Eighteen years and two months ago
There are whispers. (There are always whispers.)
As Maggie marches through the grueling rounds of the selection process, she hears them. Those who have been cut talk of some archaic ritual in the woods. Girls go out into the forest, and the next morning they emerge winged. The question is, what happens in between?
Every round that she doesn’t get cut, Maggie’s anxiety increases. She feels like a fraud, like any minute now they will see through her to the scholarship budget stretched tight and her father who is a mechanic and the credit card debt she is rapidly accruing to buy all the right clothes and shoes. Two days before initiation—the same day she learns she has made the final round—the director of her scholarship program calls her in for their third meeting in as many months. She informs Maggie that her grades have dropped such that her scholarship will not continue after this semester.
“You can always leave,” the girls who have made the final round tell each other. “If it doesn’t feel right, you can just leave.” They assure each other that they will have each other’s backs and they convince themselves that this is true even though they all know it is not.
On the night of initiation, Maggie has everything to lose. She knows even before she enters the tent that her life is now like one of those moving walkways at the airport. She can proceed in only one direction. There is no turning back.
Nineteen years ago
As a freshman, Maggie sees the Sisters gliding through campus, their wings trailing ethereally behind them. She sees everyone who scrambles to give them things, to get other things out of their way, and she wants her life to be that easy. Only later—much later—does she wonder why she never questioned whether they could fly.
Thirty-two years ago
Maggie is sitting next to her father on the sagging pleather couch, watching football—their weekly ritual. During commercials, an ad for a car comes on. There is a woman crouched like a figurehead on the roof of a car as it drives very fast through winding country roads. She is not wearing much clothing, but that part doesn’t matter. What matters are her wings, full and lush and white like an angel’s, streaming behind her in the wind. Maggie’s breath catches in her throat. She has never seen anything or anyone so beautiful in her life. She looks over at her dad, who has brought his Miller Lite halfway to his mouth and is holding it there, gaping at the woman onscreen. Maggie understands, even then, that she wants other men to look at her this way, that this is something all little girls should aspire to. She turns back to the TV, where the woman has launched herself from the car and is spiraling up, up, into the air. “Take control of your destiny,” the voiceover says, and Maggie pictures soaring above the rooftops of her small town and then beyond, the wind on her face and in her hair, the air cold and sweet and tasting of freedom. “Take flight.”
Thank you for buying this
Tom Doherty Associates ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Begin Reading
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 by Claire Wrenwood
Art copyright © 2020 by Reiko Murakami
