Magonia(21)

And I heard a sound from her chest, this song. A bird, whistling, shrieking.
I’m not crazy.
There wasn’t even really a feather in her lungs. The coroner didn’t find anything in the autopsy.
There was an autopsy, yeah. I haven’t seen any results yet. But I’ll get them. I need to see them, and make sure—okay, I know Aza died. It felt like she took off running without me. Her fingers clenched on mine. Then they relaxed, like she’d lost all her bones.
When the driver called for the life flight, I was already sure she was dead. Which makes it even worse what happened to the helicopter.
The thing about Aza and me is that we’ve spent every day since the day we met knowing she was going to die, and pushing that knowledge over to one side. No one knew what was wrong with her, not really, so a few years ago I decided I’d be the hero who figured it out.
Aza didn’t know. I went through a ton of medical journals. It’s amazing what you can learn to make decent sense of with the right motivation. I’ve got articles going back to the 1600s. If you want me to diagram a lung, I could do that for you. I could maybe even do it blindfolded.
But whatever I was doing, I didn’t do it fast enough. I’m not a miracle worker. I’m not even a scientist. Some days I’m just sixteen, and sixteen isn’t what I want to be.
Aza’s mom had the same idea as me, a lot earlier than I did. She’s been trying to figure this out for almost fifteen years, since Aza started having trouble breathing, but the meds she’s been trying to get testing cycles for keep getting rejected.
I know things Aza didn’t know about what her mom’s been doing for her. A few months ago, I ran across some really promising data that had come out of the lab Aza’s mom works in, and so I asked her about it. Her mom was on an asthma project at the time, on mouse trials. When Aza came down with this, by whatever freakish coincidence, the mouse stuff was almost to human testing, and then it got turned back, because it didn’t actually work on asthma without major side effects. It wasn’t useful for anything. Except, apparently, for Aza.
“I had a little bit of serum in the house, for severe asthma. I don’t know why it works even a little bit, but she was dying, so I gave it to her,” Greta told me.
Whatever Aza’s mom used was the X factor. Aza kept getting sicker, but it slowed down. According to all medical opinions, lungs that could barely send oxygen into her bloodstream should have killed her, but whatever Greta did probably saved her. It’s been part of her daily meds ever since. Despite the fact that it is completely illegal.
This is pretty much the only big secret I’ve ever kept from Aza. Her mom begged me not to tell her. She wanted to keep working on it, she said, and if people knew, she’d get yanked. It felt all wrong to know something Aza didn’t know.
She died anyway.
I look at the ceiling and try to imagine what happens to someone when they die. Perished = Being Separated. All the things that were you and all the things that were her, flying apart, an explosion. Dispersed into everyone else.
Morning. Funeral. Sunglasses. Suit.
Carol supervised, and it makes me feel like I’m a scarecrow. The sleeves are strangely loose, which I guess means it fits. I’m used to my grandfather’s jacket, which I wear over everything. It came from my dad’s side and even though I didn’t know my dad, don’t even know who he was, my moms gave it to me. It has about a thousand random pockets. Every pocket has a tiny embroidered label to say what it should contain. There are pockets labeled “opals,” “pitch pipe,” and “bullets.” My grandfather was either James Bond or a traveling salesman.
I’d never wear a suit to Aza’s funeral, unless it was that suit, and I’m not allowed to wear that, so.
I’m not calm. I’m not ready. But I’m getting in my car, bagful of things seat-belted into the passenger seat. Her seat.
I change clothes in the bathroom at school. I walk into Mr. Grimm’s class, past the first period warning bell, and sit down.
Everyone looks at me. The whole room is dressed in parent-picks, black dresses, black tights, black suits, and ironed shirts and ties.
Keep looking, I want to tell them. I’m not finished.
“Mr. Kerwin,” says Mr. Grimm. I look at him. He looks at me. His face softens.
“I can’t say that I blame you. Take the top part off and you can stay in the room, but I can’t teach you like that.”
I put the top on the empty desk beside me. It has graffiti on it. Aza Ray Was Here it says, in silver nail polish. Mr. Grimm kept saying he was going to make her clean it off, but he didn’t.
I never thought this would happen.
I thought this would probably happen.
I knew this was coming.
I didn’t see this coming.
How can anyone keep reciting an endless number when you can’t see the next digit? But I keep going. 673518857527248912279381830119491298336733624406566430860213949463952247371907021798609437027705392171762931767523846748184676694051320 0056812714526356 08277857713427577896.
At noon, the bell rings, the special one that says Here we go to do something completely terrible, and I walk out. The flag’s half-mast. It’s not the school’s doing; they didn’t even think of it. It went down this morning at around three a.m. I know the janitors.

Kids start pouring out of the building behind me. A lot of them are crying, which makes me both pleased and angry. I think having a dying kid in a school means, in people’s brains, that no one else will die. That slot’s taken. Everyone’s crying over her anyway, even though, to them, she was only the Dying Girl, not glow-painting, hoax-making, squid-watching Aza.