Witches in Flight (20 page)

Professor Allard looked amused.
 
“Emily Dickinson.
 
An unconventional poet for her time.”

Lizard snorted.
 
“And who would the conventional poets be?”

“Point.”
 
He still
looked amused, but now he had that geek-lecture thing settling over his
face.
 
“But I meant her
poetry.
 
She used short lines,
unflowery language.
 
A very
different style from her contemporaries or those who came before.”

“It’s better than all that ‘ah, be still my aching heart’ crap.
  
And other dudes used short
lines.”
 
Lizard reached back into
her mental poetry banks and grabbed some handy Byron.

“In secret we met

In
silence I grieve

That
thy heart could forget,

Thy
spirit deceive.

If
I should meet thee

After
long years,

How
should I greet thee?

With
silence and tears.”

“Indeed.”
 
Professor
Allard raised an eyebrow, and then nodded in approval.
 
“Anyone else have four lines for
me?
 
Happy
romantic poetry,
perhaps?”

Lori elbowed Jeremy, who cleared his throat, eyes dancing in
mirth.

“I love your hills and I love your dales,

And
I love your flocks a-bleating;

but
oh, on the heather to lie together,

With
both our hearts a-beating!”

He looked over at their professor helpfully as the class
dissolved in mirth.
 
“John Keats.”

Lizard grinned.
 
Maybe this class wouldn’t be so bad after all.
 
And she had one to match Jeremy.

“If questioning would make us wise

No
eyes would ever gaze in eyes;

If
all our tales were told in speech

No
mouths would wander each to each.”

She skidded to a stop—the next stanza had other wandering
body parts, and she was so not going there.
 
Then she caught Jeremy’s eye and realized at least two
people in the room knew that.
 
Things tended to head south fast when her mouth was ahead of her brain.

“Christopher Brennan’s not on the syllabus.”
 
Professor Allard’s mouth was twitching
again.
 
“Does anyone else actually
know four lines of even vaguely romantic poetry by some dead guy?
 
Or should we just let our dueling poets
here keep going?”

Lori giggled.
 
“I
only know ‘be still my aching heart’ crap.
 
Sorry.”

Lizard groaned as she heard the gooey lines running through her
friend’s head anyway.
 

“In that case,” Professor Allard handed around a stack of neat
four-by-six cards, “let’s try speed poetry instead.
 
Write down four lines of original poetry on some aspect of
romantic love.
 
You have two
minutes.”

Lizard hated speed poetry.
 
Four lines was easy.
 
Four
lines she could stand to have anyone else read was freaking hard.

She stared at the little white card, willing something stupidly
generic into her head.
 
And kicked
and screamed at the words that lined themselves up neatly behind her eyes.
 
No way.
 
Never.
 
She
glared at the guy trying to suck words out of her soul.

Professor Allard looked around the room, studiously avoiding her
gaze.
 
“This can be as private as
you want, folks.
 
You won’t be
handing this one in.
 
No Hallmark
cards—I want something real.”

She stared at the card.
 
Stared at the floor.
 
Tried
to see around the neon, blinking lines in her head.
 
And then did the only thing possible in the face of the
truth blazing inside her brain.

She left.

~ ~ ~

Jennie headed for the ringing doorbell, brushing flour on her
pants as she went, and laughing at herself a little.
 
Why she persisted in trying to bake for Witch Central
gatherings, given her lack of culinary talents, was a mystery, but one she was
stubbornly fond of.
 
If nothing else,
her brownies provided good fodder for impromptu games of hot potato.

She frowned as the doorbell got more insistent.
 
Girl Guides selling cookies were more
polite—and almost anyone else would have just come in by now.

She pulled open the door—and found herself nose-to-nose
with an enormous camera lens.
 
If
that hadn’t clued her in, the growl behind the lens would have.
 
Charlie Tosh, photographic genius and
world-class grump.

With one finger, she pushed down on the lens.
 
Even Charlie had to say hello before he
started taking pictures—especially if she was his intended target.
 
“Good afternoon.
 
What brings you through my fair part of
the world?”
 
She had a pretty good
idea, but annoying Charlie was just pure fun.

“Wanted a portrait, didn’t you?”
 
He humphed his way into her house, looking around.
 
“That cookies I smell?”

Charlie had a great weakness for anything sweet, but she wasn’t
entirely sure her brownies would meet his standards.
 
She did, however, have excellent backup.
 
“There’s a big dinner at Jamie’s house
in about an hour.
 
Your
great-nephew will be there.”

His eyes sharpened.
 
“What about the girl?”

Classic Charlie—unerring instincts and non-existent social
skills.
 
Jennie didn’t bother to
hide her grin.
 
“She’s likely
coming as well, along with anyone with half a nose—Jamie’s making his
spaghetti sauce.”

“Hmmph.
 
Not a big
fan of tomatoes.”

She knew his weaknesses.
 
“There will be at least a couple dozen people, all of them well used to
having a camera lens shoved in their face.”
 
Charlie loved close-up work and lacked the people skills to
avoid getting snarled at most of the time.
 
He’d be in heaven at a Witch Central dinner.

His eyes traveled through the portrait collection hung down her
hallway.
 
“Got any of the girl?”

Jennie debated.
 
Charlie’s
eyes would see as deeply into a photograph as anyone alive—and her
pictures of Lizard were intended to reveal.
 
It would be an invasion of privacy, one that stirred her
unease.

However, it probably beat their delinquent threatening to stuff
Charlie’s camera into Jamie’s garbage disposal.

She led the way upstairs to her darkroom, mentally sorting
prints as she went.
 
And then
laughed at herself—he might be one of her harshest critics, but this
wasn’t about the quality of her work.
 
Charlie sought a different kind of truth today.

It only took her a few moments to pull out the prints he’d want
to see, and his fingers reached unswervingly for the one she’d expected.
 
The very first picture she’d taken of
Lizard—a blonde fairy dressed in tattoos and a dirty white bandana.
 
None of which would matter to
Charlie.
 
It was the sad,
vulnerable eyes that would catch him, just as they’d called to her.

He looked at the portrait a long, long time.
 
“One of your best.”

It was.
 
She’d known
it the instant she’d taken it.
 
“It’s not the most important one.”

His eyes traveled the others, brushing by some, lingering in
places that surprised her.
 
He
grinned at Lizard singing rap nose-to-nose with Ginia.
 
“Got some attitude, does she?”

She touched his hand—a brave move on most days.
 
“You’ll like her, Charlie.”

“You think I can’t see that?”
 
He yanked his hand away, reaching for a photograph sitting
on the top corner of her table.
 
“What’s this one?”

Jennie smiled.
 
That
was the important one—Lizard on the Starry Plough stage, a heartbeat
before her “stupid” poem ended.
 
The ferocious light in her eyes was one Jennie had seen often enough in
Charlie’s.
 
The artist, prepared
for battle.
 
“She’s a poet.”

That surprised him.
 
“Hmmph.
 
She any good?”

“Yes.”

He nodded, very slowly.
 
“She’ll do.”

~ ~ ~

Lizard sat in a seat, her cheek resting against the cool
windowpane.

She’d come to the one place on earth that was always private
enough for whatever words needed to come out.
 
Freddie’s bus had seen her hate, handled her fear, quietly
ridden underneath her on the days she’d been almost too sad to breathe.

This was harder than any of those.
 

The lines still glowed behind her eyes.

I wish I was the one you seek

With
love in your heart and life in your eyes.

In
that not-quite-real world where good things happen and promises stick,

I
wish I was the one you seek.

Words had always been her way to find truth.
 
To name what lay inside her and then
head back out into a world where truth wasn’t safe and your insides needed to
be quiet most of the time.

She’d named this one now.
 
And for just a moment, here on Freddie’s bus, she could let it be real.

Lizard let the yearning wash over her.
 
The wish that the Lizard Monroe who sold houses and had nice
neighbors and babysat for cute babies with mohawks was all of who she was.

No tattoo-covered delinquent.
 
No ten years of seamy gluck.

I wish I was the one you seek.

She did wish—and here on Freddie’s bus, she could hug her
ribs and let a tear or two leak down her cheek.
 
And then she needed to do what she always did, even if it
totally sucked.
 
Tuck it away and
tell it to be quiet.

Wishing didn’t make things possible.

Her finger traced the indelible lines inked into her arms, one
fifteen-year-old girl’s pathetic attempt to look tough.
 
Josh thought the tats were cool.
 
He had no idea what kind of life made a
teenage girl want to look tough.
 
Or what she did when the tats didn’t work.

He wanted the grown-up version of the girl Grammie raised.

Well Grammie died too soon, and Lizard grew up too fast, and Josh
wasn’t going to get what he wanted.

She didn’t exist.

Lizard leaned against the glass again.
 
This time, the windowpane felt warm—it was her cheek
that was cold now.

When she got off the bus, Freddie squeezed her hand.
 
They hadn’t said a word all trip—and
he would still understand better than anyone.
 
He always had.

Nat strolled into the kitchen, sat down, and put her feet
up.
 
Her husband tolerated little
else these days.

He turned around from the stove, ladle in hand, grinning.
 
“Smelled food, did you?”