Chapter Eight October Thirtieth
Wilkes-Barre-Scranton International Airport, Avoca, Pennsylvania
I pace, feeling out of place in the large, drafty lobby.
Ed, the pilot from Idaho, brought me in a small cargo plane to Pennsylvania.
It was a six-hour flight that landed in the dark.
The regional airport is nothing like the deserted airfields, and I immediately feared that people would stare at me, that they’d somehow catch a glimpse of my skin and start whispering.
Instead, Ed waved goodbye and pointed me inside, saying I’d have to wait in the lounge that’s not officially inside the airport but rather where people wait to get picked up.
So that’s what I’m doing. I used Ed’s phone before we parted and called Mr. Taylor. I told him I could take a cab, but he said it wasn’t too far of a drive.
That was three hours ago.
My mind paces in time with my feet. He has to get the baby ready. He has to drive here. Maybe his car broke down. Maybe he changed his mind.
The giant clock says it’s 12:15. I’m alone in some mostly deserted airport in a strange city, in a strange state, with five hundred and thirty-three dollars and eighty cents. Ed wouldn’t take any money. I’ve been eating my beef jerky and drinking from a water bottle.
I could survive if I had to, I tell myself, but I almost weep with relief when I see a little gray car with dents and duct tape pull up.
Mr. Taylor. Laurel.
My family. At least for the sake of this job.
My breathing is racing my heartbeat as I watch from the window.
He’s lanky and thin, with thick dark glasses and brown hair that falls over his eyes.
He has a stubbly chin. He pulls the baby from the car in some kind of basket-car seat thing, swinging it over his arm.
I can’t see her, but I want to so badly.
I don’t even understand the emotions I feel when I run to meet them—slowing at the last minute.
“Imogene?”
“Mr. Taylor?”
“Call me Artie!” He extends his hand and shakes mine heartily. “I’m so sorry I’m so late. I had to get gas, and Laurel woke up and needed a diaper change. I think she’s finally fallen back to sleep again.”
I try to peer into the carrier, but the baby is bundled up and hidden under blankets.
“Uh. Well. Maybe we should get this out of the way now.” Artie’s tone is grim as he lowers the baby blanket and reveals a tiny pink face.
With horns among her little curls.
I stagger a little, knees buckling.
This is a cosmic joke. A sick one.
Or a kind act of fate. I don’t know which.
“If you can’t handle the way she looks—”
I drop the scarf and hood I’ve worn all day, sweating and smothered in layers, and look at Mr. Taylor in silence.
IMOGENE—IS PINK. SHE’S pink like Laurel. On her head are tiny growths, mostly hidden in her hairstyle, but I spot them. Horns.
This is a sick joke. The universe must be seeing if I’ll crack.
Or maybe... Maybe it’s something nice, like finding Laurel, and a house I could afford, and the car eking out a few extra miles on the highway when I know I probably needed more gas than I had money.
For a little bit, no one talks. Laurel just stays asleep. Imogene looks at me like she’s daring me to say something.
“Well. You won’t be mistreating her based on her appearance. You could be—” I stop. You could be her birth mother.
Maybe Imogene knows what this condition is called.
“She looks like I would have looked—if I hadn’t been butchered,” Imiogene’s voice is low in the cold night. “Does she have a tail?”
“Sh-she does. And it’s perfect and curly, and she wraps it around my wrist when I read her stories or give her a bottle,” I say, chest thrust out. “Do you have hooves?”
Imogene looks startled, like I sucker punched her. “I guess that’s what I was meant to have,” she whispers. “They cut them off. Or down. I have something like a flat callous. Not that you’ll have to see it.”
“It’s okay! I don’t mind. But you see why I can’t just let anyone babysit Laurel. Someone hurt you. They didn’t understand you were meant to look like this.”
Imogene shifts uncomfortably. “I was not, according to my step-father and his wife.”
“Well, Laurel is healthy and happy. I don’t want her to have anything cut off that she wants to keep. She’s beautiful.” I look at her, and I know I sound like a sap.
Imogene bends down and peers at my daughter, and my heart skips a beat.
Holy crap, Imogene is beautiful. A whole different kind of beautiful, like something out of a fairytale.
“Maybe Laurel will be as beautiful as you when she grows up if we can keep her safe,” I murmur, afraid that my compliment is misplaced or will be misunderstood.
But Imogene nods firmly and shimmies out of her thick coat, revealing a denim jacket and flared leg jeans underneath. “I’ll help you.”
“Thank you. Shall we go home?”
HOME.
Home, where I choose to be. So maybe the choice wasn’t made from a wide selection, but there were at least two choices, and I picked this one, and it’s one more choice than I’ve ever had.
He asks me what I want to listen to on the radio. Laurel likes classical, but he likes rock, so he has a playlist made of rock lullabies and rock songs played on violin and piano.
But he asked me what I wanted to pick. He asks if I want to stop and get something at one of the all-night fast food places on the highway, and even though my stomach gurgles, I say no.
I want to get home.
“You can always whip up something with what’s left in the fridge. I—uh... I have to go grocery shopping soon.”
“I can’t cook,” I suddenly blurt out. Should I have told him that? Is that a deal breaker? “I wasn’t allowed to learn. But I can learn. I’m a fast learner, I—”
“Whoa, dude. Don’t panic,” Artie’s voice is so relaxed. Not angry like Barton’s.
I find myself sinking back into the seat, muscles unclenching for the first time since dawn yesterday.
“I’ll cook the meals. I’m not great at it, but I can make some things.
We can learn together.” Artie gives me an encouraging grin.
“In my last group home, they had some cooking classes, but I wasn’t allowed to cook ‘unsupervised’ whenever I was in a foster home or the group home.
They thought all of us kids were juvies or pyros.
I rented a room when I went to college, and the lady let me cook in the shared kitchen.
I make a mean grilled cheese.” Artie laughs, but then turns serious, “Laurel is only on formula right now, but I do want to make sure I learn how to cook healthy things.”
I nod, trying to remember what I ate when I was a kid. If I ever enjoyed it. I remember Sarah making things— lots of fish. Fried fish. Grilled fish. Mac and cheese once. I loved that and asked for more, and... I never got it again.
I wonder if Barton saw that it made me happy, so I wasn’t allowed to have it.
“Can you make macaroni and cheese?” I ask softly.
“Heck, yeah. One of my specialties. And not the cheap powdered-add-water stuff I lived on in college. No. The... Well, I mean, it’s pasta, butter, salt, pepper, cheddar, milk, dried mustard, and paprika. It’s still cheap. Look, I know you’re probably wondering why I don’t have money to pay you—”
“No, I was thinking that I’m very happy to be heading somewhere with someone who sounds like a patient man and a good dad.”
Artie nodded. Cleared his throat. “Your dad not so much?”
“Not at all.”
“Never met mine. And you might as well know that Laurel isn’t mine biologically. I found her abandoned, and I adopted her. Unofficially. I’d like to make it official, but with the way she looks, I’m afraid that may raise a lot of questions that may end up hurting her more than helping her.”
A sudden idea is in my head, forming fast and furious. “She looks like me.”
“I noticed that. It’s a crazy coincidence. Some would say fate.”
I keep a lid on my idea for a while. The songs change, something upbeat and bouncy, still played with only instruments. Artie hums along. I don’t know the song, or I would, too, but there’s a smile forming in my heart, on my lips.
A man who hums, who smiles to himself, who says we’ll learn together, who says to relax, who rescues a child and claims her as his own.
.. I think that points to a good person, a kind person, a person who has happiness inside of him.
I swallow. It’s the first time I’ve ever been around another person besides my step-parents.
Keepers, that would be more accurate. Reading books from the college library has given me a few thoughts about romance, about being carried away to safety by some hero.
Seeing the guys on camera, all sorts of different people, only caused my heart to ache.
I never thought I’d have a chance to be near them.
I don’t think I’m supposed to feel this odd, fluttering in my chest, and I tell myself not to dwell on it, even if I’m worried that it’s something like a “crush.”
“Do you mind telling me—if you know, and you don’t think it’s rude of me to ask—what caused you to look like you do? Which is lovely! And I don’t care what it is, believe me. I was just thinking, maybe it would help me to take better care of Laurel.”
“Oh, my stepfather was very superstitious. I don’t think I...” Imogene trailed off. “I don’t think I could be what he thought. Half-human. Half-monster of some kind.”
“No, I don’t suppose so. I mean, it is Halloween, and my town goes all out, so if you were part-monster, you’d fit right in.”
“Oh, but monsters are terrifying.”
“I mean, some are. But some aren’t. What about all those sexy vampires and werewolves in the movies? And that fish-man in that book? Aren’t the ladies always falling for those monster types, with their brooding eyes and stuff? They can’t all be bad.”
“Maybe not. But they’re fictional.” But then, if they’re fictional, what am I? What’s wrong with me? How can I risk getting it fixed if I can’t show anyone who I am? What will happen to Laurel if she ever gets sick?