Six years ago
The HR guy takes Maggie to the top floor. “Change of plans,” he explains. “The big man wants to interview you in person.”
The CEO’s office is all wood and chrome and billion-dollar views. He leans back in his leather chair and surveys her, his eyes skimming over her wings in a way that is not lecherous so much as assessing.
“The job is yours, of course,” he says. “My wife is winged. I myself was a Brother.” His gaze wanders now to the windows. “We got up to so much trouble in those days, didn’t we? But we were all so young.”
Maggie searches for an apology in his voice. She does not find it.
Six years and two days ago
In the vestibule of her apartment building, as she is unlocking the door, a man comes up behind her and crushes her against the door.
“Don’t move. I have a knife.” His breath is hot and puffs her hair against her ear. “I’ve been watching you,” he says. “You’re so beautiful. Your wings are so beautiful. I’m going to take them now.”
The point of his knife pricks her skin as he begins to saw through her winter coat. A scream bubbles up her throat and then dissipates. Her breathing is labored and his breathing is labored and it sounds, ridiculously, like they are having sex. With each breath Maggie lifts further and further out of her body until she is not here at all, she is running through a forest until her legs and lungs give way, until the lights catch up to her and they—
There is a shout from behind; someone has seen them. The man runs. Later the police will catch him and there will be a trial and the man will go to jail. For now, though, Maggie’s legs collapse beneath her and she is suddenly aware of her heart thudding in her chest, the film of sweat coating her body. She looks down at her hands, which look like someone else’s hands. She tries to focus on the keys she is still holding, digs their teeth into her skin. But her mind keeps flicking between here on the vestibule’s tiled floor and there on the dirt in the forest—here—there—no, here—and for weeks afterward she experiences this split self, hearing a man’s shout of laughter in the street and wanting to run, seeing in a restaurant’s glinting silverware the head of an axe.
Eight years ago
An old woman stops Maggie in the streets and tells her, with tears in her eyes, that she can die a happy woman, because now she has seen a true angel. “Thank you,” she says, “thank you.”
Her fiancé lets her keep all the lights on at night. He wakes her up from her nightmares and holds her and sings to her in Portuguese, husky, off-key lullabies.
Everywhere she goes, people give her things. Promotions and restaurant tables and fur coats and free trips to Ibiza tumble into her lap, the world falling over itself to show her how lucky she is, how loved.
Nine years ago
Maggie sees the man who will become her husband across the room. His eyes meet hers and do not for a second flicker toward her wings, do not even seem to notice them. He makes his way toward her through the chattering cocktail crowd, his gaze never leaving hers, and she feels she could be anyone, she could have no wings at all. And although later she will construct many reasons for why she falls in love with him, really it is this moment, she has already fallen.
Fifteen years ago
After her college graduation, Maggie does what she has been avoiding for the past three years: she goes home. It is the first time anyone from her old life has seen her wings. Her high school friends take her around, show her off. At the town’s only diner, they place her at the center table. They make excuses to brush against her wings as they get up to use the bathroom again and again.
Sitting in one of the scratched vinyl seats that have stayed the same since her infancy, Maggie feels the town’s collective gaze upon her: in the diner, on the street, every eye drawn to her as though she is a flame blazing at the center of their small, defeated town. She feels suffocated. She feels proud.
Her mother won’t speak to her. She leaves every room Maggie enters; her lips drawn tight. Her father treats her like a china doll. Whenever she turns away, she can feel his gaze burrowing into her back, her wings.
It was worth it, Maggie thinks.
She repeats the words like a mantra.
She repeats the words until she almost believes them.
Eighteen years ago
It is two days after initiation. One of the Sisters finds Maggie balancing on the railing that lines the balcony of the big Sisterhood house, holding on to a post for support, trying and failing to flex the wings that sit heavily against her shoulder blades.
“What are you doing?” the Sister hisses, jerking Maggie back by her wings, making pain jolt anew through her body. “Someone will see.”
“I was practicing,” Maggie says.
“Practicing what?”
“Flying.”
The Sister stares at her. Wings sprout from her back, identical to Maggie’s. “Didn’t anyone tell you? Our wings don’t work like that.”
Eighteen years and one day ago
When they return from the woods, the Sisters take her into the big house that is her home now. One of them gets into the shower with her because her hands and her entire body are shaking so hard that she can’t open the door to the bathroom or swing
