can’t get that look on your face or I’m going to lose it. Just calm down. Okay? Jez? Just shut your eyes for a minute, and I’ll explain.”
Jez shut her eyes really tight and nods. “Uh-huh,” she manages to say, but she still keeps her eyes shut. “What’s going on, Gwennie?” She sounds really scared now. Poor Jez.
I slowly start to float up to the ceiling. There’s nothing I can do. I’m gone, floating, spinning slowly above the stall, looking straight down onto the top of my best friend’s head. I sigh.
There’s no easy way to do this. I just have to tell her.
“Okay, Jez. You can open your eyes when I say, but you have to promise not to scream. Actually, you have to promise not to make any noise at all. Okay? Just don’t do anything? Just look?”
She nods and I say, “Okay, you can open them.”
Jez starts breathing funny and jagged, but she bravely nods, and with a little whimper, she opens her eyes. She slowly looks up, first at my dangling feet, then at my legs, then at my body and finally up into my face. It’s in slow motion, just like in a horror movie, when the camera moves slowly up to the horrifying thing hanging from the ceiling.
That horrifying thing is me.
Jez stops breathing and just stares at me. Her eyes are gigantic, like mini soccer balls, and she slowly moves her hands up to her mouth. But she doesn’t scream.
I really love Jez at this moment.
“Thank you for not screaming,” I say. I also want to say, “Don’t cry, Jez,” because in the next second, two giant tears slide down my best friend’s cheeks.
I don’t cry, though. For one thing, since I’m hovering right over Jez’s head, my tears will fall on her and soak her (it’s a bit gross, the thought of crying on someone).
But for another thing, I can’t cry.
I haven’t cried in a long time. It’s been so long, I can’t remember the last time. So long, I think I might have forgotten how.
NINE
Jez just stands there, covering her mouth and looking up at me with her gigantic brown eyes.
I say again, “Jez, please stop crying.” She nods really hard, which is what she always does when she wants to do what you ask but doesn’t know how. She gulps.
“Stop nodding, too,” I add. She nods really hard then suddenly stops. I can see her trying to pull herself together. She draws a deep breath, pulls some toilet paper off the roll, and dries her eyes.
“Okay. Okay. I’m not crying. I’m not,” she whispers. I’m not sure why she is whispering, since there isn’t anyone else in the bathroom. She looks up at me. She looks so sad and scared, I really want to hug her, but it’s out of the question since I am up on the ceiling and all.
“Gwen, what are you doing up there?” She is still whispering. “Can’t you get down?”
“I can’t explain what I’m doing up here. It’s been happening since yesterday. And I’m not sure how to get down. Sometimes I come down when I touch things, but it doesn’t always work,” I say doubtfully. I really don’t want to fall to the ground again. This is an old school, built eighty years ago or something, when high ceilings were all the rage. At the moment, I’m floating way above the floor. I really don’t want to fall from this height. I’ve already got a few giant bruises from yesterday.
“Okay, well go over to the wall above the window, that way if you come down, you can land in the sink and not fall too far,” Jez says, wringing her hands a little. She’s always brave, but I’m proud of her for handling this so well.
“Good idea.” I slowly force my legs down to the floor and start air-walking toward the window. Jez follows underneath me, looking up, still wringing her hands. I hover above the sink, and I’m just about to put out my hand, when the bathroom door opens.
Shelley Norman, a big grade nine girl, walks in. Jez shrieks. I whip my hand out and touch the window, saying a little prayer: this better work.
It does. Next thing I know, I’m lying on Shelley Norman. I fall like a stone and land on this beefy grade nine girl. At least she breaks my fall. She shoves me off her and glowers at me. She’s mean. She’s breathing mean and nasty all over Jez and me.
“What the heck are you doing, Golden? Didn’t I tell you in gym class last week never to touch me? Geez, you’re crazier than everyone thinks,” Shelley says. She looks like she is going to turn me into stone.
“She’s not feeling well, Shelley,” Jez says. “We’re just going to the principal’s office.”
Jez grabs me and we tear out of there as fast as we can. I can actually feel Shelley Norman’s mean, hot breath on my neck as we squeeze by her.
As we run down the corridor I sneak a quick peek at my best friend, who for the first time in our lives looks back at me like she has no idea who I am.
TEN
After Jez and I run out of the bathroom, I can tell she is really upset, because she’s clutching my arm, like she does in scary movies when she’s about to start screaming. Unfortunately, this isn’t a movie, although I’m starting to wish it was. I really don’t want my best friend to start screaming, though, because then I will be kind of convinced that I am a freak.
I’m pretty convinced already.
We make our way outside to the sidewalk in front of the school and start walking back and forth. I eye some trees nearby in case I start to float away and need to grab on to something quick.
Jez doesn’t say anything for a few minutes, then she blurts out, “Okay, Gwennie Golden, what’s going on? You … you were … you can fly!” I have to hush her up; even people far away are looking over at her, because she’s shouting.
“Shhh, Jez. Quiet, I don’t need people hearing us.”
Just then Christopher and Christine come running up. I must look pretty weird or freaked out, because my little sister says, “What’s wrong with you? You ran into the bathroom at lunchtime.” At the same time my little brother says, “You were supposed to help us get french fries.”
Shoot. I forgot about that. I did promise my mother that I’d help the twins buy themselves french fries at lunch today. Now they’re getting older, she wants them to start to learn the basics of how to survive on the planet, starting with the essentials, like how to purchase french fries in a busy school cafeteria lineup.
“Sorry, guys, I kind of had an emergency. I forgot. We’ll do it on Monday, okay?” The twins eye me curiously. Sometimes it seems like they are using both their brains as one big brain and secretly working things out between themselves, without talking. I swear they are brain-talking together about me now as they look at me.
“Yeah, Gwen had an emergency …,” my little brother says.
“… because she had to go poop!” my little sister says. Then the two of them run off together, laughing hysterically.
“They’re
