when they saw his ad in the paper and adopted me.”

“Wow. That’s big. Are you okay with this? I mean, it is pretty earthshaking news to find out that your parents aren’t really your parents.”

“Tell me about it. I don’t even know what to call them.”

“Petey wasn’t adopted though. I remember when he was born.”

“Nope,” said Tamisin. “I was the only one.”

“Do Kyle and Petey know?”

“Not yet,” said Tamisin.

“And your parents didn’t tell you until now?”

“They said they were waiting for the right time. I wish they’d told me years ago. It’s like I’ve been living with a lie all this time.”

“I know what you mean,” Heather said. “I remember when I was helping my dad dig the barbecue pit and I found out my hamster hadn’t really gone ‘vacationing with his long-lost cousins.’ So what are you going to do? Are you going to look for your real parents?”

“I don’t know. After all, they did give me away. What if my mother was a drug addict? Or what if both of my parents thought I was a mistake and they split up because of me? I’d rather not know the reason they gave me away if it’s something terrible.”

“But they might have been great people and had a really good reason. They could have been in love, but were too young to keep you,” said Heather.

“That’s true,” said Tamisin. “Everyone who was adopted probably wishes that their birth parents were rock stars or someone really special. But even so, I’m not sure I’m ready to meet my parents. At least not yet.”

She was putting her things in her locker when Jak came up behind her. “I’m glad you’re back,” he said, smiling. “I heard you were sick and might be out for a few days.”

“I’m fine now,” she said, giving him a smile in return. She’d been thinking about Jak and the fact that he was the only other person she’d met who could see the little raccoon man. If she wanted to find out what Jak knew
about the creature, and why Jak could see him, she couldn’t keep shying away. Maybe if she got to know Jak better, he’d either answer her questions or let something slip while she was around. After all, if he could see the little man, wasn’t it possible that Jak had wings, too?

The first bell rang for class. Tamisin shut her locker door and reached into her pocket. “I have to get this to the office,” she said, brandishing the fake doctor’s note.

Jak nodded. “Yeah. I’ve gotta go, too. But first I wanted to ask—would you like to have lunch with me on Saturday? I know a good spot for a picnic.”

Tamisin thought about it for a second. They could talk during a picnic and maybe she could actually learn something about the real Jak. “That sounds like fun.”

“Great!” he replied. “I’ll pick you up at noon.”

Tamisin wasn’t thinking about the note when she dropped it off at the office. She was thinking about how pleased Jak had looked when she said she could go with him.

Tamisin got up early on Saturday morning. After one glance out her bedroom window she couldn’t wait to go outside. It was a beautiful day, just right for spending in the garden, so without bothering with breakfast, Tamisin headed straight for the garage to collect her gardening tools. For too many weeks she’d spent most of her time preparing for the dance performance, neglecting her garden, which was now filled with weeds.

Tamisin had always loved working in the garden. She
had learned that she had a knack for making flowers grow while she was in first grade and the class had planted bean seeds for a science class. Her seed had grown a foot tall in the time it had taken the rest of the class’s to sprout. The bean plant she took home had been the beginning of her garden. She planted more plants every year until eventually her garden had taken over much of the yard. Her parents were delighted with the lush plants that flourished under her care. Even her jealous neighbors admitted that Tamisin’s flowers were the best they’d ever seen and were always trying to get her to divulge her gardening secrets.

Although it was autumn and most people’s gardens were past their prime, Tamisin’s was still going strong, or would have been if she had been paying as much attention to it as she normally did. Feeling guilty, she used the next few hours to weed and mulch the flower beds for winter. It was easy to lose track of time when she was doing what she loved, so she didn’t realize how late it was until her mother called out the window, reminding her that Jak would be arriving soon.

It took her just a few minutes to wash her face and brush her hair, pulling it back into a high, bouncy pony-tail. She was partway down the stairs when the doorbell rang. Opening the door, she found three cats sitting on the porch beside Jak. “Are they yours?” she asked, bending down to pet one. The cat walked away before she could touch him.

Jak glanced down and shook his head. “I’ve never seen them before. Cats just sort of like me,” he said as he tried
to shove them away with his foot. The cats walked away a few paces, waiting until he had moved on before following him again. Two more cats joined them before they reached the end of the block.