by David Estes
Chapter Six: Kids with powers should stick together
Jimmy was hungry. He was hungry a lot. There never seemed to be enough food in the house. But he didn’t mind being hungry. He did mind being alone. He had no brothers or sisters. He had a mom, but not a dad. He thought it was weird not to have a dad, but had given up on asking his mom about it because he always got the same answer: “I don’t know what to tell you, Jimmy. You just don’t have a dad,” his mom would always say.
Jimmy was looking out his window at a boy on the street.
Whizzzz! Shoop!
Jimmy’s eyes followed the ball.
Whizzzz! Shoop!
The boy looked happy. Really happy. His dad threw the ball back to him.
Whizzzz!
The boy caught it in the pouch of his leather mitt.
Shoop!
Jimmy didn’t have a baseball glove. He didn’t have a dad either. Sometimes he wished he did. Someone he could talk to, confide in. He couldn’t talk to his mom, not really. If he could, he would’ve told her his secret.
Turning away from the window, Jimmy used one hand to press a button on the remote control and the TV flicked on. Some stupid soap opera. He pressed another button. Just the six o’clock news, boring. He changed the channel one more time. Another news program. But this one was different. Jimmy watched it from time to time because it had a segment called “UFOs around the globe.” The show was all about possible alien sightings in the form of Unidentified Flying Objects, or UFOs for short. The UFO segment was just coming on.
The first UFO that was caught on camera looked more like a Frisbee than an alien spacecraft. It was probably a fake. When Jimmy saw the second photo they showed, his eyes widened, and he leaned forward toward the TV. The photo had been sent in by a farmer in a small, rural town called Cragglyville. Despite the picture being taken from far away, there was no mistaking the image: a girl, young, probably no more than ten-years-old, flying high above the earth. The image was too distant to distinguish any of her features, like hair or eye color. But he had a way.
Jimmy slipped on a pair of his boots, the yellow ones that showed the top half of a boy in one spot and the bottom half of the same boy in a different spot. He liked to call them his half-here/half-there boots. He would find out who the girl was and whether she really had powers. If she did, he would go and talk to her, become her friend. After all, kids with powers should stick together.