Wings

and turned to Laurel. “I was not meant to live in northern California,” she said, pushing her hair out of her face. “During the summer my hair does fine, but introduce a little rain and bam! It turns into this.” Chelsea had long brown hair with a tinge of auburn that fell in ringlets down her back. Soft, silky ringlets on sunny days, and jumping, coarse ringlets that bounced out of control around her face when the air was cold and humid — which was about half the time. She had light gray eyes that reminded Laurel of the ocean when the sun was just rising, and the waves had an endless quality to them in the murky half-darkness.

“I think it’s pretty,” Laurel said.

“That’s because it’s not yours. I have to use special shampoos and conditioners just to be able to brush through it every day.” She looked over at Laurel and touched her straight, smooth hair for a second. “Yours feels nice; what do you use?”

“Oh, just whatever.”

“Hmm.” Chelsea touched her hair one more time. “Do you use a leave-in conditioner? That usually works the best with mine.”

Laurel took a breath and let it out noisily. “Actually…I don’t put anything on it. Any kind of conditioner makes my hair really slick and oily-feeling. And if I use shampoo, it makes my hair really, really dry — even the moisturizing kind.”

“So you just don’t wash it?” The idea was apparently beyond foreign to Chelsea.

“I rinse it really well. I mean, it’s clean and everything.”

“But no shampoo at all?”

Laurel shook her head and waited for a skeptical comment, but Chelsea just muttered, “Lucky,” and turned back to her lunch.

That night Laurel examined her hair closely. Did she need to wash it? But it looked and felt the same as it always did. She turned her back to the mirror and poked and prodded the bump. It had been a tiny thing on Saturday morning, but over the weekend it had grown pretty big. “Hell of a first zit,” Laurel grumbled to her reflection.

The next morning, Laurel woke up to a dull tingling between her shoulder blades. Trying not to panic, she hurried into the bathroom and craned her neck to look at her back in the mirror.

The bump was bigger around than a quarter!

This was no zit. She touched it carefully, and a strange tingling sensation lingered everywhere her fingers brushed. In a panic she clutched her nightgown to her chest and ran down the hall to her parents’ room. She had just raised her hand to knock when she forced herself to stop and take a few breaths.

Laurel looked down at herself and suddenly felt very foolish. What was she thinking? She was standing in the hallway in little more than her underwear. Mortified, she stepped away from her parents’ door and crept back to the bathroom, shutting the door as quickly and quietly as she could. She turned her back to the mirror again and studied the lump. She turned to view it from a few different angles until she convinced herself it wasn’t nearly as big as she’d thought.

Laurel had been raised on the idea that the human body knew how to take care of itself. Most things — if left alone — would clear up by themselves. Both her parents lived that way. They never went to the doctor, not even for antibiotics.

“It’s just a humongous zit. It will go away on its own,” Laurel told her reflection, her tone sounding exactly like her mother’s.

She dug into her mother’s drawer and found a tub of the salve her mom made every year. It had rosemary, lavender, tea-tree oil, and who knew what else in it, and her mom put it on everything.

It couldn’t hurt.

Laurel scooped up a fingerful of the sweet-smelling salve and began rubbing it on her back. Between the tingle of her hands irritating the bump and the burn of the tea-tree oil, Laurel’s back was on fire as she pulled her nightgown over her head and, with her shoulders pressed to the wall, scooted to her room.

She chose a loose-fitting baseball-style T-shirt with cap sleeves and a full back for today. Most of her tanks would probably conceal the bump, but Laurel didn’t want to take any chances. This thing couldn’t get much bigger without becoming all gross, and when it did, Laurel would rather have it hidden beneath a shirt. It tingled every time anything brushed against it — her long hair, the T-shirt as she pulled it over her head — and, of course, every time she touched it, trying to remind herself it was real. By the time she headed downstairs, she was convinced every nerve in her body was connected to the bump.

By the time Thursday rolled around, Laurel could no longer deny that whatever this thing was on her back, it wasn’t a zit. Not only had it continued growing the last two days, it seemed to be growing faster. That morning it was the size of a golf ball.

Laurel had come down to breakfast determined to tell her parents about the weird bump. She’d even taken a breath and opened her mouth to just blurt it out. But at the last second she’d wimped out and simply asked her dad to pass the cantaloupe.

Between the T-shirts she’d been wearing the last few days and keeping her long hair loose, no one had noticed the bump yet, but it was only a matter of time — especially if it kept getting bigger. If, Laurel repeated to herself, if it gets bigger. Maybe Mom’s stuff did the trick.

She’d been putting salve on it for three days straight now, but it didn’t seem to be doing much. But then, something that grew this big and fast couldn’t be something that a little tea-tree oil could fix, could it? Maybe it was a tumor. Laurel was sure she’d read news stories about people having spinal tumors. Laurel took in a sharp breath. A tumor made too much sense.

“Hello? Are you even listening to me?” Chelsea’s voice cut through Laurel’s thoughts and she turned her face to her friend.

“What?”

Chelsea just laughed. “I didn’t think so.” Then quieter, “Are you okay? You were really spaced.”

Laurel looked up and for a second couldn’t remember which class she was headed to. “I’m fine,” she muttered irritably. “Just thinking.”

Chelsea scrutinized her face for a few seconds before one skeptical eyebrow poked up. “Okay.”

David fell into step beside them, and when Chelsea peeled off to head to her own class Laurel tried to get ahead of him. He reached out and pulled her back. “Where’s the fire, Laury? It’s still three minutes to the bell.”

“Don’t call me that,” she snapped before she could stop herself.

David’s mouth bounced shut and he didn’t say anything else as the flow of people slid around them.

Laurel searched for words of apology, but what was she supposed to say? Sorry, David, I’m just on edge because I might have a tumor. Instead she blurted, “I don’t like nicknames.”

David had already pasted on his brave smile. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Did you…” His voice trailed away and he seemed to change his mind. “Come on. I’ll walk you to class.”

She felt awkward walking beside him now. She turned to him when they reached her class and waved. “See ya.”

“Laurel?”

She turned back around.

“What are you doing on Saturday?”

She hesitated. She’d hoped that she and David could do something again. And until this morning, she’d been trying to come up with a casual way to ask. But maybe it wasn’t such a good idea.

“I was thinking a bunch of us could get together and have a picnic and maybe a bonfire. I know this great spot on the beach. Chelsea said she’d come, and Ryan and Molly and Joe. And a couple other people said maybe.”

Food, sand, and a smoky fire. None of those sounded fun.

“It’s a little cold, so we can’t really swim, but…you know. Someone usually gets pushed in. It’s fun.”

Laurel’s fake smile melted away. She hated the feeling of salt water on her skin. Even after a shower she could still feel it — as if the salt had absorbed into her pores. The last time she’d gone swimming in the ocean, years ago, she’d been sluggish and tired for days afterward. And there would be no way of hiding her bump — or whatever it was — in a bathing suit, either.