Pulse: When Gravity Fails (Pulse Science Fiction Series Book 1) by John Freitas Read Free Book Online Page B

weight.
    Michael tried to look up, but his neck hurt. He felt something push on his shoulders and he actually turned to see what it was. He slammed to the ground on his side facing Roman. The grass folded flat to the Earth so that Michael was looking Roman in the eyes. Michael tried to push himself up, but couldn’t.
    “What’s happening?” Michael grunted.
    Roman’s voice answered strained and breathless. “Invisible tigers, I think.”
     

8
     
    Holden Grayson – Alberton Elementary School, West Memphis, Arkansas
     
    Holden Grayson stared at the grass on the hill above the playground. He was next to the monkey bars as kids swung across hand over hand behind him. He held onto the post and stared at the hill.
    The wind was blowing from the front of the school toward the teacher’s parking lot. The grass seemed to disobey the wind. It folded back and pointed defiantly at the sky. A few blades broke free of the Earth and even with the wind pushing at their sides they twisted and launched themselves upward into the sky. Holden watched until the sun dazzled his eyes and he lost the rebellious sky grass.
    Holden Grayson tried his best to obey as often as he could. It was harder since his mother and father split. Parents were supposed to stay together swaying with the wind like the grass on the hillside in a pattern that made sense. But sometimes they pulled loose and flew apart in ways that made no sense at all. Holden understood how wind worked, but he did not understand how his parents worked now. Sometimes their rules for him were different from each other and they were hard to follow. One was pushing while the other was pulling. And sometimes they switched.
    Holden was eight and that was old enough to notice when things weren’t right. His brother Grant was four and didn’t really remember the world before their parents split. He also did not remember dad’s trouble with anger and taking the pills that made him sick. They thought Holden did not know, but he remembered and the sadness from remembering pushed at his insides and pulled at his heart.
    One of the kids on the diamond at the far end of the playground gave the red kickball a ringing boot high over the heads of the kids scattered through the infield. Something about that rubbery ping sound reminded Holden of the playground. All play was contained in that sound of a sneaker kicking a ball. Holden turned to watch it float and hang in the air. It was one heck of a kick, but the ball was getting tricky and floating instead of falling. Holden watched it spin on its own invisible axis in the air like some angry, red planet. The other kids ran under it waiting for it to fall. From their perspective, it was a high hanging kick. They were not seeing the dark magic Holden saw in its refusal to fall. The kicker was almost home with his fists raised in double pumping victory. The ball drifted down slowly and stubbornly to the hands of the defensive players.
    Holden looked back at the kids navigating the monkey bars. Their feet swung up and the kids hung by their hands almost horizontal with their legs defying weight and gravity.
    A kid on the sidewalk beside the wall of the school flicked a marble. It bounced off a cat’s eye and hopped up off the concrete. The green glass orb hovered in the air with the kid staring, his jaw unhinged. At least someone else was seeing it too. That was something.
    Something was strange on the playground today. It was the sort of thing that adults either praised kids from their imagination for telling or scolded them for making up fibs.
    “Push and pull.” Holden whispered.
    He felt light and barely connected to the ground himself. Holden gripped the support of the monkey bars tighter trying to keep himself earthbound. He might run along hopping like he was on the Moon and then one, great leap could send him flying over the Moon like the cow in the nursery rhyme.
    Holden looked for more evidence of the disobedient world and spotted