Dove Arising by Karen Bao

Author:Karen Bao [Bao, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780451469014
Publisher: Viking Books for Young Readers
Published: 2015-02-24T08:00:00+00:00

That night, I fight with Wes as never before, testing my limits and his. We’re sore from the day’s labor, but our movements build to a frenzy, an ephemeral kaleidoscope of limbs. He doesn’t call out suggestions anymore, needing to concentrate wholly on our duel. My fists fire like tiny sparks at his face and torso; my feet whip out in attempts to trip him.

He hooks a foot behind mine and pulls my heel from under me, the same tactic I used against Io Beta in the first evaluation. Before I fall onto my back, I throw all my weight into a punch aimed at his chest, which he deflects with his shoulder. His fingers capture my wrist; he pulls me in and hooks his elbow behind my neck.

“Gotcha.” His breath tickles my ear; his sticky cheek presses against my forehead.

Inexplicably, his arm around me slackens—as does his focus. Wes never loses focus.

Out of concern rather than malice, I punch him in the gut. I feel a sour surge of satisfaction before his torso collapses inward, curling around itself like a withered stem. He anticlimactically plants his rear on the floor.

I retract my guilty hands and join him. “Sorry.”

“I’ll recover soon enough.” His voice catches on a few syllables as if he’s hurt. But he’s emitting some kind of mirthless laughter. “You absolutely amaze me.”

I inch away. Part of me had prepared for a surprise resumption of our match. “What?”

“You heard me.” Wes draws himself up and raises a flat hand perpendicular to the ground. Is he going to hit me? I’ve never encountered this peculiar gesture.

“This is what you do—we call it a high five. Raise your hand like this. Exactly.”

He slaps my hand, stinging it a bit, but it makes me feel accomplished. Victorious.

“Not so hard, is it?” he says between laughs. When he’s this agreeable, it’s hard to stay upset with him.

I glower at my hand in puzzlement. “So that gesture of goodwill was for socking you in the stomach.”

“In essence, yes.” Wes’s face turns serious again. “Please don’t be upset with me anymore, Phaet. We’ve helped each other so much.”

It’s true, at least in part. Wes has raised my ranking by more than a dozen places and turned me into a carbon-based fighting machine. “Besides the Jupiter debacle, how have I ever helped you?”

“You let me beat you nearly to a pulp on multiple occasions.”

I almost laugh.

Wes tousles his hair, searching the air around us for adequate words. “All joking aside, remember how I said I’d never really found a friend in the world?”

I do.

“You might not consider me one. Not like Umbriel. But you’re like the little sister I never had. You showed me what real companionship could be. . . . No matter how unlikely it seemed that we’d get along.”

He called me his first friend, a little sister. An Anka of his own, as if he and I share a multitude of lovely things from childhood memories to specific sequences in our DNA. I’m not sure why, then, I feel incomplete, or what else I expected to hear.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.