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turn to
jump, and he made a run for it. He fell into the air and thought he
would just keep on falling, but he didn’t. He hung there in shock
as he looked around him. Thankfully, everyone got off the airplane
just before it floated its way into a building. He couldn’t imagine
what it would have been like to have been on the plane when it
crashed. It looked terrible from where he hung suspended in the
air. He saw someone, a woman, hanging in the air not far from him.
She was clutching a young boy. Henry recognized her from the NASA
building. Did that mean that the building had been evacuated? Was
his father out there somewhere, too, floating around in the
air?
    “ Excuse me !” Henry
shouted.
    The woman turned
around and looked at him quizzically. “Yes?”
    “ Do you know my dad? Jim
Iverson?”
    She nodded as she shifted her weight to allow for a better
hold on the child. “I do know him, yes. I don’t know where he
is , though. There was a lot
going on in the building.”
    “ He’s my dad , and I
have no idea where he is. I just jumped out of an airplane, and I
have no idea what is going on.”
    “ Welcome to the club. I’m
trying to figure out what to do myself.”
    “ Can I make a suggestion? We would have a better chance of
not rising up in the air if we h eld on to each other.”
    “ That’s actually a good idea. My name is
Carly , by the way.”
    He went to Carly and took the child from her hands. The boy felt incredibly light in
Henry’s hands; he could hardly believe it. Carly moved around him,
and she then wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around
his neck. Henry held the child in the same way. Together, they
could suspend themselves in air in the same spot without worrying
about floating away. Hopefully, together they could figure out what
to do next. They couldn’t stay out there forever. There was a
chance their situation only would grow worse.
    “ I’m Henry.”
     
    ***
     
    Linus McCoy was Henry’s best friend. They had been super close since they were kids.
They pretty much spent every waking moment together. When it came
to trusting someone, Linus could depend on Henry for
anything.
    When the world decided to fall apart , Linus found himself on a bullet train, of all
places. He was traveling on the bullet train to visit his father.
He knew something was wrong when the train started to shake
uncontrollably. Everyone on the train started screaming, and it was
almost too much for him to take. He got up from the seat to take a
look out the window. It looked like the end of the world. The train
was just passing the area where the NASA building was located. He
knew that Henry was not there that day; he was supposed to be
flying off for a school event. Of the two of them, Henry was always
the overachiever.
    It looked as if the train was about to be
derailed , and Linus didn’t
think that he should be on the train when that happened. The train
suddenly went off on another track in a different direction. That
was all it took for Linus to start running down the aisle and head
for the exit. When he got there, he opened the door, expecting
there to be a huge gust of wind blowing around, but there was
nothing. The air was just still. He looked one way and then the
other before he jumped. He expected to fall heavily and maybe break
a few bones. Instead, he lifted up in the air and found himself
floating.
    “ What the …” He watched
as many other people started jumping off the train before it went
off the tracks and crashed. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing,
and he hoped that no one was seriously hurt. He looked toward the
NASA building and saw all sorts of objects and people suspended in
the air. Maybe if he headed in that direction, he would be able to
find Henry’s father and figure out what was going on.
    He started swimming through the air at a slow pace but
making decent headway. The dots that he had seen from far away
eventually turned into people. He went through a few