Believing in Blue Read online

  Wren cried as quietly as she could, muffling her sobs with the damp kitchen towel as she asked herself how she could have been so stupid: to forget her friend, to forget her high-school graduation, to have let her friend down so badly. A friend who was one of the few people who clearly cared for her. When her last tear had fallen, she saw that it was 7:55, and she hoped her eyes didn’t look too bloodshot. She didn’t want to worry her mom, after all.

  In the TV room, her mom’s tumbler was half full, but while the liquid it in was the bright color of the blood-orange soda, it didn’t look any paler than Wren’s had. Maybe her mom had decided to slow down her drinking on her own, at least for whatever surprise she had planned. “Look, honey,” Denise said as Wren entered the room, and Wren noticed that her words were slurred less than they usually were this late at night. Denise gestured toward the TV screen. “It’s your favorite movie from when you were little.”

  Wren recognized it instantly. “The Princess Bride! Thank you, Mom.”

  “Maybe I should join you on the sofa tonight, sweetheart. How’s that sound?”

  Wren was worried she might start crying again, but the only tears that fell were caused by the movie, and this time she spent with her mom almost made up for her disappointment about missing her graduation.

  When the movie was over, Wren saw the time and knew that if she was going to take her usual nap before heading into the woods, it had to happen right then. She thanked her mom again, who said, “Sweet dreams, hon.”

  But neither sweet dreams nor even bitter ones seemed to be in the cards. Wren lay in her bed for thirty minutes, trying to shut down her brain, but it was rather insistent, telling her again and again to worry about the future. Like, how would her mom…her stepmom, that was…how would she manage, with only Tim for company? With no Wren to take some of the weight of his anger? How would she react when, suddenly, her only daughter (stepdaughter?) was gone, potentially to never return?

  Yes, how could she possibly leave her mom, or at least the woman who actually deserved the title, in such a horrible position?

  Wren had found journaling to be incredibly helpful whenever her brain was stuck on such a challenging problem, and since sleep refused to come to her, she took out her journal and a pen and began to write.

  Dear Me,

  I can’t believe I’m even considering going to another world. How could I, with the situation with Tim and my mom? What kind of shitty daughter would do that? She might have chosen to stay with Tim all these years, which I don’t understand or approve of, but there’s no way I can go so far away when she’ll be stuck here on Earth, living with him and without me to take on some of his cruelty. No good daughter would do something like that, and I may not be very good in many areas, but I do love Denise, entirely, even despite her failure to rescue us from that jerk. So, what to do? How can I leave her behind?

  Or, actually…how can I take her WITH me? I know Sia said there was no way she could carry me down to her—and my—city, but maybe…maybe the two of us could manage it together? Mom is super petite, after all, in a way I’ll never be, so maybe…maybe it’s possible. It’s better than going away without her, far better, and then I won’t have to hate myself for the rest of my life, although that might not be long considering the bit I know about the Winged Red. But there’s no way I can NOT take her with me, she so doesn’t deserve that, so I think I will just have to find a way to get her out to that clearing on the morning of the eighteenth. Maybe, hopefully, I can come up with a good solution by then. I’ll have to, because I can’t abandon her to his abuse, and I can’t stand the idea of never seeing her again, either.

  Wren stopped moving her hand for a moment as she looked out her bedroom’s window, past the sill where Sia had landed only days ago and delivered the letter that had changed everything. She didn’t write down her next thought, because if she was right, there was no way, no way at all, that she could go to this other world without this woman, birth mother or not, who had raised her, almost entirely alone, and whom, even including her imperfections, Wren loved so incredibly much.

  Because I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to return to Earth.

  Chapter Eight

  When the alarm went off at midnight, Wren was already awake, feeling just as excited as she had been the last time she knew she’d get to see Sia. But she was also excited about the chance of flying tonight, especially because she had a feeling that tonight would be the night.

  Or would it? She found her hopes of taking flight that night plummeting fast when she woke up further.

  As she pulled a sweatshirt over her wing-shirt and put on some pale blue flats, her brain quickly returned to a more clearheaded and typical place. No, there was no way she’d learn tonight, but at least she’d get to see Sia, even if it was inevitable that they’d both end the night disappointed. And Sia wouldn’t even be getting anything out of it, not like Wren.

  She was reminded of the only thing she would gain that night as she entered the clearing. Sia’s striking wings were even more noticeable under the fuller moon, and her slight smile when she turned to Wren outdid even their beauty.

  “Good to see you, new friend. You ready to get into that warm night air, see what the treetops look like?”

  Wren wasn’t ready, though, and her small hope of taking flight sank deeper and deeper into the ground each time she failed to take off. Sia even suggested she try jumping off the rock they’d sat upon yesterday, but Wren barely managed to avoid a twisted ankle when she hit the ground hard, and Sia wound up helping to save her from making the pathetically rough landing even more disastrous. And embarrassing.

  “Guess tonight isn’t the night, then. Well, it’s not surprising.” Sia nodded once, as if she were even more certain of her statement than she’d sounded.

  “It’s…not?”

  Wren couldn’t hide her pain at Sia’s statement, but Sia either didn’t notice it or didn’t want Wren to know she had. “Yeah,” Sia told her, placing a warm hand on Wren’s shoulder. “There’s no way even a quick learner like me could’ve learned this fast so far from home. But you’re Torien’s daughter, so I know that by a little after midnight tomorrow, you’ll be laughing about how tonight didn’t work from hundreds of feet above where we’re standing, don’t you think?”

  “I…I guess?” Wren attempted a smile, but only one half of her mouth managed to rise, and the possibility that Sia was misjudging the breadth of Wren’s meager abilities felt more and more true as each moment passed.

  “I know just the thing to cheer you up, Wren. Why don’t you hand me your sweatshirt?”

  Wren had taken it off when she’d first arrived, and it had been on the clearing’s rock until her fall off said rock had knocked it to the ground. She picked it up, dusted off some clumps of dirt, and handed it to Sia. “Sorry it’s so gross.”

  “Totally fine. Now, check this out.” Sia let go of the sweatshirt, but it stayed in the air. Wren found she still knew how to smile as the shirt began to dance, the sleeves bobbing up and down in a very merry way. Her mood began to lift as Sia grabbed its sleeves.

  Wren wouldn’t have believed her eyes even a mere month ago, but she just sat on her rock and relaxed, watching as her shirt led a beautiful, winged young woman in a slow, graceful dance across the moonlit ground.

  Back at home and in bed once more, Wren pictured Sia dancing, only she wasn’t dancing with Wren’s shirt. In her fantasy, Sia spun Wren back and forth, moving as gracefully as she had in real life, and Wren drifted off just as Sia was leaning down to kiss her at the end of their dance.

  *

  Sia’s walk back to her cabin took less time than usual, some of her tension from her last meeting with Wren bleeding out of her and into the indentations she left in the ground. Yep, she’d sure…what was it the Earthlings said? Ah, yes—she’d sure screwed the brooch on this one. Falling for the one person she couldn’t, what a sorry cliché. And even if Wren liked her back, she would surely forget about
Sia once they arrived in their home city of Azyr. Because between the fact that Wren would be somewhat like royalty and the fact that she would have their world’s fate pretty much riding entirely on her shoulders, she wouldn’t have any time for Sia.

  And so Sia had to shut down those feelings for the pretty young woman, because they wouldn’t lead to anything good in the end. Besides, with Wren still not having taken flight, they couldn’t afford any distractions from this most crucial of goals. It was far more important that Wren get into the air by the eighteenth than it was for Sia to get the kiss from Wren she so wanted. The kiss she’d been picturing since she’d first noticed Wren’s subtle beauty.

  Wren’s beauty was growing less subtle by the day, though, and so Sia slammed the door of her cabin behind her. Then she plopped down into the cabin’s sole chair and sighed in a way that she noted was rather melodramatic. She barely knew Wren, after all, and it would just be a kiss from someone she liked, not from someone she loved or anything. Wren was only a crush, after all, not true love or anything silly like that. And when it came down to it, Wren wasn’t important to Sia in a romantic way, or at least that wasn’t where her main importance lay. No, she was important because Wren was needed in their world. And so Sia decided a bath was in order, to clear her head and, possibly, hopefully, to help her relax.

  Once the claw-footed bathtub was full of hot water and lavender-scented bubbles, Sia placed her clothes on the chair she’d brought into the room and sighed as she sank into the water, its heat already doing the work she’d hoped it would. She spent the next while blowing the occasional bubble from the bath into the air and turning each one into various things with her power.

  But her unicorn was lopsided and her ice-cream cone started to deflate and then popped only seconds after she’d formed it. Piru, her grandfather, had warned her that her powers wouldn’t be at their best in this world, so that was obviously what was causing her problems with the bubbles. It had nothing to do with her inability to empty her head of the young woman with the bright, sky-colored wings.

  She was half-asleep from the heat of the bath when she heard something from the cabin’s only other room. Had that been a voice? Quickly, she jumped out of the tub, drying off as fast as she could, and then she wrapped the towel around herself and cautiously left the bathroom.

  Her mirror’s face held a cloud of red, and Sia took a stumbling step backward. They couldn’t have found a way to use her mirror, could they?

  Then the red disappeared, and in its place Sia saw herself holding her bow and arrow, her face twisted into a look of fear. “Wren, no!” the mirror version of her cried out, and the bowstring in Sia’s hand slipped, and the arrow left her bow and shot toward the mirror’s surface.

  Sia flinched reflexively, even though she was certain that image hadn’t been real. Had it been a vision? She wouldn’t have thought herself to be one of the rare Winged Blue to receive such a gift, but if she was, it felt more like a curse at the moment. Her grandfather did have The Sight, but she’d never expected to have it herself.

  She knew, though, that there was no way to know what the image meant, or even if this event would play out in reality someday. Someday soon, it seemed, because the image of her didn’t look one iota different than she did right then, her current self now reflected in the blue-tinted glass.

  Should she tell Torien? No, she wasn’t ready to trust that this image had actually been real. She would sleep on it and decide tomorrow if it was right to bother such a busy man with something that, quite likely, had no need to be shared with anyone.

  Instead, she kept her nightly note to the Winged Blue’s male leader short, only telling him that Wren still hadn’t learned. She left out her thoughts of the small yet growing possibility that Wren wouldn’t learn in time, and that Sia would fail to teach a Winged Blue to fly for the first time in her life.

  About half an hour later, she got a message in return. It was also short and to the point.

  Sia—

  You are aware of how much we’re depending on you, I’m sure. I know you will be successful, dear friend. I also know that you must be successful, because your grandfather has had a vision. He has foreseen that we don’t have long until the Winged Red take action, not long at all, and so I offer you my sincerest wish that you can hold on to your faith in yourself and in your ability to teach the Winged Blue to fly.

  Chapter Nine

  The bow didn’t feel comfortable in Wren’s hands. And the many red eyes staring at her as she took aim didn’t help. Her hands were starting to shake from the strain of holding the bow. Then she couldn’t hold on to the bow any longer, and so she dropped it and it fell to the ground.

  “Welcome home, daughter,” a woman’s voice said.

  And then Wren woke up. The sheets were twisted around her, like she’d been tossing and turning in her sleep. As she fully woke, the dream faded fast, until, even as she tried to grasp its final subtle remnants, it was completely gone.

  Wren got dressed slowly that morning, the memory of the missed graduation hitting her like a hard slap, again and again. As she went downstairs, Wren decided that the only way to lessen the pain of her forgetfulness would be to call Nicole as soon as possible, and maybe her friend would still be glad to hear her voice, if she was really lucky.

  It turned out that she was. “Hi, Wren! God, I was so worried about you last night when you didn’t show up,” Nicole said, and Wren could hear the concern in her voice, her words made believable by its obvious presence. “What’s up? Why didn’t you come last night? Is everything okay?”

  “Just some…just some trouble at home,” Wren lied, the words coming out easily. Like they always did, she thought with a twinge of regret. But by now her untruths left only the slightest ache in her stomach as she said them.

  “Is it your stepdad again? Oh, Wren, you really need to get out of that house. For good.” Nicole sighed, loud and long.

  Wren felt like sighing, too, but she stifled her reaction as usual, instead telling her friend, “I’m so sorry that I didn’t make it. I hope you can forgive me?” She nibbled on her lip as she waited for Nicole’s answer.

  “Of course, silly. Of course. So, anyway, I have family visiting this weekend, way too much family, actually, and because of that I’m going to be super-busy till Monday. Any chance we could meet up then?”

  “Definitely!”

  Wren didn’t fail to notice the sound of pure desperation her answer had held, but this would be her last chance to see Nicole before she left Earth, and perhaps it would be Wren’s last chance to see her ever again. And poor Nicole didn’t even know that, nor did she have any clue what was going on in Wren’s overly complicated life. She didn’t know about Wren’s wings, and she didn’t know about Wren’s father’s wings, either. Or that Denise was actually her stepmom, for that matter.

  Well, Wren could fix at least half of that, with at least a small portion of the truth. “Hey, so, I’ve been meaning to tell you that I’m going to be getting out of my house for a while after all. I’m leaving town to visit my dad. He wrote me a letter, explained why he’s been gone for so long, and I’ve forgiven him.” Mostly.

  “Wow, Wren, that’s awesome! What happened to him? Why was he gone? And where is he living right now?”

  Wren obviously couldn’t tell her he was located in a completely different world, so she lied again and said, “California, actually, in San Francisco. I’m really looking forward to going, too,” another lie, “because of the huge gay community there. He told me all about it, said that we could visit the gay neighborhoods any time I wanted.”

  “But what…why…”

  Wren heard a voice calling out Nicole’s name, and Nicole said, “Damn it, I have to go. Can you tell me the rest on Monday? Over lunch maybe, around noon?”

  “Yeah. How about a picnic in the woods near my house? The weather’s nice enough for it. I’ll provide the food, too.”

  “Sounds great, Wren. Okay, gotta go, bye!”


  And before Wren could say good-bye back, Nicole hung up.

  Well, that was a huge weight off her shoulders. She hadn’t ruined things with her best friend after all. That fact and the warm weather lifted Wren’s spirits enough for her to decide to go into town for breakfast. She scribbled out a note to her mom and put it on the fridge. Denise never got up this early, even though it was nearing ten when Wren shut the front door behind her and locked it.

  It really was a lovely day, just warm enough to be pleasant, and the sky was empty of even a single cloud. Wren made her way down her street, her bright mood inspiring her to whistle a little as she walked. It seemed she reached her favorite diner in less time than usual, possibly because her thoughts were lighter than they tended to be. The cheery jingle of the bell over the diner’s door announced her entry, and a short-haired, smiling waitress approached her. “Any table you want, dear, and the specials are on the board.” She gestured at a blackboard with elegant cursive announcing a tilapia omelet and blueberry pancakes.

  “Just a ham-and-cheese croissant and coffee,” Wren told her.

  “Don’t need to write that down. Okay, honey, your order will be here quick as a blink, since, as you can see, you’ve missed the breakfast rush by about forty minutes.”

  When the waitress had left, Wren reached into her purse, where she’d tucked the novel she’d been reading for the past few days. She was almost finished, only about fifty pages to read, and in the time it took for her to savor her rich croissant and some rather good coffee, she reached the book’s final page. It had a very satisfying ending, the girl in it managing to vanquish the dark fairies and win the hand of the city’s eldest princess. She’d have to thank Shawn for suggesting the book…if she ever saw her again.