Five Friends Flying Free

My newly painted jade talons were still drying when the doorbell rang.
“The early birds are here,” Mum shouted upstairs.
“I’m not ready, get them something to eat,” I shouted back. Twenty minutes of preening later, I came down and saw my four friends stuffing their beaks with toast.
“About time,” said Nikki. ”I was about to ask your Mum for more bread.”
“Let’s go” I said.
We headed outside and piled our bags into the boot of the Nissan Bluebird Nikki’s Dad found for me when I passed my test.
“Shotgun,” said Nikki. Charlotte moaned, and the twins passed one of their secret looks between them; but I knew they didn’t mind. There would be more room in the back with Nikki in the front.
“Enjoy the weekend girls,” said Mum. “Be careful,” she added with same look as when I opened my GCSE results last summer. I made my pre-flight checks: volume up, One Direction on the iPhone and my hair in the mirror; I looked good. We were off.
We’d planned this first weekend ever since we all started lessons; the five of us flying north for a weekend in Bristol: shopping, clubbing and a night in a bed and breakfast. We soared through the lanes of the Devon, and swooped onto the M5. The girls were chattering away when I cut up a guy in a red Jaguar. He sounded his horn a couple of times and pointed as he flew past; so we flipped him the bird. The girls laughed and I relaxed. The Bluebird sped up to sixty-five, seventy downhill.
“Off at this junction,” said Charlotte. We left the motorway headed towards town. It was a good road, everything seemed fine. I came around a corner and the Bluebird just took off. It landed with the passenger side nestled around a tree. I was thrown clear. No-one else was.