Freefly

by Michele Tallarita

  Trying hard to breathe even, I climb up his stoop and jam the key into the door. It whines as I open it. Inside, a ragged carpet sits beneath a stained couch, while a television blares The Simpsons. I hover across the room to avoid making any noise, making my way toward a dimly lit kitchen.

  Ronnie slouches at the table, his back to me, jabbing his spoon into a bowl of cereal. The kitchen is nasty. Green grime covers the sink, and the garbage bin overflows. The smell of rotting food wafts from the dirt-covered refrigerator. Ronnie chews loudly, not aware of me, his mousy brown hair shiny with grease. I have no weapon, no gun or knife. At the Tower, I’ve been trained to kill with my hands. The boss likes it better this way. No murder weapon.

  A floorboard behind me creaks, and I whip around, expecting to see one of Ronnie’s pals coming at me with a knife. But there’s no one. Bam! Something slams into the side of my face. I fly into a wall and slide to the floor, drenched in something wet. Milk and cereal. Ronnie stands above me, clutching the empty bowl over my head.

  He snarls, though his skinny arms shake as he raises the bowl higher. “What do you want?”

  I clutch the side of my face, which aches to the touch. I wonder if he’s broken the bones in my cheek. I should have seen that coming.

  Ronnie lunges toward me, the bowl aimed at my head. I roll out of the way, then shoot into the air and kick him in the chin. He slams into the wall. I swoop toward him and smash him with my fists, and he sinks to the floor. I land on top of him and kneel on his arms. He struggles beneath me, thrashing around, but I’ve got him pinned. I put my hands around neck. His eyes widen.

  “Please, don’t kill me,” he hisses.

  I breathe hard. My fingers tremble. I know what I’ve got to do, if I don’t want to get sent back to the white place.

  “Please,” he hisses again.

  I fling myself off of him and curl into a ball near the ceiling. Gasping, Ronnie sits up and bolts into the other room.

  I press my face into my knees. This is the end. I’ve...I’ve—

  “Failed.”

  I whip my head up. Lederman marches into the room, a cruel glint in his eye. Behind him, several men trail. Each of them packs a gun. I launch toward the screened back door and am about to blow straight through it when a man steps into the frame. I scream.

  It’s the boss.

  He whacks open the door and grabs hold of me, wrenching me to the ground. I get one look at his face—a square jaw, wrinkles around his mouth and eyes, gray hair trimmed to a buzz—before someone puts a bag over my head.

  Damien

  I wake because the delicate feet of a butterfly alight on my arm, its black and orange wings lit from behind by sunlight. I remain as still as I can, fascinated by the butterfly’s wiry black body and long antennas. I turn to show Sammie, and that’s when I realize she’s gone. I sigh. The butterfly jerks into the air and flies out the window.

  I climb into the shower and let the water run cool. I think about Sammie’s face last night, the way it was filled with fear as she told me she didn’t know when she’d be back. What will she be doing between now and the next time she soars through my window? Will she return with bruises, or broken bones, or a cut across her neck? I dump shampoo into my hair. Something in my bones—something deep and urgent—tells me she is simply not coming back. I scrub my scalp and try to ignore this feeling.

  School is fairly typical. There is a physics exam during second block, and my blood runs hot as I swirl the (certainly correct) answers into the sheet of blank bubbles. In the afternoon, as I walk to fourth block, two of the Leslies pin me to a wall while Joe Butt punches me in the gut. I’m beginning to wish I had the ability to vomit on command.

  That night, Sammie does not return. I sit at my desk, examining my laminated sheet of practice questions for my GLOBE interview, telling myself this is completely normal. She doesn’t come by every night, after all. Just most nights. I’m sure she’s fine. (Except I’m not.)

  The next few days are an exercise in torture. Each night, I sit at my desk, paging through my science textbooks, but glancing out the window three times a minute. My mind floods with horrendous scenarios of what has happened to her. Is she lying facedown in an alleyway somewhere? Has she been captured by someone awful? Is she cold, or hungry, or thirsty, or hurt? All of these questions have run through my mind every day since I first met Sammie, but now, with her missing, I am consumed by them. I can’t get through my study materials, because I cannot concentrate. I tighten my belt an extra loop, because I cannot eat. My face hits the desk during microbiology, because I cannot sleep. If Sammie does not return soon, it’s possible that my body will simply resign.

  The only thing that holds my attention is my GLOBE interview, closer with each excruciating day. Though illogical, I seem to have concluded that if I can just conduct the interview excellently—prove to the GLOBE people that I am worthy of admission—Sammie will come back. Again, I acknowledge that this lacks logic. But something inside me questions if Sammie left because I wasn’t good enough, because I’m a loser with no friends who gets beat up. And if I can only prove myself worthy, prove I can be somebody, she’ll come dropping onto my carpet. So instead of reading the words on the page of my microbiology textbook, I imagine answering interview questions. I picture myself in a crisp white shirt, sitting up straight, speaking confidently and intelligently.

  The morning of the interview, my eyes are already open as the sun peeks over the horizon. I have been awake all night, kept alert by the anxiety streaming through my veins, both about the interview and Sammie. The two stressors seem to have meshed into one solid ball of panic, pulsing in the center of my chest. I sit up and stretch my arms over my head. I cannot stay in bed another second.

  I pull on a pair of jogging shorts and slip into my sneakers. Silently, I tiptoe down the stairs. Seated at the table, my parents sip mugs of coffee and do crossword puzzles.

  “Going for a run,” I cough, before slipping out the front door.

  The morning is cool. The sun has barely risen, casting orange light against the fronts of houses and long shadows in the streets. I set off at a brisk pace, working out the tension in my legs as my feet slap the pavement. I breathe deeply and regularly. Dad ran cross country in college, and the running gene seems to have passed to me. I run almost effortlessly, the discomfort confined to a slight burning in my lungs, easy to push through. I shut my eyes and sniff at the dewy grass. I open them and gaze at the reddening sky.

  By the time I return to the front porch, my chest feels easy, my muscles loose. I enter the house and smell something sweet.

  “Waffles, Damien?” Mom pops her head out of the kitchen.

  I nod.

  Mom and Dad are happier than ever during breakfast, wishing me “a whole lot of luck" on my interview later. They’re good parents, really. They’ve never pushed me to excel in my classes, or to do sports (obviously), or to go out with people. They’ll be happy whether I get into GLOBE or not, and would probably be thrilled if I decided to pursue garbage-man-hood. The desire to be great, to make something of myself, comes entirely from me. It began far before I met Sammie, but has been exacerbated by her entrance into my life.

  The day slugs by. Perhaps because I am not as prepared as usual for my classes, they drag on, as my teachers spout facts and formulas I will have to memorize later. At fourth block, I set my pink excusal slip on my teacher’s desk and hurry out the door.

  I go to the bathroom and change into a dress shirt, black pants, shiny shoes, and a tie, then head down the hallway toward the parking lot. I am crossing the C- and D-wing intersection when I hear a loud voice.

  “Looking fancy, Savage! Where you going?” cries Joe Butt, swaggering toward me with a hall pass in his hand. He wears a red shirt that makes his hair look orange and his face even pinker.

  I turn and bolt, flying down the hall like a grizzly bear is chasing me. I glance back and see that this is almost true: Butt barrels after me, his big muscles pu
mping at his sides. I thwack open a side door and sprint across the lawn toward the parking lot. Still, Butt hurls himself after me, grunting and screaming.

  “Get back here, Savage! I just want to admire your pretty outfit!”

  I hit the pavement at a good clip. My sneakers smack the ground, and the sun burns brightly. I take another glance backwards. Butt is still chasing me, but I’m losing him. Another fifty feet and I will leap into my car, slam the door shut, and lock it. I may not be stronger than Butt, but I am faster.

  My foot catches on some broken pavement and I soar through the air. I land on my stomach and slide across the cement. I not only hear the fabric of my shirt rip, but feel the skin of my stomach scrape against the rock. I skid to a stop, then lie still with my cheek against the pavement.

  “I didn’t even have to do anything,” Joe Butt says as he kicks me in the side. “But I can’t help myself.”

  His laughter echoes in my ears as he walks away. I shut my eyes and clench my fists. My stomach burns, from my slide against the pavement, and aches, from Joe Butt’s kick. I pull myself into a sitting position. Tar blackens the entire front of my white shirt, which is ripped at the bottom, and some of the buttons have popped off. My bare stomach bleeds in places. I open my palms. They, too, are ripped and bleeding, embedded with tiny rocks. I scream. Why can’t that guy just leave me alone? Especially today, the day of my interview, when I just wanted to look good.

  I climb to my feet. According to my watch, I have one hour until my interview. The location, a test prep center two towns down the highway, is 45 minutes away. I calculate how long it will take me to get home, clean my wounds, change my clothes, and drive to the test center. If I do this, I will be 10 minutes late. What is worse: being late, or looking like you’ve been hit by a car? I can’t say.

  I get into my car and grip the steering wheel, causing my hands to burn as the gashes meet the leather. The car is hot from the sun beating down. In the rearview mirror, I see that sweat shines on my forehead. I jerk the engine to life. I have to go the interview without getting cleaned up. If I’m late, they might not even see me. I can explain away looking like I do, but I can’t explain anything if they won’t even see me.

  If Joe Butt winds up ruining this for me, I may have to hire someone to murder him.

  I speed down the highway with the windows cracked open, letting the air roar in my ears. In my head, I try to recapture my perfect interview scenario: me, looking confident, speaking intelligently about the rings of Saturn. The interviewer nods and smiles. He scribbles on a notepad. He likes me and wants to admit me to GLOBE. He overlooks the fact that my shirt is torn and my stomach is bleeding. He thinks, This kid’s so darned smart we’ve got to take him, bleeding or not.

  I pull up to the test prep center ten minutes early. I look in the rearview mirror and run my fingers through my hair, scolding myself for not getting it cut. I look like a porcupine. And I’m bleeding. And I’m never going to be admitted to GLOBE and Sammie is never going to come back and I’m going to be stuck in Boorsville my whole life, with my parents, getting beat up by Joe Butt until I’m 85 and croak.

  I have to get a hold of myself.

  I get out of the car and walk across the parking lot to the front doors. The building is very bland: flat and rectangular, brown in color. I push through the glass doors into a blast of air conditioning, and find a lobby with lots of people sitting in cushioned chairs, while a receptionist behind a window types at a computer. I walk toward her. A few of the people look up and stare at me, eyeing my bloodied body, but I focus on keeping my back straight and my chin held high. Confident. Intelligent. I must be these things.

  “Name?” says the receptionist as I stop in front of the glass. She doesn’t look up from her computer screen.

  “Damien Savage.”

  She looks up. Her eyes narrow on my face, and her lips press into a tight line. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she disliked me. But that’s impossible, right? She doesn’t even know me.

  “Take a seat,” she chirps, turning back to her computer. “Someone will be with you shortly.”

  I walk to one of the seats and slump down, stretching my hands over my knees. The room is completely silent, except for the sound of a pencil scratching paper. I look around. A girl in the corner scrawls into a spiral-bound notebook, a textbook propped open on her knee. She wears a black skirt, a collared shirt, and a dangling golden necklace. I wonder if she is also here for a GLOBE interview. I wish I looked nearly as composed.

  A man pops his head out of a door. “Is there a Damien Savage here?”

  I leap to my feet. “Present.”

  The man signals for me to follow him, and I do, cursing myself for saying “present.” (What is this, third grade attendance?) The man leads me through a room full of cubicles, where students sit with their heads bowed, clutching their number-two pencils. People take the SATs here. I did, too, last year. (Of course, I prepared for roughly two months and scored very high.)

  I follow the man into a small office, which has no windows, lit only by the fluorescent lights humming overhead. The man sits behind a desk cluttered with papers and ringed with coffee stains. He’s older, with gray hair receding very far, combed slick on the top and sides. He has saggy jowls and a deeply lined forehead. His eyes are steely gray, matching his hair, but his face crinkles into a wide, somewhat eerie smile.

  “How are you, my boy?” he says. “Finishing up your junior year, righty right? At Boorsville High?”

  I smile weakly, perched on the end of my chair. There is something creepy about the man. He is a little too friendly, almost like his receptionist was a little too unfriendly. “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you like it there? Play any sports?”

  “Uh, no, sir.”

  “Silly me, I forgot to introduce myself. I’m Michael Thorne, admissions officer at GLOBE.”

  He sticks out his hand. I shake it, and he squeezes my hand so hard my knuckles crack.

  “Ow,” I say.

  “What’s that?”

  I shake my head and pull my hand away.

  “So, Damien.” He shuffles through some papers in a manila folder. “Quite the record you’ve got here. Ten AP courses, nearly perfect SAT scores, a finalist in last year’s state science fair. I’d say you’re a pretty high achiever, yes?”

  “I guess.”

  “What drives you? What’s the fire behind your dynamite?”

  I twiddle my thumbs in my lap. The fire behind my dynamite? This is not at all what I expected. I expected a clean, brightly lit room, a serious scientist in a leather chair, and questions a little more sophisticated than, “What’s the fire behind your dynamite?” But if this creepily friendly man is the face of GLOBE, I have to do everything I can to impress him.

  “I want to be somebody,” I say. “Somebody great.”

  “A scientist?” says the man, his eyes growing bright.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Someone who pushes the limits of what humankind knows?”

  Now, this is more like it. “Yes.”

  “Someone who gets their name in the history books?”

  “Yes. I want to work on space shuttles, travel to labs all over the world, make changes.”

  “Changes?”

  The man pulls open one of the drawers of his desk, takes out a large sheet of white paper, and sets it before me. I lean forward in my chair, clutching my knees, wondering if this is going to be some kind of test. Excellent. I love tests.

  The man looks up at me, his face frozen in his wide smile. “Like changing what it means to be human? Discovering that within each human mind, there is the ability to do extraordinary things?”

  I tilt my head. “What do you mean?”

  “Supernatural abilities, Damien. Telekinetic abilities. I’m talking about the ability to move things with your mind, to read thoughts.” He leans toward me. “To fly.”

  He flips over the white sheet of paper, which turns out to be a p
hotograph. The glossy ink colors the face of...a girl with blond hair, blue eyes, and a bored, blank expression. It’s...Sammie. Several years younger, but there’s no doubt it’s her.

  I look up at the man, who studies me carefully, his face plastered into a grin. I struggle to keep my expression neutral, not wanting to reveal that I recognize the girl (or that I love her). Why does he have her photo? Why is he showing it to me, at what is supposed to be my GLOBE interview? Is he responsible for her disappearance?

  “What is this about?” I murmur.

  “Whatever you want it to be about, my boy. It can be about you telling me where she is, and me pulling some strings to get you into GLOBE.” He drums his fingers along the edge of the photograph. “Or it can be about me putting it on your record that you cheated on your SATs and keeping you from getting into any college or university, ever.”

  My mouth drops open. “You can’t do that.”

  “Power, my boy. I have it.” He smiles. “You don’t.”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  “I think you do.”

  “I don’t.” It’s half true. Though I know who Sammie is, I couldn’t tell this guy her whereabouts even if I wanted to. Her secrecy has made me ignorant.

  The man studies me some more, and his grin straightens into a frown. He senses that I am telling the truth. “But you know who she is.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Then why was this in your bedroom?” He reaches into another drawer and pulls out a long, metal arrow with red feathers: the arrow I pulled from Sammie’s leg one year ago. I had hidden it in my bedroom closet. The fact that he has it means my room has been searched.

  “What is this?” I rise from my chair and back away. When I turn to the door, I see that it is closed. A window in the door reveals a man standing outside, his back turned. This whole thing is a setup. I have been lured here, so this person, this Michael Thorne, can glean information about Sammie. I turn back to Thorne, who has set the arrow beside the photograph of Sammie and chews on the end of a licorice stick.