by Floating Boy
“You were at the birthday party,” I say. Let’s try small talk at fifty feet.
He nods. “Yeah, I don’t know. I was just hanging out—”
“Out?”
“Or around. Above.” He sighs like talking to me is hard work. And that’s fine. “And I saw it, the party, and it looked—I don’t know. I was bored, I guess. And I was really hungry.”
I say, “Hungry, yeah. You totally dominated the snack table, dude,” which comes out sounding all kinds of awkward.
“Yeah, I guess.” He sounds nervous. Maybe I’m the first girl he’s brought up here. Surely.
“Hey, that’s my house.” I chance freeing a finger from my death grip around his neck to point. The shingles are all mismatched, some of them overlapped backwards, to catch water instead of shedding it. Dad is a DIY kind of guy, as in Destroy It Yourself.
He tilts left and we do another log roll. He says sorry some more, then something under his breath about landings not being his thing.
I groan my this-sucks groan and close my eyes until we stop barrel-rolling twenty feet up, and we do stop with him and me vertical, like we’re standing in the air. It’s not like air brakes or anything, but somehow we start to slow. We don’t come to a complete stop, though. We drift.
“Do you have any rope in the garage?” he says.
Is that a joke? “How—?” I start but stop, not sure how to ask it all in one question. In answer he just looks out across the tops off all the houses, at the town.
“Looking for a trampoline?” I ask.
He laughs back.
“My little brother is just like you,” I say then.
He repositions us in the sky, and we spin again. Corkscrew this time, which is somehow easier to take. He says, “How is your little brother like me?”
“This.” I lean opposite our corkscrew turn, reversing our direction. “I found him up on the ceiling earlier and had to pull him off. And then, before I came out, I kinda tied him to the bed.”
“He—what?” The floating boy drops his flashlight. It lawn-darts on the neighbor’s front yard. “I don’t understand. What do you mean?” He’s sounded awkward all night, but now he sounds scared. I mean, even if he didn’t know exactly how to get me home, he at least acted like he did. Now he’s breathing fast, but more like he’s mostly breathing out, not in, and the wonderful and weird tire smell picks up again, and we’re sinking. Not too fast or dangerous. We’re going just the speed you’d have if you were falling through a pool of Jell-O.
I say, “Terry was floating. Like you. Do you know why?”
“Front yard or back?” he asks, almost too quickly, like he’s pretending he didn’t hear what I said.
“Front.” It’s the direction I’d come from if I’d just walked back from Liv’s. He overshoots and we come down in the middle of the street. I let go, stumble, and almost fall. I catch myself, but then grab his hand anyway. I pull him onto my neighbor’s lawn and grab his flashlight because, you know, he probably needs a flashlight more than anyone else in the world.
We walk back out into the street in front of my house. My porch light flares on. No worries because we can pretend he walked me home, all proper like.
He says, “Your brother? Like me?” His eyes sort of dart around, like they’re trapped in parentheses.
“Yeah. And I think it might be happening to my cousin, too. Or it was anyway, earlier.” When he doesn’t say anything I rush back in to add the painfully obvious, “It’s never happened in my family before, okay?”
I say it, but then I want those words back. I make it worse by adding, “It happens in yours though, right?” Such a stupid question. I cringe and squint because it’s out there between us and I can’t get it back.
He says, “I don’t—” and kind of looks around, then finishes with, “I don’t know.”
The air changes around us now that we’re on the ground. He says, “So your brother knows Mr. Barron?”
“Who? Look, I’ve got so many quest—” I start, but then my mom’s out on the lawn, taking all three medals in the Embarrassing Robe Competition. There should be a law against that, really.
“Mom,” I say.
Mom blinks, sneezes, coughs. It’s like watching a robot break down. She says, “Who’s this?” nodding to Floating Boy beside me. He’s a this apparently. I’m still holding his hand—holding him down—which is something I’m very aware of.
I could be a total smartass here, but I also could totally just panic and melt down. It feels like an either/or kind of situation here. I say, “Um, yeah, well, this is him,” without explaining who him is. Then I look at him and say, all dopey-like, “My name is Mary,” and I move our linked hands up and down because, you know, it’s like a handshake. Let’s see if the floaty genius can figure out I’m trying to give him an excuse to keep holding my hand in front of Mom.
“Hi, Mary,” he says, and yeah, I’m expecting him to say a name, his name hopefully, But instead he turns and says, “Hi, Mary’s Mom. Um, cool robe?” He waves to her and gives us no name back.
Mom breaks down coughing, then croaks, “I never called Liv’s mom. I will next time.” Her voice sounds awful, like plague awful. “Everyone’s sick. I’m sick. I’m going back to bed. You’re coming in right now, too.” She turns, her giant pile of guilt successfully dumped on me.
“Okay. Okay. Just saying good night to my friend, here,” I say, which is as lame as it sounds.
Mom doesn’t fire back at me. She’s halfway inside the front door when I say, at last: “Mom? Make sure Terry doesn’t go outside, okay? Because he kinda shouldn’t.”
She pauses in the doorway, doesn’t turn around, and then shuts the screen door. Maybe she didn’t hear me, or is too sick to put two and two together, or more likely she wants to spy on us from behind a curtain.
I turn back to Floating Boy, and he isn’t looking at me or my house. He’s looking off to the left.
There’s someone there on the sidewalk near my driveway, just a penalty kick away, standing like he’s been there all along. That someone walks onto my front lawn. At first I think it’s Dad, but Dad doesn’t wear suits, and if he did, they wouldn’t be brown and they wouldn’t have a vest, either, and they’d probably fit him right.
It’s the old guy from TV—the balloon man.
“Son,” he says across the sidewalk, “it’s time to come home.”
Floating Boy shakes his head no and his hand clamps tighter around mine. He’s afraid of this guy. I can see his chest moving now, with panic. Like he’s trying to get his lungs full enough, or like he’s trying to inflate. Then he whispers fragments at me: “Your brother . . . like me . . . did you and him? Did you bring Mr. Barron? Did he send you to, to—?”
“What? The balloon guy? No, no way.”
“Balloon guy?” Floating Boy swivels his head all around, looking for an escape. He thinks I’m setting him up.
I pull his arm and make him lean toward me. I say, “After the birthday party, the news showed this guy and his balloon cart going up and down the street. So, he was there to explain you away, right? Like a clean-up guy? After-the-fact sidekick?”
“No, no, he’s not—” Floating Boy starts, his whole body looking like it’s about to run in three directions at once. Four, counting the sky.
A door opens and shuts. Mom yells, “Who’s out there with you now?”
So much for going to bed, right, Mom? She’s back on the porch, sharing the sight of her robe of many colors with the balloon man.
The balloon man takes advantage of us not watching him and he’s on the street now, only a few steps away from us. He says to my mom, “I’m sorry to disturb you, ma’am. I’m only here to bring him home, of course.”
“Him?” I call back to the balloon man, and, for my mom, our only witness here, “Do you even know his name?” I step between him and the not-floating-right-now boy. “Do
you know your own name, mister?” I add with as much ’tude as possible, and loud enough for Mom to hear. “I’ve read about how senior citizens . . . forget. It’s sad, really. Did you park at the grocery store, sir? Do you remember where you parked?”
The balloon man scrunches away from this and then looks at me like I’m exactly the thing in this world he doesn’t have time for.
“Mary,” Mom says in that through-the-teeth way that means Just Wait Until You Get in the House, Missy.
Floating Boy laughs, either at what I said or at my mom in her robe. Even though I’m only holding his hand, I feel his body relax. I feel him trust me.
He bends sideways so that his eyes never leave the balloon man, and he whispers, “We should talk some more. Near downtown. There’s an old mill. Come by tomorrow afternoon.” Then he lets go of my hand and starts breathing loud. There’s the tire smell again, just a hint of it.
Balloon man is almost close enough to us that he could grab Floating Boy now. The old guy can move quicker than I thought. It’s not a point in his favor. I step even more between them and say, “If we want some gingerbread-men balloons, we’ll call you, okay?”
He smiles like he gets my humor, he really does. But he sidesteps and tries to reach past me. There’s something unlooping from his sleeve. It looks like a dog leash.
“I’m Mary,” I say and mirror his moves like I’m playing a defense drill. I hold my hand out like we’re supposed to shake hands, or maybe even fist-pound if he’s a wannabe hipster. Mom is still there, on the porch, so the man has to give me his hand, right?
“Mr. Barron,” he says, very formal and proper-like. His hand is sandpaper and way icky, as icky as the you-don’t-know-who-you’re-messing-with-girl look he’s giving me.
When the handshake is over, the leash is in my hand. I wrap the nylon around my wrist. “Oh, oh, here,” I say, fake-untangling the leash. “I think your ginormous watch band has gotten caught in my, in my, in my—”
Mr. Barron grunts and works at unwrapping my hand, but my fingers are snakes diving into each new loop, just totally by accident, of course. The one glimpse I catch of Mom, she’s leaned back through the door, saying something to Dad, but her hand’s still holding the door open.
By the time I turn around, Floating Boy is gone. Well, not gone. More like up, up, up, and away. He’s already higher than any power lines.
The leash unvines from my wrist and drops to the blacktop. Mr. Barron snarls in my general direction, takes the leash and scurries to his car a half-block down the street, a brown metal slug of a sedan.
Now that he’s gone—was Mom scared of him? Shouldn’t she have been out here protecting me from the freaky pervs of the world?—she comes out and grabs my arm. I’m only now seeing that she’s wearing those Marge Simpson slippers, the ones with the big blue hair for the toes. Anyway, she doesn’t care about the creeptastic old balloon man apparently, and only says something about in and right goddamn now and young lady.
She starts swearing, which pretty effectively squashes any clever comeback I might have had. Which wasn’t much. All I had ready for my defense was wait and please. I just want to stay out here and look up into the sky some more.
He’s gone, but there’s a shrinking dot of light up there. His flashlight. It waves across and back.
6.
Mom calls in sick the next morning. Dad doesn’t have to call in anywhere as he’s been out of work since last winter, but he’s sick, too, not just hungover after an apparently epic night of bowling. They’re both hunkered in the bunker for the day, leaving me on my own for lunch. Which is fine—nothing wrong with grilled cheese—but made-Mary-style grilled cheese doesn't make me smart enough to crack the mystery of what to do with Terry.
What’s not fine: I’m under house arrest and supposedly not allowed contact with the outside. But texting isn’t contact, it’s more like breathing.
So, me: wheels?
Liv: checkn
Liv: 4 yep
Me: take me 4 a ride hot stuff
Liv: where 2 darling?
Me: tell when u get here
Liv: fab
Me: back door it
Liv: what up?
Me: mom lockdown
Liv: ow
Me: be quiet coming in
Liv: ur mum scares me
Me: me too ha
Liv: srsly 2 scary
Me: just do it
Liv: eat nike
Me: ?
Liv: it was fab in my head
Me: 11
Liv: l8tr
I’m in Terry’s room. He’s eating toast with grape jelly, the purple smeared on his PJs and around his lips. Ant bait for sure, but at least he doesn’t have a fever anymore. I’ve taken his temperature twice. I’ve pulled him off the ceiling once.
Where I am besides that is Google Maps. Or, where I am is the family laptop, which I’m not supposed to take out of the family room. Whatever. Taking the laptop in here with me is small fry, doesn’t even count after sneaking out in the middle of the night to see a boy, but I still hit the keys softly.
I zoom in and click around on the Ipswich map, and I think I find Floating Boy’s mill after a few minutes. I mean, I find a mill. There could be a bunch of old mills around here, and Ipswich covers a big area. But this place I found, it just looks like a hideout. Not too far from downtown, and it’s still surrounded by woods, and the river runs behind it.
I zoom all the way in so I can see the black tar roof. There are splashes of color that could be empty bags of chips or soda cans, and that blue thing there, it might be a beach chair. Who knows however many months ago the satellite snapped this picture. But it’s good enough for me to conclude the mill is definitely a hideout. Maybe.
I write some directions on my hand, scrub my temp files, shut Terry in his room, and take a quiet and quick shower. Liv will be here soon. Another thing you need to know about Liv: she’s always painfully early.
Post-shower, I throw on jean cut-offs, my Chuck Ts (high top, ninja black), and a zombie tee (guess what color that is). I sit at my desk and write Mom a note on my green “Mary” pad of paper Aunt Beth gave me for Xmas last year. Maybe Mom will be happy I finally used it, even if I X’d out all the Marys and wrote Josephs over them, which seemed hilarious at the time, and yeah, some days I don’t even get me. This green note is a confession note, a just-in-case note. I’m telling her everything: where I’m going, Aunt Beth calling about floaty-baby Jack, and most importantly, Terry and his not-unrelated, floating-to-the-ceiling thing he does now. It’s just so cute. Our little boy’s growing up.
No, no, I mean he’s going up.
Mom needs to know because Terry can’t be let outside, at all. I trace the letters of that part of the letter deep, then underline it over and over. Floating Boy might know how to move around up in the sky, might know how to come down easy, but I’m guessing that’s something you only pick up after all the crash landings twenty miles away from your hideout. It makes my eyes a little hot when I think of Terry twenty miles out of town, looking around at some trees maybe, thinking it’s a Little Bear cartoon gone bad.
In the note I tell Mom that I’ll call her, that she shouldn’t be mad at me, that I’m trying to find out what’s going on. I sign it “Nancy Drew to the rescue” (Mom will like that—she made me plow through the whole craptastic series when I was in fifth grade). Then I add a P.S. and tell her again to seriously watch Terry close.
I’m folding up the note—she can’t see it first thing—when the front doorbell rings. And rings. Our stupid ring takes like nine seconds to cycle all the way through Pop Goes the Weasel, and that’s if you just push it once.
I can’t believe she’s using the front door. I cover my ears at first like that can possibly stop Liv from being an idiot. Then I pull the door open so hard I’m surprised I don’t suck every leaf in the yard into the house.
>
Liv doesn’t even look at me. She’s half into this wiggly dance move she saw on a music video. She’s always like this when she’s creatively borrowed big sis’s license and keys.
I drag her in by the wrist. “Come on!”
We creep like creeps past my parents’ bedroom and then up the stairs. Liv doesn’t take off her sunglasses and makes goofy faces at me the whole way, trying to make me laugh. She has zero handle on the gravity seriousness of the situation.
“Nice hair,” I whisper, because I mean the opposite. Part of snaking her sister’s license is making her hair match it, and Liv’s sister’s a walking fashion disaster. Liv’s smile ratchets down a click or two, but I don’t let go of her wrist.
“What are—?” she says, too loudly of course, a seagull at a funeral, but by that time we’re past my bedroom. I need to make sure all the windows in Terry’s room are locked. Same with the back door. And the front. And then I have to leave the note somewhere, and all the things I have to do are piling up, and I’m starting to get that mudslide feeling in my stomach that I had all spring in school.
I open the door to Terry’s room and he’s on the ceiling again, above his bed, crying into his chest like he’s been crying for a while. His little hands are reaching out. No, down. Reaching down.
This is so wrong. I pull Liv inside and shut the door. She doesn’t move, doesn’t even take off her eye-color-hiding sunglasses.
On the bed below Terry are his two favorite dinos: Steggy and Rex. I pick them up and give them to him. He stops crying. Magic, right? He holds them out and makes flying sounds for them with his mouth. Then he says, “Hey, blankee.” I give that to him. Steggy and Rex take the blanket for him.
Liv says, “How’d you get him up there?”
“I rubbed him on my head like a balloon.”
Liv looks at me like I’m the worst big sister in the world which, even though I know none of this is my fault, is what I feel like.