Freefly (6 page)

“What?  Why?”

She shakes her head.

My gut fills with something like panic.  For some reason, I sense that she is in mortal danger.  “Sammie, please.  What’s going on?  Let me help.”

She laughs softly, and for a moment I almost hate her, for laughing when I’m certain she’s in serious trouble.  I want to run to the window and slam it shut, to keep her from leaving and facing this danger. 

“You can’t help,” she says. 

I throw up my hands.  “What
can
I do then?”

She sits down on the end of the bed and puts her hands on her knees.  When she looks up, her expression is like a child afraid of the dark.  “Tell me about field trips.” 

“What?”

“Field trips.  I want to know about them.” 

I sigh.  Adrenaline tingles in my limbs.  My body is ready to fight for her, to defend her from this mysterious threat
—
but she doesn’t want me to fight.  She wants me to tell her about field trips.

I walk to the bed and slide onto the floor, so that I’m sitting next to her dangling legs, with my own legs stretched in front of me.  I turn to face her, resigned.  “What do you want to know?”

Her face brightens.  “What was your favorite one?”

“My favorite field trip?”  To be honest, no field trip was so heartstoppingly wonderful that I consider it my favorite.  My school district didn’t do fun trips to the crayon-making factory or to the water park three exits down the highway.  We went to places like the city dump.  “I don’t know.”

“Oh.”  Her eyes turn to the window, to gaze at the moon hovering in the sky, the shape of a scythe.  There is something so sad in her expression that I force myself to think harder.

“There was this one trip.  Back in third grade.”

“What was it?” she says.

“I can’t remember the name of the place, but it was some kind of farm.  There was this big red barn, like you see in pictures, and there were wooden stalls with cows inside them, looking out at you while they chewed.  And there was a gigantic pile of hay, bright yellow, taller than your head.  We got to climb onto some scaffolding and jump into it.  That was the best part, I think:  plunging feet-first into the hay.  Afterwards, we went to the creamery attached to the farm and got homemade ice cream, straight from the cows we’d just seen.  I think I got vanilla on a cone.  I remember thinking it was the creamiest ice cream I’d ever tasted.”

Sammie smiles dopily.  “Wow.”

I smile, too.  As always, I don’t realize I remember as much as I do about something until I’m answering Sammie’s questions about it.  And afterwards, I realize how good that something really was. 

“Did you have to get a, uh, permission slip signed?  Is that what you call it?”

I nod.  “Otherwise they don’t let you on the bus.”

“Why do they do that?”

I crinkle my brow.  Sometimes, Sammie asks questions I never really thought about before, and I have to ponder the philosophy behind something I have always taken for granted.  “I think because the school doesn’t want to get in trouble for taking you somewhere your parents wouldn’t approve of.  Plus, your parents need to know that you’re going to be someplace other than school.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do your parents need to know you’re going to be someplace other than school?”

It sounds like a rebellious question
—
Why can’t kids just go where they want?
—
but her face is void of attitude, purely curious.  This is the sort of question that troubles me.  She can’t conceive of parents caring about the welfare of their children.  I wonder, as I do about thirty times whenever I am with her, what sort of childhood this flying girl has had. 

“Parents need to know where their kids are, that’s all,” I explain.

“So they can control them?”

“No,” I say.  “Because they love them.”

She tilts her head.  Then she leans back, supporting herself on both arms, and pulls her legs onto the bed.  I think that she is going to go to sleep, so I climb to my feet and walk toward my desk. 

“Damien?”

I turn around. 

She is leaning against the headboard, her legs curled into her chest.  Her eyes are wide with fear.  “Will you...”

“What?”

“Lie here with me for a while?”

Shocked, I walk back to the bed.  Sammie is trembling.  She is terrified.  I know this has to do with whatever is going to keep her from coming back, and I am seized, once again, by the urge to defend her.  But she does not want me to defend her.  She wants me to lie down.

I sit on the bed and throw my legs onto the comforter, then shuffle backwards until I lean against the headboard.  I do this very slowly, because I know that physical contact makes this girl go be
r
serk.  I lie parallel to her, leaving several inches of space between us.  Shock shoots through me when she lays her head on my shoulder.  Her trembling causes both of us to shake. 

“Are you okay?” I whisper, both terrified and ecstatic that her hair is tickling my neck. 

“Shut up,” she whispers back.

“Okay."

She lifts her head off my shoulder and sets it on my chest, curling her body toward me.  I have officially lost feeling in my legs. 

With Sammie’s head resting on my chest, bobbing slowly up and down each time I take a breath, my arms itch to enclose her.  But I am certain such a thing would freak her out.  Instead, I cautiously lift my right arm into the air, shifting our weight ever so slightly, though I am certain she notices.  When she doesn’t move or object, I move my hand toward her head and stroke her hair with my fingertips.  She shivers, but doesn’t freak out or scream at me or plaster herself against a wall.  I stroke her hair again, marveling at how soft it is, wondering if all girl-hair is this soft, or just Sammie’s. 

“Promise you’ll go back to that farm someday,” she whispers. 

“You can go with me,” I say. 

She sighs.  I stroke her hair until, as unlikely as it seems, I fall asleep.  The last thing on my mind is that maybe, tomorrow morning, she won’t be gone. 

CHAPTER 3

Sammie

Damien’s snoozed off, and I don’t know whether to feel good about that or bad.  In sleep, he stops being careful.  His arms have closed around me.  Part of this feels good, safe even:  having someone’s arms around you, someone who cares about you and has wiped the blood off you time and again.  Still, the weight of his arms makes me feel trapped.  The urge to escape and the desire to stay battle within me, until, impossibly, I fall asleep. 

When I wake up, the sun twinkles over the horizon, slanting through the window and bathing half the room in yellow light.  I lurch forward when I feel a hand on my stomach, and it takes all I have to keep from screaming bloody murder.  But it’s just Damien, I realize, with his arms folded over me.  We slept the whole night.  Oh crap. 

Damien’s breath beats slow and even against the back of my neck.  As carefully as I can, I grip his hands and pull them apart, sliding out from within his grasp.  I plant my feet on the floor and turn to face him.  He lies on his side, his black hair mussed against the pillow, his lips slightly parted as he breathes in and out.  He wears a black T-shirt, jeans, and Nike sneakers:  he never changed into his usual Phillies T-shirt and sweats.  That’s my fault, I guess, for making him lie down with me. 

He doesn’t seem to know it, but he’s pretty nice to look at.  He has skin the color of cream-filled coffee, deep brown eyes, and a wide smile you really have to work for.  (He’s a serious guy, you see.)  For as long as I’ve known him, he’s kept his hair pretty short, but at the moment it curls over his ears and sticks up in all directions, like a porcupine.  His body is long and lean.  He’s the sort of guy you could see flying down the track, but who can still slug a baseball because of his long, wiry arms. 

Basically, I don’t deserve him. 

Damien is kind.  He cares about other people more than himself.  He’ll ask you if you’re hungry, if you’re thirsty, if you want a bandage for that, if you want the window further open or closed.  He’s ridiculously smart.  The guy’s taken more science courses than I can count on two hands, and he knows a little something about everything.  He can tell you why the moon sometimes glows yellow around the edges, why certain plants come back each year while others shrink into dust, which double-star to spot to test your eyesight, how many bones are in your left foot, and so on.  He’ll really take the time to answer you, too.  I ask him question after question, and he never gets impatient or snappy.  He’s got a real knack for first aid, and he can tell a story like no one I’ve ever heard.  When he tells me about his baseball game, or his field trip, I feel like I’m right there with him.

Though I’ve got about as much romantic experience as your average potted plant, I can tell he’s falling for me:  from the way his face gets bright when he looks at me, the way he senses my every movement and picks up on my emotions.  If I had the luxury of kicking up a romance, I can’t imagine doing it with anyone else.  But my life doesn’t permit me the luxury of falling in love.  For his sake, as well as mine, we can never be more than friends.

I take another moment to watch Damien’s chest fill with air and release it, his lips twitching, before I turn to the window.  It’s half open, as always, the sun pouring in from its position between two houses across the street.  The sky is cloudless, stretching above the houses like a blue piece of elastic.  On the sidewalk, a little girl with blond pigtails holds hands with a boy in overalls, backpacks on their backs.  I turn back to get a last look at Damien, who faces the other direction, his spine curving into the mattress.  The scruffy hair on the back of his neck makes him look much younger, like he himself is not much more than a little boy. 

I whip the zipper of my leather jacket to my chin, slide my sunglasses over my eyes, and snatch my knapsack off the floor.  When I am certain there are no cars passing, I leap out the window.

I flatten my arms against my sides and shoot upwards like a rocket.  (It’s important to get high as quickly as possible, since the closer you are to the ground, the more likely someone’s going to spot you.)  Once I’m high enough, I check my compass-watch and point myself towards Reading, spreading my arms wide so that I look like a bird.  The sun blazes on my back.  Before long, the city looms beneath me, and I dive toward an alleyway.  I pull up a second before the top of my head meets the black pavement.

I emerge from the alleyway into the bustle of sidewalk traffic.  Inches apart, cars budge down the road.  The people on the sidewalks wear gray business suits and carry briefcases, their eyes focused forward, not even registering me as I slip into the stream of movement.  I head for a building made of pale yellow bricks, with a sign on its exterior reading TAYLOR’S COFFEE. 

The doorknob sticks, and I have to use both hands to wrench it open.  When I step inside, an old man with a flower in his coat pocket looks up and smiles at me from his table near the window.  I smile back.  Taylor’s is one of my favorite haunts.  Colorful artwork, made by the students of one of Reading’s elementary schools, hangs from the walls, and board games bulge from a bookshelf in the corner.  The scent of coffee is so strong it feels like you’re drinking it just by breathing.  Taylor roasts the beans in a secret room in the back, hidden by a sliding wooden panel in the wall.  (Apparently, this building was constructed during World War II, and the owner wanted a place to hide away in case the Nazis invaded.)  Taylor showed me the secret room once.  There was a round metal machine, like a cauldron, with a turbine inside for slugging the beans round and round.  Piled against the wall, burlap sacks of brown beans overflowed.