Read Above the East China Sea: A Novel for Free Online

grade, she’d already absorbed the idea that she was a dummy.
    “Cabooskie, I know that you want what you think is best for me, and it’s hard for you to believe that the air force is it, but it is. You just gottatrust me on this. Besides, Mom’s up for a transfer, and if I gotta move anyway …?”
    “But what if you get sent to …?”
    “The Sandbox? No worries. Pretty much all the troops except rent-a-soldiers are already being withdrawn. Besides, I’m a female! In the air force! It’s not like they’re gonna put me out in an up-armored Humvee sweeping for IEDs or something. Statistically, driving I-25 would be more dangerous.”
    I didn’t feel or look convinced.
    “Cabooskie, don’t stress. Mom already said that she’d pull strings to get me a cush assignment.” She looked straight into my eyes and promised, “A safe assignment.”
    “But, Codie, we hate the military. We hate Gung Hos.”
Our mother is a Gung Ho. She’s not like us. She’s the anti-us. You can’t trust her. You can’t abandon me.
    Codie shrugged, muttered, “YOLO,” drained her bottle.
    “YOLO? Don’t be all You Only Live Once. This isn’t like bungee jumping or some other onetime dumb-ass thing.”
    Codie pressed her lips together and nodded without saying anything.
    When I saw the finality of that nod, I started blubbering so hard I could barely get the words out. “Please, come on, you can’t do this. Please.”
    “Luz, it’s done.” She went inside and slid the patio door shut behind her.
    I made myself stop crying and tried to swallow the lump in my throat with a chug from my bottle. It tasted like perfume and chemicals. I’ve never drunk Breezers since.
    “Jace, hey, Jace, are you watching this?” Like a kid overamped on sugar, Kirby tries to divert Jacey’s attention away from Zavie Plutino’s vaporizer and big muscles.
    “What?” Jace asks, annoyed.
    “Cooking an egg with my flashlight.”
    Kirby is, indeed, swishing an egg around in a tuna can set atop a flashlight the size of a baguette. Beams of blinding light escape around the rim of the can and throw a halo up into the black sky like Batman signaling. The smells of burning tuna oil and can label blend with cookingegg as Kirby stirs the clear yolk around with a stick until it turns white because, yes, the ultimate Gung Ho flashlight
will
cook an egg.
    “Hey, look!” Kirby holds the can up to show Jacey, who barely notices because she’s still mostly involved with her short GI and his crafty vaporizer.
    “Jesus!” Kirby drops the hot can and flicks his burned fingers in the air to cool them off. Scrambled egg spills onto the sand. Out of everyone’s sight, tears flood my eyes at the thought of Kirby Kernshaw with his spindly arms and freckle-smeared lips packing an empty tuna can and an egg,
an egg,
down a cliff just so he can impress his latest batch of new friends with the special trick he can do with his special toy. I know it is totally stupid to be bawling for Kirby Kernshaw, but that knowledge does nothing to slow the stream of tears. Instead they fall harder as I watch the guys windmilling karate kicks and Jacey oozing over her latest interchangeable drug source. We’re nothing but little baby birds in a nest, all open mouths, begging to be fed, to be liked, to have someone sit with us at lunch, to send us a Christmas card when we’re gone, to remember that we were ever here when our two—three, if we’re lucky—years are up and we have to start all over again at a new school with new Quasi-friends. Who’ll also forget us as soon as we’re gone.
    Then, in the way I’ve been doing ever since it happened, I shift straight from sadness to anger, and Kirby’s naked show of need starts to work on me like a dentist’s drill, and I despise him. How has he not had it drummed into him that brats don’t whine? We don’t plead. We don’t need. We require nothing. Not even real roots. We’re air ferns. Kirby Kernshaw annoys me so much that