FutureImperfect by Stefan Petrucha Page B

night. So you really shouldn’t mention what happened, right?”
    That seemed a little funny, too, like it was dishonoring Harry. And how did Jeremy know how important the demo was to her mom?
    But he seemed so sure, so she nodded. “Right.”
    He slipped a black iPod out of his pocket and put it in her hands. The plastic felt smooth and cool.
    â€œWhat’s this?” she asked. “A present? You know I can’t see you anymore.”
    Her tongue felt sticky. Her voice drawled.
    Jeremy smiled sweetly. “Just a distraction,” he said. He placed its two earbuds in her ears. In a second, music filled her head, washing her, pounding her brain like it was the ocean and she was the sand. She didn’t know the band, but she liked them. She looked at the box she held.
    â€œInfinity in the palm of my hands,” she said, quoting the Blake poem.
    â€œYes,” Jeremy answered. “You might say that. But I liked the one you wrote about Sisyphus better. Remember that?”
    Siara nodded, touched that he knew her little poem.
    â€œI want you to listen to it, and keep listening to it.”
    â€œSure,” she said.
    â€œGreat,” Jeremy said. “I’ll drive you back to school then.”
    â€œThanks,” Siara answered. Her voice sounded dull and hollow, even to herself. So much so that she felt like she should apologize to Jeremy for not sounding more enthusiastic. She hoped he would understand, what with Harry being dead.
    Â 
    But death wasn’t the only consequence of time.
    As Harry Keller fell on purpose, he felt a pang, as if he were betraying his father by embracing a last-minute wildness. But he’d had not so much an idea as an intuition: The Quirk says I have to fall, but it doesn’t say how I have to fall.
    It was a crazy thought, logically impossible given the height of the building, but because Harry could see what would happen before it did, he also knew it could work.
    So, as he tumbled by the eighth floor, he twisted his back just enough to make it slam into the side of the building.
    Omph!
    The impact felt like it had crushed his rib cage, but it did what he’d hoped; slowed his fall and changed his direction just enough for him to do a belly flop onto the sixth-floor flagpole. The pole had more give than the stone, but it stung like crazy all along his body in a long thick line that started at his navel and ended on his nose.
    Ungh!
    With the pole flipping him sideways, at least now he wasn’t headed straight down. He was moving at an angle, away from the side of the building that faced the crowd, toward a huge, wide awning that hung over a fifth-floor balcony. It must be covering some sort of open-air restaurant he figured.
    Anght!
    He hit the cloth hard. Its thick canvas burned and bruised his bare skin as he slid along it. Thick though it was, the awning tore as he rolled, sending him off into the air again. He was in a wild spin now, out above a side street where a huge Thanksgiving banner stretched across the avenue. The next part would be tricky, especially with everything turning around and around.
    He slammed into the banner.
    YEOW!!
    His still-spinning form stretched the thinner cloth on impact, suspending him against it briefly in midair, until gravity took effect and he started to fall again. With a second to spare, one of his flailing arms hooked the banner’s edge. He grabbed the top of the banner in both hands and held on tight.
    Urngk!
    The strain felt like it would rip his arms out, but instead the weight of his body tore the banner off the steel cable that held it. Holding the cloth as it tore, Harry swung across the street, lower and lower. He was only thirty feet up now, still high enough to die.
    As he made the Batman-like swing, he thought that if the crowd gathered at the front of the building could see him, they’d probably applaud. As it was, with everyone stuck in a mob at the main entrance of the Valis