Parkour!

“Clark,” Sophie says after a couple blocks of walking in silence. “Are you sore at me?”

I remind myself that she didn’t have a choice about coming with me today. “No.”

She floats a little above and in front of me, gently rotating so that she’s upside down, our faces level. “You seem mad, though.”

“I’m not mad,” I say, absolutely more than a little mad. “It wasn’t the best decision you made back there, that’s all.”

“I was only trying to help.”

“I know, Sophie.”

She laces her fingers together anxiously. “Isn’t messing up that awning better than you getting your teeth knocked in? Or getting into a scuffle at your school and losing your scholarship?”

Not wanting anyone passing by to see me muttering to myself on the street (knowing my luck, word would somehow get back to my nosy neighbor), I step into the alleyway where we’ll have more privacy. “Look, I get where you’re coming from, Sophie.” I scrub at the back of my neck. “And I appreciate what you’re trying to do. It might keep those guys off my case, but it might make trouble for both of us, too.”

Sophie tips her head to one side, looking a little like a confused poodle with her curly hair. “How’s that? They can’t hurt me.”

“Well, let’s say those three tell other people what happened with you and me this morning.”

“I told them not to, remember? I said I’d Ghost Punch them in the face.”

I sigh. At least she hadn’t said it exactly like… that. Jeez. “Yeah, Sophie, and what if they do anyway? Even if no one believes anything except the part where I threatened to beat them up, how’s that going to go with the school principal? Then I’ll look like the one who’s a bully.”

Sophie frowns and looks off to the side. If her feet could make contact with anything, she’d be scuffing at the ground with her toes. “I suppose that’s a faint possibility…”

“And if someone does believe them we’ll have more than a scholarship to worry about. What if they talk about it online and… and some crazy government agency comes and snatches us into a white van?” Look, I’m not one of those guys that goes around wearing tinfoil on my head to keep Them from stealing my brainwaves, but in the last twenty-four hours I’ve gotten a lot more open-minded about what’s possible versus what isn’t. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not trying to get covered in electrodes, or dissected, or whatever!”

Sophie doesn’t seem to follow me on the shady government angle, raising one silvery eyebrow. “You’re something of a paranoiac, you know that, Clark?”

Whatever. It’s not paranoia if it comes true, and I’m not gonna risk it. All I’m trying to do is get through high school.

Speaking of which… I glance down at my watch and wince. “Ah, crap! It’s five minutes until the bell rings! School’s still ten minutes away even if I run.”

“Oh, no!” Sophie puts a hand to her mouth. “Can I help?”

I’m about to say that no, of course there’s nothing she can do to help unless she can stop time with her magic ghost powers. But I stop myself. Last night, it definitely felt like I was running faster than I should be able to when we broke out of the hotel. And this morning, there’s no way I could punch a dent in a metal pole without breaking my hand.

Even if I don’t know how Sophie does the things she does, it’s clear that she isn’t exactly held to the same physical rule book as the rest of us living folks.

“Maybe you can,” I say, considering. “I do feel a lot stronger and faster when you’re possessing me. It’s like you give me superpowers, or something.”

Her eyes light up, twinkling. “That’s right, isn’t it!”

I don’t think it’s quite that simple. Maybe more like, she can bend the laws of physics a little to make things happen if she believes they’ll happen. It’s hard to say for sure, I’m no scientist. But I get the feeling that making her feel optimistic and on top of the world isn’t going to hurt.

“Yeah, I feel like you give me a big boost. Do you think you could try helping me move fast enough to get to school on time?”

I really do want to get there on time. So sue me, I like school in general and I want to make a good impression. But now that I’m thinking about it, I’m curious about how this possession thing with Sophie works, too. No time like the present to experiment with it a little. Even if it doesn’t work, I’m going to be late, anyway.

“Your wish is my command, Clark!” Sophie doesn’t need to be asked twice, eager to show off her alleged super powers. She leaves me in control of my body, though her cheerful excitement bleeds over to me.

Running along the sidewalk like an Olympic sprinter in full view isn’t the best idea. Instead, I study the walls shadowing the alley. Taking the literal high road might be the way to go.

“Okay,” I say out loud. “I’m gonna jump back and forth between the walls until we get up to that fire escape.” I point. “Then we’ll climb to the top and run along the roofs until we get to school. Deal?”

“Sounds like a plan! Let’s go!” Sophie crows in my head, all sunshine and rainbows.

Forcefully putting aside the idea that I might smack into the wall and make a fool of myself, I run at the far wall, jump, and kick off.

Even though it’s the outcome I’d hoped for, I still get major butterflies in my stomach when I go flying out and up toward the opposite wall. I kick off again, and land with room to spare on the landing of the fire escape. It’s… easy?

It’s easy!

Running up the fire escape stairs isn’t fast enough for either of us, so we start jumping up from landing to landing, hand over foot. Up on the roof, I take a second to get my bearings, blinking in the bright sunlight. There! I can see the school’s main building off in the distance. I take off running across the roof. There’s one more little stomach-flip of nervousness as I near the edge, but I’m pushing off to leap to the roof of the building next door before I have time to psych myself out.

For a second, I’m out over open space. The next moment, I land well beyond the edge of the next roof and stumble just a little as I jog to a stop. This must be what it feels like to be a video game character, this kind of effortless movement. If only Blaine and his friends were still around, I could hop across the tops of their heads, get a score multiplier combo going.

“Feeling alright, Clark?” Sophie asks. I can feel her elation and pride, and I can’t say I disagree with it one bit. This is pretty amazing. Like those rare good dreams where you can do anything without limits.

“Definitely!” I say, and take off for the next leap. After a few buildings, I have the timing down well enough that I can smoothly jump from one roof to the next without breaking stride. We’re moving so fast, it almost feels more like flying than running. We’re even outrunning the cars down on the street.

“We should go to school like this every morning!” Sophie calls out between soundless giggling.

On the next jump, on a whim, I add a front flip and still land just fine on the other side. “We’re only doing this today because it’s an emergency, Sophie, we have to be careful about this.”

Sophie laughs in my head as we speed along. “Being late to school is an emergency, huh? Okay, Clark. Whatever you say!”

We make the ten-minute trip in two minutes. I’m a little sad to stop running. Sophie catches me feeling that way and gives me a little wordless ribbing as we approach the school.

Down on the ground in front of the entrance, I can see Sabrina nearing the doors. Huffing and puffing, Blain, Foley, and Henderson barrel around the corner to catch up with her. I strain to hear what they’re saying, and after a second it’s like someone’s turned up the volume on the world.

“My, you boys are looking particularly sweaty this morning,” Sabrina says, giving them a concerned look up and down, eyebrow climbing toward her hairline.

All three of them are talking at once and out of breath, but I can still pick out a few words. Like “threatened,” “monster,” and “aliens.” That last one doesn’t make sense, but in any case, this seems like my cue to get to school.

“See, Sophie? I told you they’d talk,” I say, hopping down off the last roof, down through the limbs of a nearby shade tree, and down onto the ground behind Sabrina. Blaine and the others see me land, eyes going wide. I treat them to a friendly smile and wave, and let Sophie flash my eyes red just to wish them an extra good morning.

They’re not smart, but they’re smart enough to run into the school.

“I will never understand them…” Sabrina muses to herself. She turns to straighten her bag and notices me. “Oh, hello again, Clark. Where did you come from? I didn’t see you on the bus.”

“Yeah,” I say, smoothing down my wind-blown hair. “I decided to run instead. Gotta work on my parkour.”

Sabrina raises her other eyebrow so they match. “Parkour?”

Technically, that’s kind of sort of what I was doing, right? “Yeah, you know,” I go on as we walk into the building. “My ninja skills. You never know.”

I could be imagining it, but I think I see her crack a smile. “I hope you weren’t running with your arms straight out behind you. That doesn’t make you run faster, you know.”

“How do you know? Have you tried it?” I’m joking, but Sabrina blushes the tiniest bit. “You have!”

She sticks her nose in the air. “It was sixth grade, and you did it, too!”

“Nuh-uh. I’m too cool for that.” I’m so relieved that she doesn’t seem to be angry with me anymore that everything else that happened this morning is worth it. I ignore the weird little twinge at the back of my mind from Sophie. She’s probably just feeling left out of a joke. I’ll explain the ninja running thing to her later.

“Oh,” Sabrina says as we fight our way through the crowded halls. “Did you hear about what happened at the Kensington? Apparently there’s a big crater in the wall of a building across the street.”

I think of the taste of mortar on my lips from last night when Sophie and I made ourselves into impromptu crash test dummies getting out of the hotel. “No, is that what passes for hot news here? I thought this was a big city?”

Did we really do that? Maybe we should be careful…

“Anyway,” I go on, aware that I’m not doing a good job of playing it cool anymore. “It was probably a drunk driver. Or some falling debris from the hotel, or a small meteorite, or something.”

Meteorite? Come on, Clark, get it together!

Sabrina looks like she wants to talk about the crater more, but the early bell starts ringing, letting us know we only have about a minute to get to our seats.

“Well, I guess I’ll talk to you later, Clark,” she says. “And don’t think I’m letting you forget about helping me after school today! You promised!”

We walk into class and I head for my desk while she heads for hers. Watching her neatly unpack her bag and arrange her text, notebook, and pencil box, I wonder how it is that such an organized person was almost late for school.

Come to think of it, she helped me get to school yesterday, and we were cutting it close then, too.

Why is she getting to class so close to the bell, anyway?