I SHRIEKED at first but before the sound exited my lips I was already responding, as if on impulse. Fear had to give way to joy, to wind that was under control. Danger Girl had trained me well. Sam plummeted for a second before flying upward, hoisted by my air. As he started to pass me he thrust out his arms and slowed to a stop.

“You’re ready,” said Sam. As calm as Yoda. “It was you, Sarah. All you. I just created the force that kept me from flying off the planet. You don’t know your own strength,” he said, then held out a hand. I grabbed it and placed one foot off the platform before stopping and rocking back on my other foot. Sam jerked down for an instant than regained his space.

“Woah,” he said, still unsteady. “Don’t lose me now.”

“I’m scared,” I said.

“If I can trust you, you can trust yourself.”

I thought about it for a second. I closed my eyes tight and stepped off the ledge.Like standing on a cushion at first. My feet sank down into it but eventually it held firm. It was solid, like a rock. It was strange to feel something as flimsy as air formed into a force that could keep two people floating through the atmosphere. I continued to maintain my emotional state, but a little part of me wanted to take it to another level, jumping up and down out of excitement. It was like I had two brains at once.

Sam looked at me with a proud smile. “See, I told you. But that’s not it just yet. Right now we’re floating. And I said I was going to teach you how to fly.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He grabbed my hand again and without any other words we shot upward, traced an arc until we were just above the trees, and began to fly above them like two birds. The wind rushed past me and pushed me from behind. We dipped below the trees for moments and weaved through branches and trunks. It was exhilarating. My heart was pounding out of my chest.

“Now you take over. Be careful of the vectors. Your wind interacts with the others. Also, the terrain shapes the flow so don’t get too low. And watch out for eddies behind large objects.”

“Shouldn’t I be writing this down?” I asked. I usually wrote everything down when I learned it. Even when I figured out how to do makeup through a YouTube tutorial.“No, you’ll get the hang of it,” he said, and suddenly the wind that projected us forward dropped out. We fell for a moment before I caught us from below and we hovered above the trees. I looked at Sam, he nodded at me, and with a few mental twitches, a gust of wind burst behind us and we were sailing above the trees and down the mountain. We hit the base and went up the next hill. It was harder, there were forces coming from all sides. We slipped a few times and Sam had to catch me. I couldn’t believe it. I was flying, and it was due to my power. I wanted to whoop and yell, but I figured that would tip my emotional equilibrium to the other side. I couldn’t stop smiling.

As we got to the top of the next peak, we hit a plateau and dipped behind a boulder. My wind suddenly cut out and we fell down to the earth. I landed hard on my butt. Sam did, too. It was only a few feet so it wasn’t too bad. He stood up, stretched out, and massaged his butt where he had landed.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Eddy,” he said. “That wind slowed and got caught behind the rock, so we lost it.”“Can we do this again?” I asked, dusting myself off. I wanted to tackle Sam to hug and kiss him to thank him for this gift, but I figured it was time for the next best thing, which was more flying.

We flew for an hour, through the mountains over towns, along highways, until we were back in sight of Doolittle. I was getting exhausted. Concentrating on one emotion that long is enervating. When we flew over the high school I looked down and laughed at the students practicing football. But when I looked over toward the Academy I could see a sky teeming with other kids my age, practicing drills for Harpastball and maneuvers for class. I may have been able to fly, but that still didn’t make me that special in Doolittle.When I saw my house, Sam and I veered toward it. When we landed I almost fell over. It was really hard maintaining the correct body position in the sky, like staying in plank position for ten-minute chunks of time, and walking on solid ground again felt weird. Like coming ashore after months at sea.

He gave me a huge high five and hugged me. Then he flew home and left me standing in the street, the sun slowly setting at my back and the stars rising over my little town. As I walked back to my house I pulled out my phone and sent a text to Alice.“Flew home. No need for a ride.”

She sent me back a very unpleasant emoji.