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The feeling is familiar, he thinks.
Like his cheek smashed against the asphalt after a beating, the paving newly dried and hot as the devil beneath the unforgiving Kansas sun.
Like breathing in car exhaust, something he’s never really gotten accustomed to since crash-landing on Earth, and he wonders how any of the other children do it. How his bullies do it. How Ma and Pa do it, and if they’d rather not.
He asks himself through clenched teeth and bloody lips what the point of holding his breath is if he can’t even handle a few fumes.
That’s how it feels when the nanites crawl their way into his mouth, his eyes, the slits under his fingernails, his pores. It’s a violation. It’s helplessness, a thing he’s not supposed to feel in front of other people. Not since he grew up, anyway. But the nanites dribble out of his mouth in gritty globs of black and he tries to cough them up but can’t. And in that moment he feels the very opposite of grown up.
He thinks he sees the woman—Angela, if he’s heard correctly—smile before his vision goes completely black. Not a real smile, no, a pleased smile but only because there is relief attached. Relief that the job is done, relief that it all ends after this. That much he can tell even as he’s dying.
Dying? Is he dying?
The nanites swirl around his face and he has the odd thought of how Ma used to dress him up for winter, winding a fluffy blue scarf around his neck and asking over and over again if he’s warm enough. Are you sure? she’d say. Okay, darlin’. If you say so. Now don’t you forget your dang stocking cap at school again. We don’t want you to catch a cold. We love you. Right, Pa? Yes in-deed, son. We love you, so much. More than all the stars in the sky. More than all the swishing wheat and swaying trees and bubblin’ springs.
Alright now, son. Enough of that. Make us proud.
He digs his nails into the web that covers his face. Pulls and pulls and it stretches like warm taffy, like oozing tar. He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe, and he’s sorry, he’s so sorry Ma, Pa, I’m so sorry, I screwed up, this is all my fault.
His words chatter to a halt as he heaves a shaky breath through tears.
I don’t belong here, he says finally, wipes his sleeve across his nose. I don’t belong here. They told me so.
Clark, they say. That ain’t true.
Warm arms around his back. Hands tousling his black mop. Hearts thumping beside his own.
C’mere, son, they say. Come home.
His hands fall from his face and into the soft turf.
And then he bunches his legs and leaps.
He doesn’t know what he’s doing but he knows this feeling is familiar, too. He’s always loved to fly. Sometimes he forgets just how much, especially in the thick of a fight. The love is not forgotten now as he feels the air peel around him, but it sits at his periphery, unattended to. He doesn’t have time for that now. Up is the only way out.
The air feels thick as water around him as he climbs and climbs, and he thinks he hears a blast from behind. They’re following him, but it doesn’t matter. Up is the only way out. The higher he climbs, the deeper the nanites settle. Come on, he pleads with himself. He’s five and he’s wandered too far into the water again, only he’s alone this time and it’s dark. Up. Just go up. Gravity feels like twice its worth here as he splutters and flounders beneath the surface.
The Moon gurgles at him from outside its watery window, mocking him. Try flying, little boy, it says. See? It’s not so hard.
He feels his awareness trickle away right as feels space under him, a cushion of blessed silence between him and the world. The others are clinging to him—how long have they been there?—but their grips slacken and so does he.
I did it, he says as he floats towards the Moon. You’re right. That wasn’t so bad.
The nanites flake away from his eyes in time to see stars, stars all around twinkling like snow. How he misses that fluffy blue scarf of his. How he misses the snow.
The Earth bobs below like a penny he’s plunked into a fountain, and if he had time he’d plunge his hands in and take it back. It’s pretty, at least. All shimmery and reddish-gold. His eyelids flutter closed and feels very tired. The nanites are gone but he has no air left. Stars melt on his neck and with a jolt he remembers, he remembers what he had forgotten, and he rushes back to the farmhouse kicking up tufts of snow behind him.
You forgot something, says Ma as he blunders through the door. As he falls back to Earth. She holds out the scarf in her hands. He gasps as air floods his lungs.
She gives him a warm smile, wraps his scarf round his neck.
He opens his eyes and gives it another go.