Canary Song (Working Title)

Chapter 2

 This is what I tell her on the first day we meet: "Sometimes, when you meet someone, your entire world shifts beneath your feet. Everything is different afterwards. But with him, it was a slow takeover. He was the arrival of spring, inevitable but unexpected. As he settled into my life, the world didn't change. But I did."

—

I wake up like it's a dream. The image of golden wings burns in my mind but it is only there for a breath and then gone in the next. I remember panic and fire and a longing like no other, but that's all I can recall. It becomes washed in blue when I remember that Ritchy is gone.

The bike to school is dreary. Even this early in the morning, the sidewalk is crowded with people, so I stick to the bike lane and pass by a faceless crowd. Above us, the sky is laden with churning clouds. I imagine a flood would be unleashed if any of us had the courage to prick one of the thunderheads hanging above us. Instead, the people I pass speak in mutters and tread lightly across the asphalt. The muted silence is expected. You don't gossip with the people you pass; you just keep walking.

Everyone has sent someone into the war. Everyone has lost someone to it. The city goes into mourning after every batch of new conscriptions only to fall back behind closed doors within a few weeks.

My mom talks about it in hushed whispers with my neighbors. I only ever catch stray words and single, sharp syllables. She helps them cope with the loss of loved ones. She teaches them the art of surviving. If anyone knows how to, she would. I'm glad we never talk about it though. It makes nursing scabbed over wounds easier. Yet I can't pretend the war isn't real anymore. Not with Ritchy gone.

When I pull into the front yard of my school, students are already milling about with hunched shoulders and cloudy dispositions. Tall elms tower over the school, rigid as stone despite the brisk wind cutting through the knit wool sweater hanging on my thin frame.

This is normally when Ritchy turns to leave, hand adjusting the strap of his backpack before he waves and swings onto his bike. I feel like I'm breathing out of sync, like everything is going to be thrown off for the rest of the day just because he's not here. Part of me must still expect him even though I didn't stop at his house. Even though I biked all the way here instead of walking with him. I turn my head instinctively as if to wish him well or pass along a biting comment.

He's not there. Of course. So I purse my lips and swallow my words and then I catch sight of her.

Brilliant. Bright. In an ocean of people, she stands out with wings of gold pinned to her back. Her long dark hair hangs like a curtain past the cut of her cheeks and her dark eyes flash over the crowd as if she were a conqueror surveying her spoils. Last night returns to me in a rush and I feel something in me crack. The apocalypse. A world on fire. Nothing but ash for Ritchy to return to.

I need to talk to her, to ask her how she can help me. But my legs buckle beneath me when the air turns sour. The skies turn darker. My beautiful, beautiful world grows harsher. Something lurches out of my core: spikes of dark greys and tumultuous blacks that spill out into shards of glass surrounding my sneakers.

This shouldn't be happening. The darkness always always waits until the Sun sets to pull higher. Somehow though, it now rises like a tsunami, a wall of water about to slam down on me.

I stop thinking of her. I stop missing Ritchy. I think I stop breathing.

It's a break in the ebb and flow of the crowd that approaches me.

Maylla bounces up to me with a twist of a nervous smile. She toes at a crack in the pavement as if it could open up and reveal steps to a world away from here. Around me, shadows blossom upwards and I think that I am choking. From the tips of her shoes sprout dandelions and clover flowers. I pretend they aren't there as they twine up and up around her legs.