Flight (5 page)

Prissi’s shoulder was on fire, but she didn’t
say anything when Jack, with a flurry of bright white and Bissell
blue feathers, muffed his own one-hopper and banged against the
boat house. Nancy slowed so much on her landing attempt that she
fell from the sky with the grace of a pregnant booby. Nancy was
panting, and, as Prissi easily read from her cork-screwed eyebrows
and radish-red face, not too happy that she hadn’t scored a single
point. Since she still had the FRZ-B in her mouth, Prissi cocked
her head like a cocker spaniel and, to break the tension, puppy
moaned until her roomie laughed.

“Bad puppy. Give me my FRZ-B.”

Prissi backed up a step and growled.

“Puppy!”

Prissi extended her neck; Nasty Nancy took
the disk, gave Prissi a pat, then, all three teenerz plopped onto
their rough hewn perches. Hiding her eyes with her spineless hair,
Prissi studied Jack and compared him to his cousin. Where Joe’s
hair was blond and curly, Jack’s was caramel-colored, slightly wavy
with a sheen that looked more greasy than healthy. Where Joe’s
chest came before the rest of him like an ice breaker plowing the
northern seas, it was Jack’s sleek otter head that arrived before
his narrow chest and indifferently slumped shoulders. Where Joe’s
eyes were bright blue, round and innocent, Jack’s were dark and
lazy. Joe was mostly forthright; Jack seemed to prefer corners and
alleys. All in all Prissi thought Joe was more attractive, but Jack
was more DISTRACTIVE. Prissi shivered in delight…and guilt.

After taking a long and purposefully loud
slurp of his caffe-mucho and tapping out the opening of Beethoven’s
Fifth on the table top, Jack Fflowers complimented Prissi on her
catch.

Prissi demurred, “It’s all in the wings. How
much time do we have?”

Nancy looked at her mypod, “About an
hour.”

Exchanging the girl-to-girl look, Prissi
stated in the way generations of teener girls have, so that her
statement sounded like a question, “We better go get cleaned
up?”

As the trio flew toward Jack’s dorm, they
looked down at the temporary stage that had been set up for the
dedication of the new science center. The light covering of snow,
which blanketed the rest of the hilly Bissell campus, had been
removed from in front of the stage with blowers. Sitting on
brilliant spring green grass was a battalion of folding chairs and
perches in close formation. From high above, Prissi could imagine
an ancient army awaiting the clarions. Rising imposingly from
behind the stage, just to the right of Grayswold Hall was that
ancient science building’s replacement—the six-story, six-sided
pink and gray granite Joshua F. Fflowers Scientatory. A half-dozen
members of the Bissell grounds crew were fussing over barrels of
brave school blue tulips looking forlorn against the snowy
backdrop.

As she passed over the stage, Prissi was more
than a little surprised when she realized that the little man
painfully mounting the temporary stairs and shuffling his way to
the podium was Vartan Smarkzy. Prissi flew in a tight circle so
that she could watch her mentor look out over the non-existent
audience before taking a sheaf of papers from his pocket and
sticking them on a shelf under the podium’s top.

Prissi pounded her LTs and caught up with
Nasty Nancy and Jack just as they dropped down and landed in front
of the tower which jutted from the front of Hoch Hall.

“Did you see who that was? Dr. Smarkzy.
What’s Bissell doing letting my favorite Dutton teacher talk?”

Jack grinned, “Our arch-rivalry is dead for a
day. Except for FRZ-B. Smarkzy is giving the dedication. He and my
grandfather went to school together. My grandfather told me Smarkzy
did some real CE work back then.”

Nancy gacked her patented cynical laugh,
“What was cutting edge back then? Battery-operated flashlights? He
creeps me. He’s like a crab, but with no shell.”

Prissi fought the urge to argue with her
roomie. Ever since coming back from Winter Break and finding Adam
Lin no longer had an interest in her, Nancy had been putting on
weight. With each kilogram of flesh gained, Nasty Nancy had become
nastier—more sarcastic, more critical, more cynical. Given the way
her friend was panting after a sortie that hadn’t changed Prissi’s
breathing at all, the teener guessed that Nancy was only a few
kilos away from having her wings clipped. For Prissi, that was a
very scary thought. Even though Nasty Nancy Sloan did not love
flying in the way that she herself did, Prissi knew that if her
roomie were grounded, the results would be so ugly that their
friendship, begun the first week of their lower mid year, would not
survive.

Prissi took a tai breath to calm herself
down, but, it didn’t help much. She took another breath and held it
even longer. Prissi told herself that she needed to stop being so
judgmental, even though being judgmental was one of the
Constitutionally-guaranteed rights and privileges of teener girls.
She looked over at Nancy who was scowling and waiting for a
comeback. Prissi clamped her jaws and smiled.

To get away from feeling meek and indecisive,
Prissi turned her attention from Nancy back to Jack. Even though
Jack Fflowers had no VCB, he was not without a certain darkside-ish
charm, and it was that which is what had gotten Prissi in her
current mess.

In the classroom , but, especially, on the
playing field, Dutton and Bissell had been fierce, but friendly,
rivals for more than two hundred years. On the ice, up and down the
steep hills of cross country courses, on the links, in sculls, on
football, baseball and soccer fields, thousands upon thousands of
contests had been played out in hard fought and, often, close
competition. Each fall, the schools alternated hosting an
afternoon’s athletic contests, then a dinner, and, afterwards, a
dance.

The previous year, it had been Bissell’ turn
to host the events. Prissi, the only lower mid on the varsity
soccer team, first met Jack Fflowers when he complimented her play
as she came off the field after an agonizing 3-2 Dutton loss. Later
in the afternoon on that perfect October day, Prissi watched Jack
play on the junior varsity soccer team in a game in which Jack had
gotten two penalties as his team lost to Dutton 5-4. Prissi and
Jack bumped into each other at the dinner and, again, at the dance.
Giving into the teener version of the fates, the two new
acquaintances talked a little and danced a lot before it was time
for the Dutton students to return to their campus.

The next time Prissi saw Jack Fflowers was in
three months when he showed up at Dutton for January’s Winter
Dance. Again, there was more dancing than talk. At the end of the
night, there was something in the shadows outside Mullen Hall that
made Prissi’s lips tingle for what seemed like a week. Afterward,
they traded a half-dozen txts. By the time Bissell came to Dutton
the following fall, Prissi’s friendship with Jack’s cousin, Joe
Fflowers, had begun. Joe had been both surprised and unhappy when
Prissi told him that she knew Jack. Joe made it very obvious that
the two cousins did not get along. Against her better judgment, but
enjoying the frizz it gave her, Prissi got together with Jack after
their respective 3D FRZ-B contests. Both had given up soccer after
having fledged over the summer. They met by the pond and talked a
little before Prissi, to relieve the awkwardness she was feeling,
challenged Jack to a flying contest. When Prissi easily won that
contest, Jack stalked away angry. She saw him staring at her at the
dance while she was dancing with Joe. The boys’ faces made plain
their feelings, even though the band was too loud to hear what they
said to one another.

When Prissi was back in home in Manhattan
over winter break, Jack had txtd her and apologized. A day later he
called and she had agreed to meet him at the Diddy Center to ice
skate. Since Prissi had grown up in Burundi, where the only ice
skates to be found might be in a colonial-era museum, Jack easily
outskated her before taking her to dinner at Nam’s, one of the most
expensive restaurants in Manhattan. Back at school, they had txtd
one another a couple of times a week, a practice Prissi had not
quite gotten around to sharing with Joe.

Despite their intersections and interactions,
Prissi had been surprised when with only two days notice Jack had
invited her to the ceremonies for the dedication of his
grandfather’s gift to Bissell. She had hesitated to accept until
she learned that Joe was not going to the ceremonies so that he
could play his last hockey game for Dutton. After she had failed to
tell Joe what she was going to do, Prissi had squirmed an
invitation for Nasty Nancy to come along to ease her guilt.

Prissi nodded her head back toward the new
building as she asked Jack, “Does your grandfather like his
legacy?”

When Jack shook his head, waves of Peking
duck-colored hair bounced attractively.

“He hasn’t seen it much lately. He used to
come up here a lot to check things out, and take me to dinner. But,
not lately. He doesn’t get out much. He was supposed to be rejuved
six months ago, but then there was an organ match problem. And then
this thing,” Jack swept his arms toward the new building, “got
delayed. He really wanted to be here, so he just decided to put
things off until after the dedication. But as he waited, things got
worse. After he finishes up here today, he goes right to the
Juvenal Institute.”

Nasty Nancy offered her caustic opinion, “I
can’t see hurting my health so a bunch of bored kids can clap for
me.”

A furious Jack enunciated each word, “I don’t
think he is here for the acclaim. He loves Bissell. He thinks that
if it weren’t for the education he got here as a student, a
scholarship student, none of the other things would have
happened.”

“Like becoming the richest man in the
world.”

Nasty Nancy’s tone caused both Prissi and
Jack to step back from where they had been leaning against the
black granite perches in front of Hoch Hall.

“Need a breather, Nance,” said a mortified
Prissi. Jack said nothing. He just flew away.

GEE Whiz

Joshua Fflowers felt as old as time as he
smiled and scrabbled with another hand. Some unconscious, but
meticulous, portion of his brain recorded it as the one hundred
forty-first hand-shake. Despite the pain in his finger joints,
Fflowers squeezed firmly and dryly. He held back a sigh, smiled and
reached out to the next well-wisher while pushing back his own wish
just to be done with the circus in which he was starring.

Fflowers had been excited when he first had
the idea of giving Bissell a new science center, but, now, almost
four years later, he was far beyond the point of regret. He didn’t
begrudge the money he had spent on building and equipping a
facility that put Andover and Exeter, Eton and Harrow, even Toin,
to shame. The money was nothing, not even one tenth of one percent
of his worth. If his commitment had been no more than the transfer
of funds, things would have been fine. But, of course, it could not
be that simple. Nothing ever was, except in physics. He had to be
toadied to, fawned over, and feted by the school’s administration
and trustees. He had to be consulted with on the architecture and
artwork—not that anyone particularly listened. He had to be
commended and thanked…by everyone from Headmaster Binny Dowdahl to
the Board of Trustees to the alumni association to the parents’
committee and student council to the little fellow who folded
towels in the field house. He had to be lauded and applauded at the
just finished dedication ceremonies where he had given a speech
that was more coughs and growls than subjects and verbs.

And, now… now, he was in a receiving line
that snaked to infinity, acquiring a zoo of germs from squeezing
the greedy hands of envious wishers and obsequious well-wishers
leaning over his wheel chair, coveting his wealth, pitying his
health, all while whispering, bellowing platitudes, gratitude and
good cheer.

The benign benefactor in Fflowers fought the
rebel’s urge to power up the wheelchair and plow through the crowd
to safety. Away from the parade of stifling people with their
mid-body noises and smells as they hulked and hovered over him.
Away from the stream of sycophancy slowly wending its way past him.
Away to the roto. To relief. In three hours he could be through the
Institute’s doors and beginning the rejuve he should have had so
long ago.

Joshua Fflowers ruefully thought of how he
might have delayed too long, irrevocably ruined his health, for the
sheer joy of what he was doing at the moment. The old man toyed
with the wheelchair toggle. He turned his head to stare at the
sleek stomach, an abdomen looking almost as stiff as its starched
shirt covering, of Binny Dowdahl. Well-met hale fellow headmaster.
Spinner of dreams. Pocket picker of the rich. Fflowers considered
whether he should request, or demand of Dowdahl, that his duties be
over, but Binny was regaling an Oriental couple looking de la mode
Chinois in their long flame-hued phoenix wings.

As Fflowers waited for the ineffably charming
Dowdahl to finish his story, he recalled how even Ives Cheredon,
his beloved headmaster from ninety years before, despite being as
brilliant a raconteur as he was essayist and poet, occasionally had
self-loved his words and thoughts to where a tale well told, with
more fillips and flourishes than a Souza march, had made an
assembly seem to last an eternity.

Feeling his hand move, the old man turned
away from the past to look up, past a short fat body, into a large
eager face, hacked in half by a bad-toothed smile. Except for the
monstrous teeth, the man looked and smelled like a boiled egg.
While he pawed Fflowers hand, the little man sputtered, “Thank you.
Thank you. Yes, as always, I believe our future, our nation’s
future, is now walking, now, this very day, in the hallowed halls
of Bissell. Those hands deserve the best, and you have certainly
given them that. I thank you. Bissell thanks you. Noramica thanks
you. Yes. Yes.”