Above Us Only Sky by Michele Young-Stone

survived without him.
    My mother complained to Freddie about child support, how she’d like to see some of that coming her way. I lit one of her cigarettes. My wings started to sag. I felt them pulling from my skin, at the itchy spot where my scars resided. It seemed like the wings wouldn’t be around for very long, like they were too miraculous for me to possess. Veronica continued her treatise, her conditions. “I’m not leaving her alone with them.”
    The lushness of my wings was devolving into weightiness, two fists pulling me down.
    My father never asked to speak to me.
    Veronica put the phone down. My knees buckled from the heaviness of my wings. She said, “They want to meet you because they’re old. Because they’re going to die one day. Because everybody dies.” It felt like there was a wet blanket draped over my shoulders, like the vinyl flooring and Styrofoam ceiling had conspired to come together and squash me like a bug. Veronica picked up her purse, and checking to see how many cigarettes I had smoked, said, “I’ll see you later.” I didn’t know where she was going.
    She hurried from the house, and I had no idea if she was ever coming back. I was sixteen. I wasn’t so old, but I was painfully sad. Wheaton was out of town. He never went anywhere, but on this particular night, he was gone.
    I heard the car start. I didn’t know Veronica’s friends or her boyfriends. I didn’t know what she did when she wasn’t working. Her life was work. Then she was backing out of our yard. I watched from the den window, where I saw the reflection of my wings in the glass. Somehow their presence only made me sadder. Ghostly wings are as useful as a ghostly girl.
    Wheaton had traveled across state to a cheerleading competition with his mother and sister. Even though he’d had no choice, I remember being angry at that moment. Everyone had turned against me. My mother was right: these old people wanted to meet me, but I didn’t know them. My father was only coming because they wanted him to. Did any of this have anything to do with me? I showered, letting the water beat down on my wings. I was still crying, trying to be hopeful, trying to think that someone gave a shit about me , but overwhelmed with an indescribable hopelessness, like a bottomless pit. I didn’t really have wings. Some doctor had put me under anesthesia and taken them. My parents had let him. I didn’t have much of anything. My best friend had visions. He could see this winged girl on the pier, but she wouldn’t make herself known to me. I got to my knees, pressing my hands against the algae-stained tiles, the water streaming over the back of my head, my forehead to the drain. I was not and never had been any better or any more special than anyone else.

    I didn’t try to kill myself. Not that night. Not ever. There are some accounts, police reports, that claim differently, but they are just wrong. I would never take my own life, but there was something that compelled me on that stormy night to venture to the pier. Maybe it was the weight of my wings, the distance between me and my parents, the desire to be free of this place, or the proximity of possibility. Maybe I was afraid that my grandparents would come and then they wouldn’t like me. I’d be a disappointment.
    I wore a vintage lavender nightgown purchased at the Goodwill. I was barefoot, my hair pulled back in a ponytail. Later, when the police asked me why I went to the pier at midnight, I had no answer for them. I’m still not certain. Something pulled me there. When I stepped off my front stoop, the stars were like a map to the sea. I don’t think I ever looked down at the sandspurs, tufts of brown grass, or briars but walked, a straight shot, to the pier. It felt good to have direction.
    The rest is murky like Florida’s stormy coast that night. I remember two lights blinking and swaying