Magonia (24 page)

“Where are your parents?” she asks.

“They went to the grocery store,” I say, oddly formal. I want to tell her everything. I want her to tell me everything.

She patrols the edges of the room, looks at everything closely, then goes into the kitchen, looking at the cupboards, into the fridge. Normally she’d just get whatever she wanted.

“Are you hungry?”

“No,” she says. “I ate.”

She perches weirdly on the edge of a chair. (Not-a-Ghost verification: the chair is dented by her weight.)

“Am I dreaming?” I ask again.

“You’re not dreaming,” she says. “You’re part of a secret. Can you keep a secret, Jason Kerwin? I need your help.”

Why does she keep saying my name that way?

What happened to her? Would I be strange, too, if I died or didn’t die, if I god-knows-what-ed? Yes. Obviously, I would.

I reach out and take her hand. Her skin’s warm. She’s never had warm skin before. There are calluses on her palm, new ones. Or at least, the last time I held her hand her skin was smooth. Now her hand feels as though she’s been doing work. Like, heavy labor, in coming back from the dead.

And wow, I’m focusing in too much on the details. The world’s shrinking down and all the things that should matter disappear into a blur when I’m this way. I try to breathe.

Is this shock? I think I’m in shock.

“Where’ve you been, Az?” I ask her in a pretty calm voice. Like it’s no big deal that she died. Like I haven’t been losing my mind. Like I am not losing my mind right now.

She’s looking around the room, her head moving oddly, tilting and then tilting again. She looks scared, the way she’s moving, but her face doesn’t show “scared,” and then it occurs to me that she’s looking for something. It’s a movement I’ve seen in birds hunting insects. She zeroes in on something, looking out the window. She smiles, and for just a second
I’m
scared.

Jason Kerwin: crazy.

I hold her hand tighter. I don’t need to be counting her freckles and comparing them to a tally in
my brain.

I’m not scared of Aza.

I’ve only ever been scared of losing Aza.

She looks straight at me, and again I’m hit with adrenaline. I want to bolt out of the room. Why? What the hell?

“Where’ve you been?” I try it again.

“What do you know?” she asks. “I’ll tell you everything, but tell me what you know first.”

I’m about to start, but then again that movement of her head, tilting quickly, turning quickly.

I don’t know anything.

She moves closer, leans in, puts one of her hands on my knee, which is so unlike Aza that I’m completely at a loss. I look down at my knee, paralyzed.

“Okay. Basic things, Az. Do you happen to be dead?”

“Of course not,” she says. “Look at me. I’m alive.” She leans in toward me again. Her hand moves on my leg. I’m not even close to being able to deal with that. I grab her fingers and keep them from moving.

“But you died, Az,” I say. “You did. I was there. I saw it happen.”

I’m cursing myself even as these words are coming out of my mouth, because she’s more alive than she was when she was alive. She was always on the verge of suffocation, and now that’s not what’s happening.

When I hugged her I felt muscles in her back and arms. She has a . . . a
density
she never had before. Aza’s body was always made of glass, and her brain was made of sharpened steel. Now her hair smells of salt and ozone.

Her skin smells like the ocean, which—we’re inland. But there’s stormy weather outside. Maybe something’s blowing in from somewhere. Maybe she has new perfume.

Aza hasn’t ever worn perfume before. She can’t wear it because it makes her choke, and no one anywhere near her can wear it either.

I know this. She knows this. Why aren’t we talking about this?

“Come on, Jason Kerwin. You didn’t really think I died,” she says. “You’ve been hunting for me. You’ve been tracking things in the sky, haven’t you? Weather patterns? What did you find?”

My confusion must show on my face.

“You promised you’d always find me,” she says. “So that’s what you’ve been doing, right?”

I take a moment.

“Yeah,” I say.

“I heard a rumor,” she says.

“From who? Where’ve you been that you’ve been listening to rumors? Where have you been that there were people to whisper rumors to you? And if you WERE listening to rumors, why did you let me think you were dead?”

I guess I sound a little overwrought.

Her eyes widen. She seems less sure suddenly. More lost.

“I promise I’ll tell you everything. But we can figure it out together. I need you to help me until we understand.”

Once, Aza Ray got bronchitis and passed out in my car. When she woke up in the hospital and learned that I’d carried her through the doors, she was mortified.

Even in the ambulance, right before she died, when she found out that I’d given her mouth-to-mouth, I could see the horror on her face.

We all knew how she felt about invalid blankets. I had a hospital hoodie custom-made for her, with a million pockets, zippable sleeves to let the phlebotomists in, and IV cord portals, so she wouldn’t have to be wrapped in a blanket to stay warm.

But she’s never asked me to help her before.

“All right then, tell me how to figure this out, Aza Ray.”

Am I playing games now? Maybe she has some sort of brain injury. How can I even assess it?

The coroner’s report—I have a PDF, scanned from a hard copy stolen by janitorial staff—was clear. Her body degraded quickly. The coroner was both surprised and dismayed. The report wasn’t fun reading.

Adolescent female, aged fifteen years. And 360 days, I added, in my head, to the world.

There was no reason for him to do a full autopsy. We knew what happened. He didn’t have the skills to do the kind of analysis someone with a disease like hers needed anyway. Same way no one here had the skills to keep her alive.

Her lungs went to a lab dealing with rare disorders. The rest of her got cremated. I haven’t seen any of those reports yet. It’s only been four weeks. There’s probably tissue still in a freezer somewhere. I can’t really think about that.

Aza sighs, and then stretches, arching her back, yogic, a new kind of fluidity to her movements, a new kind of grace. I’m reminded of a bird again, unfurling its wings. Aza pulls something out of her jeans pocket. She hands me a fat sheaf of folded papers, and I start shaking, because I wrote them. I attached them to the balloon I sent up on the day of her funeral.

“I acquired your apology list. It was really long.”

Acquired? She digs in another pocket.

A much smaller piece of paper. She hands it to me.

I open it. And it’s the note I gave her for her birthday. Creased and rumpled and refolded and stained. In the corner of it there’s a bite mark, and I know where it came from. Aza, nervous, fidgeting.

The bite mark wasn’t there the last time I saw it, because the last time I saw this piece of paper, I put it in her hand. I knew I wasn’t getting any more chances. I curled her fingers around the note so she’d have it where she was going. There are all those parentheses. All those brackets.

My body floods with some nameless emotion.

“Okay,” I say. I can feel the crying I didn’t do in the last four weeks rising up in me, and now that I
maybe should be done crying, it rushes out of my eyes and runs down my face. “Okay, Aza,” I manage between sobs. “Okay.”

It’s like she’s never seen anyone cry before. I try to mop myself up using my own T-shirt.

I go into the kitchen, put my face under the cold water tap, and try to get myself under control.

“Have you been home?” I say from underneath running water. “You have, right?”

“Not yet,” she says. I turn quickly and she’s right behind me. I didn’t even hear her come in.

She runs her fingers under the water, flicks it out from the sink, and laughs. Then she looks at me, tilting her head.

“Why not?” I ask.

“You can’t tell my parents I’m here. Or yours.”

“But, your dad,” I say. “Your mom. They think you’re dead.”

I have my phone out of my pocket, and I’m showing her the number, but she takes it and puts it on the table, a little hard, a little bit point-making.

“Do you trust me?” she says. “Then listen to me. I need you to tell me what you found out while you were looking for me. I need you to tell me everything. It’s important. Objects, data. Whatever you found. Did you find something, Jason Kerwin?”

“I—”

“Did something fall out of the sky?” she asks, and smiles sweetly at me. “On the day of my funeral? Tell me what you know,” she says.

She leans in again. I’m backed up against the sink.

“What if I said I was on a ship in the sky, Jason Kerwin? What would you say?”

I’m quiet for a second.

“I’d say Magonia,” I tell her.

I hear a car in the driveway. My moms. I turn to look out the window, and they’re getting out with grocery bags.

I look back, and Aza’s gone.

No. She’s under the table. Curled into a ball. She looks up at me, her eyes huge.

I get down on my knees beside her.

“It’s just Eve and Carol,” I say. “It’s okay.”

“Who?”

“My moms,” I tell her. “Who else? My moms.”

She shakes her head violently.

“No one will believe me but you. They can’t know I’m here.”

I hand her my car keys. She looks at them, confused for a second, and then nods at them ferociously.

“The Camaro,” she says. She says it carefully, and weirdly. Ka-marr-O.

“Uh-huh. Meet me in the car, back door,” I say, and then I haul ass to the front to meet my moms. I spill a grocery sack to buy her some time.

I walk back into the kitchen and there’s no evidence she was ever here.

I look sideways out the window. It’s stormy still. I can see the trees leaning over, and there’s that kind of slushy rain and I look up at the clouds and see nothing in them. No ships. No lightning. Just a smooth gray layer of nothing overhead.

And Aza slouching in the front seat of my car, fiddling with knobs. I mutter about something left at school, and the moms are pleasantly surprised to imagine that I’ve changed my ways, listened to them, and am going back without resistance.

“I told you it would be okay,” says Eve to Carol. Eve looks at me for a moment, a questioning look.

I let the moment pass. I grab my computer and my bag, and I’m out the door. I knock on the driver’s side, and Aza gazes blankly at me. Then, as if she’s remembered something, she waves at the passenger seat.

Aza never drives. I’m—

I walk around the back of the car, and open the passenger door.

“We’re going to your parents’ house,” I say.

“I’m not ready yet,” she says. “They can’t know anything. Unless they already do?”

She turns and looks at me. “Do they know about Magonia, Jason? What did you tell them?”

“I haven’t talked to anyone about Magonia since you and I watched the squid footage. They know you
died
,” I say. “Can we at least drive by? Just to see if they’re home.”

She sighs. “The ship will be looking for me. They’re probably looking right now.”

I can’t get used to the sound of nothing in her lungs.

She starts the car and flicks on the windshield wipers. I watch her turn the wheel, not struggling at all, even though it sticks. Her biceps flex.

She pulls out of my driveway.

“Left,” I say, when she hesitates. She turns left.

“Now right,” I say.

She turns right without stopping at the stop sign, taking the corner too tight.

“I love you, Jason.”

I look at her. “You love me?”

“Of course,” she says after a moment. “Don’t you love me?”

I look at her some more.

She’s driving faster than the speed limit, and she’s not paying any attention to the road. She’s just staring at me.

“Left here,” I say.

We approach Aza’s house.

Eli’s walking out the front door. I wait for Aza to slow down, but she doesn’t. Eli sees my car, raises one hand halfway into the air and waves.

Aza doesn’t stop, doesn’t look to the left, doesn’t do anything but drive.

Her hair is still neat in its ponytail.

“Where are we going?” she asks.

“This left,” I say. “And now this one.”

We pass through some fancy gates, up a long hill.

“Here.”

We pull into the lot at the graveyard. It’s empty of the living, because of the rain and the weekday, but it’s full of the dead. It’s out a ways from town, and on top of a pretty good cliff, looking out over the view.

It’s one of those places made by pioneers. Closer to God, maybe, if you make it higher and more precarious. I always think about people trying to pack coffins up here in the days before cars. It must have been a horrible job. I thought about it the day we put Aza here.

“A graveyard?” she says as she gets out. “Really? You know I’m not here. Look at me, stupid. I’m with you.”

Maybe I flinch. Maybe I don’t.

“I thought you might want to see where we buried you,” I say.

“Not really,” she says. “It’s not safe for me to be exposed this way.” She looks up into the clouds. Her expression is one part expectant, one part certain.

“I want you to see your grave,” I say. Of course I do. I need her to read the headstone.

She’s beautiful, in profile, her head tilted up, looking at the clouds, but she’s always been beautiful.

“I can’t,” she says slowly. “It might not end well. You need to tell me about the spyglass. And where you sent it. I know you have it. We’re running out of time.”

We’re at her grave. There’s no grass on it yet. The stone is there, though.

It says this:

AZA RAY

trust your heart

if the seas catch fire

(and live by love

though the stars walk backward)

She says nothing. The rain’s all over her. Her hair’s wet, and her T-shirt sticks to her.