Watcher in the Woods by Robert Liparulo

standing on ice. At the same time, he realized he was not looking up at Xander. He dropped his gaze straight down and saw the grass ten feet below his shoes. His stomach rolled. His muscles tightened. His feet did slip out from under him. He fell back, his arms pinwheeling, his legs shooting up over his head. But he didn’t drop. He saw the ground below him and then Xander again as he came back around. He had done a backward somersault in midair.
    â€œWay to go, Dae!” Xander said. He threw himself backward. He spun his arms and kicked his feet until he had executed a similar move.
    David watched with amazement. He felt pressure under his feet and arms, as though invisible hands were keeping him afloat.
    He brought his arms down and kicked as he would underwater. And what would happen underwater happened here: he rose higher. As frightening as it was to watch the ground get farther away, David felt a lightness that went deeper than his skin and muscles. It reached his spirit. It was like he was free of more than the laws of gravity; all the garbage that had been dumped on him recently didn’t seem so heavy.
    He was still aware of his mother’s absence and how awful it was. But at this moment, he felt able to deal with it. He was sure it was temporary, as though she had gone to the store and would return soon. He laughed at that, kicked his legs, and shot higher. Bending at the waist, he leaned diagonally over the ground. This—staring directly at a forty-foot plunge—was even more exhilarating. His heart raced faster. His mouth twitched from a joyful smile to a worried frown and back again. His father called to him, and when he turned to look, his body rotated with his head.
    Dad was standing—if that’s what you called it, when there was nothing to stand on—as high as David thought he could go, at the center of the opening to the wide blue sky.
    â€œWhat do you think?” Dad said and laughed.
    David meant to answer, but only an excited breath came out. He swallowed and tried again. “Great!”
    Just under the arcing canopy of leaves, Xander hovered. He was reaching up to touch the branches. He was being careful, as though any connection with reality would send him crashing back down.
    â€œI can’t do it!”
    Toria’s voice reached David, sounding thin and far away. He looked to see her jumping in place on the grass.
    Dad said, “I think you’re trying too hard, honey.” He moved his arms and legs and began descending toward her.
    David swiveled away and “swam” toward the canopy at the edge of the clearing. How cool would it be to get a leaf from up here and save it as a memento of his first time flying? He still had trouble thinking of it as flying . It wasn’t like Peter Pan : hadn’t Wendy, John, and Michael Darling needed fairy dust? And they had flown away to Neverland.
    David, Xander, and Dad weren’t flying, and they would never go anywhere this way. But that was all right. This was enough.
    He was near the edge of the clearing and reaching up to a leaf bigger than his hand, when something outside the clearing caught his eye. His eyes widened, and his heart felt squeezed into a tight knot. Through the trees, on the ground, a man stood looking at him. He was in shadows, but David could tell the man’s expression was grim. He had long hair that was blowing around his head. He wore a dark overcoat, and his hands were stuffed into his pockets. The whites of his eyes seemed to glow in the darkness of the woods.
    David hitched in a breath and tried to yell for Dad, but his mind would not form the words he wanted to use. He moved his mouth without saying a thing.
    He suddenly realized he was still moving, fast and out of control. He saw a heavy tree branch seconds before he crashed into it. His face hit first, then his chest. The pressure or currents that had been holding him up suddenly evaporated, and he fell.
    His hands