An unlikely pair of best friends, together Felix and Portia navigated their way through the winding roads of middle school and high school, communicating with what to them was a natural combination of signing, mouthing, talking, and lip-reading.
Felix had taken some razzing for having a girl as his best friend, but growing up in a house full of women, he was up to the task. So while other kids were busy giving each other cooties vaccines in the playground—a foolproof procedure involving the tracing of two circles and three dots onto the back of a friend’s hand—Felix and Portia were off in their own world of childhood wonder.
Her stroll down memory lane was interrupted by the nagging sensation that her body’s thermostat was completely freaking out.
“Open it already—oh, never mind, I’ll open it.” Felix grabbed the gift and carefully removed the thick paper wrapping. She didn’t argue with him as the heat traveled into her limbs, weakening them and sparking a steady tremor. Nonetheless she was delighted when into her trembling hands he placed an ancient oversized volume of Audubon bird illustrations.
The gift was perfect, and she hoped that he sensed her gratitude despite her being distracted by the growing constriction in her throat.
“I found it lying around a secondhand bookshop when I was out with my grandfather one day. Wait until you see some of these drawings. The detail is amazing!”
“This must have cost you a fortune,” she managed to sign.
“Do I look worried?” Felix responded. “Just enjoy it.”
Portia cautiously fingered the leaves of the book. The illustrations were breathtaking, drawn with meticulous perspective. Flipping through the pages, she stopped at one breed that was unfamiliar to her. A white bird with snowy feathers, its wings disproportionately large for its body, its green eyes clouded and muddied. A plumed Mona Lisa, those eyes followed her no matter which way she angled her head. Something about it was unnerving.
She looked up at Felix, who had been sidetracked by the arrival of Luke and Lance O’Reilly. The twins were ribbing their friend about Ellen Chadwicke.
“Hey, if I knew the sign language interpreter would be so hot, I think I might consider going deaf, too.” Lance was speaking and signing at the same time. When their friendship with Felix had sprouted, the twins had challenged each other to see who could learn to sign better. Lance was definitely in the lead.
Felix good-naturedly pointed out to the brothers that he had become something of a giant over the summer and could probably take them both with his eyes closed.
“Yeah, well, don’t keep ’em closed too long,” shot Luke, “Lance is right—Ms. Chadwicke is looking f-i-n-e.” He challenged his brother by signing out the letters to the word with great flair.
Portia ignored their conversation and looked back at the book. Reaching her hand out to stroke the lifelike drawing, her fingers recoiled as they met the true texture of silken feathers. And she could have sworn that a moment ago the bird’s head was facing left.
Now it stared at her full on.
And then it blinked its muddied eyes.
She snapped the book shut and steadied herself against her locker.
What the hell is wrong with me this morning?
She knew her mind was playing tricks on her and wondered if this unprecedented dementia was somehow related to the hot flash and throat constriction that had not yet eased up entirely.
Before heading off, the O’Reillys offered Portia a quick hello, which she barely acknowledged.
“What’s the matter, Portia? You look hot, too, it’s just, well, you know, Ms. Chadwicke is a woman. Although, I gotta say, you’re looking pretty womanly yourself. You’re really working that whole olive-skinned, blue-eyed—”
“Brown-haired, full-mouthed—is ‘full-mouthed’ an expression?” Luke had picked up where Lance had left off.
“OK, that’s enough. Move along, boys. Nuthin’ to see here.” Felix ushered the brothers along and then returned his attention to Portia.
“So, do you like it?”
If I weren’t coming down with some kind of hallucination-inducing flu, I’d be jumping for joy.
Instead she looked up at him and crossed her hands over her heart.
“I know, I know. I’m a lovable guy. What can I say?”
Looping her arm through his, Portia forced a grin, hoping Felix wouldn’t notice her firm grip, the way she was allowing him to help support her weight. She felt unsteady, completely shaken by the bird’s movement and the silkiness of its feathers that should have felt like nothing more than the parchment upon which they were printed. Luckily, at least her limbs had started to regain their strength, and the hot flash was ebbing away.
But as they walked together to first period, she couldn’t help but notice the look of sheer delight on Felix’s face.
“What?” she mouthed the word silently.
“Nothing—I’m just happy that Zachary Wilson pummeled you that day, you know?”
“Me too, Felix.” Though her words were silent, she hoped that they resonated in the deaf ears of her best friend.
The dining hall at Ridgewood Preparatory Academy was the favored hangout on any given school day. Glowing with the light of giant leaded glass windows, the dark maple wood tables, laid out in perfect symmetry, offered each grade its own area to eat. With a student body of only 427 students, lunchtimes were rarely staggered, offering a unique sense of camaraderie between upper and lower classmen. The hall was especially loud on the first day of school while everyone caught each other up on their summers.
“Hey there, care to dine with a hearing-impaired sophomore?” Portia was comforted to hear Felix’s familiar voice in the sea of noise.
“I don’t know,” she signed back, “the whole ‘handicapped’ thing doesn’t really do much for me.” She smiled at her own joke. She was feeling a lot better and had convinced herself that the morning’s hallucination was just first-day nerves. OK, maybe there was also some intimidation fueling the morning’s episode. Seeing the way Felix had ripened over the summer had been totally unexpected for her.
“I’m gonna have to get used to that thing,” Felix said as he pulled two trays and ushered her forward in the lunch line.
“What
thing
?” she mouthed silently.
“You know—the smile. The thing you’ve barely done for like the last gazillion years.”
Portia instinctively brought her hand up to hide her mouth.
“Don’t.” He eased her fingers away.
They ambled along the lunch line, Felix filling his tray with anything that was being offered. Blessed with a speedy metabolism, Portia loaded up on her favorite—carbs. Spotting Jacqueline Rainier across the room, they made their way over to her table. Portia set her tray down next to Jacqueline’s, shamed at her heap of potatoes and rolls next to Jacqueline’s iceberg wedge, its dressing notably on the side.
“Aren’t you Frenchwomen supposed to gorge yourselves on Brie and baguettes?” Portia typed the message out on her phone with lightning-fast thumbs.
“Ahh, cherie, you Americans will never really understand us. We are all about le mystere, you see?”
“You should pitch that as a slogan to your dad,” Portia typed out. Jacqueline’s family had moved to the States two years ago when her father had been promoted to the US division of
Bourgeois
, a cutting-edge cosmetic company. Jacqueline had taken an instant liking to Portia, delighted by the fact that she wouldn’t have to suffer another American accent—‘Quel horrible!’ Portia welcomed the exotic newcomer into her life, especially since Jacqueline loved nothing better than to dominate a conversation.
Portia smiled as she sat down next to Jacqueline, eliciting a torrent of compliments from her friend about her brace-free mouth.
While the gushing continued, the O’Reillys made themselves comfortable next to Felix. Portia had only just come to tell the twins apart, as they really were identical in every way. Luckily she had spotted a tiny freckle on Lance’s left thumb last year and now she never mistook one for the other. She used to resist the twins, finding their brusque maleness a bit overwhelming, until she saw what loyal friends they had become to Felix. And if Felix was willing to put up with Jacqueline’s constant references to fashion and shopping, then the least she could do was loosen up around the twins.
She was feeling quite content, sitting together in the dining hall and buttering her second crusty roll, when suddenly the heat came back with a vengeance. An intense ache between her shoulder blades also popped up out of nowhere and had her wondering if maybe she was developing some kind of flu.
I sound like my mother
, she reprimanded herself.
Stop worrying
.
She stretched her neck from side to side to try to relieve the tension in her back and spotted Charlotte Trotter on the periphery. Her neighbor was snaking her way quietly past Portia’s table.
“Charlotte might as well get homeschooled. I mean, if I lived in that mansion, I’d probably never want to leave, and it’s not like she ever bothers talking to anyone anyway—”
Luke elbowed his brother and told him to shut up.
The stabbing pain in Portia’s upper back worsened as she watched Charlotte find a quiet corner where she settled herself down to a paltry-looking pear and a bottle of water. As always, the shirt of the skeletal girl’s uniform was buttoned all the way up to her collarbone and her legs were encased in thick opaque tights despite the heat wave.
Portia struggled to remember when it had all gone so sour with Charlotte. When they were little, she and Charlotte used to have playdates all the time. Portia could remember toddling over with her mom or dad to her next-door neighbor’s house, which was then a charming stone farmhouse with a multitude of nooks and crannies, perfect for hide and seek. Back then, Charlotte was still Charlotte Avery. Her father had been such a nice man, always helping the girls devise new games that would not oblige Portia to speak—silent tea parties, exotic scavenger hunts.
And then Michael Avery went to sleep one night and never woke up. He was thirty-four.
Portia had tried being there for her friend when her father died, but her four-and-a-half-year-old arms were simply too small to wrap around such a senseless tragedy. The girls began to slowly drift and then six months later Janie Avery announced that she was remarrying.
“…that famous architect, Harold Trotter,” Portia remembered her parents discussing. “It’s so soon, but maybe she’s just terrified of being alone…”
Over the years the once-charming farmhouse transformed into a cavernous mansion. With each new wing added, Charlotte retreated further and further away from her friends, from Portia. And then one day Portia was forced to admit that Charlotte had become unrecognizable—hair cut to the quick, dyed jet black, heavy streaks of eyeliner angrily applied. She had even abandoned her own father’s last name, legally changing it to Trotter.
The only thing that remained from the house of her youth was the old stone well at the edge of the footpath. Portia had often spotted Charlotte standing outside, peering down into the stone well. She wondered what thoughts were going through the girl’s mind while she glared down into the darkness. But after several attempts to break the ice, Charlotte had made it clear to Portia that whatever thoughts she had were for private consumption only.
Still, Portia felt an allegiance to her childhood playmate and hated when her friends made digs at her.
“Lance, perhaps you have a little crush, non?” Jacqueline teased.
“Yeah, Lance,” shot Luke, “Me think thou doth protest too much.”
“Yeah? Well me think you’re an asshole…”
Portia was about to chime in and tell her friends to ease up on her neighbor, but the pain in her back began to intensify, radiating from between her shoulder blades all the way down her spine. Her chest felt tight and the pressure in her throat brought forth a coughing fit. Taking some sips of water, she attempted to calm the episode, wondering what would be causing such a strange combination of symptoms.
Jacqueline was busy applying a fresh coat of lip gloss to her plump lips and from the way Luke and Lance were hanging on Felix’s every word, she suspected he was saying something about football.
“…the fumble…going crazy…when they lost…” Felix’s voice traveled in and out of her reach. She tried latching onto it to bring herself back to the moment, but it was like trying to grab a moving wave. A ringing in her ears swelled, drowning out the din of the dining hall. Her throat grew tighter and an increasing pressure at the base of her neck made her feel like she was being strangled. As rivers of sweat ran down her face, a fleeting image of the mysterious white bird from the book clouded her mind, sending her heart rate into an altogether new stratosphere. Looking at her wrist, she could actually see the movement of her own pulse, a tiny balloon inflating and deflating at mind-boggling speed.
Portia had always been stoic about issues regarding her health, reluctant to call any extra attention to herself. That fear of an endless cycle of doctor visits always loomed in the back of her mind. She would have done anything to avoid involving her friends in whatever it was that was happening to her. But as her breathing grew more labored, she knew she didn’t have a choice.
Grabbing Felix’s sleeve, she tried interrupting him. He was so caught up in what he was saying, though, that he held up his hand without even looking her way.
She tugged at him with greater intention.
Finally he turned to look at her. “What? What is it—?” When he saw the strain in her face and the shade of crimson that had flushed her cheeks, Portia suddenly had his full attention. “Oh my God, Portia, what’s the matter?”
Panic was snaking its way through every inch of her body. She was afraid of losing consciousness as the room spun faster and faster. The image of the white bird took on a sardonic smile, jolting her with an electric current. Before the attack overtook her entirely, she steadied her trembling hands long enough to sign out two desperate words to Felix.
“Help me…”
♪
Portia could barely remember the walk to the nurse’s office. She had a vague sense of déjà vu as she leaned against Felix for support while he escorted her to the small room on the lower level. By the time they got there, the episode had subsided a bit. Entering the sterile office, she collapsed onto the gurney, overwhelmed by an intense weariness.
A deep sleep beckoned her, adding a weight to her eyelids that she didn’t even bother to fight off. She drifted off, welcoming the kind of slumber usually reserved for one’s own bed. The last thing she remembered before surrendering was Ms. Leucosia thanking Felix and sending him back to class.
As she slept, Portia’s dreams traveled into unfamiliar territory. As a person obsessed with the avian world, it wasn’t so far-fetched for a winged creature to have a supporting role in one of her dreams. But the ones flying around this reverie were determined to play the lead. The birds were staggeringly white, almost blue in fact, the green of their eyes filmy and clouded.
The breadth of their wingspans seemed endless as they circled her, each one making an odd throaty noise, something like bubble wrap being popped. Portia couldn’t place this birdcall, but she knew instinctively that they were beckoning a response from her. Signing feverishly, she tried explaining to them that she couldn’t sing back. Even in her dreams she didn’t have a voice.
The flock continued to call out more fervently, their collective voices growing louder and louder. The sound was dizzying as Portia spun around and around trying to address the ring of birds. As their speed increased, it became impossible to distinguish one from the next until suddenly, midflight, the birds converged into one giant creature.
The bird was hard to look at full on, its down whiter than freshly fallen snow emblazoned by the sun. The mutant creature must have stood upward of eight feet tall, its wings stretching for miles. The popping noise had evolved into something altogether explosive as the giant wings flapped back and forth, catching Portia in their breeze.
Portia could feel a looming sense of danger as the winged mutation picked up speed. She was terrified to look into its face, closing her eyes against the fluorescence of the wings. Much as she tried to avoid it, though, there was no escaping the explosive song of the bird, which had suddenly taken on the spoken word.
“Portia, you’re all grown up. No more silence…”
“What do you mean?” she signed back, ignoring the fact that she was conducting a conversation with a giant freak of nature.
“You’ll know.” The creature started laughing, a loathsome sound that was both painful and beautiful.
Portia began floating up to the surface of the slumber, determined to escape the clutches of the unsettling dream.
“Open your eyes, Portia.”
The menacing laughter of the bird grew more distant as Portia climbed further and further out of the grip of her sleep. Right before she broke through the surface, the creature drew her back in with one final song. The lyrics were weighty but secondary to the actual beauty of the vocals, which were unparalleled by anything she had ever heard before.
She was caught in the music, her entire person riding the tide of the melody. The oddest combination of euphoria and dread settled over her as part of her longed to remain in the song forever and part of her wanted nothing more than to run for her life.
“OPEN YOUR EYES, PORTIA!”
Her eyes flew open with a start and she found herself curled into a fetal position, Ms. Leucosia’s slender hand stroking her forehead. The nurse’s touch was a welcome tether back to the real world, her world, where giant winged creatures were reserved for fables and legends. Portia made the universal sign for “something to write with” and then remembered that Ms. Leucosia was fluent in signing.
“Have I been sleeping long?” her weary hands managed.
“About twenty minutes,” the nurse said as she took Portia’s wrist in her hand, feeling for a pulse.
Portia could not believe it had only been twenty minutes. She felt like she had been sleeping for hours. Her limbs were heavy and a dense headache had settled itself in for what she was certain was going to be a long visit. Mostly she longed for a toothbrush to rid herself of the thick pasty feeling that had developed in her mouth.
Once she awoke, only brief fragments of her dream were retrievable—the strange noises of the birds, their aged eyes, the enormity of the one giant winged creature. Something specific was gnawing at her, something the creature had said just before she woke up. What was it?
Jolted back to her present surroundings by a pungent, not altogether unpleasant odor, Portia noticed Ms. Leucosia closing the lid on a glass jelly jar.
“What’s that smell?” she signed. She detected lavender and citrus.
“It’s just a little homemade remedy I keep on hand. I applied some to your shoulders and back to relieve your pain.”
“Thanks,” Portia signed, “It feels much better.” Indeed the pain had actually subsided and Portia offered Ms. Leucosia a grateful smile.