Angel Wing

FEBRUARY

THERE WAS AN ugly creature in the living room that Hadley couldn't name even if he wanted to.

It was a sizeable, white sculpture that took its place at the left side of the TV and didn't really seem to have any identifiable form or shape beyond a smooth curve that looped back into itself, leaving an odd gap in the middle like a missing body part. It loomed and waited and watched, and he stared at it from the living room doorway as if trying to pinpoint where it was looking out from. 

His parents were sitting on the sofa. His father was still wearing his suit from work and his shining black oxfords, and he was watching some property show while his mom curled up in the corner, rapidly typing on her laptop. He stood in the hallway, observing as his father muttered about the people on TV while his mother worked and, after a delay, would ask him to repeat what he had said only to keep typing while he said it. Other than their muttering, the living room was filled with the sound of a false, desperate TV host.

Loudly, dramatically, he cleared his throat and, in unison, they snapped their heads towards him. His mother flashed him a smile and his father, his arm lying across the top of the sofa, craned his neck as far as he could.

Hadley drew his gaze towards the sculpture and blinked at it, but neither of them moved, their faces locked with smiles, so he cleared his throat again and pressed, "What's that?"

"What's what?" His mom asked, tilting her head and watching him expectantly, her chestnut hair falling over her shoulders and her thin, light eyebrows knitting together.

"That," he replied, nodding his head towards it and dropping his backpack at his feet.

"Oh!" She cried, resuming her work and laughing at herself. "Some show your father is watching where people keep pretending that they're going to buy a new house and never actually do."

"Sometimes they buy the house," he argued lightly, pointing a finger at her. His right leg was folded over his left, his foot bouncing restlessly.

"Not the TV," he frowned, eyeing the sculpture and shrugging his jacket off. "That. That white thing."

Swiftly, she followed her gaze and her face contorted into a scowl. Pursing her lips, her green eyes glinting with sharp disapproval, she scolded, "How could you say that? That white thing. It's not white, Hadley. It's angel wing."

Tucking his jacket over his arm, he cocked a brow and blinked at her, vague disgust in his stiff mouth and wide eyes. "What?"

"Angel wing," his father echoed, his gaze on the screen.

Leaning against the decorated oak dresser, his hands curved around the edges and his right leg folded over his left, he tilted his head and narrowed his eyes at the sculpture. "What's angel wing?"

His mother hummed and halted her typing, biting the inside of her lip and glancing towards the ceiling thoughtfully. "It's like white," she began tactfully, "but it's not white. It's better than white: it's angel wing. It's like a dreamier, more heavenly version of white."

"You sound like a commercial," he remarked, trying to figure out where it started and ended.

"Well, whatever," she said brightly, waving a hand at him and resuming her typing. "It's very in style right now and it makes the living room look so much more interesting so you can just keep your negative comments to yourself, Nancy. And anyway," — she sighed deeply, melodramatically — "Your father and I didn't expect you to understand."

"You didn't expect me to understand?" He echoed, glancing at the back of their heads. "Understand what?"

"The adoption of our new artistic style," she remarked, shaking her head.

"What artistic style?" He frowned. "It's a white nothing."

"Angel wing," she corrected, rolling her eyes and giving another small shake of her head.

He considered that morphing, infinite shape, unable to tear his gaze away. He thought about Mr Martinez's Mountains at Collioure. He thought about Spencer's bruised face and his throbbing fist. He looked curiously at his right hand and pushed himself away from the cabinet, picking up his dropped jacket and backpack, and turned to leave the room.

As he began to trudge away, his father whistled, shot his hand up in the air and snapped his fingers. His eyes still locked on the TV screen, he called, "Not so fast, Had! School called!"

"Yeah?" He asked after a pause, stepping into the living room hallway and looking at his father's dark head of hair. "What'd they say?"

"They said you punched your classmate," his father replied and then he paused, laughed and tapped his hand on the top of the sofa, satisfied. "I knew they weren't going to buy that house."

"I told you," his mother muttered, typing briskly on her laptop, a scoff caught in her voice. Then, with a frown and a wrinkled nose, she stopped and lifted herself slightly to peer at him. "Hadley, why did you punch your classmate in the face?"

"It was a matter of principle," he said, only because he was unable to come up with anything else.

"What principle?" She asked, narrowing her sharp eyes at him.

He shifted his weight from foot to foot and shrugged his shoulders. "Elodie."

"Who on earth is Elodie?" His father scoffed, as if offended.

"His girlfriend," His mother snapped, glowering.

"Ex-girlfriend," he corrected.

"Elodie," his father tested slowly. He hummed thoughtfully, trying to jog the memory of her face back into his mind.

"We met her," his mother interjected, pausing her typing to glare at him again. "She had dinner with us."

"Multiple times," Hadley added with a sigh, glancing around the living room.

"Was I there?" His father pressed, baffled. "Oh, that house is atrocious."

"Of course you were there," his mother sighed, massaging her forehead.

"Every time," Hadley murmured, pressing his hand against his forehead and closing his eyes.

His father cleared his throat.

"You remember her, Adam," his mother pressed impatiently, her arms folded. "You know, quite pale, blonde. On the shorter side. She wore very strong perfume and she wanted to be a journalist or a teacher or something."

"Hm," he pondered.

Hadley could see his frown without even being able to see his face. "Her dad had that Porsche," he added, rolling his eyes.

"I remember her!" He announced, snapping his fingers. "Eloise."

"Yeah, that's right," Hadley agreed, shaking his head. "Eloise."

"And this classmate stole her from you?" His father pressed, finally turning around, his handsome, amicable face pulled into a frown, his forehead lined and eyes narrowed.

"That's not very a feminist perspective on the matter," his mother scolded. "She wasn't stolen." And she turned around too, her smooth, pretty face disapproving. "She chose someone over you."

"Thanks, Mom," he remarked, smiling tightly at her. "I imagine he's saying the same thing right now."

"Who?"

"You know," he began, forcing himself to keep smiling, "that classmate I punched?"

She hummed decisively and turned back around, continuing her work. "He sounds lovely. Maybe you shouldn't have punched him."

"Ridiculous," his father scoffed. He, too, had turned back around and was watching the TV again. "You were right to punch him in the face because it's important to establish dominance in these situations."

"Shut up, Adam," his mother muttered.

"He stole Eloise, Cecilia."

"He didn't steal anyone," she glowered, rolling her eyes— not that Hadley could see her doing it. He just knew she was.

"Either way," he dismissed. "Good job, son!"

His mother scoffed.

"See you at dinner," Hadley muttered, shaking his head and trudging out of the living room. He stopped to throw his jacket over the banister and left his backpack at the bottom of the stairs, then headed into the kitchen.

"Oh my god," he heard his father declare from behind him. "That is the worst house yet. This is getting ridiculous."

The afternoon sunlight was streaming in through the back windows and leaving patches of gold on the floor tiles, decorated with black and white flowers that looked beautiful in summer, cold in winter, and always made him feel dizzy when he had a headache. He considered the white tiling behind the white cabinets, the white-painted walls and the white photos in their frames, the same colour as the glossy wood surfaces on the cabinets.

He walked around the kitchen island and opened one of the higher cabinets, searching for something to eat before dinner.

His brother, already typing on his laptop at the kitchen table, greeted him without looking up. "Hey."

"Like mother, like son," he declared in response, pulling out a box of bread sticks. He closed the cupboard doors, took some hummus out of the fridge,  and walked around the kitchen island until the floor turned back to that light, sun-sprinkled, glossy wood. "Hey."

"Heard you punched someone," he said, watching Hadley as he pulled out the adjacent chair and sat down.

"I didn't think it would get around that quick," he admitted, pulling the lid off of his pot of hummus. A jolt of unease stirred him. "I thought it would take until tomorrow, at least."

Tristan rolled his eyes. "Don't be so naive, Hadley. No one in that place knows how to keep their mouths shut. You know that."

Without speaking, he shrugged his shoulders and ate silently, leading against his seat and staring at a patch of sunlight on the table.

"I've known for hours," Tristan continued, typing on his laptop again. "I still can't believe you did it."

"Me neither," he murmured, only half-listening, his gaze vacant as he reached for another bread stick.

Neither of them said anything for a while; Hadley continued to stare at that golden patch and Tristan continued to type and the kitchen remained otherwise silent, the occasional bursts of conversation from his parents in the living room disturbing the stillness every few minutes.

Tristan glanced towards him and hesitated before speaking. There was a shadow on his face and if he looked up too high then the sunlight would catch his light eyes, forcing him to turn away and bow his head, his brown hair lightened. "Did it hurt?"

"Kind of," he shrugged. "I mean, I guess so."

"That means yes," he replied, his lips pulling into a half-smile as he leaned back in his chair, barely enough to escape the sun. "Was it worth it? The two weeks of detention?"

"Yeah," he said. "No. I don't know. Maybe. Probably not." He paused. "I thought it would be." He paused again, then looked at his brother. "What are you doing?"

Tristan leaned forward and picked up a copy of The Razor's Edge, handing it to Hadley. "It's an English assignment. We have to write an analysis on the scene where Larry and Isabel break off their engagement because Larry wants to go to Paris and Isabel's all pissed off because she wants him to get a job."

Studying the book and flipping through it, Hadley smiled and glanced towards him. "Hey, speaking of good old-fashioned American materialism, have you seen that new sculpture in the living room?"

"Space has seen that new sculpture in the living room," he grimaced, furrowing his light brow and resuming his typing with those languid hands.

Searching for the scene that Tristan was writing about, his smile grew and he paused to look at him, pondering before he spoke. "It's white," he stated. "Right?"

"Mom and Dad say it's angel wing," Tristan replied, rolling his eyes as he spoke.

"But it's white," Hadley pressed searchingly. "Right?"

"Of course it's white," he laughed, his blue eyes darting towards Hadley, glinting with fresh amusement. He squeezed his eyes shut, dipping away from the light again. "But what difference does that make? You know for a fact that Mom and Dad are going to keep calling it angel wing anyway."

"Yeah, well, Mom and Dad are full of shit," he muttered, passing the book back to Tristan who was holding his hand out for it. "I mean, angel wing? Really?"

"Excuse you," his brother declared haughtily, a smile caught at the corners of his mouth. "For your information, Hadley, angel wing is very in season right now. Mom and Dad would never be caught dead with a white sculpture because white is so not in season right now."

"It's ugly," Hadley muttered. He was thinking about that bruise on Spencer's face again, the two of them talking in the hallway and the surprising softness of Spencer's voice, even if only for a second.

"I know it's ugly," Tristan agreed, opening the book and flipping to the page, "but why does it matter what we think when we both know that their friends are going to love it?" He stopped, glanced around the kitchen and grinned. "Think they're gonna start telling their friends that all those white cabinets are actually angel wing, too?"

Silently reaching for the bread sticks again, his brow knitted, he glared at Tristan, who only laughed.

He thought about the new addition to the house and felt a knot of irritation forming in his stomach. He wasn't sure why it had bothered him so much and he wasn't sure why their insistence on the colour had left such a bad taste in his mouth, and he wasn't convinced that he was going to figure it out either. His mind was still half-lingering on Spencer, on the way his eyes had gleamed right after Hadley had punched him, how he'd felt that pain in his hand and tried to shake it out.

Unable to express his intensifying bitterness in a way that would make any sense, he said, "I think I'm gonna move out."

Tristan snickered. "Famously easy at seventeen."

"I mean it," Hadley pressed, his frown deepening as he chewed. "I'm gonna go out into the woods and build a cabin. No electricity or anything."

"Well, you'll need some new furniture if you're moving out to a cabin," his brother considered, meeting his eye with a grin. "A bed, a table, maybe an armchair and a bookcase and a desk for writing letters by candlelight and a nice angel wing sculpture right in the centre of the living room."

"Ha," he replied wryly. "Funny. Why do you think I want to move out in the first place?"

"To see if Mom and Dad notice?" He asked lightly, reaching for a bread stick and dipping into the hummus.

"We already know the answer to that," Hadley remarked airily, gently kicking his brother's shin.

Tristan finished eating and then returned to his essay, holding his book open with one hand and typing slowly with the other. "People are going to be whispering about you tomorrow."

"Maybe they will, maybe they won't," he shrugged, staring out through the glass patio doors and into the backyard. An urge to go outside struck him.

"There you go with that naivety again," Tristan scolded. "They will. Maybe even until next week. Maybe even until Spencer's new decoration heals. Or, you know," he smiled, "just until something else happens."

"That's a news cycle for you," Hadley sighed, leaning forward onto the table and folding his arms over. "Someone does something terrible and everyone goes crazy about it for a while until other terrible stuff happens. Then everyone gets so caught up in that new terrible stuff that the first terrible stuff slips silently into the background and just keeps occurring without any real consequence. People will devour anything you put in front of them. As soon as this incident of ours fades into irrelevance, all those people who were glaring at me in class today will start making jokes with me again and asking to borrow some notes that they missed or whatever. Like nothing even happened."

"Now, Hadley," Tristan scoffed with a pointed look. "I thought we talked about you learning to keep expressions of misery to yourself."

Distracted and flooded with a kind of emptiness that he was too tired to try and figure out, he hummed and shrugged. "I saw a painting today. Mr Martinez had it hung up in his office."

"Alright," he replied, his brow furrowed. There was a laugh in the shadows of his voice. He gave Hadley a look. "What was it?"

"Mountains at Collioure," Hadley replied, leaning around in his chair so he could see Tristan's screen as he searched for it. "No, I-O-U– yeah, that's the one."

Tristan clicked on one of the images and nodded with vague approval. "It's nice," he murmured, flat but sincere. "Bet you wish Mom and Dad bought one of those instead of their new friend in the living room."

"Tell me about it," Hadley muttered, studying those bright, flooding, dancing colours; that burnt orange and marine blue and the green of Spencer's eyes.

"It is nice," Tristan pressed, eyeing it curiously and glancing back at him.

"Yeah," Hadley said softly, falling back against his seat. He thought of the air outside, fresh and cool and sharp. "It is. It really is."

note
thank you for reading! i hope you enjoyed the introduction to Hadley's family. I'm still trying to get my feel for this 온라인카지노게임 and these characters, so I hope this was okay to read and any feedback is always appreciated :')

to any of my regular readers, I am currently working on the next chapter of The Best of Us, but this 온라인카지노게임 just feels easier to write at the minute, hence the quicker updates! More TBOU will be coming, so I hope that's okay <3

thank you again and I hope to see you next time!!

originally published
8 feb 2025