Flight

Flight
(March 2006)
Josh MacLeod

Teacher at the new school today was asking us to write a paragraph about childhood as the sun sang invitingly outside and we sat cramped in desks and a dull room. I asked my new father how long a paragraph was, if it could be a sentence. He said yes, puzzled, and I went upstairs, silent, and stared at the page.

On Childhood,

I wrote, then underlined it. Then I wrote:

Do you remember what it is like to be powerless, the helplessness of it? The lure of it?

I added, an afterthought, and signed my name, added the date as well, all neat and tidy and clear. I knew I shouldn't do this: I'd learned not to stand out, not when I was new. Don't call attention, don't be important: you'll move again soon enough, I heard, though no one ever said anything.

At the last place, they liked to watch cop shows. They'd cheer for the criminals, and I'd watch them in the prisons, being told to be silent, to fall in line, to be obedient; thinking, that's just this, me, now: it's all it is. being a child again. Maybe they want that. I couldn't understand why they would, but people forget how bad things are so easily. I know I have.

Except when I dream. I remember my mother when I dream.

*

It's snowing when I wake up, the world pristine and pure. There's a song inside my head, and I can almost feel words for it, a voice, but a car comes through, and another, carving through it like a giant Thanksgiving turkey, and the snow is flung about as I stand by the window, watching, held there by some helplessness I can't name. tugging at my heart.

I stand there, frozen, muscles tight and straining, as if I was a tuning fork. Thinking, when is the last time I watched it snow and wasn't afraid? Two years ago. The Vanderbilts. They were good people, but he got transferred, and they had to move to a smaller place, and I ended up in a different place.

I turned again, quickly, not wanting to see my eyes, burying the memory as I drove nails into my palms, staining another kind of snow.

"Are you up, dear?" my new mother asks from the door.

I freeze, but manage to say yes in a voice that gives away nothing, soft and low. I wonder what kind of people they really are, in the dark, with the blinds pulled, locked in by the snow. The wind batters the windows and I wave to a passing crow, old habit I've never lost, and dress. There's something comforting about a murder of crows. It's nice to know other things get misunderstood.

Or maybe they don't. Being pecked to death by enough crows would be fast. I grin, and the mirror returns it like a placid lake, my eyes giving nothing away. I wear long sleeves, even when they turn the heat up: it hides things. Me. Bruises. Cuts.

They must know about the cuts, but they've never said a word, never hid anything. Maybe they weren't told. Maybe someone just makes stuff up about me, and so I move, and move, and keep on moving. It's like the story about the girl who dances, telling tales, though all I have to offer are silences.

She starts when I sit at the table, surprised. "You're so light-footed. You need to eat more, boy."

I've never put down roots, I want to say, but I know they just want the money, not the problems. I offer up a shrug and accepts the cereal and toast. She asks if I'd like anything else, but I know not to actually ask, so I say it's okay and eat, even though the toast is dry and the milk is some odd goat stuff. It's probably illegal, which heartens me a little: it's the ones who think they're better than people, that are doing me a favour, who are scary.

Her husband comes down the stairs, drinking coffee, nodding to us. He's not big, but you don't have to be to wield a belt. She doesn't look mean, but it doesn't matter. I wish I knew how long this would last, how long I'd stay here, but it's not the kind of thing that can be asked, so I ask about school, am told it's on, catch the bus.

People are staring at me as I find a seat, but I say nothing, watching the trees we pass and losing myself in the wind blowing the leaves. There's a little magic everywhere, my gran told me before she died and I drifted between homes and lives, if we knew where to look. "Even in my mom?" I'd asked, because I was younger, and because she knew.

And gran had just smiled one of her sad smiles, and said that all magic wasn't good, but good came out of anything, if we looked deep enough. I've looked, and haven't found anything yet, but maybe I've looked in the wrong places. It's the snow that reminds me, when we get off the bus. It's still white, or thinks it is, no matter what we do. If I was snow, I'd always remember how I looked before anyone hurt me.

The kid across from me in the classroom asks me where I'm from. I say: Lots of places. He asks me if that's a joke. I say: No, and: Sorry. he asks if my parents are dead. I say: No. I do not say I wish, or anything else. Just no. He stares, searching, then just nods and goes back to reading something.

I try not to hear the whispers. I had in the page

*

Math is easy. It makes sense: addition, subtraction. I can put my life on both sides of the equal sign, getting memories as remainders. The teacher asks to talk to me, after class is over, as everyone vanishes to the lunch room. She is tall, friendly, and smiles a lot. I don't smile often; it's my way of not lying.

"Do you know my name?" she says, tapping her nails on the page I handed in.

"No."

"I told you it," she says, quiet, careful.

I say nothing. She stares at me, her expression sad.

"You should make friends," she says.

"I won't be here that long." It slips out, like the wind. "I never am," I add, meeting her gaze, knowing mine gives nothing away.

Hers breaks first. "It doesn't have to be that way. But if will be, if you think that."

I say nothing.

"Why did you write this?" she says.

I remain silent until she says I can go.

*

The wind is strong as I walk home, moving though snow no one else has touched for reasons I don't like to think about. It pushes me, as if trying to force me past the house, to the world over the hills. I could call it exploring; everyone else would call it running away. So I go inside, and up the stairs, and have a bath. After, I cut myself. Just once, small, on the leg.

It doesn't do anything. I wait, door closed - not locked, a kind of thrill - but there is just blood, and it stings a bit, and there is nothing else. I stand, staring at the mirror, trying to read my own eyes. Thinking, this is what it comes to? I cut my face, then, quick and hard, along the cheek, but there is only pain, and tears that surprise me.

I clean up slowly, fixing things, go downstairs. She is watching some talk show, sees me. Asks about the band-aid. I say: "I cut myself. Shaving." She stares, and there is pain in her eyes that almost brings me to a halt. I want to ask why she cares, why she pretends she does: I'm just some money for a spare room, a child who isn't even theirs.

"You don't have to," she says, and nothing more.

I am almost at the door when I turn, sudden, as if blown. "Why not?" I say, the words full of jagged edges. I can hear tears under them, surprising me, and everything is going distant and surreal.

"We don't want you to," she says. "You could talk to us."

"I have."

"Nothing that matters. Nothing that is you."

"Why should you care?" I say. "You get the money anyway."

"We don't need the money," she says, the TV continuing some drama in the background.

I want to go away. The wind tugs at me, the air does; like a bird, I always go away. But. "Why?"

"To help someone. You don't just hurt yourself. No one ever does that," she says, and there is a deep pain in her eyes.

"It doesn't matter."

"Everything matters."

"Can I go now?" I manage. I can feel other words under those, and an itching under my skin. I want to say something, but I can't. I want - but I won't., can't, shouldn't, don't.

She just nods. "You know the wind flies to," she says, and for a moment I hear my grans voice, and it's too much. The door bangs, sharp, as I spring into the yard, anger driving the cold from me, a scream muffled my the coppery taste of blood as I bite through my tongue. It's winter, and I could catch a cold, but I start running, and can't stop.

I stumble a few times, but keep getting back up, moving on automatic. Thinking, I said too much: I lost secrets. Hiding places. And I'm scared. For the first time in a year, really scared. The knife didn't work, maybe because it's winter, maybe because I'm too cold not for it to help: I don't know. It's all moving inside me, like wings, beating, my heart pounding in the cage of my chest, the air icicles stabbing into me as I move, and move, and move.

The wind pummels me from the side as I stagger, no longer running, still moving. I want to stop. The band-aid flies from my face in one gust, the wind driving into the cut, and I'm crying, nose running, just some stupid little kid running in the snow like i ran from mum that last night and I've never stopped and it's

too much, and the wind catches me, carries me, embraces me. I let go of all of it, of everything holding me down, of me, and my hurt, and the love thrown at me like a common cold and the hole in my heart the cutting never healed, and I fall into the sky, catching it, gliding, and let the wind take me, and pull me, scattering me all over, because I know Life goes on, and I'll feed worms, and if it pulls me far enough, I might finally reach the

end