Bryce Greyson was the only boy in the world who could fly.
Well, flying wasn’t the correct word. Rather, Bryce was incapable of falling. No matter the height, Bryce couldn’t hit the ground with enough force to even jar his bones. If asked, Bryce would say that he had known that he had this ability since he was born, or at least for as long as he could remember, which went back pretty far.
His parents had never noticed that as a toddler learning to walk, Bryce never cried if he fell. They missed the briefest millisecond before impacting the carpet when his little baby body stopped in mid-air, quickly but gently, as if gravity had cancelled itself out, and he would be able to land softly on his hands and knees again. In fact, they had no idea of his ability until he was seven years old and there was a certain incident involving a roof.
By the time Bryce was seventeen, no one outside his parents knew of his ability.
But heights were irresistible to Bryce. That’s why he was so high up in the tree—level with the second floor—when he met Lina.
“Are you sure you should be up that high?” someone called up to him. He blinked out of the words of his book and looked down. There was a girl standing at the base of the tree, shading her eyes as she craned to look at him. She looked familiar but Bryce couldn’t place her. He waved the hand that still held open the book, like it was a papery extension of himself.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I come up here all the time.”
“I’d still feel better if you were on the ground,” the girl said. That note of authority in her voice jogged Bryce’s memory. She was the class representative—Lina Something. If he didn’t listen to her, she’d probably rat him out to some authority, so Bryce swung his legs to one side of the branch and pushed himself off.
As his body sped down, crashing through the branches, Lina gasped and covered her face. Good, Bryce thought. He wouldn’t have to pretend. But he rolled anyway, in that brief pause before hitting the ground, just in case anyone else happened to be around. When he was back on his feet, he found Lina still covering her face. He waited but she didn’t move. “Um, what are you doing?” he finally asked.
Lina removed her hands from her face and seemed genuinely surprised to see him. Or to see him intact, at least. Her eyes were huge with alarm and fear—that was normal for anyone who happened to see Bryce jump from a particularly high place and he was used to it. She glanced him over and then back up at the tree where he had been sitting. “How did you…?”
“How did I, what?”
“The tree…” she stuttered, again unable to find the words.
“I don’t think I was quite as high as you think I was, Class Rep,” he said. Usually people said, “Oh, well, I could have sworn…but maybe not” and that was the end of the conversation. Bryce’s secret stayed safe as long as people didn’t pry.
A firm frown came to Lina’s mouth. Suddenly that stunned part of her that was impairing her speech passed. “I saw you,” she said. She pointed to the branch Bryce had been a moment before. “You were right there.”
Bryce shrugged and smiled. “I’m good at breaking my fall.” He walked quickly away, a little unnerved by Lina’s persistence and that bright look of curiosity and determination. He could feel her eyes following him.
The lunch bell rang as Bryce reentered the high school building. The roar of the cafeteria was increased with the scraping of chairs and banging of tables. Lunch was over.
