Excerpt from A Bird in the Air Means We Can Still Breathe by Mahogany L. Browne, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Chorus: Wild Fire

If you listen closely, you can hear their TV screens pour from the windowpanes, under the apartment doors, and out onto the streets. Everybody is listening to the news, and no one is listening to their hearts.

I am Hyacinth. Mi a har best fren, Electra.

And we're just two city girls ...

Suh yuh sey, Ms. Trini-to-the-bone!

Okay, okay. We're two city girls with island roots. We met in the foster care system, after one too many fights took us from our families' homes and placed us as roomies in a group home slash detention center, wearing blue crew neck sweatshirts and matching sweatpants with one-size-too-small slippers. We sat in that weird-smelling facility until we were moved to neighboring foster care homes. Some might say we have a chip on our shoulders because we talk the truth loud. But really, we are over being talked down to, talked over, and completely ignored.

Fi Chuu.

You can say that being height-challenged brought Electra and me closer. Because for some reason, people think they can pick on people like us.

Dem pick pon mi, mi wi fight dem.

But you aren't here to hear about our origin story--you are here to learn the stories of how we all got to this weird pandemic place in the first place. And you are in luck, because we keep our eyes wide open!

Serious. Wi see all a it.

No lies, we've seen it all. Okay, maybe not all--but a lot. Follow us. We have seen a granny spoon-feed VapoRub to a likkle one. We have seen fishermen pull seaweed from the mighty waters, clean all the sand free from the leaves, and make a cure with it. We have even seen a mother strap a baby on her back with thick kente fabric and machete a clearing through the sugarcane field for her family's safe passage to New York City.

She and Electra's mother moved from Kingston, Jamaica. And after my father passed away, my mother, big brother, big sister, and I moved from Trinidad and Tobago to Stamford, Connecticut.

We fine each odda unda strange circumstances.

Yes, Electra, we did find each other.

After we were both Scarlet Lettered as disruptive students (simply because we asked questions and demanded answers), we became used to being ignored. Adults often ignore the young people they don't understand. And this is when you really see the trees from the forest. This is why Electra and I are chorus. We have seen it all.

Like duppy. People figet sey wi deh yah

We have seen People living behind surgical masks waiting for the world to end

People hoarding food and hand sanitizer

People afraid to be kind to other people.

I mean, we weren't alive to witness the world surrender to the "Spanish" flu of 1918, the flu in 1957, or the flu in 1968. We only know what this rebuilt world looks like. And we know how to be good neighbors. We know to always be kind and say thank you. We know one should wait until everyone at the table has their meal in front of them before taking a bite. And we know we need each other to make the future possible.

Tank goodness we did raise fi know betta.

Malachi: Quinies, Part 1

It's like one day, the planet woke up and evicted us all.

One day we woke up and didn't have to go to school. It was just over. My entire freshman year in high school, poof ! Gone. My brother, an extremely annoying eighth grader: Maseo Jr. formerly known as Lil Maseo but now known as MJ, didn't have school either. It was like we went to sleep angry about a test or whoever didn't text us back, or whoever was cowardly enough to write someone else's name on the bathroom wall in the locker room, and woke up to nothing.

Sure, the adults tried to pretend they knew what to do. Started online class check-ins a week later. But most of the students figured out quickly, if you turn your camera on to a pre-saved picture, then you might actually get some real work done on your current game of Fortnite. And sure, the adults tried to pretend they weren't stressed out, weekly deliveries of wine bottles and face masks tossed everywhere our shoes weren't. It lasted for a couple of months, until the Wi-Fi cut out. And we tried to stay on top of it all, but essential workers were quitting left and right. So finally, the phone towers were taken over by the ivy and various green waves of nature. It's like the earth opened her eyes one day and was tired of all our plastic straws and Amazon deforestation and cracked dirt from black oil and minerals mining.

Excerpted from A Bird in the Air Means We Can Still Breathe by Mahogany L. Browne. Copyright © 2025 by Mahogany L. Browne. Excerpted by permission of Crown Books for Young Readers. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.