“Don’t worry yet,” he replied. “Callista made a plan.”
“And what’s that?”
He opened his mouth to answer, but instead something else chose to respond. It came in the form of a dramatic, faraway explosion, with a burst of orange light flashing from the coastline. It made me jump, then a second later I heard an echoing roar like a bomb going off. Seeing a tall curl of black smoke heading for the sky, Thad smiled.
“That,” he said, “would be Callista’s plan.”
He leapt off the cliff edge. In that same second, the scales appeared on his hands once again, and he rose into the air a few feet as if there were gentle rockets at the bottom of his shoes. The motion caused water to sling from his clothes and into my eyes. His motion seemed as natural as walking.
“Come on then,” he said, hovering with his feet now at the level of my eyes.
“You still have a lot to explain!” I protested. It was a wonder I managed to speak at all.
“Well,” he replied, lowering himself a bit, “I could stick around and tell you everything, or we could go down and see what horrible thing Callista’s done.”
He shot up and away. I was left alone on the cliff, and watching him rise into the sky, I came to the rim and stopped. What did he really expect…he couldn’t actually mean for me to…?
I’d done it before but that’d only been by instinct. It had felt effortless. But I didn’t even know what I’d done or if I could do it again. The rocks below seemed so far away. I licked my lips, stifling a sudden urge to jump, as if even my body and mind were telling me to just do it, to just step over that edge, to let the air carry me…
I felt like a tiny child about to skydive out of a plane, a sinking feeling inside that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. But Thad beckoned me, and I looked up and saw his head blocking the sunlight that had just begun to clear the storm clouds. He looked impatient. So I jumped.
It was a stupid thing to do. I wasn’t close enough to the edge to clear it, so my heels ended up slipping on the end, my arms waving frantically. I was entirely unprepared for having nothing beneath my feet, falling like a stone toward jagged rocks and trees. I gasped because I couldn’t gather enough air for a shout, feeling the scales emerge on my hands again…
I was caught by the air.
With a whoosh, my plunging dive turned in the opposite direction, my body soaring up like I’d leapt out of a swing. Fear had pressed my arms to my sides, but though I trembled, I continued to rush up with such grace that I knew I was not consciously controlling my motion. One second I was falling, the next I was floating.
Air ruffled my hair as I rose, feet and arms still pressed tightly against my sides because I was too fearful to move them, afraid that any motion would upset whatever force held me aloft. And yet it all seemed so normal. So natural. I simply wanted to go closer to Thad and with less than an active thought, my body started toward him like an arrow.
The motion was smooth and I closed in on him in seconds. Thad regarded me with approval.
“I can’t promise I won’t make fun of you for that sound you made,” he said. When stopped, our bodies righted themselves, so that our feet dangled below us. Thad’s hands were out as if even he was still getting used to balancing in the air. I struggled to get a feel for what I was doing. When I willed myself to climb an inch, I did, and when I turned my head to look back at the cliff that I’d been on moments before, my body turned midair to follow.
“You’ll get the hang of it,” Thad said. “Let’s go see Callista.”
We headed toward the blue as the distant black smoke continued to crawl its lazy way into the sky.
11
Pyromania
If I’d had any lingering fears that I was still dreaming, they were beaten in a moment. I could not have invented such a feeling even in my imagination, as we broke through low tufts of cloud that fought like vapor and then fell again toward the miniature ground below.
I finally dared to look down at the houses and buildings, spots darkened with moisture from the rain. The smell hit me in a rush—a mixture of dust and smoke and smog. How was I held up? There were no wings or devices. Gravity just seemed to have less power over me. Everything seemed to have less power over me.
How can no one see us? I wondered. Was that another part of the supernatural powers: something in the semi-invisible shell that allowed me to breath and kept my eyes clear? We were either invisible or camouflaged. Or maybe we were merely faraway birds darting between the clouds to everyone below.
I saw another explosion in the distance, a belch of black smoke erupting from a fire on the beach, followed by a boom. We were nearing the Pacific coastline, the long stretch of sand bordering the blue water like some type of cream-colored road. The rain had left the beach abandoned but I could already see the flashing lights and hear the sirens of police cars and fire trucks rushing toward the flames. I looked closer and saw that the fire had consumed the wreckage of a small executive jet.
Thad began to dive so I followed him toward the ground. The plane had been absolutely obliterated, a mangled clutter of wreckage with pieces of it floating in the water, a wing poking from the sand and another tossed a few hundred feet away. Even as I descended, it was hard to take my eyes off the destruction.
Until, of course, I spotted a figure sitting in the shade of a tree, staring out in my direction. It only took one fleeting second to recognize Callista.
I wasn’t watching where I was going, so the ground came upon me quicker than I could react. My shoes scraped a pile of sand, making me fall forward and roll, dirt and sticks clinging to my already-tattered shirt. I fell onto my back, eyes flying open. No more clouds or sky. I was surrounded by palm trees.
Sand flew into my eyes as Thad leaned over me with his head blocking the sunlight. He shook his head.
“Watching where you’re going is supposed to be the easy part,” he said. He offered me his hand, and with some flailing I managed to catch it and pull myself up. Both of our scales had disappeared.
We were in a shaded area on a hill, the breeze blowing in from the coast and the sounds of the waves hitting the beach like endless radio static.
“What happened over there?” I asked, smelling the smoke even from where we stood. Thad didn’t answer me, hopping across the slippery rocks in the direction of Callista. I hurried to follow him, hearing the sounds of police shouting to residents to stay away from the beach. I’d probably heard more police megaphones this week than my entire life.
Callista sat with her back to us, knees pulled up to her chest with arms hugging them for warmth. She wore a simple gray shirt with the back torn in uneven slits. Her hair was a mess from the wind that whipped at it, as dark as I’d seen in the dreams.
“I could have blown the plane up sixty seconds earlier,” she said, with some measure of discontent, never looking up at us. “That extra minute of jet fuel would have tossed the tail a bit further out into the water.”
“I still think you made a fine explosion,” Thad replied, sitting down beside her.
I awkwardly sat on her other side, trying not to stare or blurting something out that I knew would sound stupid. But who could blame me? There was the girl who’d haunted me all week, talking about the mechanics of blowing up planes.
The fire trucks were having a hard time getting out to the beach thanks to the wet sand, and there was another loud pop that sent tiny bits of metal flying like bursting popcorn. The destruction looked pretty complete to me. I watched with alarmed attention as the fire licked through the air, feeding on fuel and whatever had been in the plane before it’d hit. Its middle was split, windows blown out and spewing more spoke.