Read Online Zip by Ellie Rollins - Free Book Online

little, raising his hands to his face. Then he started to spit and hum, making noises into his hands that sounded like nothing Lyssa had ever heard before. It was as though he were an instrument: the soundshe made were crashing cymbals and drums and staticky speakers. As he hummed into his hands, he started to move, dancing in a way that was jerky and robotic at times and smooth and liquid feeling at others
    Lyssa watched in awe. It was such a different type of music from what she was used to. When he was done, she started clapping
    “Like it?” Demo asked
    “I…” Lyssa paused, not sure how to express how
much
she’d liked it. She’d never heard someone make music that way before. “It was
amazing
. Your mouth sounded like a garbage disposal!”
    Demo narrowed his eyes. “Is that good?”
    “Yes. No, I mean, it was like a machine or something.” Lyssa felt her cheeks redden. No one wanted to be told they sounded like a garbage disposal. “It was like you had a drum set in your mouth, I mean.”
    “Thanks,” Demo said, a grin spreading across his face. “I practice a lot. Sometimes I hit the street corners in Seattle and put out a hat, ask for donations. I make okay money.”
    “Demo, will you shut it?” Regina called from the other side of the room. “The show’s back on.”
    Demo stuck out his tongue at Regina. Then he led Lyssa back over to the rest of the group, introducing everyone in the “Lotus Crew,” as they called themselves. She waved hiand found a comfy armchair to curl up in with her blanket and dinner. The television show—
Lotus Island
—wasn’t half bad. And during all of the commercials, everyone turned their chairs around to face her, making her tell stories of her adventures again. After she’d told them all about escaping from Michael’s house, she moved backward in time and described the Athena concert she’d been to with her mom—how amazing it was to be one of the last lucky people who’d seen Athena perform.
    “You remind me of her,” Regina said after Lyssa finished. “A little bit.”
    Lyssa opened and closed her mouth, so shocked that, for a moment, she couldn’t think of a thing to say. “I do?”
    “Yeah. I watched this interview last week with this music historian, and he’s like an expert on Athena, right? He said he spotted her in Egypt, riding around on the back of a camel. She’s an adrenaline junkie! That’s why she disappeared. Music just didn’t get her heart pumping anymore, so she had to find her kicks somewhere else.”
    “I thought she got abducted by aliens or something?” the curly-haired boy muttered
    “Don’t be an idiot. She just left it all behind. Sick of the spotlight.” Demo shook his head, but there was a tinge of awe in his voice. “Can you imagine walking away from all that money?”
    Lyssa thought about telling him about one of the theories she’d read on a website—that someone close to Athena had died and that grief had made it impossible for the singer to go on—but it made her think too much about her own mom, so she decided not to. Instead, she said, “I was there—at her last concert before she disappeared.”
    Regina’s eyes grew wide. “Shut up.”
    “My mom took me,” Lyssa added. “We did lots of cool stuff like that.”
    She started telling them the stories about adventures she used to have with her mom: how they’d sneak into department stores in the middle of the day and try on all the hats and ties in the men’s department, or set up a tent in the living room on rainy days and pretend they were camping in the wilderness
    In exchange, the Lotus Crew told Lyssa about how they all found each other. Demo explained that he used to put up posters with secret codes written into them all over town so that any kid who was lost or scared or alone could find them if he or she really needed to. As long as a kid could figure out the code, he’d know where to go to find the crew. It didn’t matter if he was a runway