Wings

or her bare midriff.

Either way, she didn’t mind.

“Well, I don’t have leaves — except the little tiny ones under the petals. Yet,” she added cryptically.

“Not technically, but I think your skin probably counts.”

“Why? Is it looking a little green these days?” she asked, then clamped her mouth shut. The thought of turning green made her think of Tamani and his green hair. She didn’t want to think about him. It was too confusing. And it seemed unfair to think about him while she was with David. Disloyal, in a strange way. She saved those thoughts for nighttime, just as she was about to fall asleep.

“Not all leaves are green,” David rattled on, without noticing. “In most plants, the leaves are the largest outer surface, and on you that would be your skin. So maybe you absorb carbon dioxide through your skin.” He blushed. “You do like wearing tank tops even when it’s cold.”

Laurel stirred her Sprite with her straw. “Then why do I breathe? I do breathe, you know,” she said pointedly.

“But do you have to?”

“What do you mean do I have to? Of course I have to.”

“I don’t think you do. Not the way I have to, anyway. Or at least not as frequently. How long can you hold your breath?”

She shrugged. “Long enough.”

“Come on, you’ve been swimming — you must have some idea. A rough estimate,” he pressed, when she shook her head.

“I just come up when I’m done being underwater. I don’t go under a lot, anyway. Just to get my hair wet, so I don’t know.”

David grinned and pointed to his watch. “Shall we find out?”

Laurel eyed him for a few seconds, then pushed her soda away and leaned forward, poking David in the chest with a grin. “I’m tired of being experimented on. Let’s see how long you can hold your breath.”

“Fair enough, but you go next.”

“Deal.”

David took several deep breaths and when Laurel said go, he sucked in a lungful of air and leaned back in his chair. He lasted fifty-two red-faced seconds before the air whooshed out of him and it was Laurel’s turn.

“No laughing,” she warned. “You’re probably going to blow me away.”

“I highly doubt it.” He smirked with the same confidence he always had when he was sure he was right.

Laurel took a deep breath and leaned back on David’s pillows. He started the timer with a soft beep.

It unnerved her to look at his self-assured smile as the seconds ticked by, so she turned to the window instead. She watched a bird fly against the pale blue sky till it soared out of sight over a hill.

With nothing else interesting to look at, she began paying attention to her chest. It was starting to get uncomfortable. She waited a little while longer, decided she didn’t like the sensation, and let her air out. “There. What’s the verdict?”

David looked at his watch. “Did you hold your breath as long as you could?”

“As long as I wanted to.”

“That’s not the same thing. Could you have gone longer?”

“Probably, but it was getting uncomfortable.”

“How much longer?”

“I don’t know,” she said, flustered now. “How long did I last?”

“Three minutes and twenty-eight seconds.”

It took a moment for the numbers to sink in. She sat up. “Did you let me win?”

“Nope. You just proved my theory.”

Laurel looked at her arm. “A leaf? Really?”

David took her arm and put his up beside it. “Check it out — if you look closely, our arms don’t look quite the same. See?” he said, pointing to veins that spidered along his arms. “Granted, veins usually stick out more on guys anyway, but with your light skin, you should at least be able to see pale streaks of blue. You don’t have any.”

Laurel studied her arm, then asked, “When did you notice that?”

He shrugged guiltily. “When I checked for your pulse, but you were so freaked out that I decided it could wait a while. Besides, I wanted to do some research first.”

“Thanks…I think.” She was quiet for a long time as thoughts rushed through her head. But she came back to the same conclusion again and again. “I really am a plant, aren’t I?”

David looked up at her, then nodded solemnly. “I think so.”

Laurel wasn’t sure why the tears came. It wasn’t exactly a surprise. But she’d never truly accepted it before. Now that she had, she felt an overwhelming combination of fear, relief, amazement, and a strange sadness.

David climbed up on the bed beside her. Without a word, he leaned back on his headboard and pulled her against his chest. She joined him easily, enjoying the safety she felt in his arms. His hands occasionally moved up and down her arms and back, carefully avoiding her petals.

She could hear his heart beating a regular rhythm that reminded her some things were still normal. Dependable.

The warmth from his body spread into her, warming her in a way that was strikingly similar to how the sun did. She smiled and snuggled a little closer.

“What are you doing next Saturday?” David asked, and his voice reverberated in his chest where her ear was pressed.

“I don’t know. What’re you doing?”

“That depends on you. I was thinking about what Tamani told you.”

She raised her head from his chest. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Why not? He was right about you being a plant. Maybe he was right about…about you being a faerie.”

“How can you even say that where your microscope can hear you, David?” Laurel asked with a laugh, trying to keep the subject light. “It might stop working if it realizes its owner is so unscientific.”

“It’s pretty unscientific to have a friend who’s a plant,” David said, refusing to adopt her humorous tone.

Laurel sighed but let her head sink back down onto his chest. “Every little girl wishes she was actually a princess or a faerie or a mermaid or something. Especially girls who don’t know who their real mothers are. But you lose that dream when you’re, like, six. No one still thinks that when they’re fifteen.” She set her jaw stubbornly. “There’s no such thing as faeries.”

“Maybe not, but you don’t necessarily have to be one for real.”

“What do you mean?”

David was staring at her blossom. “There’s a costume dance at school next Saturday. I thought maybe you could go as a faerie and try out the role. You know, get used to the idea as a costume before you try to tackle the idea that it’s real. Get comfortable with it.”

“What? Strap wings on and wear some funky dress?”

“Seems to me you already have wings,” David said, his voice serious.

His meaning slowly dawned on Laurel and she looked at him in disbelief. “You want me to go like this? With my blossom out for everyone to see? You must be crazy! No!”

“Just listen,” David said, sitting up. “I’ve thought about this. You know that tinsel garland stuff? If we wrapped that around the base of the flower and then looped it over your shoulders no one would know it wasn’t fake. They’d just think it was an awesome costume.”

“I couldn’t pass this off as a costume, David. It’s too good.”

David shrugged. “People generally believe what you tell them.” He grinned. “And do you really think someone’s going to look at you and say, ‘Hmm, I think that girl’s a plant’?”

It really did sound absurd. Laurel’s mind drifted to the shimmery sky-blue formal she’d worn to her mother’s cousin’s wedding last summer. “I’ll think about it,” she promised.

After school on Wednesday David had to work, so Laurel decided to go to the public library. She stepped up to the reference desk where the librarian was trying to explain the Dewey decimal system to a kid who clearly