cackles. He has a really funny laugh that always makes me laugh, too. He sounds a little like Grover from Sesame Street when he laughs. I smile. I can’t help it. I’ve watched Mr. McGillies push his empty bottle cart around our neighbourhood since I was a little girl. He did always make me smile. But this is a bit odd — he’s never mentioned flying before.
“Flying, Mr. McGillies? What do you mean?” I repeat.
He winks at me then and says, “Flying, missy. You heard me! You know exactly what I mean!” He cackles again, but this time I don’t smile. I think my face must do a downturn, and I go from looking like I am being nice to Mr. McGillies to being horrified by him.
He starts to hum a little tune. “Scrub and wash, scrub and wash, scrub and wash the bottles,” as he turns away. He’s not getting off that easily.
I run up to him and stand in front of his bottle cart. I put my hand on the cart and ask him again, sterner this time, “What do you mean? Flying? What do you mean?” It’s starting to dawn on me that Mr. McGillies knows something I don’t. But he isn’t owning up to anything. He cackles again.
“Oh no, Miss Gwennie. All in good time! All in good time! Don’t fly away now!”
His old brown face splits into a wide smile, one of the widest smiles I’ve ever seen. How did I not notice that Mr. McGillies has a gold back tooth? I guess I’ve never seen him smile that wide before.
Then he trundles his cart away, and no matter how much I pester and yell and downright whine at him, he pretends he can’t hear me and goes on humming his crazy man scrub-and-wash-the-bottles song. He shuffles off down the sidewalk.
Okay, this is just very odd. I shake my head and decide that despite what my mother thinks, maybe he is just a crazy old guy. A crazy old guy who somehow knows exactly what is happening to me.
I am going to have another chat with Mr. McGillies, really soon, but right now I have to get to school.
SEVEN
I make it through the morning at school without any body parts floating away from me.
It is actually such a dull morning that I catch myself wishing for that floating feeling.
It would be a welcome distraction from the boring lesson about local taxes in our Civics class. I’ve been taking Civics for almost seven months, and I still can’t quite figure out what it’s about. Sometimes we talk about helping old people and volunteering for things, and sometimes we talk about garbage collection. Those things I can pretty much understand as something that we all need to get behind, at least some of the time. But then our teacher goes on about salt or taxes, and I swear my body just goes limp. I simply cannot get my mind around what on earth she is talking about.
I wonder if there is some way I can pretend I need to throw up again, like yesterday? Or maybe get some mystery “cramping,” which might get me a free hall pass to the nurse’s office. It wouldn’t work with this teacher, though, she’s too smart for that — besides, she’s a girl. That old “cramps” trick only works with guy teachers. Mr. Marcus always goes pale, for instance.
I sigh and wiggle in my seat. This simply has to stop. I am going to freak out if I have to listen to one more word about municipal taxes. What are they for, anyway? Who gets to decide how much tax we pay? I have a paper route on Saturdays, do I have to pay taxes? My head is starting to ache. I cheer up for a moment — maybe I am going to throw up.
Nope. False alarm. Okay, then.
I try to will my body to float. I try lifting my foot off the floor, but it just falls like a dead weight back to the tile beneath my desk. I lift the other one. Nothing. My running shoe makes a loud slapping sound as it hits down. “Sorry,” I mumble as my teacher shoots me a warning look, which sadly doesn’t stop her from babbling on about garbage taxes.
I slowly float my arm out to my side, but it’s just as heavy as my leg. I try my other arm. Nothing. I’ve never felt so leaden and earthbound in my life.
At this point, I’d be happy with a floating finger. I try raising my index finger off the table. It almost hovers for a second, but no, I realize I’m holding it there.
Clearly I’m not going to float anywhere during Civics class, just when I really want to.
Noted. The ability to float seems to have nothing to do with the desire to float. In fact, it seems the more I want to float, the less likely it is that I will.
At this moment, in this class, I have as much chance of floating as a lead balloon.
EIGHT
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
