Vanished (13 page)

              While I still have an ounce of self-control, I sneak out of the bed-room and shut the door behind me unsure of how I survived
that
moment.  And suddenly it hits me.  The reason I feel so disturbed right now is because every cell in my body is attracted to Logan Darby. Up until what he told me in the hospital, back when I thought he saw me as a
freak
, it was easy to ignore those feelings but now that he’s not with Madison anymore and he’s openly flirting with me, how he makes me feel is impossible to ignore.

              “Trin?” Someone says as I walk like a zombie down the hall. I turn to my right and see Madison sitting on a messy bed pulling on her boots.  She dressed in jeans, a low-cut black sweater, with holes cut in the back for her wings to fit through, and she’s wearing her hair down for the first time in a few days.  I can’t help staring at her wings. “Come in.” She says, looking down to put on her boots.

              I step slowly into the room and look around.  I know this must be her bedroom because it’s the only messy room I’ve seen in the house. Her clothes are thrown over chairs, in somewhat organized piles on the floor and hanging in the large walk-in closet.  I can’t imagine having that much clothes. 

              She finishes with her boots and looks up at me, “It’s a mess, I know,” she says, “I’m used to Juanita cleaning up after me.  Guess I’ll have to learn how to do that myself now.”

              I shrug, “It’s pretty easy once you get in the habit.”

              She smiles, “Yeah, I bet your room is immaculate.  You strike me as a clean-freak.” Her use of the work
freak
makes me flinch a little but I tell myself it’s just a word.  I can’t really argue with her. She’s right about my room being clean, just not about the reason why.

              “I can help you straighten up if you do my make-up?”

              She cocks her head and gives me a perplexed look, “You actually want me to do your make-up.  You know I was trying to humiliate you.”

I want to laugh at her bluntness but instead I just smile.

              “Yeah, it worked,” I lie, it’s
really
hard to humiliate me anymore, “but so did the make-up. You were right… I felt more…confident.”

              “So, actually you should be thanking me?” She asks, her eyes lighting up.  She’s teasing me, I know, but I’m not sure how to respond.

              “Don’t push it,” I mutter, and bend down to scoop up a pile of jeans at the end of her bed. We organize the clothes into clean and dirty piles then separate the dirty piles into colors. Three baskets of dirty clothes are leftover when we’re done.  She takes me to the laundry room and I show her the settings she should use to watch each basket on.  Then we go back to her bedroom and hang up the other clothes. We put her gobs of jewelry back in the ornate oriental jewelry box on her vanity and make her bed.

              Half-way through Collin bops his red head into the doorframe, sees what we’re doing and vanishes as quickly as he appeared, “Coward,” Madison yells after him and we both laugh.

              When we’re done the room is transformed into what it was before the mess; an elegant bedroom the size of a small apartment.  “That wasn’t so bad.” Madison says, collapsing in the white arm-chair across from the matching one I’m sitting in.

              I raise my eyebrows and she laughs, “Your turn,” she says and goes into her closet heaving out the big bag of make-up. 

She takes my hand, pulls me up and drags me over to the vanity pushing me down on the stool in front of it.  Out with the old me and in with the new.  “Should I ask where you got these scars?” She says, interrupting my silent transformation.

              I feel myself tense up, “I prefer you don’t.”

              She nods and spins me to face her bed while she works on the back of my hair. “Do you want to know why I
really
invited you on the trip, Trin?”

             
Do I want to?
“To be your project?” I quote her, “because where other’s see coal you see a diamond.” 

              “You’re sort of right but not the type of
project
you’re thinking.”

              “What do you mean?”

              “Did you know that a long time ago our dad’s were friends?”

              I turn and look at her.  My heart begins to race. “No.”

              “You know the cave?”

              “Yes?”

              “Well I lied. My dad and I didn’t find the cave together.  We went there together a couple times, but he discovered the cave with
your
dad.”

              “Wait. My dad or my step-dad?”

              She frowns, “Your
real
dad, silly.  They went to school together.”

              “I had no idea.”
Maybe that’s why he was so adamant about me attending St. Raphael’s.

              She gives me a suspicious look than shrugs, “Turn back around,” she says, nudging my head with the back of her hand, “So anyways, my dad was talking to me a few days before the trip and he mentioned your dad, then he asked about you.  I told him you still went to St. Raphael’s but we weren’t friends and you were kind of a geek…sorry. Anyways, he’s all that’s not right of you Madison…you should befriend her….I’ve heard stories about what goes on in that house now that Malcolm’s gone… it’s no wonder the girls a little strange yada yada yada…” She’s waving the straightener around as she talks so nonchalantly about something that makes my insides clench into a fist. 

They knew?
People knew about Judge and didn’t do anything to stop him?

“Anyways, for the next two days he wouldn’t leave me alone about you.  I have to admit I was curious because of how he was always going on about Malcolm this and Malcolm that, so I watched you for a couple days and I realized helping you was going to take something extreme.  So, in a way, you were a project, but not the kind you thought, right?” She touches my shoulder and leans over to smile at me, like she didn’t just call me a geek and talk openly about my family’s darkest secrets.

              I glare at her, “That’s a nice story.”

              She disappears from my field of vision and goes back to working on my hair. “It’s the truth.  OTrin, so I wanted to humiliate you a little too especially when I saw the way he…” her voice trails off and she skips over what we both know she was going to say, “I don’t want you to think I’m telling you this as an apology.”

              “Why
are
you telling me then?”

              “Because…who we were before doesn’t matter and…” she hesitates and I feel the brush stop moving through my hair, “and because I want us to be friends.”

              I don’t know why what she says shocks me so much but it does.  I was expecting another twist, for her to tell me something that would make this life, with them, seem more awful, to make it easier to face going home. If I could hate these people it wouldn’t hurt so bad to leave them.  

              “I’d like that too.” I tell her and I actually mean it.

              She turns me toward her and pulls me into an unexpected hug, her wings tickling my face. I don’t know what to do so I just let my hands hang limp at my sides. She steps back, her hands still holding my shoulders, “Since we’re friends, if you ever need to talk,” her eyes flash up to the scar on my forehead, barely visible under her miracle mask, “I’m a
really
good listener.”

              “Thanks,” I murmur. But I don’t think I’ll be sharing any secrets with her anytime soon.  Let’s see how this friendship thing goes for a while first. 

              “Am I interrupting something?” A gritty voice asks from the doorway.  Logan is watching us, looking amused.

              Madison instantly releases me and turns toward the vanity, gathering up her magic make-up. Logan’s hair is still wet from the shower and he’s looking right at me. “We were just talking,” I say.

              “We need to get going if everyone has time to get back before nightfall.” 

              “Sure, just a second” He watches as I help Madison pack up the make-up and we follow him out the door to the living room.

__#__

              Before we leave we stop to study the development of Madison’s wings, which look almost full grown now and are so majestic they take my breath away.  She stretches them out displaying them almost proudly.  We get out some measuring tape and I step up on a stool and touch the feathers. They’re as soft as silk. The wing moves a fraction of an inch under my fingers.  I press the tape measure to very tip of the wing, feeling soft cartilage underneath reminding me of the pliancy of the cartilage in an ear, flexible and rigidly shaped at the same time.  I drop the tape, it dangles down and Collin steps up and grabs it.  He pulls the rest of the tape out, draws it down to her skin where it meets the wings jutting outwards.  He carefully checks the number and looks up, his eyes wide, “Fifty five inches, that’s over four feet,” he says and I detect a little bit of pride in his voice. Madison smiles affectionately at him. 

              She folds the wings down carefully and then turns to show us how they retract down against her back so they don’t mess up her balance or get in the way.  With her wings folded down like that, all she’s missing is a halo to look like she just stepped out of a
Sir Edward Burne-Jones’
painting. 

Her cheeks and face have filled in a little and, now that I know to look, I see her baby bump is showing a tiny bit.  “They suit you,” I say, “Have you thought about trying them out?”

              She frowns and gives me a confused look that quickly transforms into enlightenment, “You’re saying…I  mean…I think you’re suggesting…”

              “Maybe you can fly.” I furnish, since she seems to need help.

              Collin looks at me, then back at Madison, “Now don’t go giving her any ideas, Trin,” he says turning back to glare at me.

              “She’s right,” Madison says, “holy shit maybe I
can
fly,” she starts to brim with excitement and it’s all she can talk about all the way down to the front of the building.

              It’s still sunny and clear outside.  At least it’s not raining.  “Remember if we see anything strange or out of place, we come immediately back here.  Otherwise, we’ll see you guys before nightfall.”

              We leave the building together, moving the concierge desk out from in front of the door.  We choose vehicles off the street in front of Madison’s apartment building.  Logan’s choice is a big, intimidating Harley Davidson. I’m still a little nervous about being on a motorcycle but if Logan drives the motorcycle as well as the Expedition, I’m not that worried.  He hands me the helmet, and pats the seat behind him, holding out his hand to help me on. 

              We take Wornall and pass Loose Park on our right. The lake is twinkling, ducks swimming over the surface, flowers blooming in a variety of vivid colors.  The only thing it’s missing, on a sunny day like this, is people.

              He takes a right on 67
th
street and the familiarity of the neighborhood jars me from my thoughtful trepidation, “You just missed my street,” I say over his shoulder.

              “My place is right up here.  I thought we’d go there first.”

              There’s something really strange about Logan living this close to me. If things were different, being from the same neighborhood, maybe we would have been friends. It’s a little sad to me that he’s been so close for so long and I didn’t even know it.

We make a right, then a left and turn into the driveway of a brick, ranch style house.  There’s a blue Ford F150 in the driveway, the yard is modestly landscaped with a small fountain and some recently trimmed square bushes.  “That’s Josh’s truck,” Logan says, leaning the bike to the side and putting down the kick-stand.  I slide off the back and hang my helmet on the seat while he dismounts and peels off his riding glove, his gaze focused on the house. 

              “Do you want me to come with you?”

              He cuts his eyes over to me and smiles, “Of course I do.”

              “OTrin,” I say with a shrug and I let him take my hand and lead the way across the lawn to the front door.  

              When we step inside, the first thing I notice is the house smells familiar, the odd combination of grease and soap.  It smells like Logan. He leads me into the living room which you have to take a step to get down into because it’s not on the same level as the rest of the house. 

It’s a typical living room; a faded blue couch, two grey recliners, and a coffee table with some motorcycle magazines and a set of Harley coasters sitting on it.  Two bronze colored lamps with cream lampshades sit on the end tables and there’s a large flat screen TV in the entertainment center. It’s obvious the house is missing a woman’s touch, it has the feeling of a bachelor pad or at least how I’d imagine it.