73
“Yo!” I said loudly. “Up and at ’em!”
You’ll be relieved to hear that my brief descent into weary lack of caring was totally gone by the time the sun fried my eyelids the next morning.
I got up, started the fire going again—because that’s the kind of selfless, wonderful leader I am—then started affectionately kicking the flock awake.
There was much grumbling and groaning, which I ignored, instead carefully balancing a pan of Jiffy Pop popcorn over a branch on the fire. Popcorn for breakfast! Why not? It’s a grain. It’s like, like, grits, but with high self-esteem.
Plus, no one can sleep through the machine-gun sound of popcorn popping. Soon the rest of the flock was gathering glumly around the fire, rubbing sleep out of their eyes.
“We’re headed for the Big Apple, guys. The city that never sleeps. I think we’re maybe six, seven hours away.”
Twenty minutes later, we were taking off, one by one. I was last, after Angel, and I ran about twenty feet, then leaped into the air, beating my wings hard. I was maybe ten feet off the ground when it happened again: Some unseen force shoved an unseen railroad spike through my skull.
I cried out, falling, then smacked into the ground hard enough to knock my breath away.
I curled up in a fragile ball of pain, holding my head, feeling tears dripping down my cheeks, trying not to scream.
“Max?” Fang’s gentle fingers touched my shoulder. “Is it like before?”
I couldn’t even nod. It was all I could do to hold my head together so my brains wouldn’t splatter all over my friends. A high, keening sound reached my ears. It was me.
Behind my eyes, bursts of red and orange flooded my brain, as if fireworks were exploding inside me. Then it was as though someone had jacked a movie screen directly into my retinas: Lightning-fast images shot through me so fast it made me feel sick. I could hardly make any of them out: blurred buildings, fuzzy landscapes, unrecognizable people’s faces, food, headlines from papers, old stuff in black-and-white, psychedelic stuff, swirly patterns . . .
I don’t know how long it went on—years? Gradually, gradually, I realized I could move, and as soon as I could, I crawled over to some bushes and barfed my guts up.
Then I lay gasping, feeling like death. It was a while before I could open my eyes and see blue sky, puffy white clouds—and five worried faces.
“Max, what is the matter with you?” Angel said, sounding as scared as she looked.
“Think you should see a doctor?” Fang asked mildly, but his eyes were piercing.
“Oh, yes, that’s a good idea,” I said weakly. “We need to let more people in authority know about us.”
“Look,” Fang began, but I cut him off.
“I’m okay now,” I said, lying through my teeth. “Maybe it’s a stomach bug or something.” Yeah, the kind of stomach bug that causes brain cancer. The kind of bug you get when your whole genetic makeup is about to unravel. The bug you get before you die.
“Let’s just go to New York,” I said.
74
After giving me a long, level look, Fang shrugged and motioned to the Gasman to take off. Reluctantly, he did, and the others followed. “After you,” Fang said, jerking his thumb toward the sky.
Gritting my teeth, I got to my feet and ran shakily, opening my wings and leaping into the air again, half braced for another explosion of pain. But it was okay. I still felt like I might hurl, and I thought about how awful that would be in midair.
“Are you okay?” Nudge asked once we were airborne. I nodded.
“I’ve been thinking about my mom and dad,” she said. Her tawny wings beat in unison with mine, so we just barely missed each other on the downstrokes. “I bet—if they’ve been thinking I died eleven years ago, then I bet they would be pretty happy to see me again, right? I mean, if all this time they wished I had gone home with them and grown up—then they would be pretty happy to see me, wouldn’t they?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Unless . . .” She frowned. “I mean—I guess I’m not what they would be expecting, huh? It’s not my fault or anything, but
I mean, I’ve got wings.”
Yep, I thought.