What do four-year-olds like to do? I tried to think back to when Angel was little. Ivy was going to get bored of fluttering around in the fancy hotel suite at some point. She was really getting better at flying. She could even stay up in the air for a while. Gazzy and Angel were teaching her how to do simple tricks, how to move around while in mid air. As soon as I had officially introduced her to the flock as Ivy, they had accepted her in.
I had to say, she was adorable. And I was so, so proud of the flock. I had thought they would be jealous. I wasn't sure how Angel would to react to having another little girl, other than her.
I still am your little girl, right? Angel barged into my thoughts. Of course, I thought back. I looked over the room, where Angel was doing flying somersaults. On the exterior, she was smiling and carefree, but I could see she had her innocent blue eyes trained on me. No matter what, she was still my baby.
Angel smiled a little and nodded, and I knew she had heard that. Fang was typing away at his computer, the blue glow lighting up his face. Iggy was listening to music on his iPod, dangling a leg over his bed. Nudge was reading a magazine she had taken out of her overstuffed sparkly purple backpack. What did Ivy do, by herself? I looked back at her. She was still busy "flying." Her small striped wings beat fast, trying to support her.
She'd get tired eventually. As I thought that, she fell on the ground, exhausted. She crawled over to her bed and in one last effort, fluttered up. She stayed on the bed, unmoving, her wings spread out on top of her. I opened a drawer in my night table and saw a pad of paper with the Best Western logo. On it was carefully laid a Best Western pen.
I handed Ivy both things. "Here, you can draw with these." Her face lit up and she took the paper and pen and started scribbling. I saw her sketch out a circle then add a semi-circle underneath. She drew some lines on it, and started to sketch out lines and shapes. Watching her carefully, I saw she was making a face.
She finished and gave it to me. "It's you," she said. Usually, when a four-year-old draws you, it's a smiley face on top of a triangle. Looking at it, I really recognized myself. It was so realistic. In a few imprecise lines, she had captured my face, my expression. I could tell I looked determined.
I looked back at Ivy. She was scribbling again, drawing an eye with a tear in its corner. It was breathtaking. "Where did you learn to draw?" I asked her. She looked at me then frowned. "The whitecoats. They would give me an injection then make me draw. Something about my right brain."
She rubbed her left arm. I could see there was a spot where there was a neat row of red dots. They were punctures from the needles. She started drawing again and I let her be. I was staring at the picture she drew of me. She captured everything, the strand of hair I put behind my ear sometimes, the fold of the neck of my shirt…
"What's that?" Fang asked from behind me. I jumped back almost a mile. "Ivy drew it," I said. I showed him. He looked at it silently, scanning it with his dark eyes. He looked at me and it was like we exchanged a whole conversation.
"It's pretty," he finally said. "Looks like you."
"The whitecoats taught her how to draw. They enhanced her or something," I said, my voice shaking, unable to hide my anger. I looked over to her small form on the bed. She shook out her wings, drawing on her stomach, sketches spread out around her. Eyes, tears, hypodermic needles and different people I didn't know, crying and laughing, populated her pen drawings. They were so… vivid.
I turned and Fang was gone. I walked over to Ivy to get a closer look at what she was drawing. She was drawing Fang and I talking, like we had been a few seconds ago. Gazzy walked up to us.
"Whatcha doing?" he asked, his mouth full with candy that I did not buy him. He looked over at the picture of Fang and I. "Whoa," he exclaimed. "Draw me!"
"Okay," Ivy smiled, and ripped out the page. She started to sketch out some basic shapes, and in a minute she had Gazzy flying through the air, his wings beating fast. They weren't really moving, but I could sense the motion, like she had taken a picture.
A crowd had started to form around Ivy. "Ooh! Draw me!" Nudge said. She smiled widely and sat on the bed, posing for the portrait and fixing her hair. Angel wanted a picture of Celeste next, and Ivy started scribbling frantically.
A few minutes later, she produced a photograph-like drawing of Nudge, smiling on the bed. She also had Angel holding Celeste. Angel took the picture hungrily and trotted off with it.
Ivy went back to drawing fractured images of lab equipment. Cages, DNA strands, computers, pills, needles, were all stacked together, evoking a nightmare. Her work was beautiful, but also terrifying.
Everyone was asleep, or so I thought. I needed to go get some air. There was a window that opened to the street in the bathroom. I could just fly around and come back. I did a quick head count. Fang, Gazzy, Nudge, Angel, Iggy… Where was Ivy? I looked to her bed, the dim light barely illuminating anything. Her bed was empty, no doubt about it.
I left the room and opened the door to the luxuriously large bathroom. The window I had planned to jump out of was wide open, and sitting under it was Ivy. Her wings were extended, and a small breeze ruffled her feathers.
I saw she was looking at something intently. A bird was perched on a building. I recognized it from the Patterson Park bird tour. It was a red-tailed hawk. It extended its wings, shaking them out. I saw why she was so taken by this bird. Its feathers were brown at the tips of the primaries, and white with fuzzy gray stripes. They were just like hers.
She shook out her wings, imitating the hawk. "I guess I'm part hawk then," she said. We watched the hawk together. It stepped out onto the edge of the building and flew away. It was probably flying to a park or bird reserve. Heck, it could have been flying to evil-scientist playground Patterson Park.
"Do you think I'll ever find my parents?" she asked. I looked at her. She was so young…how could I really answer this question? "I don't know, kiddo."
"Can… can I stay with the flock until then?" she asked timidly. I made a split-second executive decision as flock leader. "Yes," I said, and I thought I heard a sigh of relief coming from Ivy.