Gwen, she had to leave on an emergency visit to see her sister in Napanee until tomorrow. She told me to tell you she’ll see you then,” he calls, then gets lost in a sea of children all yelling out their float orders. I see him reach beneath the counter, though, and he pulls out an envelope. He raises it above his head. “She left this for you,” he says. I can see that he can’t possibly get through all those kids, so I wade in and grab it from him.
“Thanks, Mr. Forest,” I say, pushing little children aside, but those kids are so loud I don’t think he hears me. The envelope says, GWENDOLYN G. on the outside, in very neat capital letters.
Outside, I tear it open, and it says, Dear Gwen, I’m called out of town for a day or two, sorry. Look at the handbook, tell your body what to do, remember to breathe, stay safe. If anything happens, find Mr. McGillies. I’ll see you as soon as I get back. And it’s probably best if you don’t go out flying alone, at least for now. Yours, Emmeline Forest.
I’m thinking two things. The first is: Emmeline? What a pretty name.
The second is: Mrs. Forest has gone out of town! What the heck am I going to do without her?
I try to stay calm. It’s okay. I’ll be okay. I know a thing or two now about controlling my breathing, telling my body what to do.
So I continue to the library. For a spring day, it’s way too hot.
At the library (which is nice and cool), I find a computer far away from everyone else. I know I should start reading the handbook, but I don’t. I just wonder what I’ll find on the computer, so I check there first. I’m lazy, it’s true. I flop into the chair and I type in: “Night Flyers.”
I’m not sure what I’m going to find.
There’s some stuff on bats, sure that makes sense. “Nature’s Night Fliers.” Interesting that there seem to be two spellings for the word “flyers.”
There’s some stuff on World War II fighter pilots and warplanes. They were night flyers too, I guess.
There is a bad-looking vampire movie called Monster Night Flier, and then a mystery about birds with the same name.
Nothing about humans flying at night, though, at least not without being a vampire or having an airplane underneath them.
Not really surprising.
So then I type in “night walker,” and a bunch of stuff pops up. It’s all about sleepwalking. There’s a lot on sleepwalking, that’s for sure. Pages of it. I find out that sleepwalking was first written about two thousand years ago. That it has another name that I can’t pronounce, which is spelled “s-o-m-n-a-m-b-u-l-i-s-m,” and that it affects up to fifteen people in one hundred.
I do some quick math: our town has about two thousand people in it, so that would mean about three hundred sleepwalkers, give or take a few.
How many Night Flyers are there? I suddenly wonder. Somehow I don’t think we have three hundred Night Flyers in town. The sky would have been full of people floating all over the place and bumping into each other last night, if there were that many of us. So far as I know, it’s just Mrs. Forest and me. I’ll have to ask her about that when I see her tomorrow. The list of questions I want to ask that woman is just getting longer and longer.
The library is getting quieter and emptier as people leave for home. I really have to open my handbook, so I go find a lonesome reading chair, as far from everyone as I can get. I take the clumsy book out of my pack and just stare at it. It’s really dusty. The family on the front cover is so old-
fashioned it’s almost laughable. They’re from the 1950s or something, the little boy with shorts and a shirt with a bow tie, the dad in a dark business suit and shiny shoes, the mom in a pretty flowered dress and high heels and pearls around her neck.
And they’re all flying so happily along.
I just know I’m never going to read this book. I’ve never read anything longer than a pamphlet about summer camp. But I should at least open the front cover, because I know that even if I don’t read a word, the first thing Mrs. Forest is going to ask me the next time I see her is if I’ve opened it yet.
I open the front cover. And stare.
The book is cut away on the inside so it’s really a box that just looks like a book from the outside. It’s not a book at all.
And inside the box are three items.
The first item is a creamy yellow envelope with “Gwendolyn Golden, N.F.” typed on it.
The second is a small, colourful brochure with the headline Your Life as a Night Flyer Starts Today. It has a subhead: Your 10 Most Pressing Questions Answered. There is a red slash across the side of the brochure cover that reads Micro-Edition for the Less-than-Willing Reader.
I smile at this. Someone has me figured out. I feel a tiny bit reassured. I’m less-than-willing, all right, about most things in life.
The third item in the box is a beautiful golden feather, made of bright, light metal. It reminds me of the aluminum foil that Mom sometimes uses for wrapping up baked potatoes, except it’s gold and shaped like a feather.
I open the envelope with my name on it first. It’s made of heavy paper and feels old and expensive. The typed letter inside is short:
Dear Ms. Gwendolyn I. Golden,
Congratulations on the successful completion of your First Flight. You are now a Night Flyer with full privileges (see Appendix D, details attached). Your Mentor, Mrs. Emmeline Beatrice Forest, and your Watcher, Mr. McGovern Everett McGillies the Third, have been notified.
Best regards from the Flight Crew, Local 749
That’s it.
I read this letter probably fifty times (since it’s so short). All I really get from it though is that Mrs. Forest has a great name, and Mr. McGillies has a terrible one. And what on earth is Local 749?
So I turn my attention to the little brochure, Your Life as a Night Flyer Starts Today. I am ridiculously relieved, and a little ashamed, to be honest. A three-page brochure that answers my 10 Most Pressing Questions is something I can probably read from beginning to end without too much trouble. Although now I’m slightly annoyed at being pegged as a Less-than-Willing Reader. Why do other kids get an eight-hundred-page book and I just get this little brochure?
Honestly, I’m never satisfied.
The picture on the front cover of the brochure is interesting. It’s a girl about my age flying beside a huge old tree. It’s night, and there is a hint of something glowing behind her, but you can’t see what. And she looks happy. Like really, really happy. Full of joyousness, if that’s a word.
I open the cover. The ten questions are neatly laid out:
1. What is happening to me?
2. What is a Night Flyer?
3. Is Night Flying dangerous?
4. How do I control my flying?
5. How do I tell my friends?
6. What is a Watcher?
