Read Online Flowers by Scott Nicholson - Free Book Online Page B

showed off her belly button.
    And here Wendy would sit, a stupid old lump.
    "Sorry, girls," Wendy’s mom said.
    "Too bad," Beth said, and almost managed to sound like she meant it.
    "Maybe I’ll see you around," Randy said to Wendy.
    "Maybe." She felt swollen and strange, holding in all that wind while trying not to talk like a dork.
    The three continued down the sidewalk, Sue Ellen actually skipping, Beth stumbling artfully, Randy walking with his shoulders straight as if he didn’t care whether Wendy was watching him or not.
    And he probably didn’t care.
    Who would waste time on a stupid wind girl, who could do nothing right but stir the sky?
    What guy in his right mind would fall in love with a maker?
    And even though she knew it was probably not possible, that Randy could never love her long, she also knew how Mom felt all those years ago. You have to breathe, you have to inhale, you have to walk through the air.
    You must use whatever you have to grab whatever you can.
    And so she relaxed her throat, clenched the muscles of her stomach, and drew an extra whiff of atmosphere through her nostrils. Now the wind would come, no matter that the cloud girl and Mister Thunder were miles away from getting their work done.
    "Wendy, it’s not time yet," Mom said.
    "It’s time. It’s either now or never."
    The words came out with a soft wheeze, and behind the syllables a true bluster broke forth, rising from a whistle to a screech to a keen to a scream.
    Wendy exhaled, and the sky ripped apart. Mom shouted something that was lost in the wind. A soda can rattled along the street. Leaves flapped like a thousand birds lifting, branches bent, the tongue of the mailbox fell open.
    And still Wendy let loose, pushing out her anger and her desire, freeing shingles on the houses across the street, making the streetlamp sway. Beth shouted and lost her balance so thoroughly that she fell to the ground.
    Sue Ellen spun around and caught her sweater in Mrs. Seaver’s rose bushes. Randy turned and faced the gale, his hair barely tousled even though hedges leaned and shutters knocked wood.
    Randy fought against the force of Wendy’s breath, and Wendy kept blowing even as she thought how strange this was, attracting a guy by pushing him away. But he was as strong as he looked and kept coming, elbow raised across his face.
    This was the biggest storm Wendy had ever thrown, and all by herself, too. Sure, the lightning woman and Mister Thunder would have helped the show, and a thick rain would add some color, but Wendy was giving it all she had. The wind poured out of her chest and through her mouth and she had never shrieked as she did now.
    Randy reached the fence, hanging onto a post as the wind whipped his clothes. He held on until at last Wendy’s lungs were empty.
    "Wow," Randy said. "Did you do that?"
    Wendy nodded.
    "You’re different."
    "I’m nothing to sneeze at," she said.
    Mom was getting upset, but Wendy didn’t turn around to look at her. Instead, she looked at Randy as Sue Ellen and Beth gathered themselves from where they had fallen.
    "Do it again," he said, right to Wendy, his dreamy eyes crinkling as he smiled.
    Wendy said, "Will you wait?"
    He nodded.
    The wind fell off in small currents and eddies, floated between the exhausted trees, settled on the skin of the land. The wind died like an impossible love.
    Wendy inhaled, so softly that March seemed September.
    And she held her breath.
    ###

 
     
    SCARECROW BOY
     
    The sun raised a sleepy eye over the north Georgia hills. Short-leafed pines shivered here and there in the breeze, surrounded by the black bones of oak. Ground mist rose and waltzed away from the light. A stream cut a silver gash in the belly of the valley on its way to the Chattahoochee, the only thing in a hurry on the late-autumn morning. Inside a warped barn, the scarecrow boy rose from its dreams of brown fields and barbwire.
    Jerp rubbed his eyes to wipe away the glare of dawn as he walked with his