Night Moves

He indicated the Moller. 'I'll use this one for my event.'

'Hmmp. Doesn't sound as hard as DinoWarz.'

'Analog real time is different than digital, hillbilly. Talkin' muscle memory, judging wind speed, temperature, all like that.'

Jimmy Joe wasn't impressed. 'I could program all that in. One session.'

'Yeah, but you couldn't walk over there and throw this and make it work.'

The dog ran back with the Frisbee in its mouth and dropped it at the feet of its owner, a tall dude with green hair. 'Good girl, Cady!' Green-Hair said. 'Go again?'

The dog barked and bounced around.

'And the event you are doing is which one?'

'Maximum Time Aloft. You throw, it twirls up and around, a judge puts a stopwatch on it. Everybody gets a throw, the bird that stays up the longest wins. You have to catch it when it comes back or it doesn't count, and it has to land inside the fifty-meter circle. You want something light and with a lot of lift. The current record is just over four minutes.'

'Feek that! Four minutes twirling around? No motor? Come on.'

'That's just the official record. There are guys who have put one in the air for almost eighteen minutes, unofficially.'

'No feek? That doesn't seem possible.'

'I scat you not.'

Tyrone held up the Moller. 'My best with this is just over two minutes. If I could throw that today, I could probably make the Junior National Team.'

'That'd be DFF.'

Tyrone smiled. Yep, data flowin' fine. Too bad his dad wasn't here to watch. Dad had been real helpful when Tyrone had gotten started, even had an old boomerang at Grandma's house he'd found. Of course, Dad couldn't keep up with him now, but that was okay. He was not bad — as dads went.

The PA system blared to life. Tyrone's event was up.

Tyrone swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. Practice was one thing; competition was another. This was his first, and he suddenly felt a need to go pee, real bad, even though he had gone just ten minutes ago.

Despite his indoor pallor, Jimmy Joe seemed to be getting into the spirit of things. 'So, when do you do your thing?'

'I'm eighteenth. There are thirty-some-odd throwers in my class. Some of them have come all the way across the country for this, and some of them are real good.'

'You gonna watch the others?'

'Oh, yeah. Might see something useful. Plus I want to know what time I have to beat.'

'You know some rude dude has, like, three minutes, that helps you?'

'Just like knowing the high score in DinoWarz does.'

'Copy that.'

There were several other events under way at the same time — distance, accuracy, Australian — and Tyrone and Jimmy Joe found a shady spot under a dealer's canopy and watched the juniors.

First guy up was a tall, lean kid with a shaved head. He threw a bright red tri-blade — not the best choice for this event — and Tyrone clicked his stopwatch. Forty-two seconds. Nothing.

The next guy was a short, stout kid with a Day-Glogreen L-shape, which looked like a Bailey MTA Classic or maybe a Girvin Hang 'Em High. Or it could be one of the clones; you couldn't really tell from this far away.

Tyrone clocked the flight at a minute-twelve. No winner here, he was pretty sure. Winds were light, from the northeast, so he wouldn't need to tape coins or flaps to his blades to keep them from getting batted down.

Third thrower up was a girl, as dark as Tyrone was, probably about his age, and she had a Moller, same model as his. She took a couple of steps, leaned into it, and threw.

The bird sailed out and up, high, hung there for what seemed like forever, spinning, drifting, circling back. It was a beautiful throw and an exemplary flight. Tyrone glanced away from the bird at the girl. She was looking back and forth from her stopwatch to the bird, and she was grinning.

As well she should. When the bird finished its lazy trip and came down, the black girl had a two-minute-and- forty-eight-second flight to her credit. That wasn't going to be an easy time to beat.

They watched eight more throwers, none of whom came within thirty seconds of the third girl, then Tyrone had to go and warm up for his own throw. His mouth was a desert, his bowels churned, and he was breathing too fast. This ought not to be scary, it was something he did every day the weather was good, throw his boomerang, dozens of times. But there weren't several hundred people watching him practice, and today he only got one throw that counted.

Just let me break two minutes, he thought, as he approached the throwing circle. Two minutes won't win, but I won't be last, and I won't feel like a fool. Two minutes, okay?

He pulled a little commercial pixie dust from his pocket and rubbed it between his left thumb and first two fingers, letting it fall to check the wind direction. The glittery dust sparkled as it fell and showed him that the wind had shifted a hair toward the north but still was mostly northeast. He dropped the rest of the dust, pulled his stopwatch and held it in his left hand, and took a good grip on the Moller with his right. He took three deep breaths, exhaling slowly, then nodded at the judge next to the ring. If he stepped out, he'd be disqualified. The judge nodded back, raised his own stopwatch.

Go, Tyrone.

He took another deep breath, one step, leaned, snapped his wrist, and put as much shoulder into it as he thought the bird could stand. He was careful to make sure it didn't lay over to the right, and he put it as close to forty-five degrees as he could.

He clicked the stopwatch.

Two minutes and forty-one seconds later, his bird gave it up. He caught it safe, double-handed clap, and that was that.

Tyrone grinned. There were still a dozen more throwers to go, but he had beaten his own personal record by more than thirty seconds, and he was in second place. No matter what happened, he was happy with that throw.

As Tyrone started back toward where Jimmy Joe waited, the black girl who was in first came over. She was athletic looking, muscular in a T-shirt and bike shorts and soccer shoes, a little plain. Not in the drop-dead-beautiful class that Bella had been in. And still was in.

'Nice throw,' she said. 'You'da leaned a little more to your left, you'da gotten another ten, twelve seconds out of the flight and beat me.'

'You think?'

'Sure. The Moller'll do six minutes, so they say. I've thrown a three minute fifty-one second in practice. Hi, I'm Nadine Harris.'

'Tyrone Howard.'

'Where you from, Ty?'

'Here. Washington.'

'Hey, really? Me, too. Just moved here from Boston. I go to Eisenhower Middle. Or I will go next week.'

Tyrone stared at her. 'No feek?'

'Nope. You heard of it?'

'I go there.'

'Wow! What are the chances of that? Hey, maybe we can throw together sometime! Last school I was at, nobody else was a player.'

'I hear that. Exemplary. Let me give you my e-mail address.'

When Tyrone got back to where Jimmy Joe stood, his friend was looking around on the ground. 'Lose something, white boy?'

'Oh, I was just looking for a big stick.'

'A big stick?'

'Yeah, slip, for you. To help keep the women away.' He waved in the direction of the departing black girl,