Matters of Circumstance Read Online Free Page A

that she hadn’t noticed her state of dress. She took her clothes from him anyway. “Thanks again.”
    “Don’t worry about it.”
    Just before putting her shirt on curiosity got the better of her. She turned around and looked at her back in the mirror above the sink. The skin around the granulomas was a much brighter red than the rest of her, and the cracks looked bigger and cleaner than before. Inside she saw something clear and somewhat shiny.
    Farrah made a face and reached over her shoulder to touch one. “What are those…?”
    Neal caught her wrist before she could make contact. “They’ll come out in a few days, but I’ve just been aggravating the hell out of them. If you touch them now you’re going to regret it.”
    She almost laughed, but she obeyed and pulled her clothes back on anyway. All of her humor disappeared when her shirt settled over her shoulders. It felt like fucking sandpaper being scraped across her skin. Tears were springing into her eyes again, and the pain was filling her like she was a coffee pot catching water from the tap.
    Eager for any sort of distraction, she looked at Neal intently. “So what are they?” she asked again, her voice raising an octave midway.
    He was kind enough to pretend like she had spoken normally, but when he opened his mouth no sound came out. He closed it, thought for a moment and then shrugged a little. When he started fiddling his own layers she understood.
    “Here, it’ll be easier to believe if I show you.” Neal pulled his shirt and sweater off in one clean movement and turned to show her his exposed back.
    He had wings.
    They weren’t feathery like a bird’s. Rather they were ugly and primitive, like a pterodactyl. There was only one bone along the top, and she could see how white it was—could see every joint and vein and muscle—through the smooth, lightly-freckled skin that encased it. Folded up, they were as long as his whole torso. Farrah heard him grunt, and the right one unfurled faster than the left. Collapsed against him they didn’t look like much, but in actuality they went about ten feet across, sprawled panes of parenthetical bones and flesh curled up against the tiny bathroom’s walls. The skin gleamed dully in the bathroom light.
    Holy fucking shit, he had wings.
    With a loud sigh both wings folded against his back once more. As he tried to put both layers of clothing back over his head at the same time Neal’s voice was muffled, but she heard him all the same, “Kind of hard to hold them out there like that—I think it’s ‘cause they’re still only baby muscles, you know? They’d probably get stronger if I practiced.”
    That was what she was going to have? Right now, as she stood here, she was developing wings? She didn’t have a choice or a scientific explanation, this wasn’t a dream, and there was no reversing it?
    Could Farrah deny what she had seen? Or better yet, could she deny the wrinkled skin in those granulomas on her back had shone exactly like Neal’s? And he had predicted exactly what would happen to her, could she also deny that?
    She couldn’t. Farrah absolutely couldn’t deny a thing, and that complete and utter defeat was horrifying.

Chapter 3
     
    “I think my goal is to have a hoodie for each day of the month,” said Neal conversationally. They were supposed to be at the mall with friends, but somehow —i.e.: Farrah knew it wasn’t a coincidence—it had ended up only being the two of them.
    “A hoodie for every day,” she repeated.
    He had her undivided attention, but he reached over and patted her arm anyway. “Don’t you think that would be funny? You’d look over and automatically know what day it is because of what I’m wearing! Be like, ‘oh look, it’s Neal. And check out his jacket—it must be the 7 th .’ And they’ll all last forever since I’ll only wear them twelve times a year, even less for the last two days since some months don’t have. Isn’t that brilliant? I