HIGHER

The first time Astrid flew it was an accident. On the night she threw herself from her bedroom’s second story window, she’d intended on landing in the tiny, unkempt rock garden below. She hadn’t wanted to die, just to punish her mother with a trip to the emergency room that their broken little family couldn’t possibly afford. Astrid dove headfirst through the window and braced for impact. 

But the impact didn’t come, and it wouldn’t come for at least a few more years. Instead, on that night she found herself soaring, the tears being pulled from her cheeks as she circled higher and higher in the cool night air.

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Astrid had been sixteen when her gift hit her. Now she was almost twenty-one, and it felt strange to be around all of these recovering addicts before reaching drinking age herself. She felt a hundred years old. She felt like she was still a child. 

The church basement smelled like old carpet, half-smoked cigarettes, and Folgers coffee. Astrid avoided eye contact with any of the people ambling into seats or loitering around the table of day-old pastries.

The styrofoam cup that she cradled with both hands felt as fragile as a baby bird, like if she applied too much pressure it would burst. A twinge of pain came from her wrist, a complaint at having to support the weight of the cup. 

She didn’t even know why she kept coming to these sad little gatherings. Sure, everyone here was an addict too, and they kept assuring her that it was a safe place. But they didn’t know her. There was no way they would understand.

So she sat there, watching, listening, fuming, judging, and saying absolutely nothing. 

And she thought about Clara.

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Astrid and Clara had met on a dark web forum for supers. They grew close in each other's DMs amidst tumblr screenshots and walls of mutual oversharing, and they decided to meet up.

The night air in the city park was cool and heavy with dew. 

“Wow,” Astrid said in the choked, nasally tone of someone holding in a hit of weed. Clara had just punched a tree in half. Astrid still wasn’t sure whether or not this was a date. 

“The trick is going to be keeping ourselves off the radar of other supers, those fascist hacks,” said Clara, blowing on her knuckles theatrically. She was short and stocky, with roughly chopped black hair and loose black clothing.

“Word,” said Astrid.

“Especially if we only rob dealers and junkies. The feds aren’t gonna bother protecting them.”

“Yeah,” said Astrid, “I’m just thinking about all the shit I’m finally going to be able to buy.”

“I’m thinking about caving some fucker’s chest in with my hands.”

“That’s fucking dark dude,” Astrid said, laughing.

Clara laughed too.

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“My name is Deb,” said a straw-haired, desiccated-looking woman a few seats down from Astrid, “and I’m an addict.” 

“Hi Deb,” came the staggered chorus of tired voices. 

Deb started sharing, and Astrid closed herself off to the outside world again, opting to stare into the swirling brown mud of her half finished cup of coffee, which somehow tasted both too strong and watered down at the same time. 

“…it’s been a hard six months,” said Deb, choking slightly, holding back her sad little tears.

Six fucking months. It had been almost two years since Astrid had last used. Boohoo, six months. 

“…I’ve had to lose everything in order to find myself.”

What could Deb have even lost? Custody of her kids? Her house? Her collection of piss stinking cats? She hadn’t lost anything like what Astrid had lost. Astrid rolled her eyes and peeled a piece off the top of her coffee cup. 

“Keep coming back,” came the chorus of voices.

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Astrid felt incredibly vulnerable, hovering just above the tops of the old, boxy apartment buildings that flanked the alleyway. A part of her worried that the dealer would look up and see the dim blue glow of her cellphone as she texted Clara the cross streets.

35th and Central, just one guy 

omw, Clara responded.

Just seeing Clara walking up from a few blocks away made Astrid feel infinitely less exposed. She waited until the moment just before Clara rounded into the alley, then she dropped silently down behind the dealer. 

“Hey,” Astrid said. 

“The fuck—” said the dealer as he spun around.

Then Clara was on him, grabbing him in a chokehold.

“Where’s the money?”

“Oh, come on, fuck you.” His voice squeaked under her grip.

“I will pop your skull like a grape so help me god.”

“I’ve seen her do it.”

“Oh Jesus, it’s under the dumpster, in the paper bag.”

“Gracias.”

“Fuck you, you fucking freaks.”

Then lights out for the dealer. 

Astrid had been so inundated with adrenaline that she had forgotten to fly away, instead opting to run off next to Clara, their laughter ricocheting off the buildings.

After running for what felt like miles, they finally stopped to gather their bearings in a parking lot. Astrid leaned in and kissed Clara, tasting the sweat on her upper lip and the hot breath of exertion.

Clara pushed her away, grinning and rolling her eyes. “Later, dummy,” she said, “Let’s see what we got.”

Astrid grinned and shook the paper bag out onto the trunk of a nearby sedan. A few rolls of cash plopped out, followed by a folded over gallon ziplock bag. She stared down at the big bag filled with a dozen or so little bags of clumpy powder.

“What in the fuck are we supposed to do with this?” asked Astrid breathlessly.

“I don’t fucking know. We can sell it or we can use it I guess,” said Clara.

“Yes, those are the two options. But fucking meth?”

“Don’t knock it ‘til you try it, I guess.”

Astrid felt invincible, unbreakable. She didn’t want the feeling to ever go away. 

“Okay, so we don’t even have a pipe or anything,” said Astrid.

“You just bump it like coke, idiot,” said Clara.

“Coke makes me fly crooked. You know that.” Astrid pulled one of the little bags out, weighing it in her hand. 

“Well don’t fucking fly then.”

“That’s like telling a fish not to swim.”

“Give me that,” said Clara, snatching the bag away. She scooped out a tiny pinch of powder with her pinky before shoving it up her nose and inhaling deep. Then she turned around and walked over to the side of one of the decaying cars. Clara squatted down, put both hands under the frame at the side of the little sedan, and heaved it across the parking lot. 

“Holy fucking shit,” said Astrid while the car was still flipping through the air. It landed with a screeching crunch.

“You gotta try this,” said Clara, “I’m not sure if it’s supposed to feel like this, but goddamn, you have to try this.”

“We have to get the fuck out of here, actually.”

“No, no, no, try this first, then we can dip.”

“Fine,” said Astrid, digging her own pinky into the little bag before jamming it up her nose.

Without even trying, without even thinking, Astrid shot up into the sky faster than she ever had before. The warmth of her exhale condensed into a thick fog in front of her face. There was nothing around her except black sky studded with starlight.

She peered down below her feet and felt the gut sinking feeling that she hadn’t felt since her first month or so of flight. She must have been a mile above the city. The buildings, the streets congested with rumbling trucks and honking commuters, all glowing with a hundred shades of artificial light, it was all so beautiful. Even the biting cold air felt incredible. She knew that if she wanted to, she could fly around the world in a night. In an hour.  

Although maybe that would have attracted too much attention. What if she flew in Russian or Chinese airspace and started World War Three? She knew better than that. 

Astrid felt the need to share this with someone. Then she remembered Clara a mile below. 

“Oh fuck,” she said out loud. Then she let herself plummet, turning off whatever it was inside her that allowed her to fly. 

About a hundred yards before she hit the ground she remembered to slow down, managing to land on her feet in a completely unrecognizable part of town. 

“Goddammit,” she said, looking around, her eyes feeling like rubber balls bouncing off of everything she saw.

The muffled screeching of a car sliding across a parking lot came from blocks away. Although Astrid wasn’t sure, because at that moment she felt there was a strong possibility that she had just developed super hearing. Still, she flew off towards the sound, more hopping than flying, laughing as she skipped over whole city blocks like she was playing a giant game of hopscotch.

“Clara, holy shit,” she said, skidding to a stop as she found the parking lot, “I can hear sirens. The cops are coming. I think I have super hearing.”

“You don’t have super hearing, dumbass,” said Clara, “I can hear the sirens too.”

“Maybe we both have super hearing.”

“Maybe we need to get the fuck out of here.”

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“I pass,” came the gruff voice of the man sitting next to Astrid. 

“Keep coming back.”

Astrid gave the guy a once over. Who was he to pass? What, did he think he was better than everyone? With the sleeves cut off of his t-shirt and the nicotine stains on his fingertips, his hairy arms crossed defensively, what secrets could he possibly have that he didn’t deem fit to share?

As she was eyeing him, everyone else was staring at her. And she had let too much time drag on. Now they were expecting something. Caught off guard, she saw her own stubborn jackassery highlighted in the gruff asshole to her left, and she wanted to be anything other than exactly like him. 

“I…” she said, trying to figure out where to start. Now that she actually wanted to say something she felt ridiculous. Words stopped making sense. Tears threatened to spill out from the thin shields of her eyelids. Her heart raced, her mind splintered into a dozen separate thoughts. 

She opened her eyes briefly, shooting a cursory glance at all the faces that were focused on her. She said the first thing that came to her head.

“Um. I just wanna say thanks. I know I don’t ever share, but this place is kind of all I have left. So thanks. But I pass.” The words surprised her. But now that they were out there, she knew they were true. It was everything she could do to not burst into tears.

“Keep coming back.”

 Astrid couldn’t tell, but she felt like maybe there was a little more warmth behind the voices this time around. 

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“I just want to save up enough money for a trip to Italy,” said Astrid, scratching at the tender skin behind her ear.  

“You can fly to Italy, dumbass,” said Clara. 

“Okay, there’s several problems with that,” said Astrid, “One: where would I put my luggage. I can’t carry all my shit halfway across the world. Two: customs and immigration. It may sound silly, but I want the stamp on my passport.”

“Do you even have a passport?”

“Not yet, but I’m going to get one.”

“Sure you are.”

They were hanging out in Clara’s studio apartment, half paying attention to each other while scrolling through their phones. The detritus of fast living surrounded them, soiled clothing intermingling with takeout containers and crumpled dollar bills. They sat on a stained futon that was set at an awkward, backrest-like angle, and could easily be adjusted into an awkward, bed-like angle.

A small dining room table was wedged into one corner, complete with the bones of four partially assembled Ikea chairs littering the area around it. They reminded Astrid of the day before, when they had jacked a bigger deal in a marine salvage yard and she had flown off with Clara in her arms, weaving through the rusting skeletons of obsolete tanker ships as curses and nine millimeter rounds followed them through the air. 

They sat in the irritable purgatory of the comedown. It was almost at the rare point where settling down enough to sleep actually sounded better than getting high again. It was also the perfect time to go over the events of the binge with critical clarity. 

“Fuck, maybe we need to slow down,” said Astrid. She felt like her insides were melting and pooling in her feet. 

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” asked Clara.

“They were shooting at us last time. I don’t want to catch a bullet. Not even your super strength can stop a blast from a shotgun. We don’t have iron skin like that fascist, cop-ass super, whatever his name is.”

“Kevlar?”

“Yeah. Wonder how much he got for that endorsement deal.”

“What?”

“Never mind. What I’m saying is that they seem to be catching on to our plan. Have you noticed that there’s no more solo dealers out there, and there’s a lot more guns?”

“Fuck them, what are you, a pussy?”

“No, but maybe we should lay low for a while.”

“You can lay low if you want. I’ll go crazy in this shitty little apartment.”

As if to emphasize her point, Clara gripped the edge of the futon’s frame and peeled one of the pieces of brittle aluminum off as easily as Astrid would peel a banana. 

“Jesus, Clara. You can’t do this without me,” said Astrid.

“Oh? Who the fuck do you think you are? I’d do just fine without you.”

“Clara. Come on.”

“I don’t need you. Go ahead, try to run a scam on your own, see what I care.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“So you’re saying you’re a pussy, then.”

“Fuck you,” said Astrid, “I’m leaving.” She got up from the futon unsteadily, looking towards the window. But in the midst of the comedown the switch inside her, whatever it was in her brain that she did to make herself fly, eluded her. It was just out of reach, like a sneeze that she wanted so bad and yet couldn’t release. Lately that had been happening more and more. She could hardly even hover without using something.

So she turned to storm out the door. 

“Don’t you walk away from me,” said Clara, getting up from the futon, almost steaming with agitation. Astrid wondered if she had taken another bump while she wasn’t looking. She looked feral, half in reality. 

“I think I just need to cool off,” said Astrid, backing away. 

“I said,” said Clara, teeth grinding as she stomped towards Astrid, “don’t walk away from me.” She reached out lightning quick to grab Astrid’s wrist, and before Astrid could pull her hand away, she felt two little pops, followed by a hot, electric agony.

Astrid wailed. 

A momentary lucidity washed over Clara’s face. She snapped her hand back, recoiling as if Astrid was the threat. “I’m…” she started, and then rage took over again, “Oh shut up. Go ahead, leave.” 

Astrid could hardly see through the white hot pain and streaming tears. But she ran.

Then she wandered the streets, cradling her arm and whimpering. Most pedestrians crossed to the other side of the street as she grew near, as if the hurt that was radiating from her was visibly contagious. When the sharp, electric pain mellowed into a dull throb only reignited by sudden movements, she found the wherewithal to walk to the downtown hospital’s emergency room. 

At first, the nurses refused her, having seen many people exactly like Astrid feigning wounds in order to get a quick fix. It didn’t help that she kept yelling, “Downers aren’t my shit.” 

It wasn’t until she removed the hand cradling the broken wrist, where a confluence of red and purple swelled amidst formerly wrist shaped pieces of bone, that they began to take her seriously. 

The rest of the evening was a blur as sharp throbbing pain fought for superiority over the slow, aching agony of withdrawal and a broken heart. Hours passed, a doctor came, decided she both didn’t need and couldn’t afford surgery, and went. She slept. A cast was put on. Then she was told that the room was needed and that she would have to leave. They’d send a bill to whatever address they had pulled from her ID. 

She looked at the ID, trying to remember what address that would even be. It was her Mom’s house. 

Better late than never.

Astrid walked off into the night, fighting the urge to go back to Clara’s place. Instead she dragged herself the three miles to her own shitty studio apartment, opened the door, and without even turning the lights on, collapsed into her bed.

She slept for twenty hours.

She woke up covered in sweat, her throat dry and parched. Her phone sat on her bedside table in torturous proximity to the charger she had failed to plug it into.

Astrid lay on her side, shivering, as the phone took its sweet time charging. When her phone finally turned the only notification was a text from Clara.

i love you. im sorry

Her wrist throbbed in response.

“Fuck you,” she whispered, dismissing the notification. 

It was awkward to scroll through her phone with her non-dominant hand, but the various feeds served to distract the conscious part of her brain. Some sensationalist news media clip kept trying to grab her attention as she mindlessly scrolled. Each time she managed to flick it away before any of the words actually took hold in her mind. Until finally something clicked. 

“Oh fuck,” she said.

SECRET SUPER SLAIN! NEWEST VICTIM OF MUTANT GANG VIOLENCE

There were tacky sticker images of flashing police lights over the blurred photo of a crime scene. Some aspiring talking head gave a thirty second rundown in an annoying mid-Atlantic accent. 

“—as of yet unidentified super was killed in a drug deal gone wrong. She seemed to wield super strength, having taken two of her gun toting adversaries with her—”

Astrid’s mind went fuzzy as the clip showed phone pictures of the scene, a car flipped on its side with two tangled sets of legs sprouting from underneath. A handgun and shell casings. Astrid couldn’t look away. Then they showed a brief picture of a blurred out form laying in a pixelated pool of blood. But Astrid could recognize Clara’s stocky figure and black clothes. 

“Oh, fuck. Clara.”

Muscle memory pulled her off her feet. Every time she had feelings she didn’t want to feel she did the same thing. Why make this moment the exception? She walked over to the little cigar box on her dresser that held her drugs. Then she threw herself through her open window, tears streaking her face as she flew off into the night. 

Stars and city lights blurred together in her vision. Time was swept away by the roaring of the wind and the icy grip of the high night air. Astrid screamed  through the air until the sun crept up on the horizon and the air grew warm. 

By the time she found the ocean, the drugs had almost entirely worn off. The radiant colors of the sunrise felt muted and dull. She felt her flight sputtering. Grief and anger melted together in her heart before pooling heavily in her muscles. She hit the water.

Although she wasn’t able to fly, there seemed to be enough of whatever energy made her lighter that she floated just on top of the water. The sun-warmed surface of the ocean felt like warm bed sheets fresh from the dryer. She bobbed and drifted for some time, wondering what she wanted more, for the last of her flight to leave her and let her sink, or to gather the reserves of her fading high and skim across the water back to shore. 

Instead, exhaustion took over, and she fell asleep. 

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“So they pulled me out of the water. And they were speaking Spanish and the water was so warm, but I swear to god, I thought they were speaking Italian. And I was so pleased with myself. Even as these poor guys were hauling me up onto the deck of their fishing boat, my delirious ass with a soaking wet cast on my fucking arm. They must have seen me crash into the water.”

“Wow,” said the man across from Astrid in the parking lot, smoke spilling out of his mouth. Astrid had bummed a cigarette from him after the meeting ended and he had struck up a conversation. Something had flipped the talkative switch in her, and now she couldn’t seem to turn it off.  “You really got high and tried to fly to Italy?”

Astrid grabbed the cigarette out of his hand. “Yeah dude,” she said, “And I thought I had made it. But it was fucking Florida. Jesus, imagine if I had crashed in the middle of the ocean instead of five hundred yards from the shore.”

“Jesus is right,” he said, smoke filtering through the tendrils of his mustache. “What was your name again?”

“Astrid.”

“Astrid, it’s funny you mention Florida. I’ve heard from, honest to God, a hundred other addicts, that their moments of clarity hit them somewhere in Florida.”

“But I bet nobody else had it a hundred yards from shore.”

“You’d be surprised. So what, you hitched back home?” 

“Yeah.”

“Damn.”

“You won’t tell anyone?”

“I’ve been going to meetings for twenty years, Astrid. Unless someone is in real actual danger I don’t share shit with nobody outside the meeting.”

Astrid believed him. She nodded at him in thanks before flicking the cigarette butt through the air. It skidded across the parking lot in a little burst of orange sparks. “Can I bum another one?” she asked.

“Sure,” and he handed her the whole pack and the lighter.  “I’ve got to get going. You can give me the lighter back next week.”

Astrid’s wrist ached as she flicked the lighter. She thought about how much Clara would have hated these meetings. She imagined her standing, hand outstretched impatiently for the cigarette as she made fun of something someone had shared earlier. 

Did you see that guy's teeth? You’d think if he’d stopped buying drugs he’d finally have enough money to see a fucking dentist.

Despite herself, Astrid laughed and shook her head. She couldn’t decide if all of this would have been easier or harder if Clara had still been here. She supposed it didn’t matter. 

Astrid stood in the parking lot and chain-smoked for a long time. The cigarettes dwindled as she paced back and forth. She kept catching herself glancing up into the sky. On nights like tonight, when she was five cups of coffee in and chain-smoking, she felt like she could almost locate whatever it was inside her that let her fly. 

But not quite. She had to settle for feeling just a little bit lighter.