Exo: A Novel (Jumper) (2 page)

It worked. I smiled. “I know.
Muy estúpido
.”

She hit me. “You want to talk about it?”

I shook my head. “A little too
fresh
, you know?”

She nodded. “Oh, yeah. I know.” She gave me a moment, sipping at her drink. “So, are you going to be around? Or is this just a quick check-in, with you disappearing for another year or two?”

I hadn’t thought about it. Mostly I just wanted to see the place. It was probably the breakup. It brought back memories of all those places where things had started, but I realized how good it was to see her.

“I missed you guys. I’d like to keep in contact, without being stupid. Remember what happened to you and Jade when you hung out with me before?”

“
You
didn’t do that.”

“Yeah, but if you hadn’t been hanging with me—”

“I
wish
you could hang out with both of us. It would mean Jade and I were in the same place.”

“Ah. Well, right.” I said. “Maybe I can help with that.”

*   *   *

I can’t jump to someplace I’ve never been. The exception is jumping to a place I can see from where I am: to the other side of a windowed door; to a ledge up a cliff; to the other side of persons facing me. I’ve jumped as far as a half mile using binoculars to pick my destination.

But I’d never been to Northampton, Massachusetts, where Smith College was. The closest I’d been was New York City or Boston. I could’ve jumped to one of those cities and taken a train or a bus. Or I could’ve flown into Bradley International near Hartford, Connecticut, but going into airports was something we avoided unless there was no choice.

I stepped out from between two trees against a wrought iron fence in Washington Square. I was overwarm even though the insulated overall I wore was off my shoulders, the arms tied around my waist and its hood was hanging down over my butt. It was only
slightly
cool here. People walked by in light jackets or pullovers. The leaves were starting to turn here, too, but it was the beginning of the change, with many trees still green and very few fallen leaves.

The sun had set twenty minutes before, but the sky was still lit, and, of course, it was New York City, so it never really got dark. One way or another, barring power outages, it would stay brightly lit until sunrise.

And that would never do for my next trick.

I caught a half-full, uptown A train at the West 4th Street station, and rode standing, a grip on the vertical stanchion near the door. I put my earphones in and pretended to listen to music, but, as usual, when I’m
en público
, I people watch, and the earphones make them think I’m not listening.

A man, olive-skinned, light, trimmed beard, early thirties, well dressed in slacks, silk shirt, and a leather jacket, stepped up to me. He gestured at his own ears and said loudly, “Watcha listenin’ to?” He grabbed the same stanchion I was using, brushing against my hand.

I shifted my hand up the pole and leaned back. He was in my space. The subway car wasn’t
that
full.

He grinned and repeated himself, increasing the volume.

I sighed and took one earphone out. “Pardon?”

“Whatcha listenin’ to?”

“An audio book.”

He raised his eyebrows, prepared, I guess, to have opinions about music, but thrown by literature.

“Oh? What book?”

I looked around. There was an empty seat at the other end of the car between two big black guys, but they were sitting with their legs apart and their knees nearly touched, despite the empty seat between them.

“Must be a good book, yeah?”

I said, “Yes.”

“What’s it called?”

“
Walden
.”

“Huh. What’s it about?”

“It’s about someone who wants to be left alone.”

I put the earphone back in my ear.

He frowned, and then deliberately slid his hand up the stanchion. At the same time he swung around it, his free hand coming up behind me.

I let go and stepped away. “Hands to yourself!” I shouted. He flinched and the other passengers looked up.

“What the fuck are you talking about, girl?” he said.

“Get away from me!” I kept the volume up.

Mom told me that.
When someone is acting inappropriately, don’t normalize it. Make it clear to
everyone
that you are not okay with the behavior.
I’d seen her demonstrate it, once, when she and I were shopping in Tokyo. A man grabbed for her breast on the train. We’d had a long talk about it.

The asshole held his hands up, palm outward, and said, “You’re
crazy
, bitch.”

I walked around him and went down the other end of the car, standing by the two black guys. He followed, muttering angrily. I wasn’t worried about him. Worst-case scenario, I would just jump away, but he creeped me out.

The bigger of the two black men stood up and said, “Have a seat,” then stepped suddenly past me, blocking my friend with the boundary issues.

I sank down into hard plastic seat, watching, fascinated.

No words were exchanged, but the man in the silk and leather backpedaled, two quick steps, before he turned away and went back to the other end of the car.

The black man turned around and grabbed the stanchion. “You okay?” he said.

I nodded. “Thanks.”

He reached into his jacket and pulled out his phone. After going through a few menu choices he showed a photo to me. “My daughter. She’s at Columbia. On my way up to visit her.”

Oh.
“Sophomore?” I said, smiling.

“Freshman. Engineering.”

She was tall, like him, probably a year older than me. “Isn’t it, like,
really hard
to get into Columbia?”

He nodded. The paternal pride was practically oozing out of his pores.

“She must be
very
smart.”

I wasn’t looking at the asshole directly, but I saw when he exited the car at Times Square.

I shook the hand of my protector when I got off at Columbus Circle, and this time, when I put my earphones on, I turned the music up.

By the time I’d wound my way into the middle of Central Park, dusk had gone to true night, and though there were some lights and the ever-present glow of the city all around, the woods gave patches of true darkness.

I was shrugging my way into the arms of my insulated overall when the man grabbed me from behind, one arm across my throat, the other hand pawing down my torso, starting at my breasts, then diving into the still unzipped front of the overall and trying to worm under the waistband of my jeans while he ground his hips against me.

I jumped in place, adding about thirty-feet-per-second velocity, straight up.

I instantly regretted it. As we shot into the air, the top of my head felt like I’d been struck with a two-by-four. I jumped back to the ground below.

My assailant kept going, briefly, topping out at around fifteen feet in the air before dropping again.
My
turn to backpedal. I took two quick steps away and felt his impact through the ground. He collapsed like a sack of potatoes, no flailing, no sound, and I wondered if I’d broken his neck when my head hit him.

I took out my cell phone and used the flashlight app to illuminate his face.

Olive-skinned, with a light, trimmed beard—the asshole from the train.

When he got off at Times Square, he must’ve stepped into a different car, then followed me from Columbus Circle.

I shook my head and turned off the damn music player. He’d never have gotten close if I hadn’t been blocking the ambient noise with earplugs.

Stupid!

His eyes were closed and his mouth was open and bleeding slightly, but he was breathing. I didn’t want to go too close, in case he was faking.

I rubbed the top of my head. There was a serious goose egg forming and it stung. When I examined my fingers with the light I saw a smear of blood on my fingertips.

I remembered his hand raking across my body and I had to resist the urge to kick him as he lay there.

He didn’t look poor. As I remembered, he wore gleaming loafers, slacks, a silk shirt under a leather jacket. He was wearing a fancy watch and two gold rings.

I slipped on my gloves and searched him.

His wallet held a driver’s license for one Vincent Daidone, four hundred dollars in cash, several credit cards in the same name, and three condoms. There was a baggy of white powder in his jacket pocket and an expensive phone in a silver protective case.

I looked at the picture and for a moment thought it couldn’t belong to the man on the ground. Something wasn’t right. Then I realized his face was swollen under his ears and his lower jaw was projecting forward, like a bad underbite.

His jaw’s dislocated
, I realized.
Or broken.
I touched the bump on my head again. Lucky I hadn’t broken
my
neck.

I no longer felt like kicking him. I activated his phone. It was locked, but there was a button for calling an emergency number. I dialed 911.

“What is the nature of your emergency?”

“I’ve found an unconscious man, unresponsive, Central Park, in the trees behind the Dairy Visitor Center. He has some head trauma, but he is breathing and I’m not seeing any major bleeding. This is his phone. I’ll leave it on.”

“Who is speaking?”

I put the phone back in Mr. Daidone’s jacket pocket, careful not to hang up. The battery indicator showed three-quarters charged. I could hear the operator still talking, trying to get me to respond.

Mr. Daidone didn’t
look
like he had the financial need to rob, but perhaps that’s how he paid for his nice clothes. Still, I thought that his thing was more likely sexual assault, pure and simple.
Not pure. Not simple.
I hoped the white powder was drugs, but I wasn’t going to check any closer. I was still mad. I thought about taking the money, but instead I used my phone’s camera to take a close-up of his driver’s license, then put the wallet back in his pocket.

I walked away, to the Chess and Checkers House, jumping to the roof and crouching by the cupola in the center. It took the park police five minutes to respond, a car coming up East 65th. I watched their flashlights flickering through the trees for three minutes before they found him.

While I waited, I’d zipped up the coveralls, put on my goggles, and cinched the hood tight around my face. I’d only done this once before, in West Texas, as an experiment, but it had worked just fine.

I left the rooftop at 130 miles per hour, rising nearly a thousand feet before I slowed, then doing it again before I started changing the vector, adding horizontal velocity toward the northeast. I’d like to say that I shot into the air cleanly but, just like the first time I’d tried this, I tumbled wildly out of control the first few jumps.

At a 130 mph, the air feels like a wall, a palpable barrier that tears at you as you push your way though. It pulls at your clothes and snaps at your exposed skin. You want your shoes tied tight, and all your zippers secured. You want earplugs—or at least good flying music—because the air screams as it rips by.

Every time I tumbled, I jumped in place, changing my orientation, pointing my head to match the velocity vector. At these speeds the slightest movement of hand or leg, the crook of an elbow, the turn of the head, sends you spinning, and tumbling. You hold yourself semirigid. The more you relax, the more drag you have, but you can’t stay stiff as a board for too long, it’s exhausting.

You slow as you rise, but since you’re not rising straight up, you don’t come to a complete horizontal stop. There’s a moment when you feel yourself hang at the top of the parabola and then you’re falling again. At this time, I arch to a facedown free-fall position, then “cup” my arms and hands close to my body, steering. I’m tracking and, usually, I move a meter forward for every meter I fall.

I covered the length of the park in seconds, crossing the top of Manhattan, and then into the Bronx. I could see Long Island Sound to my right, a dark stretch between the lighted shores.

I had a GPS with a preset waypoint on my wrist and I would tweak the direction of my jumps. I was nervous about letting myself drop too far on the other end of the parabola, so I found myself rising higher and higher.

I knew I had to stay well above 854 feet, the highest hill anywhere near this route, but I soon found myself whistling along at five thousand feet and freezing my
tuchus
off.

It was exhilarating but tiring.

I’d checked the driving distance online, and between Manhattan and Northampton was 157 miles of highway, but as the crow flies (or the Cent plummets) it was 126. But I was getting cold and the roar of the wind wore at me.

I endured. After all, I’d only have to do it once—for this location anyway.

The Connecticut River Valley and the I-91 corridor were easy to make out, but the GPS told me I was a bit south and that the mass of lights I’d pinned my hopes on was Holyoke, not Northampton. I followed the highway north.

Three more jumps and I was over Northampton, adjusting my speed until I stopped dead five thousand feet above a cluster of athletic fields by Paradise Pond, my chosen waypoint.

Gravity took over and I fell, face down, my eyes flicking back and forth from the altimeter readout to the green grass below.

At a thousand feet I killed my downward velocity, then dropped again, never letting myself drop more than three seconds before stopping my downward velocity again.

At thirty feet, I jumped to the ground and fell over.

*   *   *

I thought I was just tired. The passage through the air had been like being pummeled with socks filled with dirt, and my body was stiff from the wind and stiff from holding low-drag positions for extended periods of time. Still, when I came down into the kitchen after returning to the cabin, Mom took one look at my face and said, “What happened?”

I blinked. “Huh?”

“You looked angry just then. Did your father do something?”

I shook my head. Angry?