Page 88 of Icarus

Icarus sat down in front of Celestina and lay back into her lap so she could get her fingers in his hair. Then he closed his eyes and listened to them talk around him.

He’d never had this. More than two people he liked being together around him, it felt so easy. It was worth it. It was all that he imagined it to be.

Detail

Aspen nodded when he walked into math class but didn’t say anything.

Icarus looked up at the teacher droning and figured this would be as good a time as any to start working on his plan.

First they would have to handle collateral damage:

Icarus would be leaving school before graduation, so he would have to either transfer to a school in their new area or get his GED. He’d heard getting a GED was more difficult, and he’d have to find out if they could travel internationally. He and Helios had never discussed school, but he obviously wasn’t going to class. So he’d either have to continue with whatever he was doing already or get his GED too. Technically he should only have six more months of school left to finish, so it wasn’t a huge hurdle. But, it also wasn’t something he could just rashly ignore.

He would have to drain his bank account, where roughly half of his money was. He would have to make time to do it the day of their escape. Just in case Angus was so overwhelmed by fury that he tried to freeze Icarus’s assets.

Next, he needed to figure out how to get the security anklet off Helios. He had no idea how it worked. It would be foolish to assume it just sent an alert if Helios left the property. What if it was electrified? It would have to be cut off, and he would have to do research about how.

He would have to work on the actual choreography of escaping the property. He was strong, strong enough to probably pick up Helios for a moment. But he couldn’t carry him all the way down the wall. But if he bolted hooks to the roof, and had Helios in some kind of harness, he could handle the weight of him on his back.

He would have to pack his most precious items and bring them with him. But he couldn’t bring them on the climb itself. He would have to stash them somewhere—maybe the diner across the street. But the idea of all that money sitting somewhere he didn’t trust made him uncomfortable.

Between now and when he left, he would have to finish all his homework and the project he was working on with Julian.

Last, he would have to tell Luca and Celestina, eventually. Which was the hardest part. No one else had to know, but the two of them were important to him.

The leaving, at least, should be easy. They could take a bus and a train to Detroit. Sit where they were for forty-eight hours to wait out the initial panic search, then buy plane tickets. If Helios had access to his passport, they could swing by New York, grab it, and go immediately, but if not they could head elsewhere and have a new one expedited. With the new account with his savings and selling the gold, they could be out of Mr. Black’s reach completely in a month.

He looked down at his quick list, just a few words—Leave, GED, Account, Steal, Lift, Pack, Work, Friends—and felt more secure than he had in months.

Aspen glanced over at it too.

“You shouldn’t drop out,” she said. “We’ve only got half a year left, and the GED is much harder. Took my brother three times to get it and he’s not stupid. They make it like that for . . . classist reasons.”

“I’m not dropping out,” Icarus whispered. “I’m moving.”

Aspen didn’t look impressed. “Do what you want, dude. I just thought someone should mention it. Alfie said he wished someone had mentioned it to him.”

Icarus frowned and folded the paper up.

“Thanks.”

Flutter

Today was the last day for their final projects. Sorrel was glazing his still life when Icarus walked in.

“How did you meet them?” Sorrel asked him immediately.

Icarus sighed and started scraping wax off his own piece.

“Luca sat next to me on the first day of class, and Celestina needed a pencil and no one else around her had an extra,” he said. “Something wrong?”

Sorrel shook his head. “No . . . I just. They’re a bit much for me. They’re nice and all, I just can’t keep up with them.”

That . . . was disappointing. Icarus slid his eyes over to Sorrel without turning his head. “You know Mina is more like them than she is like us,” he warned.

Sorrel shrugged. “With her, it’s worth it.”

Icarus sighed again. It was for the best, probably. He was going to try to keep in contact with people from here when he left, but he didn’t know if Sorrel was brave enough to help him flee. Their relationship would have to go back to the way it was before. Impersonal. Isolated.