When We Collided by Emery Lord

Author:Emery Lord [Lord, Emery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2016-03-31T23:00:00+00:00

I push these thoughts away at the Daniels residence because I’m busy turning a little girl into a plume-tailed bird.

“Spin,” I tell Leah. She obeys. “Yep—you are the most magnificent child-peacock there ever was.”

Jonah isn’t home because he’s already at the restaurant working on my party dinner, but Silas, Bekah, and Isaac all agree on Leah’s magnificence, from her shiny blue leotard to the fanned-out feather tail to the way I rimmed her eyes in white and black face paint. She dances around, as giddy about my party as I am. The other three refuse to tell me their costume selections, on Jonah’s order.

“All right,” I announce. “I have to go home to get dressed.”

Originally, I considered dressing up as a dolphin as an homage to my soul’s former vessel, but you’d be surprised how difficult it is—even for someone as talented as me—to create a dolphin costume for an almost-seventeen-year-old human girl.

Besides, I want wings because, well, don’t we all? Sometimes I bend my arms behind my back and feel the protruding shoulder blades—technically the scapula, but they feel like broken-off wings. Everyone thinks we evolved from apes, but I’m not totally convinced that we didn’t once have wings, at least some of us.

For one night, I want my wings back. But not the wings of a mighty bird, beating powerfully enough to make noise against the air. I want to drift dreamily in the breeze, to let the wind direct me. I know, I know: butterflies are used in bad metaphors about metamorphosis, about bursting forth from a cocoon, born again and in flight. But I’m not dressing as a butterfly to prove that my caterpillar days are behind me—no. No symbolism. It is enough to choose things for their beauty.

My wings are wide and diaphanous—nylon stretched over thin, arced wire. I painted the inner parts with the eye-aching, perfect blue of a sunny day, but the edges are black as if dipped in ink. Between the two colors, I painted little rivers of veins like a leaf’s surface.

The true showpiece is not my meticulous wings but my vintage dress. I paid a small fortune for it, but this beauty is worth every nickel. It’s from the 1930s, a tight-fitting flapper dress slicked in glossy black beads. The hem ends in a fringe right about my knee, and the straps split into these fabulous V shapes across my bare shoulders.

Okay, fine, I’ll admit I’m wearing a very padded strapless bra, but this dress deserves truly divine cleavage, you know?

I’m wearing black satin pointe shoes, which don’t feel wonderful on my toes, but they look wonderful to my eyes and make me feel graceful, so there. I glued thick black lashes to my eyelids and lined them in a shimmering navy color. For once, I forgo the red lipstick for a cherry-blossom pink because that’s how the makeup spirit moves me.

Jonah wanted to pick me up, but I begged him not to. If there’s ever a night to zoom

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.