“I’ll be fine,” Leila said, the voices now faded.
“You stay away from my man,” Jessica snapped. “I own him.” She bent down and picked up the card, holding it between two well-manicured fingers like a playing card, and promptly flicked it at Leila. Then she turned on her heels and kept walking down the hall with Rebekah. Leila let go of Sarika, and the two of them began plucking the flowers from the hard floor.
“Sorry about all that,” Gwen said, softly, handing the flowers over to Leila. “They, um, get carried away sometimes.”
“You think?” spat Sarika, snatching the flowers out of Gwen’s hands.
Leila took the flowers gently from Sarika, focusing on them, her hand gripping the stems tight. They didn’t rustle or stretch or show any signs of movement, which gave Leila an odd, sinking feeling in her chest. She sifted the non-broken flowers back into the paper bouquet. A majority of the flowers had snapped their stems, hanging off by green threads like the lowered heads of sad people. Leila lifted the bouquet up and looked at it, shaking her head, and then plucked the “I’m sorry” card off the floor, where it had slid across the smooth linoleum to the opposite side of the hall.
“You know, forget all this,” Leila said, marching back over to her locker, cramming the flowers and card inside and slamming the door. The force sent a small blossom of pain against her still-wounded head, pressing against the new head scarf Lisabeth had given her this morning. “I don’t need this today. Or any day for that matter.”
Leila snatched her bicycle helmet from off the ground and tossed on her jacket. Jon and Liz weren’t thrilled about her getting back on a bike so soon, but the headaches hadn’t been bad. And besides, she was going to do it anyway, with or without the okay. And Lisabeth’s bike was good enough to ride, despite being a little too tall.
“Cover for me?” Leila asked Sarika, who responded with a sneaky grin.
“Don’t I always?” Sarika shrugged. “And besides, it’s enrichment, remember? You could cut the rest of the summer. But don’t. We’re supposed to be having fun.” Sarika glared at Gwen, who shied away from her gaze.
“Let’s meet up at Adam’s later,” Leila said. “I’ll ride over there around the time you’re getting out.”
“Perfect.”
Leila hugged Sarika softly and turned to see Gwen still standing there, shifting her feet about on the floor awkwardly. She was trying to stare at anything but the two of them.
“You can, you know, go fuck off now or something,” Sarika said, waving at Gwen.
“Oh, come on, Sarika,” Leila said, giving her a playful shove. “Thanks for, you know, trying, Gwen. I think you’re probably better than all them, you know?”
Gwen nodded, and turned away to walk down the hall. Something about the way she carried herself, her head down, not looking at anything around her in particular, felt incredibly sad. Like she was lost.
It weighed heavy on Leila’s heart.
She knew the feeling all too well.
_____
Leila pushed forward on Lisabeth’s bicycle, the frame a bit high and bulky for her tastes. It was thick and made more for mountain biking and difficult trails than the city streets. The end-of-summer Philadelphia breeze tickled her face. She exhaled, fighting the urge to close her eyes and just let her other senses take over as the sidewalks, trees, and people whooshed by her as she sped through the city streets. She sighed as a feeling of warmth rushed to her chest, enjoying the moment, welcoming the long ride back home.
Home.
The word stirred up feelings inside her, but it actually was a home this time, wasn’t it? For once she wasn’t pedaling towards a group home she’d grown weary of spending the night in, or speeding towards another lame job fair or skill-building workshop thrown together by well-meaning and concerned adults. She was going towards something good. It felt nice.
Leila.
Her body stiffened, and she fought the urge to slam on the brakes again as the memories of the last time this happened up on Kelly Drive came surging back. The whispering. The voices. They were louder than ever, resounding in a single voice instead of feeling like a few dozen. No longer did the whispering feel like a quiet breath against the back of her neck. Now, it was as if the faceless voice was next to her, singing in her ear.
Come to the forest.
“Bike. Wind,” she started muttering to herself softly as she rode.
The forest. Come to me.
“Road. Trees.”
Leila.
Her name.
The voices used her name.
Suddenly, everything felt as though it had piled up too high, and something in Leila snapped.
Shawn being a tool, asking his inappropriate questions. The damn girls in the hallway at summer enrichment. Her parents, and their sad, pleading eyes, how she couldn’t give them what they seemed to desperately want. Landon, and whatever that park ranger had to do with the voices in the wind.
That was it.
Time to talk back.
“There isn’t a fucking forest around here,” Leila growled, her eyes darting about as she pressed on, pedaling fast and feeling angry. It was just another thirty or forty minutes on this bicycle and she’d be home, where she could hide in her room and not worry about some disembodied voices causing her to crash. She could hide out in the living room, maybe tool around with fixing Marigold in the yard. She’d check out Major Willow and see how she was doing, if she somehow had magically grown a little more in the past few days.
“This is a city,” Leila said, resolutely. “There are parks. Nothing that resembles wilderness—”
There was once a great forest.
“Stop it,” Leila muttered, shaking her head a little. “Just stop it. I’m not here for you. You aren’t real.”
But then men came, with axes and saws, killing many, leaving few.
Leila slowed down and pulled over to the sidewalk. She was in the Eraserhood, a section of Philadelphia affectionately named after a David Lynch movie she thought was weird and unwatchable. She stopped. The single voice was loud and clear, with the hint of others still whispering around it, circling like a small breeze.
She took a deep breath.
If this was the game the voices wanted to play, then fine.
She’d play.
“Where do you want me to go? Huh?” Leila asked, closing her eyes. All these years she’d pushed the voices away, shoving them down, down, down, as far from her as she could. She’d said words that grounded her to push them back. “What do you want me to do?”
The old mansion, made of stone and our fallen sisters.
Leila shook her head, the nonsensical words starting to press against the wound on her forehead.
“I don’t understand. I . . . you’re not real. I can’t help you. G-go away.”
He will know. He who has walked among us. His brothers once sought to save us.
“Who?”
The boy with the one-winged bird.
Leila dropped the bicycle, grabbed at her head, and cried. She sat on the warm sidewalk, heated by the late summer sun, with large, looming buildings surrounding her. The Eraserhood was a mixture of old, decaying structures and repurposed warehouses made into condos and offices. The shattered, abandoned buildings looked like blackened teeth next to the brand-new ones. She took a few deep breaths, trying to focus, trying to push the voices—and the dark feelings brewing in her chest—away.
Leila.
“GO AWAY!” she screamed, her head pounding.
We need you. I need you.
“What do you want me to do? If I listen, will you just leave me alone?”
The forest. The mansion. The boy. And the bird.
“That doesn’t tell me anything!”
Leila listened. She waited. The neighborhood around her was quiet, save for the rumble of cars as they drove by her, some slowing down to peek at her before driving off. The wind rustled bits of trash on the streets, howling gently in the nearby alleys and empty buildings.
She listened.