Flight (32 page)

A half-dozen young boys, with weak tea to
double espresso-colored skins, were fardin and goophin in front of
the run-down electronics store. For the third time in a row it was
the shortest boy—Prissi was beginning to think that she might have
discovered one of the immutable laws of males teenerz tnature—was
the one started the confrontation by leaping in front of her just
before she reached the door. When she stopped, two other boys began
sliding their hands down her feathers. Prissi shivered dramatically
in revulsion, which encouraged the boys to do more. The one on the
left began flicking a long chopstick thin finger at the tips of her
pinions. Prissi bent forward and emitted a sob. The assailant in
front of her started to laugh, but stopped short when Prissi leaned
her right shoulder into him, then swept his legs out from
underneath him with her left leg. He sprawled on the sidewalk with
a smear of blood on his cheek where it had smacked into the
concrete. Prissi thanked her African elementary school for its
mandatory courses in self-defense as she snapped an elbow into the
chest of the boy to the left while he was staring at his vanquished
friend. She flared her wings as she stepped toward the shop
door.

An extremely tall black stick man, who Prissi
guessed must be Masai, laughed a distant rolling thunder as Prissi
pushed her way through the door.

“Warrior woomahn.”

Prissi salaamed as she greeted him.

When Prissi told the shop owner what she
wanted, his hands began to move in a way that reminded her of a
crane walking along the shore. The offer and counter-offers went
back and forth as regular as a metronome. Prissi listened to the
words, but paid most her attention to the man’s hands. When she was
sure she had done as well as she could, given that she wasn’t in a
Burundian bazaar where competitors could see one another and there
was no such thing as a two-party negotiation, Prissi conceded.
Frowning, as if disappointed that an agreement had been reached so
quickly, the stick man disappeared through a faded polka-dotted
curtain, which, Prissi guessed, probably had begun its life hanging
from a cheap shower rod. While she waited, Prissi walked toward the
front of the store to see if her tormenters were still hanging
about. Even though she couldn’t see them, Prissi was not reassured
that they weren’t close-by.

Stick man returned with a mypod so old and
battered that his customer laughed in wonderment at the price he
was demanding. Flighty hands flicked away her concerns as easily as
winter flies. Prissi took out the bubble tags she had used to
download her mypod. Despite the incredible amount of data, the
relic loaded in seconds. Prissi scrolled and found her files and
folders in place. The download bit counter total matched the
upload. The GPS was accurate when she switched that on. There was
no way to check to see if the altimeter would read accurately. She
keyed in the address for the NYPD and the correct flight plans
popped up.

As Prissi fiddled with the device, the stick
man’s fingers stopped their dance. When she looked up, the smile he
gave her with the few teeth he still owned showed brilliant white
against watermelon red gums. His teeth looked so healthy that
Prissi knew that it wasn’t disease that had caused the loss of the
others. Sadness dropped over her like a shroud. A second later, she
flung it off by deciding to be happy that whatever malign African
force had coveted the man’s teeth wasn’t malignant enough to take
his smile.

Before that smile faded, Prissi asked the
stick man for a favor. He immediately agreed and led her past the
polka-dotted curtain. The back room was dark, piled high with boxes
and smelled of garlic and harissa. The thin man’s worn orange flips
slapped against the treads with a sound like soft clapping as he
climbed a flight of rickety stairs. Since the stairs were being
used more as shelving for another jumble of boxes than as a means
of elevation, Prissi was extra careful with her wing tips. Two
flights up, they came to a matte black metal door with a chicken
wire reinforced window letting in smog-colored light. After
unlocking the door and opening it wide to let her through, Prissi’s
benefactor murmured a goodbye. Prissi touched his wrist, no bigger
than a small white child’s, as she thanked him. Again, the bright
gums and handful of teeth emitted their warmth. A second later his
face was gone and a half-second after that, Prissi heard the snick
of the lock.

Keeping away from the edge of the roof,
Prissi carefully reconnoitered the sight lines from the surrounding
buildings. After she had decided on the rookery’s most private
spot, she shucked off her kanga, and stripped off her old clothes
while keeping her wings close to hide her nakedness. She hopped and
twisted her way into her new clothes as she tried to blot out the
smell of patchouli coming off them in clouds. When the teener was
dressed, she wadded her old stuff into a bag and launched herself
from the backside of the building. She flew south and west until
she saw a re-cyclist. Dropping down, she trailed behind him as he
pedaled his cart south down Fifth Avenue alongside the park. When
he stopped to collect a pile of shoes in a string bag set out along
the curb, Prissi swooped down, dropped her old clothes into the
open yellow bin behind the back wheel, before swooping back into
the air.

Free from the weight of her past, angry at
her future, and ignoring her body’s weaknesses, Prissi beat her
wings hard. She climbed and climbed and climbed until, by the time
she was at the bottom of the park, she was higher than the top of
the Airie—more than five hundred meters higher than her license
allowed. She looked down at Joshua Fflowers’ roof-top garden—a maze
of shrubbery wrapped around more than two dozen white marble
statues of mythical beasts. As she moved closer to take a better
look, the security lights began flashing to warn her off. She
dipped a wing, swung away from her tormentor’s home and flew west
toward the Hudson. From being up so high, the girl was able to
glide almost the whole way across the Hudson River to New Jersey.
And, even though her shoulder seemed to be popping out every ten
minutes, with so much else going on, Prissi never even thought of
crashing into the turbid brown water far below. The hydroaerophobia
that had bothered her just the day before was crowded out by too
many other kinds of more realistic fears.

Despite having no warning of her visit,
except for the alarms going off, Nasty Nancy’s parents were
gracious when Prissi landed on their roof. Prissi lied that she
hadn’t called ahead because her mypod was acting up rather than
saying that she was staying off the grid because people were trying
to kill her. Despite Dutton’s emphasis on honor, Prissi thought
that proper etiquette called for the lie. Nancy, who had been out
buying clothes, seemed aloof when she returned; however, as Prissi
filled her BFF in on what had been happening, Nancy grew warmer.
That concern, however, stopped as soon as Prissi, blubbering
through a squall of tears, told her about her father’s death.
Through the fog of her tears, Prissi watched Nancy’s eyes grow
large as she described to her friend what had happened. It took
Prissi a minute to understand that it was concern for what danger
might be following close on Prissi’s heels, rather than concern for
Prissi herself, that had Nancy’s attention. The teener had hoped
that her roomie would invite her to spend the night. She assumed,
since the Sloan’s were wealthy, that their security systems would
keep her safe. When she realized that no invitation was going to be
made, Prissi made her goodbyes. As she was walking Prissi toward
the door, Nancy’s conscience seemed to override her sense of
self-preservation.

“What about your dad? What are you going to
do about his services?”

Appalled at Nancy’s naiveté, Prissi barked,
“Nothing. What can I do? If I were to show up for anything, like
claiming the body, the same thing will happen to me that happened
to him.”

“But what about school?”

“Freeieekin A, Nancy, don’t be such a dwoof.
I can’t go anywhere I’m expected to go. Whatever I’ve opened up is
enormous—and I don’t even have a clue what it could be. My dad said
that they had found something, a key of some kind, biological,
chemical, something that opened up what turned into a Pandora’s
Box.”

“What was it?’

Prissi flapped her hands to keep from hitting
Nancy, which seemed to be the only obvious thing which would make
her feel better.

“Jay-Zee, would I be here fumbling around if
I knew? Something with my mom’s science, something happened that
made him so ashamed or afraid that when he was talking about it he
couldn’t get past metaphors and similes. So, the surviving family
member and scientific detective is pretty much clueless. ”

Nancy nodded enthusiastically. “Hubris.
Something with hubris. When the pride of man leads him to act like
the gods. It’s got to be something like that.”

Prissi shook her head disconsolately, “I
don’t know. And I don’t have time to speculate. At least, not here.
I’ve got to get somewhere safe.”

“You have to go back to school, Prissi. You
can’t stay here, you know you can’t. It wouldn’t be fair. But at
school, you’ll be safe. Even if whoever is after you knows you’re
there. Think of the kids they protect. I mean if Joe Fflowers can
be kept safe, so can you.”

“Pretty delusional for a cynic, Nancy. School
doesn’t even start for another two weeks. What am I supposed to do
in the meantime? Hide in the laundry room and eat Tofrutos? Even if
I made it back to school safely, I’d be fogged in a day or two. I
wish I could go back, though. I wish I could talk to Smarkzy to see
if he knows what’s going on, but now that I’ve found out that he
played a part in it, I’m not even sure whether I can trust him. He
was the one who got me started. Did he use me to flush something
out? Something that was too dangerous for him to do? I don’t know.
I don’t want to think that, but I don’t know.”

“So, don’t go. Just call him. Talk to
him.”

“Omagod, you don’t understand anything.
Everybody I talk to, my dad, Burgey, the guy in Verona has been
killed. If I call Smarkzy and he’s innocent, he gets hurt. If he’s
part of what is going on, then I’ve just helped them pick up my
trail again.”

Nancy, whose face had indicated while Prissi
was yelling at her that she was prepared to respond in kind,
suddenly went rigid.

“What does that mean? Everyone you talk to
ends up dead, and you come here? You come here and…and…infect me
and my parents?”

Nasty Nancy’s short fat arms shot out like
battering rams and she slammed Prissi in the shoulder, the same
shoulder that had been dislocated earlier in the day.

“Get out! What are you doing to me? Get out!
Now!”

By the time Nancy finished her tirade, her
voice was high and loud and an umbra of spit mist hung in the air.
Prissi started to put a finger in Nancy’s face, but, suddenly, she
felt so exhausted, so deprezzed and so defeated, that the idea of
just lifting her hand was overwhelming. She made herself walk out
the rooftop door, but once she was outside, even though she knew
her Nancy would be watching through a gap in the curtains, Prissi
stood immobile. She felt too tired to fly at all, let alone to fly
safely. And, even if she had more energy, she had no idea where she
should go. The fear and anger, which had energized her ever since
leaving the hospital so many hours before, that had flared up with
her father’s murder and the fight and escape from his killers, that
had burned bright with Jack Fflowers apparent betrayal, was gone,
burned out, turned to ash. Now, she was neither afraid nor angry.
She was only empty, numb, hopeless. Prissi thought that if she were
to fall from the rooftop where she stood in the dusk’s bleeding
light that she wouldn’t even bother to flap her wings.

Her sobs and their chemistry wracked her
chest and burned her eyes and flayed the back of her throat.

She was fifteen. Her mother was a suicide.
Her dad murdered. Betrayed by one friend. Abandoned by another.
Privy to some secret or crime of which she herself hadn’t a clue.
Her home unsafe. School no refuge. She had no idea where to go and
not much money to get anywhere even if she did.

Prissi’s whole body trembled.

She wanted someone to tell her what to do and
where to go and what to say…and…and…what to eat and wear and when
to take her bath and brush her teeth. She wanted to go back. Back
before everything was uncertain and dangerous. Back before she knew
her parents had been living a lie. Back before she knew anything
about Centsurety. Back before she knew Jack and Nancy. Back before
Noramica.

Africa.

She wanted to be back in the thick air,
sticky dust, rotten smells and open sores of Africa.

And in a split second, Prissi knew what she
had to do. To be safe, she would have to get herself back to
Africa. Where the water wasn’t safe to drink and the evening
shadows were filled with insects that could leave you shaking with
chills and glowing with heat. But, a place where the satellites
didn’t spy and the phones didn’t work and the current of
electricity ebbed and flowed at some unknown force’s whim. She
might not be able to put the misery back into Pandora’s Box, but
she could run away. Leave the box and the troubles that had escaped
and, now, buzzed around her life.

But, before she could run away, she had to
run toward something.

A small flick at the edge of her peripheral
vision let Prissi know that Nancy still was watching. And, although
less than five minutes before she had been too forlorn to care that
her former friend was watching her sob, now that she had a goal,
Prissi did care. She brushed the water from her face, took three
deep breaths, flapped her wings and flew off into the gloam of the
New Jersey sky.