For the rest of the day, Bryce slid in and out of worry. There was something in the way that Lina girl had looked at him that sent stabs of panic to his stomach and made his chest ache. He couldn’t get her face out of his mind: The soft curve of her face seeming to settle into a firmer line, the way her mouth turned hard with determination and the way her blue eyes had glinted with curiosity and excitement, which unnerved him the most. It was the look of someone who had been presented with a quest and just couldn’t wait to start on it. He’d imagined a similar look on the faces of characters in adventure books.
He felt jumpy at school the next day and he couldn’t help himself from scanning the crowds of people that he passed in the halls. But Lina wasn’t one of them. He caught sight of her once, on the other side of the cafeteria.
When he first saw of her, his heart exploded with adrenaline. But then he realized she wasn’t paying attention to whoever was standing on the other side of the room and he sighed in relief. Still, he took the time to study her.
She was a bit small. Well, average for a girl, but small in comparison to his height. Her just-past shoulder length hair was a warm brown and she brushed it back from her face as she continued to talk to her friend. Her eyes weren’t too big and her mouth seemed more mature than other girls’ mouths. That seemed silly when he thought about it but it gave her the quality of seeming a bit more aware and conscientious than her other peers. It probably worked in her favor as one of the leaders of the student body.
Overall she was actually fairly pretty, he thought. In a sort of mature way, if you thought that was attractive. She wasn’t really his type.
Bryce talked himself into thinking he wouldn’t be confronted by Lina. They didn’t see each other on the normal rotation of the school day. He didn’t think she’d bother to go out of her way to come looking from him, to pursue the small curiosity of an odd landing. He put the idea out of his mind and went back to life as usual. So when he saw her outside the school late one day as he was walking home, he was a little surprised when she caught sight of him and started to walk towards him.
“I was hoping I would see you again,” she said as she drew closer.
“Oh?” he said in a tone he hoped came across as nonchalant.
“I wanted to talk to you about the other day, when you jumped out of that tree,” she continued.
“You didn’t report me, did you?” Bryce asked. “Am I in trouble?”
Lina gave a light laugh. “No, nothing like that. It was something else....” Her voice faded away and she stopped walking. Bryce didn’t notice right away but when he did, he stopped too and turned towards her. She was staring at him with that look again, the one that made him a little nervous. “There’s something about the way you move,” Lina said, a finger resting on her lips with puzzlement. “Like a frame missing from a film. Almost too fast to catch but there all the same.”
Bryce fought the urge to bite his lip. He carefully kept his face blank, although surprise was stabbing at his gut. No one had pursued the knowledge of his power for so long and gotten so close.
Lina’s eyes refocused on his face. “Well?” she said. “I know there’s something.” Bryce didn’t say anything. “I promise I won’t breathe a word. You can trust me.”
The denial and the excuse that was so familiar and well-worn were right on the tip of Bryce’s tongue. Yet he couldn’t make the words pass his lips.
He wanted to trust her.
More than that, he realized with a jolt, he had a burning desire to share his secret with her. He’d never noticed how much it weighed in his chest and clawed at his throat. If someone didn’t notice, they didn’t notice, and there was no need to point out something they weren’t careful enough to see. But Lina had seen it, nearly guessed correctly what happened on her own. Bryce felt she deserved to know.
He strode the five or so steps to Lina until he was barely inches from her. Most people probably would have retreated, looking surprised and cautious. But Lina remained where she was and looked up at him with simple, naked curiosity.
Bryce’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I’ll show you, if you promise not to say anything, not even hint, at what I can do.”
Lina’s mouth twisted into a hurt frown. “I said I wouldn’t.”
Bryce nodded and walked off. He heard Lina follow him. When they got to the back of the building, where there were no security cameras, Bryce said, “Wait here,” and disappeared inside.
She came into view again when he stepped to the edge of the roof. He waved at her. For a moment he enjoyed the feeling of being off the ground. It made him happy, buoyantly happy. It was a kind of joy that he couldn’t get from anything else and he savored the feeling for a moment.
And then he jumped.
The air roared, the ground rushed, there was that millisecond of calm and still and then Bryce was on the ground once more. He looked to Lina.
She’d stuffed a fist in her mouth, probably to keep herself from screaming. Horror was brimming in her eyes. But as he watched, the horror drained from her face faster than water through a colander. Awe and something else that Bryce couldn’t name filled Lina’s being. The emotions were practically radiating from her.
“Amazing,” she said in a voice that was much quieter than Bryce expected. “Magic.”
Bryce shrugged. “Something like that.”
“How do you do it?” she asked in an excited whisper, as if they were sharing a piece of gossip in a crowded room rather than in an empty yard.
Bryce shrugged again. He was feeling self-conscious. “I’ve always been able to do it. I can’t explain it.”
“How come I haven’t heard about it before? Like, shouldn’t you be famous, or something?”
Suddenly the lightness that Bryce had been feeling at finally sharing his secret with someone evaporated. His face snapped into stoniness. “No,” he said, perhaps a little more sharply than he had intended. “And you promised not to say anything about it.”
Lina looked taken aback, her eyebrows resting high on her forehead. “Of course.” She looked up at the roof of the school and then back down at him. If she had been hurt by his tone earlier, she recovered quickly, and as she continued to look at him that strange mix of emotions from when realization kicked in came back to her face. “Do you want to go get a coffee?”
They went to a coffee shop down the street. It was close to the dinner hour, so the shop was close to empty. There were some dutiful college students with laptops sitting at a few of the tables but otherwise the shop was theirs. They ordered their coffees and sat down in a corner.
“Do you like reading?” Lina asked as they sat down.
“Sorry?” Bryce asked, a little more than surprised at her question. It wouldn’t have been the first topic he’d think of after initially seeing someone jump off a two story building.
“When I first saw you, you were reading during lunch, up in that tree,” Lina clarified. “It’s not the usual pass-time of our peers during lunch.”
Bryce took a sip of his coffee, burning the tip of his tongue. Too hot. “Yeah, I guess. I actually really like basketball but it’s sort of...exposing,” he said. Lina nodded. “Reading about things I can’t do freely was the next best thing.”
“Do you have a favorite genre?”
“Not really. I read all sorts of things....Do you?”
“Fantasy,” Lina said brightly, smiling. “I want to major in Literature and Folk Tales.”
“Wow, got it all figured out already,” Bryce said. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lina asked, frowning. There was a dangerous glint in her eyes. Bryce quickly tried to mutter out an apology but Lina just sighed. “God, am I that stereotypical?”
Bryce thought about keeping his mouth shut but girls didn’t like it when you didn’t answer them. “I don’t know yet,” he said, honestly.
She liked that. She smiled at him and relaxed back into her coffee.
They ended up spending a couple of hours in that shop. They talked about books, and classes that they didn’t share, teachers that they did. Lina talked about her best friend, Carrie. Bryce told her funny stories about the group of guys he hung out with in the halls. They didn’t realize how long they’d been there until Bryce got a text from his mom asking where he was and that dinner was going to be ready soon.
“I should go,” he said, locking his phone’s touch screen.
“Me too,” Lina said, standing. She drove him home and stopped in front of his house.
“I had a good time,” Bryce said. He opened the door and stepped out.
“Bryce.” Bryce turned back to the car. Lina was leaning across the seat to look him in the eye. “Thanks for trusting me.”
“Thanks for not freaking out,” he said. She grinned at him and he shut the door.
Bryce didn’t mention to his parents that he had shown his ability to another person. He knew it would just cause them to worry. Understandably, they’d always been a bit paranoid and jumpy when it came to Bryce’s power, even though they loved him dearly.
“You are not a science experiment to be examined,” his father had said to him many times, his mother nodding if she was within earshot.
So he just didn’t say anything to them about Lina.
Of course Bryce didn’t see Lina for a while after that. It wasn’t like they passed each other in the hall all the time. On occasion, they’d catch each other’s eye from across the cafeteria and they’d smile and wave. But Bryce found himself thinking about her a lot. Or rather, how she had reacted when he had demonstrated his power to her, that strange mixture of calm and intense, well-meaning curiosity. He felt like he wasn’t some sort of freak or superhero to her but that his inability to fall was just a talent, like being good at calculus. And why had he shown her? Because he wanted to, yes, because she had earned it, yes. Shouldn’t he be more concerned that she might blab to someone? Inexplicably, he wasn’t, though. He felt that his secret was quite safe with her.
It was a Wednesday when Lina called him and asked if he wanted to see her race at the track meet the next day.
“You run track?” he said.
“I didn’t tell you?” she said.
“Well, we’ve only hung out for like, two hours.”
Lina laughed. “I guess you’re right. I sort of forget. Sometimes I feel like we’ve been friends for a long time. We’ll have to hang out more. Like at the track meet.”
“Sure.”
So it was after school the next day that Bryce made his way to the field where several high school track teams were warming up. Lina found him and towed him over to meet her parents, who had also come to watch. He awkwardly shook hands with the shorter man who was beginning to bald and the thin woman who gave off the feeling of being firmly grounded. But they were nice and smiled, and even offered to have him sit with them while they watched. Bryce agreed.
“Great!” Lina said, beaming. “I’m gonna go warm up.”
Bryce and Lina’s parents took a seat in the bleachers.
“Lina said she had a good time talking with you the other week,” Lina’s mother said.
“Yeah,” Bryce said, making small talk. “We got to talking and just sort of lost track of time.”
“Do you have classes together?” her father asked.
Bryce shook his head. “I don’t even see her at school most of the time. We just bump into each other every now and again.”
“Oh, Garrett, good to see you again,” said another parent, addressing Lina’s father, picking his way through the bleachers. “How have you been? Hi, Marta.” Lina’s mother nodded. The other parent sat down with Lina’s parents, engaging them and leaving Bryce to sit by himself.
“I didn’t think I’d see you here, Bryce,” said a voice as someone slid into the bleachers next to him.
He turned to find a thin, tall girl with blond hair braided down her back sitting next to him. She had small green eyes and a pinched sort of look to her mouth, like she was frowning very subtly all the time. She was graceful and beautiful in a severe sort of way, and she was also Bryce’s ex-girlfriend.
“Hello, Sheyenne,” Bryce said. “How are you?” He was trying to be cordial but his heart still beat painfully in his chest. Their relationship hadn’t ended in the best way.
“I thought books were your thing,” Sheyenne said.
“I like sports too,” Bryce said.
“I saw you with Lina. Are you dating her?”
“Dating her?” Bryce said, a sharp edge coming into his voice. “I just met her. Jesus, Sheyenne, you really didn’t know me at all.”
Sheyenne shrugged, her shoulders slumping forward, so even though her mouth said, “Don’t care,” her shoulders said otherwise. Sheyenne gave a derisive snort and then she slipped off into the crowd of people without a goodbye or a backward glance.
Bryce watched her go with annoyance and more than a touch of anger but as those feelings faded, he felt a little sad. He and Sheyenne had dated for a little under a year. He liked being with her and she liked being with him too, he suspected, even after the breakup. But Sheyenne had a tendency for jealousy and suspicion and Bryce couldn’t handle that anymore. Sheyenne had pointed out, in that last fight, that he was “emotionally unavailable” and so of course she had been suspicious. Although the jealousy was totally off base, Bryce wouldn’t deny the first part. It was hard to open up to someone when she didn’t know the biggest secret in his life. It was hard to get really close to people with a secret that hung like a wall between him and others.
It occurred to him that that wall that had prevented him from getting to a really personal level with others didn’t exist between Lina and himself. Not that he had any intention of dating her but he wondered if they could become good friends. He wondered if the wall meant anything at all or if it was just in his head. The thought that he might just be completely incompetent at connecting with people flashed past in his head. It was a possibility.
There was a sharp crack and Bryce was jostled from his thoughts. Runners were speeding down the track, arms and legs blurring. It was Lina’s race. Their feet fell into close rhythm as they neared the first hurdle and it almost sounded like music. Tat tat tat dum. Tat tat tat dum. Bodies folded to get over the hurdles in sharp origami angles. Lina looked so graceful in her jumps, so effortless, and yet so powerful when she was on the ground running. Bryce couldn’t help admiring her.
He admired any athlete, simply because what they did was something he craved to do and yet could not. He even admired that kid in the third row who knocked down two hurdles. Bryce would have loved to be able to fly over the obstacles. He was sure he’d be good at it but there was the possibility of catching his foot and not falling. And that would be a disaster.
In that last few yards, Lina put on a burst of speed and shot from fourth place to second in time for the finish line. Bryce cheered and clapped with her parents. As the racers slowed to jolting, halting steps, he watched Lina frown and a shadow pass over her face.
“Were you disappointed with your placement?” he asked her later, handing her an energy bar he’d brought from home. He pulled another from his pocket and ripped open the packaging. They were his dad’s, who ate them every time he ran on the weekends. Bryce grimaced at the artificial taste but swallowed anyway.
Lina looked at him with confusion. “What? No, I actually did a lot better than I thought I would. The competition was tough. Why do you say that?”
“You frowned when you finished,” Bryce said.
“Oh,” Lina said. She opened her mouth to say something but then smiled and shook her head. “It was nothing.”
