“Wait,” my mom says. “What is this? Jason. This isn’t okay—”
“I’m sorry,” I say to my dad. “For making you come to my school over and over to get me loose from the principal’s office. I’m sorry for not appreciating it when you held my toes as I went into the MRI machine, and saying I wasn’t scared. I was scared. You made me less scared. You told me you’d fight Big Bird for me.”
My dad’s expression is crumbling. He lets out a strangled sob.
“I’m sorry you suck at backflips and strained your back showing me who was boss.”
He snorts suddenly and looks up at me, his face shifting.
“I’m sorry I died when you were with me, and you couldn’t keep me from dying. It wasn’t your fault. I can explain it.”
I look at Eli.
“I’m sorry for—”
“Stop,” she says. She looks at me hard. “You don’t need to. I can see you in there, Aza.”
“I never even gave you a real I Love You list,” I manage to say, because I’m not far from crying right now, “let alone a real apology list. I put everything stupid in your list, and none of the real things.”
Eli looks at me. “Also, you underestimated me,” she says, and grins, a very Eli grin. “I notice everything.”
“What is this? What are you saying?” My mom. I take her in. Her blond-gray ponytail. Her face. Her eyes are shining, wild.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “For not seeing you. I didn’t know how lucky I was. You worked late and I slept late. We never saw each other. I made fun of your war-mice. I told you that nothing you did ever helped. I complained. I crashed the car into the garage, twice, and then pretended you did it with your bike. The last thing you said to me was on the phone, when I was in the ambulance, and you told me it was okay to go.”
The corners of my mom’s mouth wobble.
How do you prove you’re not gone? How do you prove you’re alive, when your whole family saw you dead? How do you prove you’re even human, after all that, after everything that’s happened, and everything that’s probably still going to happen? I don’t know how you prove it. I only know you have to have faith in people.
My family is around me. There is a moment of not knowing, of not loving, of not caring.
Then my sister reaches out her arms. My dad does too. Then my mom. I hear Caru whirring from the tree outside the front door. I reach out my hands to them and throw myself in. Jason’s on the outside for a moment, and then I grab him and pull him into us, and we are like
( )
like [[[[[[[[[[[ ]]]]]]]]]]]
like
H O M E
O M
M O
E M O H
For as long as it lasts.
They’ll come for me. Zal isn’t dead. Magonia isn’t gone. And Dai—there’s Dai. There’s Heyward and the Breath. There’s a whole world of trouble out there.
But right now, Jason and me and my family are holding onto one another, and all of us in this kitchen?
However much time there is? I’ll take it. I feel my strange, beautiful bird in my heart, and the unflooded world all around me.
Aza Ray, human and not, Magonian and not, Aza Ray, whose history is hospitals, and whose future is more interesting than her past. Aza Ray, who was born in the sky. Aza Ray, who is in love with a boy from earth.
If I have to fly, he’s flying with me. If I have to sail, he’s on my ship. I lace my fingers into Jason’s. I hold on tight.
I breathe in. I breathe out.