Hot Pterodactyl Boyfriend (32 page)

But was that what Shiels wanted now? She couldn't even seem to bring herself to go to class anymore. If she didn't finish her senior year, then the whole question of college applications was moot.

Yet—she was happy cleaning an old running-shoe shop. She liked hanging around Linton, improving his business. She liked running, as slow as she was. She liked feeling her body. Learning to breathe.

It did feel better dealing with a lungful of air.

I am challenging all my old assumptions,
she wrote on her laptop.
So much is changing, every day, I can hardly imagine how much I will learn under the tutelage of one of the great thinkers of our age.

Blatant flattery. Probably Lorraine Miens threw out those applications without reading any further.

I feel like every movement is strangely bursting with life,
she wrote.

•  •  •

In her dream that night she was on the pterodactyl's back, clinging, her arms around his muscled neck, her legs dragging behind. It was morning, chilly, she should have worn gloves, she thought, but where she was now, above the clouds, it felt warm, almost watery. Blue sky. As Pyke pumped his gorgeous wings, she could feel the depth of his breathing—his whole body seemed to turn into a long, magnificent, organic oxygen processor.

But that wasn't it.

She was breathing with him. In time. His rhythm was her own. As he moved his body—the arc of the wings, the undulations of his core—she moved too. She was mounted on him, after all; she would have to move with him or else they'd crash back to earth.

Where were they going? It didn't matter. The wind was warm and wet upon her face. She felt herself intertwined, pulsing . . .

That was enough.

She awoke clutching her pillow with a layer of sweat between her body and the bed. It was still dark, the house seemed cold. For a moment she closed her eyes again and willed herself onto the pterodactyl's back once more. But she couldn't quite make it happen.

The house was still. Her feet slid coldly onto the floor. She went down the hall to the bathroom, peed quietly, then sat still, feeling her breath. She was using her abdomen, as Linton had suggested; in less than a day she had changed something as fundamental as the way she nourished herself with oxygen. It did feel calmer, more peaceful. Almost entertaining—to listen to herself breathe!

She got up, wondering which way her feet would turn her body—right, back to her bed, or left, toward Pyke's room?

She decided not to make a decision, to let her feet dictate, if that was possible. Just as an experiment. She would simply breathe, and her feet . . .

Went straight, almost into the wall.

She smiled, turned left. Opened the door quietly and stepped in. Her mother was not there, this time. Only Pyke, sleeping quietly. She just wanted to look. She liked being near him. Where was the crime in that? It felt almost like she was floating to his bedside, that all of this was an extension of her Pyke flying dream.

Maybe it was?

She sidled onto his bed. Her body felt the chill of the night. His beak was tilted away from her. There was no reason to reach for it, but if this was a dream—it was starting to feel more and more like a dream—then there was no reason not to reach for it either.

She just liked to stroke it. She liked having its power in her hands. He didn't wake up, not at first, but he seemed to settle into her hands as if this were exactly what he wanted.

Her feet were so cold from the floor, it only made sense to draw them up, to snuggle inside the sheets. Since this was . . . this could have been . . . a dream.

Then she was wrapped in his wings. She couldn't believe how quickly it happened, yet it was completely tender and caring. The movement was enveloping, not painful. She was wearing her old pajamas. Nothing could . . .

Well, she had thought she was wearing them, but—she couldn't feel them. The world seemed to have turned skin to skin, (skin to fur!) and Pyke's heat was urgent now. She was on top of him but wrapped inside him too, inside his wings. It wasn't the same as flying on his back—as the feeling from the dream—but it wasn't terribly different, either.

He started to rock. She felt . . . intertwined. She breathed deeply. Everything seemed to be happening with her whole body. She thought she should stay quiet, but it was difficult to hold herself in. It was just a dream, after all. It was—

She woke, or at least she opened her eyes. Pyke's rigid beak was rubbing gently against the side of her neck. His eyes were closed. He seemed to be in another world, about to—

She pushed herself free. “God!” she said, as if a deity might have been in the room, might have been responsible for hypnotizing her and leading her into the beast's bed. Maybe some ancient god, responsible for duping mortal beings.

She bolted from Pyke's side.

She couldn't speak, couldn't look at him. She stumbled into the dark hallway. Where were her pajamas? She gathered them quickly. Where was her room?

“Shiels—are you all right?” Her mother was standing in the gloom by the door to the master bedroom, her own robe pulled tight.

“Just—I had to pee!” Shiels said.

In a moment she was back in her own room, back in her bed, shivering in the cold.

At breakfast the
next morning the silence was crushing. Even Jonathan seemed to be soothing his spoon along the edge of his cereal bowl in an effort to make no noise. Shiels's mother gazed into her tablet screen with the intensity of a cat waiting for movement in the shadows. She was dressed as if made up for work. Her face, especially, seemed overly prepared, perfected.

“So what's on the agenda for today at school, Shiels?” her father finally said.

Shiels took her eyes from her mother's composed figure. “Just an ordinary day, I think,” she said.

“What's next on the social calendar? What's the council working on?” he pressed.

The council seemed like a piece of clothing she used to wear.

“Shiels really needs to focus on her college applications,” her mother said. “And getting every ounce out of this semester's grades.” She turned to her daughter. “You've done enough on the social and political front, dear.”

Jonathan left the table and clattered his bowl in the sink. Shiels's mother snapped her head to look at the boy and said, “Could you please rinse and put it in the dishwasher, honey?” Shiels saw in profile what she hadn't noticed before in the slightly different light. Her mother's nose seemed . . . more prominent than before. Slightly, slightly darker than the rest of her skin.

“I'm going to stay home with our guest again today,” Shiels's mother said. When Shiels's father raised his eyebrows, she said, “He's making a lot of progress, so this won't be forever. I know I have a practice to sustain.” She glanced back at her tablet screen again, and her nose looked perfectly normal.

Just heavily made-up.

Shiels finished her bowl of grapefruit pieces sliced into yogurt and sprinkled with granola. When she gazed up again, her mother was looking directly at her. “Tell me you will have a draft of your personal essay done by tonight so your father and I can read it over.”

Blink, blink. “I'll do my best, Mother,” she said.

•  •  •

On her way to the running-shoe shop (and away from the high school she now seemed allergic to), Shiels tried to breathe from deep within her, in time with the
slap-slap
of her feet on the chilly pavement. Though bright, it was cold enough to snow again. It felt like winter's army had quietly surrounded the city, was bunkered down not yet attacking but preparing for a long siege.

Her mother and Pyke?

Unimaginable! And yet . . .

Makeup or not, you cannot hide a purple nose for long.

•  •  •

The window washer agreed to wash the front window of the running-shoe shop for ten dollars not five, because it hadn't been cleaned in decades, probably. Shiels paid, since Linton was not yet there. When Linton did arrive, the front glass gleamed in the sun. He stared at it for a moment but did not seem to recognize exactly what the change might have been.

He did notice once again that Shiels was in her yellow runners, that she was sweating from her exertions. He asked about her breathing.

“Better,” she said. “I have to think about it, but when I do, I seem to be feeding myself more oxygen.”

“ ‘Feed' is a good word.” He did not seem to be in a hurry to open the door and get out of the chilly air. “Everybody thinks about fuel from food, but most of our energy actually comes from breathing. The better you breathe, the less food energy you need to burn. Show me how you run.” His hands were on his hips now. He stood like a coach, although he was old and it was hard to imagine him running anywhere for himself. “Just go up the block and come back. Pretend I'm not watching.”

Shiels felt self-conscious about every footfall. She wasn't very good, she knew that. She wasn't Jocelyne Legault and never would be. But she tried to be sleek and smooth, to move quickly, to hold herself straight and land softly and pump her arms. She was out of breath before she turned around, so she tried to inhale deeply on her way back, to blow out hard. It didn't work. She was pretending, trying to be some runner she was not.

She stood gasping in front of Linton again. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I was terrible. I can do it better.”

“Don't fight gravity so much,” he said simply. “Watch.” He ran to the end of the block and back, and while he was running, he wasn't old anymore. He seemed to move inevitably, like a freight train wheeling across the center of town. He covered the ground much more quickly than Shiels had, she felt sure of that, but he wasn't breathing hard. His face was slightly flushed.

She didn't know what to say.

“Start by standing straight,” he said. “Engage your core. The same muscles you breathe with. Tuck in your chin a little bit. Lean forward slightly. Not from your waist, from your ankles.”

Shiels tried to do it, but she stumbled forward instead.

“What just happened?” Linton asked.

“I don't know. I was clumsy.”

“When you leaned forward, gravity pulled you. Don't pick yourself up and carry yourself along like you're the dead weight of a refrigerator. Lean forward, cycle your legs easily, and keep yourself moving.” He demonstrated by running loosely, easily again, a few paces, as if he were about to fall over. Shiels tried and stubbed her toe on an uneven bit of concrete in the sidewalk.

“Better!” he said. “You have to pick up your feet. But don't overstride. Don't reach with your legs and pull yourself along. Cycle your feet instead. Push back rather than reaching forward.”

She tried it, she tried it, it was all very confusing. Running was so basic. How could she have been doing it wrong?

“You're going to have to think about it a lot, get it into your conscious mind, before the feel of it settles into your muscles,” Linton said. “But there's no hurry. You're young.”

She tried again. Office worker types passed them on the sidewalk, looking at their gadgets, not interested at all in what they were doing.

She was learning to breathe. Learning to run.

Why didn't they teach this in school?

“We'll add the arms in a moment,” Linton yelled after her as she ran. “How's it feeling? Keep your stomach muscles engaged. Let the world pull you along.”

She wasn't so good at that, Shiels thought. She pulled and pulled a lot herself, but she wasn't good at letting the world pull her.

What did that even mean?
Slap-slap
, her feet hit the pavement. This was like being a baby again, learning everything from scratch.

Why was everything so bloody difficult?

•  •  •

“Why aren't you going to school, anyway?” Linton asked when they were inside again. The store was as still as a mausoleum—significantly less dusty than it had been yesterday before Shiels's efforts, but Shiels still felt gripped with a certainty that no one would drop by that day to buy anything.

“I'm not there in my head anymore,” she said. “So I'm taking a break. Figuring things out.”

“Fair enough.” He disappeared into the back room. When he came out again some minutes later, he handed her a cup of coffee and sat down with his own on one of the ancient customer benches. He leaned back and looked out at the street. “Did somebody clean this window?” he asked.

As Shiels told him about hiring the cleaner, he seemed to be viewing her with new admiration. She said, “Keep sprucing the place up, and more customers will come.”

“Maybe,” he replied, the word laced with doubt. Then—“It is a great thing to have more light.”

He seemed happy to sit still and watch. Nothing in particular was happening outside—a woman walked past pushing a stroller, a bus stopped and let off a couple who held hands briefly, then parted.

“How did you learn all that stuff about breathing and running?” Shiels asked.

Linton paused before answering. “I was a mildly talented runner when I was young, but serious, and I made it my business to learn as much as possible from the people around me. If you keep doing that for a long, long time, then eventually you learn about even basic things like breathing and running.”

“What else don't I know?” Shiels asked. It seemed a perfectly legitimate question, but it cracked him apart with laughter.

“That's lovely, lovely!” Tears shone on his cheeks. He spilled coffee onto his sleeve.

“No. I mean it. What other basic things don't I know? When you look at me, what do you see?”

He brushed away the spilled coffee. “I see someone who needs to open up.”

The coffee tasted musty. “How do I do that?”