Page 3 of Gifted & Talented

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At the moment Arthur Wren crossed the threshold of an orgy and Meredith Wren nearly pissed her lady-pantsuit on stage, Eilidh Wren—slightly less of an asshole, but only by virtue of personal misfortune so extreme it derailed all potential assholery she might have otherwise blossomed into like a peony in June—was plummeting to her death on a last-minute flight back to San Francisco aboard a budget airline, her tailbone practically rattling against the skeletal economy seat (an aisle seat, 16D), while an ad winked sadistically up at her from the in-flight magazine ( THIS APP WILL MAKE YOU HAPPY! : ), a particularly insidious taunt).

The plane had been undulating wildly for several minutes, such that the oxygen masks had already dropped into the cabin and Eilidh was, ultimately, impressed they did not require an additional fee to use. This was what she got for coming home early, bypassing the ample preparation she’d so recklessly elected to ignore. This plane was almost certainly going down, something that Eilidh had not previously believed was possible. True, she was not a person of any mechanical know-how, but she was familiar enough with the family business to be comfortably sure that even this cabin had been equipped with the industry-standard technomantic computing her father had developed over the last four decades with Wrenfare. Assuming the airline had kept up with the latest system updates, the plane ought to be borderline sentient. Shouldn’t it practically land itself?

Someone in the pipeline of airline safety had fucked up monumentally—which, Eilidh was displeased to reflect, was an uncharitable thought on her part. She had been doing so well. She hadn’t had a bitchy thought for nearly two entire days. (She, unlike the other two Wren siblings, did not have Lou living in her head, which was better or worse for Eilidh depending on whether you find it more oppressive to be insulted by the ghost of childhoods past or your own insipid thoughts.)

Eilidh’s impressive departure from misanthropy was new, and far from the usual. She had just returned from a silent retreat in Vermont that she was fully prepared to lie about. Of course she had loved it. Of course she was refreshed. No, she had not missed her phone. No, she wasn’t at all devastated that three days of total silence was something for which she had not had to bargain for or fight about with a partner because she had no partner, not even a roommate or a cat (she felt it would be rude to The Cat, the one she might one day adopt but wasn’t currently ready for, as she was not yet her ideal person). Yes, she was terribly glad she’d done it! Well, that part was true, sort of. She wasn’t not glad she’d done it, except for the fact that she was maybe about to die on her way home.

The plane dropped again in the sky, like a toy clutched in the hand of a giant. The lights flickered almost hysterically—almost more hysterically than the woman beside Eilidh, who was presently hyperventilating into a paper bag. Earlier, Eilidh had tried to reach for the woman’s hand in an effort at solidarity, but the woman had only been more terrified, as if the well-meaning touch of a stranger was proof this was very bad, very bad indeed.

Eilidh’s hand tightened on the armrest of her seat as she considered the prospect of dying, a thought she entertained somewhat routinely, about three times a week (tops). She once again had the counterproductive thought that her body was useless, then corrected herself firmly, compulsively consulting the mental sticky note that read YOUR BODY WORKS BETTER THAN MOST AND YOU SHOULD BE GRATEFUL :) before another roil of turbulence knocked her mindfulness somewhere into her colon.

God, but maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, would it? What did she really have to bind her to this world, to keep her even remotely interested in her life? It had been five years since the injury. Five entire years since the surgery. And in that time, what had she done?

(Here’s what she had not done: played the Sugar Plum Fairy, or Juliet, or Odette, or woken up unaware of her back, though the last time Eilidh had mentioned that to Meredith she’d been briskly told to stop complaining, they were all getting older, gravity wasn’t specifically invested in ruining Eilidh’s life, even though Meredith had once sprained her ankle and missed a round of the USTA Junior National Championship finals when she was ten years old and had never, ever let anyone forget about it, which wasn’t technically the same thing because Meredith had moved on from tennis and Eilidh had never fallen out of love with ballet. But it was a similar fla vor, and anyway this was all in Eilidh’s head, and she did not have to defend herself to anyone outside of it.)

Eilidh was, at present, a marketing executive at Wrenfare. Well, “executive” was maybe too lofty a term. (Her amendment, not mine—“executive” is technically accurate, if spiritually controversial.) She worked in marketing at Wrenfare, though because her last name was obviously Wren and her father, the founder and CEO, had a photo of her on his desk, people assumed that Eilidh was slightly more important than she actually was. She was routinely asked to sign off on things that she considered quite frankly none of her business, and people often specifically requested to work with her, thinking that her presence on a project might ensure that it favorably crossed the boss’s desk.

Which wasn’t wholly false. Her father did like to keep tabs on what she was up to, and they had a standing lunch date near the offices on Tuesdays. At these lunches, familial and casual though they purported to be, Eilidh might mention a person who would later be promoted, or she might reference a project that would later be green-lit, so it didn’t really matter what her title was. Still, she was primarily just an ordinary person who worked in marketing, because it was the only thing for which she was even remotely qualified. (She had worked on the annual gala for her ballet academy, an extracurricular she’d taken up as a bit of quid pro quo because she’d overslept after a particularly grueling rehearsal for which she held the principal role—okay, she hadn’t meant to brag, but since you’re so obviously curious, it was Princess Aurora from Sleeping Beauty —and missed an exam.)

Eilidh was good at her job. Eilidh was not, generally speaking, an idiot. And—this part is the Big Secret—Eilidh did not technically have to die in this plane crash if she didn’t want to.

As if to belabor the point, Eilidh felt a stirring up her spine, something sprouting like an emergency hatch, a panic button presented from inside herself. It was a different sensation every time, but its presence was always noticeable. Often the feeling lived dormantly, alive but inactive from somewhere within Eilidh’s chest cavity, but this particular flourish of motion was both muted and undeniable, like the crook of a lover’s finger. A quiet but unmissable unfurling where a set of wings would be. It was rare that she and the thing were of similar minds, but even so, the message was unmistakable. All she would have to do to save everyone on this plane was give in.

Provided she could stand the cost.

The plane was going down, that was for certain. Inclement weather, poor planning, technical malfunction, maybe some unholy combination of all three. The pilot had somehow left his microphone on and was crying audibly, which was not very beneficial for the vibes. Some rows ahead of Eilidh, a woman was clutching her screaming baby, unable to keep from sobbing into the child’s head despite her ardent rocking, her desperate attempts to make these final moments good, to make them sweet. Who boarded a plane with a baby unless they absolutely had to? Eilidh felt a pang of something horrible then, almost criminal, as if this were single-handedly her fault. She looked away and spotted an older woman who was praying a rosary; a man who was weeping openly, his thumb gently stroking a picture of three young children on his phone.

If circumstances were left to the parasite’s whims, it was narrowly possible Eilidh might survive the impending crash against her will—against the laws of physics, against all conceivable odds. The parasite—the thing that seemed to have taken residency like a squatter in her chest—had already intervened for her in the past, unless there was some other reason she’d survived carbon monoxide poisoning (the doctors had insisted there was, but then again they’d had no subsequent explanation for the frogs).

Of course, the consequences might be worse if she accepted its help rather than simply leaving her demise up for grabs. Terrible things always happened where the parasite was involved. Though, was there really a worse, given the scale of things? How did one assign a measurable degree of disaster to a pestilence of livestock, or to the seas turning red? The death of firstborn sons was understandably catastrophic, but did stars falling from heaven to earth outrank the leveling of mountains to plains? If Eilidh said help me and the thing said yes but turned all potable water to blood in exchange, how was that equitable preservation of life? Certainly the government would be no help whatsoever.

And even with all apocalypses being equal, at what point would they stop being warning shots? How much calamity could strike at the parasite’s hands before the world was actually ending, and therefore Eilidh was, too? Because at some point surely there’d be no more posturing. Eventually the earth would stop fucking around and call it quits.

But these weren’t the real questions. Eilidh’s mortality, her intellectualizing of life itself, these thoughts were trivial, extraneous at best. The real concern was, what of the others on the plane, the bystanders, all presumably parasite-free, with only one outcome written on their fates unless Eilidh so charitably intervened, risking only the continuity of life on earth over a bargain with an eldritch thing for which she had no rational explanation…?

Oh, it was all so fucked, thought Eilidh tiredly, with all her young, young, youngyoungyoungyoung twenty-six years of exhaustion in her bones. All these people for other people to miss. Might the plausible horrors be worth it? Philanthropically speaking, if nothing else? Maybe the world wouldn’t end today. Maybe, theoretically, it would just be one tiny, survivable plague. Mere roulette, with suboptimal (but dismissable) nonzero odds of complete annihilation! Just another thing she’d simply have to suck it up and live through, like all the rest.

In any case, her father would miss her, a quiet voice reminded her. Eilidh imagined him sitting at the restaurant alone, looking at the door, checking his phone. Waiting, as he always did, for her to walk in and meet him at their usual table, in their usual place. Could she really bear to disappoint him? She had never been able to before.

In the wake of Eilidh’s indecision, the situation irreversibly worsened. Nothing could help Budget Airline Flight 2276 now except a miracle, or whatever you might call a miracle that did its job but in the worst imaginable way. Still, the choice was a simple one, somewhere between carnage or ugliness. Either a combustible mass grave somewhere in the Rockies, or…

Truthfully, Eilidh hated to find out. But the sensation in her body, the monstrous creature she housed, it was both guardian and jailer—it would do her bidding, yes, but only if she wished for life at every other living thing’s expense. She could feel it now, the power that was really more like capitulation. The red button she only had to press for temporary salvation, which would feel like destruction right up until it passed.

The flight attendants screamed for everyone to assume the brace position when Eilidh, lacking persuasive alternatives, finally gave in. She compromised with the universe, making her peace, taking a deep breath and hoping for something mild. Something not too… destructive. (Surely there’d be fallout, but then again, a compromise means neither party truly wins.)

The irony, really, was how hard Eilidh had to fight on a daily basis to keep it at bay, barely contained, versus the ease of letting it loose, which was only metaphysically difficult. What would happen now that she’d set it loose on purpose? A flood? A plague? A fire?

The end of the world?

Abruptly, the plane’s cabin went dark. The parasite living in her chest unfurled, a greedy, gleeful rattling at the bars of its perilous cage. Just enough to live, Eilidh thought desperately. Please, just rein it in.

Nah, she practically heard in answer.

Then, as if with a gentlemanly shake upon contracted offer and acceptance, Eilidh felt the wings burst free.