Headlamps
by A.S. Morgan"Your Daddy works on the trains, doesn't he?"
Lilly resents the question immediately. She glares, not at Teresa, and the little proto-wings sticking out of Teresa's shirt and waving in the breeze, but at the passing trains, cherry-red with purple licorice stripes.
The licorice stripes were Lilly's Dad's idea. The trains are color-coded by route, by destination, by express or regional classification. Here in Gare du Nord all of their colors combine in a rainbow of traffic patterns. The trains exude billows of smoke that mate with steam from the electrical conductors before soaring to the glass-paned rafters of the station. Lilly would rather watch the smokesteam forming animals and shapes like clouds than the garish trains. Or Teresa.
Teresa's shirt is not tailored, and though it is clearly made of silk she has torn the wing-holes by hand. But she has placed little rhinestones around her makeshift wing slits, and strung a snood of rhinestones and pearls over her black feathers.
Lilly has no wings, and her shirt is plain seersucker, with red and purple bands woven into the collar. She has several shirts like it, and she wears one every day. Everywhere she goes, her Dad's friends and co-workers recognize her. "Hey! Miko's Girl!" they call to her - but she is not thrilled by their attention, and does not take the lollypops they offer.
When Lilly must meet her Dad after school she brings her heaviest textbooks: chemistry, paleo-botany, her blue biology primer with pencil markings on the cover page. Lilly Mikasa, Student #5637J. And underlined beneath her name: I HATE TERESA MORCHILD. She stacks them in front of her eyes, one after the other, until they make a tower blocking the trains from sight. She reads and does her lessons, but pointedly ignores any textbook with any mention of trains.
Lilly's eyes are drawn to Teresa against her will. Teresa is the palest silver sculpture in this museum of black engines and strange paint. For a moment the movement of the station seems to cease around her; engineers, passengers, cargo boaters, and salesmen all freeze as though caught under gelatin. As if noticing Lilly's gaze, Teresa gives her wings a small shake, and a fringe of silver bells on her snood jingles gaily. Her posture emphasizing her question, she stands smiling innocently as though she cannot fathom Lilly's resentment.
But you know. Lilly swallows bitterly. She grits her teeth, but knows her silence has been so long as to border on ridiculous.
"Yes. He does." She does not say that he is the head engineer. She does not say that her Dad probably earns more than Teresa's father, even if he isn't an Avian.
Teresa laughs shrilly, tossing her finely-curled hair so that her matching rhinestone tiara glimmers in the light from the passing engine headlamps.
"My father works for the Bureau of Regard," Teresa says, lifting her pale chin and letting the platform lamps trickle gold down her neck. Lilly clenches her hands into fists.
"Yes," she murmurs under her breath, "I know who your father is. I know where he works."
It was the first thing Teresa ever said to her, on the first day of school. Lilly stood outside the multi-storied cement building, back turned to the front door with its school symbol of white wings and golden scales carved above the entrance. At first she had stood alone on the sidewalk, looking frantically for her Dad's car, silently begging him to take her back home. When she could no longer see him in the crowd of vehicles, she entered the stone gates of the schoolyard, but refused to watch the girls, proto-wings garnishing each of them, climb the stone steps one by one to enter the school.
"I'm Teresa Morchild. My father works for the Bureau of Regard."
Lilly turned, clutching her striped shirt in surprise, as though to hide the colors of the fabric. For the first day, Teresa had dressed in a series of white petticoats under a gray silk embroidered dress.
"Mikasa. Lilly Mikasa," Lilly blurted, her cheeks turning crimson as she unintentionally introduced herself as a member of the Formians.
"Oh, how nice," Teresa's square teeth glinted beneath her painted pink lips. "Do you have a major yet?"
"Organics."
"Great! Mine's Plastics. We'll be in the same study hall."
"Teresa, who's your friend?" a bevy of girls approached, all with wings, their feathers shining in the sunlight. They looked at Lilly appraisingly, their eyebrows arched and cold.
"Lilly Mikasa. She'll be in our grade."
The girls muttered amongst each other, staring directly at Lilly and not bothering to shield their mouths. More than once Lilly caught a snatch of their discussion.
"No wings..."
"Obviously one of the Worker castes..."
"Why is she here?"
Teresa heard them too. "Oh, come on," she said to the crowd, "everyone knows it's good grades that get you into Vauxhall, not anything else." 'She smiled at Lilly, her wings fluttering to emphasize the dimples on her pale cheeks.
Lilly did not believe Teresa's kindness. But she had taken Teresa's hand when offered, and walked slowly towards the front doors.
"Oh, I almost forgot," Teresa smiles, pushing a gold- wrapped box into Lilly's hand. "That's for your birthday." Lilly opens the box revealing a bar of chocolate stamped with Vauxhall's school symbol. The wings, iced in silver, shine brightly under the smokesteam of the incoming commuter express train on the next platform. Lilly closes the box and stuffs it into her book bag. The platform loudspeaker announces the arrival of the next Brabbage Links Local train to Bust End.
"Look," says Teresa, "it's us."
Twin headlamps round the corner, stroking soot-covered walls in a rush of noise and heat. The train plunges into the station, spitting forth a froth of afternoon travelers. Feathered wings flicker on the bodies of other schoolgirls, of businessmen and women, of musicians carrying sleek black cases under their arms. From the engine one of Lilly's Dad's friends gives her an enthusiastic wave. Lilly does not meet his eye. She stands still like a zebra among trees, trying to keep her striped skin from alerting a passing lion.
"Aren't you coming?" Teresa asks blithely, a dimple in her left cheek.
"I don't want to be your friend anymore," Lilly says, suddenly picking up her book bag. When the doors opens she pushes Teresa through the crowd and into the car. She turns back, retreating from the licorice stripes, her face a grimace. I'd rather push you under the engine. I'd rather freeze time and this platform, until it's too slippery for you to hold on and you go tumbling onto the electrified tracks.
But she doesn't. The doors close on Teresa, standing statuesque in shock. Tears dance on Teresa's cheeks, making the glitter she has painted on her face shine doublefold beneath the light. As the train lurches into motion she opens her mouth as if to say something, but the tunnel embraces her and she is gone.
Lilly removes her birthday present from her book bag. The box has been smashed by her chemistry textbook, the chocolate broken in two. Lilly tosses the box onto the tracks, then stands in the shadow of the tunnel, waiting for the next train to eat her whole.
"Happy Birthday, Lilly!" her Mum and Dad chant as Lilly enters their home. The living room table is a circus tent of color, acidic and green, with bright magenta streamers around a blue- and purple-iced cake. Each of her twenty-four gifts ˆ two for each year of her life ˆ is wrapped vividly in fabrics of textured silk Lilly knows her Mum has spun herself.
The cake is her Dad's creation, a multi-tiered building complex with a dome of lacquered apple butter. Ginger cookies shingle the roofs on the lower levels, and a marzipan train rushes from a shortbread station on a track of iced peppermint jam. Smiling, Lilly's Dad cuts her the first piece as Lilly opens her presents.
A Vauxhall stationery set, its vellum sheets and embossed silver pen glimmering, greet her from the first box. A Vauxhall sweatshirt, the school symbol embroidered on the front and back, lies in the second. Lilly opens the other boxes and the double wings and scales of Vauxhall's symbol mutliply, on keychains, notebooks, chocolate bars, a lunch box with thermal capsule, pens, calculators, and hats.
Tissue paper, discarded boxes, swathes of silk cover the floor beneath her presents, the layers so thick she can no longer see the floor. It's like a flock of pigeons is nesting in the living room. Suddenly she is disgusted, in search of an exit, unable to breathe.
"Mum...Dad...why?" Dumbfounded, Lilly's fingers tremble as she tries not to touch the detritus of her birthday. She closes her eyes against the virus that has invaded her living room, the Vauxhall symbol bifurcated and spread until it has covered everything, even her parents.
They look astonished, suddenly small, as if they cannot comprehend Lilly's anger. Laughing as though to quell the red rising on Lilly's cheeks, her Dad smiles. "We were so happy you got into Vauxhall this year, we wanted to give you everything you needed."
"We're so proud of you, Honey." Her Mum rises, moves toward Lilly, gives her a hug and a kiss.
Lilly stands, letting the shower of gifts tumble from her lap. She accepts her parents' embraces numbly before turning and going to her room.
Lilly returns to school the next morning for gym class, her seersucker shirt substituted for a new Vauxhall jersey, one of her birthday presents. She sits with the other Plastics and Organics major students on bleachers in the center of the gym. The gymnasium is large and vaulted like a cathedral. The school symbol, gigantic wings and scales shining, is laid in bamboo on the floor. Two large athletic nets are stretched overhead, dividing the room.
The game is Rondel, a semi-aerial sport, and one of Lilly's least favorites. The instructor takes roll, double checking each name, before selecting the day's captains, who will choose teams for game play. Lilly grimaces as Teresa is named second captain, and tries to ignore Teresa's impish smile in her direction.
When the time has come to select her team, Teresa stands upon her bleacher holding the burnished Rondel ball. Her wings are painted silver today, and she wears a gray silk veil and a golden tiara. As she chooses her teammates they follow her like satellites. Though Teresa does not openly command it, each of them walks once deliberately round Lilly before they take their places near the Rondel nets. They flutter their wings at her, their faces open in silent jeers. When Lilly is the last student sitting on the bleachers in the center of the room Teresa calls to the instructor, "Miss Marano? I'm done choosing my team now."
The girls standing closest to Teresa begin to laugh, looking at Lilly, their faces hard.
"You are a player short, Miss Morchild," the instructor responds, "do you not wish to have Miss Mikasa on your team?"
"Miss Marano, I'm sure you agree that Lilly lacks certain important parts to play." More girls are laughing now, shaking their wings or pointing.
"Well," says the instructor shaking her own wings like an admonition, "I am sure that you can find a way to include her, despite your differences." She smiles sadly at Lilly before returning to the referee stand at the center of the gymnasium. An iron taste grows in Lilly's mouth, and she cannot swallow. Slowly, cheeks burning, she follows Teresa to the side of the nets.
"Just stay at the back," Teresa's voice is ribald with mockery. She glares at Lilly as she positions her team. "I'm sure you can at least catch the ball, if it ever falls to the ground." The other girls laugh again, and Teresa smiles. Lilly says nothing, though she can taste blood in her mouth as she bites her tongue.
At the instructor's whistle the Rondel ball soars into the air amidst the shimmer of wings. All around her Lilly's classmates leap and twirl in the air as the ball bounces from one to the other. Smiling in victory, Teresa scores the first point, sending the ball slamming into the ground in the center of the nets. Teresa's teammates cheer.
Again and again the ball glides golden through the air as though gravitating toward Teresa, who smiles and leaps, wings fluttering in proto-flight, her hands open to catch it. Your wings. Lilly feels bile rise in her throat, Your damn wings. In a rush Lilly leaps at Teresa, her own feet leaving the ground, her hands fighting to tear the ball away, to claim it as her own. Teresa retaliates in a scream, teeth bared, fingers clutching, her wings buffeting the air as the girls wheel, suspended, waiting to fall back to ground. As Lilly tears the ball from Teresa's grasp she can hear the pop of dislocated fingers. Hands gone gnarled, Teresa grasps Lilly's shirt, her arms twisting like snakes ready to spit venom. For a moment it is as though Lilly steals not only the ball, but the power of Teresa's wings. They hang in air, impossibly high, the faces of their teammates pinpoints in sand. Then their arc diminishes and they descend, locked together, hands and bodies biting.
Teresa lands first, with a jarring crash that resounds across the gymnasium. Her hands are suddenly frozen, her body compacted, shrunken by the fall. Her eyes flutter, her neck bends at an obtuse angle. Lilly's hands still grip the ball; it bounces against her chest between her palms, and she lets it drop as she stands. The noise of the other students vanishes as Teresa's head opens like a train tunnel, black and blinding red.
The instructor's whistle blows, louder than Lilly's heartbeat, like a siren in the room. Swift like a steam- train engineer, a medic appears, holds Teresa's hands and head steady, applying pressure like the switching of an engine valve. Teresa trembles beneath the medic's touch, eyes growing stale and bloodshot as she gasps for breath. The medic's words echo slowly around the room.
"Rare condition..."
"Hemophilia..."
"Hollow Bones..."
Teresa's proto-wings seize as if broken, flapping aimlessly, creating a wind that swirls around them before fading. Lilly stands dumb as Teresa's blood seeps slowly around her shoes.
Lilly's Dad meets her outside the Principal's office. He is still wearing his engineer's uniform, panting as though he has been running. He takes Lilly by the shoulder gently, as if waking from a dream. As they enter the office he asks, "I saw a stretcher and a van outside the school ˆ is that what all of this is about?"
The Principal is an aged Avian crone, her wings long and steel grey. When Lilly enters her eyes slit for an instant, before she motions for Lilly and her Dad to take the seats opposite her desk. She offers them lemonade from a crystal pitcher, but neither Lilly nor her Dad accept. I know what is coming, Lilly thinks, sitting on the edge of the chair, her legs tense as if ready to run. I know what you want.
"Mr. Miko," the Principal clears her throat, "I have brought you here today to inform you that your daughter has been involved...that is to say, involved as the perpetrator...in a very serious accident."
"Was that the student on the stretcher?" Lilly's Dad asks the question haltingly, as though afraid of the answer. The Principal nods once, her feathers rustling faintly.
"I wish to inform you that assault on another student of this school is unforgivable, and when the attack involves a student such as Lilly, I am afraid the only course of action is immediate expulsion."
Lilly's Dad sits motionless in his chair like a paper doll. Slowly his eyes move, taking in the Principal, the stained wood emblem of the school on the Principal's desk, and Lilly. His lips tremble.
"But...surely...surely this is all some misunderstanding..." He peers at his daughter, looking deep into her eyes. Lilly stares back. Like a second shadow, Teresa's blood stains on her cheeks gleam in the light from the office window. Without a word, Lilly stands and walks to the door, letting it slam shut behind her.
She waits in the hall, listening to the muffled sounds of conversation from within the office. The Principal speaks for a long time, her low voice steady. There is a pause, and then Lilly can hear her Dad begin to cry.
Lilly follows her Dad to the train station. She wears a jacket over her seersucker shirt, and pretends not to notice when her Dad's coworkers nod or call to her. This early in the morning Gare du Nord is host to the engineers and their families, with only a few rogue Avian businessmen walking swiftly through the crowd. Lilly waits at a tunnel platform with a small crowd of engineers' children for the Garringold Express train to Luke's Head. When the train arrives she shoulders her book bag, and accepts a hurried hug from her Dad. His arms feel weak, and his hands shake as they let her go. He forces a small smile as she boards the train.
"Be good."
Lilly nods to him as the doors close, then finds a seat next to the window. She puts her bag in her lap and rummages for a moment before extracting a bag of homemade silk and tissue paper. Her Mum has placed the last of Lilly's birthday chocolate inside. Lilly smiles as she sees that the Vauxhall symbol has been meticulously scratched off of each piece. She eats as the train lurches slowly around a darkening tunnel.
©A.S. Morgan
A.S. Morgan holds a BA in Classics from Bard College. Her work has been recently published in Syntax and Rumble, and is forthcoming in Great Works. Her website is here.