Beyond (Afterlife book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

for our first practical flying lesson. The new students
used the Academy’s football field to practice. We lined up, facing
the headless Mr. Grangé.
    “ Now who wants to be the first
to try?” he said while walking back and forth in front of us with
his head under his arm.
    No one said a word. I was not going to make
a fool of myself in front of the whole class. I just knew I would
fall flat on my face.
    “ Really?” Mr. Grangé
asked. ”Not a single volunteer?”
    The silence was unpleasant. I kept hoping
someone would step forward. Anyone as long as it wasn’t
me.
    Mr. Grangé’s arms lifted his head up in
the air so he could look down at us. It was quite a
sight.
    “ Very well, then. Let me
show you,” he said.
    Without a sound he started soaring
straight up in the open air. Over our heads he circled faster and
faster while screaming with delight and laughing.
    The class all gaped at him.
    “ Wow!” one student
said.
    “ Oh là là!” Mr. Grangé yelled.
”I am getting so dizzy … come on, this must be something you are
all dying to try!”
    Then he soared even further into the air
before he let his body fall until he almost hit the grass. Then he
soared into the air again.
    “ It is like the best
roller-coaster ride you have ever tried!” he yelled from high up in
the air.
    None of us could help smiling. This looked
really fun. I couldn’t wait to try it myself, but I didn’t want to
be the first one to go.
    Mr. Grangé came down and stood in front of
us. He took a moment to catch his breath.
    “ It is a lot of fun,” he
said. “But you get exhausted.”
    Everyone was dying to try, but still no one
said it out loud.
    “ Now what are you waiting for?
There is a whole new world ready for you out there,” Mr. Grangé
said. “At my count to three you all try to jump into the air and
stay there.”
    Nigel put his hand in the air.
    “ Oh no, not him again,” I
heard Portia whisper. One of her friends giggled.
    “ Yes, Nigel?”
    “ Do we need to do anything
like flap our arms or something like that? I mean how do we stay in
the air?”
    Mr. Grangé sighed. “My dear Nigel. You no
longer have a body that can pull you down. You are nearly
weightless. There is not much that the gravity can pull on. It is
all in your minds. If you believe you can do it, you
can.”
    “ Oh, okay,” Nigel said not
too convinced. “Do we need to say anything? Is there a rhyme or a
spell or anything we can say?”
    “ No, Nigel. Just think happy
thoughts, like in Peter Pan, all right?”
    The class laughed.
    Mr. Grangé looked at us with a smile from
under his arm. “Now at the count of three …”
    I felt my heart racing. I closed my eyes and
concentrated.
    “ One … Two …”
    This was it!
    “ Three…”
    All fifteen of us jumped into the air. I
felt the weightlessness under my feet and as I opened my eyes I
realized I was hanging two feet over the ground. I was excited and
looked around to see my classmates. While Portia had soared right
into the air and was hanging high above all of us, Nigel hadn’t
moved at all. He stood on the grass with his eyes closed and looked
determined, but he hadn’t jumped. When he opened his eyes and saw
the rest of the class hanging in the air he looked sad.
    Mr. Grangé tried to cheer him up. “Some
people just have their feet more solidly planted on the ground than
others,” he said. “Did you mother tell you to always keep your feet
on the ground?”
    Nigel nodded while sobbing.
    “ It is okay, boy. You will
master it soon enough.”
    Nigel kept sobbing.
    “ Let’s try again, shall
we?” Mr. Grangé asked and signaled the rest of us to come back
down.
    Portia was already circling in the sky
shrieking and laughing, taking dives toward the rest of us, making
us scared that she would bump into us.
    “ Uhm, Mr. Grangé?” I
asked.
    He smiled at me. “Yes, Meghan?”
    “ How exactly do we get
down from here?”
    Mr. Grangé laughed. “Well, now that is the
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