Flight (3 page)

DNA. Stairway to a trillion
possibilities.

Although her mother and father always had
laughed at the absurdity when Prissi would accuse them of not being
her real parents, Prissi often wondered whether she was made from
her parents’ DNA. As early as fourth grade, when she began to learn
of all the parenting possibilities—GEEs (genetically-enhanced
embryos), surrogation, hy-babes (hybrid babies with either sperm or
egg from a donor), and the ancient stand-by, adoption, Prissi had
fantasized about how she came to be with the people who called
themselves her parents. Those tales, first thought while lying on a
cot under mosquito netting on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika,
usually involved exotic people in even more exotic
circumstances.

Prissi stared at the ladder of life pulsing
inside its glowing sac at the front of the room and considered the
wisdom of bringing some of her parents’ DNA back after winter break
to prove that she could not possibly be their spawn.

Prissi snorted so loudly that Smarkzy’s
smartstick swung in her direction. Her face reddening in dismay,
Prissi covered her mouth to squelch another outburst.

Spawn. Prissi Langue loved that word. Evil
spawn. Like corn smut, but with shoes and underwear. Prissi toyed
with the idea of bringing back a gatherum of hair from her father’s
brush, then bribing an honor’s senior to type it to see if she
really was flesh of his flesh. But, that would only answer half the
equation. Finding out about her mother would not be so easy. The
only possession Prissi had of her mother’s was a small, ornately
carved rosewood box. After her father gave it to her, Prissi had
been caught within a labyrinth of emotions as she opened it and
found her mother’s engagement and wedding rings, as well as a
strand of pale green pearls. Even after hundreds of times, looking
in the box still released a rat’s nest of feelings in the girl.
Prissi shook her catfood brown hair to sweep away her thoughts.

Coming out of class, Prissi saw Joe Fflower’s
broad back half-way down the hallway. She sped up and darted left
and right around her classmates to get closer. Like with a lot of
teener relationships, Prissi sometimes had a much better time
watching Joe than actually being with him. Even from the back, she
could tell that, like always, he was walking with his nose in the
air. She rode her loving loathing like a favorite horse as she
scanned down from his shiny, blond, perfectly curled, but perfectly
uncoifed hair to his too broad shoulders and down to his VCB. The
first time Prissi had noticed the VERY CUTE BUTT, it was so
distinctive that she had nicknamed it Hector. When she found out
who its owner was, that he came from a family with more money than
Mombai, came from the family that had dominated the meta-mutancy
business for three-quarters of a century, she was sure the VCB
would never have a place in her life. But, in another example of
Dutton’s famous tradition of diversity, Prissi Lange and Joe
Fflowers had become friends, and, finally, after a months-long
fencing match of feints and counters, more than friends.

Following three steps behind, Prissi had a
bittersweet feeling in knowing that Hector would soon go behind the
feathered veil. There was no chance that Joe’s family would let him
remain a walker. Prissi had listened too many times while a
cavalierly defiant Joe explained why he didn’t want wings—at least,
right now. He wanted to play hockey. Prissi knew that Joe’s
reputation was that he was one of the top ten high school hockey
players in the country. But, even if that were true, Prissi could
not imagine Joe’s father, Illiya Fflowers, the Co-President of
Cygnetics, a company that fledged over five million teenerz a year,
letting Joe have his way. Whether he wanted it that way or not, the
Joe Fflower’s was going to have to accept that tomorrow would be
his last hockey game as a walker. Four days after that, Spring
Break would begin. Prissi was positive that when Joe returned from
break, he would have been muted. And, while the world would have
gained a winger, unfortunately, Prissi’s eyes would have to bid a
fond adieu to a visible VCB.

Prissi skipped around Kipo Phelps, wrapped an
arm around Joe’s waist and laid her head on his shoulder.

“Hi.”

Joe wriggled himself free.

“No PDAs, miss.”

“Well, what if I hit you in the arm, would
that be seen a public display of affection?”

“An attack on me is an attack on Dutton.”

“Wouldn’t want that. I’ll see you later. In
private.”

Joe turned toward Prissi, and gave a slight
nod toward the restroom door, but said nothing.

As Prissi watched Joe’s VCB go through the
doorway, she sighed.

Once again, for the billionth time, commerce
would trump art.

Oh, woe. Goodnight, sweet butt of a not
always so sweet prince.

Prissi snorted, then immediately chastised
herself. Next to her flourishing farm of excrescences, her high
strung ever-talking hands, her mutation into a fizgig whenever she
had too much caffeine, and the nose, of course, the monumental
nose, the thing Prissi hated most about herself was her snort. It
was a horrible noise. Like the sound a javelina would make before
it gored a dog. The snort was her unedited laugh and it made her
want to cry when she heard it.

With gallimaufry thoughts of love and hate,
like and dislike, bubbling in her brain, the girl hurried down the
hall and burst from the Zoeg. The sun was shining, the wind was
blowing. The tulip heads wee bobbing in a way that reminded the
girl of Twa tribe dancers. Another snort was triggered by the
massive snowflakes dancing in the sky. Snow in March was unknown.
Snow from a blue sky in March was magic, and, for Prissi Langue,
magic always drew a snort.

BFF

The wingless Joe Fflowers flies…in skates, on
ice. Unless he makes a mind-boggling decision, tomorrow will be the
last time Joe will skate in Evenen Rink. He loves the old arena. Of
the scores of rinks where he has practiced and played hockey for
eleven years, the century-old Evenen Rink has the hardest ice he
has ever skated on. Evenen’s ice is so hard that the sound his
speeding blades make as he races over its surface could have come
from some medieval Japanese musical instrument.

Cross push stretch cross push stretch don’t
think cross push stretch.

Joe has the entire sheet of ice to himself.
His Friday schedule leaves the last class period of the day free.
Every week of hockey season he has taken those extra minutes before
practice begins just to skate.

No helmet. No pads. No stick. Just dim lights
and hard ice.

Joe explodes forward as he uses all of his
strength to push through on the inside edge of his left skate. He
closes his eyes to concentrate on two sounds—the hissing of metal
slicing through ice and the roar of a thirty kilometer-an-hour wind
blowing past his ears. He glides blind down the length of the rink.
At the last second, as some inner sense feels the boards just
ahead, he shifts his weight to his outside edge and, eyes still
closed, circles back from whence he came.

If he does not decide, cannot decide, then,
tomorrow it is over. In a week, the skater will be gone. A mutant
bird in its place.

Joe opens his eyes, cuts an edge, uses three
short explosive steps to accelerate, lengthens his stride, digs
hard, increases his speed and smashes his shoulder into the rickety
old glass. The rink reverberates with sound.

Five more days. His father has let him know
the day before that the wing-mute is scheduled for the day after he
gets home for spring break.

Five days and the thing he likes doing most
in the world will be gone. Unless….

Joe spins toward the opposite end of the rink
and speeds off. He drives himself down the ice. As he crosses the
second blue line, he notices movement in the shadows behind the
heavily scratched glass.

Coach Deirkin. The bald, but bearded coach,
famous for his harangues, merely points his finger and gives a
slight shake of his head to his best player.

Joe aborts his crash. Slowing his breathing
and his speed, the fifteen-year old circles the rink a half-dozen
times. The first three times around as he comes down the ice he
looks closely through the dim glass for Deirkin. After that, he
decides that his coach has gone down to his office, probably to
practice yelling.

Joe tentatively extends his arms and flaps.
Flaps again. Flaps and swears at his father and what is to be his
fate. Unless….

After practice ends, Joe holds back. He waits
until he is sure that he is the last one leaving the rink. Instead
of following his teammates, who are rushing down the hill to get to
the dining hall, Joe slips along the wall of the side of the rink
and hurries to the back. The boy makes his way through a small
forest of shadows. He stops where he has been told to wait and
listens. The only sounds he hears are a couple of shrill taunts
from down the hill and the bored drone of the compressors making
ice.

“It’s Joe.”

The tired boy leans against the wall and
looks at stars sprinkled, like sequins, among a sky full of
cotton-balls. He waits for ten minutes, but no one shows. As Joe
waits, his feelings rise and sink, like a teeter totter, between
relief and disappointment. He doesn’t want wings, but he doesn’t
want to leave Dutton and he definitely doesn’t want to leave
Prissi. Joe knows he has a hard time showing it, but Prissi Langue
does something inside him that no girl…no person… ever has done.
She seems to see past all the defenses and screens he has had to
put up from being from an immensely wealthy family. She teases him,
likes him, argues with him and, best of all, acts like she doesn’t
know his last name. He can’t even imagine how much he will miss
her…if he decides to go.

As Joe pushes himself from the wall and
shifts his skate bag higher on his shoulder, a low voice emanates
from the deep shadows between the compressors and the rink wall,
“Have you decided?”

A startled Joe blurts, “Yes, I…no. Not
really.”

“Time’s short.”

“I know.”

“It can’t happen on a whim. It has to be set
up. Organized.”

“I know. I know.”

As Joe’s fears turn to anger at being
watched…studied…for ten minutes, it causes his voice to pitch up an
octave. He worries that it might break.

“It can’t happen with a day’s notice. We need
two days, at least.”

“It’s not going to happen now. I’m late. I’ve
got to go.”

“Think hard. It’s close to too late. Think
what you will lose. You could be the best.”

Joe whirls away from the speaker, as if
eluding a defender on the ice, and sprints toward the lights of the
dining hall. As he shoves open the massive door, the teener is
breathing hard, and not so much from the run, as from what he is
running from. He hurries into the reassuringly familiar light and
warmth, the myriad of noises and pastiche of smells swirling
through Mullen Dining Hall.

* * *

After being abandoned by Nasty Nancy, Prissi
has been sitting alone with her dinner and her thoughts. Tonight’s
dance. Smarkzy’s special lecture on Sunday. The essay due on
Tuesday. How boring Spring Break was going to be. And the thing she
didn’t want to think about: Seeing Joe’s cousin Jack Fflowers in
less than twenty hours at The Bissell School dedication.

Prissi’s thought get even more jumbled when
she sees Joe run into the dining room and grab a tray.

As Joe moves from station to station filling
his tray, he looks down the length of the cavernous room to where
his teammates are sitting. In the far left corner Beak, Frankie
Nuts, Willie T and Bawlzout Bechley seem to be scrimmaging as much
as eating. Feeling too confused to defend himself against their
rough friendship, Joe veers off to the right side of the
Tudor-style hall to where Prissi perches at a table by herself.
Just before he sits, Joe looks back to be sure that the dessert
station will block his teammates’ view. After he drops his skate
bag, Joe nods to Prissi.

Prissi tips her head at Joe’s tray, which is
filled with meat and potatoes, and in a mocking voice says, “All
green.”

Joe, laughing at the line some Ecos use as a
greeting, responds with its complement, “Or all gone.”

Prissi dramatically twirling her fork through
the edamame and udon noodle salad she has been avoiding says, “Or,
not.”

When a nonplussed Prissi saw Joe bee-lining
toward her table, she had twisted around so quickly to see if the
hockey corner was empty that she had snapped a couple of quills.
Now, while Joe scarfs his food, Prissi leans forward so she can
angle her wing and pull out the useless quills.

Freeieekin feathers. She was born too late.
Sixty years ago, it was still possible to get membrane wings. But,
the ersatz bat wings had gone out of favor not only because the
folds of flesh didn’t contain melanin, thus wouldn’t tan, but also
because the wings couldn’t be grown without claw-like appendages at
the end, which had to be kept trimmed. Plus, of course, they were
disgustingly ugly, which Prissi, given her age, actually considered
a strong selling point.

Fine, she thinks. Wings that looked like they
were made from the wattles of dowager geris had drawbacks, but they
didn’t have freeieekin feathers.

After Prissi finishes her wingkeeping and
looks over, Joe Fflowers seems a million kliks away. Not sure of
what he might be thinking or feeling, Prissi feels an irresistible
urge to touch the bumps on her face before putting her head down
and stirring her food. She wishes Nasty Nancy hadn’t run off to
finish her homework before the dance. Although Prissi is still
hungry, she is not hungry enough to chance the social dangers of
eating udon with Joe at the table. She can visualize noodles flying
across the table and onto Joe after being launched by some random
spazz neuronal blast. Or, if by some unexpected good fortune, the
food happened to make it to her mouth, she is sure that half of it
would hang from her lips like the slobber and green that slops from
the mouth of a hippo deep into its dinner. But, swirling and
twirling, but not eating, looks stupid, too. And, she can’t
leave…because… Because. Because, she can’t. Because her honor
demands that she say something about going to The Bissell School
tomorrow to see Jack.