The Girl Who Could Fly (4 page)

    “If I’m stuck with that,” Rory Ray balked, pointing at Timmie Todd, “then you hafta get stuck with her. Fair’s fair.”
    “Ah, beans,” Junie Jane spat, but Piper finally had a team.
    Bathed in the late afternoon sun, the whole community gathered on the side of the hill to watch and cheer the children’s baseball efforts. Betty and Joe McCloud couldn’t take their eyes off of Piper. They had seen her attempts to make a friend, and each time she was turned down flat, their hearts got a little heavier.
    “Play ball,” shouted Junie Jane, and the game began.
    
BAM!
Billy Bob hit the ball hard and straight for the outfield . . . straight for Piper. With her glove held high in the air, Piper reached up, on her very, very tiptoes. She stretched as far as she could, careful not to let her feet leave the ground. Despite her every effort, the ball went right over her head and hit the grass ten feet behind her. She scrambled for it, but her feet clumsily caught on each other, and moments later, she was facedown in the dirt.
    “Aw jeeez.” Junie Jane spat out her gum in disgust.
    Betty and Joe sighed, but Millie Mae Miller nodded at several ladies as though Piper’s performance only confirmed her point.
    As bad as things seemed for Piper, they somehow managed to get even worse the more the game progressed. Facing Rory Ray, an ace pitcher known for a mean spitball, Piper held the baseball bat aloft, ready to do battle. Half the game was already over and her team needed this base. Their hopes weighed heavily upon Piper’s ball-hitting abilities. Rory Ray wound up and threw the ball with all of his might; Piper gave it everything she had and . . .
     “You’re outta there,” Rory Ray called gleefully.
    A collective moan rose from her teammates.
    At the bottom of the ninth, with two bases loaded and two outs, Billy Bob covered the plate, confidently prepared to hit the home run that would win the game.
    Junie Jane, a fighter to the end, called a time-out and gathered Piper and Jimmy Joe to her side.
    “Billy Bob’s gonna hit hard and far. McCloud, you’re on the bench. You’ll take McCloud’s place on the field, Jimmy Joe.” Junie Jane knew that Jimmy Joe could catch a fly in his bare hand on a moonless night. Besides, Piper hadn’t caught or hit anything the whole game.
    Jimmy Joe reached for the glove in Piper’s hand, but Piper held firmly to it.
    “I can catch it, Junie Jane,” she pleaded.
    “You couldn’t catch a cold if you lived in Antarctica without a winter coat.”
    “Could too.” Piper was reduced to begging. “Gimme a chance, Junie Jane, I won’t let you down. Cross my heart, stick a pin in my eye, and hope to die if I lie.” Piper did as many of the arm motions as she could while holding the glove.
    “Gimme it.” Jimmy Joe pulled roughly on the glove, but still Piper held firm.
    Junie Jane was not a soft girl. She didn’t coo over puppies, she hated the color pink, and unlike every other girl in school, she hadn’t once wished that Rory Ray would kiss her. In spite of herself, she suddenly felt empathy for Piper McCloud. Had things been different, if there hadn’t been something wrong with Piper’s head, Junie Jane probably would have given her a shot. As it was, Junie Jane wasn’t going to blow the game for some retard.
    “Give it over.” June Jane yanked the baseball glove out of Piper’s hands so hard that Piper fell to the ground.
    “Y’re on the bench, McCloud,” Junie Jane yelled as she ran back to the pitcher’s mound, her mind already on the next play.
    For the second time that day, Piper found herself in the dirt, her humiliation laid out for all of Lowland County to see. Millie Mae Miller was smiling in triumph while pretending to be sympathetic. (Which was not an easy expression to pull off.) Kids were smirking in her direction.
    On the side of the hill, Piper saw Betty and Joe, and they looked like they’d been shot clean through the heart. Their features carried the unmistakable look of pity, which drove Piper to feel a deep shame of herself. Why hadn’t she been able to catch or hit a ball? Why wasn’t she able to make a friend? What a terrible thing it was to have your own ma and pa looking at you as though you were nothing. And Piper felt like nothing.
     Burning up, Piper dragged herself out of the dirt and walked away from the game and everyone there. She didn’t know where she was going and she didn’t care if she ever got there.
    On the mound, Junie Jane spat on the ball, wound up, and sent it speeding toward Billy Bob. Billy Bob leaned into it, thrusting his huge shoulders forward. All the eyes in Lowland County rested on him, waiting and urging him on. Their breath stuck in their throats and they couldn’t move as the small white ball spun through the air toward the big boy holding an old wooden bat. Billy Bob swung hard and—
CRACK!
    The bat splintered in half with the force of Billy Bob’s swing. The ball exploded like a rocket into the air. But to the surprise of all gathered, particularly to Junie Jane, the ball didn’t go into the right outfield and the waiting hands of Jimmy Joe as planned. Instead, Billy Bob proved he had more smarts than anyone, including his mama, gave him credit for, and sent that ball into the left outfield, where Gomer Gun was sleepily picking dirty wax out of his abnormally large ears.
    Parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and the minister too got to their feet and followed the ball with keen eyes as it rose higher and higher and then even higher into the air.
    Billy Bob caught a freight train to first base, which instantly ignited his team into unabashed jubilation, while forcing the opposing players into fits of panic.
    “Catch that ball, Gomer Gun,” Junie Jane hollered.
    “Run, Billy Bob,” the other team was shouting with all their might. Gomer Gun shook himself into semiconsciousness and ambled his lanky frame into a position that might somehow catch the ball.
    “Go, Gomer. Go, Gomer,” shouted his team.
    Several fathers whistled softly and shook their heads in wonder as the ball continued to climb in the sky. Underneath it, Gomer Gun futilely jumped into the air and swung his arm about, like he was trying to snatch crab apples off of a high branch. It was no use. That ball had grown wings and was reaching for loftier spheres. Gomer Gun’s arms came to rest fruitlessly at his sides as he too stood and watched the ball ascending to the celestial realm.
    “Awwwwww,” Junie Jane spat. “Dawgone it all.” She threw her glove down in a very unsportsman-like way and muttered things that would have gotten her a hide-tanning had any parent been within earshot. As the ball sailed away, the entire team deflated and kicked the dirt or took off their ball caps and sighed deeply.
    Meanwhile Rory Ray’s team was ascending to a fever pitch of excitement as Billy Bob, now complacent with victory, began Sunday-strolling the remaining bases.
     In the stir, all but Betty and Joe forgot Piper’s retreating form. It was Betty who saw Piper pause as the ball headed her way, high in the air. And it was Betty who saw Piper looking up at the ball with a curious intensity that immediately sent Betty to her feet. With eyes wide and hand reaching for her heart, Betty whispered, “Dear Lord, no.”
    Piper’s entire body was tingling before she could even think straight. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind what she was going to do. She was going to catch that ball and show them all.
    
Let’s see a retard do this, you old bat,
she thought at Millie Mae spitefully. Less than a second later, Piper’s feet lifted off of the ground and she launched upward into the air.
    “Holy cow.” Jimmy Joe stopped short. “Look!” He was the first, besides Betty and Joe, to see Piper flying. He watched her, rooted to the spot as the color drained from his face. Seeing his reaction, several kids turned to look, and soon expressions of bewildered wonder and confusion spread like wildfire across the field.
    Like an arrow shooting through the air, Piper chased after the ball. She made certain that she held her form—arms and legs straight and steady. She hadn’t yet practiced retrieval techniques, and chasing a ball through the air is harder than it looks. Once she got her altitude right, she picked up velocity and sped after it.
    “You can do it,” she cheered herself along as she closed the gap.
    The tips of her fingers flirted with the leather of the ball. Lunging to snatch it she missed, then wobbled dangerously on the verge of completely losing control. Adjusting her right arm, she held firm, got her legs back into position, and darted at the ball with all her might. With one final lunge, the spinning orb rested in her victorious hand.
    Piper immediately stopped in midflight and looked at the ball in shock. “I did it,” she whispered, glad and excited and thrilled all at the same time.
    Suddenly Piper became so swept up in her victory that she shot up and performed a triple spiral backflip. When she was finished, she held the ball high above her head in a pose befitting a pro baseball player in the throes of the World Series and yelled, “YIPPPPEEEEEE!!!!!!”
    The silence that followed her joyful shout was deafening. Even in the sky, Piper suddenly became aware that absolutely no one else was cheering or celebrating. Peering downward, the image of slack-jawed children and amazed farmers greeted her.
    Piper waited but it never came. No one cheered. None of the kids asked her to play. Sally Sue did not run over and apologize or beg for friendship. Instead, parents’ blank stares quickly turned to concern and soon they were grabbing the hands of their children and walking—make that dashing—away from Piper as though she were a contagious disease.
    “This is the work of the devil,” one woman was heard to say darkly to another.
    Another farmer shook his head. “She’s given all them youngens bad notions.”
    When Piper’s feet hit the ground, Betty and Joe snatched her away without a word. During the entire journey home, not a single syllable was uttered between all three of them. It wasn’t until Piper had been placed in a kitchen chair back at the farm that Betty let loose her fury.
    “What in the name of blazes was you doing, Piper McCloud?”
    “But, Ma, I caught the ball.” Piper held up the ball as evidence. Sometimes it seemed to Piper that her ma and pa missed the point entirely. When all was said and done, it had been a very hard, very confusing day all around for Piper. Nothing had gone as she had hoped and yet, despite everything, she had at last prevailed and achieved a certain victory by catching that baseball. Surely, she should be getting credit for that. “Wasn’t that what the game was all about and what everyone was cheering for? Din’t I do it?”
     “You was flying! I told you and told you. . . .”
    “But, Ma, you said there wasn’t any use for flying, but there is. See?” Piper held up the ball a second time, because it was a fact. “And I thought up more uses besides. Like fixin’ the barn roof or . . .”
    “PIPER McCLOUD!”
    “But, Ma, if you’d just try flying, I know you’d like it. And I could show you how. It’s not difficult and I already learned a bunch of hard lessons so you wouldn’t have to get ’em so painful like I did and—”
    “There won’t be any more flying ’round these parts. And I never wanna talk about it or see you up in that sky again. And I mean it this time.” Betty stamped her foot. “GO TO YOUR ROOM, Piper McCloud!”

CHAPTER FOUR
 

L
OWLAND COUNTY was immobilized by a pandemic of gossip fever, and as the town’s official gossip, Millie Mae was suddenly a person of great importance. Folks who in the past had turned tail at the mere sight of her were suddenly inventing excuses to pay her a visit. Years of persistent practice had prepared Millie Mae well for the sudden spike in demand for her services and she hit the ground running. By evening time, her rendition of the events at the baseball game had morphed from a five-minute breathless account to an elaborate dissertation that stretched more than one hour and thirty-three minutes, including vivid descriptions, a blow-by-blow report, and a short demonstration.
    Like a wildfire in a hot dry summer, the news blazed outward and jumped the county line so that before long, New York, Tokyo, London, and every city besides wanted to know about the mysterious girl who could fly. Millie Mae worked overtime and was happy to oblige the ever-increasing number of inquiries that came her way from all corners of the globe. From ten o’clock that night to six o’clock the following morning, Millie Mae was booked solid and talked nonstop, loving every precious minute. She told everything she knew and saw, and even a bit more besides.
    While the McClouds slept, people they’d never met in far-off places they didn’t even know existed were reading detailed accounts about Piper and the baseball game. Headlines with bold exclamation marks shouted out:
    
FLYING GIRL CATCHES FLY BALL!!!
    
FIRST HUMAN FLIGHT DOCUMENTED
    
PEOPLE FLOCK TO LOWLAND COUNTY TO CATCH GLIMPSE OF FIRST FLYING GIRL!!
    From Moscow to Saigon to Sydney to Athens and every place in between, breakfast conversation was dominated by one single subject—the girl who could fly.
    At dawn the following morning, a stampede of reporters had materialized with the morning sun, as if by magic, and set up camp on the McCloud farm. Cameramen, large news trucks, newspaper reporters, and photographers quietly trained their lenses and eyes on the farmhouse where they waited to catch and record their first glimpse of Piper McCloud.
     Oblivious to the events of the outside world and the activities taking place on the other side of her very window, Piper slept deeply beneath her quilt. It had taken her a long time to get to sleep the night before, especially as she knew that morning would bring a punishment from Betty for her disobedience. In her confused and exhausted state, Piper had somehow reasoned that if she didn’t go to sleep, the following day would be unable to dawn and the punishment could be avoided. After everything that had happened at the picnic and the baseball game, though, Piper was bone-tired and was relentlessly dogged by her need for sleep.
    Lying in bed, she was successfully able to keep herself awake by fretting herself silly.
I’ve really cooked my goose now. Ma and Pa ain’t never gonna let me off the farm again.
Not that it mattered anyway.
None of them kids want to be my friend. Sure as anything they don’t now.
No doubt her ma and pa were going to be watching her like a hawk from that point on too.
I reckon I can forget about getting any flying time tomorrow or for many tomorrows after that.
Piper sighed. If there was one thing she hated more than anything, it was wasting a perfectly good sky. Everything was starting to feel utterly hopeless, especially as Piper knew that had she to do it all over again, she wouldn’t have done anything differently.
What’s so gosh darned wrong with flying, anyway? Everyone’s got something they do better
than everyone else.
It wasn’t fair from Piper’s perspective that folks were so riled up about it.
    
I’m just gonna change their minds, is all,
Piper firmly and silently resolved.
They just don’t understand but soon as I give ’em half a chance they’ll come ’round.
As soon as Piper settled the issue in her mind, she fell under the spell of her dreams and spent the night passing through blue skies dotted by fluffy white clouds. She would have slept most of the morning away had an anxious world not had other plans in store for her.
    “Piper McCloud?” A voice sounded in her small room just after sunrise.
    “Ummmm.” Piper turned over, half awake.
    “Piper, wake up!”
    Piper showed no signs of complying, when suddenly the blankets on her bed were whisked to the floor, causing her to wake with a start. Sitting bolt upright in her bed, she looked about, but the room was completely empty.
Great, now I’m imagining things.
As if she didn’t have enough problems as it was.
    “Piper?” the voice said again.
    This time, Piper knew it wasn’t her imagination. It was a male voice and it sounded like it was coming from the corner by the door. But who? Or what? She squinted her eyes and looked everywhere, but the room was empty.
    “Who’s there?”
     “Don’t be afraid.”
    Piper screamed, leapt out of bed, and backed away from the corner of the room where the voice was coming from.
    “I’m here to help you,” the voice said.
    While that might have been true, Piper wasn’t about to take any chances. Without turning her back to the voice, she quickly pulled open her curtains, allowing light to stream in. The morning sun hit the corner of the room and, by squinting her eyes just so, Piper was definitely able to see
something
against the door, but what exactly was it? It looked like an outline of a man or a wavy bit of air. But all the same, there was actually
nothing
there.
    “Look in the window.” An eager voice shouted from the farmyard below. “It’s Piper McCloud!”
    For the second time that morning, Piper jumped out of her skin, turned on a dime, and caught her first glimpse of . . . something different.
    Piper’s eyes, already opened wide, somehow grew wider to take in the fact that every available place on the farm was crowded with people! Lots and lots of people and all different kinds of them too. And not only people but news trucks and equipment!
    A man with several cameras around his neck was pointing up at Piper with great excitement. “That’s her! It’s Piper McCloud!!!”
     People with cameras were materializing out of nowhere and a battalion of high-powered, high-tech flashbulbs took aim and held in their crosshairs the figure of a little girl peeping out of a window. They fired at will. Piper’s startled eyes took a direct hit and she was thrown backward, clutching her scorched cornea.
    “Owwww.” Piper stumbled blindly, falling to the floor.
    “Piper? That you making all that noise in there?” Betty entered Piper’s room a moment later, feeling a strange gust of air brushing past her. (This was to be the least strange thing that happened to her that morning.) To her astonishment, she discovered Piper curled up by the bed, holding her eyes. Bright lights, brighter than Betty had ever thought possible, were throbbing nonstop from outside the window, and then a crane-like contraption rose up into the air, upon which sat a man crouched behind a huge camera.
    “Heavens to Betsy!”
    “Ma, my eyes is burning up.”
    Snapping out of it, Betty lunged forward, scooping Piper up. “Mr. McCloud,” she screeched, “Mr. McCloud, we’re bein’ attacked.”
    Joe went from a dead sleep to a dead run. He entered the hall clothed in his long underwear and his twelve-gauge.
     “They’s everywhere,” Betty said as she bustled Piper into the corner of the hallway. “Went and blinded our Piper with some terrible lights and they’re tryin’ to take over the place.”
    Joe bounded down the stairs. He headed straight for the doors and double-locked all of them and then propped chairs up against them just to be certain.
    By late morning the siege was still going on and showed no signs of abating. Two windows had been broken, the hens had lost over half of their feathers, and the number of reporters had grown exponentially. Betty, Joe, and Piper remained huddled in the upstairs hallway like frightened prey. Thankfully, Piper’s vision had almost completely returned, except when she looked too far right or left, and then it hurt like heck. Outside the house, the noise grew and grew. More trucks. More people. More shouting.
    “Mrs. McCloud! How long has your daughter flown for?”
    “Mr. McCloud, did you teach her to fly?”
    “Will Piper come out and fly for us?”
    And on and on they persisted until Piper thought she’d lose her mind. Suddenly the outside world was downright frightening, and what’s more, it was making her ma and pa scared, which in turn made Piper feel terrible. She wracked her brains for a solution.
     “Ma, maybe I should go talk to ’em some and then they’d let us be.”
    “You’ll do no such thing.” Betty held on to Piper firmly. “They’s strangers. Every single last one of ’em, and there’s no telling what they’ll get up to. No sir, you ain’t going nowheres.”
    “But, Ma, what if they never let us alone? What then?”
    “The good Lord will watch over us and protect us, child. That’s what.”
    As it turned out, Betty was partially right. Someone was indeed about to protect them, but their orders came from a slightly lower realm.
    Deployment of the Containment, Security, and First Contact units commenced at oh-two hundred. Ten hours later, a line of twenty unmarked black SUVs and two transport trucks sped toward Lowland County in strict formation. They dominated the roads, pushed smaller vehicles onto the shoulder, and held to their course, undeterred by the collateral damage of crossing animals or loose livestock.
    Agent A. Agent (yes, his last name by some strange cosmic joke was actually Agent—and, no, he didn’t become an agent because his last name was already Agent) approved and scrupulously supervised every move. He was a humorless man of indeterminate age who stood ramrod straight and held a steady body-fat count of less than three percent. His men made jokes that he was more cyborg than human. Had Agent Agent overheard these jokes, he would have taken them as a compliment.
    When they arrived at ground zero (also known as the McCloud farm), the situation was about as bad as any they’d ever documented. Media and general onlookers had flocked to the scene and were posing what Agent Agent considered a threat to their target (also known as Piper McCloud).
    “Raising alert status to code red, Alpha Team and Omega Team on standby for immediate deployment.”
    The convoy roared up to the house and, in record time, fifty agents, equipped with every conceivable piece of technology, achieved predetermined targets. Security forces rounded up media and civilians alike and escorted them from the premises while containment crews confiscated all tapes, pictures, and evidence.
    “Area four B secure.”
    “Area seven L secure.”
    “All containment protocols complete.”
    In T-minus five minutes, Agent Agent stood in the epicenter of the completely deserted farmyard, meticulously monitoring every detail of his men’s movements. He was a perfectionist who left nothing to chance and was careful to ensure all safety protocols were in place (you could never be too careful when establishing first contact) and all eventualities had been accounted for (he had to expect the unexpected at all times) before calling in his next order:
    “Air unit, you are clear to land.”
    “Roger that, team leader.”
    High above the farm, a massive helicopter dropped out of the clouds. It was bigger than even the largest military helicopters and the force of its blades was devastating.
    “What’s that sound?” Piper called over the din from the huddle in the hallway.
    Betty didn’t answer because she was too busy praying. Joe didn’t answer because his mouth had gone completely dry. And then more terrible than all the noise and the shaking was the ominous silence that soon followed when the mighty beast outside had settled itself in the dirt.
    In the farmyard, Agent Agent smartly opened the helicopter door as one dainty leather pump, followed by its twin, stepped down onto the dusty McCloud soil.
    They belonged to Dr. Letitia Hellion.
    Reed thin, she was as delicate as a prima ballerina combined with the aura of a majestic fairy queen. She wore an elegantly tailored black suit beneath which peeked a crisp white linen shirt made from the finest cloth. Her hair was coiled into a lovely twist at the nape of her neck and its jet-black sheen set off deep green eyes and the purest, whitest skin. Anyone who was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to set eyes on Dr. Letitia Hellion swore she was the most exquisitely beautiful woman that they had ever seen.
    She walked with such grace toward the house that it might have appeared that her feet didn’t touch the ground at all. Agent Agent and the two other agents who flanked her movements appeared like Neanderthal apes in contrast.
    
Knock! Knock! Knock!
    Dr. Hellion, Agent Agent, and more than fifty security, containment, and science personnel waited patiently for their knock on the McCloud door to be answered. In the upstairs hallway Joe, Betty, and Piper didn’t move.
    “Mr. and Mrs. McCloud?” Dr. Hellion called up in a clear, refined voice. “My name is Dr. Letitia Hellion and I am a representative of and for the government of the United States of America. Please open your door.”
    All doubt existing in Betty’s and Joe’s minds was immediately dispatched. The McClouds were law-abiding folk, and if the government of the United States saw fit to pay them a visit, far be it from them to refuse their country’s call. Before Piper knew what was what, she found herself standing between her ma and pa in the yard before Dr. Hellion, who produced an official-looking identification card and introduced herself.
     Shyly studying the beautiful stranger from behind her mother, Piper suddenly felt like a little planet being pulled into orbit around Letitia Hellion’s steady and powerful gravitational force. Her white skin, dark hair, and flashing eyes all pulsated with a confidence that was magnetic and inescapable.
    “My men have secured the area and are maintaining the strictest surveillance to ensure your safety and protection,” Dr. Hellion said, indicating where all the agents were posted at key points about the farm. “I am the director of an institute that specializes in providing assistance to people, much like yourselves, who find themselves in . . . well, shall we say, difficult situations.” Dr. Hellion considered Piper with intense green eyes. “I understand you have a child who likes to fly.”