Graham was on his way with a watermelon to meet Viv and me at the meteorite. We had planned to hurl the melon from its top, for no reason other than wanting to throw what was sure to break. The summer months were spent fleeing boredom. Belly flopping from Viv’s diving board until our fronts were slapped red. Daring one another to eat the least ripe and sourest apples off the trees. Camping on the rock with my telescope. Acting out plays that Viv wrote while on the meteorite. Sled races down the steepest sand dunes.
Viv and I were running late. We’d been lounging on the back lawn, weaving daisy chain crowns and admiring our new, brightly colored flats that her grandmother had sent us from where she lived in India. We lost track of time. “Seventh graders have the same lunch period as eighth and we’ll get to eat right next to Luke McHale. We could sit in his circle. If he asks us. If he sees I have cupcakes to share,” she said, breezy and hopeful. Viv was looking forward to the start of school in a few weeks.
I didn’t have sunglasses on and I was weaving around the trees, squinting at the orchard set on fire by the silver tinsel that scared off birds. Halfway to the rock we heard the eerie, frantic squawks. We should have known by the way the smell punched us in the face that it would be bad. But there were often putrid scents in those hills covered with cow patties and snakeskins. I was preoccupied with Viv swearing Luke was the cutest boy in the eighth grade.
The apple tree nearest the rock was full of crows, their sleek coal bodies hunched in between the glittering holographic tape. They reminded me of this photo of baboons on the plateau of a hill in Ethiopia. Their broad, hairy backs were a wall blocking out whatever they surrounded. I just knew they probably did something awful—violent—once the photographer lowered his lens. It was what the photo didn’t show that made me swallow twice. I had wondered if animals could be wicked or bored.
“Wait for Graham,” Viv said, catching my wrist, trying to keep me next to her. She was wearing one of her long bohemian skirts and the gold, pink, and blue of her slippers poked out from its drape.
“Can’t. I’m too curious,” I told her, twirling her under my arm, slipping my hand from hers while her skirt caught air. I scaled my way up the rock’s face. At the top, the stench was crawling up my nostrils, making my eyes swell with water. A stiff, hot wind in my face intensified it.
I blinked three times before I believed the body was there.
“What is it?” Viv called. I glanced down at her. The flower crown looked like snowflakes in her chestnut waves.
“Stay there and call Graham,” I said. She cocked a hand on her popped hip. Waved her brand-new cell phone at me. All mock attitude. “Please, Vivy.”
I didn’t tell Viv to call 9-1-1. I was twelve. My brain didn’t have a setting for an emergency too big for Graham. Not then. Not at first.
Viv called him. “You’re late. Why walking? Couldn’t you strap the melon to your scooter?” Pause. “Weirdness on the rock.”
From the angle and the distance, I made out the body, tatter of clothing, naked skin. A big, shaggy vulture hunched over it. I inched closer. Long brown hair. Arms open.
My breath grew shallow.
A bruise as livid as her purple bra ran from her chest to the waistband of her buttoned jean shorts. A second bruise like a choker around her neck. A girl. On her back. And those arms, they were thrown open as if she were midflight. The girl’s T-shirt had been slashed down her sternum, its halves peeled back to expose her bruised rib cage and tucked under her arms as if she had wings. There were rocks, too, at the bottom of the wings like feathers. They pinned the fabric in place.
Wings. Like those of the vulture worrying her bellybutton into a larger hole with its beak. A cloud tapered across the sky with the look of a white fissure in the blue. The sky was cracking. It would fall soon.
The vulture looked reluctantly away from its meal, a patch of soft tissue hanging out of its hooked beak. There were holes in her thighs, too, just under the hem of her cutoffs. Channels cut into the muscles; the white gleam of bone.
She was dead. Not bleeding. Not moving. No blood that I could see on the rock.
“Oh my God,” Viv whispered. I hadn’t heard her crawl up. She stood with the back of a hand to her mouth, the other clutched her stomach. She lurched to the side and dry heaved.
I returned to the girl. Not a woman. Not old enough. But older than me. She wore a real bra, not a tiny one with padding like I did. Her breasts were like hills as she lay on her back. Death made her look caught, trapped. I wanted to swat the flies from her brown hair. Knock the rocks and her wings away. Help her up so she could run.
My stomach churned, tears stung, arms lost feeling at my sides. She was not so different from me and Viv. Except she had wings.
The vulture had swallowed by then and it cawed shrilly. Its head bowed for another bite. I rushed forward, shouting. It hobbled to the edge of the rock, faking indifference, but kept one gleaming eye my way.
I was directly over her. Gravel decorated one side of her face. Her knees were dirty and cut. The single white sneaker she wore was stained, the rubber sole partially detached and wilting from her foot.
“What happened to her?” Viv whispered.
“A nightmare,” I said.
“Why is her shirt open like that?”
“Like wings,” I said and then shook my head.
We called 9-1-1 before Graham hiked up, the watermelon braced on his shoulder. Then we called my house, where my dad answered, and he called Mom because she wasn’t home. Viv’s dad was away on business and we left her mom for last because she was in recovery after surgery to remove a tumor from her chest a few weeks earlier. Viv and I sat in the dirt, waiting for the grown-ups. Graham stood by the girl on the rock, keeping the vulture at bay.
The rest of that afternoon was superimposed horror on our familiar kingdom. Where we played and pretended and dreamed and dared. Viv had to wait inside with her mom for the police because Ina had buckled against an apple tree, too weak from surgery. Dad steadied Ina and walked them back through the orchard. I sat with Graham and the watermelon as the EMTs and firemen checked the girl. I knew she couldn’t be saved. My legs stopped being legs. Graham kept muttering stuff like, How could our rock be involved in this? We’d just been there two Saturdays before. Sleeping bags. Flashlights. Liter of root beer over ice cream in Ina’s giant lobster pot. The rock was just an extension of the orchard and the orchard an extension of our barn. Ours.