Читать книгу The Night Flyer's Handbook 2-Book Bundle - Philippa Dowding - Страница 13

There is nothing leaden about lunch, though. Oh no! That’s all fun and games and up in the air time. Honestly, I’m starting to feel like a hot air balloon, with all this upping and downing. And I’m starting to want some answers. The novelty is definitely wearing off.

I guess I should back up a little. I’m having lunch with Jez. She’s the best friend I’ve always had, since before we started school, I think before we could even speak. Our mothers met in the park when we were still too little to do anything but lie around in our strollers. Our mothers are actually nothing alike, so they must have been pretty desperate to meet up and become friends.

Jez’s mom is about fifteen years younger than mine. Jez is short for Jezebel, which is a not-so-nice woman from the Bible, but Jez’s mother didn’t know that. She just liked the name. It is a pretty name, I think so too.

Anyway, at lunch Jez and I are sitting at a table eating french fries and dipping them in too much ketchup, which is how we like them. Martin Evells walks by us, and my stomach flips.

Okay, so what? I like Martin. I always have. It’s not really my fault. He’s nice and he smells like lemons. We were best friends the year we were six.

“Hi, Gwen,” he says then walks away.

My stomach does its flippy thing, then under the table my foot leaves the floor. Just for a second. Which wouldn’t have been such a problem if it didn’t kick Jez on its journey.

“Ouch. Gwen. What was that for? Martin always says hi to you.” Jez looks really hurt. She’s gripping her calf where I booted her.

Uh-oh. I’m definitely starting to feel something. A kind of tingling and burning up and down my arms and legs. I grab her by the wrist and I swear I yank that girl out of her chair. I start sashaying across the lunchroom and out the door, dragging my best friend behind me.

She doesn’t go willingly. She fights me all the way. Luckily the lunchroom at our school is really noisy (since it’s got the junior and senior kids in it), so no one pays much attention to me dragging my unwilling friend out the door.

“Ow! Gwennie, stop it. What are you doing? I wasn’t finished my lunch! I’m still hungry!” She gets all weird and whiney. I don’t have time for weird and whiney. That feeling, that weightless feeling, is starting to take over. I’m tingling like I’m on fire, and I know what’s coming.

I run us down the empty school hallway into the girl’s washroom and push us into the big wheelchair stall at the end. I slam the bolt behind me then spin around and look at her. I must look a little scary, because she backs away from me until she bumps into the bathroom door. Her eyes get really big and her mouth falls open.

Yep. She’s scared. I know that look.

“Okay, Jez. You can’t get that look on your face or I’m going to lose it. Just calm down. Okay? Jez? Just shut your eyes for a minute, and I’ll explain.”

Jez shut her eyes really tight and nods. “Uh-huh,” she manages to say, but she still keeps her eyes shut. “What’s going on, Gwennie?” She sounds really scared now. Poor Jez.

I slowly start to float up to the ceiling. There’s nothing I can do. I’m gone, floating, spinning slowly above the stall, looking straight down onto the top of my best friend’s head. I sigh.

There’s no easy way to do this. I just have to tell her.

“Okay, Jez. You can open your eyes when I say, but you have to promise not to scream. Actually, you have to promise not to make any noise at all. Okay? Just don’t do anything? Just look?”

She nods and I say, “Okay, you can open them.”

Jez starts breathing funny and jagged, but she bravely nods, and with a little whimper, she opens her eyes. She slowly looks up, first at my dangling feet, then at my legs, then at my body and finally up into my face. It’s in slow motion, just like in a horror movie, when the camera moves slowly up to the horrifying thing hanging from the ceiling.

That horrifying thing is me.

Jez stops breathing and just stares at me. Her eyes are gigantic, like mini soccer balls, and she slowly moves her hands up to her mouth. But she doesn’t scream.

I really love Jez at this moment.

“Thank you for not screaming,” I say. I also want to say, “Don’t cry, Jez,” because in the next second, two giant tears slide down my best friend’s cheeks.

I don’t cry, though. For one thing, since I’m hovering right over Jez’s head, my tears will fall on her and soak her (it’s a bit gross, the thought of crying on someone).

But for another thing, I can’t cry.

I haven’t cried in a long time. It’s been so long, I can’t remember the last time. So long, I think I might have forgotten how.