Wayward Son - Rainbow Rowell Page 0,9
the tight quarters as an excuse to be close to him. I’ve forgotten how warm he is. We’re touching from shoulder to knee; it’s like lying in the sun, without the sting.
Simon’s changed since we left school. Physically. He’s softer, fuller. Like the butter (more like the cider) is catching up with him. Being the Chosen One was good cardio, I suppose. And being a magickal reactor must have given him a hell of a metabolism.…
Snow looks like he hasn’t been plugged into the charger for a while. His skin’s gone pale. His toffee-brown hair has lost its shimmer. He’s grown it out—in neglect, I think. He’s got a headful of loose curls now. They bounce when he walks, and he’s constantly pulling at them.
“Crap,” Snow says to the tiny screen in the seat ahead of him. “Absolute crap. I’ll be damned if that bloke’s ever picked up a sword.” He shakes his head, and his curls wobble.
He’s lovely. A bit of a sad mess. Dull and pale and rough round the edges. But still so lovely.
I close my eyes and pretend to fall asleep on his shoulder.
SIMON
We spend an hour in the queue at Immigration.
The American border agents are dead scary, but my wings stay gone, and my passport holds. Penny says she has more to worry about as a brown person than I do as a winged person. (She’s half Indian, half white. English on both sides.)
But we get through.
We’re in America. I’m in America. Across the ocean. Me. If the kids from the care homes could see me now …
Well, really, I wouldn’t want them to see me because then I’d have to see them. And I don’t have many good memories of my childhood outside of Watford.
My therapist (the one I was seeing last summer) always wanted me to talk about that—what my life was like as a kid, how I felt, who took care of me. I tried to tell her that I can’t remember—and I really can’t. It’s all sort of spotty. I vaguely remember where I lived before my magic kicked in, what school I was in, what I watched on the telly … I can remember that things were bad, but not specifically why. Trauma affects memory, my therapist said. Your brain closes off painful corridors.
“That sounds good to me,” I told her. “Thank you, brain.”
I don’t see why I should go looking for pain and trouble in my childhood, especially things my head has already taped off. I’ve got enough pain and trouble on my plate.
The therapist said I needed to work through the past to keep it from undermining the present. And I said—
Well, I didn’t say anything. I skipped my next appointment and didn’t make any more.
* * *
Penny hired us a car, but we’ve got to walk half a mile to get to it. Baz looks completely wiped, even though he slept on my shoulder through most of the flight. (I needed a piss for the last four hours, but I didn’t want to wake him.)
When we get to the car, it stops me in my tracks. Baz walks right into me.
“Penelope…” I’m actually holding my head, like someone who’s just seen their renovated living room on a DIY show. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
Penny laughs. “Nope.”
Crowley, it’s beautiful—sleek, saltwater blue. With a nose like a Doberman pinscher. “A classic Mustang! Are you kidding me?! Just like Steve McQueen!”
“Well, we can’t drive across America in a Ford Fiesta.”
Baz is frowning at the bonnet. “Nineteen sixty-eight … Tahoe Turquoise.”
I climb into the driver’s seat, even though I can’t drive—I wish I could. The seats are sky-blue vinyl and shorter than any car I’ve been in.
“Room for your wings,” Baz comments.
“Oh, speaking of,” Penny says. “Let me freshen you up.” She holds up her ring hand. She’s got a bell hanging from her middle finger. “Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings!” she casts. Then she spins her hand around, ringing the bell and hissing, “I put my thing down, flip it and reverse it!”
I hear Baz take a sharp breath just as the magic hits me—with a much bigger oomph than it had back in our flat, when Penny tried this spell on me the first time. An icy feeling blooms between my shoulders.
“Great snakes, Bunce, that’s genius.” Baz’s eyebrows are at maximum up and down positions.
Penny shakes out her hand. “That was far more powerful than back home,” she says excitedly. “Do you think