The Strange Gift of Gwendolyn Golden Read online

  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 get really big and her mouth falls open.

  Yep. She’s scared. I know that look.

  “Okay, Jez. You 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.

  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

  ELEVEN

  Okay, so I know you’re going to make a big deal about that last sentence, and you shouldn’t. You really shouldn’t. But I know you’ll be thinking about it, so I’m just going to deal with it now, and then it’ll be over.

  TWELVE

  Jez and I have gym class after lunch.

  THIRTEEN

  But after a while, Jez’s arms get tired and she has to let me go. I bob back up to the ceiling.

  FOURTEEN

  I make it through the rest of the day without so much as a hover. I decide it’s good that someone else knows what’s happening to me. Knowing that Jez knows really helps. She can be my anchor. If I start taking off, she can pull me back to the ground.

  FIFTEEN

  I make it through the rest of the day without so much as a hover. I decide it’s good that someone else knows what’s happening to me. Knowing that Jez knows really helps. She can be my anchor. If I start taking off, she can pull me back to the ground.

  SIXTEEN

  What is Mr. McGillies doing outside my window at four o’clock in the
morning, or whatever time it is?

  SEVENTEEN

  My body just flies me as high and far as it can, as fast as it can. It’s like when you let the air out of a balloon, and it just flies all over the place with no particular plan. For a moment I’m so high up I can see our whole town, and the melting place between the edge of town and the dark empty fields ready for sowing corn, all below me. Way off in the distance I see a bright glow on the horizon. It’s the city, a place I’ve never been.

  EIGHTEEN

  I stare back at her, stunned. I simply can’t think of a thing to say that doesn’t sound like I’m insane or stuck in a Disney movie, or perhaps both. She sounds a little crazy too, actually. I run my hand over my forehead to check for a fever.

  NINETEEN

  I stare back at her, stunned. I simply can’t think of a thing to say that doesn’t sound like I’m insane or stuck in a Disney movie, or perhaps both. She sounds a little crazy too, actually. I run my hand over my forehead to check for a fever.

  TWENTY

  I put my wagon in the hut at the back of the house, and I take Cassie and me in for some lunch.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I call Jez, but she’s going to a family barbecue. Jez comes from a huge family. Not at home — there it’s just her and her mom. But her mom has eight brothers and sisters, and Jez has twenty-nine first cousins or something. Enough people that someone is always having a barbecue or a family picnic or some get-together, every Saturday.

  “Do you want to come?” she asks me, but I say no, I’ll see her later. Sometimes I go along, but I just don’t feel like it today. I just don’t feel like being with a lot of people who don’t know I’m a Night Flyer.

  I really just want to talk to Mrs. Forest. And then there’s the handbook, which is beginning to nag at me, like a chore I have to do.

  So after I help Mom with the groceries, and I put everything on the shelf, and I wash up the Chrissies (who are sticky and completely covered in ice cream), I ask my mom if I can go out. I tell her I want to go to the library and maybe the Float Boat.

  “The library? Okay, sure. But you just had a big ice cream, so no candy at the Float Boat.”

  My mom helps me find my library card (which is hidden behind the Chrissies’ book shelf, since they were playing “let’s go to the library” with it some time ago). I go into my room and stick my head under my bed: there’s a Hershey’s Kiss sitting on top of the handbook. Nice touch, Mrs. Forest, but candy-coating isn’t going to help me digest this gigantic book any easier. Or faster.

  I unwrap the Kiss and pop it in my mouth, then shove the handbook into my backpack. It’s surprisingly light. Mom tells me to be home in time for dinner and I leave.

  She’s right to be surprised about the library.

  I’m not exactly the most academic person in the world. But I do go to the library sometimes. We don’t have a computer, so if I need one, I use one at the library. I have to admit, that’s usually the only reason I go there. But this time I want to go to the library because if I’m caught reading a book in my bedroom, everyone will be so ecstatic that I’ll have to show them what I’m reading. I really don’t want my mom to catch me reading Your First Flight: A Night Flyer’s Handbook.

  The library just seems safer.

  It’s late in the afternoon, and I walk slowly along the quiet streets. There’s no one around, probably because it’s suddenly so hot and people aren’t used to it yet. I walk by the Float Boat and stick my head in the front door, but there’s no sign of Mrs. Forest, just Mr. Forest. And he’s busy with a huge mass of kids who all want floats.

  “Hi, Mr. Forest!” I call out.

  “Hi, Gwen!” he calls back over the kids’ heads.

  “Is Mrs. Forest here?” I call out again.

  “No, sorry, 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 b
ook 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