Dirty Wings by Sarah McCarry

Author:Sarah McCarry
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

In the car, Cass roots around in her bag until she finds a scratched cassette tape, which she pops in the car’s player. A surfy line of guitar comes through Maia’s dad’s old speakers, and Cass turns the volume up. The hook is poppy and sweet; a man’s voice come in, clear and almost as high as a girl’s. Cass sings along happily.

“Why are they singing about caribou?”

“Ree-pent!” Cass yells with relish. “I don’t know, it’s the Pixies.”

“Is that punk?”

“Sweet child of mine,” Cass says, “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.”

The show is at a falling-apart house in the old industrial neighborhood by the locks. The yard is a sea of teenagers dressed in black, smoking cigarettes and drinking out of bottles in paper bags. Cass laughs at Maia’s huge eyes. “Nobody’ll bite you,” she says, patting Maia’s hand on the gearshift. “Promise.” Maia parks a block away, double-checks the locked doors. She follows a few steps behind Cass, pulling her shoulders up to her ears and hunching into herself. She wants to go home and crawl under her piano and never leave her house again.

These kids are terrifying. They’re arrayed in rags, their hair standing up in spikes or ratted out in snarled manes. They have safety pins through their ears and hoops through their lips and chains around their necks and big black boots, on their feet, and they stare at Cass and Maia as the girls walk by. Cass slows until Maia bumps into her and takes Maia’s hand. “You’re doing great, princess,” she murmurs into Maia’s ear, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze. “These fuckers’ve never seen a girl as pretty as you, is all.”

“I think they hate me.”

“No way. Their faces are all just frozen like that. Come on, let’s find something to drink.”

Cass drags her into the house. It’s even more crowded inside, a mass of white kids in black clothes, drinking beer out of red plastic cups. Cass lets go of her hand and Maia shrinks back against a wall. The house is almost devoid of furniture. There’s a wretched couch pushed against a wall, a collapsing shelf filled with dog-eared copies of On the Road and Siddhartha. “You wait here,” Cass says. “I’m going to find the keg, okay? I’ll be right back.” Cass shoulders her way through the crowd. Maia bites her lip, hoping she doesn’t look as terrified as she feels.

“You don’t look like you’re having a good time,” someone says next to her. Okay, then. She does look as terrified as she feels. The speaker’s a boy, tall and lanky, with dirty brown hair that falls in tangles down his back. He’s wearing leather and spikes like the rest of them, but his eyes are kind.

“I’m not really—uh, I’m fine,” she says.

“I’m Todd. You want a drink?”

“My friend went to get me one.” He raises an eyebrow. “Oh. Sorry. Maia.” He shakes her hand gravely, as if they’re at a tea party, and takes a silver flask out of his pocket.

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