Free Falling

Chapter 3

Sitting on the park bench, Dani considered her options. I could stay with Steve, he’s probably involved with the ‘stuff’ that ball of light wanted me to fix… then again, why should I do that? Knowing me, I’ll mess everything up. And what right does it have to force me to do its dirty work, anyway!
Scuffing her feet, she stood up and wandered around the area. The sun was still high in the sky, so she couldn’t count on Steve’s arrival for a while. She wondered what would happen if she just left before he came and kept walking far, far away from here. She liked that idea. Most likely she would have followed through with it had a certain small boy not walked in just then.
“Danny!” Steve panted, looking like he had run a long way. He seemed shocked to find her there. Dani noted that the bruises on his face all looked old and yellowed… that shouldn’t be right, he had just been beat up yesterday.
“Steve?”
“Danny, where were you?” The blond looked upset now. “Why weren’t you here last week? ”
“Last week?” she echoed, confused.
“You said you would be here the next day and you weren’t! I came every day after, too!” Dani’s confusion grew. The sphere had to have a hand in this somehow… She decided to come clean with Steve.
Just as she opened her mouth, a headache slammed her. Whiteness seemed to envelop her again, and images flashed around her at an alarming rate. Even more alarmingly, she understood them all. She saw the path of the future change, Steve never joining the army, never falling in the ice, how the future would suffer from that because he was the one who would essentially win the war…
The visions faded, and she noticed that Steve was looking at her in concern as she gripped her head.
“…Are you ok?” he asked timidly. Ok, I can’t tell him the truth… but…
“I had to go to the doctors, I’ve been having bad headaches, but I’m back now,” she fibbed. “…Also, I should probably tell you that I travel out of the city unexpectedly sometimes,” she lamely added, covering for any future events where she skipped a chunk of time. Smooth. Let’s hope he believes it…
“Oh. Ok,” he said. A thought occurred to Dani.
“…Steve, why aren’t you in school right now?” The boy looked ashamed.
“See… if we get there late, the teachers won’t let us in the school… and my friend and I saw this group of guys from our school bothering a girl, so we told them to stop…” he stuttered, not making eye contact.
“And by the time you finished dealing with them, it was too late to get to school?” she finished. Steve nodded. “Where’s your friend, then?”
“He’s leading them away. They blamed us because they got locked out too… My friend can run faster, so he decided to lead them away from me. He’ll be here in a minute.” Right on cue, a boy that Dani could only assume was Bucky stumbled into the park, wheezing like he had run a marathon.
“I… *pant*… I lost them, I think…” he breathed. Looking up, he looked shocked that Dani was there. “Are you Danny?”
“Yep. You must be Bucky.” She smiled as warmly as she could.
“How do you know his name?” The question came from Steve. Shoot. He hadn’t mentioned Bucky’s name the other day…
“You told me his name, remember?” she calmly replied, hoping that he wouldn’t question further.
“Oh…” Steve seemed convinced, but for a few moments longer Bucky looked suspicious. Putting his doubts aside, he offered Dani his hand.
“Well, it’s nice to meet you. Thank you for saving Steve the other day, he doesn’t always think before getting into fights.” Steve looked only slightly offended at that. Dani took the hand and shook it firmly.
“Pleasure to meet you too. Now-” her statement was cut off by approaching yelling. “…I don’t suppose those are the guys you ‘lost,’ are they?” Bucky looked like he was about to pee his pants.
“…Probably…” And sure enough, a group of about five boys, all as tall as Dani and muscular as well, barreled into view. She grabbed each of her new friends’ hands and pulled them towards the alleyway.
“FOR THE LOVE OF CHEESE, RUN, GUYS!” she yelled, and off they sped.
XXX
After an exciting day of alternately losing their pursuers and being found by them again, Dani finally hid the group in another restaurant and watched amusedly as the angry group stomped around the street. Bucky and Steve seemed less amused. Dani just ordered the group dinner.
She was starting to enjoy this, even if it was only her second day here. While running, they had a ton of fun joking and chatting, more than she had ever had with her crummy excuses for friends in the other dimension. Shortly the food arrived at their table, and as her two companions dug in, she fished her phone out of her pocket.
It had re-appeared earlier that day, but she hadn’t had time to look at it. Holding it below the table so the two couldn’t see, she discreetly entered the password.
All her apps were there, but another one had shown up. The icon looked like the floating orb she had encountered yesterday… or last week, really. Yesterday for her. She opened it.
There was only one thing on the display, a digital readout counting up by the second. It currently showed just under twenty-four hours. Dani realized with a start that this amount of time was almost exactly how long she had been in this dimension. Really, it probably was the exact amount of time.
“Washu doimf?” Bucky asked through a full mouth of mashed potatoes, ever observant. Dani looked up.
“Just thinking,” she quickly replied. Perhaps a little too quickly. She began to shovel food in her mouth before he could ask her another question, earning her a disapproving look from Steve. Before long, the two boys were yakking it up with each other again, and she returned her attention to her device.
Opening her browser, she searched for a news site. To her slight dismay, the last date of the most current article was the exact day that she had left her dimension, just minutes before the light had taken her. A popular news site like this would update every few hours… After checking another news site, Dani quickly concluded that she had all of the internet available to her, but only up until the time of her dimensional jump.
Her frustrating discovery was quickly pushed aside as Bucky again took notice of her suspicious behavior. Slipping the phone into her bag, she directed her attention back at the two boys and tried to ignore the way this all very suddenly felt real.
XXX
Back in her crate at the park, she began to wonder exactly what she should do. With agonizing slowness, the night dragged on and the moon rose higher above. Dani finally concluded that it would be best to just go along with what the orb had wanted. If she finished what it wanted her to do, she would eventually be able to go home. Also, the two boys felt more like her friends after a few hours than anyone else ever had.
She pieced together that her purpose was probably to keep Steve from dying. The kid was practically asking to be pounded into a pulp daily… and she was quite certain that he would have died if she hadn’t stopped that brute the first day. She could play along. She would be Steve’s bodyguard every evening after school and enjoy every minute of it, and when she got home…
Home had finals.
Dani wasn’t in a hurry to get back to that.

Notes