Read Online After the Red Rain by Barry Lyga, Robert DeFranco - Free Book Online Page B

massive slabs of concrete and pavement that seemed frozen in orbit, blocking the approach to the Broken Bubble. It loomed at the very edge of the Territory, close to the southern border where Dalcord and Sendar both abutted Ludo. Too dangerous to approach. She’d never seen it from this angle before.
    “Oh.” Rose grinned. “That. Yes. Very interesting.”
    “I sort of want to go there someday. Just because it’s impossible.”
    “Nothing’s impossible.”
    “You can say that, but it doesn’t make it true.”
    Rose considered this for a moment. “I suppose that’s right. Saying something does not make it true.” He craned his neck to peer out along the skyline. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
    Again with the beauty. She boggled. Was he seeing the same thing? The devastation?
    “Look,” he told her, pointing. “If you look over there, that cluster of buildings almost looks like a hand with its fingers like this.” He gestured
come here
. “Like it’s inviting you over.”
    “I… guess…” She squinted, doubtful. But what he’d said was true, and now that she’d seen it, she couldn’t unsee it.
    “And over there. Right down by the horizon. You can almost see the sun through the clouds. It’s sort of purple and red, almost like the sky’s blushing.”
    That, too, was true.
    “It’s all in how you look at it,” he said.
    She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and thought of the metal flower, of how it had looked like junk to her until she’d really paid attention to it. Then she opened her eyes and tried to see the world his way.
    The sky blushed in that spot, the pale shadows of the clouds castalong the upper reaches of the buildings like intricate tattoos on the concrete and brick. The entire panoply of the Territory sprawled before her.
    She realized, with a tiny thrill, that she was seeing something most people from Ludo Territory would never see in their lives: the entire skyline of the Territory, the river as a grayish worm inching along the ground, the Broken Bubble, the far-off towers of the Mad Magistrate’s Territory looming. From up here, she felt as though she could see the entire City. Maybe… maybe she could even see to
another
City. There were rumors that they had real names, like ChiPitt and SanAngeles. What were
those
Territories like? The wikinets said all Cities were the same, but maybe, just maybe…
    She picked up the metal “flower,” turning it over and over in her hands. It seemed new every time she changed its angle. “Was it worth it?” she asked. “Getting all cut up?”
    His lips quirked into a smile as he remembered. “Completely worth it!”
    She handed it to him, but he refused. “No, I got it for you. Keep it.”
    Tucking it into her poncho pocket, Deedra pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on them. She didn’t know what to say next. No one had ever made her feel remotely like this. No one had ever given her a gift. The last time anyone had given her something…
    She couldn’t remember. Maybe it had been the pendant she wore around her neck. She didn’t know where it was from, but she liked to imagine it came from her long-lost family.
    She’d been orphaned as a baby, had grown up surrounded by people who, if she was lucky, merely disregarded her or, if she wasn’t, outright assailed her. Sometimes verbally, sometimes not. Nothing in her experience prepared her for this.
    Maybe this was what family felt like. Rose, too, had no family, so maybe they could be each other’s.
    No, that was crazy. She blushed at the mere thought. She couldn’t say something like that out loud.
    So she said nothing. Rose gazed out at the Broken Bubble, as if yearning for something. In the diminishing light of day, his appearance was even more delicate, more refined, the glow highlighting his cheekbones and the fine hollows of his eyes, the thin line of his mouth. She was possessed by the sudden urge to kiss him, but she couldn’t tell if that was real or