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By Jessie Atkin The official notification arrived with gold embossed letterhead. The message was handwritten calligraphy on thick cream-colored paper. Parents hovered expectantly as wax seals were cracked from stiff envelopes and dates and times were revealed at last. The Featherbox was almost upon them. “I won’t make a fool of myself the way Penelope did,” Amelia swears to her mother. “I won’t cry.” Or come home only to hole up in my bedroom for years and do secretarial work for father, she insists to herself.
Amelia will not become her older sister. She will be famous. She will be successful. She will have a real job. And real friends. She will have everything her parents always promised because she works hard and is finally old enough to attend the Featherbox. “We will go shopping for your dresses this weekend,” her mother promises. And Amelia smiles, flutters the wings at her shoulder blades, and hovers inches above the ground. She stares out the window, up at the sky, and wonders when her father will descend from the clouds, and she will be able to promise him as well. This is how growing up has always been. All children are born with wings. Their wings are wide and feathered, and strong enough to send them all soaring above the clouds (which can be a bit worrisome when the children are very small). Then all the boys and girls are invited to a Featherbox. Boys are gifted with conditioner, their feathers made strong and stiff, with a new gleam about them. Girls have their wings clipped, so they will not grow too broad, as the boys begin to. Amelia has never seen a girl with wings after attending the Featherbox. At school, it is easy to tell who has been named mature enough. The girls wear new dresses that lay closer to the skin, showing off their hips and legs in a new and grown-up way. They all walk in groups afterward, smiling, and laughing, and eyeing the junior high girls with pity as they still flit around the hallways. Amelia cannot wait to have close friends like these. … The Featherbox is held at city hall in the building’s great atrium. The walls are hung with fairy lights and a live band is set up on the largest section of staircase. The boys are wearing new suits, the girls the first of their dresses. Amelia’s dress is blue like the sky, and her mother even had her hair specially done, straightened to match the feathers still present at her back. A few of the guests have started to dance, rising from the floor to the ceiling and back again with the sound of the music. Amelia hovers off to the side with a few of the other girls, a bit too nervous to try moving with any real grace. A bit too out of place, having never attended a party like the Featherbox before. The chaperones glide around the edge of the dance floor, the women on the ground, the men in the air, trying to encourage everyone to enjoy themselves. But none of the boys and girls really came here to dance. Jaden moves to stand at Amelia’s elbow. His wing touches the tip of hers as he leans back against the wall. They were science partners earlier in the year. They had won the junior high fair with an inflation vest for toddlers they based on airbags. The vests would inflate should a new flyer fall suddenly to the ground. Both Jaden and Amelia want to work in the Aeronautics Administration one day. “Are you nervous?” Jaden asks. “No,” Amelia says. “Are you?” “Only of the dancing,” Jaden replies. “Won’t be aerial ballet company for you, then.” “Or you,” Jaden says, with a jab of his elbow. “Who wants to be an aerial dancer anyway?” “Lots of people.” “Not you,” she reminds him. “Nope. Aeronautics engineer.” “Good, you can work for me,” Amelia grins. “Really?” “Yes, I will be Aeronautics president.” Jaden snorts. “Have you ever seen an Aeronautics president who didn’t have wings?” he asks. His voice hasn’t changed. It’s as if they are still joking about their dancing skills. But something in Amelia’s stomach feels suddenly heavy. And soon the heaviness enters the room as the sky outside darkens and the hour signals that it is time. Only the fairy lights seem certain as the music fades. The mayor stands in front of the band, smiling, and thanking the musicians, before he indicates the stairs to his left where the boys should line up for their ceremony, and the stairs to the right where the girls should do the same for theirs. Jaden says he will see Amelia later. She doesn’t even wave. She feels slightly sick. “Don’t forget your bags, girls!” a chaperone calls. And Amelia and the rest pick up the other dresses their mothers have helped them shop for. The ones they will wear when they reenter their lives as grown-up young women. “Mine is red,” Marsha whispers as if they are great friends and already have a secret. She shakes her bag in Amelia’s direction. Amelia tries to smile. “That sounds lovely.” She crushes her own bag in her fists, unconcerned with the purple gown still folded within. The line curves up the stairs and down a shadowed hallway as the music returns, distant now, back in the atrium. A shiver runs down Amelia’s wings and through to her toes. She tries to refrain from stroking a feather, a nervous habit she has been warned against for years. She wonders if it will hurt. This rite of passage. This ceremony. She doesn’t remember even Penelope saying anything about that. It’s not spoken of, the clipping of wings, it never has been. Only the boys ever joke about the new sleek shine they present to the world. When it is finally Amelia’s turn a smiling chaperone with coiffed auburn hair, puts a hand on her shoulder, and ushers her through a door. “You are up, darling,” she smiles. And Amelia nods politely, and thanks the woman for her direction, and steps through a door that closes automatically behind her. “Step up, don’t be shy.” A new woman, with a blond bob, sits at a mahogany desk wearing rubber gloves on both her hands. “Do you need help with your zipper?” she asks. “What?” Amelia stammers. “On your dress,” the woman clarifies. “We will need your shoulders bare to clip your wings.” “No, thank you,” Amelia says, as polite as always. “I can hold your Featherbox gown for you,” the woman offers, extending a slim gloved hand. Amelia hands over her bag before she reaches around her back and, with one hand and the tip of one wing, pulls the zipper on her blue dress halfway down. “Now just step right up here.” The woman stands and gestures at a metal plate hanging just above a tripod. The bottom of the plate reaches just below Amelia’s shoulder blades. “All you need do is hunch just slightly here, your wings positioned behind the plate, and then stand up straight. One quick motion.” “Me?” Amelia asks. “Of course, dear, it’s your ceremony.” Again, out of respect for the woman beside her, Amelia nods. She steps toward the plate and feels a small measure of heat emanating from the device behind her. She hunches slightly, allowing the top of her wings to inch under and behind the device. The bottom tips of her wings drag on the floor. The heat is at her back. The woman smiling at the front. Amelia smiles too and stands up. She will remember the pain. She will also remember how quickly it passed and how she did not see any blood. She will remember pulling on her new gown and being helped to zip it up. She will remember how tight it felt, so much closer to the skin on her back than anything has ever been before. When she exits through a second door there is no line. This hallway is empty except for one man. He clasps his hands together and smiles. “You look lovely.” Amelia is not sure that this is true. “Now, just that way,” he says, pointing over a balcony. Amelia can just hear the music of the band far below. She can make out the glow of the fairy lights. “Aren’t there any stairs?” she asks. “Oh, you need stairs as well, do you?” “They’ve just clipped my wings,” Amelia reminds him. “The boys didn’t have any problems,” he says as if he is surprised that this is an expectation she can no longer fulfill. As if, whatever has just been done to all of them is the same. “I suppose you can use that back staircase.” He motions to a door on his left. Amelia walks all the way down.
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