How It Feels to Fly Read Online Free PDF

our right,” I continue, trying not to let my inner voice derail me. “With a vegetable garden. And there’s a gazebo in front of us. Set back in the woods a little. Looks like no one’s gone over there yet.”
    â€œOh yeah, the gazebo. Let’s go check it out.”
    His words make me pause. He’s been here before. I’d forgotten. “This is weird,” I tell him.
    â€œWhat’s weird?”
    â€œI’m describing stuff to you that you’ve already seen.”
    â€œIt was three years ago,” he jokes. “I barely remember.”
    â€œStill.”
    â€œIt’s not really about the landscape, Sam,” he says, hisvoice growing earnest. “It’s about learning to trust each other.”
    â€œRight. Okay.” I guide him off the path and across the lawn. Andrew keeps his arms held stiffly out in front of him. That, plus his polo and khakis and his slow progress forward, makes him look like a preppy zombie.
    â€œSo, what year are you?” he asks.
    â€œI’ll be a junior. What year are you?”
    â€œI’ll be a junior too. But in college, obviously.”
    â€œOh. Right.” The age difference between us: another thing that separates Andrew from Marcus.
    Stop thinking about Marcus. He dumped you. Get over it.
    â€œSo, do you like college?” I ask Andrew, wincing right away at how young the question makes me sound. “I mean, do you like the University of Georgia?”
    â€œYeah, it’s great.”
    â€œEven after you quit football?”
    â€œYeah. It has a lot more to offer than that. Though it’s a great football school, for sure. You a football fan?”
    The question is so absurd that I actually laugh out loud. “Um, no.”
    â€œYour loss.” Andrew flashes his warm smile in my direction. But since he’s blindfolded, it looks like he’s smiling at the trees over my left shoulder. “Anyway, I still like watching football. I go to all the home games. I just didn’t want to play anymore.”
    â€œHow come?” I ask. “I heard what you said in there, but . . .”
    â€œI spent way too long letting my dad run the show. With him, I never had a choice. He put me in peewee when I was nine—that was the earliest my mom would let me play—and we never looked back. Playing in high school and college was a given. But when I got to UGA, it was like a lightning bolt: I did have a choice. Dr. Lancaster said something similar to me when I was here, but I didn’t really get it until I wasn’t living at home anymore, you know?”
    â€œSo you were just . . . done? Just like that?”
    â€œYou make it sound so easy. But believe me, there was time between deciding and quitting. Took me all of fall semester to get up the nerve.”
    As he’s been talking, I’ve been studying his features, framed by that sandy hair. The furrow in his brow above the blindfold. A small, white scar on his chin, just off center. Thin lips, which he presses together tightly before going on:
    â€œYou said last night your mom was a dancer?”
    â€œShe was in the corps de ballet at a small company in Virginia. But not long after she met my dad, she broke her ankle.”
    â€œIt ended her career?”
    â€œYeah. It didn’t heal properly.”
    â€œToo bad.”
    â€œIt’s scary, how one wrong move can screw everything up.” I shudder a little. “But then my parents got married and my mom got pregnant. As soon as I was old enough, she put me in ballet classes, and I turned out to love it as much as she did.”
    â€œIt’s good she’s supportive of your dancing.”
    â€œShe totally is.”
    â€œAs long as she supports you in whatever you want to do. When I quit football, my dad about had a heart attack. Threatened to stop paying my tuition. My mom changed his mind on that one real fast.”
    I can’t imagine what my mom