On Little Wings Read Online Free Page B

earth as our plains dropped into the horizon. I peered past the houses into the night sky, thinking of the strange roads and scenery between the bent Harrison street sign at the corner and 12 Haven Lane, Smithport, Maine. And then I thought of the phone lines, climbing up the impossible cliffsides, curving around the lakes, traversing thousands of snaking miles and ending innocently as a jack in the wall. The wall upstairs. I shivered and squeezed my father a little harder.

CHAPTER 4
     
    “Why don’t you get out some clean sheets for the trundle bed,” Mrs. Douglas told Cleo when I came back inside. To her credit, she didn’t ask a single question, despite the motherly curiosity that blazed in her eyes. I climbed the stairs behind Cleo, waiting until we were back in her room and stretching her childhood purple sheets over her spare bed to speak.
    “Does your mom know?” I asked her.
    “No. I just told her your mom was upset over a relative. She didn’t pry.” The word ‘pry’ came out as a grunt because Cleo could not force the last corner of the old, shrunken sheet over the mattress.
    “Give it to me,” I told her as she let go in frustration. I pulled, smoothly looping it around the thick mattress. Cleo didn’t look surprised, just mildly entertained. She gives respect where respect is due, and most people find my physique impressive.
    Looking at Mother and Dad, one could never explain my athletic build. Mother is thin, but not at all sporty, and my father is a beanpole. Nevertheless, I’ve had sleek, defined muscles since I was barely more than a toddler and though I am slim, inch for inch, I am stronger than most of the boys in our class. My gym teacher always pulls down the twenty foot rope whenever any particular boy needs a lesson in humility. Only two boys in our class can match my time to the top. Nine seconds. Consistently. It doesn’t win me anything, but every now and then, when my amber ponytail is swinging and my arm muscles are straining as I climb up, the boys tear their devoted eyes away from Cleo and look at me with residual admiration. It is surprisingly gratifying. I might not fawn over the boys, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know they’re there.
    Cleo and I make it a point to avoid the hormonal males surging around us in our high school hallways. I banter with them more, keep a friendly dialogue, while Cleo barely acknowledges their existence. She rarely expounds on her deeper thoughts, but I know she ignores them out of horror of being one of the girls who cries by her locker when someone breaks up with her after a heated six week fling. We have an unofficial understanding that such nonsense is for other teenagers.
    Cleo threw an afghan over the sheets and asked, “What are you going to do?”
    “I don’t know. My dad made it sound like she would want to know me. Then he told me not to call her. I have no idea.”
    “Does he know her?” she pulled off her jeans and hopped onto the bed, kneeling in her blue underpants and t-shirt looking like the next fresh-faced add campaign for Hanes. Ismiled when I thought of what most boys at school would do to trade me places. Probably gnaw off their feet with their own teeth.I helped myself to her dresser drawers, pulled out some pajamas and lobbed a pair of sweatpants at Cleo’s head. She pulled them off her face with a huff. While I dressed, I told her everything my father said.
    “Let’s go look for some food and wait for inspiration to strike,” she said when I finished. I told her I just wanted to think and asked her to bring me back an orange if they had any. Peeling oranges always helps me think. Or maybe they help me stop thinking because I am concentrating on the feel of the peel tearing jaggedly away from the fruit. She left and I looked at the red numbers on the clock radio glowing 8:44. Too early to sleep, but my body felt too heavy to move anymore. I closed my eyes, feeling my spine flatten into the mattress.
    I couldn’t