Flying by Carrie Jones

Author:Carrie Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466828490
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

CHAPTER 11

Every year, for my birthday, my mom would make me a homemade peanut butter cake with salted caramel frosting (also homemade, thank you very much) and this toffee crunch stuff between the layers. It was a big deal because she never baked a cake from scratch the whole rest of the year. Even last year, when you’d think I would be more excited about the whole sweet sixteen birthday party thing, I was so psyched about this cake that I actually stood there leaning against the counter and watched her whisk the eggs, peanut butter, and butter (yes, real butter, not the Smart Balance Light spread stuff) all together.

“Does your wrist get tired, doing that?” I had asked, poking my finger in the bowl.

She bumped me away with her hip. “Absolutely. But you’re worth it.”

I licked my finger and laughed. “Oh, right…”

And she stopped right then, propped the whisk up in the gooey goodness, put both of her hands on either side of my face, and kissed my forehead. She said in this super-serious mom way, “You are.”

It was so normal, so Mom normal, and now, remembering it, I’m like, How could she have done all that normal mom stuff and been tracking down aliens at the same time? How could she have not shrieked and screamed and given up, gone ballistic on the street corner by Hoyt’s Cinemas, and yelled to the world about the aliens coming? Sorry. Scratch that. How could she have not shrieked and screamed and given up, gone ballistic on the street corner by Hoyt’s Cinemas, and yelled to the world about aliens being here?

But she didn’t. She held it together. She worked against how overwhelming it all was. So that’s what I will do, too. I won’t start hysterically crying as Baldy and Beefy Face, also known as Brian and Aaron, push Lyle and me into the building. I will not gasp from the stench. I will not wet myself when they force us down these rickety steps into the basement, where they will probably murder us. I will brave myself up.

Right?

Right.

* * *

Lightbulbs swing over our heads, dangling by wires that seem like they will snap and burst into flames any second. Concrete walls bar our way out of the hallway that just seems to lead one hundred feet toward the center of the building.

I try to pause at the door. Beefy Face doesn’t let me.

“Get going.”

He pushes me in behind Lyle and Baldy.

“Don’t push her,” Lyle says. His hair flops over his eyes. I want to lift it out of the way, see him under there, figure out what he’s thinking. His mouth just presses itself into a line, coding his thoughts. I reach out and clutch his hand, cringing, expecting Baldy or Beefy Face to object. For some reason they do not.

“Go down the hall,” Beefy Face says.

“Or what?” I say.

Baldy laughs. “We’ll shoot you.”

He turns around and winks at me over his shoulder. I try to be all brave and to smile sassily back at his abductor self, but I don’t quite make it.

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