by Sarah Porter
“Even if regular humans don’t appreciate it?” Ada smiles so warmly at him that he flushes.
“Maybe that doesn’t matter. We’re here if the world ever needs us. We can carry on—well, hopefully just the good parts of being human.”
Ada shakes her head. “We don’t have just the good parts.”
“I know. Or I wouldn’t have had to go racing to those undersea chimeras to stop Gabe from killing you.” Rowan pauses. “But they rushed to help as soon as I asked them, and maybe that proves we have enough of the good parts in us? I mean, to make the whole project worthwhile?”
“You’re calling us a project?” Ada laughs. “That makes it sound like the blue stuck us together with tape. Like, for a science fair or something. Tape and fur and wings and tentacles.”
Rowan grins back and gives the same call again, a long groan broken by five rapid clicks. A good possibility.
A flurry of wings breaks the air over their heads, and Ophelia thuds down in a spray of sand. “Ada! Rowan! You have to come right now! This second! It’s—oh, she’s so beautiful! She’s orange and golden and—but she’s having trouble remembering who she is. She needs to see her friends.”
Ada and Rowan are already scrambling to their feet. “You mean Marley?” Rowan asks. “She hatched?”
“Not totally. She’s still in the middle of it. Oh, come quick!”
“We can’t call her Marley anymore,” Ada says, sliding her long feet into sneakers, then leaping onto the grassy shelf. “I promised her that. We need to call her something new.”
MiddleGradeMania.com
About the Author
SARAH PORTER is the author of the young adult novels Lost Voices, Waking Storms, The Twice Lost, and Vassa in the Night. Tentacle and Wing is her first book for middle grade readers. She is also an artist and a freelance public school teacher. Sarah and her husband live in Brooklyn, New York.
Learn more at www.sarahporterbooks.com
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