IGGY

Hey, you've reached Ella Martinez! I'm afraid I can't get back to you, it's finals week and I'm busy studying. Leave a message and I'll get back to you!

BEEP

Hey, 'Ells bells, it's Iggy. You asked me to call you and tell you what the funeral was like because you couldn't make it. So, uh, this is me calling and reporting in. Sorry if it's not as descriptive as you had hoped. It was crowded as hell, and me and Angel were wigging out. It's funny—there were so many people there that we didn't even get close to her coffin. Angel was really torn up about that. Not saying that I wasn't upset about it, but she was crying over it.

Anyway, um, it was in the same cemetery that they buried Gazzy in. We brought two sets of flowers so we could put them on the graves. I carried Gazzy's; Angel carried Max's. We waited until after to put them down, because we knew that they would get trampled. By the time we put down Max's, about a billion other people had had the same idea. My nose is still burning from the stink of fifty thousand different kinds of flowers. They buried her next to Gazzy, so I couldn't be sure—but I think a few people put stuff on his grave too. That was nice of them.

Funeral started late because it took the pastor forever to show up. Same guy as last time, in case you were wondering. Is he a friend of your moms or are funerals just his thing?

Okay, that was bitter. Sorry.

Pastor guy didn't do that bad of a job. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust… he talked about how she made a great change in the world, and thank God he avoided saying anything like "she's flying with the angels now," because Angel was already sobbing and I didn't want that to set her off even further. Also, not trying to be an ass about it because I know you aren't into, quote, "my religious stuff," but I'm pretty sure it's sacrilege to say that a human can achieve the same things that the angels do. Max wasn't an angel, and neither am I. We're just… humans. We're just as good as you, if not a little worse. God knows I'm worse.

And this isn't the time for me to tell you about all my life's struggles either. Again, sorry. But I'm tired as shit from the flight down and back—it's over a thousand miles. We had to take three rest stops, and I'm still worn out. Excuse me if I ramble.

The funeral itself wasn't so bad, and it wasn't so great either. It was just kind of weird, being shoulder-to-shoulder with people who've seen us all perform, people who don't know anything about us other than the fact that we have wings. Like you're probably one of the few people who knows that Nudge once ate a jar of Nutella all by herself. Everybody else is just like, oh yeah look at the bird girl. That's how it felt. They weren't sorry for Max, they were sorry that the bird girl was dead. Then again, I guess I'm not any better. I didn't really speak to her after we left. I guess Angel and I were going because it was our sister there, not because it was Max there, do you know what I mean? Kind of like your mom, like you said.

But if you could have gone… you knew Max the least of us, but you knew her the best of us, especially in the last four years. So instead of recapping exactly how much people were crying, or the exact temperature of the Arizona desert, I'll tell you about the Max that I grew up with.

She was an asshole. I mean, we all were assholes, but she was the biggest asshole. She would always treat me like a burden without saying as much, and there were days when I wished to God that she would just call me a useless lump so we could have our cards on the table. She wasn't that great a mom, as I'm sure you know. The shit that Gazzy and I got away with was nothing short of legendary, and to this day I'm surprised that no, like, news helicopters saw our occasional rockslides. And when it came to chores, she would yell until she was blue in the face but we would just ignore her. Like I said, we were all assholes. She was just the biggest one. Maybe that's what made her an ineffective leader as we all grew up. We got used to it, but she did, too, and she didn't want to change.

Okay, now that the worst is out of the way, I'll tell you about the best. The best was that she tried so hard. She would wake up at some ridiculous hour to train us, and she let us know that she hated it as much as we did but she was doing it so that we could live. There's a lot of shit that she shoved under the rug, and I don't give her enough credit for that, probably because I was busy shoving my own shit under the rug. But, well, I'm better now. I learned. She's never going to be able to learn.

Ah, hell, I sound really cold about this right now. But the thing is, Nudge told me about the security tapes. She saw that guy's gun and she ran at him anyway. I'm sad she died, but Gazzy… he didn't have a choice, and, Jesus, Gazzy was ten years younger than her when he died. It's like when you drop something and superglue it together. It's tougher. That's me right now.

I think at the end, she was trying to do the right thing. I think throughout her life, she was trying to do the right thing, or what she thought or had been led to believe was the right thing. She had good intentions, but you know what they say about the road to hell. And again, I know you don't go for, quote, "that misogynist slavery-ridden claptrap," but I've been praying for her soul. After a life like hers she deserves to rest. We all deserve to rest, I guess. I try to make it so Nudge is safe, and Angel too… I'm getting off track.

It's so easy to say that you're doing the right thing when you're doing it, you know? But then a few hours later when you're sleeping on the ground and every bit of you is sore and it feels like you've been cut off and you're falling through the dark—it's hard to say that you're doing the right thing then. Max was the kind of person who could always think that she was doing the right thing, deep down inside. And if she couldn't think that, then she could lie up a storm and only crack sometimes. I don't suppose many people have that talent, if you could call it a talent.

That's what I was thinking when I was shoulder-to-shoulder with what felt like half of America and three-fourths of America's sweat. There were babies crying. People took their babies to this funeral. Why the hell didn't they get a babysitter? I thought that then and I think I know the answer now. They think that this was some monumental event. Some cornerstone in whatever movement Max was fighting for when she died. They think it was something political, instead of what it was—a mistake. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and so was the gunman. You know he turned himself in? They say he isn't cooperating to help them find the others, but he turned himself in and, get this, requested the death sentence. It was all over the news. I know you're busy, but you might have seen that?

At the funeral Angel stuck with me, cried into my shoulder. She's gotten so tall. I keep expecting to feel her face against my hip or in my stomach when she hugs me. I keep trying to pick her up, and then I remember that if she stands on her toes she can just about rest her chin on my shoulder…

Oh, yeah… I didn't talk to Dr. M. She made a speech, though. Kind of the same as the pastor's. She's in a better place now, we have to continue the fight, she wouldn't want us to stagnate in grief.

Did you know that she didn't pay us for the air shows? That's, like, sending soldiers out to breathe in the smog of fucking Beijing, that city where the pollution is so thick that you gotta wear a mask, and not giving 'em any money. Having air sacs means that there's just that much more lung area to get scarred up. I still cough early during my runs, and I've never smoked a damn day in my life. And we didn't get paid. Max said that we were helping her, goddamnit. And then one day Gazzy just kind of… dropped out of the sky. He thought he was being tough, flying really fast and doing these huge circles around the rest of us. He was just using up his air. And then when we went down to get him, they grabbed all of us. And then…

Well, you know. As it went. Sorry.

But your mom didn't pay you either, did she? I remember Nudge sneaking downstairs because you were still on the phone at three in the morning with a sore throat. You really had me working the teakettle.

Huh. You know, maybe we should talk about something other than our shitty childhoods. Like our dead sister. We could talk about her and how she at least contributed to them. …Jesus, I'm a regular root of fucking horseradish here, aren't I? Sorry, Ella. You don't need to deal with my shit and Nudge's shit, too. I mean she deals with your shit, so it's only fair… I'll hang up now.