I helped her back onto the bed, and this time she lay back, folding her arms onto her chest. She shivered. I ran out to the linen closet, grabbed the blanket with puppies on it (my mother’s), and draped it over her. After giving me one last look—with something like suspicion in her eyes—she succumbed to whatever poison was in her system and drifted off to sleep.
I exhaled. The girl’s sneakers stuck out from the bottom of the blanket, but I decided not to try to remove them. I glanced at the digital clock. 4 p.m. Mom and Dad would be home soon.
After quietly clicking shut the bedroom door, I barreled down the stairs. Blood drizzled down the entire hallway leading to the kitchen. I wondered, again, if the flying girl was going to die. I hoped not. I liked her. Already.
A towel hung from the handle of the oven door, and I snatched it and ran it under the tap. Then I got down on my hands and knees and scrubbed up all the blood in the hallway, darting back to the sink every so often to squeeze the towel clean beneath the running water. When I got to the large red pool in the kitchen, I grabbed a roll of paper towels and ripped off about half a tree’s worth, then scrubbed up the blood for a good ten minutes. Finally, I stood in the center of the kitchen, eyeing every surface, ensuring that no trace of blood remained.
Then I remembered that the outside of my house looked like a crime scene.
I got the hose and washed down the sidewalks and the porch. Then I realized that blood reddened the knee of my jeans, and crept back into my room to pull another pair from my drawers. The girl was sleeping, her head cast sideways, her legs curled into her chest. I went into the bathroom and got changed. I went back downstairs and grabbed my first aid supplies, replacing them in the bathroom cabinet. Finally, I stood in the kitchen once more, satisfied that I had fulfilled my promise to the girl to tell no one about what I had seen.
Throughout dinner, I said nothing, thinking about the sleeping person upstairs. Who was she? Who had shot her? How could she fly? My parents chatted about American Icon, arguing over who they thought would get voted out in that night’s episode. When I was distant and unresponsive, it was nothing unusual.
I returned to my room to find the girl still sleeping. I had half expected her to have vanished, the whole thing a dream. I checked the bandage on her leg, lifting the blanket carefully, so as not to wake her. The blood was not seeping through. I had done a good job.
I sat down at my desk and dug into my homework. The downside of spending the afternoon tending to the arrow-wound of a mysterious flying girl was that I was severely behind. I clicked on my reading lamp and flipped open my biology textbook.
When she still hadn’t awakened by 12:30 am, when I finished, I pulled my Phillies blanket out of the linen closet and spread it out on the floor. I lay down and fell into a deep sleep.
The next morning, the buzzing of my alarm clock jolted me awake, and I was quickly confused at being on the floor. Then I remembered the girl, and the arrow wound, and the girl being in my bed. I had a small heart attack and leaped to my feet. The bed was empty, the puppy blanket in a ball in the corner. I whirled around. The window was open, and the screen had been pulled out and set on the floor.
She’d left.
Filled, for some reason, with soul-devouring dread, I let out a long breath. Then I headed for the shower.
The whole day, I trudged to my classes in a stupor, half the time wondering if the girl had been a figment of my imagination and the other half wondering why she’d left without saying goodbye, or thank you, or my name is Claire. Thinking of her soaring into the sky above MacRearigan Road, it was extraordinarily difficult to concentrate on copying problems out of my calculus textbook. When Joe Butt tripped me in the hallway, I thought about how awesome it would be if, instead of slamming into a set of lockers, I had rocketed into the air and sent him screaming toward the parking lot.
By the time I got home, I was so depressed at the thought of never seeing the girl again that the sight of her sitting at my desk almost made me choke.
“You!” I cried.
She spun around and grinned. She wore a black leather jacket and jeans, and seemed to have been flipping through the book of colorful star maps I’d left on my desk.
“Are all high-schoolers interested in constellations?” she said, her fingers on a glossy page of my book. She was much more beautiful than I remembered.
I struggled to rediscover my vocal chords. “Where—where did you go?”
She crossed her arms and leaned away from me. “None of your business.”
My eyes widened. “I’m really confused.”
“Is it the flying?”
“Yeah. That.”
“You get used to it. But I want to know about you. Are you personally interested in constellations, or is it, like, some kind of fad right now? Do all teenagers have astronomy as a hobby?”
I stared at her. She could fly, and she wanted to know about my dorky astronomy book? “Uh, well, I don’t know. It’s not really a fad, I guess.”
“So it’s just you? Are you a nerd? A dork? Do you have friends?”
“No. Yes. Wait, we need to talk about some things here. Who are you?”
She stood from the desk and walked toward the window, sighing. A pair of sunglasses dangled from her belt loop, and a knapsack hung from one of her shoulders. Her walk consisted of long, loping steps, the sort of walk you would expect from a girl several inches taller.
“If you’re going to keep asking questions, I’m going to have to leave,” she said.
I took a step toward her. “Wait!”
She whirled to face me, fists raised. “Woah, back off, buddy!”
I froze, putting up my hands. “I’m not trying to be offensive.”
“Then stop asking questions!”
“I’m sorry.” I scratched my head. “It’s just you, and the flying, and the arrow.”
She edged closer to the window.
“Wait! Okay, if you can’t tell me anything about those things, can you at least tell me your name?”
She stopped moving and studied me. With the light from the window forming a halo around her, she could easily have passed for some sort of heaven-dweller. But her face was suspicious. A suspicious angel? It didn’t make sense. I noticed that she stood with most of her weight tilted onto her right leg. The left leg, with the arrow wound, must have been hurting her.
“Let me look at the bandages,” I said.
She jolted from her thoughts. “What?”
“The bandages on your leg. I’ll change them.”
The girl studied me some more. Without saying anything, she walked to the bed and sat down.
I ran into the bathroom and grabbed the roll of bandages, the box of rubbing alcohol, and the tape, then slowed down and tried to look as unassuming as possible as I returned to the bedroom. The girl’s hands were in her lap, and her eyes were on the floor. She did not move as I knelt in front of her and moved my hands toward her pant leg. When she remained still, I carefully rolled up the fabric.
A red spot darkened the white bandage on the inside of the girl’s calf. I put my fingers under the edge of the bandage and ripped it free, then carefully unwound it. The leg did not look good. The puncture itself was deep black, surrounded by a shiny, swollen ring of purple skin. I couldn’t help but gasp.
The girl lifted her face toward the ceiling. “Is it bad?”
“No.”
Her body sank slightly as she sighed in relief. “Good. Because I’ve been feeling kinda funky.”
“How so?”
“Dizzy. And heavy, too.”
“Heavy?”
“Yeah, my limbs feel heavy.”
“Was it harder to fly?”
She nodded solemnly.
“The arrow was supposed to keep you from flying,” I said.
She met my eyes. “I guess.”
There was a moment of silence between us, while I battled the urge to ask her if she knew anyone off the top of her head who might want to s
hoot her. The only sounds were her long, even breaths, carefully controlled, as if she was trying very hard not to suffocate.
“My name is Sammie,” she said. Her blue eyes were wide, her brows raised, like she was very afraid.
I held out my hand. “Damien.”
Slowly, like she feared my outstretched arm could explode at any moment, she closed her fingers around my hand. Her skin was cold and clammy. I squeezed her hand in return, conscious of the fact that my palm and fingers must have seemed large and warm to her.
She snatched her hand away. I cleared my throat.
“I should clean out the wound again.” I ripped open a packet of rubbing alcohol.
“God, not that again.”
“Infection bad.”
She set her jaw and closed her eyes.
I cleaned the injury, then unraveled another length of bandage and wound it around her calf, securing it with more tape.
“Good to go,” I said.
The girl—Sammie—yanked down her pant leg. Then, to my shock, she lay back on the bed, as if she was going to go to sleep.
“Mind if I, like, hang out here?” she said.
“No!” I blurted. “I mean, uh, that would be cool.”
She laughed, then tossed her body to the side and shut her eyes. I rose from the ground, thinking she’d gone to sleep, but she said, “Do you have homework?”
I chuckled. I hadn’t even thought of my heavy backpack sitting near the door, crammed with my biology, microbiology, and calculus textbooks. “You'd better believe it.”
The girl sat up, hugging her knees to her chest. “Are you a good student? Or are you a slacker? I imagine you being a good student.”
“I’m a good student.”
She grinned. “Knew it. Let me guess, you’re one of those do-it-all guys: smart, athletic, popular. I bet you have a girlfriend. Do you have a girlfriend?”
I coughed. “No.”
“Tell me about high school. Is it like the movies? Is it really awful? Or is it wonderful? I imagine it being wonderful.”
I shook my head, baffled by the girl’s excitement. She could fly through the air, and she wanted to hear about the place I got beat up each day? “It’s not that wonderful.”
Her face fell. “Oh.”
I realized this girl needed me to lie. “Actually, it’s awesome.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I’m, uh, a baseball player.”
“Cool! What’s that like? Do you get a lot of hits? Are you a pitcher? Or a...first baseman?”
“Short stop.” Back when I was five.
“What’s that?”
“Uh, it’s like halfway between second and third. Do you want anything? Food? Water?”
“Is that a good position? Did you have to beat out a lot of other guys for it?”
I pressed my fingers to my temples. “For someone who won’t answer any questions, you sure ask a lot.”
She looked mortified. “Do most teenagers not ask a lot of questions? Should I be more...statementy?”
I laughed, realizing I might have finally met someone with less social experience than myself. I wondered what on Earth she did, if she didn’t go to high school.
“You’re fine,” I said.
“Okay, good. Because there’s a lot of stuff I want to know.”
She grilled me for hours, gobbling up every detail of my life, down to what cafeteria pizza tasted like. I did my best to answer her, but found myself lying more often than not. What was I supposed to do? She was so excited, and I didn’t want to dampen her enthusiasm by telling her I would give anything to get out of my high school and go somewhere else, somewhere like GLOBE, where being dorky and unathletic would be the norm and not the exception. Plus, if she found out I was a social outcast, the butt of Joe Butt’s antics, she’d stop looking at me with admiration and start pitying me. Perhaps she’d even leave, which I didn’t want to happen.
At ten o’clock, when my eyelids started to feel heavy, I told her I absolutely had to do some homework before the night was out. Already, I would be so behind for the next day. She enthusiastically declared that she didn’t want to interfere with my success, and then, without a word, rolled over and went to sleep.
Thus began a precedent. Sammie flew through my window almost every night, usually sometime after ten o’clock. (She said she wanted to give me enough time to study.) Always, she had question after question for me: about my parents (who weren’t allowed to know about her), my friends (who suddenly existed), the baseball team (hah), college plans, GLOBE, astronomy, lunchboxes, meat loaf, learning how to drive, just about anything you can think of. It was like she had zero real-world experience, like the only time she came down from the sky was when she was standing on my carpet. I lied to her because she looked at me like I was really something, and I didn’t want that to go away. I lied to her because it felt good to pretend to be someone who deserved her.
Sammie was sensitive. She acted tough, but when I flipped on the television to catch the news before bed, she turned away and sometimes hummed to herself, to block out the hard voice of the newscaster. She loved to be told stories, especially if they involved my baseball victories or stuff from my childhood, like family vacations at the beach. She loved to hear about Mom making me smoosh sunscreen into my skin every hour-and-a-half, about peanut butter sandwiches wrapped in tin foil, about Dad teaching me to lie flat on a boogie-board and let the waves sweep me to the shoreline. She laughed at everything: knock-knock jokes, riddles on popsicle sticks, kid shows on Toon Network. She loved junk food. Every night, her knapsack bulged with processed calories, from Twinkies to beef jerky, all of which she wolfed down as quickly as possible, as if it was oxygen and she was suffocating. She cared very much about my success. She wanted me to get into GLOBE as much as I did, and it felt amazing to have her cheering me on. Plus, if I got in, I wouldn’t have to lie anymore about being someone great.
Aside from these things, I knew nothing about her. Unlike her, I wasn’t allowed to ask questions. This was torturous. Sometimes, I broke her rule and demanded to know where she had gotten some strange bruise, or begged her to tell me what it felt like to fly. When this happened, her whole body tensed, and her eyes grew dark and distant, like she was thinking about something awful that had happened to her. I always felt bad when these questions slipped out, but sometimes the frustration at knowing nothing was too overwhelming.
I was quite in love with her, you see. Can you really blame me? She was gorgeous and smart and funny, and she cared about me. She wanted to know about my life. It made as much sense as a person who could float.
Unfortunately, she was about as interested in that sort of relationship as a carnivore in spinach. “I don’t know that much,” she said, “but I know sometimes a guy and a girl will get all coupley if they spend a lot of time together. That can’t happen to us, okay? Not ever.”
It was that depressing.
She also hated to be touched, hated it like no one I’d ever seen. Once, we’d been watching a movie, and I grabbed her hand. She shot into the air and slammed against a wall. It was like she couldn’t handle the idea of someone physically trapping her, couldn’t see holding hands as anything less than an attempt to restrain her. I wondered what she had been through, to make her this way. It wasn’t like I could ask.
It’s been a year since I first saw Sammie limping along MacRearigan Road. In the yellow light of my bedside lamp, her eyelids droop as she sits with her legs crossed on my bed, her face in her hands. I can barely make out a thin, pink line across her neck, no longer crusted over with blood, but deep enough that I imagine it will scar. How did this happen? I wish, for the millionth time, that she would be open with me.
She scoots to the end of the bed and slides off, yawning. “We should go through your interview questions. One week till the big day.”
“Good idea.” My hand moves toward my drawer, to grab the laminated sheet of questions, but stops. “Sammie.”
; She tilts her head, eyeing me suspiciously, as if she already knows I am about to leap into forbidden territory. “What?”
“Please tell me what happened.”
“Just now? I got off the bed.”
“You know what I mean. You come in here with a cut across your neck, like someone tried to kill you, and you expect me to not ask questions?”
Her mouth goes hard. Perhaps unconsciously, she sidesteps toward the window, her arms folded over her chest. “I’m not talking about it. Period.”
I take a step toward her, one hand raised. “Sammie—
She rips into the air and flattens herself against the frame of the window, her sneakers hovering about a foot above my desk. “Don’t do that!”
I lower my hand. “I’m sorry.”
“Just stop, Damien.” She lowers herself onto the desk and presses her fingers to her temples. “Would it be so bad for us to just be what we are?”
I look at the ground. I hear her land lightly on the floor and walk to within a few feet of me. I lift my head. Her face has shifted entirely, from hardness to complete vulnerability. Her eyes are wide. Her lips tremble. Shocked, I almost rush forward to comfort her, but stop myself.
“What’s wrong?” I say.
She swallows. “Nothing.”
“Come on, Sammie."
“I—I need to tell you something.”
“What is it?”
She shuts her eyes, then opens them. “I just need you to know...that I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
“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.”
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