The edge loomed up toward her. One foot went off into space. The toe of her other sneaker caught in the rain gutter, and she halted for a second. But she had only a tenuous grasp on the roof tiles. Her fingers, her foot, everything was slipping….

Then gravity let go again.

Jessica felt Jonathan’s hands gently grasping both shoulders. The two of them floated down to the ground together.

“I’m so sorry,” he said.

Her heart still pounded, but she wasn’t scared anymore. The featherlight feeling had returned so quickly, like a wave of relief when some horrible test was over.

Their feet settled onto the ground.

“Are you okay?” Jonathan said. “I should have warned you.”

“It’s all right,” she said, shaking her head. “I should have realized. I was just thinking that it’s too bad we can’t all fly.”

“No, just me. Although when you turned up, I was kind of hoping.”

She looked at Jonathan. His eyes were still wide with alarm. And Jessica could also see his disappointment that she had fallen, that she wasn’t like him.

“Yeah, I was kind of hoping too, I guess.” She took his hand firmly. “But take me up again. Please?”

“You’re not scared?”

“Kind of,” she admitted. “So unscare me.”

They flew.

It was true, Jonathan wasn’t Superman. Flying was hard work. Jessica found that they went much higher if she jumped with him, pushing off as hard as she could. The timing was tricky—if one of them pushed too soon and too hard, they would fly apart and be jerked to a halt at arm’s length, then spin helplessly around each other, laughing until the ground caught them again. But they got better with every jump, coordinating their leaps to soar higher and higher.

She gripped Jonathan’s hand hard, nervous and excited, terrified of darklings and thrilled to be in the sky.

Flying was beautiful. The pale blue streets glinted like rivers beneath them as they crashed through high, windborne columns of autumn leaves. There were birds up here, too, their wings outstretched in arrested flight and angled to catch the frozen winds. The dark moon glowered over them, almost risen all the way, but it didn’t seem to crowd the sky as oppressively as it had last night. From up here Jessica could see the band of stars that stretched around the horizon, bright pinpoints whose white light hadn’t been leached blue by the moon.

The layout of Bixby was still unfamiliar to her, but now that Jessica could see the town from above, laid out like a map, it started to make sense. From the highest jumps the houses and trees looked small and perfect, a city of doll-houses. Jonathan must see the world completely differently from everyone else, she realized.