Floating

Chapter 8

The next day, Ava waved bye to Jenny as she walked off to swim tryouts. After changing in the locker room with several of her classmates and previous teammates, she walked out in her swimsuit with her goggles and towels on hand, joining the rest of the swimmers by the pool.

Following the coach's instructions, she lined up at the diving block.

"Hey, Ava."

Ava turned to see Evan placing his goggles on his head. He wore the standard swim team uniform, which showed off his muscles. Well. She scowled.

"Do you have to be everywhere?"

Evan shrugged. "Swimming is one of my favorite sports." He waved and grinned as a few students called out to him, teasing him about his expected captaincy.

Ava closed her eyes and took a deep breath before diving off the block and into the pool. In the water, she felt much more clear-minded. Free of the distracting conversations of the students, she concentrated on the timing of her stroke, regulating her breathing before flipping at the end of the lap. Bubbles rose to the surface as she glided underwater in a streamline position, watching the way the light played on the floor.

After her fourth lap, she rested on the side of the pool and checked her time. Hearing claps and whoops, she turned just as Evan completed an individual medley in under a minute. She groaned. The rest of the practice passed in a blur.

Ava walked home with her earbuds in her ears. Tryouts had gone as expected. Ava made varsity again, and it was only a matter of time before Evan became team captain. Not that she cared.

Humming idly, she stopped at the intersection and pressed the button for the crosswalk. One of the larger intersections, a few other students soon gathered around her. She noticed a familiar red backpack among them.

She had thought little of their encounter the day before, but found herself wondering what would happen if his "condition" started just then. Backpacks flying through the air... with people attached? How much could he lift? Then she began thinking of their physical education class the week before and soon was definitely off-topic.

The automated crosswalk voice sounded, pulling her back to her walk. It would be irresponsible to let him wander around with the possibility of making people float through the air above intersections. She imagined cars crashing into one another, screeching to a halt, or rolling atop one another as their drivers gaped at floating high school students.

Ava frowned. Confrontation was never really her thing. Fixing the issue would mean talking to him about it, and that was almost unacceptable, especially with him. He was frustrating and nice, especially in how a dimple would always form on his right cheek when he smiled at her. Not that she cared.

Ava rolled her eyes and began walking more briskly. She soon caught up to Evan.

Pulling her earbuds out, she asked, "What if it happened right now?"

"Hi Ava!" Evan exclaimed cheerfully. "Didn't see you there before! Sorry, if what happened right now?"

Ava looked up at the sky and took a deep breath in and out, miffed that she had to actually explain it. "If your... condition started acting up all of a sudden in a crowd of people." She frowned pointedly at him.

Evan's face shifted slightly. A bit downfallen. "Oh. Yes. Well, that hasn't happened yet. I suppose I would just have to start running around in circles, waving my hands in the air, and hopefully that would solve everything." He grinned, his mood not easily tanked by his "condition."

"Ha ha, yes, very funny."

"I suppose I would have to make a break for it." Evan stared at the path in front of them thoughtfully. "If I ran away from all the people, that would solve everything, wouldn't it?" He posed this last sentence as more of a statement than a question.

Ava tried to picture the situation. "Wouldn't you immediately be followed by all sorts of flying things? I think the cause of all the floating people would be somewhat obvious."

"People? Who said anything about floating people?"

"I just assumed -"

Evan broke into a huge smile. "Now that would be hilarious. Imagine people just up and floating away."

Ava waited for his senses to return to him, annoyed at both her own assumption and his failure to take her concern seriously.

"No, I can't float people yet. Just the odd pencil or bag here and there. Sometimes I can control it." He glanced around, and Ava realized they had reached their neighborhood. They had left the crowd of students a while back.

Evan put a finger to his lips, a mischievous expression passing over his face as he pointed at a red bike leaned against the mailbox. Twitching his right finger, he lifted the bike. Ava watched as the bike rose slowly at first, as if reluctant to move against the laws of gravity, then more quickly as it shot up into the sky.

"Evan!"

"Shoot. Hang on, this happens sometimes. Let me know when you see it." Evan put a hand over his eyes to shield himself from the glaring sun as he scanned the skies.

"When I see it?" Ava's annoyance at Evan threatened to turn into something more, but right now the concern was the flying bike. She searched the clouds for a red dot. After a moment, "There! There, there!"

"Got it." Evan threw up a hand to slow the descent of the falling bicycle. Soon it became more than a red dot and the outline of the bike was clearly visible.

"Uh... heads up, you might want to take a few steps back." Ava immediately took several steps back, much more wary of his casual warnings now.

"Usually I have to - oh no -" In attempting to stop the bike, Evan had only made the bike change trajectory. Evan made a split-second decision, running to shove Ava to the grassy lawn.

The bike fell to the ground with a loud crash, startling a group of mourning doves in the nearby tree, and landing on Evan's ankle, where Ava had been just a second before.

"Ow." He grimaced. Then he realized he was on top of Ava, who was peering at him with a curious expression on her face. His hands were on either side of her, deep in the blades of grass. Her hair lay spread out on the grass, reflecting the sunlight as her eyes searched his.

So close up, Ava noticed his eyes were more of a green than she had originally thought - a green hue mixed in with the blue. He had a freckle just to the left of the bridge of his nose, and his hair had begun to float again. His face was only inches from hers, his lips slightly parted in surprise. They stared at one another for several seconds, neither daring to break the silence.

A crow finally did so for them. Evan shook his head, suddenly self-conscious, and mumbled, "Sorry about that," rolling over to remove himself as he did so.

A sharp pain in his ankle made him suck in a breath through his teeth loudly.

Ava sat up, forgetting about the awkward moment between them as she knelt down at his ankle, inspecting the angle at which it had twisted with a turn of her head.

"It's sprained, isn't it?" he asked, his face contorted in pain.

"Yeah, if it isn't broken," Ava noted thoughtfully.

"You have a terrible bedside manner."

"You're not dying," Ava replied sardonically.

Evan dropped his head back to the grass and groaned melodramatically. Ava rolled her eyes.

"Here, you're going to need help walking in." Ava offered a hand, and an arm, as it took their combined efforts to get him off the ground and onto his other leg. She helped Evan hop back to the sidewalk, where they both paused to stare at the remains of the bike.

Unfortunately, Evan hadn't been the most successful in slowing the bicycle down, which meant the impact had completely separated the gears and pedals from the frame.

"Well, I suppose it's a good thing that was my bike," he noted drily.

Ava rolled her eyes again before helping him up the steps to his house.