Chapter One: Running
All my life, my dream was to fly.
Without an airplane.
Without a jet-pack. If I had a jet-pack, though, I’m sure I wouldn't mind.
Looking up at the birds, I
could never help but feel jealous. They were born to fly, and don’t have
any other care. They don’t have school. Their life is easy. They fly with
grace.
Grace. The way people are
supposed to move around. What’s the point of walking around if you weren't going to do it right? Although wherever I was, I heard only, “sorry,” “oops,” and
“I’ll… uh… clean that up”.
People seemed only bashfully happy to me. So very grounded by what they have to
do, by either force or necessity or desire. Being able to fly would pretty much
be the exact opposite of being grounded, wouldn't it? That’s what I’d liked. To
have been different from my Grade 6 classmates at school, each of whom had
their own anchor. It was usually video games or TV or sports.
My
friends gave me a share in their fun from time to time, and they always insisted
I was crazy for not having much of a video game system at home. I used to agree
with them, but I got over it. Now I felt lucky. I didn’t have to worry about my
scores. I heard that’s all they talked about, which gave me nothing to talk
about, whatsoever. My friends were Simon and Chase. The only two people I
really felt comfortable to talk to, even though all they talked about is video
games. They didn’t seem to care when I didn’t understand them, they seemed to
enjoy explaining things to me.
They
were the only ones who enjoyed coming to my house, where I had just a computer
to entertain them. My TV was “lame,” and anything else was nearly
inconsiderable. At school we did everything together.
That
was before I knew I could fly.
It
was early September, and I had decided I wanted to fly. Our teachers took us
out to the park at lunch, and I didn’t want to play soccer. We hung around the
field at first. After a while, we managed to wander away from everyone, up a
small hill. It was where the running track was, but seeing it in front of me
revealed that this would the perfect place to practice my plan to fly.
I
once read in a book about someone that had learned to fly after following
instructions in a book. They told him what yoga positions to do, what to say
and what to put in a blender. After that he was able to fly. It described how
flying had felt. It made me so angry that this was only fiction.
Nobody
told me flying was impossible. I never asked, but everyone kept saying that
anything is possible. All the teachers said that with a confident smile. We
really could do anything. They could give more homework, I could become a
genius, animals could talk, when the lights turn out your chair can attack you.
I could fly.
All
I had to do was want it enough. And what better position to be in to start
flying, randomly by the power of will, than a running one?
So
every lunch I started to lead my friends over to that little hill beyond the
soccer field and run. After my friends got tired I would continue. I tried to
cry a bit; maybe that would help build my will.
Eventually
I started to jump, and grab at the air every once in a while, but still nothing
happened. I tried to push off the ground with the Force, like a Jedi might, but
still, nothing. I didn’t give up though, and I could feel myself getting
stronger from this endless running during the lunch recess.
Maybe
I may have stopped after a while, realizing how crazy I was, but I didn’t get
the chance to. One day, I was running, sweat was just starting to bead down my
forehead, I could feel. Chase and Simon were on the bleachers talking about
video games or something. I felt like it
was time to try jumping. I tried my “Force Method”: I concentrated really hard,
bringing my eye brows down, squinting. My hands open at my hip, I leaned forward,
tried to feel the stony track without touching it. The space in between. My
eyes shut and I thrust everything I could off the ground. Air blew over my
face. In my hands I could feel something. It felt like compressed air, or the
feeling you get when you push and pull your hands at each other repeatedly. The
feeling was gone I opened my eyes and I was falling. But I was falling from way
higher than I have fallen. I started to whoop in joy, but I yelped as I fell
hard onto my feet and landed on my hands in the grass right after a turn in the
track. Chase and Simon saw me lying there. “Jesse!” they called, “Jesse, are
you okay?!”
“I
did it,” I told them, “I flew.”
It had truly been only the sky and I.
╞╕╒╡
So, you read the first chapter in the story! At least that's what I assume you're doing at the bottom of this post! I hope it was short enough, the word count is 871 words! So... My first story since... my last one! I'm pretty amazed that I'm doing this! So far this is going according to plan, but you may remember me saying I don't have one, so... I'm not going to try and fill you with any hopes! This is pretty much all I've got!
PLEASE let me know what you think!
