Hot Pterodactyl Boyfriend (3 page)

“So . . . so . . . like, you saw him? Up close?”

“I had to,” she said simply.

“And his wings—like, what are they, about thirty feet across?”

“Good God no. They're maybe, I don't know, six feet. Eight? And he's not very tall, really. Shorter than you. Unless he stands really straight. Which he seems to hate to do.”

Jonathan was going to be tall, like their father. Shiels was patterned more after their mother, in the compact fireball mode. Even with exquisite posture she was still—

“But he looked enormous on Vhub!”

“Well, maybe somebody stretched the truth or something. I guess mostly his wings were folded up when I got to him. He was holding Jocelyne.”

“So he's going to . . . He's coming to our school?”

This was the longest conversation Shiels had had with Jonathan in years, it seemed. Over the pterodactyl, naturally.

“Looks like it. He's probably in your class.”

Jonathan did a funny little hop-flip motion with his feet, as if he were on his skateboard. His face was all flushed, and his pants, as usual, were nearly falling down. As she watched him, Shiels started to feel uneasy. “I didn't . . . I'm worried about how he'll be treated,” she said.
Clump-flap
,
clump-flick
went her brother, from one imaginary trick to the next. He could not stay still . . . unless he was in front of a screen. Then he couldn't get up to save his life. “A lot of kids might be mean.”

What more was she going to learn from Manniberg in the morning? Probably not much. When was Manniberg ever prepared for anything?

“Pyke looks like a scalded dude,” Jonathan said.

“But he doesn't know anybody, and he can hardly string together two words.”

“Sure got to know Jocelyne Legault pretty quick!” Jonathan said.
Clump-crash.
He wobbled on the carpet, as if about to lose his balance. He dropped to one knee, then bounced up and twisted nonchalantly. “The man's got wings,” he said.

•  •  •

Wings indeed. It was almost too much to think about. The interlude with Sheldon was draining away, and other thoughts came rushing back. Shiels had reacted instinctively to what had seemed like a dangerous situation, but now it was something else. What was it? Her mind was churning over. She didn't know what to make of it, or how she felt, or what to do.

The PD—parental dynamo—were dining out, so Shiels fixed herself an arugula salad with almond slivers and then baked organic corn bread from a simple recipe she found online. Jonathan finished the corn bread but also ordered a pizza. He had a shocking disregard for his own health and for the PD's express wishes. Yet they had left a credit card on the busy tray in the kitchen island for so-called emergencies, and Jonathan knew—and Shiels knew that he knew—that they didn't look closely at the monthly bill. Better pizza than drugs.

Normally Shiels would conference in the evenings with Sheldon, if he wasn't physically with her in her room. They would go over the half dozen or so joint efforts they always seemed to have on the boil. She had an English project due in the morning—she was preparing to create a fan blog for the crippled poet Alden Eldon, whom she had personally discovered (along with about seven other “fans”). Weeks ago, when she had happened upon his work, she'd been struck by the evocative streak of lameness shading so many of his poems (“morning now, and I am just a cup of coffee”). But somehow, on the verge of creating the blog, she had trouble summoning her earlier convictions. She needed to feel more, to get back in the mood, but first . . .

. . . She just sat going over it all again: the dark speck in the sky getting larger, the way her feet had taken off when she'd seen that Jocelyne was in trouble, how the monster—Pyke—had stood semi-glowing with pterodactyl heat close enough to spear her through if he'd wanted.

The muscles in his rib cage trembling, rippling.

Those eyes.

(Was he afraid of her?)

The frail blond runner draped in his winged arms. (Why hadn't he landed on Shiels, knocked
her
down, picked
her
up like she was the most precious thing in the modern world?)

Sheldon vibrated her four times in the course of the evening, but she didn't pick up. She had the Alden Eldon blog to do. Which took a lot of thinking.

It took a lot of thinking to get around to thinking about Alden Eldon.

Finally she texted Sheldon back. He called immediately. “Where are you? I've been at you all night.”

“We need an emergency assembly over Pyke,” she blurted. “He's going to be a completely ostracized circus act. I mean, think about it—that beak! It'll be against the code of conduct for him to walk down the hall. Manniberg is going to have to address the school, and we're going to have to get briefing notes together for him to do it or people simply won't know how to act. I'm worried about the football team. I think I told you they would have torn his wings off if I hadn't been there. . . . I have a meeting with him in the morning, but don't tell me he's prepared. You know he isn't.”

“You have a meeting with Pyke?”

“Manniberg! Don't be dense.” He could follow her thoughts perfectly well, even when she was being scattered. If he was offended, he would've said something, but he didn't. She felt him pause for a breath.

All right, she could be brusque with him, especially in moments of intensity, but she was hard on everybody, including herself. And he knew that, didn't he? Didn't he love her exactly for who she was?

Being able to kiss the way they did meant they could say anything to each other.

“How is any of this your responsibility or concern?” he said finally.

“I'm student-body chair. Everything is my responsibility!”

“Even the pterodactyl?”

“He has a name! He has rights! All we need is one ugly incident, and Vista View is going to be tagged as anti- . . . as anti- . . .” As Shiels was talking, she could almost feel Pyke next to her again, surrounded by the hostile crowd. She wasn't tired anymore. It was a rush to be decisive. “Anti-diversity! Not on my watch, Sheldon. It's my reputation too. We need to do this.”

“It's after two in the morning,” Sheldon said, in that voice of his that, fundamentally, agreed with what she was doing. He always agreed, finally. He had no defense against her energy, Shiels knew. He just gave in.

“We need to hammer out a charter, a sort of code of conduct, for dealing with pterodactyl-students,” she said. She would frame it out loud, the way she was doing—letting the rush happen—and he'd start to take notes and then ask pertinent questions, and that was how it was going to get done. Like they were two brains connected by the grid—almost the same person.

“Are we really calling him a ‘pterodactyl-student'?” Sheldon asked. Brilliant! To focus on the language from the get-go.

To get the language right.

“He's not a pterodactyl-student.” She paused, breathed, waited for the rush to continue. “He's a . . . New Cultures Arrival.”

“We could make a New Cultures Accommodation Protocol,” Sheldon said.

“Not a protocol. That's so—”

“Okay. It's just a . . . New Cultures Accommodation.”

“It's the NCA,” she said. “We'll have it in place by nine a.m. for Manniberg to announce. It's all about . . .”

“Trusting the welcoming spirit,” Sheldon said. His dear, dear voice in her earbuds (practically an implant!). If he were here beside her, she would pull him to her. They would . . .

Well, if he were here physically, they might not get the NCA done. And that was the most important thing right now.

•  •  •

Normally Shiels collapsed in a heap at the end of busy days, and slept, oblivious to the world, until her alarm jolted her back to her obligations, sometimes as early as five in the morning, if the project list of the particular day were snarly. Early-morning thoughts were clearer, bolder, more focused yet more likely to range toward fresh solutions. She counted on rising anew, strong and able in the head.

But now sleep was slow to come to her. She thought again and again of the play of those dark wings, and now, somehow, felt like she could smell him right next to her—an earthy, potent, wild aroma. And when she did finally drift off, she dreamed of Sheldon, of all people, who had improbably just bought new yellow running shoes like Jocelyne's and was eager to try them out. And so Shiels was running with him, but without shoes herself—her feet were slapping the grass as they might have ten thousand years ago, racing across some rocky meadow (but her feet were tough; nothing hurt). Sheldon appeared in the distance, then, naked except for his yellow shoes (free of any logo) and an old pair of underwear so battered and ripped, they looked more like a loincloth than anything else. His body was hard. He had changed. He was just as lean as ever, but she could see the movements of his back muscles, the lovely tight shape of his thighs . . . and his hair was longer, and he had shoulders (he looked good with shoulders). She wanted to be closer, to see for sure. So she sped up, her strong bare feet shaping themselves to the ground so that she hardly felt any hard stalk of grass, any shard, any little spiky shrub she happened to . . .

She happened to be able to jump over most things, quite easily in fact, effortlessly, her body was so . . . She jumped so well, she only had to touch the ground now and again, bouncing like a moon walker . . . flying.

She was flying. Not high, barely off the ground, but with just the power of her mind she was able to do it. Quietly. No need to tell anyone. What a fuss they would make! She looked down at the ground passing beneath her, how smoothly it all worked.

Power of mind. Anyone could do it. Keep the right pressure—no sudden thoughts or mental movements—and she would stay afloat.

Aloft.

Flying.

And here was Sheldon. Turning to her. With his new body. He was darker, harder, like he'd been carved from purplish ebony . . .

What was ebony? A hard, dark wood.

Piano keys.

Oh, those shoulders!

He didn't seem surprised to see her. He had to turn his beak—such a long, sharp, dangerous weapon! And then she was breathless in his arms, soaking in his heat, his soft fur, his pungent . . .

Why was she breathless? This had all been so easy. Practically effortless.

It was silly,
and she knew it was, yet just for a moment the dream changed the way she looked at Sheldon. There he was at the pickup spot, the corner of Roseview and Vine, in his slouchy pants and worn old faux-ironic trench coat and the faded black canvas running shoes he wore unthinkingly, even through the worst winter storms (which would surely be coming soon). His hair was rumpled, as usual. He was looking at her with those puppy-dog eyes.

He looked soft all over. Not a hard angle to be found.

“Do we have to have twelve points?” he said. “Ten was good enough for God and Moses.”

He looked like a pillow you could mush into any shape and it would just lie there on the bed, inert. Shiels had woken forty minutes after her alarm, coverless, soaked in sweat, thinking of angles, hard edges, hot tangents a body might want to lean into.

“Hey, you look nice,” Sheldon said, lifting his glasses. “What's the occasion?”

Without his glasses, his face had a washed-out vagueness to it. His eyes looked weak. They
were
weak—that was why he wore glasses. But to really see something, often he took his glasses off.

“I don't have to wear the same thing every day,” she said.

They were walking now. They hadn't kissed. It would've been perfunctory anyway. Roseview and Vine was semi-public. She'd have smudged her lipstick if they'd kissed, and Sheldon would've said something—he was unused to the taste of it. Anything he said would have made her feel uncomfortable about wearing it.

Was this what it was like to be married? she wondered. To know exactly what your partner's reactions were going to be twenty chess moves later?

“Let me see the list.” She took his phone out of his hands. Despite his strong fingers, she couldn't help noticing how easy it was to steal the thing.

“NCA—New Cultures Accommodation.”

Was it good to lead with an acronym? Not everyone was in love with them.

“Vista View High is an open-atmosphere school welcoming to students from all cultures and backgrounds. Diversity is our strength, and as representatives of new cultures arrive, we strive to foster the rich inclusiveness . . .”

Sheldon was walking with her as she read aloud, shambling in his way, as if exhausted somehow, old. She had noticed it before, but it had never bothered her.

“I'm falling asleep already,” she said, “and this is just the preamble.”

“Well, maybe we don't need the preamble.” He was giving in, as he did so often. “It was your idea.”

“It can't sound United Nations. It's got to be relevant, punchy. And we can't say things like, ‘arrive, we strive.' ”

“What?”

Shiels read him the passage again. “I can fix that,” he said, and he took back his phone and happily thumbed in new text.

She wasn't used to walking in heels. She had to step carefully along the rough sidewalk to avoid ruts. She found herself scissoring her legs like fashion models do, and swinging her hips, just a bit. Sheldon paid no mind. His nose was in the phone. The coolish breeze made her legs feel more alive than they had felt in . . . forever.

She was wearing zebra-patterned leggings, and a short dress she'd bought months ago but had never actually worn before. Of course Sheldon didn't notice.
Hey, you look nice.

Practically didn't see her.

She let him talk. He read the whole thing to her, but as they neared the school, she felt her heart swelling until it seemed to engulf her chest. Sheldon hadn't noticed, but others would. People would comment. “Shiels, my God, look at you all of a sudden!” As if she'd been a librarian most of her life.