The Boy Who Could Fly. Laura Ruby

of Flight! We’ll see birds, of course, but also flying squirrels and insects! And we’ll see how scientists are studying the evolution of human flight! Isn’t that fascinating?”

      Sigh.

      “We are going to learn so many important things!”

      Uh-huh, thought Georgie. The most important thing that Georgie had learned in the last six months was the fact that money does not buy happiness. Because as happy as Georgie was with her parents, there were many other things that made Georgie unhappy.

      “Ow!” said Bethany Tiffany when Georgie accidentally crashed into her.

      “Sorry,” Georgie muttered.

      “That is the third time you’ve bumped into me!” Bethany said, rubbing her elbow as if Georgie had hit it with a hammer.

      “I said sorry.”

      “You’re always bumping into people and you’re always sorry.”

      Georgie clenched her teeth to refrain from saying something rude about Bethany’s tiara. Georgie’d had a growth spurt that had happened overnight and her body wasn’t her own any more. The doctor said it was from good nutrition and seemed pleased by this turn of events. Georgie, whose joints ached and whose feet grew so fast that her parents couldn’t keep her in shoes, wasn’t as pleased. She felt like a marionette, all arms and legs jangling and none of them ever under her control.

      This wouldn’t be so bad if she wasn’t a leadfoot – a person who couldn’t fly at all. Apparently, you can have more money than everyone in the universe put together, but if you can’t fly even a smidge, well, then you might as well be living in Hope House for the Homeless and Hopeless, eating lard on toast and getting pounded by a girl called Digger (who got her name because she picked her nose). And it didn’t matter that Georgie had a special power all her own. The fact that she could turn herself invisible – that she was the first person in more than a century who could – was the reason she had been kidnapped by Sweetcheeks Grabowski in the first place. Her parents didn’t want to take the risk ever again. They had made her promise that she wouldn’t use the power or even mention it. They had told her to trust no one with her secrets. And that meant that it was impossible to make a real friend.

      “Fly, I mean, walk with us, Georgetta.”

      The red-haired goddess herself, Roma Radisson, appeared next to Bethany Tiffany and London England. Georgie was immediately suspicious.

      “Georgie,” Roma simpered. “We were just kidding before. We didn’t mean anything by it.”

      Right, thought Georgie. Roma meant every spiteful word she said. But then, even with everything Georgie had been through, she was a deeply curious girl, the kind of girl who watches the world and misses nothing; she wanted to know why Roma was talking to her. And though she would never have admitted it, Georgie was also a hopeful girl. In the back of her mind, a little voice told her that maybe, maybe, if she were nice to Roma, if she could joke and laugh like the rest of the girls, Roma might be nice to her.

      “Tell us,” Roma said. “Were you really kidnapped when you were a baby?”

      Even though the story had been in the papers for months and months, everyone always asked the same questions over and over again, as if Georgie would suddenly answer them differently. “I was kidnapped by Sweetcheeks Grabowski. He’s in jail.”

      “Amazing!” said London. “And is it true that no one could find you for years and years, and you lived in an orphanage practically your whole life?”

      Georgie nodded. “I didn’t even know my real name.”

      “Speaking of real,” London said, eyeing Georgie’s thick silver ponytail and fluffing her own blond curls with her fingers, “is that your real hair?”

      “Whose hair would it be?” Georgie joked.

      The other girls gave each other funny looks, and not the kind that indicated they thought Georgie’s joke was amusing. “Well, anyway,” said Roma, fanning the air. “I bet that orphanage was just so grimy and horrible. I did a TV special once where I had to meet some poor people. They sent me to a farm. I had to pick tomatoes. Awful! I had dirt under my fingernails and everything!”

      “At least you could have eaten the tomatoes,” Georgie said. “At the orphanage, I was always hungry.” The girls gaped at her. So much for joking. Since Georgie was always trying not to reveal too much, she was prone to saying strange and unfunny things. (When you’ve spent years in an orphanage shunned by everyone but a cat, you’re prone to saying strange and unfunny things.) Georgie cleared her throat. “So, you were on TV? Was it, uh, cool?”

      “She’s been on TV thousands of times,” Bethany said, eyes so green that Georgie wondered if Bethany had ordered them from a boutique. “You haven’t seen Roma’s advert for Cherry Bomb lip balm?”

      “Or the video from her new CD, Don’t Get Up, Get Down?” said London.

      “Or the ads for Jump Jeans?” said Roma.

      “No,” said Georgie. “I don’t watch much TV.”

      “What do you do?” Roma demanded.

      “Well,” Georgie said. “I’ve been reading a lot.”

      “Reading!” London said, her sky-blue eyes wide. “Why would you do that?”

      Roma admired her French manicure, glancing askance at London. “Have you ever thought, London, that she’s been reading my memoir, Fabulousity?”

      “Oh!” said London. “Right. That’s a different story.”

      Georgie didn’t believe that fabulousity was an actual word, but she decided not to say so. Instead, she said another wrong thing. “I’ve been reading From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler.”

      “The mixed up what?” London said.

      “That’s a kid’s book!” said Bethany in horror.

      Georgie was tempted to point out that, technically, they were still considered kids, at least by adults too dim to know better, so a “kid” reading a kid’s book wasn’t so surprising, but somehow knew that wasn’t the right thing to say. She was also tempted to tell the girls how thrilling it was to pore over all the books she’d missed reading as a child, but then she knew that wasn’t the right thing to say either. Georgie lumbered along, trying to figure out something fabulous and witty to talk about. Mechanical monkeys stole my memory? No, too crazy. My cat Noodle is really unusual, even for a cat. She’s what they call a Riddle, see, and she can put you in a trance if she wants to… no, too childish. Um, there are giant rats with filed teeth living underground that call themselves The Sewer Rats of Satan. They’re obsessed with kittens. No, too bizarre.

      “So tell us about Bug Grabowski,” Roma said, stopping to stare at yet another mounted skeleton of something or another. “Is he really Sweetcheeks’s son?”

      “Yes.”

      “Oooh! A gangster’s boy! How dangerous!” said London.

      “Well,” said Georgie. “It was until they threw Sweetcheeks in jail. Now he’s just a regular boy.”

      “Not such a regular boy,” said Bethany. “Is he your boyfriend?”

      Georgie felt herself flush. “No, he’s not my boyfriend.”

      “Did you see that advert he did for Rocket Boards?” Bethany said. “Those muscles!”

      Ever since Bug was declared the youngest winner of the citywide Flyfest competition, he’d been spending hours and hours every day working out with his personal trainer. Like Georgie, Bug had also grown some centimetres… wider. His biceps bulged