Alan reached out and petted her wings through her jacket. “Were you broken?”
“Of course I was,” she snapped, pulling back. “I couldn’t talk to people. I couldn’t do anything. I wasn’t a person,” she said.
“Right,” Alan said. “I’m following you.”
She looked glumly at the road unraveling before them, grey and hissing with rain. “Is it much farther?” she said.
“An hour or so, if I remember right,” he said.
“I know how stupid that sounds,” she said. “I couldn’t figure out if he was some kind of pervert who liked to cut or if he was some kind of pervert who liked girls like me or if I was lucky or in trouble. But he cut them, and he gave me a towel to bite on the first time, but I never needed it after that. He’d do it quick, and he kept the knife sharp, and I was able to be a person again—to wear cute clothes and go where I wanted. It was like my life had started over again.”
The hills loomed over the horizon now, low and rolling up toward the mountains. One of them was his. He sucked in a breath and the car wavered on the slick road. He pumped the brakes and coasted them to a stop on the shoulder.
“Is that it?” she said.
“That’s it,” he said. He pointed. His father was green and craggy and smaller than he remembered. The body rolled in the trunk. “I feel—” he said. “We’re taking him home, at least. And my father will know what to do.”
“No boy has ever taken me home to meet his folks,” she said.