I was a member of a small band, a teen crime-fighters club, like something lifted from a young readers' book series or more warily still a television show, though certainly not nearly that banal in scope.

Shown, or rather, introduced to a much needed advantage, I was carried aloft, almost clasped to the belly of a mythical being, avian or angelic, but with no wings involved, indeed no monster above me at all. Quickly I achieved an erratic independence. I was hovering, dipping awkwardly up and down, soon trailing above a golf course. At times I had to curl up my legs to avoid dragging my feet on the grass, only to shoot up several dozen such measures above the flush flat green of the links. I barely skimmed across the laughing waters of a small brook, then found myself having to duck to avoid the embracing arms at the uppermost of royal old trees. I took great delight in shouting at the golfers on the greens, hoping to make them muff their putts. I could pee on them if I wanted. The danger in swooping so low for the effect--I had gained a small clumsy skill at what I was doing--was that immediately place me in the vicinity of the next tee, and I was terribly afraid one of those tiny hard white balls would soar a blur arcing through the blue to smack me in the head. Gradually I became more adept at my flight, climbing higher and higher, leaving off with my pranks. If nothing else, I was given the greater distance between myself and the hard crash of the ground. I was keeping myself up, way up, but I did not feel at all a master of this art. At once apprehensive, I was incredibly happy with the day's glorious perfection, the way the sunshine rained in smiles, the green below tended as carefully as fattened cows, the bottomless blue of the upturned bowl covering, cupping us all. In my uncertainty, I remembered as dreams how often I'd flown before, those lessons learned lost a breath away, a taste not quite lasting past the tip of my tongue. What I needed was more to squeeze my eyes tight enough than to flap my arms like a fool. I followed up a steep hill, rising as the marking of a second pencil grasped in a fist with another will trace a shadow above the path of the one gripped below. At the top of the hill it seemed natural that the time had come to return to earth, the lesson was over and I could see the exact spot on the grass where I would land. By then I was very high in the sky, and though I was nearly giddy at my control of staying up, I thought nothing but the worst would come of descent. Perhaps I was nothing but a dumb gnat, haphazardly buffeted by the breeze, the soft grass way below a poor buffer against the tragedy of landing. I saw myself as a crumpled sack, a broken body full of splintered bones. I dropped like a stone, but amazingly landed lightly, on my feet, the impact no more jarring than if I'd been walking and had simply taken another step.

I eluded the pursuers by vaulting over the turnstile, racing feet slapping across underground concrete, squeezing through the closing doors of a departing subway train, surprised by the circumstances even as they occurred.

The secrets of flight were directly related to the consumption of food! The less one ate, the more birdlike one became. Bones would become hollow, filled with air. It was no mistake feathers were a metaphor for lightness. I looked up with a smile broad and bright, declaring, "I'm never going to eat anything ever again!"

In the end, I'm not sure exactly what good we did. We either vanquished, or more likely merely escaped, the evil clutchings of bad. At any rate, we celebrated with a party of delivered pizzas. It was debatable whether the pizzas smelled even better than they looked, or the other way around. This quibbling difference didn't matter, because best of all was how they tasted, to which I could attest, since I did relent and have a slice. It was imperative that I did. Some ballast was absolutely necessary. One had to eat a little something every two or three days. Otherwise one would become as gossamer, a balloon let loose to the updrafts, carried away upward, ever upward, lost to the heavens, never to return.