The Parts of a Feather

Part Six- Vane

School seemed to get in the way of life for me the rest of the year. I couldn't think about anything else but Milo, still in at the hospital in critical condition. There wasn't any change because, just when hope rose, something busted inside him that made him return to his condition. He hadn't woken up since the night he was thrown into his coma. I visited him on Saturdays, every week, to hold his hand, talk about life and school, do my best to heal his marred wings, and cry inevitably.

I was forgetting his voice, his smile, the brown eyes scared through experience...  It reminded me of when my grandma had died. As the days went by, her voice got farther away and more muddled. The shine of her eyes and her laugh, a whoop followed by a more regular style of laughing, is all but vanished for me. My mom has her pendant and the mirrors I own belonged to her, but even with those items to remember her by the things I wished I remembered were the parts that made her... well, my grandma.

Jemilia would come and visit with me too. Not as often but... I'm glad she did. Especially when we talked at lunch about topics that seemed to divert our minds away from worrying about Milo. We both did, I knew that, but it was something to change our thoughts from worry to hope. She came over a lot too to help me work on things for class.

I still broke down and cried when I did my work.

It hurt to work. It hurt to breathe. Just as Milo was waking up from the gloom he was thrown into it with little to no chance of coming back. That bastard of a drunk piece of hell-filled shit took him away from me in one blow and now I was back to the beginning. Back to a broken wing, back to feeling uncertain about everything, back to my depression, back to the whole goddamn lot of it. Jemilia was a blessing, the teachers were understanding, my folks even more so, but...

...Mika stayed the same.

A report had come out about the Milo some time later, and somehow that put her on edge. She wanted to fight more, put me down as often as she can, and even tried spreading rumors. The rumors were falsified very quickly however. No one believed her. I don't know why or how but the words were reported and Mika was sent to the principal's office more often than not. It made her more vicious to me in a direct way, but indirectly she was clearly loosing her power. It was like no one really wanted to listen to her anymore, not even her group of friends which began to dwindle as a month became two months, then three, then the last few weeks of freshman year.

I felt edgy. It was getting close to the day I got assaulted, and I feared that a repeat was going to happen. Jemilia said I was nuts and that nothing like that would happen, but she herself also seemed on edge. I couldn't understand it. Then again, around that time understanding was getting farther away from me. Milo was better, the internal damage healed and he had a few scars on his body, with the wings doing just the same, but still not awake. The doctors and nurses told me that it was easier for the body to heal rather than the mind itself to overcome obstacles. I don't know if they were being existential about this bit, but there slept Milo every time I saw him; just as I had left him the week before.

The way my folks took my depression was different from the first time they tried to deal with me. My dad took more time off from work while my mom picked up the slack working for a museum as a tour guide. There was more talk than activity, either about the day or something deep. We took walks on the beach behind our house, in the mall my dad worked in, the museum with my mom as the tour guide, areas where they thought they could distract my mind for a little bit. I liked the museum, especially when they did an exhibit featuring Van Gogh. I knew he was insane from what my mom had said, but I found it amazing how he found some sort of peace painting and drawing and never thinking he would be remembered. I tried to paint more, mainly remakes of his work, but they don't seem to hold the same amount of value.