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Magonia
Magonia
Magonia
Ebook320 pages5 hours

Magonia

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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“Maria Dahvana Headley is a firecracker: she’s whip smart with a heart, and she writes like a dream.”  —Neil Gaiman, bestselling author of The Graveyard Book and Coraline

Aza Ray Boyle is drowning in thin air. Since she was a baby, Aza has suffered from a mysterious lung disease that makes it ever harder for her to breathe, to speak—to live.

So when Aza catches a glimpse of a ship in the sky, her family chalks it up to a cruel side effect of her medication. But Aza doesn't think this is a hallucination. She can hear someone on the ship calling her name.

Only her best friend, Jason, listens. Jason, who's always been there. Jason, for whom she might have more-than-friendly feelings. But before Aza can consider that thrilling idea, something goes terribly wrong. Aza is lost to our world—and found, by another. Magonia.

Above the clouds, in a land of trading ships, Aza is not the weak and dying thing she was. In Magonia, she can breathe for the first time. Better, she has immense power—but as she navigates her new life, she discovers that war between Magonia and Earth is coming. In Aza's hands lies fate of the whole of humanity—including the boy who loves her. Where do her loyalties lie?

Neil Gaiman’s Stardust meets John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars in this New York Times bestselling story about a girl caught between two worlds, two races, and two destinies.

Don’t miss Aerie, the stunning, highly anticipated sequel!

Editor's Note

Gaiman meets Green…

Longing for a fresh, magical take on little known but tremendously fascinating myths? Look no further than this breathtaking debut that blends the lyricism of Neil Gaiman with the snarky, realistic drama of John Green.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Release dateApr 28, 2015
ISBN9780062320544
Author

Maria Dahvana Headley

Maria Dahvana Headley is a #1 New York Times-bestselling author and editor. Her novels include Magonia, Aerie, and Queen of Kings, and she has also written a memoir, The Year of Yes. With Kat Howard, she is the author of The End of the Sentence, and with Neil Gaiman, she is co-editor of Unnatural Creatures. Her short stories have been shortlisted for the Shirley Jackson, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards, and her work has been supported by the MacDowell Colony and by Arte Studio Ginestrelle, where the first draft of The Mere Wife was written. She was raised with a wolf and a pack of sled dogs in the high desert of rural Idaho, and now lives in Brooklyn.

Read more from Maria Dahvana Headley

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Reviews for Magonia

Rating: 3.6562499038461542 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

208 ratings21 reviews

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Aza Ray is a teenager with a unique lung disease that makes it extremely difficult for her to breathe. She's "drowning in air." By any definition of our society she's disabled. She hallucinates ships sailing the sky and voices calling her name. Everyone dismisses it as side-effects from medication. Except her best friend Jason, Jason who she might love.

    Then, one night, she dies.

    Aza Ray is a teenager like any other, except her mother is a powerful sky ship captain and Aza Ray is her heir. By no definition of her society is she disabled. She misses her home and the mother who raised her. She struggles to learn the magic everyone else takes for granted. And she misses Jason who she might love.

    This book was so great. It's about disability and illness and how disability is so much more about society then about the individual. It's about dreaming of a different life and wish fulfillment and being careful what you wish for. It's a fairy tale. It's a dream. It's a war.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    My girlfriend and I read this aloud to one another. It was a fun book for that sort of thing! It's the story of Aza Ray Boyle, a teenaged girl with a mysterious and debilitating ailment of the lungs that she expects will kill her at any moment. I'm not going to say much about the plot because it spoils it, but there is a really really gut-wrenching and memorable scene in this book, and the magic is really bizarre and out there, stretching even my suspension of disbelief in a fun way. The voices of Aza and her best friend are so well drawn and the plot goes topsy turvy so early that I felt like this book was exciting and unpredictable, with a core of teenage feeling that you really cling to while all the wackiness ensues.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Magonia is one of those books that you would either hate or love, fortunately I felt the latter while I was reading it. It's about a teenaged girl named Aza who has been sick ever since she was little. Her affliction remains a mystery in the medical field.  Her family loves her and would do anything to give her a semblance of a normal life. Her bestfriend Jason adores her and can't bear the thought of losing her. But Aza is really sick, and before her 17th birthday, she succumbs to her unrelenting illness.However, Aza's story doesn't end there, in fact it's only the beginning. You see Aza is not of this world, she belongs to the sky where she is destined to lead her kind. Up in the clouds her lifelong illness can't touch her, she is strong and powerful, and that power would prove to be both a blessing and a curse.What I like about this story is the voice of the narrators. Aza tells her story in a manic-like voice, but her bravado in the face of her illness makes her a sympathetic character. Jason's pov is told in a semi-functioning, somewhat unhinged voice, from a boy who is hopelessly in love with his bestfriend. It was interesting to see if these two would end up together and how they'll make it work.One thing I question though, and it applies to other YA novels as well, is that Aza and Jason act older than their age. Jason particularly does some pretty amazing and unbelievable things to help Aza, I would've also liked there to be more world building, especially when Aza was already in Magonia. It's such a unique and fascinating world and I wish it was described more vividly.I give this book 4 out of 5 stars.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This book was pretty awesome :) Unlike any other fantasy book I've read this year. It was original, well written and had likeable characters. I found myself immersed in this book and read it whenever I could - but tried to savour it so much. The world-building was cool, although somewhat lacking since we only got a glimpse of what Magonia is really like - hopefully there is more in the sequel, if there is one! :D It didn't bother me too much though because we were as much in the dark as the main character, who by the way, was quite awesome. She was believable and not one of those characters who does everything perfectly, she is a human being - kind of. The secondary characters were interesting and not thoroughly explored but there is potential for more and they really added to the plot! I really enjoyed this book and I can't wait for the next instalment! hopefully there is one :)
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Wow. Not. What. I. Expected. At all. Here is what I think i learned.


    Heaven is real, it is really called Magonia, and you only go there after death on earth if you were born there to begin with. Magonians are where the myths of gods come from. They live on a series of floating islands and ships.


    In Magonia Magic is real. storms are made by whales, lightning by sharks, and wind by song. I didn't so much enjoy this book, as was enthralled by it. I couldn't put it down, even though it was hard to follow and barely made sense to me. I give it a 4/5 for brilliant imagery. However, since it was not my personal cup of tea, overall rating is a 2/5.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    MagoniaUniquely strange3 stars I almost gave up on this book, in the beginning. Slow start and I didn't like the protagonists annoying and abrasive personality. In short, a VERY cynical teenager (Aza Ray Boyle) suffers her whole life from a breathing disease which is basically causing her to drown on air. She loses her battle with it and is transported from earth to a world hidden from earths view where breathing is easier, a world (Magonia) where ships sail through the clouds and is inhabited by bird like, other worldly creatures. This is Aza's true home. Not so content with her new life in the beginning, Aza eventually softens and accepts her position (she's the chosen one and for the first time in her life, feels useful) but soon discovers that war between Magonia and earth is coming (a flooding of earth that's unbeknownst to humans). Aza makes a decision. The end. There are a lot of things about this book that were interesting and unique (pirate ships, birds nesting in your lungs, bats used as sails, flying whales) but there were quite a few things that grated on my nerves(long drawn out sentences, weird and random dialogue, Aza). I enjoyed the fantasy element very much and recommend it. It's a pretty neat story. Also, if there is a sequel, which is a possibility, I'd read it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    "For the first time in my entire life, I have power. More than power. I feel like I belong. Like this is my ship. Like this is my country. Like this is my destiny."

    I have so much respect for writers like Maria Dahvana Headley who are so immensely creative that they can create an entire world. There’s nothing cookie cutter about this novel and I love that!

    Aza is a young girl with a lung disease that doctors are unable to diagnose. It’s hard for her to breathe, so every day is a struggle, but her family and best friend Jason support her, making her life a little easier for her to bear. One day Aza sees a ship in the sky, but her family thinks she’s hallucinating from her medication. The only person who believes her is her friend Jason Kerwin. Jason mentions Magonia, but Aza thinks it’s a myth. Something goes tragically wrong and she wakes up in an unfamiliar place. She discovers that she’s in Magonia, which is another world, but in Magonia she’s healthy and powerful. She can breathe. Earth and Magonia are dependent on each other and Magonians think a war between them is imminent. Aza feels torn because she still loves and misses her Earth family, but she’s starting to feel like she belongs in Magonia.

    Maria Dahvana Headley is super smart and her intelligence shows in her references throughout the novel. Jason is constantly reciting pi and he’s read the Annuls of Ulster. She references Shakespeare, Casablanca, Moby Dick, E. E. Cummings, Animal Form, Icarus and Jacob Grimm. I love stories that incorporate those types of details.

    I love the prose; it’s smooth and conversational. It has a natural flow that meshes well with her wonderful storytelling and fully developed characters.

    I’ll never view storms the same way again. Whenever I see a storm, I’m going to start thinking, “That’s Magonia foraging the Earth again.” I wouldn’t be surprised if I started staring at the clouds looking for ships. This novel was so refreshingly different, so if you love fantasy, you’ll love this one.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Unexpectedly surreal and haunting, but with just enough geekery and typical teen moments to somehow seem realistic. Aza Ray can't breathe, and somehow manages to make it to a sickly, snarky adolescence on oh so little oxygen. For a minute you fear this is going to be another sick kid with a bad attitude story-turned-movie.

    And then.
    In the sky, as half-bird and fueled by songs from a bird that flew into in her chest, she is a superpower. Also, a boyfriend who speaks in pi, a giant squid, and lots of lightning. And a crazy power-hungry bird-person-mom. And I'm still not quite sure what really happens here.

    "trembling adored tousled bird mad girl" - Robert Smith
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    First of all, I absolutely hate books that start series without being clear about it. I have no objections to reading the first book of a trilogy, if I know from the beginning that it is the first book of a trilogy. I may even willingly read the first book of god-knows-how-long series, just preferably after at least couple of the next books is available.
    But I hate when something is selling like a stand-alone novel, but "the end" is not the end of it. Not at all.

    OK, so, this is the first in a series. So, the author spends a lot of time on world-building. I could forgive it, if the world is beautiful, interesting, or at least does not defy logic. Sorry, not here. It's ugly, it's just the earth mirrored in the sky, and it shows author's poor knowledge of physics (or geophysics, whatever).

    So, are there any redeeming qualities? Like engaging and believable characters? Sadly, not really.
    In the beginning Aza is engaging enough, but as the time goes, she becomes more and more Mary Sue-ish. The Chosen One.
    Jason is better, but just marginally. And they have the same voice. Ok, they are alike. Still. Longer phrases might have helped. Really. I mean, {{[]}}?
    Obviously, I am not a fan of such writing style. Don't know, maybe, it's brilliant. Just not for me.

    And the love story? Sickeningly sweet. Love overcomes everything. Rock, water, earthquakes, lightnings, death... Everything. It's postulated. And eventually boring.

    Summary: In my opinion, the best and the most impressive part of this book is its cover. (And marketing campaign.) The writing is not on par with it.

    I believe I will skip next books in this series.

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Oh my this was a wonderful, amazing and delightful story! I fell into it quickly. Couldn't put it down. The imagery was beautiful. I loved the characters. Magic was every where and I laughed and cried and hung on to every word. Will there be a part two? I need more of this story to continue. Such a good story.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The book is beautifully written and the characters of Aza and Jason are awesome, but the plot, to me, was ridiculous and I just couldn't get past it to lose myself in the novel. Secret sky ships and bird people just never quite gelled for me. I found the idea ludicrous from the start and the world-building wasn't quite strong enough to overcome my prejudice. But, damn, the prose was astonishing. I kept reading, in spite of my eye-rolling just to feast on more of the gorgeous writing.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    When reading a book, there's one quality of a story that I crave over everything else (i.e. good editing, relatable characters, witty dialogue): CREATIVITY. And, I'll tell ya what, Magonia has it in spades.I can honestly say that I've never read anything like this before. Maria Dahvana Headley has the most Vivid of Imaginations, and I reveled in every word of it. I totally LOVED Headley's writing style, both Aza and Jason's voices, and the wildly creative world that she created. In fact, there were only two things that kept Magonia from earning all 5 Stars for me.1. Aza goes through this "phase" towards the middle of the book that kind of annoyed me. It was almost like she was stronger as a weak human girl than she was as a strong Magonian one. I get that she was kind of going through a Big Thing, but still, she didn't quite seem like herself for a while there.2. And this is probably just me, but I kind of feel like the last 2/3 of the book was rushed. At just over 300 pages, Magonia isn't what I'd call a long book---I would have liked to have had 50-100 more pages of story to fully explore Magonia's history and customs. I would have liked to have had a little more detail about the sky ships, the Rostrae, and the power of song. But you guys know me, I'm just greedy like that.I can't find anything about a sequel anywhere, but I definitely feel like there's a lot more of this story left to be told. If ever a ship sets sail for Magonia again, you can bet I'll find a way to stowaway on it ;)
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    So this book. I hate when something starts out so unbelievably amazing and then dissolves into complete mediocrity. The 1/3 of MAGONIA was awesome. I had all these wonderful John Green vibes and I actually cried at one scene. The voice was so intoxicating. But then...not so much.As soon as Aza goes up, the amazing voice gets strangled in a complicated world full of rules and history and just strangeness that failed to captivate me. One of the big problems with this book (and others like it) is that Aza is thrust into this sky world with a million questions (rightfully so), but guess how many get answered? Not many. And instead of demanding answers, Aza just lets people dismiss her and literally put to work swabbing the deck. It was extremely frustrating. Worst of all though, is that the plot and worldbuilding is so complicated and unique in the sky that Aza's character fades into generic girl in a fantasy novel. Maybe if she hadn't be so dynamic and alive in the first 1/3 of the book, I wouldn't have noticed as much, but she was so I did.Also the introduction of a love triangle was so anemic as to be pointless. And yet it looks like it might develop more in the sequel. Bleh. Overall, this would have been one of my favorite books if the last 2/3 of the book (the fantasy) had lived up to the 1/3 (the contemporary). I love fantasy YA, but this just didn't work on that level. I will anxiously await this authors next contemporary offering, but I won't be returning to Magonia.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    3.5 (liked it a lot) I wanted to read Magonia because I was first drawn to the premise of the girl who has these respiratory issues because illness books have always appealed to me. But then I realized it was a fantasy and she is misplaced--because in this universe in the skies, she is strong and has no illness. I like the main character Aza she was very smart and full of life even though she was so sick. her and her best friend Jason were pretty obscure people. they know all kinds of random knowledge and we're constantly challenging each other. since they've been friends for years and years since they were 5 they have a very special and deep bond. As part of her disease she sometimes runs fevers and hallucinates and when she all the sudden sees a ship in the sky, everyone assumes that it is a hallucination. But when they find a feather, of all things, in her lungs then we start to see the fantasy aspect of the story. jason is very well read so he's heard of mythology and such of people claiming to come from a place called Magonia throughout history and when they are on land, they say they for there by falling from the sky. there is a story event of a man who came out of nowhere with a rope and an anchor and it appeared like he was drowning in the air. the story especially stuck with Aza because of her lungs and her breathing problems that seems to be very unique to her and the disorder is even named after her. After seeing the ship, she sees all sorts of birds along with crazy weather. Them she starts to think that the birds are talking to her and of course that is a link with the feather. She is in her room and thinks that a bird flies into her chest and is speaking through her. Next thing we see her rushed to the hospital and then we know we are all of the sudden out of Aza and in Jason's perspective and it seems like Aza has passed away. Jason works hard, using all of his knowledge and connections into looking into ships in the sky. He hears her screaming at him from a distance at her funeral and he doesn't stop searching. The world building takes a whole new step as we get back into Aza's perspective. She is all of the sudden able to breath, and her body feels strong. She learns a lot about her past, and shocking secrets about her family, and why her lungs were so bad on the ground. She tries to grasp the differences in this whole new species that she is a part of. They work with the birds, their skin is different, so is their language and thinking. She is surrounded by a whole new cast of characters and she is rightly suspicious of everyone. But she does form bonds with some of them, and some are good decisions and others lead to plot developments and twists she didn't want to believe. I enjoyed this book, and although it felt like some parts got a little slow, I was easily distracted by other things going on, and I am sure that had something to do with it. But I certainly want to keep reading, and find out more about this strange world in the sky and how Aza fits into it. I also am eager to see more of the chemistry and deep bond between her and Jason, how the alliances she made while sailing will play out. Bottom Line: Intricate world building, relatable main character, and fun read.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Really, really interesting! love the bird imagery and the dystopian feel. Super unique read!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The writing was nothing like what I have read! And the storyline was so unique that I fell in love with it!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Incredible concept, extremely enrapturing — I finished it in two days!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Such a fresh and beautiful voice!! Your search for novels is over. Read this.

    3 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Aza Ray has spent her life struggling to breath, the fact that she’s made it to fifteen years is nothing short of a miracle. At her worst, she hallucinates ships in the sky with people sliding down ropes to the earth. But what if she wasn't hallucinating? What if there was another world up in the sky that coincided with our own below? What then? On earth she has a family who loves her, and who have gone to great lengths to keep her alive. She has Jason, her best friend, an OCD geek genius, who could maybe be something more than just a friend.

    I was about 70% done when I realized I’d started another series. It’s okay, the world is interesting enough that I want more information. t have all the back story, yet, but I’m hoping we’ll get some of that in the next book. I also need some more world building of Magonia itself. I have lot of questions, just like Aza.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Absolutely captivating.

    This unique fantasy had me from the first chapter and before I know it I had finished over one-hundred pages of this can't-put-down novel.

    Aza Ray's story is full of great humor, friendship, love and hope.

    Love this!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I was fascinated by the book cover first and then the summary of this book. So I took chance on it. Overall, it was a good book. The world that the author built in Magonia was amazing. It was so colorful and full of magic. Aza is a different person in Magonia than she is in the real world. I liked her better in Magonia. She is strong. The reasons that I gave this book only 3 stars is because when I first started this book I did not pick out anything in the first several chapters as interesting. In fact, I started this book while laying in bed. Some of my best times to read. Because the story had not picked up yet, I quickly fell asleep and could not remember anything that I had read in those several chapters. Also it seemed that the story was rushed and details glossed over. I wanted to know more about this fascinating world and the people in it. I did not have a close connection with anyone in particular in this book. Although, I must admit that this book is different from the books that are currently on the bookshelves. This is a good thing.

Book preview

Magonia - Maria Dahvana Headley

PROLOGUE

I breathe in. I breathe out. The sky’s full of clouds. A rope is looping down from above, out of the sky and down to earth. There is a woman’s face looking at me, and all around us, hundreds upon hundreds of birds. The flock flows like water, surging up and into the air, black and gold and red, and everything is safe and cold, bright with stars and moon.

I’m tiny in comparison, and I’m not on the ground.

I know everyone has dreams of flying, but this isn’t a dream of flying. It’s a dream of floating, and the ocean is not water but wind.

I call it a dream, but it feels realer than my life.

CHAPTER 1

{AZA}

My history is hospitals.

This is what I tell people when I’m in a mood to be combination funny and stressful, which is a lot of the time.

It’s easier to have a line ready than to be forced into a conversation with someone whose face is showing fake nice, fake worry, or fake interest. My preferred method is as follows: make a joke, make a half-apologetic/half-freaky face, and be out of the discussion in five seconds flat.

Aza: Nothing really majorly wrong with me. Don’t worry. I just have a history of hospitals.

Person in Question: "Er. Um. Oh. I’m so sorry to hear that. Or, wait, glad. You just said that nothing’s really wrong with you! Glad!"

Aza (freaky face intensifying): It’s incredibly nice of you to ask.

Subtext: It isn’t. Leave it.

People don’t usually ask anything after that. Most are polite. My parents, my family, not so much, but the randoms? The substitute teacher who wonders why I’m coughing and having to leave the room—then having to go to the nurse’s office—then having to have a nice 911 call to summon an ambulance to spirit me back to my white linoleum homeland?

That sort of person doesn’t typically want to remind me of things I no doubt already know. Which I very much do. Don’t be stupid. Also, don’t think I’m stupid.

This is not, like, Little Women. Beth and her nice, invalid Beth-ness have always made me puke. The way people imagined she wasn’t dying. The way she blatantly was. In that kind of story, the moment someone decides to wrap you in blankets and you accidentally smile weakly, you’re dead.

Hence, I try not to smile weakly, even if I feel weak, which I sometimes secretly or unsecretly do. I don’t want to make myself into a catastrophic blanket-y invalid.

Bang, bang, you’re dead. Close your eyes and go to bed.

Side note: invalid. Whoever invented that word, and made it the same word as not-valid? That person sucked.

So, right, the question of death comes up in my presence on a regular basis. Adults don’t want to talk about it. Seriously, it’s not as though I want to talk about it either. But other people my age do.

DEATH DEATH DEATH, everyone’s thinking, like we’re in our cars, driving slowly past accidents on the highway all day long. They’re grossly fascinated.

Some of us, the ones actually dying, are maybe less fascinated than others. Some of us, maybe, would rather not get stuck in rooms where people are regularly talking about celebrity death-y things, whichever kind you want, the OD, the car crash, the mystery fall-apart . . .

People my age enjoy crying and speculating dramatically over how people our age could die. Take it from one who knows. Take it from one whose role has been, for years, The Girl I Knew Really Well Who Tragically Died One Day.

Not that I’ve died yet. I am still totally here. Which is why all the artistic, goth morbidity is a bummer.

Adults want to talk about death way less than people my age do. Death is the Santa Claus of the adult world. Except Santa Claus in reverse. The guy who takes all the presents away. Big bag over the shoulder, climbing up the chimney carrying everything in a person’s life, and taking off, eight-reindeered, from the roof. Sleigh loaded down with memories and wineglasses and pots and pans and sweaters and grilled cheese sandwiches and Kleenexes and text messages and ugly houseplants and calico cat fur and half-used lipstick and laundry that never got done and letters you went to the trouble of handwriting but never sent and birth certificates and broken necklaces and disposable socks with scuffs on the bottom from hospital visits.

And notes you kept on the fridge.

And pictures of boys you had crushes on.

And a dress that got worn to a dance at which you danced by yourself, before you got too skinny and too breathless to dance.

Along with, probably, though this isn’t worthy of huge thinking, a soul or something.

Anyway, adults don’t believe in Santa Claus. They try hard not to believe in Santa Claus in Reverse either.

At school, the whole rare-disease-impending-doom situation makes me freakishly intriguing. In the real world, it makes me a problem. Worried look, bang, nervous face, bang: Maybe you should talk to someone about your feelings, Aza, along with a nasty side dish of what-about-God-what-about-therapy-what-about-antidepressants?

Sometimes also what-about-faith-healers-what-about-herbs-what-about-crystals-what-about-yoga? Have you tried yoga, Aza, I mean have you, because it helped this friend of a friend who was supposedly dying but didn’t, due to downward dog?

No. I haven’t tried yoga to cure my thing, because yoga isn’t going to cure my thing. My thing is a Mystery and not just a Mystery, but Bermuda—no sun, only Triangle.

Unknowable. Unsolvable.

I take handfuls of drugs every morning, even though no one is entirely sure what the thing that’s wrong with me actually is. I’m rare like that.

Rare, like bloodwork and tests and things reaching down my throat. Rare like MRIs and X-rays and sonograms and swabs and never any clear diagnosis.

Rare, like my disease is standing onstage in a tuxedo belting out a torch song that has a chorus along the lines of "Baby, you’re the only one for me." And then the disease just stands there, waiting for me to walk into its arms and give up resisting.

Rare, as in: so far, I’m the only person on earth who’s been diagnosed with this particular precision awesomeness.

Maybe I sound like I’m exaggerating. No. My disease is so rare it’s named Azaray Syndrome.

After me, Aza Ray Boyle.

Which is perverse. I don’t want a doppelgänger in disease form, some weird medical case immortality, which means medical students’ll be saying my name for the next hundred years. No one asked ME when the lab published a paper in Nature and gave this disease my name. I would’ve said no. I’d like to have named my disease myself: the Jackass, or maybe something ugly, such as Elmer or Clive.

None of the above topics, the death and dying topics, are things I actually feel inclined to talk about. I’m not depressed. I’m just fucked up. I have been since I can remember. There’s not a version of my life that isn’t fucked up.

Yes. I’m allowed to say that word if I feel like it, and I do. I feel like swearing about this. It’s me in this body, thank you, snarled and screwed up and not going to make it; let’s not go on about things we can’t revise. I’m an edited version of a real live girl, or at least, that’s what I say when I want to tell you something and I’d rather not talk about it but have to get it out of the way so we can move on to better topics.

Yeah, I totally know I don’t look well. No, you don’t need to look concerned. I know you wish you could help. You can’t. I know you’re probably a nice person, but seriously? All I really want to talk to strangers about is anything other than this thing.

The facts of it, though? Basic, daily of Elmer /Clive/the Jackass/Azaray Syndrome? I have to live in rooms kept free of dust. This has been true almost since forever. When I was born, I was healthy and theoretically perfect. Almost exactly a year later, out of nowhere, my lungs stopped being able to understand air.

My mom came into the room one morning and found me having a seizure. Because my mom is my mom, she had the presence of mind to give me mouth-to-mouth and breathe for me. She kept me alive until they could get me to the hospital. Where they also—barely—kept me going, by making a machine do the breathing. They gave me drugs and did things to make the oxygen density of the air less, rather than more. It got a little better.

I mean, a lot better, given that here I still am. Just not better enough. Early on, I slept for what felt like centuries inside a shell of clear plastic and tubing. My history is made of opening my eyes in rooms where I didn’t fall asleep, the petting of paramedics, the red and white spinning shriek of sirens. That’s a thing that just is, if you’re the lucky girl who lives with Clive.

I look weird and my inner workings are weird, and everyone’s always like, huh, never seen that shit before. Mutations all over my body, inside, outside, everywhere but my brain, which, as far as anyone can tell, is normal.

All the brain chemical-imbalance misery that some people have? I don’t. I don’t wake up riddled with apocalypse panic, and I don’t feel compelled to do anything in the category of biting my own fingers off, or drinking myself into a coma. In the scheme of things, having a brain that mostly obeys your instructions is not nothing.

Otherwise, I’m Aza-the-Exhibition. I’m the World’s Fair. (All I want, ALL I WANT, is for there to be a World’s Unfair Exposition, preferably in a city near where I live. Booths full of disappointments, huge exhibits of structures built to fail. No Oh-My-God-the-Future-Will-Be-Amazing Exhibits, but the reverse. No flying cars. Cars that squinch along like inchworms.)

I try not to get involved with my disease, but it’s persuasive. When it gets ahold of me, the gasping can put me on the floor, flopping and whistling, something hauled up from a lake bottom. Sometimes I wish I could go back to that bottom and start over somewhere else. As something else.

Secretly, as in only semi-secretly, as in this is a thing I say loudly sometimes—I think I wasn’t meant to be human. I don’t work right.

And now I’m almost sixteen. One week to go.

School Nurse: "You’re a miracle! You’re our miracle!"

Aza Ray Boyle: (retching noises)

Because I’m still alive I’m thinking about having a party. There’s that thing about sixteen. That big-deal factor. Everything changes and suddenly you’re right in the world, wearing a pink dress and kissing a cute boy or doing a dancey-prancy musical number.

I clarify, that’s what happens in movies. In this life? I don’t know what happens from here. Nothing I majorly want to think about.

Who would I invite? EVERYONE. Except the people I don’t like. I know enough people to categorize the group of people I know as everyone, but I like maybe five or six of them, total. I could invite doctors, in which case the group would radically grow. I said this to my parents a couple of days ago, and now they hover, considering my questionable attitude. Which they’ve been considering since forever.

But I ask you, wouldn’t it be worse if I were perfect? My imperfections make me less mournable.

Nobody enjoys birthdays. Everyone in the house is nervous. Even the plants look nervous. We have one that curls up. It isn’t allowed to share a room with me, but sometimes I visit it and touch its leaves and it cringes. It’s curled up now into a tight little ball of Leaves Me the Hell Alone.

Get it?

Leaves? (Oh, haha. Oh very haha.)

High school. First bell. Walking down the middle hall. Past a billion lockers. Late for class. No excuse, except for the one I always have.

I raise my fist to bump with Jason Kerwin, also late, who doesn’t acknowledge me with his face, just as I don’t acknowledge him with mine. Only fists. We’ve known each other since we were five. He’s my best friend.

Jason’s an exception to all rules of parental worry re: Hanging With Humans Other Than Parents, because he knows every possible drill of emergency protocol.

He’s allowed to accompany me places my parents don’t want to go. Or do want to go, but don’t want to spend hours at. Aquariums, natural history museum bug collections and taxidermy dioramas, rare bookstores where we have to wear masks and gloves if we want to touch, back rooms full of strange butterflies, bone and life-size surgical model collections discovered on the internet.

Et cetera.

Jason never talks about death, unless it’s in the context of morbid cool things we might want to hunt the internet for. Aza Ray and the Great Failure of Her Physical Everything? Jason leaves that filth alone.

Second bell, still in the hall, and I raise one casual relevant finger at Jenny Green. Pink streak in her hair, elbows sharper than daggers, tight jeans costing roughly the equivalent of a not un-nice used car. Jenny has pissed me off lately by being. I mean, not by basic being. Mean being. We have a silent war. She doesn’t deserve words at this point, though she called me some a couple of days ago, in a frenzy of not-allowed. Calling the sick girl names? Please. We all know it’s not okay.

I kind of, semi, have to respect her for the transgression. It’s a little bit badass, to do the thing no one else has ever dared do. Lately, there’s been this contagious idea that I resemble a hungry, murdery girl ghost from a Japanese horror movie, so Jenny came to school in blue lipstick and white powder. To mock me.

Jenny smiles and blows me a kiss full of poison. I catch it and blow it back through my today very indigo lips, thoroughly creeping her. I give her a little shudder gasp. If ghost girl is going to be my deal, I might as well use it to my advantage. She stares at me as though I’ve somehow played unfair, and takes off at a repulsed run for her class.

Insert meaningless pause at locker. Slow walk. Peer into classroom windows, through the wire mesh they put in there to discourage people like me from spying on people like them.

My little sister, Eli, senses me staring, and looks up from her already deep-in-lecture algebra. I rock out briefly in the hallway, free, fists up, at liberty like no one else is this time of morning. Sick-girl privilege. Eli rolls her eyes at me, and I walk on, coughing only a little bit, manageable.

Seven minutes late to English and it’s Mr. Grimm, eyebrow up. The Perpetually Tardy Mizz Aza Ray, his name for me, and yeah, his name is Grimm, really. Blind bat eyes, thick-frame glasses, skinny tie like a hipster, but that look’s not working for him.

Mr. Grimm’s muscle-bound, though he never rolls up his sleeves. He has the kind of arms that strain against fabric, which fact tells me he has no actual life, and just veers between being a teacher and drinking protein shakes.

He’d seem as though he belongs in the PE end of the building, except that when he opens his mouth he’s nerdtastic. I also think he has tattoos, which he’s tried to cover up in various ways. Pancake makeup. Long sleeves. Not too smart to get a skull/ship/naked girl (?) permanently marked on you. You have to button your cuffs all the time.

Mr. Grimm’s new this year. Youngish, if you can call thirty young. But the tattoo is interesting. I can’t tell exactly what it is because I’ve never seen the full extent of it.

It makes me want tattoos. I want one that’s worse than whatever his is.

He’s got a constant complaint going that I could work up to my potential if I’d only pay attention instead of burying my face in a book while he lectures. He can’t lament too successfully, considering that I am one of, oh, what, four people in this school who read.

And I know that’s trite. Yes, I’m a reader. Kill me. I could tell you I was raised in the library and the books were my only friends, but I didn’t do that, did I? Because I have mercy. I’m neither a genius nor a kid destined to become a wizard. I’m just me. I read stuff. Books are not my only friends, but we’re friendly. So there.

I don’t need to pay attention to Mr. Grimm’s lecture. I read it already, whatever it is, in this case, Ye Olde Man vs. Ye Olde Sea.

Obsessed guy. Big fish. Variety of epic fails. I have to wonder how many generations of sophomores have been oppressed by stories about this same damn thing.

Why? Which of us is or will one day be engaged in a death struggle with a big fish? What is the rationale?

I’ve read Moby-Dick, another version of Obsessed Dude, Big Fish, and taxonomies of sorrow and lost dreams.

I know, whale = not fish. Mammalian cetacean. Still, whales have always been the prototype for Big Fish Stories, which makes all kinds of sense given how wrong humanity always is about everything.

I even read the Moby-Dick chapters that no one reads. I could tell you anything you need to know about flensing. Trust me on this, though, you don’t want that information.

Ask me about Moby-Dick, Mr. Grimm. Go on. Do it.

He did do that once, about a month ago, thinking I was lying about reading it. I gave a filibuster-quality speech about suck and allegories and oceans and uncatchable dreams that I then merged into a discussion of pirate-themed movies, plank-walking, and female astronauts. Mr. Grimm was both impressed and aggravated. I got extra credit, which I don’t need, and then detention for interrupting, for which punishment, in truth, I respect him.

I glance over at Jason Kerwin, who is ensconced in his own book. I eye the title. Kepler’s Dream: With the Full Text and Notes of Somnium, Sive Astronomia Lunaris. It looks old and semi-nasty, recycled hardcover library copy. Big picture of the surface of the moon on the front.

No clue: me.

I slink my hand over to his desk and snatch it to read the flaps. The first science-fiction novel, it says, written in the 1620s. An astronomer tells a story of a journey to the moon, but also he attempts to encode in the novel a defense of Copernican theory, because he’s looking for a way to talk about it without getting executed for heresy. Only later did people realize all the fantasy bits are pretty much Kepler’s code for astronomy and equations.

I thumb. There’s a flying alien witch.

Awesome. Kind of my kind of book. Except that I’d prefer it if I could write one of my own. This is always the problem with things containing imaginary languages and mysteries. I want to be the cryptographer. I’m not even close to being a cryptographer, though. I’m just what used to be called an enthusiast. Or maybe a hobbyist. I learn as much as I can learn in like fifteen minutes of internet search, and then I fake, fast and furious.

People therefore think I’m smarter than they are. It gives me room to do whatever I want, without them surrounding me and asking questions about things. It keeps people from inquiring about the whole dying situation. I invoke factoid privilege.

Give, Jason whispers. Mr. Grimm shoots us a shut-up look.

I consider how to pacify my parents about the birthday party. I think they have visions of roller-skating and clown and cake and balloons—like the party they had for me when I was five.

That time, no one showed up beyond two girls forced by their mothers, and Jason, who crashed it. Not only did he walk a mile uninvited to my birthday party, he did it in formal dress: a full alligator costume left over from Halloween. Jason didn’t bother to tell his moms where he was going, and so they called the police, convinced he’d been kidnapped.

When the squad cars showed up outside the roller rink, and the cops came in, it became immediately clear that Jason and I were destined to be friends. He was roller-skating in the alligator suit, spinning elegantly, long green tail dragging behind when they demanded that he show himself.

That party was not all bad.

For birthday sixteen, though, I’m drawing a better vision in my notebook: a dead clown, a gigantic layer cake from which I burst, a hot air balloon that arrives in the sky above me. From the hot air balloon’s basket dangles a rope. I climb. I fly away. Forever.

How much pain would this solve? So much. Except for the pain of the dead clown, who died not according to his own plan, but mine.

Apparently, Mr. Grimm hears me snort.

Care to enlighten us, Miss Ray?

Why do they always use this phrase? Rest of the class is taking a quiz. They look up, relieved to be legitimately distracted. Jason smirks. Nothing like trouble to make a day pass faster.

Do you really want enlightening? I ask, because I’m working it today. I was thinking about dying.

He gives me an exasperated look. I’ve used this line before in Mr. Grimm’s classroom. It’s a beautiful dealbreaker. Teachers melt like wet witches when I bring it up. I kind of enjoy Mr. Grimm, though, because he sees through me. Which means he’s actually looking. Which is, in itself, weird. No one looks at me too closely. They’re afraid my unsustainability is going to mess them up. That plastic bubble I lived in when I was little? It’s still there, but invisible now. And made out of something harder than plastic.

Dying, in the context of which literary work, Aza? he asks. No mercy.

"How about The Tempest? I say, because there it is, on the syllabus, looming. Everything is ocean this semester. Drowned twins."

"The drowned twins who don’t really drown are in Twelfth Night, not The Tempest, he says. Try it again, Ray."

Embarrassing. I’m at a loss, unfortunately.

Play it again, Sam? I say, illegally using Mr. Grimm’s first name. Then I embark on my traditional method: one-fact-that-makes-them-think-you-have-all-the-facts. You can learn the oddest little items from a wiki page.

Except that that’s a misquote. ‘Play it, Sam,’ it should be, but people want it more romantic and less order-givey.

Grimm sighs. "Have you even seen Casablanca? Ten more minutes till pencils up. I’d do the quiz if I were you, Aza. And don’t call me Sam. It’s Samuel. Only people who don’t know me call me Sam."

He’s won,

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