Page 86 of Scars Like Wings
Teleporting actually blows chunks. Or at least, it will make you do that if you aren’t prepared.
Don’t get me wrong. Is it an amazingly convenient form of transportation that is straight out of a sci-fi fantasy novel?Hell yes! For a flat fee on most one-way trips within the city limits, you can use a wild combination of both magic and science to go damn near wherever you want in record time. You can even bring luggage with you. The problem is you have to be able to stomach traveling against the natural flow of space, time, and reality and having your atoms deconstructed and rearranged back together again to get you from Point A to Point B. The longer the trip, the worse the tele-lag. At best, you feel nauseous for a few hours. But at worse?
There are teleportation recovery clinics around Blackbell for a reason, okay?
With my anxiety already turned up to eleven from everything that happened today, adding more nausea wasn’t ideal. But Maisie lived far from a Midnight Railway Station, and I wasn’t in any mood to risk talking to anyone in the backseat of a Broomshare. I would rather vomit my breakfast than deal with a stranger trying to make small talk right now.
Simone and Maisie seemed to feel the same way. After Aran’s summoning call, Maisie just wanted to take a bath and drown herself in wine while watching some new reality show that bills itself as a social love experiment. She declared herself done for the day and didn’t want to think until tomorrow at the earliest. We all agreed before Simone and I took our leave and parted at the Teleways.
I stepped off the Teleway platform. To stave off most of the strong desire to vomit from both the teleportation and my general anxiety, I popped a ginger candy in my mouth. I pulled my coat tight around me to fight the chill. I put my headphones in to listen to my favorite album when I needed to drown out my feelings and not think: Fall Out Boy’s “So Much (For) Stardust.” Walking toward home, the guitar solos and rhythmic lyrics pounded through my ears and straight to my heart.
The buildings in Blackbell were outnumbered by the beautifully tall evergreen pine trees. Among the branches, pine needles, and leaves, there were homes and businesses for the various creatures who thrived off the woodland like nymphs, elementals, and some kinds of fae and witches. They looked like treehouses up there, with steps and ladders made of wood and mushrooms. Near the sidewalk just before the Waterways and the road, a garden of flowers and bushes bloomed despite the chill of the fall, serving as a home for pixies and all sorts of tiny supernatural creatures that were always flying about like butterflies. The large amount of flora and fauna turned the city into an almost literal forest rather than a concrete jungle. It made it feel like you were always walking through a never-ending park.
Despite the beauty and magic all around me and the strumming guitar and drum beats in my ears, my brain still insisted on wandering to exactly where I didn’t want it to go.
I would at least make your death easier and more profitable.What had Aran meant by that? Who would want me dead? Why would that be monetarily advantageous at all to anyone? I wasn’t someone incredibly special. I was a nobody. Up until this morning, I thought I was human honestly. What reason would anyone want me dead? Why was Aran such a major dickwad? What did someone as sweet as Ms. Repond see in him in the first place? The grimoire…Mygrimoire… My family’s grimoire, what had my mom known about it? Why was I finding it now? What did any of it mean? If I wasn’t human,whatwas I? Had my mother known? Why hadn’t she or Pops told me? Who had created that spell in the book fifteen years ago? Why?—?
A ding paused the chorus of “Heartbreak Feels So Good” and my thoughts. Siri read in her usual artificial monotone:Queenie red heart emoji said, “Would you still want to talk to me if I was a worm?” sent with the looking eyes emoji.
Then:Queenie red heart emoji also said, “What about an octopus? Could you be friends with an octopus?”
And: “Speaking of octopuses, did you know they have terrible eyesight but three hearts?”
And: “I think there’s something poetic about that,” sent with a red heart emoji.
And: “I’m so sorry if this is random. I have ADHD, so my brain works… not normal. I’m so weird, I’m sorry! If you hate it, you should leave now,” sent with a crying laughing emoji.
I laughed hearing her amazing text messages read aloud in such a dull voice. I pulled my phone from my pocket to respond to her. But my fingers hovered over the virtual keyboard. I wanted to answer her questions, to reassure her that I thought her brain was perfect. I adored how her brain worked, the connections she could make. I was deeply obsessed with it.Maybe it was the demisexual in me, but hearing how her mind functioned was so adorable to me that I could scream with joy.
Her brain was why I wanted to tell her all about today, everything from the mundane start of my day with my quiet commute and Ethan’s passive aggression to finding out about the grimoire and everything that entailed to everything that went down at Maisie’s house. I wanted to hear her thoughts on it, to see if I was as crazy as I felt.
At the same time, I didn’t want to even think about any of this anymore. I was so tired and worn raw like an overly exposed nerve. My constant thinking and turning over every pebble of information from today was enough, more than honestly. My overthinking would make me talk to myself more than I could with anyone else. No, I wanted—needed—a distraction.
ME
Can I call you?
Barely ten seconds passed after I hit send before my phone rang with a video call. I smiled as I hit accept.
“Hi, sweetness,” Quinn greeted with a smirk. Her phone must have been propped up against something on the kitchen counter since I recognized her backsplash and oven of the Barn behind her. Glass bowls full of flour, brown sugar, vanilla, butter, and other ingredients were placed all around her with a whisk sitting next to it. Her plushy, wild curls were pulled back into a ponytail, but some strays stubbornly remained and framed her face nicely. She wore a navy blue apron with her name embroidered on the top front pocket. The sleeves of her maroon red t-shirt were stretched tight over her biceps, and I had to stop my brain from focusing too hard on those same biceps lifting me with ease the other night when I got too drunk at the party. Gods, she was sofine.
Focus, Byrd. Remember to stay strong. You promised. It’s all still an idea. Don’t think about touching… or, her touching you… or?—
“Hi!” I said, trying to shut my brain up and ignore the heat I felt rise along my cheeks and… elsewhere. Instead, I tried to focus on putting one foot in front of the other on the sidewalk.
“I’m so sorry for blowing your phone up with questions,” she said, pulling a large glass bowl of what looked like flour closer to her. “Sometimes, I just… You know how Clarkson got the zoomies the first time you met her? My brain does that sometimes, and I just have to ask things even if they are out of pocket. I know it’s a lot?—”
“Oh, gods, no, it isn’t at all,” I reassured. “It’s really fucking cute, actually. Uh, to answer your question, I would very much still like you as a worm or an octopus or a bird or anything. I like you, starlight, and I like your ADHD zoomies. That fun fact about octopuses—wait, octopi? Octopussies? Is that right?”
Quinn laughed, dumping the contents of a few bowls into the large bowl of flour before stacking them inside of each other. She grabbed a sheet of parchment paper and a sifter that she pulled from somewhere out-of-frame. She laid the sheet down and dumped the flour mixture into the sifter. While sifting onto the parchment sheet, she said, “Oh, I have no idea what it is, but octopussies is too perfect for me not to use from now on.”
“Hey! English is hard, okay? I think I read somewhere that any of those could be considered right!”
“There is no way thatoctopussieshas come out of the mouth of a marine biologist unironically and with a straight face.” Quinn sprinkled something I guessed was salt onto the sifted flour.
“As I was saying,” I said through laughter. “I get it. I have really bad anxiety, so my brain does a zoomie, but it’s less of Sonic the Hedgehog and more of a train wreck. It’s kind of moreof a brain spiral, like a plane crashing and falling out of the sky toward the ground.”
Quinn looked up at me from her, whisking the mixture with what looked like the tiniest whisk I had ever seen. I wanted to smile at the cutest kitchen utensil I had ever seen, but Quinn’s golden hazel eyes were alight with concern.