The Girl Who Fell Out of the Sky

by Victoria Forester

  Fly! I can fly! Fly!

  Nothing. Piper resorted to clambering up a barrel and jumping off. She fell to the ground like a stone.

  Up onto the flatbed of the truck. JUMP!

  Thunk to the ground.

  Off the top of the fence post. Jump …

  Down again. Fast and hard.

  Piper’s thoughts came in a frenzy now. The sky, the sky. Have to get back to the sky.

  She looked for something higher she could climb up onto. Anything. Casting about, her eyes settled on the perfect thing, and without another thought she ran to it.

  * * *

  Everyone was woken by the scream—it was not the sort of sound you could sleep through. It was the kind of scream that came out of a wounded animal that was cornered, terrified, and in pain.

  A stampede of feet. Smitty was the first one to spot her.

  “She’s over here!”

  They found her on the ground beside the barn, writhing in pain, her nose bleeding, her arm bent to the side. Without delay, Jasper knelt at her side, rubbed his hands together, and gave her healing. When the pain was released and she could catch her breath again, Piper sat up.

  “I fell,” she said by way of explanation.

  This didn’t make sense to anyone. “Fell from what?” “How did you fall?” “What are you talking about? Just fly.”

  “I’ve been trying to fly all morning,” Piper insisted, getting to her feet. “Watch.”

  Piper took a step away and looked up, willing herself to the sky. They’d seen her do this same move hundreds, if not thousands, of times. This morning Piper’s body didn’t move up, and her feet stuck to the ground.

  “See? It’s not working.” Turning around, Piper went to a ladder propped up against the barn and resolutely climbed it. “Now watch this.” From the very top of the ladder Piper dove into the air.

  As everyone watched, Piper fell down, down, down, landing on the ground with a sickening thud. Once again, there was blood and pain. Once again, Jasper rushed to heal her. When she was whole again, Piper sat up and drew her knees to her chest, hugging them.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Piper said, looking to Lily, to Violet, then to Conrad.

  “I feel different too.” Piper’s hand pressed the place in her stomach where her deepest feelings lived. “I can’t feel the sky inside me.”

  Each of the kids intimately understood the feeling she was speaking about. Violet’s feeling came from wanting to be small and hide; Conrad’s feeling was an unquenchable thirst for knowledge; Myrtle’s feeling was the need to escape. All of them, without exception, had been born with “the feeling,” and to suddenly be bereft of it was … unimaginable.

  “I can’t fly,” Piper said. “What am I going to do? I. CAN’T. FLY.”

  CHAPTER

  6

  “She’s in shock,” someone said when Piper didn’t have the strength to stand. Her body had started to tremble uncontrollably, and Conrad had to pick her up and carry her to the barn. Very gently, he placed her in her chair at the team-meeting table.

  “Don’t worry—I’m going to fix this,” Conrad vowed.

  “We’ll get you back to your normal self in no time.” Violet patted Piper’s arm.

  Without a word everyone sat in their chairs at the table, poised and ready.

  “Ideas?” Conrad prompted.

  “I can telekinetically get her back into the sky. Maybe when she’s up there for long enough, she’ll be able to stay up there.”

  “Why don’t we figure out the venom, and Conrad can create a vaccine?”

  “Maybe if Jasper healed her again.”

  “Kimber can shock it out of her, and that’ll reboot her system.”

  “All she needs is some rest.”

  Conrad pulled up an image of the bug, zooming in on its underbelly.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Smitty said.

  “It could be a mutation from two different species or DNA that’s been genetically modified,” Conrad pointed out. “Part cockroach, part virus, part dinosaur.”

  Nalen snorted. “That would be just like Max to figure out a way to create some sort of superbug bent on world destruction.”

  “Like a cyber bug,” Ahmed agreed.

  Conrad tilted his head, considering everything. “We need more information,” he decided. “Smitty, Jasper, and Kimber, I want you to isolate and pull out samples of the venom still inside Piper. Myrtle, Daisy, and the twins, you’re going to figure out how to predict if and where more bugs will emerge. Once you have that information, we’ll set a trap for them. Violet, I’m going to need you to get smaller than you’ve ever been. If another bug emerges, we’ll be there, and you’ll be the one to get close enough to extract hair and skin samples—blood, too, if you can get it. I’ll be working on an analysis. Come to me as soon as you get anything.”

  Conrad got to his feet, setting off a flurry of movement and chatter. Everyone dispersed but Piper, who remained at the table, aware that she was the only team member who had nothing to do.

  “Conrad?”

  Conrad turned, remembering her. “Yes?”

  “What should I do?”

  “You’d better rest.”

  “But—” Piper faltered. “I’m going to be okay, aren’t I? This is just temporary, and once we figure out what’s wrong, I’ll be able to fly again … right?”

  Conrad paused. “Let’s get more information.”

  * * *

  Without anything to do, Piper found the day stretching out endlessly. Betty insisted upon feeding her, as though her trouble were due to lack of nourishment and the solution rested in a solid serving of bacon and eggs. When Piper was unable to eat a bite, Betty decided Doc Bell should take a look at her.

  “It’s been a long time since you’ve had a checkup,” Betty pointed out. “It can’t hurt to go see Doc Bell.”

  Doc Bell’s office was housed in a small clapboard building off Main Street. It wasn’t much more than a waiting room and an examining room, but as he was the only doctor in Lowland County, he was busy. Piper soon found herself sitting on the examining table as Doc Bell listened to her heart, checked her joints and reflexes, and then held her tongue down with a wooden tongue depressor, instructing her to say “ahhhh.”

  “Ahhhhh.”

  “Hmmmm,” Doc Bell muttered, squinting at her.

  Piper felt a small stirring of hope that Doc Bell was seeing something simple, maybe something that could be solved with a pill, and that as soon as she swallowed that pill she’d be able to fly home.

  “Hmmmm.” Finishing up, Doc Bell draped his stethoscope around his neck. “She looks normal to me,” he said.

  “But that’s the problem; she wasn’t normal before,” Betty said fretfully.

  “You got me there,” Doc Bell agreed.

  “I want to go back to the way I was,” Piper said.

  “Ahhhh.” Doc Bell scratched the top of his head. He was getting quite old now, and his hair was white and had the habit of sticking up straight in the air when fussed with. He was a small, pensive man who had seen enough to know that life had its own agenda for doing things, and he was wise enough to get out of its way when it was doing it.

  Sitting on a small rolling chair, he looked at Piper thoughtfully. “If there’s one thing I’ve noticed in all my years of doctoring, it’s that we’re all changing, either growing upward or down. It’s a mighty hard thing to change a body’s mind once it gets going in one direction or the other.”

  “But this just happened all of a sudden,” Piper pointed out. “You can fix a broken leg or an arm, can’t you?”

  “Sure I can,” Doc Bell said. “But you aren’t broken. Sometimes folks just wake up one day and find their bodies aren’t like they were before. It’s all part of growing up.”

  Not for one second was Piper prepared to believe this. “Not for me and my friends it isn’t.”

  “Well, young lady, the only thing I can tell you,” said Doc
Bell without rancor, “is that there’s nothing wrong with you—you ain’t sick; you ain’t broken; you’re not in any pain. I can’t make you more right than a body normally is; I wasn’t taught how to do that in medical school. And there’s nothing wrong with being a normal, healthy girl of twelve years old. There’s plenty of girls out there who’d give anything to be normal and healthy, and I happen to know a thing or two about that.” Doc Bell turned to Betty. “There’s something to be said for counting your blessings and just appreciating what you have. Of course, I’m old-fashioned that way, and most folks don’t hold with the old ways.”

  “Amen to that,” Betty said. Doc Bell’s words made a whole lot of sense to her.

  Piper felt a zing of anger. Clearly, Doc Bell was not appreciating the severity of the situation. “This,” she said, pointing to her body, “is not me. I have never felt this way before. I can’t live the rest of my life like this.”

  “Watch your mouth, Piper McCloud,” Betty warned. “I won’t stand for sass.”

  Piper had an uncontrollable urge to roll her eyes.

  “There, there,” Doc Bell chuckled. “These things always find a way of working themselves out in their own time, one way or the other.”

  * * *

  “Doc Bell’s so old. He doesn’t understand what I’m talking about,” Piper complained when Betty pulled the ancient pickup truck to a lurching stop in front of the farmhouse.

  Betty stuck out her lower lip and tightened her jaw. “Seems to me he talked good common sense. I never was much one for the flying, and maybe it’d do you some good to keep your feet on the ground.”

  “How exactly is that going to do me one bit of good?” Piper got out and slammed the old rusty door after her. “All I ever wanted to do was fly.”

  Dragging her weary body from the truck, Betty said, “God has a plan for all of us.”

  Piper threw up her hands. “So it was God’s plan that I fly so that he could take it away from me? That doesn’t make any sense.” Piper turned away from her mother and stomped to the barn to find her friends. They would understand.

  Inside the barn Piper found all the kids gathered in a team meeting, the air thick with concentration and plans. Conrad had a three-dimensional terrain map projected above the table. He’d already created team lists and arrows and action points. Myrtle was jotting down notes, and Jasper was nervously rubbing his hands together, making them glow without realizing he was doing it. All of which was to say it was a completely typical “save the world” team meeting.

  Piper took her place opposite Conrad and tried to catch up on what she’d missed. She turned to Lily for information, but Lily was practicing telekinetically lifting up Violet, who had shrunk down to the size of a small doll.

  Conrad shut down his model with a snap of his fingers. “And that wraps it up. We’ll move out in fifteen minutes. Myrtle, I want boots on the ground ahead of us so that we know what we’re walking into.”

  Myrtle saluted and zipped away. The others got to their feet, intent on assigned tasks.

  “Wait!” Piper was forced to trail behind Lily, who was the last to leave, since she had to negotiate a path for Violet too. “The meeting’s over already? What’s going on?”

  “Didn’t you hear? Myrtle and Daisy figured out the coordinates on the next bug eruption. Conrad’s worked out a plan for us to gather DNA from the bugs so that we can analyze it.”

  “Tell her about the picture!” said a mouse-like voice coming from Violet, who was floating between them.

  Lily’s face screwed up. “Oh yeah, and big win—Conrad uncovered this obscure cave drawing from thousands of years ago that depicts the bugs. He thinks maybe they’re some sort of ancient species or something.”

  “Really? What did the cave drawing look like?”

  Lily put Violet down on the nearest workstation and then pressed the button on a monitor. A few quick keystrokes later she pulled up a strange drawing, the sight of which stopped Piper in her tracks. With rudimentary strokes, the ancient etching depicted large bugs chasing people. A person lay on the ground, apparently dead from a bug attack. Other people were wielding spears at the bugs.

  “Holy moly,” Piper breathed, shaking her head. “Have you ever seen anything like this?”

  “Nope,” Lily answered. “I sure haven’t.”

  Piper touched the curve on the back of the bug. It reminded her of something, but she couldn’t quite think of what. For a moment she felt dizzy.

  “Lily, does this bug remind you of anything?” Piper turned to Lily, but Lily was gone. All of them were gone. How long had she been standing there for?

  Piper ran to the door, catching sight of the transport in the yard. The team had several different modes of getting to and from missions, and today Conrad had ordered up the trucks. They were sleek, black, unmarked, self-driving transport trucks packed full of every possible device. Generally speaking, when the kids went out on a mission, Myrtle ran, Piper flew, Nalen and Ahmed whipped up a wind and windsurfed, and everyone else traveled as a team.

  “Moving out,” Conrad said, closing up the back of the first truck.

  Piper went for the other truck, ready to climb in. Before she could get a foothold, Conrad was at her side. “Piper, can I talk to you for one second?”

  “You bet!” Piper waited expectantly for whatever it was that Conrad had to say.

  Conrad hesitated, lowering his voice. “The thing is, Piper, we don’t yet understand all the effects of the venom.”

  “I know,” Piper said quickly. “But, like you said, once we get more information from the bugs, we’ll be able to figure it out. Right?”

  “That’s my hypothesis.” Conrad ran his hands through his hair and looked away. “But these missions are … dangerous, Piper. Without our special abilities, we could get hurt.”

  Piper puffed air out of her mouth. “I’m not going to get hurt.”

  As soon as the words escaped her mouth, it was obvious to her that this had already happened.

  “Or get killed,” Conrad continued. “This is not an easy mission, and the team has to be focused on the objectives, not…” Conrad let his words die away.

  “Not on babysitting me?” A heat rose up inside Piper; her eyes narrowed. “How many missions have we done together?”

  Conrad shook his head. “That’s not the point.”

  “How many?” Piper insisted.

  “What—you want a number?”

  “Yes, I want an exact number! How many missions have we been on?”

  Conrad threw up his hands. “Four hundred and two.”

  Piper crossed her arms over her chest. “And how many were successful?”

  “You are not being rational right now.”

  “Just because you’re a genius, it doesn’t mean you hold the copyright on rational thinking. Our success rate?”

  “Four hundred and one; I cannot count our last mission as being successful.”

  “Okay, so that’s over ninety-nine point nine percent success.”

  “Ninety-nine point seven five,” Conrad corrected.

  “Whatever. I’ve been on every single one of those missions.” Piper pointed to herself and back to Conrad. “It’s been me and you the whole time. Together. A team.”

  Conrad sighed, took a step back.

  Piper mounted the truck. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you all of a sudden.”

  “We need more information on this venom. I just want you to be safe,” Conrad argued, but Piper was already inside.

  CHAPTER

  7

  The transport was luxurious. It was designed to accommodate a large lounge area with workstations, a small kitchen stocked with snacks, and a few bunk beds. The other kids, who were used to riding this way, settled into their usual spots, but Piper, who always flew, had to figure out exactly where she felt comfortable. After sinking into a couch and resenting the softness, she ended up at a table where Smitty and Kimber were hard at work, bent over thick textbook
s.

  “Did you figure out this one?” Kimber tilted her book toward Smitty, pointing at a problem.

  Smitty shook his head. “I think it has to do with the x being part of the y over the z.”

  “Ohhh, I see.” Kimber got back to work.

  Piper peeked at the books. “What’s that?”

  “College entrance exam.” Kimber flipped her page over and started on the next one. “I’m doing a practice test. I have to do one every day to prepare. I’m applying for electrical engineering, and it’s competitive to get a spot at the good schools.”

  “Gosh.” Piper looked down at the problems Kimber was working on, and they looked hard, harder then anything she could probably ever do. “You’re going to college?”

  “Well, I can’t make a living by shooting electrical current out of my fingertips.” Kimber shrugged. “It’s not exactly a paid position. I’m not saying that it’s not fun saving the world, but at a certain point you have to grow up and get a job.”

  “She’s got that right.” Smitty nodded. “Having X-ray vision will only get you so far. It won’t pay my rent, when I have rent, that is. That’s why I’m going to apply to med school and go into radiology.”

  Kimber turned back to Piper. “What about you? What are you going to do?”

  “Me?” Piper shifted back and forth. “Uh. I’ve been … thinking of things.”

  “You’ve got a few years yet to pick just one,” Kimber said. “It’s different for us. We have to get our college applications out this fall.”

  What was Piper going to do when she grew up? She hadn’t really thought about it before. “How did you find out about electrical engineering? I mean, did someone tell you about it?” Had there been a meeting about how to live your life, and had Piper missed it?

  “Smitty and I have been researching career choices for the last two years. We weighed the pros and cons between our passions, our academic strengths, and our long-term financial goals. I mean, you have to be practical, too, right?”