Free Dear Edward: A Novel by Ann Napolitano Page B

then turned back and met his lips differently. And for his final three visits to the storeroom, they shared a new kiss, one that said, I’ll miss you, and I’m scared that we’re growing up, and I wish this could continue forever, but I know that even if you weren’t leaving, it could not .
    Jordan sighs, tump-tump, and says, “Excuse me.”
    His father slides out so he can slide into his seat, and he is back to being a term in the equation that states Eddie + Jordan = Bruce. Jordan tips his head back and closes his eyes, the music still playing in his ears. He’s pleased that he never told anyone about Mahira. She is his alone. His secret history. He figures that the more times he opts out of security machines, the more girls he kisses, the more of himself he will own, the more of an unknown quantity he will become, and the equation, the one his father has built his life around, will no longer be true.
----
    —
    Directly across the aisle from the Adlers, Benjamin slides the free magazine back into the seat pocket. He tries to change his position, but there’s not a lot of room to do so. He’s uncomfortable; his side aches where the bag is taped to his skin. After surgery, the drugs were the only upside to the weeks spent in the hospital. Benjamin had never taken anything stronger than ibuprofen before, but while pumped with pain medication during the day and sleeping pills at night, he was able to exist in a delicious haze. He thought about the fight with Gavin, but his thoughts were not tethered to reality. He watched it like a play: a massive black guy circling a skinny blond white one.
    This flight, the final one home, has unfortunately woken him up. He’s drug-free, and the return to sobriety makes him feel painfully aware of every niggle in his body and every thought in his head. He has flashes of panic, even reaching to his belt to see if he’s armed. How is he supposed to bear himself nonstop?
    He’s being sent back to L.A. for one more operation, and then he’ll be assigned a desk job. He is no longer allowed to work in the field. He catches himself hoping, now that the drugs have cleared his system, that he will die on the next operating table. That would be better, far better, than folding himself into a desk chair every day. Besides, he is a stranger to himself now, and he’s not at all sure that this stranger deserves to live.
----
    —
    The clouds outside the windows are a shade darker than before. Inside the cabin feels darker too, beset with memories of soft-lipped girls, permanently sleeping mothers, shy teenage boys, and clashing fists. Florida can almost see the scenes, the missing people, the dense minutes and hours and years that sit behind each person on the plane. She inhales and lets the choked air fill her lungs. The past is the same as the present to her, as precious and as close at hand. After all, if you think about one memory for most of a day, is that not your present? Some people live in the now; some people prefer to reside in the past—either choice is valid. Florida operates her lungs, pleased by the fullness.
    When Linda sits back down, Florida pats her hand. “You remind me of someone,” she says. “I’ve been trying to remember who.”
    “Oh?”
    “Might be one of the revolutionaries I took care of in my store in Cebu. In the Philippines. They were mostly boys, but occasionally I’d get a feisty girl who had faked her way into battle.” Florida pictures the crowded back room of that store. She sold or traded rice and beans out front and hid the wounded under blankets in the back. She held secret meetings of the Katipuneros in her bedroom late at night. The wounded or sick soldiers came straight from fighting the Spanish, but they were no more than children. They called her Tandang Sora, and she whispered the same truth in each child-soldier’s ear: You are special. You are meant to survive, to go on and do great things .
    Florida is proud of this memory; she lived