Chapter 30

Dana only spared the briefest of glances in Jeff’s direction and carried the mysterious black bag to the loveseat just off to the side of where April was standing. Laura and I knew exactly what was coming, but Jeff and, more importantly, April, didn’t have a clue, which was evident by the looks on their startled, confused faces.

I wasn’t about to be left out from a front row seat to the reveal. Laura had the exact same reaction as me, hurrying over and grabbing my hand in both of hers.

“I thought she was going to wait?” Laura whispered, barely loud enough for me to hear.

I shrugged, just as surprised as she was. I squeezed her hand and she leaned against me, her head resting gently on my shoulder.

“Why won’t you just answer me?” Jeff growled, moving to stand beside me and Laura.

“Can it, would you?” Dana snapped. “It’s not a surprise for you.”

All eyes zeroed in on a doe-eyed April who looked almost scared at that moment.

“Me?” She said, her finger pointed toward her chest.

I almost felt bad for the position Dana had forced April unknowingly into just then. That only lasted for a moment though because I knew when Dana opened that bag and showed her those white wings, April would be shocked. I just hoped it was the good kind of shock versus the alternative.

Without any pomp or ceremony, Dana pulled down the zipper and indicated she wanted April to come take a look inside.

April took one tentative step toward the bag and then another. Jeff wasn’t at all impressed and just rolled his eyes, sighing in what I could only take as boredom and disgust. He was an idiot ... most of the time.

To be honest, the way I had envisioned this whole thing playing out in my head was vastly different than what was actually happening. When I had seen it in my mind, the lights were low, and the spotlight angled in such a way that when the wings were revealed they would almost shimmer and sparkle in the light. Sure, that was silly, I knew that. Still, it would have been awesome.

What Dana had just done though, while not as dramatic, was sure to be just as impactful. It seemed like it took forever for April to finally reach the garment bag. It was only a few steps in truth, but it was the way April paused and hesitated between steps that made it feel like the moment dragged on far longer than it really did. Laura and I were waiting on pins and needles the whole time.

With one last look from April to Dana, the moment finally arrived. April slowly, gently pulled the zippered sides of the garment bag apart to reveal what was hidden inside. April immediately jumped back as if bitten; her hands clamped over her mouth. Her eyes were wide but showed an utter elation that was impossible to fake. In the time it took me to blink, she was bouncing in the balls of her feet with barely contained energy. She went from being as scared as a mouse to a kid in a candy store in a fraction of a second.

“Is that...? Are those...?” April exclaimed.

April was so caught off guard she couldn’t finish her questions. Her mouth was moving, but she just couldn’t get it all out. I grinned, satisfied. April’s lip started to quiver as her slender hand reached for the bag in front of her and what lay inside again. Her hands were shaking so much that she pulled them back and laughed at her own nervousness.

“It’s okay, go ahead and take them out,” Dana spoke softly, comfortingly, reassuringly.

April took a deep breath, which looked funny due to her over-anxious bouncing, but did as Dana had asked and opened the bag enough for everyone, including Jeff, to be able to see what was inside.

“Oh my God!”

April looked around the room wide-eyed as she grasped the white feathers and slowly pulled them free, and the room went utterly and totally silent. April was holding a pair of massive, brilliantly handmade white angel’s wings.

“Holy fuck!” Jeff gasped. “Dude, those are wings!”

“Yup,” Laura said, and I snickered at the befuddlement on Jeff’s face.

“Badass, huh?” Dana asked, grinning.

Everyone nodded, except for April. She was way too busy scanning the wings, running her fingers over each and every feather she could.

April was like a kid on Christmas. Once she had opened her surprise and took out the wings, she refused to put them down. No one rushed her, least of all Dana. If anyone of us were anywhere close to as happy as April was just then, it was Dana, and she was going to milk that moment for all it was worth.

Seeing April with these wings made a laughable contrast when you saw the toyish wings she already had on her back. There was no comparison at all between them. One set was obviously cheap, the other on the other hand looked almost real.

“Where did you find those?” Jeff finally asked, breaking the stunned fog that had lingered in the room.

“My aunt,” Dana answered without looking at Jeff or offering any other explanation.

April, her arms wrapped around Dana’s surprise, clamping them to her chest, looked at all of us with a wild-like, crazed grin on her face.

“Help me get these on, right now!” April laughed maniacally, but then must have realized what she had just said and quickly finished with a more prim-and-proper. “Please?”

It took a while to get her fitted into her wings. First, Dana and Laura had to get the old ones off. That, it turns out, required April to take off her bra, which she did without any hesitation whatsoever. Once the old wings were detached and subsequently destroyed, which I kind of felt bad about, the bra was put back on and the new wings secured moments after.

“Do you have a mirror?” April asked but sounded a lot more like pleading.

“Not down here, come on,” Dana answered. “Let’s go back upstairs.”

Unlike last time the three girls went upstairs to get ready, all five of us ventured together this time. Mom had a full-length mirror in my parents’ room and Dana made a beeline for it, so April could see what she looked like with the new wings attached. I was a bit mortified that we were all going to my parents’ bedroom, but I wasn’t about to attempt to keep them away from the mirror. I knew better than that, regardless of the weirdness of it.

As Dana set up the second of her two poses she did something I wasn’t expecting. She adjusted how the wings were extended. Initially, for the first of her poses the wings were pulled in tight. In the second shot, however, the wings were extended fully out to the sides, as if ready to catch any breeze and take flight at a moment’s notice.

This new development sent a flood of ideas into my mind. Something so small as adjustable wings gave me so many more options and one specific image came to mind. One I knew would be more...

“Hello? Earth to Josh!” Dana barked, snapping me out of my reverie. “Aren’t you listening to me?”

“Sorry, I was just thinking about something.”

Dana gave me a dangerous look, one that I knew promised all sorts of things I wouldn’t like if I didn’t comply exactly as she wanted, when she wanted.

“Think later, this is my time. Understand?”

Laura and Jeff both snickered, safely off to the side and away from Dana’s notice.

“Yeah, umm, of course.” I nodded; a grave look on my face. “No problem.”

Directed or more aptly corrected as I was, I did as Dana commanded. I could see what she was trying to achieve right away with her final pose. It was obvious when you actually took in the scene she had created.

April’s arms reached up, straining as high as they would go. Her head tilted back, eyes toward the heavens, and wings as wide as they would go out to April’s sides.

Dana wanted a shot of April just before she took flight. The lighting was good, really good. The lights’ position landed shadow and highlights where they should or would have been if April were indeed going to suddenly defy gravity that very moment.

There were two results from this final pose. I wasn’t sure if Dana had known what she had done, but I had learned never to underestimate what Dana did. It never ended well. This pose showed a promise of flight, of movement, both of which were nothing to brush off as accidental. They were clearly planned.

The other, however, was that it put everything April was and what she was wearing to bare for all to see. April’s white lacy bra and panty set were on full display. So was her body—all of it, every single perfect, flawless inch. You could see her lean muscles taut and flexed in her arms, legs, and stomach and more importantly, the perfect smoothness of her skin. Not a blemish or hair was to be seen where it shouldn’t be.

I smirked at the mere thought of Dana creating exactly what I would have assumed the catalog wanted of their models: beauty. Not just the beauty of the girls or women in them, and not just the sexy underwear they were wearing, but both of them, simultaneously, as if in concert.

When Dana nodded at me, stepping clear of the scene before me, I uncovered the small hole in my pinhole camera and started counting.

When I slipped the first of the new set of four images into the develop bath, I wasn’t shocked that Jeff and Dana were right there by my side. April probably would have been too, but she was doing her best to not show how mortified and embarrassed she was at that moment.

April had had to take off her wings because she couldn’t get through the door with them on, which got all of us laughing because she actually got stuck in the door. The sheer red-faced panic that overcame her was both hilarious and horrible all at the same time.

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Pinhole - Higher Learning

Fanlon

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