Read Online Aerie by Maria Dahvana Headley - Free Book Online Page B

tugs at the skin around my mouth and I wonder if it’s ripping off my skin, if they’ll yank off the tape and reveal half my Magonian face. My wrists are jammed together. I’m bent like a broken bird, and we’re out and down the back stairs.
    Frozen crunching footfalls, a car door, open, a car trunk, open.
    They put me inside the trunk, shove my knees painfully up to my chest, put a cloth over my nose and press it hard to my face. I don’t inhale. I don’t inhale, I don’t inhale—
    But they cover my mouth, and I choke on bitterness, gasp, breathe it in. I feel myself tilt suddenly, like I’m shrinking down into the smallest version of me, a version that’s voiceless, screamless, Aza-less.
    They slam the trunk down as the world swims around my eyes. They start the engine.
    I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know why.
    I’m in the dark again, this time without a song to save me, and then the dark is everything I see, everything I know, the inside of my skull a room I’m trapped inside.
    I’m seventeen and I’m missing.

CHAPTER 8
{JASON}
    I’m as miserable as Aza is when I leave her house. I bring my other pair of glasses out of my pocket. Just glass. No prescription.
    Well, not just glass. These are special. Just like the other phone, Aza has no idea I have these. I can see Magonian vessels through them, squallwhales, and more. Nothing crazy up there. Nothing I can see , but that doesn’t change my suspicion. I send another emergency text. If Heyward’s here, I don’t have much time.
    I’m frenzy-clicking buttons on my phone, working my way through coordinates and patterns, making things make sense, possible trajectories. By the time I get home I’m nearly flat with exhaustion and confusion. It’s not even that far between our houses, but getting through twenty-four hours of birthday has left me messed up. Fighting with Aza has left me wrecked.
    We never fight.
    Does she think she’s the only one here who’s in charge of anything? Does she think she’s the only one with responsibilities?
    I stumble up the stairs, pausing only to greet my moms, who are curled on the couch watching a documentary about black holes. Of course they are.
    â€œCondoms,” says Carol.
    â€œCondoms,” says Eve.
    This is exactly the wrong moment to say that to me.
    â€œYou do know it’s Aza’s birthday, right?” I say, and both of them flinch.
    â€œOf course,” says Eve.
    â€œIt’s only been a year,” I say. “A year isn’t very long.”
    They come to me on the stairs, their faces full of niceness, full of grief.
    I don’t know why I do this. They don’t know anything about what I know, Aza-wise. I’m just making them feel bad. I want someone to feel bad for me. It’s perverse, but it’s true. I feel miserable, and like no one even notices, because Aza won’t let me tell her anything about anything.
    â€œWe were talking about Aza tonight,” says Carol.
    â€œAbout how when you took off to her birthday party, that first year, and we thought you’d been kidnapped—” says Eve.
    â€œNot your best moment,” says Carol. “But then again, not your worst. Early warning for the kind of kid you were going to be.”
    â€œI remember seeing you at the roller rink, in your alligator suit, and thinking, oh no, this one’s got his own dreams,” says Eve. “There’ll be no controlling him.”
    â€œWhat dream did you think I had?” I ask, curious in spite of myself.
    â€œAt the time I thought maybe you were going to be an Olympic ice-skater or something,” she says. “But that’s what’s weird about having kids.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThey’re themselves from the beginning. You think youknow what they’ll do, but you don’t. You think you can predict everything based on your own self,