Free Entangled by Amy Rose Capetta Page A

center; from the warm underside of her skin, flooding in. She’d always been strong, but now she had another person’s strength, too, underlining her arms, crashing down her legs, pumping through her heart and double-beating.
    She stomped back on Mr. Smithjoneswhite’s feet, and spun around to crack a fist into his face. As he staggered, Cade grabbed the guitar case and clamped her other hand, one nail-blacked finger at a time, around his neck.
    Xan sent more strength, enough to wring and knock out Mr. Smithjoneswhite. Cade sent a flash of her view—the Andanan at the end of her arm, his skin hurtling past deep red to purple—to let Xan know she had the situation under control.
    â€œYou think I care about the club? You think I need you? Cute,” Cade said. “Watching you try to figure me out.”
    She raised the case over her head and tossed it. The fake brass latch clattered open in the air and the guitar did Einstein proud, stretching its two-second dive into forever.
    Mr. Smithjoneswhite looked back at Cherry-Red and its sickly snapped neck, long enough for Cade to pound the walkway as it curled and tucked itself, pink and scratchy, into the mouth of the ship.
    And then Cade was up. Gone. The guitar and Mr. Smithjoneswhite and the spaceport smeared into one bright memory.
    Â 
    The world shook and then Cade remembered it wasn’t the world, it was Renna. Gaining speed.
    Cade ran for the cargo hold, the upward pull confusing her forward-moving feet.
    I’m coming, Xan. I’m coming, Xan. I’m coming . . .
    Cade chanted it soft, under her breath and in her head, over and over. She told herself that Xan needed to know, but she also had to remind herself why she was onboard an enormous floating burr, headed for the unknown of space.
    I’m coming, Xan. I’m coming, Xan. I’m coming . . .
    Cade made it to the cargo hold just in time for Lee to toss her a thick cloth strap to latch on to—otherwise, she might have smacked into the floor and spent the rest of liftoff unpasting herself.
    Cade didn’t want to spend too much time nursing the quease in her stomach, so instead she watched Lee. She had her hand wrapped expertly around a strap and she modulated her breath to match the thinning-out of the atmosphere. Nothing to indicate that she was worried about bursting off Andana. But her freckles leached pale.
    â€œYou all right?” Lee asked.
    Cade knew that however bad Lee looked, she must have looked ten times worse.
    â€œSure.”
    She remembered the facts from the filmstrip. She was entangled. She was supposed to prance around in space like it was her job. A sloppy minute or two at liftoff was one thing. She would snap into the beat of it soon.
    Cade pitched forward and almost cracked foreheads with Lee as the ship lurched out of the atmosphere.
    â€œSo this is what delight and ease feels like . . .” Cade muttered. She tilted her face so she was looking at Lee’s forehead instead of the ground. “I’ve never heard of a cargo-ready orbital.”
    â€œWell, you’ve never met Rennik,” Lee said. “He’s not the average Hatchum.”
    â€œWhat does that have to do with Renna being a spaceship?”
    Lee’s voice drummed tight—defensive.
    â€œEverything.”
    Cade hung there, motionless at the end of the strap, her nose at a sharp angle to the floor, as they hit the smooth emptiness of space. The change of pressure in the tender inner shell of Cade’s ear reminded her of her old friend the Noise.
    â€œHey,” she said, laboring to stand. “You think I can get another guitar on . . . what’s the planet that comes after this?”
    â€œHighlea.”
    â€œRight. Highlea. Do they have guitars there?”
    â€œGuitars?” Lee said, perking up noticeably. “There are planets that don’t even have
music.
On Mann, the nonhumans are deaf and communicate