Flight Read online

  “You can always leave,” the girls who have made the final round tell each other. “If it doesn’t feel right, you can just leave.” They assure each other that they will have each other’s backs and they convince themselves that this is true even though they all know it is not.

  On the night of initiation, Maggie has everything to lose. She knows even before she enters the tent that her life is now like one of those moving walkways at the airport. She can proceed in only one direction. There is no turning back.

  Nineteen years ago

  As a freshman, Maggie sees the Sisters gliding through campus, their wings trailing ethereally behind them. She sees everyone who scrambles to give them things, to get other things out of their way, and she wants her life to be that easy. Only later—much later—does she wonder why she never questioned whether they could fly.

  Thirty-two years ago

  Maggie is sitting next to her father on the sagging pleather couch, watching football—their weekly ritual. During commercials, an ad for a car comes on. There is a woman crouched like a figurehead on the roof of a car as it drives very fast through winding country roads. She is not wearing much clothing, but that part doesn’t matter. What matters are her wings, full and lush and white like an angel’s, streaming behind her in the wind. Maggie’s breath catches in her throat. She has never seen anything or anyone so beautiful in her life. She looks over at her dad, who has brought his Miller Lite halfway to his mouth and is holding it there, gaping at the woman onscreen. Maggie understands, even then, that she wants other men to look at her this way, that this is something all little girls should aspire to. She turns back to the TV, where the woman has launched herself from the car and is spiraling up, up, into the air. “Take control of your destiny,” the voiceover says, and Maggie pictures soaring above the rooftops of her small town and then beyond, the wind on her face and in her hair, the air cold and sweet and tasting of freedom. “Take flight.”

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Begin Reading

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2020 by Claire Wrenwood

  Art copyright © 2020 by Reiko Murakami