by Paul Tobin
“Data always means something!” he said. His eyes were wide. I think I’d offended him, a little.
“That’s the thing, though, Nate. It doesn’t. Friends aren’t friends because of any data. They’re friends because of … being friendly. It’s like how the hippos were only my friends until your ray gun thingy broke, and then they were mad. But real friends don’t need bribes or ray guns or anything but friendship. You’ve been a dork like a hundred thousand times today, and we’re still friends.” I punched him in the shoulder again so he would know I liked him, and of course to let him know that he’d been a dork, like, a hundred thousand times.
“Thanks, Delphine,” he said. And I do think he meant it. I really do think he was trying to understand what I was saying.
But he was also writing some more calculations on his pants, working out some ideas, and the word “friend” was circled several times, surrounded by numbers, and by mathematical symbols that I couldn’t even begin to comprehend.
I thought about giving him another little punch on the shoulder, but I have a rule of punching boys no more than a hundred times in one day, and I was worried that I might run out too soon.
chapter
7
Susan Heller was parachuting.
Of course she would be parachuting. She couldn’t have been reading in the library or shopping in the mall like she was supposed to be, or having lunch at Popples, the burger place where your burgers pop out of a machine like a jack-in-the-box. No, she was skydiving, otherwise known as leaping out of an airplane at ten thousand feet with nothing but a hunk of cloth strapped to your back, which, when you think of it, is nothing more than a style of clothing, so you’re falling from ten thousand feet with a modified T-shirt.
And we simply couldn’t wait for her to land, not with Bosper struggling to hold Proton, not with time running out. We were going to have to go up and get her.
Way up in the sky.
“This is great!” Nate said, proving that he did not … to my mind … have any idea what he was talking about.
Looking at the time on my phone, hoping against hope, I said, “You’re sure we can’t just wait here on the ground for her to, um, fall down?”
“Parachute down. She won’t be falling. Well, technically she will be, but it’s a modified style of falling.”
“I’ll just stay here, then, and modify falling all the way into not doing it.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure?” Nate said, which shouldn’t have worked, but it did, because, dang it … I do like to have adventures.
I said, “Okay. You win. Where do we get our parachutes?” I looked around. We were standing at the edge of an airfield.
“Oh, you and I won’t need them,” Nate said. “We’ll just jump out.”
I lost my sense of adventure.
“What about modifying our fall?” I said. My voice squeaked.
“You’ll see! This will be great!” He ran off across the airport toward a small plane. Susan’s own plane was already high up in the sky. We were in a field. A flat meadow with a dirt runway for small planes, where the Polt Parachuting Program was held. Three P’s.
I hurried to the bathroom. If I was going to be jump-ing out of an airplane without a parachute, I would need at least one P first.
You know that lurch when a plane takes off? The one where your stomach says, “Whoa, hey! Are you absolutely sure this is smart?” Well, I had that lurch in my stomach even before our plane took off. It super-quadrupled when the plane actually did take off. It grew even more when we were gaining altitude, while Nate was doing some stretches as if we were about to enter some strange and exotic challenge, like the obstacle courses on the game shows, except in this case, once we stepped out of the plane, the only real obstacle was going to be the ground, and there would be no way to avoid it. So, yes, I’ll admit I was tense. So tense, I actually shrieked when my phone rang.
It was Mom.
“Did you order some tea?” she asked.
“No. Why?”
“A package of tea arrived. Had your name on it. Are you okay? You sound tense.”
“I’m absolutely fine and there’s no reason to worry.”
“That sounded suspicious, Delphine. What are you up to?”
“Jumping out of an airplane because of a giant cat.” I decided to be honest, because I doubted she would believe me, and then later, if she ever found out I was telling the truth, I couldn’t possibly be in trouble.
“Okay,” she said, obviously and thankfully not believing me. “Home for dinner?”
I looked over to Nate. He was writing a series of calculations and symbols on the side of the plane, occasionally stepping back to consider what he’d written. I didn’t understand the math of it, but I could understand the symbols.
There were an awful lot of arrows pointing down.
“I hope so,” I told Mom.
“There’s the plane, sir,” said the pilot. He pointed ahead of us, maybe a half mile, to where Susan’s plane was soaring high in the sky. We were level with it, meaning we were also soaring high in the sky, flying in a plane that could only seat four people. The plane was bright red and seemed to belong to Nate, which was interesting, because I’m impressed by Liz Morris’s nice bicycle, and here was Nate with a plane. I mentioned how impressive it was to own a plane and Nate said it was one of the first he’d ever bought. So there’s that.
I’d never been in such a small plane before. Whenever I traveled with my family it was always on big jets, so it really didn’t feel like we were up in the air. Now, in a very small plane, the sky was only three feet above my head. And it was also three feet to my right. And three feet to my left. And there was ten thousand feet of that sky below me.
“The wind is loud,” I told Nate.
“It’ll get louder when I open the door,” Nate said. He pointed to a door. One that he was going to open. This is not an acceptable plan on a plane. I would go so far as to say it was unacceptable.
“Won’t Proton’s giant size just … revert back to normal?” I asked. I had very little hope of this.
“Yes.”
“It will?” My eyes went to the closed door of the plane. Ha! Won’t be needing YOU, door!
“But it would take almost five years,” Nate said. “And in the meantime, Proton is too dangerous.”
I scowled. I refused to look at the door of the plane, though I could seriously hear it laughing at me. Instead of looking at the door, I looked to the parachutes. They were on a hook on the side of the plane. In other words, we weren’t wearing them.
I said, “So what’s our plan here, Nate?”
He opened the door.
I said, “Uh, the plan?”
“Look!” he said. He was pointing to where we could see, in the distance, people parachuting out of Susan’s plane. They were too far away for us to make out any individual identities. They were so very small in such a big sky.
Nate took a step toward the open door, through which the wind was indeed making much more noise than before. The wind was going “Whooosh, whoosh, whoa, what are you doing, you can’t be serious!” Everything inside the plane was flapping and fluttering. The parachutes were banging against the bulkhead, struggling against the hooks as if wanting to be free.
I had to yell over the noise of the wind, asking, “What … is … the … plan … Nate?”
He took me by the hand. I looked down at our clasped fingers. I was really stressed out, and holding Nate’s hand was giving me a certain level of comfort that—
He stepped out through the open door.
He was holding on to me.
Out I went.
You know that saying about how in space, nobody can hear you scream? Well, that’s pretty much true for when you’re ten thousand feet above the ground, too. It wasn’t entirely true for me, though, because there was one person who could hear me scream. It was Nate. In fact, I was screaming right into his face, which is a perfectly acceptable thing t
o do when you’re ten thousand feet in the air and falling with no parachute. Oh, excuse me. I didn’t mean ten thousand feet. I meant nine thousand eight hundred feet. No. Nine thousand five hundred. Nine thousand two hundred. And so on.
I said, “Piffle.”
Why oh why had we stepped out of the plane?
Nate, for his part, was supremely unconcerned. It was as if he stepped out of airplanes all the time. Maybe he did. Urrrgh! That would be just like him! The wind was ruffling his clothes and hair. It was tearing at mine. His arms and legs were spread like he was making a snow angel. I was tucked into a fetal position. I planned to stay that way.
“Put out your arms and legs like this!” Nate yelled at me. He swooped by me, then put out his arms and legs.
“Like a flying squirrel!” he said.
“I am not a squirrel!” I yelled back.
“Of course not! Squirrels have no memory. But you do. You remember that I have a plan.”
“I actually don’t remember that you have a plan, because you never told me! Which is why I’m going to die!”
Nate said, “Just wrap this around your arms and legs!” He reached in back of his shirt, then pulled out what looked to be a roll of tinfoil.
Tinfoil.
Our plan was based on tinfoil.
Which is the substance that crazy people put on their heads.
I was supposed to put it on my arms and legs. Which is crazier.
I said, “Tinfoil?” In the time it took me to say “tinfoil” (which is one word, with only seven letters) I probably fell fifty feet through the sky.
“It’s not tinfoil!” Nate said. That ate up maybe another hundred feet of falling.
“Then what is it?”
“It’s antigravity cloth. I invented it!”
“What?”
“Just put it on your arms and legs!” Nate said. He swooped closer and started wrapping some of it around my leg. It felt warm. That was nice. The sky was very cold.
“Why couldn’t we have put this on in the plane?” I asked.
“Because that wouldn’t have been as much fun.”
“I am not having fun!” This was another scream that only Nate heard. Well, maybe. We were getting much closer to the ground. And I certainly was loud.
“Almost done!” Nate said. He’d already wrapped some of it around my left leg, and was finishing up on my right.
“About to activate it,” he said. “Get ready.”
“I’m ready!” I can wholeheartedly confirm that I was ready.
Nate took out his phone and entered a couple of codes. His tongue stuck out as he concentrated. It was taking too long. We plummeted fifty feet. Another hundred. Two hundred more. I was not unconcerned with this.
I said, “Did you hear me say I was ready?” It’s possible that I screamed it. I was probably frightening the birds, at least.
“Here!” Nate said, and then …
… whoop.
I was upside down.
Hanging in midair.
By my legs.
Not falling.
“Nate!” I yelled, but he was gone. He was falling below me, already a hundred feet gone. It was even more amazing to gauge the speed at which I’d been falling when I could see it in action. Nate was almost a speck already, plummeting to the ground. But, as he was disappearing, I could see him wrapping the antigravity cloth around his arms and legs.
I just watched the speck, hoping that he hadn’t waited too long. If something happened to Nate, that would be horrible. Even though we had just become friends, I was already feeling like my world was expanding, like I was catching sight of a huge part of the world that I’d never known existed, like the world was much broader and far deeper than I’d ever suspected. So, if Nate was gone … it would have been terrible. Also, I’d spend the rest of my life hanging upside down, seven thousand feet in the air, hoping for cell phone reception and for somebody to believe me when I called them to say where I was and what I was doing, a hope that seemed unlikely.
I watched the speck that was Nate. It grew smaller.
And smaller.
And then …
Bigger.
And bigger.
He came soaring back up, grinning. He hovered in the air in front of me, turning his head sideways so that he could see me better, since I was still upside down.
He said, “I came up with this idea a few Friday the thirteenths ago!”
“What?” I was enraged. “You came up with the idea to scare me to death a few Friday the thirteenths ago? You didn’t even know me then!”
“Well, I had a dossier on you, of course. But that’s not what I meant. I mean the idea to jump out of an airplane and test my antigravity cloth at the same time.”
“Oh. Well, then—wait. Test the antigravity cloth? This stuff hasn’t been tested?” I stared at the almost-tinfoil that was on my legs. I was back to screaming. It wasn’t wise. All the blood was draining to my head and I was beginning to get dizzy.
“Of course it’s been tested!” Nate said. “In theory. Hypothetically. The mathematical modeling definitely works. There was fully a ninety-eight percent chance of success!”
“I jumped out of an airplane—was pulled out of an airplane—with a two percent chance of failure?” I was glaring at Nate. You can go ahead and picture laser beams shooting out of my eyes, because there was at least a three percent chance of that actually happening.
“Your face is all red,” Nate said.
“Isss cuzz mmm angry!” I said. My words were beginning to slur. I was quite dizzy.
“Oh!” Nate said. “You’re upside down!” I just stared at him. I mean, seriously, the genius hadn’t figured out that I was upside down? Nate truly is a genius, but that doesn’t always make him smart.
He began wrapping pieces of the antigravity cloth around my arms. Soon, with their support, I was floating upright. It was much better than being upside down. My dizziness began to pass. The clouds were rolling by. The cloth around my arms and legs truly did look like tinfoil, but with a glistening sheen, like oil on water, reflecting a myriad of colors. It felt warm. And it was slightly humming.
And I was floating in the sky.
And it was awesome.
I said, “Nate, I … ” My words trailed off. The two of us were together, soaring through the clouds. Flying. We could control our flight by waving our arms, kicking our feet. It was a little like swimming, if every swim stroke shot you three hundred feet forward. It was … amazing.
“Forgive me now?” Nate said, grinning.
“Not at all,” I said, also grinning.
“Oh,” he said, disappointed. And then, “Oh! We have to catch up with Susan!” He turned and we went zooming toward the distant specks of Susan and the other parachutists who had jumped from their own plane. We were traveling far faster than they were, even faster than we had been when we were falling, and certainly much faster than Susan, as she had her chute open and was simply floating through the sky.
The wind was hurting my eyes, drying them out. I slid through a cloud to get a little moisture. It felt like a strong fog.
“Put on your goggles,” Nate said. He was putting on the same goggles we’d worn when we were looking for Proton. It made me worry there were other giant cats, giant flying cats, in the sky. Absurd, of course, but then Nate had certainly brought quite a few absurd things to light. In my defense, it must be remembered that I’d recently been dizzy.
“They’ll help your eyes,” Nate said, as I was putting on my goggles. “And I’m going to bend a few light waves soon. This will help us see each other.”
“You’re going to what?” I asked.
“Bend light waves. An eye perceives objects by reflected light, but if light waves bend around the object, there will be nothing to report, no reflections. Even if the object exists, it will remain unseen.”
I thought about this, digesting his words, trying to make sense of them.
I said, “Are you talking ab
out making something invisible?”
“Yes. But technically it’s—”
“Aargh. Just say invisible. I don’t want a science lesson right now. I just want to soar through the skies and scare pigeons. And don’t you have to scan the molecule on Susan’s, uh, neck, or wherever you put it?”
“I do! That’s why I’m bending light waves. So she won’t notice us. I thought it might scare her if somebody flew up to her in the sky and touched a molecular scanner to her neck.”
“Yeah.”
“Stay here! Off I go!”
He started to zoom away.
I said, “Wait!”
He paused. In midair. Which looked really cool. Even though he doesn’t dress very well.
He said, “What?”
“You’re not invisible!” He smiled at this, and tapped at his goggles as a way of indicating mine. I understood what he meant, and so of course I knew what I would see when I took off my goggles. I saw … nothing. Nate had simply disappeared. I pulled my goggles back on and waved. He zoomed away.
He’d told me to wait for him, but in case I haven’t made this clear I’m not very talented at doing what I’m told. You can ask my mom about that. Or Dad. Or any of my teachers, especially Mr. Marsh, my science teacher, who always repeats the steps of an experiment for me, and me alone, and says that he really does encourage my scientific explorations (he always pauses before saying “explorations”) but that he wishes I would quit making so many things explode.
Anyway, I followed Nate.
He zoomed through the air, swimming, but fast. I kept up with him, staying about a hundred feet back, flapping my arms like a bird. Honestly, I actually felt like a bird. It was amazing to see the world as they do, to see the city and the countryside as a whole, instead of just a collection of streets, buildings, trees, and so on. Birds must revel in the majesty of the skies.
I do wish they wouldn’t poop on everything, though.
Nate was closing in on Susan. She was doing a tandem jump with her mother, so she was strapped to her mother’s torso. Her mother was trying to calm Susan down, because she was a little afraid of what they were doing. How childish! You’d never hear me complaining about falling through the skies. Well, at least you didn’t hear me, because there was no one but Nate around when I was complaining via a series of horrified screams.
