I Can Fly Read online

I Can Fly

  Sherri Cornelius

  Copyright 2013 by Sherri Cornelius

  Image copyright Nikolai Aamaas

  www.sxc.hu/photo/1111125

  I Can Fly

  If I was right, Edith was the girl of my dreams. “I can fly,” I told her in the hospital cafeteria. I expected the standard response: uncertainty, followed by a slug on the arm to tell me she was in on the joke. I’d laugh along, as usual, and wait until the next likely candidate came along. Despite what I’d heard of Edith I didn’t expect my admission to be met with a beading brow and darting eyes.

  She gripped the edges of the table and leaned in. “Are you kidding me, Warren?”

  Okay, she was taking me seriously; proceed with caution. “Do you think I’m kidding?”

  Edith’s eyes welled up and she stood, poised on flight herself. “Oh, I get it.” She smoothed and snapped out the wrinkles in her scrubs. “Gerald Hopkins put you up to this, didn’t he?”

  “Hopkins? No—” I put my hands up to ward off her anger. It didn’t work. All I could do was sputter as she snatched up her lunch tray.

  “Word gets around fast at this place, doesn’t it? Edith’s the crazy one, go have some fun with the crazy girl.”

  “No, that’s not it at all,” I said, but it was too late. She’d already dumped her tray and was hurrying out of the cafeteria.

  I slumped in my chair and watched her go, wondering what had just happened. I’d been working with Edith for two years, and I’d never seen her freak out like that. Could the rumors be true?

  The truth was, although Gerald Hopkins wasn’t in on my game he was the one who’d clued me in. Hopkins was another orderly at the hospital. He worked in the psych ward, and Edith had dated him until recently—not sure how long, but long enough that she trusted him.

  He was telling her the story of the cut above his eye, he said, told her they’d had a scuffle in the psych ward that day. One of the patients had to be physically restrained because he was jumping off furniture, and Hopkins had taken an elbow to the forehead. “And I said, ‘Dude thought he could fly,’ and Edith said, ‘How do you know he can’t?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I guess you’re right, maybe he can,’ you know, funny-like. And that’s when she said that she could fly, and I thought she was just, you know—“ He took a meaningful drag off his cigarette and expelled the smoke. “—so I just went along. Girl’s crazy, dude.”

  Throughout his story, I’d been very careful to nod in the right places. And that night when I went flying, I thought about Edith. I liked her. Our lunch breaks coincided, and we ate together a lot. I knew something had happened with Hopkins, but she didn’t want to talk about it. I just figured he wasn’t her type. I figured I was.

  I’d chosen my flying place because it was secluded, an old lover’s lane before somebody’d fenced it off. I was afraid to go high enough to see over the trees lining the hay-field on the north side, but I had a magnificent view of the city to the south. The whole city lay before me, glittering like fool’s gold in the valley.

  In the waist-high grass, I spread my arms, took several hopping steps and lifted off. It was getting easier. I wasn’t too steady yet, but I was sure that would improve in time. It had only been four months since I discovered my ability.

  At first I told a few trusted friends, but my attempts to show them were no more successful than Edith’s. I realized I was just buying myself a one-way ticket to Crazytown. Had to leave my old job at Springdale before somebody decided to make me leave and come here to St. Mary’s. You can’t blame them. If someone had told me in the spring that by fall I would be flying like Superman I’d have suggested psychiatric help. But here I was, gliding over the field, skimming the tall grass with my hand. One of these days, if I could remove from my mind the image of my body lying at the bottom of a small impact crater, I would go higher.

  The next day Edith didn’t come to the cafeteria. I tried to talk to her when we met in the halls, but she wouldn’t even look at me, using the nursing shortage as an excuse to run off. I saw it as a challenge. When she went into the supply closet I took the opportunity to get her undivided attention. I sneaked in after her but my shoe squeaked on the tile and gave me away.

  “Oh, great,” she snapped. “Don’t think you can butter me up, Warren. I don’t know what kind of bet you orderlies have going, but you’re going to lose.” I opened my mouth to protest, but she rambled right over me. “You’re lucky I don’t report—“

  My fingers pressed against her lips, surprised her into shutting up for a minute. “I’m trying to tell you something. Will you listen?”

  She sighed with her whole body. Her sarcastic “I guess” was muffled by my hand.

  “Okay.” After a short hesitation, I lowered my hand. She crossed her arms and waited. I didn’t know where to start. She raised an eyebrow. “Okay. When I said I could fly I wasn’t making fun of you. It’s the truth. I think you may be the only one who would understand.”

  Silence.

  “I heard the rumor, and I just couldn’t believe it was possible. Tell me, can you lift straight off the ground or do you have to take a few steps like me?”

  She hesitated, looked at the boxes of gauze on the shelf, began straightening them. She glanced at me and quickly moved her eyes back to the boxes. I waited. Dropping her hands to her sides, she finally rounded on me. “Why should I trust you?”

  “Because I’ll believe you.”

  “I trusted Hopkins.”

  “Listen, we’ve been friends for a while now.” I raised my eyebrows at her and she nodded. “Have I ever been one to play practical jokes?”

  “No…”

  “Have I ever turned you down for lunch, even when you had that thing on your face?”

  A smile flirted with her lips. “No.”

  “Did I ever pry about what happened with Hopkins? No,” I answered for her. “Just give me a chance, Edith. Is it true? Can you fly, too?”

  “Warren, I swear if you’re dogging me…”

  I lifted my hands and said, “If I’m lyin’ I’m dyin’.”

  She looked at me, blew out a breath.

  “All right then, I’ll give you a chance. Yes.”

  My heart leapt at the confirmation, and I laughed with joy. Edith’s face twisted, and I realized that I shouldn’t have laughed. “No, no, no!” I wrapped my arms around her reluctant form and lifted her off the ground. “I’m just so happy!”

  Later in my shift, we took a walk through the grounds, meandering among the trees, unmindful of any path until our course was impeded by the garden wall. There was a skate park on the civilian side of the wall, and the clatter of protective gear hitting pavement punctuated our conversation.

  Edith said, “So she left you, just like that? That was harsh.”

  I nodded. “Performance anxiety.”

  “It’s so bizarre, that’s the same thing that happened with Hopkins. I went out to my flying ground with him, you know, to surprise him, and I couldn’t—” Her mouth snapped shut.

  Her dark doe eyes were guarded, but I hoped if I opened up to her, she would see I was for real. “I found out I could fly by accident.”

  “How so?” A clatter followed by Shit! wafted from the other side of the wall

  “Well, it was raining, or more like a fine mist. I love walking in the rain, don’t you? So I was walking through the park and it made me so happy I thought I would burst.” I took her hand, and she let me. “I wished I could jump to the tops of the trees, and just for the heck of it, I leapt up into the air.”

  She looked down at our hands and talked so softly I could barely hear her, but her voice gained strength as she spoke. “There’s nothing like feeling the wind all around me, feeling so buoyant. When I was a kid and imagined fly
ing, I thought it would be like a feather floating, but it’s not.” She looked up at me. “Not like a feather at all. It’s as if I’m swimming in a sea of air. It’s pure euphoria, that’s the only way to describe it.”

  “So are we gonna do this thing?”

  “Where?”

  I grinned. “How about I just show you?”

  Our shifts both ended at eleven, so we went straight out to my secret place after work. I let her drive, so she’d feel safe

  I took her to my secret place, where we stood arm in arm gazing at the city. And I’ll admit I gazed a bit at the way her pink t-shirt stretched over her bosom.

  “It’s beautiful up here,” she said. “Nicer than my place.”

  “Where do you fly?”

  “A cow pasture not so far from here. We’d probably be able to see it if those trees weren’t in the way.” She pointed toward the woods, then paused. She released my arm and shifted slightly away from me, examining the tree line.

  I almost asked what was wrong, but then I realized she was looking for hidden cameras, or spectators, or anything out of the