“REMEMBER, ONCE YOU’RE in the air, push down hard with your wings,” I called to Dylan.

I was hovering a little ways out in case we needed a rescue mission for Dylan. Dylan himself was doing a balancing act on the edge of the roof with Nudge behind him to push him off.

“After that I just flap right?” he called back to me. He kept glancing at the ground with more fear of plummeting to his death than excitement.

“Yeah, pretty much. Ok Nudge, ready?”

“Yep.”

“Ok, on three. One…Two…THREE!”

Nudge shoved Dylan over the edge. His wings snapped out and pushed down. He must have gotten so excited that he wasn’t going to splatter all over the lawn that he forgot to flap.

I grabbed his hand before he fell more than a few feet. Once he got over the initial shock of what had just happened, he started flapping again and I released him. He turned in the air to face me.

“Thanks for catching me.” He was looking at me with real gratitude on his face, as if he meant it.

“No problem.” I shrugged, turning away. Those turquoise eyes were boring into me.

Dylan was made for you, Max, my Voice chimed in. You need to accept that, not shrug away from it.

I rolled my eyes, making sure Nudge and Dylan couldn’t see.

We flew around for a while. I mostly avoided eye contact with Dylan. After about fifteen minutes of this I said-

“Ok, lets work on landing.”

Dylan, it turned out, was a natural at landing so we didn’t have to spend much time on it.

I finally suggested we go inside because there really wasn’t anything else for him to learn. Plus, I didn’t want to spend a whole lot of time alone with him. Sure, I had Nudge, but she was unusually unsocial. She disappeared inside first, actually. Dylan held me back from following her.

“Thank you Max. You’re a really great teacher.”

Once again his eyes were drilling into mine. I turned away without answering and went inside.