First Flight Read Free

important, important to Jesse. The thought of him being important to Jesse made him feel strange, but in a different way than the eggs had.
    “Here we go,” Jesse said, coming in. “I would have been back sooner but Mom made some soup and brought home some more crackers, so she made me bring up enough for an army.” He carried a tray with a couple of bowls, a square white thing, and a couple of glasses of water on it. “Well, enough for us, anyhow. Here. Careful, it’s hot.”
    Chris took the bowl that Jesse offered him, setting it on his knees. “Spoon?”
    “Yeah, here you go.” Jesse handed over a spoon and a piece of paper towel. “Here’s the water, too.”
    “Water.” It tasted good, better by far than the eggs. He drained the glass, then held it out, gasping as he did.
    “Slow down,” Jesse said, taking the glass back. “You’ll make yourself sick again, and you don’t want that.”
    “Water,” Chris said, plaintively, then burped. What had that been?
    Jesse smothered his laughter at the look on Chris’s face. “I’ll be right back.”
    He stirred the soup, then lifted a spoonful and blew across it as Leanna had demonstrated at dinner . It was warm, salty, and tasted almost as good as the water had. Chris was careful to use the spoon, but it seemed terribly inefficient.
    Jesse came back with two glasses of water, and the two of them spent the next few minutes eating. Chris finally gave up on the spoon and picked up the bowl and sipped from it, though he turned away from Jesse as he did.
    “It’s okay to drink soup like that,” Jesse said, leaning over and bumping his hand against Chris’s shoulder. “Just don’t use your fingers. Here.”
    Chris turned back and took the crackers that Jesse held. “Okay.”
    Jesse glanced at the panel, grumbling and sighing. He touched the rounded block that made clicking sounds, then pulled the long flat thing with buttons on it toward himself. “Didn’t have to be a bastard about it,” he mumbled.
    “Okay?” Chris scooped up noodles with half of a cracker.
    “Yeah, more or less,” Jesse said, but Chris didn’t like the sound of his voice. “Oh, hey. I talked to Betsy and Tanner, today. They both said they’d be thrilled if you’d like to come work in produce, but they don’t wanna do an under-the-table thing. We’re gonna have to figure out how to get you some ID, which will probably take a couple of weeks.”
    “Oh.” Chris ate some more noodles, watching Jesse as he poked at the flat thing with buttons with one hand and stirred his soup with the other. “Okay.”
    “The other thing is….” Jesse turned away from his desk and looked at Chris for a few moments. “The other thing is, you kind of need some more vocabulary. ‘Okay’ is good, but you’re gonna need to know things like ‘potato’ and ‘mango’ and ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘right this way.’ And I’m kind of worried about you eating stuff that you shouldn’t, like Dad’s leftovers. Why’d you eat them, anyhow? Weren’t they moldy?”
    Chris just shook his head and finished his soup. “Okay.”
    “Yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say,” Jesse said, smiling a little. “Don’t worry about it, okay? Do you want some more soup?”
    “Okay.”

Chapter Two
     
    “ T HERE he is,” Jesse said, waving at someone in a hooded sweatshirt. “Hey.”
    “Hi,” Kevin said, glancing at the guy beside Jesse. “Who’s this?”
    “Kev, this is Chris. Chris, this is my good friend, Kevin Woods. Chris is staying at our house for a while.” Jesse waved back and forth between the two of them.
    “Yeah?”
    Chris held out his hand and tried a smile, even though he didn’t think he liked Kevin. The little voice inside him was silent, but even the silence seemed disapproving. “Hi.”
    “You’re pretty short,” Kevin said, keeping his hands nestled in his pockets.
    “I guess so,” Chris said, keeping his hand out. Jesse had said he was kind of