Wings

Most seniors didn’t have anything substantial to do in the last week of school, when the teachers were grading our previous week’s final exams for graduation and the lower grades were taking their finals. A lot of people skipped one or more days that week, including Poppy, Lisette, and Britt, but I attended classes that week so I could hang out with Jada during homeroom and lunch. And free period; she went to school that week but skipped her second period class to hang out with me in the courtyard. I introduced her to Dawson, who I didn’t see again for a long time after that week, and we talked about books and TV shows as well as our plans for after graduation.

Those post-graduation plans were a source of tension between us. Jada was the only one of our group of lunch friends who was going to college in the fall. I was working for a year to save money and establish residency, Britt was going to take online trade school classes while learning more from her dad about working on cars, and Poppy and Lisette were just going to start working full-time. Jada had been accepted into several state schools, including North Carolina Central University in Durham (where her grandma had gone), Winston-Salem State University, and UNC Greensboro, but by the time I got to know her, she had decided to go to East Carolina University for much the same reason Nathan had elected to go to Mars Hill University — to be far enough away that her grandma wouldn’t drop in casually as she might in Greensboro or Winston-Salem. It was a three hour drive from her grandma’s house, assuming no unusual traffic.

But now that we were getting serious, she was having qualms about going to school that far away from me while I was staying in Brocksboro for another year. She’d started talking about not starting school until the following year, at the same time as I did and possibly at the same school as me or at schools fairly close together. I’d tried to talk her out of it. I didn’t want her to hurt her own prospects and delay getting her degree. Then she suggested splitting in two and leaving one of her at home, to continue working at Food Lion, contributing to her grandma’s household expenses, and dating me and Britt; her college student self would re-merge with the stay-at-home every few weeks and re-split after assimilating all the new memories.

“I’m not sure I’d want to split for that long at a time,” I said as she drove us from the high school to Lisette’s house after the graduation ceremony. “The longer you go without merging, and especially the more radically different your experiences are, the harder it’s going to be to assimilate the memories. If the two of you are living in different places, and one of them’s meeting lots of new people, learning a lot of new things, and hopefully making new friends, it’s going to be a really dizzying merge.”

“Yeah, I know. I figure I can come home at least once a month, every two weeks whenever possible. And maybe merge just before bedtime on Friday, and split again before I leave for college on Sunday afternoon.”

“The more college-you gets involved in extracurriculars at school, and makes new friends there, the less willing you’ll be to come home often and miss whatever your friends and clubs are doing doing that weekend.”

“Maybe, but I’ll have you and Britt to keep me coming home regular.”

“You should test it out. Split up for a month sometime over the summer, and see how you feel after you merge back.”

“Hmm,” she said. “My grandma might not want to feed two of me for a whole month. Even if I’m paying for a lot of our groceries now, and it’s going to be more when I start working full-time after graduation. What about if I make my second self a tiny pet for you?”

“I can’t have a pet,” I protested. “Six humans is already kind of pushing it for the Ramseys’ house.”

“I could be so tiny they’d never notice,” she pleaded. “Or a plushie for you to sleep with.”

I squirmed in my seat at the thought of snuggling with Jada every night. It would depend on Jada’s ability to be discreet. I’d had several close calls during my fourteen months of living with Meredith and Sophia without their parents’ knowledge; Jada would only have to lie low for a month, but she’d be staying in the living room most of the time, not in a closed bedroom.

“What if,” I said, “we try something radical. Tell the Ramseys what we’re going to do. I don’t think they’d object — as a plushie you wouldn’t eat or use water, and you’d hardly take up any room. And if you’re snuggling with me all night, you wouldn’t use any extra electricity — not like me when I had an extra doll body that was sitting up and studying most of the night.”

“You don’t think they’d mind you sleeping with your girlfriend?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But they’ve been really good to me and I’d rather not deceive them if it doesn’t seem really necessary.”

Just then Jada slowed down and parked on the side of the street. “We’re here.” I’d been engrossed enough in our conversation that I hadn’t paid close attention to where we were going, except that we were somewhere north of downtown. The houses around here were smaller than in my old neighborhood or Meredith’s, and most of them had unkempt lawns and ragged shrubbery. We got out and Jada led the way to the next house down the street, which had a driveway full of cars. That made me a little apprehensive — Lisette had given the impression there were only going to be a handful of people at her party. I recognized Britt’s old Ford Focus, and wondered who else was there; I later realized that most of the cars belonged to Lisette’s parents, her older sister, and her aunt who was living with them temporarily.

Lisette’s aunt answered the door and showed us to the door leading to the basement stairs. Downstairs, we found Lisette, Poppy, and Britt dancing to some techno band I wasn’t familiar with. Lisette and Poppy were venned with an even greater height difference than usual, Lisette being over a foot taller than Poppy, and they both had extra arms like Britt, which they weaved around while dancing, clasping each other’s hands with this arm, then that one and another one.

Jada grabbed my hand and we started dancing too, not really talking to anybody except to say hi until after the song (which was pretty long) ended. It was amazing to see the moves Britt and Jada could make with their extra arms and extra joints. After the song was over, Jada, Britt and I collapsed onto an old sofa with stained upholstery and Poppy and Lisette plopped into a beanbag chair; Jada put her long, flexible arm around me. The loud, fast techno track gave way to a soft, meditative guitar instrumental.

“We were wondering when y’all would get here,” Poppy said, reaching over to the side table and picking up a pipe from an ashtray. “Britt was here almost an hour ago.” I’d known for a while that Poppy and Lisette smoked pot, but I’d never smelled it before. Poppy tamped down the pipe and lit it, then toked and passed it to Lisette, who offered it politely to us. Britt waved it away, but Jada surprised me by reaching over and taking it. She picked up on my surprise and asked me, “Are you worried?”

“Kind of, maybe? I don’t know much about pot... just what they tell you in school, which I guess is probably exaggerated.” It was a sweet smell that might have been nice if it hadn’t been quite so close and concentrated.

“No shit,” Poppy said with a loud laugh.

“Well, it’s not super addictive and dangerous like they tell you,” Jada said. “And if you’re doing it in a venned form, there’s pretty much no downside. The high wears off a lot faster than if you get drunk or tipsy on alcohol, but I still won’t smoke any in the last couple of hours before I drive you home.” She toked and after holding the pipe where I could take it if I wanted for a few moments, passed it back to Poppy.

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

“Make up your mind soon,” Lisette said. “I don’t have a lot left, we’re gonna run out before the party’s over. What took y’all so long, anyway? Britt got here almost an hour ago.”

Poppy and Lisette hadn’t participated in the graduation ceremony, claiming it would be too tedious for words. I wondered if the cost of the cap and gown might have been a factor, too, though I could readily believe they were just bored at the very thought of the ceremony. I’d considered skipping it myself until both Mom and the Ramseys had strongly encouraged me to go. Mom had asked Mrs. Ramsey to take lots of photos for her.

“We had lots of pictures to take afterward,” I said. “Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey wanted pictures of me and Meredith with all of our friends who were graduating... it was a lot. And Jada’s grandma wanted to meet me too, and take pictures... fortunately Britt got away as soon as her parents had taken just a couple of pictures.”

“It was so hard to keep my hands off you while Grandma was watching,” Jada lamented, doing a notably poor job of keeping her hands off me at the moment.

We talked about the ceremony for a couple more minutes and when the next song started, got up to dance again. After several songs, we sat down again and Lisette broke out the snacks.

“So me and Poppy have been thinking about splitting in two like y’all have been doing,” Lisette said. “We can’t really afford to take too much time off work, but if we leave two of us at home to work, maybe the other two can go on a road trip like we were daydreaming about.”

“Yeah, that would work,” I said. “Me and Jada have both done that, gone to work with one body and gone on a date with the other. How long a trip are you thinking about?”

Poppy shrugged. “However long we can afford to keep traveling. I’ve got some ideas about keeping the expenses down. Like we take turns venning each other into a motorcycle instead of taking Lisette’s car.”

“Oh, that could be cool. A regular motorcycle or like a cyborg or robot? Either way, I guess you wouldn’t need gasoline.” Venned machines usually had their own long-lasting, built-in power supplies.

“Maybe try it different ways and see how we like it best.”

“Do you both know how to ride motorcycles?” Britt asked.

“Just regular bicycles,” Lisette said. “We’d need some practice first.”

“You probably don’t want to get your practice riding in the library parking lot and the streets around there,” Britt said. “How about if I borrow my dad’s truck and load motorcycle-you on it to take you out to the dirt track on Lehigh Road?”

“Yeah, let’s do that sometime,” Poppy said.

“And then you’ll need to get your motorcycle licenses,” Britt added. “I don’t know if the DMV will let you take the test on a venned cycle, though.”

“Huh,” Poppy said, frowning. “Do you think they could tell?”

“Probably,” I said. “Most venned machines don’t look like anything standard. And you’ll want to make sure your cycle body has cameras — probably one facing forward and one looking back at the rider — so you can see what’s going on. Probably microphones too.”

“Oh, yeah, good point,” Lisette said, snuggling closer to Poppy.

“Hmm,” I said to Jada. “Maybe instead of making one of your bodies a plushie, we can make it a cycle I can ride to work.”

“But I want to be cuddled,” Jada pouted.

“Just think about it,” I teased, feeling daring. “My behind nestled in your seat, my hands on —” I faltered, blushing too hard to speak, and Jada laughed. My teasing had backfired!

“What’s that about a plushie?” Britt asked. “I like the plushie idea, especially if I can cuddle her too.”

So we told them what we’d been talking about on the way over.

“A whole month like that?” Britt asked. “I’d be down for spending a few hours as a plushie, maybe a day, but not any longer.”

“I won’t miss any work,” Jada said. “And if I decide I don’t like it, I can ask Lauren to change me back early. I think I’ll let her split me tomorrow or the next day after work.”

“What kind of plushie do you want to be?” I asked. “And Britt, maybe you could be a plushie at the same time — not the whole month, obviously, but the first day. Or some day in the middle, whenever it suits.”

“Make me whatever sort of critter you want to snuggle with,” Jada said. “Surprise me.”

“A stegosaurus,” Britt said. “I know you like dinosaurs. And I’ll let you know about the time later on.”

After that, Lisette and Poppy wanted to know more about our experiences splitting in two, and we wound up telling them more than I was comfortable with about our date the previous weekend when we’d chased each other through the maze of blankets in the back seat while our big selves sat up front. Jada didn’t come right out and give them a play-by-play, but she said enough to make my cheeks glow and Lisette and Poppy laugh at my discomfiture. I swatted Jada on the arm.

“Fuck yeah, let’s try that,” Poppy said. “Maybe not an inch tall, but if we were smaller your bed would feel a lot bigger and softer,” she added aside to Lisette.

“Or your bed,” Lisette added.

“Nah, my bed would be hard as concrete even if we were small enough to fall between the atoms,” Poppy said morosely. Nobody said anything for a few awkward moments.

“Could the Venn machines make you that small?” I wondered.

“We could try and find out,” Britt said. “I doubt it could make you smaller than an atom, but it could probably make you so small it would take hours to walk out of the booth, so small your friend can’t find you to pick you up.”

“Wouldn’t that just tie up the Venn machine until your venn wears off?” Poppy wondered.

“No, see, if you can’t get out of the booth in a reasonable time it turns you back early,” Jada said.

“We should try that,” Lisette said.

“You oughta do it when the machine’s not busy,” Britt said. “Late at night, maybe.”

“Yeah, it’d be a dick move to tie it up deliberately,” Poppy said.

“Let us know how that turns out,” I said. “I think it’d probably be pretty boring, though. You’re all alone on a vast, featureless plain. Even if you brought your phone or a book, you can’t read because it’s all nonsense. You walk and walk but never get anywhere. Finally, after however many hours, you’re suddenly back to normal. No, thanks.”

(Later, when I mentioned it to Sophia, she told me some guy in Ukraine had done exactly that and it was pretty much the way I’d guessed. His friends had gone over the floor of the booth with a magnifying glass and couldn’t find him. He’d seen vast shapes darkening the sky but couldn’t make out details at that distance. I don’t remember exactly how long it took for the machine to time out and turn him back; you can look it up on VennWiki.)

After a little more conversation and snacking, we got up and danced some more, then watched an old movie about a high school graduation, being silly and making fun of it. The party finally broke up after midnight. I kept dithering and never got around to trying pot before Lisette ran out.

Before she took me home, Jada and I went by the Venn machine to clean the pot smell off our clothes.

“Anything else you want?” she asked.

“You could go ahead and change me into a dragon-girl for tomorrow’s work shift,” I said. “Second most recent form from my history.”

“Got it.