Freefly

by Michele Tallarita

  “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 berserk. 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’v
e 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.

  I walk past several small tables, manned with people pecking at their laptops, to the long black counter. Taylor is washing mugs at the sink. He has brown hair, spiked up in the front, and glasses with square rims. He yanks off the tap and shakes out his hands, dripping water onto the floor.

  “Hey, Taylor,” I say.

  He whirls around, a grin on his face. “Where ya been, Sammie? I missed you yesterday.”

  I shrug. I’d been in New York City yesterday morning, dropping off a brown package of God-knows-what at a law office. “Around.”

  He shrugs back. He’s about 30, I would guess, and every other morning his wife accompanies him behind the counter. Taylor was one of the first people I ever had a normal conversation with, after the train wreck of my childhood. I shudder. No need to dwell on that.

  “The usual?” he says.

  I nod.

  He swings around and thrusts a cardboard cup beneath the big coffee jug, then flicks up the nozzle to let the brown liquid pour. I reach into my pocket and pull out a crumpled ball of cash, which I set on the counter. Taylor clacks the steaming cup down in front of me, and I grab it and head for a round table in the back.

  “Change, Sammie!” Taylor calls.

  “Keep it.”

  After stirring two cylinders of cream and three packets of sugar into my coffee, I sit at the table and sip. It’s a half-hour to eight. Yellow school buses rumble past the window, packed with children. My breath moves easily in and out of my chest. This is the easy part of the day. The hard part, the Code Black, comes later.

  A man with a baseball cap shielding his eyes pauses in front of the window. The visor of his cap swings back and forth as he scans the coffeeshop, and I lift my hand. The man wrenches open the door and walks inside, his long coat dragging on the floor.

  He pulls out the chair across from me and sits down. His black eyes narrow on me, stubble spiking out of his chin. “Did you deliver it?”

  I nod. “It’s a thousand extra, because I had to knock out the security guard on the first floor.”

  “Extra? No way.”

  “That’s the policy. Your guy was supposed to leave the window open so I didn’t have to go past the security desk. He didn’t. You pay extra.”

  He blows air out his nose. “Ridiculous.”

  “Not my rules.”

  He sighs and digs through the pocket of his coat. A trio of ladies in business suits enters the coffeeshop, conversing loudly. Behind them, a man in a black suit, with sunglasses over his eyes, slinks through the door. I stiffen. There is something about his face that I recognize. The jut of his chin, the small scar slicing through his left eyebrow—they bring me back to a place with white walls, white floors, and bright fluorescent lights. A dreaded place, the backdrop of my childhood. The man cuts toward the counter, though his sunglasses remain on me the entire time.

  I jump out of the chair. It scrapes across the floor and bashes into the wall.

  “What the heck?” says the guy in the baseball cap.

  “I have to go.”

  I bolt out of Taylor’s without the money, leaving the door flapping open behind me. I smash into someone as I burst into the sidewalk traffic and send her suitcase flying onto the cement. The person screams at me, but I’ve already exploded to the right. I fly down the sidewalk (not literally), darting between all of the people, my heartbeat booming in my ears. After I sprint across a street and nearly get nailed by the bumper of a car, I glance backwards. The man with the sunglasses speeds after me, pushing people out of the way to get through. He’s much faster than I am and is closing the distance between us quickly.

  I let out a little cry, then try to force myself faster—but it’s no use. Fear and adrenaline already flame through my muscles, powering them as fast as they can go. If I continue the way I am, the man will soon be close enough to grab me from behind.

  I lurch down a side street, where two women with baby carriages stroll. Aside from them, the street is empty. This will have to be good enough. I take one more gigantic step and launch into the air. The women screech, but eventually their voices are lost to the roaring of the wind.

  As I approach the clouds, I stop rising and hover, pulling myself into a sitting position. My hands tremble. Someone from my past has found me. There aren’t a whole lot of worse things that can happen.

  I rub my hands up and down my arms and try to focus on what to do. The right thing would be to fly straight back to the Tower, tell the boss what’s happened, and hide out there until he tells me to do otherwise. Surrounded by the Tower's many armed inhabitants, there’s no way they'd be able to reach me. But I also know that if I tell the boss they’ve found me, I won’t be allowed to leave the Tower, and I don’t know for how long. All my hard-earned freedom: gone. Plus, I need to warn Damien. If the people from my past found me at Taylor’s, odds are they know other places I go. Like Damien’s house. What if somebody hurts him, or kidnaps him, or...something even worse? They already know I hang around Boorsville—that’s where they shot me with the arrow last year.

  I’m going to go on with my day as planned, then hurry back to Damien’s hous
e to warn him. After that, I’m never going to go back to his house again. I’ve already put him in too much danger.

  I glance at my wrist and point myself toward Philly, then rocket forward. Flat, wispy clouds have formed, and I veer around them, occasionally feeling the moist tickle of one grazing my arm. There’s a plane nearby—droning from somewhere behind me—but it’s far enough away that I’m not worried. I focus on the task at hand: the Code Black.

  I squeeze my eyes shut and try to ignore the fact that a cold lump has solidified in my gut. I can’t kill anybody, let alone Ronnie, a real skeeze but not a totally bad guy. That’s my problem, the boss says. That’s the reason he threatens to send me back where he found me.

  Today is a test, and I know it. The boss tested me last year with a Code Black, too, and I failed big time. Jiminy had to plead with him not send me back to the white place, telling him I would get the hang of it, I just wasn’t ready yet. But the boss was no nonsense. When someone wasn’t doing what they were supposed to do, he got rid of them.

  Because Jiminy was one of the few people the boss listened to, I got spared, got to have another year doing delivery work and collecting money. But doing deliveries isn’t the reason the boss has a flying girl on staff. He wants me there so I can get through a window and put a knife in someone’s back without leaving a footprint. Toss a bomb at a plane and see it spiral toward the sea. Drop chemicals over a campaign event and watch the candidate choke, without radar ever picking up someone hovering overhead.

  The skyscrapers of Philadelphia tower below, clustered like a team of giants. I skim around one and slowly sink, landing in an alleyway. I cut into the sidewalk traffic and walk with the crowd, down a street lined with small restaurants, a grocery, and a laundromat. The sun burns brightly in a sky almost perfectly blue, except for some puffy clouds the shape of lambs. I am about to murder someone.

  Ronnie’s apartment slumps ahead, a rundown place with the shutters slanting off. I stop in front of it, gazing at the second-story windows, which gape open. I don’t need to fly to get in, though. I snatched a key off his desk last time I was here.