Oh. Well, okay. So they might be a little tired of the fear, pain, and mayhem, but still...
“Iggy?” I said, trying to keep the pleading out of my voice.
“Let’s see,” he said, holding out his hands as if they were a scale. “Hmm. On the one hand, we have constant, desperate, heart-pounding escapes, day after day, never knowing what’s going to happen to us or whether we’ll even be alive the next day...”
I frowned, seeing where he was going with this.
“On the other hand, a home: hidden, safe, sleeping in the same bed every night, relaxing, not having to fight for our lives at a moment’s notice...”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “You don’t have to rub it in.”
They watched me, waiting.
What was with Fang? Why was he undermining me like this? I used to feel so connected to him, like he was my absolute best friend in the world, someone who always had my back. Now I looked at him and felt as if I hardly knew him.
Reluctantly I shrugged one shoulder. “Whatever. A home, whatever.”
The ecstatic cheering only made me feel worse.
12
“I’m not giving up the mission,” I said, loud enough for Fang, several yards away, to hear me. We were only about eight thousand feet in the air, but it was really cold, probably below freezing. The wind in my eyes made them water constantly.
“I know.”
“This is stupid,” I said. Looking down, I saw the Pecos River winding like a thin, shiny snake through west Texas.
“Their hopes and dreams aren’t stupid,” Fang said, and I felt a flush warm my cheeks.
“That’s not what I meant,” I grumbled. “It’s just—we were on a path. Now we’re just leaving that path. One day I’m supposed to be saving the world, and the next I’m out looking for real estate. I don’t get it. Plus, thanks to your little plan, we can’t spit without being spotted and recognized. Where was my brain when I agreed to that one?”
Fang opened his mouth, but I interrupted. “Plus, now, thanks to you, we left the younger kids to be watched over by a blind guy and a talking dog. I must be insane! I mean, even more insane than usual. I’m going back.”
I dipped one wing, ready to make a big wheeling turn, but Fang edged into my way, his face set.
“You promised,” he said, making me scowl. “You said you’d give a quick recon, see if we could find a place.”
I kept up the scowl, thankful that not once in my whole life had anyone felt compelled to tell me not to ruin my pretty face like that.
“Let them blow up the world, and global-warm it, and pollute it,” Fang said. “You and me and the others will be holed up somewhere, safe. We’ll come back out when they’re all gone, done playing their games of world domination.”
He had positively become a chatterbox lately.
“That’s a great plan. Of course, by then we won’t be able to go outside because we’ll get fried by the lack of ozone layer,” I said, getting worked up. “We’ll be living in damp caves, eating at the bottom of the food chain because everything with any flavor will be full of mercury or radiation or something!”
I recognized Fang’s face of exaggerated patience, which of course got on my last nerve.
“And there won’t be any TV or cable because all the people will be dead!” I was on a roll now. “So our only entertainment will be Gazzy singing the constipation song! And there won’t be amusement parks and museums and zoos and libraries and cute shoes! We’ll be like cavemen, trying to weave clothes out of plant fibers. We’ll have nothing! Nothing! All because you and the kids want to kick back in a La-Z-Boy during the most important time in history!”
I was practically frothing at the mouth.
Fang looked at me. “So maybe we should sign you up for a weaving class. Get a jump on all those plant fibers.”
I stared at him, saw how he was trying to suppress his laughter at my vision of the apocalypse.
Something inside me snapped. My whole world had gotten turned on its head in the last twenty-four hours. Like, my old world had sucked so bad, and this world, amazingly, sucked worse.
“I hate you!” I screamed at Fang. Tucking my wings in, I aimed downward, diving toward the ground at more than two hundred miles an hour.