Spoonbenders

He began to fly at random, zooming close to street signs, trying to remember the map of Chicago. Why hadn’t he studied it more? Why hadn’t he arranged for Frankie to come wake him up?

His body was the anchor. He’d gotten this far from it by following whatever drew his attention. Maybe, then, he only had to pay attention to his body.

He tried to think about his arms, his chest. His throat. The tickle of smoke at the top of his lungs. He coughed—and felt his body move. The sound of the cough seemed to come from far away.

“Okay, Matty,” he said aloud. His voice came through more clearly, and he began to follow it back across the network of roads and houses. “Here we go.”

A minute later, he slipped through the roof of the garage. His body said, “Next time, maybe you should be less high.”

—

He didn’t make it all the way to Mitzi’s Tavern until ten days later. The biggest obstacle was finding a place and time to smoke. He couldn’t keep staying at Uncle Frankie’s house. Grandpa Teddy’s place, though, was crowded and chaotic. The basement was out of the question; Mom had made that her second home, camping out there when she wasn’t at work to talk to the Joshinator. Buddy could barge into any room at any time. And the garage was too risky; Grandpa Teddy had a door remote, and the thought of the door sliding up while he was passed out on the floor terrified him.

He eventually settled on a spot behind the garage, between two overgrown bushes. If he sat cross-legged, with his back to the garage wall, he was invisible unless someone walked up right in front of him. He thought of it as his nest. But the only time to slip into it was between the end of work with Frankie and the return of his mother from work.

At least it was easier to travel in the daytime. He memorized the route from Grandpa Teddy’s to Mitzi’s, and after a few trips he was able to get there in seconds, as long as he didn’t let his mind wander—literally. Anything could distract him: sirens and church bells; old ladies and young girls; animals, especially birds, which were amazing, and seemed to be everywhere he turned his attention, a nation of tiny, officious observers who could not only see Matty’s astral form, but hungrily track it.

That last bit of paranoid insight, he realized later, came courtesy of the marijuana. He was having trouble fine-tuning his cannabis intake. Too much and he never arrived at the tavern, too little and he barely had time to look around before his body snapped out of it.

And time was a problem. Barney the Bartender never went to the door alarms during the day. Finally Matty was able to get there early enough one morning to see him open up the bar and type the disarm code into the alarm console: 4-4-4-2.

Frankie was overjoyed. Then almost immediately he forgot the joy and started worrying about the safe. Days went by without Matty being able to give him the combination. “What’s the problem?” he asked one afternoon in the Bumblebee van. “It’s just three numbers.”

“Most of the time I’m there, she never gets up from the desk,” Matty said. “I’ve only seen her open the safe twice—and the first time she hunched over it, so close I couldn’t see the numbers. Practically on top of it. And the next time she went for the safe, I tried to zoom in, but I overdid it. I went straight through the wall, and then—whoosh.”

“Whoosh? What’s whoosh?”

Matty felt his face grow hot. “I ended up…away. Like, really far away.”

“Like what, Glenbard?”

“Over the water. Lake Michigan.”

“What the fuck!” Frankie had said that too loud, and lowered his voice. “What the fuck?”

“I know! It kinda freaked me out. I panicked. Luckily, the—” He was about to say that the pot wore off, and squelched that. “I came to, and I was back at home.”

“Okay, okay, this is good news,” Frankie said. “You’re getting stronger. You just need control. It’s a classic Telemachus problem. Too much power.”

Matty liked the sound of that.

“Tell me what you need,” Frankie said. “Talk to your coach.”

Coach? Matty thought. Aloud he said, “I think I need to spend the night again at your house.”

“Why’s that?”

Why, indeed. Because (a) he’d smoked half the pot and needed to stock up if he was going to stay on his game; and (b) he wanted an excuse to hang out with Malice. The only reason he could give Frankie, though, was (c): “Mom’s getting suspicious of all the time I’m spending alone.”

“Right, of course she is,” Frankie said. “I’m coming over for dinner in a couple days. I’ll ask her then.”

“Thanks, Uncle Frankie.”

“It’s nothing.” He clapped Matty on the shoulder. “It’s just another obstacle. Like the twelve labors. You know what I’m talking about?”

“Sure. Hercules.”

“Heracles, Matty. Learn your Greek. That’s your heritage. We’re sons of gods—demigods at least. We come from heroes. Heracles, Bellerophon. Theseus—”

“Okay…”

“And what can stop a hero if he sets his mind to it?”

“Nothing?” Matty said.

“Damn straight.”

—

Then Uncle Buddy asked him to walk to the gas station to buy milk for dinner.