Black Feathers (22 page)

“Why don’t you come with us,” Harrison said gently. “We can—”

She pulled herself to her feet, pulled herself away from the touch, from the words. “No,” she sobbed. “I can’t. I can’t.”

“Cassie …”

“I can’t.”

“We can get you help.”

She bristled at the words, but she tried not to let it show, tried to focus on her breathing.

“I’m serious,” he said, his voice tighter now. “It’s not safe out here.” He glanced into the park. “You need to be careful. Find someone you can trust. You can look out for each other.”

She shook her head, wiped her nose on the shoulder of her coat.

“I did,” she said.

All the air had been sucked out of the universe.

He looked at her for a long time, like there was something else that he wanted to say, then turned back to the car. “All right, Farrow,” he said.

Cassie watched as the two of them got back into the cruiser. Harrison unrolled the passenger window and looked at her as they pulled away from the curb.

She watched as the right-turn indicator flashed at the end of the block, as the car disappeared around the corner.

She clung to the fence as the sun rose around her, her legs barely able to support her weight, not thinking, not able to think. She cried, and as the tears steamed on her cheeks, she mouthed Skylark’s name over and over, no sound, just gentle puffs of grey drifting silently away.

When she couldn’t cry anymore, she wiped her face roughly with her sleeve, sniffed decisively, then walked through the gap in the fence and back into the camp.

She wanted to crawl into Ian and Jeff’s tent, zip the fly up like she had never been gone, and curl up in the sleeping bag, tug it over her head and let it fill with the warmth of her breath. She didn’t want to talk to them, not now—she didn’t
trust herself to speak—she just wanted to lie there, knowing that she wasn’t completely alone.

She stopped short as she rounded the corner.

Bob was standing in the shadows at the head of the path.

“You’re up early,” he said.

She just nodded, afraid to try to speak.

“Have a good chat with your friends in the five-o?” He looked at her like he actually expected her to say something, but then he shook his head. “Come on,” he said. “Brother Paul wants to see you.”

“Now?” she managed to croak.

“When else?”

For a moment she thought about saying no, about returning to Ian and Jeff’s tent, hiding herself away. But it wouldn’t do her any good. And she didn’t want to think about what Bob and his friends might do if she refused.

She followed the dreadlocked boy down the path.

Brother Paul’s tent shimmered in the dim light, the flickering of several lanterns causing her to squint as Bob held the flap open for her and she stepped inside.

Brother Paul was pulling on his jacket, head slightly hunched under the ceiling of the tent. He stopped when she came in.

“Dorothy,” he said, stepping toward her. “Oh, I am so happy to see you back with us.”

As he opened his arms, Cassie realized there wasn’t enough room in the tent for her to step away. She had no choice but to allow him to wrap his arms around her, to pull her into the smoky, musky smell of him.

“We were all so worried about you girls,” he murmured in her ear as his hands rubbed up and down her back.

Cassie didn’t say anything, didn’t move, stayed frozen in place, trying not to breathe.

“You just disappeared,” he continued. “We thought—”

He was cut off by a scratching at the front flap of the tent behind Cassie, and Bob’s voice. “Brother Paul?”

He stepped back from Cassie. “Yes, send her in,” he said, loudly enough to be heard outside.

The flap of the tent parted, and a girl entered, carefully balancing a mug between her hands.

“Thank you for this, Charity,” Brother Paul said as he took the mug from her.

It took Cassie a moment to recognize the girl who had been next to her at the wall; it seemed like it had been a lifetime ago. Charity looked like she was a little younger than Cassie, her face smooth, her hair clean and pulled back into a blond ponytail. She looked at Brother Paul with an openness to her expression, eyes wide and focused on him.

The way Skylark had looked at him.

He took a sip from his mug. “That’s perfect,” he said, exhaling contentedly. “Thank you so much.”

He brushed the girl’s cheek with his hand, and she turned away, blushing, disappearing back out through the flap without speaking.

“She’s very special,” he said, watching her go. “Poor child.”

He took another sip from his mug. “Tea,” he said. “Should I have her bring you a cup?”

Cassie shook her head. “No. No, that’s fine.” The words were all she could muster.

He nodded. “All right,” he said. “Would you like to sit
down?” He pointed at his bed, a mess of blankets and a sleeping bag on top of an air mattress.

“No,” Cassie said. “No thank you.”

“All right,” he repeated. “Well, then.” He took another sip from the mug, pursing his lips like the tea was too hot. “So I am told you had an encounter with the local police this morning.”

Cassie didn’t know if the chill running up her back was from his voice or from the draft blowing through the tent flap.

It felt like there was glass in her throat when she swallowed. “They … they wanted … Skylark …”

He looked at her for a long moment, and his face fell. Tea sloshed from the top of his mug, splashing with a crackle on the plastic floor.

“Oh my God,” he said. “She …?”

Cassie nodded.

“Oh my God.” He turned, first to the left, then to the right, like he was looking for somewhere to go, something to do. Stepping toward the far end of the bed, he set his mug down on the overturned milk crate, next to the black book he always carried, then turned back to Cassie. “Did they …” He stopped himself. “Oh, Dorothy. I’m so sorry.”

He stepped toward her, his arms open again.

This time, Cassie stepped back, buckling the plastic wall of the tent.

Brother Paul lowered his arms, nodded. “Yes. Yes, of course.” He shook his head. “She was so lovely,” he said. “Such a lovely person. Did the police … Did they tell you what happened?”

She shook her head, barely able to speak, not sure that she wanted to. To tell him—to say the words out loud, to describe what Harrison and Farrow had told her, to hear it, in her own
voice—would make it all real. It would mean that Skylark was truly gone.

Laura.

“Are you all right, dear?” Brother Paul asked, leaning toward her, his voice lowering. “This must be so hard for you …”

Cassie bit her lip and nodded. She knew that if she made the slightest sound, she would start crying again, and this time, she probably wouldn’t stop. Ever.

“Are you sure you don’t want to sit down?” He gestured again at the bed.

She shook her head.

“All right,” he said, nodding slowly. “But know,” he said, staring at her, his eyes locking on her own, “that we are all here for you. This loss, it lessens all of us. She was such a … presence. We’re all here to support you, to give you what you need. We’re a family, you know that.” He gestured toward the front of the tent. “I’ll have Bob find you a good tent—”

“No,” she said, her voice louder than she intended. “Thank you. I can’t. I just …”

“You can’t be thinking of going back out there?” Brother Paul’s voice was incredulous. “By yourself?”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to,” she said.

“Then don’t.” He didn’t give her time to finish what she was going to say.

“I—” She started to argue with him. She wanted to explain, to make him understand why she couldn’t stay. But there was nothing she could say that would make any sense, even to herself. “I’ll be all right,” she said, instead, knowing that it was a lie.

“Dorothy—” But she was already turning away, out through the zipper, into the cold.

The wind blew cold and hard down Douglas Street, cutting through Cassie’s layers, driving tiny snowflakes like needles into the exposed skin of her face. She staggered headlong into the wind, lashed and beaten with every step.

That she had run away again—not able to face Brother Paul, not able to even speak to Ian and Jeff when she had gone for her bag—that she had no place to go, didn’t really register for her. The tears that blistered on her cheeks in the driving snow were for Skylark.

Laura. Laura Ensley.

She had been so beautiful, so full of life. It had made Cassie feel better just to be near her.

And now she was gone.

She had been in grade eleven, the same grade as Cassie. In another world, in other lives, they might have been friends. Out here, sleeping on the frozen concrete, begging for change, they had been something else, something more.

Skylark had given her a home, a community, a shoulder to lean on. Cassie hadn’t realized how much she had been missing all of those things. And now she was gone.

She would never hear the sound of her laugh again. Never hear the sound of her voice. Never share a meal, a bed, a smile.

She was gone.

And the last thing Cassie would remember of her was the way the knife had slid into her stomach, almost without a sound, the way her eyes had widened in sudden surprise and the sound, almost like a zipper, as she had drawn the knife upward, splitting Skylark’s belly open, like unzipping another layer of clothes, the real Skylark spilling onto the ground as she cried out.

This was his favourite part.

Watching the girl, bent-backed, as she slumped down the sidewalk, bouncing around people as they bumped into her without noticing, as they passed her without even realizing she was there.

The sidewalks were crowded with Christmas shoppers, but none of them really saw the girl. She had become invisible.

She was nothing. And she knew it.

That was the best part: she was fully, consciously aware that she had been stripped of everything. Her family, her home, her friends, the new home she had found, all gone. Nothing left.

She was a smear on the pavement, a cigarette butt in the gutter, a hamburger wrapper caught in the skeletal twigs of a wintering shrub, discarded and forgotten.

He felt a wild rush of thrumming pleasure.