Flight

by Neil Hetzner

CHAPTER FOUR

  Betrayals

  Bissell School sophomore halfa-hunk and modestly talented soccer…hero, Jack Fflowers flung the FRZ-B past Prissi’s right shoulder toward Lake Wanapocamuc. From twenty meters below her, Nancy Sloan challenged, “No waya you can playa.”

  Prissi yelled back, “Oh, yaya?”

  Prissi dropped her right wing, threw her left leg over her right, and shoved her left wing forward and down. Her body pivoted around. She drew up her legs and pulled her wings tight to her body. She cannonballed until she was less than ten meters feet above the lake. When she executed a two-part wing flare, her silver and red feathers shimmered like the aurora borealis. Prissi dove down and caught the FRZ-B in her mouth when it was less than a meter above the glittering surface of the lake. She barked in delight as she skimmed just above the lake’s dimpled water. As the winger passed from water to land, she banked up, then, abruptly dropped her last rows of remiges down to brake. When she landed, the exuberant teener skidded on a small patch that remained of the previous night’s snow. As she snapped her body to keep her balance, something popped in her right shoulder. Despite the needle-sharp pain, Prissi forced herself to finish off the one hop landing. The hurting winger stopped just in front of the granite perches by the Bissell School boathouse where she, Jack and Nasty Nancy had been sitting nd talking until competitive juices and spring hormones had motivated them to play an under-manned version of 3D-FRZ-B.

  Prissi’s shoulder was on fire, but she didn’t say anything when Jack, with a flurry of bright white and Bissell blue feathers, muffed his own one-hopper and banged against the boat house. Nancy slowed so much on her landing attempt that she fell from the sky with the grace of a pregnant booby. Nancy was panting, and, as Prissi easily read from her cork-screwed eyebrows and radish-red face, not too happy that she hadn’t scored a single point. Since she still had the FRZ-B in her mouth, Prissi cocked her head like a cocker spaniel and, to break the tension, puppy moaned until her roomie laughed.

  “Bad puppy. Give me my FRZ-B.”

  Prissi backed up a step and growled.

  “Puppy!”

  Prissi extended her neck; Nasty Nancy took the disk, gave Prissi a pat, then, all three teenerz plopped onto their rough hewn perches. Hiding her eyes with her spineless hair, Prissi studied Jack and compared him to his cousin. Where Joe’s hair was blond and curly, Jack’s was caramel-colored, slightly wavy with a sheen that looked more greasy than healthy. Where Joe’s chest came before the rest of him like an ice breaker plowing the northern seas, it was Jack’s sleek otter head that arrived before his narrow chest and indifferently slumped shoulders. Where Joe’s eyes were bright blue, round and innocent, Jack’s were dark and lazy. Joe was mostly forthright; Jack seemed to prefer corners and alleys. All in all Prissi thought Joe was more attractive, but Jack was more DISTRACTIVE. Prissi shivered in delight…and guilt.

  After taking a long and purposefully loud slurp of his caffe-mucho and tapping out the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth on the table top, Jack Fflowers complimented Prissi on her catch.

  Prissi demurred, “It’s all in the wings. How much time do we have?”

  Nancy looked at her mypod, “About an hour.”

  Exchanging the girl-to-girl look, Prissi stated in the way generations of teener girls have, so that her statement sounded like a question, “We better go get cleaned up?”

  As the trio flew toward Jack’s dorm, they looked down at the temporary stage that had been set up for the dedication of the new science center. The light covering of snow, which blanketed the rest of the hilly Bissell campus, had been removed from in front of the stage with blowers. Sitting on brilliant spring green grass was a battalion of folding chairs and perches in close formation. From high above, Prissi could imagine an ancient army awaiting the clarions. Rising imposingly from behind the stage, just to the right of Grayswold Hall was that ancient science building’s replacement—the six-story, six-sided pink and gray granite Joshua F. Fflowers Scientatory. A half-dozen members of the Bissell grounds crew were fussing over barrels of brave school blue tulips looking forlorn against the snowy backdrop.

  As she passed over the stage, Prissi was more than a little surprised when she realized that the little man painfully mounting the temporary stairs and shuffling his way to the podium was Vartan Smarkzy. Prissi flew in a tight circle so that she could watch her mentor look out over the non-existent audience before taking a sheaf of papers from his pocket and sticking them on a shelf under the podium’s top.

  Prissi pounded her LTs and caught up with Nasty Nancy and Jack just as they dropped down and landed in front of the tower which jutted from the front of Hoch Hall.

  “Did you see who that was? Dr. Smarkzy. What’s Bissell doing letting my favorite Dutton teacher talk?”

  Jack grinned, “Our arch-rivalry is dead for a day. Except for FRZ-B. Smarkzy is giving the dedication. He and my grandfather went to school together. My grandfather told me Smarkzy did some real CE work back then.”

  Nancy gacked her patented cynical laugh, “What was cutting edge back then? Battery-operated flashlights? He creeps me. He’s like a crab, but with no shell.”

  Prissi fought the urge to argue with her roomie. Ever since coming back from Winter Break and finding Adam Lin no longer had an interest in her, Nancy had been putting on weight. With each kilogram of flesh gained, Nasty Nancy had become nastier—more sarcastic, more critical, more cynical. Given the way her friend was panting after a sortie that hadn’t changed Prissi’s breathing at all, the teener guessed that Nancy was only a few kilos away from having her wings clipped. For Prissi, that was a very scary thought. Even though Nasty Nancy Sloan did not love flying in the way that she herself did, Prissi knew that if her roomie were grounded, the results would be so ugly that their friendship, begun the first week of their lower mid year, would not survive.

  Prissi took a tai breath to calm herself down, but, it didn’t help much. She took another breath and held it even longer. Prissi told herself that she needed to stop being so judgmental, even though being judgmental was one of the Constitutionally-guaranteed rights and privileges of teener girls. She looked over at Nancy who was scowling and waiting for a comeback. Prissi clamped her jaws and smiled.

  To get away from feeling meek and indecisive, Prissi turned her attention from Nancy back to Jack. Even though Jack Fflowers had no VCB, he was not without a certain darkside-ish charm, and it was that which is what had gotten Prissi in her current mess.

  In the classroom , but, especially, on the playing field, Dutton and Bissell had been fierce, but friendly, rivals for more than two hundred years. On the ice, up and down the steep hills of cross country courses, on the links, in sculls, on football, baseball and soccer fields, thousands upon thousands of contests had been played out in hard fought and, often, close competition. Each fall, the schools alternated hosting an afternoon’s athletic contests, then a dinner, and, afterwards, a dance.

  The previous year, it had been Bissell’ turn to host the events. Prissi, the only lower mid on the varsity soccer team, first met Jack Fflowers when he complimented her play as she came off the field after an agonizing 3-2 Dutton loss. Later in the afternoon on that perfect October day, Prissi watched Jack play on the junior varsity soccer team in a game in which Jack had gotten two penalties as his team lost to Dutton 5-4. Prissi and Jack bumped into each other at the dinner and, again, at the dance. Giving into the teener version of the fates, the two new acquaintances talked a little and danced a lot before it was time for the Dutton students to return to their campus.

  The next time Prissi saw Jack Fflowers was in three months when he showed up at Dutton for January’s Winter Dance. Again, there was more dancing than talk. At the end of the night, there was something in the shadows outside Mullen Hall that made Prissi’s lips tingle for what seemed like a week. Afterward, they traded a half-dozen txts. By the time Bissell came to Dutton the following fall, Prissi’s friendship with Jack’s cousin, Joe Fflowers, had beg
un. Joe had been both surprised and unhappy when Prissi told him that she knew Jack. Joe made it very obvious that the two cousins did not get along. Against her better judgment, but enjoying the frizz it gave her, Prissi got together with Jack after their respective 3D FRZ-B contests. Both had given up soccer after having fledged over the summer. They met by the pond and talked a little before Prissi, to relieve the awkwardness she was feeling, challenged Jack to a flying contest. When Prissi easily won that contest, Jack stalked away angry. She saw him staring at her at the dance while she was dancing with Joe. The boys’ faces made plain their feelings, even though the band was too loud to hear what they said to one another.

  When Prissi was back in home in Manhattan over winter break, Jack had txtd her and apologized. A day later he called and she had agreed to meet him at the Diddy Center to ice skate. Since Prissi had grown up in Burundi, where the only ice skates to be found might be in a colonial-era museum, Jack easily outskated her before taking her to dinner at Nam’s, one of the most expensive restaurants in Manhattan. Back at school, they had txtd one another a couple of times a week, a practice Prissi had not quite gotten around to sharing with Joe.

  Despite their intersections and interactions, Prissi had been surprised when with only two days notice Jack had invited her to the ceremonies for the dedication of his grandfather’s gift to Bissell. She had hesitated to accept until she learned that Joe was not going to the ceremonies so that he could play his last hockey game for Dutton. After she had failed to tell Joe what she was going to do, Prissi had squirmed an invitation for Nasty Nancy to come along to ease her guilt.

  Prissi nodded her head back toward the new building as she asked Jack, “Does your grandfather like his legacy?”

  When Jack shook his head, waves of Peking duck-colored hair bounced attractively.

  “He hasn’t seen it much lately. He used to come up here a lot to check things out, and take me to dinner. But, not lately. He doesn’t get out much. He was supposed to be rejuved six months ago, but then there was an organ match problem. And then this thing,” Jack swept his arms toward the new building, “got delayed. He really wanted to be here, so he just decided to put things off until after the dedication. But as he waited, things got worse. After he finishes up here today, he goes right to the Juvenal Institute.”

  Nasty Nancy offered her caustic opinion, “I can’t see hurting my health so a bunch of bored kids can clap for me.”

  A furious Jack enunciated each word, “I don’t think he is here for the acclaim. He loves Bissell. He thinks that if it weren’t for the education he got here as a student, a scholarship student, none of the other things would have happened.”

  “Like becoming the richest man in the world.”

  Nasty Nancy’s tone caused both Prissi and Jack to step back from where they had been leaning against the black granite perches in front of Hoch Hall.

  “Need a breather, Nance,” said a mortified Prissi. Jack said nothing. He just flew away.