Black Wings Read online

  Briella made a snorting laugh sound, although she didn’t look as though she were laughing. “I wouldn’t take any pills. Taking drugs is bad for you.”

  “Good. I’m glad to hear it. Something seems to be upsetting you, though. Do you want to talk about it?”

  Briella sighed, long and hard, sounded desolate. “I just don’t like the way my brain works sometimes. That’s all.”

  “Are you worried about having a seizure? Because—”

  Briella’s face twisted into a grimace. “No. But it hurts.”

  “Your head hurts?” Marian’s mind raced, thinking of the bump from a few weeks ago. Remembering the sight of Pamela convulsing and the sound of her mother’s wail. Her heart clenched. What did any parent fear the most but an inexplicable illness in their child?

  “Not like a headache. My thoughts,” Briella explained. “I think so hard, and it hurts my brain sometimes. Because there’s so much to learn and know, and I want to fit it all in there, but I just can’t.”

  “You don’t have to know everything, Briella. You’re just a kid. You have the rest of your life to learn.” Marian kissed her forehead, trying to look into Briella’s eyes to reassure her, but the girl shrugged away from her grasp and went to her bed, where she climbed under the blankets and lay flat on her back, staring at the ceiling.

  Marian pulled the covers up to beneath her daughter’s chin. “Sleep tight. Tomorrow’s going to be a great day. And next week you get to start your new school, and that’s going to be even better. Okay?”

  Briella closed her eyes. A tapping at the window had Marian cursing under her breath. She strode to the window, intending to scare the bird away again, but stopped herself at the last second. From inside, all she could see was her reflection in the glass, overlaying the night outside.

  She turned to see Briella watching her.

  “Goodnight,” Marian said. “No more talk about flying away up to heaven.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “You’re more nervous than she was. Babe, sit down. Have a mug of tea. She’s going to be home soon.” Dean yawned and rubbed at his eyes. Normally he wouldn’t be up for another few hours, but he’d asked Marian to wake him so he could be there when Briella got home from her first day at Parkhaven.

  “I can’t sit.” Marian wrung her hands before she realized what she was doing and dropped them to her sides. “God, Dean. I’ve been waiting all day long for the school to call and say there was a problem. That they changed their minds, and they’re going to kick her out of there, too.”

  “Nobody called, because there aren’t any problems,” he told her gently. “Southside didn’t kick her out. They offered her an opportunity, a terrific chance for Briella to really excel. Parkhaven’s going to be the perfect fit for her. She’s going to have access to her own lab for experiments. They’re going to start her with a foreign language. That’s three years before she’d start at public school. And she was so jazzed about going. It’s all going to be great, Marian. I promise you.”

  Marian cupped her elbow in her palm and chewed on her thumbnail. “It’s not a mutant school.”

  “Tommy was just being a douche. You know how he is.” Dean shook his head. “Even if the school building had a weird past, that has nothing to do with the school itself.”

  “We should have gone with her the first day.”

  “You know they said it would be better if she started as normally as possible,” Dean said gently. “She’s not a baby, Marian. She’s ten. She can handle it.”

  “You’ve heard the same stories I have. We all did. The big school up on the hill, the weirdo kids that go there. There was that kid who made the news when he built that nuclear weapon. I mean, they came out later and said it was never, you know, usable. But still.” Marian gestured with both hands. “There’s a reason why Parkhaven has the reputation it does, and it’s not just because it used to be a psych hospital.”

  “My cousin’s husband is the nicest guy you could ever want to meet.” Dean paused to give her an encouraging smile. “Parkhaven’s a good place, even if there are a few weirdos here and there. It has a waiting list for kids to get in, from all over the country. The world, even. We hear the stories because we live close to it, and schools like that always have rumors spread about them. But we got really lucky that they’ve made a place for Briella, so she can do the day school program.”

  “Maybe I ought to buy a lottery ticket, if our luck’s so good.” Marian tried to say the words lightly, but they fell, solid as stones, without humor.

  Dean sighed and took her in his arms. Together they danced in a slow circle. She finally gave in and relaxed, resting her head on his shoulder and pressing her face to his neck. She breathed him in, the good warm scents of skin and sweat and his shampoo. She closed her eyes and let him hold her. It didn’t make her any less nervous, but she was grateful for the comfort anyway.

  “She should’ve been home by now,” she fretted.

  “The paperwork said to expect her at three forty-five. That’s later than normal. The van will be bringing her right to the driveway. It’s all going to be fine. She’s not even late yet.”

  A quick glance at the clock showed her he was right, as usual. It would’ve been irritating if it wasn’t also such a reassurance, a reminder of how fully she could always count on Dean. He’d never let her down.

  “I just want everything to be okay,” she said. “I’m worried that she won’t like the new school. And then what would we do?”

  “We’d figure it out, together, because that’s what we do. We can go wait out front if you want. Then you can see the van coming up the street.”

  “Would that make me a…what do they call them? Airport mom?”

  “Helicopter parent,” Dean said. “Maybe. A little. But not too much.”

  They both started laughing, and the chuckles turned to guffaws, until Marian had to wipe away tears. Barely able to catch her breath, she straightened, turning to see Briella in the doorway. The kid’s backpack looked almost as big as her entire body. Briella hung back, not coming into the kitchen.

  “What are you laughing about?”

  “Oh, something Dean said struck me funny. Hey, how was your first day of school, big girl?” Marian’s voice sounded too bright and fake, even to herself. She tempered it with a smile and went to help Briella shrug off the straps of the oversized pack. “Are you hungry? Do you want a snack?”

  “No. They give us snacks at school. Anytime we want,” Briella said offhandedly. “There’s not a lunch. We eat or drink when we’re hungry. We don’t have recess either, but that’s okay, because the whole day is like recess!”

  “Sounds like you had a great first day,” Dean said.

  Briella nodded, but spoke to her mother instead of him. “I got to pick out my locker and put my stuff in there, and I got to meet Principal Stewart too. He was super nice. My homeroom teacher is Mrs. Addison. She also teaches science and computer programming. And there’s a girl in my class, her name is Aubrey, and she’s got the same birthday as me, but a year older! Because the classes don’t just have the same kinds of kids in them. Which means I don’t have to be in a dumb class just because I’m younger.”

  “Wow.” Marian exchanged a look with Dean over the kid’s head. “It really does sound like you had a terrific first day. C’mon and sit here and tell us all about it.”

  “Well, Mom, I’d really like to go out back and get some fresh air. I’ve been working hard all day long. Parkhaven isn’t like Southside. I got to do some real stuff there. I’m going to do some really great experiments.” Briella said this so seriously that Marian did not dare laugh.

  “Remember when you used to call them ‘spearmints’?”

  Briella rolled her eyes. “Yeah, well, I was little then.”

  “Right. Of course. Sure, you go on outside. I’ll call you when it’s ti