Cian

I was horrible at entertaining myself. Without Lucie here, as she was attending school, and without Vinny, who was discreetly Eden-hunting, I was alone at the house. I hated every second of it—just me, my bedroom, and the faint drone of women's voices from downstairs: Mom's book club.

I checked the clock.

Ten in the morning.

Which meant three hours until Lucie's classes were over and we went to see Eden, and three hours was roughly equivalent to a movie or two, so maybe if I pulled out the DVDs or something—but three hours was also six different intervals of thirty minutes, which was sitcom length.

I sighed, rolling over and pressing my face into the pillows. One of the worst feelings ever, I thought, was boredom. The world was moving around me and I was this still commodity, unable to move myself along with the tide. Time stopped for no one.

Another glance at the clock.

10:02.

Great.

The voices had drowned out downstairs, and now only my mother's carried, in the same fluctuating tone she used to tell Vinny and me bedtime stories with, the timbre of her voice rising and falling in rhythm with the tension of the storyline. Back then, when Vinny and I were small, she had been different. She hadn't been so worried about imperfection, worried that if anyone even saw an inch of something that wasn't immaculate, it would be the end of her. Back then, it was easier to see her as my mother and not as that person who was always trying to fix me.

I went to the bedside and reached my arm over the side of it, clawing underneath the bed's frame until my fingers grappled around something firm and rectangular, leathery beneath my palm. I hoisted it up, flopping it down on the bed.

It was an old photo album that was falling apart at the spine, all stained pages and faded ink and sepia photographs with frays at the edges. In gold that was slowly disappearing, this was embroidered on the front: Horne. 1995. 1995 had been the year my parents were married, and they considered that year the beginning of us, though children didn't enter the picture until three years later.

I sighed, and because I was bored enough, pulled it open.

The first few pages were wedding photos. Mom, clad in white lace with ribbons woven through her blond hair, smiled at camera as Dad in his expensive tuxedo held out a piece of cake to her. They looked so happy there, mouths open in half-laughs, that it was almost hard to imagine what they'd become now: mannequins that put on a different costume for every average passerby, showing something off every hour of every day.

Next came me with chubby cheeks and baby fat.

I skipped hurriedly past that section.

Here was Vinny at his first soccer tournament when he was four, stick-thin legs carrying him across the turf as he teetered a little on his balance. Six-year-old me cheered him on from my perch in an Elmo lawn chair.

Here I was at the spelling bee in second grade, and in third, and in fourth, and in fifth.

Here was Vinny swinging a bat.

Here was Vinny and I playing catch. I was holding the glove wrong.

Here I was at the regional chess tournament, at the poetry competition, at mathletes.

Here was Vinny's fifteenth birthday—

I froze, squinting at the photo. He was identical to the ghostly Vinny I saw everyday, though markedly more pink. Live Vinny was all sun-kissed and sandy-haired and freckled, a wide smile on his face as the lit candles on 1 and 5 cast an orange glow about his young face. Eden and I smiled from either side of him.

Everything was perfect in that picture. Everything was what life should have always been for me, how my parents wanted it to be, how everyone else's was. Everyone else celebrated birthdays and everyone else blew out candles and everyone else smiled at cameras and everyone else made that silent wish in their heads that only they heard.

I traced over the photo paper with my thumb, frowning. If only I'd known then, what would I have done? If I'd been aware that in a few months that boating trip would go wrong, could I have changed something? If I'd known that was the last time Vinny got to blow out candles and make a wish like everyone else?

The door to my bedroom creaked open. I set the album aside as Mom entered. She glanced around my room, and I could tell it was not to her liking, but nowadays, nothing about me really was. "Cian? What're you doing?"

I touched my shoulder, then dropped my hand. "Nothing. What's up?"

Her eyes had fallen to the photo album. They lingered there, just barely, then lifted to mine again. "Well, the ladies have left until next week. I thought I'd just come check on you. Unless, I don't know, you're busy. Or if Vincent's..."

I just shook my head.

It hurt that she almost looked relieved. I was very glad Vinny was not present at the moment to see the look on her face, as if her own son scared her. "Oh," she murmured. "Of course not. Like I'd know, or anything—"

"Do you need something?" my voice came out a bit sharper than I'd intended, but for some reason, I didn't regret it. Something about seeing the phony expression on my mother's face flicker was satisfying, even if it was only a tiny twitch of her mouth, a miniature spasm of her eye. I shucked my jacket off, laying it down on the bed beside me. "I'd kind of like to be alone, if that's alright."

"Cian?"

"Mm?"

"You're bleeding."

I stared at her, then paid more attention to myself, feeling the blood slowly trickle from the scars at my shoulder blades. I muttered under my breath, knowing I must have scratched the scabs in my sleep, or something. I gripped the jacket in my trembling fingers. Mom couldn't find out. Not like this, not now... "Uh. Nope. I'm fine. I just..."

"Cian James."

I cringed.

My mother folded her arms. Her lips were pursed, mascara-smudged eyes blinking at me. Ornate curls she had obviously spent a while on were nestled against her shoulders, and there was a long crack in the porcelain of her reserved expression. "That's where your wings are, aren't they?"

I was stricken. Mom never said anything about the fact I was an angel, not unless it was dire. "Mom," I warned.

"What's going on with you? Your dad told me you were sick, and now...Cian, you have to tell me."

I shook my head, shrugging my jacket on over my sore shoulders, licking the scar at my lip. "I don't have to do anything. I'm fine."

Mom exhaled, rubbing a hand across her forehead. She looked inexplicably tired. "They must have taken them from you. Your wings."

My veins throbbed underneath my skin, bones aching within me. When I sighed, it sent an involuntary shudder through every inch of me, and I tugged my jacket around myself tighter and ducked my head. It was no use trying to lie anymore. In the bottom of my heart, I guess I'd known I couldn't hide it for long. "Don't," I said, knowing what was coming next, as it had been the moment I'd been trying to avoid in the first place. "Just don't, Mom. Please."

"This is a good thing, Cian!" she exclaimed, her tone jovial and singsongy.

I grunted and hid my face in my hands.

"This makes it easier, doesn't it? To go and have a normal life? You can go to college now, maybe even somewhere nice, like Eden did! My Lord, Cian, nothing is holding you back now!" I risked a glance at her, and her eyes were alight with excitement as she clapped her hands. I felt sick to my stomach. "You're practically who you were before—"

"I'm never going to be that person again," I snapped. Mom went silent. "When Vinny died, that person went with him. I know you and Dad don't want to accept it, but everything's changed now, and there's no going back, Mom. This is who I am now, what I am now, so stop blinding yourself by pretending like I'm still that kid in the trophy case."

The light in Mom's eyes had evaporated; she sounded very small. "Cian..."

I got up, and Mom took a few hesitant steps back, her eyes wide. This was what I wanted for her—for her and Dad. I wanted her to realize that this thing they called normal was gone now. There was no sense in gripping something that had slipped from their grasp years ago. "I'm not your prize anymore, Mom."

I slammed the door shut in her face, locked it.

The silliest thing was that I didn't feel an ounce of regret.

It had been something I had wanted to say for eternity, something bottled up and uncorked but never really spilt.

My phone winked at me from my bedside table, the one Lucie had bought me. Without much thought I picked it up and I dialed her number because I couldn't bear not to. 10:12.

There was a lot of shuffling and the phrase "I'm sorry" was repeated more than once before I heard her voice, cutting through all the other noise in my crammed brain. I exhaled. Hearing her was like a salve to my wounds. The tightness inside of me unwound itself. "Jesus Christ, Cian! I'm like, in class. What the heck?"

"I'm coming to get you."

A pause. "Did you not hear me? I'm in class. You've never told me you're deaf."

"I don't care if you're in class. Get out of class, because I'm coming to see you. I can't not."

"You can't not," Lucie mimicked. "Of course. Whatever. You're crazy. You're actually crazy."

I smiled, though she couldn't see it. "Sanity's a subjective term."

The dial tone blared in my ear; I sighed and shoved the phone in my pocket, squinted at the sunlight through my window. I fled into the hallway, which Mom had thankfully vacated. 10:13.

I took the photo album with me.