Fly Away Home Read Online Free PDF

as fast as she could, with music pounding in her ears and her blood pounding through her body, until a stitch burned in her side and her breath tore at her throat and the pain pushed everything out of her mind except putting one foot in front of the other.

LIZZIE
    It was a scramble getting Milo out of the brilliantly blue swimming pool, into the changing room, and then into his clothes: his khakis and boat shoes, the button-down shirt and the ski cap he insisted on wearing even in the summer heat. Lizzie ended up with no time to do anything but pull on her ribbed tank top and her long, lacy white skirt, slide her feet into her flip-flops, loop her old Leica around her neck and her purse over her shoulder, grab Milo’s backpack, and race through the swimming club’s door out to Lombard Street to hail a cab.
    By the time they arrived at the hospital they were fifteen minutes late, and Lizzie was a wreck—pink-faced, frizzy-haired, with something unpleasant that she hoped was gum and feared was worse clinging to the sole of her shoe. Also, she’d forgotten her bra. She’d barely noticed, but it was the kind of detail that would not escape her sister. She was sweating, and the unpleasant taste of copper filled her mouth. Ashley hadn’t said what her sister wanted, but Lizzie had never been summoned to Diana’s workplace in the middle of the day and could only assume that the news was bad—that she’d screwed up something, that she was in trouble again.
    Diana was waiting for her by the ER desk, perfect as ever, buttoned up in her lab coat, wearing a slim pearly-gray pencil skirt and matching high heels, as put together as she’d been that morning, except her face was beet red and her hair, slicked back in a twist, was wet.
    “Are you okay, Mom?” Milo asked in his gravelly voice, and Diana softened, the way she only did for her son, and bent to brush her lips against his forehead and smooth his dark bangs out of his eyes.
    “I’m fine. Did you bring your Leapster? Can you go sit in the waiting room by yourself like a big boy for ten minutes? Aunt Lizzie and I need to have an adult conversation.”
    Once Milo was parked on the couch, playing some improving game, Diana pulled Lizzie into the empty break room and closed the door behind her.
    Lizzie, who thought she’d figured out the reason for this impromptu visit, was prepared. As soon as the door was shut, she started talking. “Look, I know what you said about McDonald’s, and I read all the information you gave me.” This was a slight exaggeration—she’d glanced at one of the articles in the stack that Diana had left on her bed, but had gotten so grossed out by the descriptions of cattle mistreatment and beef preservatives that she’d shoved it in the drawer of the dresser and never looked at it again.
    Diana lifted an eyebrow—Diana could do that, could lift her eyebrows one at a time. Lizzie plowed ahead. “He said he was the only kid in his class who’d never been there. And we only went once, and I paid with my own money, and he had the Chicken McNuggets with milk, not soda, and I got him a cut-up apple on the side …”
    Diana cut her off with a wave of her hand. Her nails were perfectly filed, gleaming ovals. Lizzie snuck her own raggedy fingertips, with their bitten tips and peeling red polish, into her pockets.
    “Dad called.”
    Lizzie blinked. “What’s going on?” Her sister’s tone triggered a familiar sensation, the feeling of a trapdoor opening in her belly. For years, Lizzie had thought of her parents, and even her sister, as sort of like Greek gods—distant and capricious and unknowable, larger than life, or at least smarter than average, given to hurling their thunderbolts and their decrees down from Mount Olympus, not really caring what kind of damage they’d do to the normal people like Lizzie. Like savvy mortals throughout time, Lizzie had done her best to escape their notice. She was polite and cheerful when spoken to, and